Life is a journey, and that’s why I drive a Voyager… a Grand Voyager actually. I scoured the earth looking for an affordable minivan. I finally bought my blue-green beauty queen from a private seller this week in Arlington Heights. It was quite a drive up to the northern suburb, but I was more than willing to make the trip for a vehicle with 72,000 miles and a $3,500 price tag.
I’ve wanted a minivan for quite a while. That may sound strange, since these vehicles hardly have the sex appeal of a Corvette. However, my in-laws rented a minivan during a recent visit, and I fell in love with convenience of dual-sliding doors and ample cargo room.
I had been driving a 2002 Lincoln LS. This was a posh luxury sedan, filled with options. It was a sweet ride, but hardly a family-friendly vehicle. The backseat was small. The trunk could barely hold our double stroller. Plus, the hot-rod Lincoln was getting old. The odometer had just turned 100,000 miles, and a recent “love tap” dented the passenger side, causing the car to pull in that direction while driving.
The good thing with the Lincoln was that it was paid in full. There’s no room for a car payment in our current budget, so I really needed to swap my four-door Lincoln for a gently-used minivan. This was going to be tricky.
First, I had to find out what the Lincoln was worth. I took my car to a dealership and was offered $2,500. I thought this was a bit low. I decided to try to sell the LS (short for luxury sport) myself. A buyer emerged rather quickly and paid $3,500. I was sad to see the Lincoln drive away in her pearl-white glory. I was also excited to start shopping for my man van.
What influences your tweens?
The daughter, who is less than three months away from turning into a teenager, has a poster of a popular actress on a wall in her bedroom, but she has also given the character a sticky note mustache. What’s up with that?
Her reply: “I am not really a big fan, but others I know who may see it are fans, so hopefully they will see this and not continually tell me how great she is. It is kind of like rebelling against idol worshipping.”
This whole time I am thinking, “you don’t clean your room so you never get to have friends over to show this display; and it is not like your brother is into anything that isn’t military related.”
Does this translate to — I needed something to cover my walls and this free poster just seemed to work fine because it covers a lot of space? Or, her clothes are kind of cool and I liked the way she mixed and match those pieces?
Confused parents of tweens everywhere may be feeling the same way.
Our nation’s 12-year-olds (some of her friends have already hit the teen level) are beginning to identify their own generation.
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Either I’m losing my mind, or there’s something different about Dora the Explorer. New episodes of my 2-year-old son’s favorite cartoon began appearing in my DVR a couple of weeks ago. Something’s not right about this new season.
Together, Bubba and I have watched almost every episode of the Nick Jr. television show that debuted in 2000. That may sound like a lot of TV time, but there’s an episode on everyday. Usually these episodes are reruns, which gives those of us with kids born within the past two years time to catch up on eight y
ears of Dora’s bilingual adventures.
Not that there’s much to catch up on. Every episode is basically the same thing. Dora and her friend Boots the Monkey begin each show with a problem. The problem is resolved in two or three well-defined steps. Spanish words and phrases are sprinkled in along the way as well as a few fun songs, games and puzzles.
But this season is different. The first thing I noticed is that there seems to be new voices for repeat characters like Boots, Backpack and Benny the Bull. The Wife also noticed that in one new episode Isa the Iguana replaced Boots as Dora’s sidekick. In another episode, it was revealed that Backpack is a girl - a surprising fact since Dora’s purple pack had never previously been assigned a gender. Another new episode had Tico the Squirrel speaking English. This character spoke exclusively in Spanish in all previous episodes.
I doubt my 2-year-old or anyone else in Dora’s target audience has noticed these subtle changes, but I sure did. There’s a phrase used by television critics and hardcore TV fans that denotes the point when a television show loses its luster. From that point on, the plot veers into strange territory and the original appeal of the program is lost. When this happens, it’s called “jumping the shark,” referring to an episode of “Happy Days” when The Fonz literally jumps a shark on water skis.
So I’ll leave it up to you my fellow parents, has Dora the Explorer “jumped the shark?”
Bullies are everywhere and they know no season.
I was recently talking to a mom who was worried about her young (first-grade) son who is being bullied on the bus.
Been there and can feel her pain and his pain.
I wish it were our kids’ bus because then some allies for this child could be easily recruited.
As it turns out, the little guy doesn’t even go to the same school district.
Why are kids so mean?
When our younger child was in Head Start, there were boys on the bus that teased him nonstop and took advantage of the fact that he was not as smart as they were.
Hello, there is like a seven-year age gap we’re talking about here.
We repeatedly told our “really little guy” to ignore them. He had a hard time grasping that concept because he had always been taught to “pay attention when someone is talking to you.”
Confusing? Yes.
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Having kids close in age has advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage: My 9-month-old son and my 2-year-old son have similar diets. If the baby is eating applesauce, his older brother will usually wander over for a few spoonfuls. If my oldest is eating a turkey sandwich, I just break off small pieces of bread for the baby.
Disadvantage: Two kids in diapers makes my house smell like a kennel.
I’ve observed another interesting thing as a parent of two boys close in age. The baby seems fascinated with everything about his older sibling. Baby Peter can watch his brother, Bubba, for long stretches - often without blinking.
The baby is particularly fixated on Bubba’s sippy cup. It’s almost always filled with whole milk. Occasionally, Peter will swipe the spill-proof cup and take a swig. This prompted me to ask our pediatrician if Peter was ready to make the switch from baby formula to whole milk. He certainly seems interested.
Unfortunately for my wallet (baby formula is expensive), I was told to wait until Peter’s first birthday before making the switch. The reason for waiting is that formula is fortified with iron, whereas cow’s milk is a relatively poor source of iron. Babies who don’t get enough iron can develop anemia. I confirmed the doctor’s recommendation on this Web site.
I guess I’ll just have to go on hiding Bubba’s sippy cup from Peter for another couple months. Actually, keeping track of two milk cups might get difficult anyhow. How am I going to know which one belongs to which baby?
There is a ton of inconsistent information regarding health and medical issues on the Internet. I was relieved when a reader of last week’s blog on kids debating food choices helped answer a parenting question by providing some information she had read that was published in a new book by American Girl (a long-trusted name, in my opinion).
Maybe you, as our kids and we did, will find that some sound familiar and others that are part of the “Smart Choice” quiz come as a surprise.
1. Whole-wheat bread or white bread?
2. Light green lettuce or dark green lettuce?
3. Peanuts or potato chips?
4. Fruit or fruit juice?
5. 2 percent milk or skim milk?
It started out on the Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend as a conversation about how the kids always go for the foods that aren’t necessarily good for them, but are convenient and very portable.
For example, I suggested the daughter munch on something other than chips.
“But they are potato based and that is a vegetable” came her reply from our 12-year-old.
Later this weekend, she goes for the carton of ice cream (it was on sale) and debates the importance of calcium.
With that in mind, we started talking about making healthier food choices.
How about a container of yogurt or wheat crackers, a granola bar, dried fruit, celery sticks, carrot sticks, popcorn, or even the cubes of cheese, melon or pineapple we had just cut? I agree, some aren’t friendly to braces, but what about the others?
“I’m tired of that,” comes the reply from both kids. They just don’t realize how much better they have it than those kids in third-world countries.
“Soylent Green is people!”
Charlton Heston’s memorable line from the 1973 science fiction movie, “Soylent Green” was the first thing I thought of this week when I read a recent editorial published in the British Medical Journal.
The editorial urges parents to have fewer children in order to reduce their carbon footprint, thus saving the planet. In Heston’s sci-fi classic, he’s cast as a police officer in an overpopulated world. Food is sparse in 2022, particularly fresh fruits, veggies and meat. Most of the sprawling population survives on government rations, 
including “soylent green” wafers.
*Spoiler alert!* Heston meanders through this dense world, of course landing a hot babe along the way. (I think a love scene with a gorgeous actress became standard language in Heston’s Hollywood contracts in the 1970s.) By the end of the film, he learns human corpses are being made into food - namely soylent green.
The BMJ doesn’t go so far as to suggest that we are doomed to a future of cannibalism. Basically, the editorial simply reminds us that more people means more polluters. It’s a simple concept that’s impossible to argue against.
But, population control remains a hot-button issue. Many of the world’s religions have strict rules regarding birth control. There’s also a social issue at play. Folks don’t seem to mind being encouraged to buy a hybrid car or an energy-efficient furnace. Telling someone how many children to have sounds like an infringement on personal liberty.
The British study also forgets another side effect of limiting family size. Who knows when the next genius will be born? Perhaps the brilliant mind that solves the world’s pollution problem comes from a family of eight. That person might not have been born if the parents decide to have fewer kids.
Benjamin Franklin was one of 17 children (his father was married twice). Famed guitarist Carlos Santana is one of seven children. Physicist Stephen Hawking has two younger sisters and an adopted brother. So, maybe big families aren’t so bad after all.
