Lifestyle

Dear Healthy Men: My wife and I are planning to start a family and her doctor suggested that she start taking prenatal vitamins to prepare her body for pregnancy. When I asked the doctor whether there was anything I should be doing to increase the chances of a healthy pregnancy and baby, she just laughed — which I thought was really insulting. I find it hard to believe that as someone who’s going to be contributing 50% of the genes to our new baby, what I eat and do before the pregnancy is irrelevant. Am I wrong?

LIMA — “Your body is an always-changing, never finished, work of art. And it deserves a freakin’ art show,” said Amanda Rose, a photographer at Lima’s Wild Rose Photography LLC.

Celina Lake Festival

LIMA — Lima’s Canteen was at the heart of American history.

After enduring war-time wage controls and restrictive labor laws passed in the aftermath of World War II in answer to a rash of work stoppages, workers at many Lima plants were ready for action, never more so than in the mid-1950s.

LOS ANGELES — If your yard is tiny, or even just a balcony, Jordan Karambelas has a suggestion for growing food organically: a good-looking aquaponics system that uses recycled water enriched by fish poop to irrigate vegetables planted above.

FICTION

This week, while Reagan and I were practicing her batting in the front yard, she suddenly saw something brown hopping around in the grass. Immediately, she dropped her bat to inspect it and was pleasantly surprised to find a tiny toad.

Q: We have a 3.5-year-old daughter and each night we have a routine we go through with her — bath, pajamas, brush, choose two books and read them, sing a couple of songs, and pray before lights out. Bedtime typically falls between 7:30 and 8 p.m. each night and she sleeps soundly for about 11-12 hours. We try to go through the routine calmly but most evenings, she finds some way to deviate from it. Almost every evening, she ends up having a screaming meltdown because we’ve told her the next step, given her time to respond, and she procrastinates in a big way. We’ve tried skipping books and songs as a consequence, to no avail. Last night, for instance, when it was time to go to her room to read, she threw herself on the floor and screamed bloody murder. We ended up having to carry her into her room. What can we do to make bedtime happier and calmer? I don’t want her last thoughts as she closes her eyes to be about the meltdown that just ensued.

After 32 years on the ground leading the City of Lima as mayor, David Berger looked to the sky for his next challenge.