Thoughts on Parenting

Toxic Toys

It's hard to be a parent these days. On top of the impossibly long list of responsibilities we parents have already had for decades, now we must check our kids' toothpaste for anti-freeze, scour the juice aisle for China-free apple juice, and monitor all the toys coming in the house (even the ones from Mattel) for lead laced paint. What's a parent to do?

Well, I found this great website at HealthyToys.org. You can search for the toys in your home by brand or type to see if they are toxic. You can request that a toy be tested for toxins, and you can also request to receive updates and alerts via email. This site can't help with edible items such as toothpaste and juice, but at least when your 12-month old tries to eat your 4-year old's silver ballet slipper necklace that Aunt Suzie gave her for Christmas, you'll be able to find out what exactly your child may be ingesting.

The Quest for the Perfect Toy

Sometimes I wonder why we even buy toys for the kids at Christmas. Feeling particularly happy with ourselves one Christmas morning a few years back, Duane and I rounded the corner to find the kids in an empty moving box playing pirates -- fancy Disney salon and basketball hoop nowhere to be found on "Ye Olde Pirate Ship". After that, I made one of my famous declarations emphatically stating that for next Christmas we would be visiting U-Haul to find the BEST. PRESENTS. EVER! 

Even though it is a little late in the season, there is help. It's the Parents' Choice Holiday Gift Guide put out by a great nonprofit that monitors quality children's media and toys. Their helpful website allows you to search by age, interest and budget making it pretty easy to get some ideas for toys that actually might get played with beyond Christmas morning. Of course, nothing will ever beat an empty box!

The Invention Box

It was an unusually rainy day here in Texas, and I don't want to sound unappreciative, but that makes the mother of a preschoolers' life just a little more difficult than usual. As I found myself confronted with the age old question of what to do on a rainy day, I had to push past the obvious (TV) and retrieve the Invention Box.

Cason loves to invent things and create things. Anyone who has visited our house has seen the results of these projects all over the walls. In an effort to foster this passion, we started the Invention Box. It's just a giant plastic tub -- nothing fancy. It's filled with egg crates, paper towel rolls, paper cups, boxes, straws and anything else that seemed interesting and destined for the local landfill -- nothing fancy.

But the things that come out of Cason's brilliant little mind -- they're really fancy! Just last week we had an entire village of Styrofoam dots inhabiting our living room. They had individual rooms, garages, even a swimming pool. Heck, I was ready to move in myself!

It's just amazing to see what a child can do with some trash (clean, of course), tape, string and scissors!

Best Book for Expecting Parents

It seems that everyone is having a baby these days, and I'm not just referring to the latest rash of Hollywood arrivals. With so many of our friends embarking on the journey of parenthood, it seemed to me that is was a good time to dispense with some very, very valuable advice for first time parents.

What is the most important book you need to own as a first time parent?

Some would surely say What to Expect When You're Expecting (dubbed by Duane as What to Freak Out About When You're Expecting). Others would say you can't live without Dr. Spock, Dr. Brazelton or Dr. Sears. The list could go on.

With a few years of perspective now behind us, Duane and I have come to agree that Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields was the best book we bought for our expensive entry into the parenting world! With the billion dollar parental industrial complex getting more and more ridiculous by the day, this book is so helpful in knowing what you need and what you don't need as a first time parent. For the things you actually do need, this book has great advice on getting these things for the best price. It not only saved us tons of money, it saved our sanity by outlining simple things like how many onesies one child can actually wear and how many crib sheets you'll really use.

So if you're expecting (or even if you have one already), our best advice is that you shouldn't set one foot inside your local baby superstore without a copy of this book in your hands!

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An interesting side note: Baby products change quickly as new technologies are developed and safer and better products are introduced. Denise and Alan Fields offer downloads of the most current reviews for items such as car seats, strollers, high chairs, etc. You can find them here.

Road Trip to the Edge of Sanity, Part 2

It's been 2 very long rainy days and we've now traversed 7 states in our 8 state tour. Our usual brief stops to play soccer have been replaced by a tour of Wal*Mart in a desperate attempt to stretch our legs and escape the rain. I was telling Cason that hopefully tomorrow will not be rainy and we'll be able to stop and play. She said, "Good. You'll see a lot more happy faces then!"

So what on earth have the children been doing for 26 hours in the car?

Well, we haven't been watching movies. I know this idea will meet with huge resistance and possibly confirm our diagnosis of being mentally ill, but Duane and I don't really like to let the kids watch movies in the car. Before you freak out and go to your next RSS feed, just hear me out. Between us, Duane and I have seen 44 of the 50 states and 14 countries by car. I once spent 2 weeks driving from Michigan to Alaska. I have beautiful pictures in my head of virtually every state in the Union and they didn’t come from TV! They are all mine, created and stored by my brain, one of a kind reminders that the world is a truly amazing place. The benefits of looking out the car window and just being “bored” sometimes cannot be measured. Children these days rarely have down time and always expect to be entertained. So, at the risk of committing one of our own biggest pet peeves, let us say in our best cranky adult voice… "when we were kids, we didn’t have movies in the car and we turned out just fine."

Here's what we have been doing:

• making Pipe Cleaner Statues (this was a HUGE hit)
• using Sticker books
• coloring maps of the states we're traveling through (this is another great site)
• playing Tic Tac Toe
• using the Leap Pad
• making snap together model airplanes
• listening to audio books (Henry Huggins read by Neil Patrick Harris was surprisingly wonderful)
• making aluminum foil art
• drawing
• playing with toy animals
• playing with toy planes
• stringing fruit cheerios necklaces
• eating

The children have done remarkably well considering the rain, but I sure hope it's sunny (like the picture) tomorrow or I'll have to consider checking into the old Sanitarium across from our hotel.

Animals, Animals!

When I was a kid growing up in Europe, we had Smurfs.

No, not an exotic communicable disease--Smurfs were little blue people who lived in mushrooms. They were collectible toy figurines, and we were playing with them long before they were on TV in America. The figurines were made by a German company called Schleich.

Several months ago we were at a local retail superstore chain and happened upon a display of beautiful toy animal figurines made by...you guessed it...Schleich. Since I'm a big fan of all German toys, particularly Legos and Playmobil, I was anxious to buy a couple for my then two-year-old boy. Since then, our collection has grown to several dozen animals. They're a little on the pricey side (about $3-5 each), but we buy them one at a time for special occasions or gifts from grandparents. I only wish they were available at more retail locations. We've only been able to find them at small specialty toy shops like Learning Express (and the aforementioned retail giant).

For whatever reason, our three-and-a-half-year-old loves them. He plays make-believe animals every single day, and takes them into the bathtub, the sandbox, and wherever else we'll let him. They are hand-painted and very realistic, and obviously quite durable. Best of all, they don't light up, make noise, or require any batteries whatsoever. NPR recently ran a story called Old-Fashioned Play Build Serious Skills that clearly shows how play is crucial to a child's development, and there is simply nothing better than toys that stimulate the imagination.

Take a look at a few of the choices at our Amazon store.