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The mother of missing Aisling Symes today described how she turned her back for a few seconds and the toddler was gone.

Angela Symes, married to Waterford man Alan, pleaded with the kidnapper to hand Aisling (2) back.

"I was just fiddling with the taps and looked behind me and she was there, watching what Caity and I were up to," Angela said.

"Then I turned off the cold tap, looked behind me and she was gone."

Police renewed their appeal for an Asian woman seen with a child like Aisling to come forward.

In an emotional interview on New Zealand TV, Angela -- clutching a Winnie the Pooh bear she had bought for Aisling -- described working at her parents' home at the time of the disappearance.

The two-year-old was standing behind her mum and her sister Caitlin (5) when she vanished.

Angela was working at her parents’ home at the time Aisling vanished. The two-year-old was standing behind her mum and her sister Caitlin (5) when she disappeared.

“I just erupted from the door, screaming out her name and that was just that, she was gone. I just can't believe that she moved so quickly, in the time it took just to turn off a tap, she was gone.”

A distraught Angela, clutching the teddy she bought hours before Aisling went missing, said that she always keeps her children within her sights.

“I was always watching her,” she added.

Alan Symes, originally from Waterford, then spoke directly to anyone who may have abducted his daughter.

“She belongs with us, she needs to be back with us, we miss her terribly. No matter what reason you took her, look what you are putting her through, look what you are putting us through,” he said.

Alan, his older sister Eithne and mother Olwyn emigrated to New Zealand from Stradbally, Co Laois over 18 years ago.

A neighbour, Cherie Tahitahi, said the creek behind the house was not fenced off.

Mrs Tahitahi raced next door when she heard Angela cry out, “Aisling, Aisling”.

“The mother was panicking, she was really hysterical,” Cherie said.

The parents have made an emotional plea for her abductor to return their daughter safely.

They described Aisling as a “very fast, quite fit young lassy”. New Zealand Police have stepped up precautions to ensure she had not been taken out of the country.

Customs staff have been given photographs of Aisling and are getting briefings at the start of each shift.

Inspector Gary Davey said: “It's now more likely that she has been abducted. We need to keep our minds open.

“We have searched and not found her, which makes it more likely we are looking at someone having picked up Aisling.”

A team of more than 40 officers are working on the criminal investigation, checking “people of concern” in the area and looking at any recent reports of suspicious behaviour.

Mr Davey said two sightings of Aisling around the time she disappeared on Monday, indicated the most likely possibility was an abduction.

Is your spouse missing out on valuable family time and a real bonding experience with your children ? In an article published earlier this year it was reported that only 1 in 30 men in the UK found time to read a bedtime story to their children. I suspect the situation wouldn't look that different in the USA or Australia either.

Reasons for the lack of bedtime reading were cited as long hours and work commitments and tiredness.

When women were interviewed the results were 9 out of 10 still found time to read to their children. I admit this is a subject I feel very strongly about. Mick and I read to our children from the time they were babies. I'm not talking about the odd book occasionally but myriads of books of all types. In fact I'm sure we were the libraries best customers.

Books are an important aspect in our house. Mick is an avid reader and so am I, so there are stacked bookshelves in several rooms. A present for each other will often be a book and it's a standing joke in our house that we dare not let Mick near a second hand book shop, or the bookshelves at home will end up suffering further overload.

But the thing I found sad with the story is how much fathers are missing out on. When we lived in Sydney Mick didn't get home till late because we lived a long way out in the suburbs and he worked in the city and had to rely on the vagaries of public transport, but he still managed to find time to read to the children. Each of us loved that special time of curling up together with a book. Reading to children is one of the things we are both passionate about.

Even though it is hard at times to make time for it, our son and his wife have been reading to their children since they were babies, because they see it as important.

So wives out there, do try and encourage your husbands in this vital aspect of parenting and bonding of children and parent. Maybe there is something you can do, a job you can take over to enable this to happen on a more regular basis.

It's not just about reading either but often those times becomes great times for the best conversations and drawing closer the bond between parent and child. Make sure your spouse doesn't miss out on this.

Missing People, the charity that helps both the disappeared and those left behind, told us that 250,000 missing persons reports each year ? more than 30,000 higher than any previous total ? is "probably an underestimate"; others put the total nearer 275,000. This, the equivalent of the entire population of Plymouth being spirited away, means that, across the country, one person goes missing every two minutes. The vast majority are swiftly found, or return of their own volition, but many don't. Some disappear for decades, and sources, including some inside the police, say the number of people in Britain who have been missing from family, friends and usual haunts for more than a year is at least 16,000 and could be as many as 20,000.

Among them are people like Melanie Hall, last seen in a Bathclub nightclub in 1996, whose parents had to endure 13 years of waiting and wondering before her remains were found, a week ago, beside the M5. She had been murdered. Nor does death always bring closure. At any one time, there are an estimated 1,000 unidentified bodies lying in the country's mortuaries and hospitals. Many have been there for years ? unknown, unclaimed citizens.

The long-term missing inhabit a looking-over-their-shoulder world of false names, cash-in-hand jobs, hostels and short lets. For their families, they leave behind not only trauma, grief, guilt, anger and despair, but also, if they are breadwinners, more practical problems. Missing people are deemed neither dead nor properly alive, so salaries are stopped, insurance companies won't pay out, bills can't be paid and corporate "helplines" won't discuss the disappeared's affairs because of the Data Protection Act. But, most of all, the long-term missing leave behind an aching sense of mystery: what has become of them, and why did they go?

This is the story of Britain's long-term disappeared ? of people such as Joyce Wells, Alan Hobbs and Janet Cowley; of those as young as seven-year-old Daniel Entwhistle, missing from his Great Yarmouth home since May 2003, or as elderly as 88-year-old Mary Ferns, missing from West Lothian for 16 months now. All an agonising riddle. Why did the Gloucester librarian Angela Bradley leave her spectacles in her car, the keys in the ignition, and walk away one January day in 1995? What happened last November to Quentin Adams, a 40-year-old father of three from Banchory, Aberdeenshire? He popped out to buy cigarettes and has not been seen since. And where on earth is the 14-year-old Doncaster schoolboy Andrew Gosden?

Some 93 per cent of the children who go missing do not live in a two-parent household, and single children are more likely to run away than those with brothers and sisters. Andrew fell into neither category, happily living, according to testimony from his caring family, with his mother, father and elder sister, Charlie. He was doing well at school, and no one had noticed him behaving in any way that would set alarm bells ringing. And yet, one day two Septembers ago, he left for school, waited for his parents to go to their work as speech therapists, returned to the house, changed his clothes, went to a cash machine, withdrew £200 of his savings, and boarded a train to London. We know this because he was seen on CCTV arriving at King's Cross, a slight figure dressed in black jeans and T-shirt. No one has seen him since. The despair, the not knowing, hit his father, Kevin, like a truck. He tried to commit suicide, hanging himself from the banisters, and his life was saved only because the vicar ? who had a key to the house ? arrived at that moment.

The Toronto Star did a fantastic article on women determined to have a baby boy are buying unmarked medication from strangers to affect the sex.

According to the article, Punjabi women face huge pressure to have baby boys – girls are considered burdens on the family. “Boys outnumber girls in Toronto’s South Asian community. In Brampton, for instance, the ratio is 864 girls for every 1,000 boys.”

For hundreds of years, women in many cultures have tried to control the sex of their unborn children, often to have sons which were/are considered more valuable. Recent technology like ultrasounds has made it easier for expectant mothers to simply abort female fetuses.

This sex selection is not an India specific problem.

China has 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, thanks to a restrictive one child per family policy and the abuse of reproductive technology.

So what the hell happens when these children (those who are heterosexual) grow up and start looking for a mate? It would be nice if the shortage of women at least had the effect of increasing their power in domestic relationships.

But sadly, a society that devalues baby girls to that extent doesn’t always treasure adult women.

The recent article has sparked debate in the GTA about the hush-hush practice of trying to avoid having daughters. An honest discussion of the pressure these mothers are under to have sons is the first step towards trying to end this long cross-cultural tradition.

Many companies are turning to new methods to advertise their business. One method that has become very popular is to use wristbands for advertising. Wristbands have been used by charities and non profit organizations to promote their causes. Now businesses are using these wristbands as a marketing tool as well. This article will outline how to advertise your business using wristbands.

The third step to advertising your business using wristbands is to decide how to get your wristbands out to people so they can start wearing them. You can offer them free with a purchase from your store, or you can send them to existing customers as a thank you present, or you can do both. The more wristbands you can get people to wear, the more advertising your business will get, which will lead to more potential customers for your business.

The second step to advertise your business using wristbands is to come up with a design for your wristband. You want the wristband you design to be nice looking and something that people will want to wear, something that stands out from the crowd. You can have your wristband made of several colors, one solid color, or almost any design imaginable. Experiment with color of your wristbands, and how your company logo appears, until you have found a combination that you like. You will want some form of contact information for your business located on the wristband. Whether it is a phone number, website address, or street address make sure that someone who is looking at the wristband has a way to get in contact with you.

The first step to advertising your business using wristbands is to find a company to manufacture your wristbands. When having your wristbands manufactured you want to make sure that they are made of stretchable silicone and not rubber. Silicone wristbands are made of higher quality and will last longer than the rubber wristbands. You also want to shop around to determine a fair price for your wristbands. There are many companies that manufacture these silicone wristbands, so contact several companies and shop around to get a good price. Once you have verified that the wristbands will be made of silicone, and that you are paying a fair price, you are then ready to design your wristbands.

There is a lot of information about the various styles and materials of customized silicone bracelets. It would be a good exercise to take the time to understand the different types of basics of rubber bracelets that many online companies offer.

In general, there are basically four types of wristbands available for customers. There are embossed, debossed, screen printed, and laser-printed basics of rubber bracelets. They are explained as follows:
Embossed basics of rubber bracelets.

Even though they are not as possible as debossed or printed wristbands, they are definitely a good option for those whom want to put uniqueness and style onto their wristbands. As well as the embossed basics of rubber bracelets, embossed wristbands are able to incorporate any type of design and message. They require a mould to be manufactured, sometimes, basics of rubber bracelets manufacturers store these steel moulds for the regular clients.

Laser-Printed basics of rubber bracelets

These types of basics of rubber bracelets are becoming more and more popular in the younger population. Laser-engraved bracelets are closely alike to debossed bands in appearance and texture. However, many of these laser-printed wristbands manufacturers charge outrageous prices no matter if they are less expensive and quick to manufacture. These kind of wristbands are a fair option if they are ordered for very special purposes.

These laser-printed wristbands are not as popular as the silicone wristbands just by the fact that many manufacturers do not have the modern machinery to produce them. On the other hand, if you prefer the common LIVESTRONG debossed wristband, you should consider laser-engraved basics of rubber bracelets for small orders. The good part of these wristbands is that they can be customized with real images in full color. A modern design program allows a printing machine to engrave any fully customized message or image on the basics of rubber bracelets. They do not require a mold to be produced. Therefore, the high quality used in every laser-engraved bracelet makes them very exclusive and good looking.

Debossed basics of rubber bracelets

The LIVESTRONG is the most representative wristband of the debossed style. Here the term “debossed” refers to the message letters that are actually carved on the wristband. Manufacturers use a steel mould to create the personalized messages for every client. At the very beginning, these basics of rubber bracelets were more costly and took longer to manufacture than any other wristbands. However, expert manufacturers have simplified the production of these steel moulds as well as the basics of rubber bracelets themselves.

Silk-printed basics of rubber bracelets

They are the cheapest choice for customers. In this case, the message is silk-printed on a blank basics of rubber bracelets by using a template which is quite similar to the ones used for printing t-shirts. Although this is a very simple process, there has been an important improvement in screen-printing silicone wristbands since more elaborated dyes and effects penetrate the silicone basics of rubber bracelets. So, the messages printed on these basics of rubber bracelets never fade or lose their original color.