Family Fodder
(From Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent)
With a job that sometimes requires all night travel to reach a story, it would be easy to believe my sleep suffers most when I'm on the road. But with five children, none yet a teen, the truth is my most sleepless nights are at home.
It doesn't take lightning out the window or a monster in the room for a child to find their way to my bed, where -- in truth -- I'm already awake thanks to the early alert system: the sound of little feet bounding down the hall.
So by the time they've arrived I'm alert and mentally calculating how much more sleep I'll get after dealing with that night's particular "emergency," which in the last week have included:
1. I'm hungry
2. I've got a growing pain
3. It's dark outside
4. I threw up on my bed
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It was my first time in the back of a police car. I didn't know the seat was going to be made of a sloped and slippery molded plastic that pushed me towards the floor.
Easier to clean up, I was told, when people vomited. I wondered how many times that had happened where I was sitting. Or rather, sweating. It was stifling back there, as the Plexiglas separating me from the officers also cut off the air conditioning on this 80-degree day.
There were, of course, no handles to open anything. Even though I had the peace of mind to know I could get out by just asking, the experience was suffocating and not something I'd want to repeat. CONTINUED >>
(From Janet Shamlian, NBC News Correspondent)
I'm sitting here thinking about how wrong it is that I'm better able to report a story on how to talk to your kids about sex than talk to my OWN kids about sex. WATCH VIDEO
I have five (kids, that is), and my oldest is 12. Fortunately, as I'm so often reminded, I'm married to an amazing guy. So, my better half (it's an expression) handled the first one.
I fear our second child, my daughter, has picked up more than I'd like from movies and friends. She should have heard it FIRST from me. By the way, did anyone else let their 5th grader watch the season finale of "The Office"? Just wondering.
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(From Alicia Ybarbo, TODAY Producer)
My job continues to teach me things I never knew before. As a producer, one moment I'm picking out belts and shoes for a fashion show and the next I'm writing up interviews with major politicians and war experts. What helps me get through the more challenging segments is my ability to "brush up" on the subjects that I really know little to nothing about. (Nothing a quick call to the research library for some current articles on the subject can't fix.)
In the end, I always manage to pull through the more difficult segments, not letting on that I had to take a crash-course in whatever the topic was. That is, until recently, when I got a big wake-up call reminding me how little I know about science... where no amount of articles from the research library (nada, zilch, zippo) were going to help.
I went to interview a group of high school students from Buffalo, NY, who were on their way to the National Science Bowl in Washington D.C. as the first ever all-girl team. The "Fabulous Five," more formally known as Buffalo Prep, are successful, well-rounded sophomores, juniors and seniors. This was their first time to the Science Bowl, which is a national challenge between 60-something high school teams from across the country, who compete in a Jeopardy-style science challenge.
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