Unlike some people, I happen to love the names of Mariah Carey‘s newest additions. I like a little originality when it comes to choosing your offspring’s moniker. Monroe and Moroccan (Carey twins one and two) are the right combination of cuteness and class. Still, naysayers have to scream out and plead for Carey to go with something more run-of-the-mill; something more Dick and Jane. Really? Do we want something this boring from our celebrities?

I gawked at a recent columnist who called the originality celebrities use when naming their offspring self- promoting, unorthodox and icky. (This same columnist later admitted to wanting to change the name of her own child months after she was born because it was becoming too popular. Who’s the icky one now?)

I’ll admit Carey could have kept quite about naming her son after the decor in a room of her house, but shouldn’t parents be able to name their children whatever they want? (Also, the room was where her actor’s husband Nick Cannon proposed.) Actors are artists and it only seems fitting that they would exercise a little more artistic freedom when playing the baby name game.

People tend to copy everything celebrities do from their hairstyle to the color of their footwear. For years, people have also copied celebrity baby names. Maybe uber original names are, in part, an attempt to avoid a string of copy cats. After all, if you name your baby Buddy Bear (Jamie Oliver) or Caspar (Claudia Schiffer) people will be less likely to follow your lead with their own little buddles of joy. If the said author was upset enough to call the city about changing her daughter’s name because it was becoming a little too popular, what would she do if thousands of people world wide started to copy her child’s name?

I love that celebrities tend to avoid common names and, in doing so give us something to talk about. Does the world really need another Emma?

Designer clothes and lavish parties still reign in many celebrities families, but more famous families are

Jennifer Garner enjoys a quiet walk with her daughter.

choosing to get back to parenting basics.

Celebrity parents such as Tobey Maguire, Jamie Lee Curtis and Helen Hunt have embraced a back-to-basics parenting approach known as Rie.

Rie (pronounced wry) is short for Resources for Infant Educators and has the goal of raising more peaceful, competent and self-aware children.

Rie honors the child’s struggle, by keeping toys and life simple. Busy days filled with classes and errands are avoided; instead parents try to engage their child in simple pleasures and narrate what is going on around them.

Cool shoes that are easy for toddlers to put on themselves.

Most of us can’t afford to dress our tots like Suri Cruise. But Converse makes it easy to put your kids in Shiloh Pitt and Violet Affleck’s shoes. Their three-strap oxfords retail for just $35 a pair. Best of all, the velcro is ultra practical and easy for most toddlers to do up themselves. We put the shoes to the ultimate test–two-year-old Bode Ripton.

Bode felt so proud when he could do up his shoes on his own. And he loved showing off his cool new treads to his classmates at preschool.

The three-strap oxford (seen here) and other cool styles are available in stores March 2009 and locations can be found online at converse.com