Budding artist in your family?
Many parents like to think their child or children will be famous and make some money too.
Maybe they are into drama, the visual arts, music, or all of these.
I decided to write about arts education at the end of the month on purpose.
Just because October, which is National Arts and Humanities Month, is nearly gone doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan some extracurricular art activities with the kids.
It is so exciting because the possibilities are endless.
We are so lucky to live close to Chicago.
How often have I heard this from friends where we used to live in Kentucky? My typical reply: “You could move, too.”
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My latest column in the Daily Journal offers a first-hand account of making play dough. The homemade recipe uses Kool-Aid as a secret ingredient. It turned out well, but I can’t help but gripe about the toy itself.
Brand-name Play-Doh and homemade play dough are both messy. Little bits of the colorful putty get everywhere. These bits and pieces become embedded into carpets and rugs. Sometimes little scamps also leave lumps of the stuff hidden among their toys. It’s not unusual to find a wad of hard, dry play dough in the microwave of a kiddie kitchen or in the trunk of a toy car. And let’s not forget the urge every child has to place everything within their grasp into their mouth. This undeniable urge has left plenty of kids with a mouth full of play dough.
Play dough is just one of the many classic kids toys that I believe are designed to annoy parents. Sure we let our kids play with these iconic toys. They are fun, after all. It also seems like a rite of passage since we all played with these same toys as children. Nevertheless, there’s a long list of kids toys that are a pain in the butt for parents.
Crayons are a prime example of a fun kid toy that has been driving parents crazy for decades. I’ll admit that coloring is relaxing and rewarding. The problem is that these sticks of colored wax not only mark blank paper and coloring books, but they also mark walls, floors and couch cushions. If you think I sound like a grump, you’ve obviously never had to scrub burnt sienna out of your pillows.
The sandbox is another classic toy that most parents loathe. I spent hours in the sandbox as a little boy. However, I find myself keeping my 2-year-old son’s sandbox time to a minimum. First, sand from the sandbox finds its way into every crack, crevice and fold in a child’s skin and wardrobe. Fun in the sandbox is either immediately followed by bathtime or vacuuming after your kids track sand into the house. There’s also the looming threat of one of the toddlers unearthing a cat turd (kitties think sandboxes are giant litter boxes). Kids also seem to enjoy shoveling the sand out of the sandbox which can really damage a previously lush lawn.
I could go on, but I’m curious to hear what you think. What are some classic kids toys that make you crazy? Do toy cars drive you nuts? Are those inflatable balls at the grocery store on your hit list? Please share your gripes. I can’t be the only one that feels this way.
How did Great Grandma make it through the Great Depression?
Although the kids’ great grandma (my paternal grandma) died when our 12-year-old was just a newborn baby, the kids often wonder how people like her struggled through the Great Depression but still managed to survive.
From what I remember about Grandma — no, kids, I wasn’t around during the Great Depression — she never let anything go to waste. She grew up with the responsibility of eight younger siblings and helping her father run a restaurant in Springfield.
Her mother had passed away and she had to drop out of school. I believe she said that was in seventh grade, which is what our daughter is in now.
She didn’t have a choice, but she made the best of the situation and learned “life skills” from her surroundings. At the restaurant, they were blessed with enough paying customers that the ones who came begging for food were given a nice, hot meal.
You might recall a column I wrote in August lamenting the emptying of my 10-month-old son’s savings account to pay for a new roof. Back then, I was feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for using baby Pete’s money for a home improvement rather than investing it into his 529 college fund.
Most of the savings was gleaned from gifts Peter received after his baptism. In the thank you cards, I told gift givers that the cash would be put into an education account. That was before the bill for the new roof arrived. With only $3,000 saved, I had no choice but to tap Peter’s savings to the tune of $4,600 to cover the remaining balance.
Four months later, I feel much better about my decision. The stock market has plummeted. Had I invested the money as planned, Peter would have lost a significant portion of his savings on Wall Street anyway. The new roof is a fixed cost and replacing it this summer proved visionary in the fall when record rainfall - the remnants of Hurricane Ike - bombarded the Midwest.
My brother learned he too needed a new roof early this summer. He held off the purchase, opting instead to replace some drafty windows. Last week, he called the roofer again. The new estimate was $2,000 more than the price he was previously quoted. He inquired about the price hike and was told that the cost of roofing supplies jumped dramatically.
The kids and I have heard the public service announcements on the radio for feedthepig.org, and the simply common-sense aspect of the commercials always get us talking.
Just thinking of the name, Feed the Pig, not only makes the family laugh, but takes Mom on a stroll down memory lane.
I start whining about when I was a kid, I had to take care of the pigs for about two hours each night and how lucky our own kids are to not have to tend to a whole bunch of livestock.
That suddenly gets them interested in listening to Dave Ramsey’s radio show again and not Mom’s latest lecture.
That is saying a lot because they don’t like Dave.
The NFL season has arrived, giving me and countless other men an excuse to be extremely lazy on Sunday afternoons. This is a tradition I’d like to pass down to my two sons. I look forward to the day when they are grown men and all of us are passed out in front of the television after Thanksgiving dinner.
Perhaps I have low expectations. Some dads dream their sons being elected president. Others envision their boys throwing the winning touchdown pass. I see myself snoozing under the influence of Tryptophan surrounded by my snoring sons. It might not be a lofty goal, but it’s definitely achievable.
I’ve begun introducing Bubba to football this season. We watch highlights on television and regularly wander over to the park while the grade school team is practicing. It’s like our own version of the Chicago Bears Training Camp in Bourbonnais - only these Bears are in 4th grade and don’t tackle particularly well.
Bubba seems to enjoy the sport, though I may have made a mistake in teaching him to tackle. It’s fun to have 2-year-old Bubba chase me down in the park and tackle me while his 10-month-old brother, Peter, watches from the stroller, giggling with every sack. However, Bubba doesn’t know when to turn it off.
He usually yells “Tackle Football!” before he lowers his head and begins to charge. He’s made this announcement and tried to tackle me in church and at the bank. He’s also tackled Peter, who has a hard enough time just standing on his own. I’m actually quite impressed with Bubba’s technique. He consistently buries his shoulder into the abdomen or above the thighs and always wraps up with his arms.
Still, I can’t have Bubba running around trying to tackle people. It’s rarely appropriate behavior, and someday he is going to tackle someone who isn’t expecting it. That leaves me trying to explain to another parent why my bratty kid just slammed their unsuspecting child to the floor for no good reason.
In retrospect, I should have waited to introduce the whole concept of tackle football. It will be years before my boys and I pass out while the Detroit Lions or Dallas Cowboys play on Thanksgiving. I’m just really looking forward to it.
You know when your child starts making scientific observations everywhere he or she turns that it is sinking in.
The young inventor in your life is probably taking paper towel rolls, aluminum foil, toothpicks and all the masking tape you have left in the house and building something right now. Am I right?
Ask him or her to sit down with you in front of the computer and check out http://rsinventionlab.com/
The only thing that disturbed our little guy was the fact that these people aren’t keeping their inventions secret.
He realizes it is important to keep his inventions secret.
We read about a few of them.
He recognized several he had been talking about for several months and he quickly became competitive. “I may come up with that one before they do.”
“Go for it,” I say.
I got a good laugh the other day when I came home from lunch. Steve said he had made Grace a breakfast of oranges, waffles and toast. (Why he made two starches is beyond me, but hey.)
He sat her at the table and ran upstairs for a quick shower while she ate. When he came downstairs, the plate was in the sink.
At 3 1/2, Grace is very independent. She had apparently decided she wanted some maple syrup on her plain waffles and hit the ‘fridge in search of some.
My 2-year-old son took a big step towards becoming a man last month. Bubba made the move from a crib to a big-boy bed.
Ironically, his big-boy bed is the same one I slept on for the 15-plus years while I lived with my parents. Grandma and grandpa saved the solid-oak bed frames of my youth and graciously handed them down to their grandchildren.
Both Bubba and his 10-month-old brother, Peter, will someday share a room, sleeping in the same twin-size beds I shared with my brother. Peter is still in a crib for now. When he is ready for a big-boy bed, he and brother Bubba will sleep side by side or in bunk beds in the upstairs bedroom.
I wasn’t pushing Bubba to make the move into a big-boy bed. I actually prefer the crib, which kept my curious toddler from wandering around his room. Bubba requested the big-boy bed. I knew he would have to transition out of the crib eventually and decided to use his sudden motivation to ease the change.
The first week of the big-boy bed experiment wasn’t easy. When Bubba was in his crib, we could simply lay him down at bedtime. If he protested, we just closed the door. He might whimper for a while, but eventually he’d give in and fall asleep. This wasn’t as easy with a twin bed. Without the bars of the crib to contain him, Bubba could get up and tear through his room in protest of being placed unduly in his bed.
You have heard of an act of Congress being required to get something done, but what about a contract signed by a mayor out West to spend more time with his 6-year-old?
Isn’t it lame that the schools have to tell the parents to spend time with their kids? I agree.
An e-mail from a reader brought my attention to a story in the “Rocky Mountain News” recently about the Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) Mile High Parents campaign.
It is called the 5280 pledge because the idea is to encourage parents in DPS to spend 30 minutes each school day with their children.
Yep, parents should be doing this anyway.
Over the course of the school year, that comes to approximately 5,280 minutes.
Now keep in mind that they are just talking about “each school day.”
I guess parents get the weekend off from their kids. I don’t like that idea.
