I wasn’t surprised to be pitched a Memorial Day story about traveling with kids. PR folks often use holidays to promote certain products or services.
Already, I’ve received suggestions for Father’s Day stories promoting the latest barbecue grills, golf clubs and weed wackers. On the first day of summer, I’m sure my inbox will be filled with story ideas about how to keep your yard looking great with help from Brand X Lawncare or suggestions for proper summertime skin care.
I usually just delete these email messages and move along. From time to time, one of them will catch my attention. That’s exactly what happened last weekend. I was traveling with my family and decided I could use all the help I could get during a 12-hour car ride.
As a result, I clicked on the email about Memorial Day travel tips. Most of it was pretty mundane, until I found a description of My Pee Pee Bottle. This little travel companion is intended for toilet-training tots and their parents. Why pull over at one of the 26 rest areas in Illinois or stop off at a McDonald’s when your toddler can relieve themselves into a baby blue or pink plastic bottle?
The Web site is even more disturbing. It features the creator’s grinning daughter giving a testimonial that reads, “Thank-you mommy for creating My Pee Pee Bottle.” There are also detailed pictures on how to use the device. Equally alarming is the video describing the product.
Now I’m not saying I haven’t re-filled a Gatorade bottle or two on a long road trip, but having a re-usable receptacle designed exclusively for kids is just plain goofy.
We’re talking about yard sailing strategy here, although the youngest member of the family is currently fascinated by anything nautical.
That same young boy has established a pattern of going up to the person running the yard sale and asking “where is the free box?” before the rest of the family is barely to the first table.
The boy has been doing this for years and at first it was cute, but now it leads to mom’s lecture on “needs versus wants.” Someone else may need some of the small things he gathers that would be duplicates in our household. For example, for years there has been a moratorium on purchasing stuffed animals, but I still need to remind them.
Just moments after Ryan Seacrest announced David Cook as the 2008 American Idol on Wednesday night, my son Jayden flung his tiny left arm up and scratched himself under his eye.
The cut was about a centimeter-long, but sort of deep. So deep, that my wife Alicia told me to bring her a towel to quick — because “my baby’s bleeding bad,” she sorrowfully said.
If Jayden were older I might have thought his injury was from a jerk reaction from the shock of Cook beating out the other David — Archuleta — for the American Idol crown.
With Cook winning by a margin of 12 million votes, Jayden could’ve been surprised like Idol’s judges and many faithful viewers were. Or upset because his G-Ma (my mom’s “cool” term for grandma) had been a huge fan of the baby-faced Archuleta all season long.
But since Jayden is only three months, he didn’t know what was going on. The left side of his face turned a ghastly red after he scratched himself due to his real frustration: Eczema.
Clinically called atopic dermatitis, eczema is an allergic condition most commonly found among babies and children that makes the skin dry and itchy. It can cause raw, sensitive skin from scratching, according to online resource, MedlinePlus.
The red to brownish-gray patches of dry skin can occur anywhere, but appear mostly on the hands and feet, arms, behind the knees, ankles, wrists, face, neck and upper chest. Eczema can also affect the skin around your eyes, including the eyelids, the Web site said. (Okay, doesn’t that sound like the whole body?)
While still trying to find a cure, researchers have found that eczema isn’t contagious. Yet, it can surely be passed down from one generation to the next, and come on during adulthood.
My mom has always told me that I suffered from eczema from the time I was born until I was a kindergartner. It developed only on my legs; yet, I would scratch them so much that I would bleed constantly. At age 29, I don’t remember the agony, of course.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - This weekend my cousin is getting married to a sweet, Southern girl. As is tradition, the wedding is being held in her hometown - Huntsville, Alabama.
We decided to attend the wedding when it was still cold and icy. At the time, a late-spring road trip sounded great. The days leading up to the trip were quite different. I found myself dwelling on the 10 hours of driving we had ahead of us.
That is a long time to be in the car for anyone. It’s an exceptionally long time for two kids under 2 years old. I started to brainstorm for ways to make the trip easier. First, I borrowed my uncle’s conversion van. This vehicle drinks gas like a frat boy drinks beer on spring break. It also offers plenty of space to pack snacks, take a nap or even watch a DVD.
We also decided to caravan with my parents. This way, we could trade off kids. On one leg of the trip 23-month-old Bubba could ride with grandma and grandpa. Meanwhile, his 5-month-old brother, Peter, could ride with mommy and daddy. Then, we could switch at the next rest area.
The combination of the different cars and the big van turned out great. (Though the van did burn through $220 in gas one way.) With the exception of Bubba freaking out for about 45 minutes while riding with grandma and grandpa, both of the kids were well behaved.
I’m still a bit nervous though. We leave to go home on Sunday.
When the kids were younger they wanted to read the same books again and again.
That’s good for them and economical for their parents.
Those of you with teens and tweens may find, as we are, that now books are read once or twice and the student is done with them, unless it is a reference book.
I would love to ramble on each week about the importance of reading, but I decided to hold off until summer break was just around the corner.
If you have no other curriculum plan for the summer, you should do a summer reading program for the kids.
Reading helps them in all of the subject areas.
A few days ago, I picked my daughter Zion up from my mom’s house in Chicago, and got into a heated argument with my grandmother.
Okay, it wasn’t really an argument. (I wouldn’t dare raise my voice at my 83-year-old granny.)
But it WAS fairly intense, as we shared two different opinions about an important issue that is, perhaps, overlooked: Whether or not parents should let their kids use pacifiers.
Our conflict started when my mother told me that Zion had been crying while trying to doze off. She was asleep by the time I arrived; however, my granny said it was a fight because she didn’t have her pacifier to soothe her.
My mother hadn’t given her one because she thought Zion no longer took a pacifier to go to sleep. And for the most part, my mom was right.
Nevertheless, my bulging-eyed granny was quick to sternly say, “Tony, you don’t raise no babies on a pacifier.”
I thought her advice was ludicrous. I simply couldn’t imagine us making it through a two-hour church service without a pacifier to help keep a squirming Zion — or my son Jayden — quiet. When we forget to take a pacifier for Zion, I have carry her out of the sanctuary so she doesn’t disturb the service. But with a pacifier in tow, I’m able to worship God with ease.
So I asked my granny why so many people give pacifiers as baby shower gifts, and why they’re sold in stores everywhere. (Today, they come in all colors and even with fake jewels so babies can have bling in their mouths.)
I recently asked Netflix - the online movie rental giant - to compile a list of the top kids movie rentals in the Kankakee area. I provided them with ZIP codes for Kankakee (60901), Bradley (60915) and Bourbonnais (60914).
The good folks at Netflix went back to 2000 in their database. The company then sent me a Top 10 list for each of the three ZIP codes. I thought it was pretty interesting to see how kids movie rentals differed from place to place. Here’s the list. Enjoy!
Top 10 Kids Movie rentals for Kankakee (60901)
1. Night at the Museum
2. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
3. Happy Feet
My 22-month-old son is in love with Dora the Explorer. We have a DVR, and it’s set to record every episode of Nick Jr.’s bilingual beauty.
We don’t watch every episode, but it is good to have a stockpile. Say I need to answer an important phone call or take a shower, I can always plop Bubba in front of the television for 24 minutes of Dora (broadcast without commercial interruption.)
I was flipping through the channels on a lazy Saturday morning and stumbled upon Dora the Explorer on Univision.
We usually watch television downstairs. That’s where the cable box and DVR are located. However, this morning I was channel surfing on the upstairs television. It works with an old-fashioned, rooftop antenna.
The channel selection on this TV is lousy. Sure you get your local network stations - 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 32. Beyond that, the viable options are few. It’s mostly shopping channels, televised preachers or foreign-language programming.
Still, I found myself glued to Dora on the Spanish-language station. I’ve watched countless episodes of this show, but this was interesting because it was the exact opposite. The Nick Jr. show casts Dora as an English-speaking girl who goes on a daily adventure teaching children Spanish words and phrases along the way. On Univision, the adventures are the same, but Dora speaks Spanish and teaches kids English words and phrases.
One of my favorite characters on the Nick Jr. show is Tico the Squirrel. Tico doesn’t speak a lick of English and is usually found driving a yellow car. Dora has to stop to speak Spanish to Tico, who then usually helps out by offering Dora and her pet monkey, Boots, a ride.
On Univision, Tico speaks English. It was very interesting to hear his voice. I searched the Internet looking for a video link to the English-speaking Tico. Unfortunately, I came up short. I did find this small clip from a Spanish-speaking Dora show on Youtube. It features Dora’s backpack - another reoccurring character - speaking Spanish instead of English. Enjoy.
“Will my chores get easier in the future?” the kids ask.
The complaints seldom stop when it comes to kids and chores.
And the answer is “no,” by the way. It only gets worse as you get out on your own about six years from now, we tell the daughter. And then there is my popular line of “it could be worse; you could be taking care of livestock every day like we did.”
Or, try this one: “Imagine how much worse it would be if we did not have indoor plumbing.”
Chores are a constant struggle. Even though the kids know that if they do the work without complaining, they might get a little commission, that doesn’t seem to help.
The daughter even suggested she save up money for a new dishwasher so she didn’t have to hand wash the dishes. I then reminded her that she would also have to pay the utility costs associated with a dishwasher.
That gets a fun and educational conversation going (as well as a few Web site searches to back up the parents’ comments) about electricity and propane and how those utility costs are only going to go up, just like the price of food and fuel.
On yesterday afternoon, my wife and I sorted through the last four storage bins/bags full of Zion’s old clothes. It seemed to take forever to prepare the items to be donated to two friends who are having girls within the coming months.
There were colorful — although pink, mostly — dresses, pants, onesies, sandals. The piles also included receiving bibs, socks, blankets. Plus, two of the most memorable dresses from Zion’s first year — a tiny yellow one she wore on Easter, when she was three months old; and a red and black one she wore on Christmas, just a week before she turned 1.
It was fun to reflect on the events to which Zion wore certain clothes and how much she’s grown. However, I couldn’t help but think about all the money we spent on outfits that she never wore.
Prior to Zion’s arrival, we anxiously went out and bought clothes, just hoping that she would fit them. For those of you who aren’t parents, every mom and dad faces the dilemma of not knowing what size your child will be once born.
And how rapidly, the baby will grow.
And will he or she outgrow clothes set apart for a certain season before it even arrives.
For example, by summer 2007, Zion probably would’ve suffocated by wearing the summer clothes we had bought for her the previous fall. So we had to do more shopping. (more…)
