July 2010 Archives

When my husband and I first learned we were going to be parents, one of things we loved to do most to prepare for our baby was searching our favorite downtown bookstore for children's books.  We would pick up childhood favorites like Green Eggs and Ham, but we found plenty of recently published books that we couldn't wait to read to our little one.

Turns out our son likes to read as much as we do. I'm not saying he'll pick reading over taking his bike to the park, but he is always up for reading at least once a day. Lately, I enjoy reading stories that teach something, whether it's a lesson in morality or just being comfortable being you. When I was a kid, I had a book of Aesop's Fables that my dad would read to me. I knew the intent was to teach me important lessons through stories, and the pictures were cool too. Another favorite was the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series.  Now Kellan's favorite include a Richard Scarry story collection, that teach lessons on things like good table manners and how to behave when visiting a friend's house.  He also likes The Feelings Book. I used it to help me calm him after a major meltdown once so that book has a special place on my book list too.

Do you have a book recommendation to share?

If there's one thing my son needs on a regular basis, it's shoes. He seems to outgrow his shoes faster than I can keep up. At the beginning of the summer, I noticed the back of his heels were red and realized his shoes were way too small. Sometimes he barely wears a pair of shoes before he's on to the next size.

If that sounds familiar, then you might be interested in donating your unused shoes. Soles4Souls is a group that donates new and gently used shoes to people in 125 countries.  According to their website, Americans threw away more than 300 million pairs of shoes. I can't imagine a better way to keep good shoes out of landfills than giving them to organizations that give them new life.

If you have well-worn athletic shoes that you thought about tossing out, Nike has a program that actually recycles all brands and turns them into athletic and playground surfaces. The program has collection sites throughout the country. By the way, NG Kids received the Guinness World Record for the longest chain of shoes and we recorded a video of our collection of the shoes that we sent to Nike!

A way to make a bigger impact is to get your co-workers, friends, and family involved. You can make one big donation by organizing your own shoe drive. With back-to-school time around the corner, this might be the perfect time to go through your closets before you buy new shoes for fall.

Some parents sign up their kid for swimming lessons or the soccer team, hoping an Olympic medal or the World Cup may be in his future. My husband, Erik, and I put up a map of the world in our son's room in the hopes that he can be a competitor in the National Geographic Bee. Well, okay, we aren't really that obsessive about teaching our preschooler geography, but we are definitely committed to instilling a love of travel.

I had mentioned in an earlier blog post that we got a map of the world for Kellan's third birthday. Little did we know what a huge hit it would be.  We put little flags on cities we have visited - only cities we've visited by plane to avoid cluttering the map around where we live in Portland - and we talk about the places where we plan to travel.

Now it's a before-bedtime ritual for Kellan to sit on top of the little table and talk about the map with us. He likes to point to different countries and ask who lives there.  For some reason he has taken a shine to Australia so we told him about the kangaroos, koalas, and wombats that live there. Last night he pointed to Mauritania and asked who lived there. "Um, Mauritanians?" was my lame answer. I definitely need to up my game!

We are not trying to create some sort of stage parent parlor trick - Watch the three-year-old name all the countries in Africa - it started out as a way for us to get Kellan excited about our next big trip this fall. Erik and I have a serious case of wanderlust and want to share a love of travel with our son. We also hope he develops a curiosity and respect for new cultures and landscapes. Oh, and if he is lucky enough to be a part of the geography bee then that would be okay too.

When my son was first born, I was a newly sworn officer of the germ police. Forget the five-second rule. Even one second was too long. Now I fully admit to allowing Kellan to eat food that has fallen on the floor. Even after reading the blog post about a study on the five-second rule in the July issue of NG, I still take the fallen food question on a case-by-case basis. Just yesterday, Kellan dropped his popsicle on our deck and picked it up faster than I could say, "Wait, don't eat that!" It would have been more of an ordeal to wrestle it away from him than to just let him eat it, so I did.

Before reading the article, I always assumed my home was cleaner than, say, our favorite park. So I've been more permissive about letting my son eat food that fell on the floor at home than the bark dust at the park. But according to Clemson University food scientist Paul Dawson, my kitchen is actually not the place to dust off a cracker and hand back to my child. In fact, the kitchen is the perfect place for harboring bacteria, like salmonella. I figured a wooden deck was safer than the kitchen counter. Sometimes you just can't get between your kid and his frozen treat. 

For a quick look at the blog post and the fun behind taking the perfect picture to go along with it, check it out here.

In addition to beach vacations and longer days in the sun, summer for us means visits from far-flung family members. Last month, my husband's parents came for a visit and this month my mother is in town.  It's been a nice break having another person to help keep Kellan busy. It has also been great seeing him bond with his grandmother. He follows her around the house and looks for her first thing in the morning when he wakes up.

My mom thinks of new ways to play with him and offers new things to talk about. I try to be creative about how we spend our free time, but sometimes I am just out of good ideas. So when I come home to find my mom and Kellan playing soccer inside the house and laughing hysterically, I can only be grateful. 

I also love listening in on conversations between them. He asks her about her funny-sounding hair dryer and her bag full of make-up in the bathroom. Seeing them together made me realize how important relationships with family members, especially grandparents, are for kids. Not only do they get lots of extra attention, but hopefully they will create happy memories and strengthen bonds for years to come.

I think I can say we are in the dog days of summer, and even though Portland isn't as hot as other parts of the country, I still feel like wilted lettuce after an hour at the park or just running errands. I am trying my best lately to always have a reusable water bottle in the car. I get thirsty all the time and it's a much more Earth-friendly way to stay hydrated than buying water everywhere I go.

I knew bottled water creates tons of waste - 1.5 million tons to be exact - but it also wastes resources.  With all the oil it takes to produce plastic water bottles, we could eliminate 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide if we stopped buying bottled water. That definitely puts things in perspective for me. I didn't think twice about buying bottled water but now I look for a water fountain if I don't have my own bottle handy.

On a recent road trip we filled up all of our aluminum water bottles and brought them along instead of buying water when we stopped at a gas station. On the drive home, we bought a couple of gallon jugs and filled up our bottles instead of getting smaller disposable bottles.
I know it can seem overwhelming when we think about all of the problems plaguing our planet, but I really do believe many people taking small steps can make a difference. Do you have any plastic-saving tips of your own?

I feel like I should be ashamed to admit this, but here goes. My son has no clue about McDonald's, but he definitely knows his way inside a Starbucks. When I get an afternoon pick-me-up, he usually gets chocolate milk. I should feel embarrassed because in Portland, coffee is revered and going to a local shop is the preferred way of getting it. But as my sister-in-law pointed out, sometimes you want your coffee served with a smile and not with surly indifference, so I don't feel too alone in going to a global chain to get my caffeine fix once in a while.

But this isn't about coffee, it's about chocolate milk. I didn't know the level of vitriol chocolate milk can evoke in some people until I read on another parenting blog about the evils of chocolate milk. I know chocolate milk isn't a health food, but what American kid doesn't get through childhood without having had it? My guess is not many.

School districts from Washington, D.C. to Berkeley, California are banning it. Celebrity chefs are speaking out against it. When you note the sugar and calorie content compared to regular milk, I can see why. I don't want to get into the merits or even the possible downside of banning chocolate milk in schools. With childhood obesity such a serious public health concern, I'm sure the debate will rage on.

Here's what I do know. My child doesn't drink chocolate milk everyday or even every other day.  It truly is a treat for him. I've already discussed what it means for our bodies when we eat too many treats. I think the best thing is for parents to lead by example. We try to cook nutritious meals at home as much as possible. We don't buy soft drinks and limit juice consumption. We get some form of physical activity every day and talk about the importance of exercise.

I know there will be a time very soon when I won't be able to control every bit of food and drink my son consumes. I just hope his early years will inform his later years. I admit that as a kid in elementary school, I drank a lot of chocolate milk. As a teenager, I remember plenty of slumber parties and outings with friends that involved fast food or junk food. But that wasn't not all I ate. So using information I've learned about nutrition, I try to make the best food choices for me and my family.

Now if only I could quit my afternoon coffee! I'm still a work in progress.

If there's one thing that can bruise a woman's ego, it's the appearance of gray hair. I noticed gray hair cropping up here and there in the past few years. It wasn't a big deal because I'd just pluck them and that would be that. Now the gray hairs are multiplying faster than I can manage with tweezers and good lighting.

Dyeing my hair would be the next logical step, but I'm pretty ambivalent about doing it. I'm not convinced there's a product out there that would look natural on hair as dark as mine. The other part of my reluctance is hair dyes can contain toxic ingredients, like ammonia and coal tar, which can harm our bodies and isn't exactly safe for the environment either. Even though a report published in a 2005 edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association found  that hair dyes do not cause cancer, I'd still rather be cautious about applying chemicals on my head on a regular basis.

So what can a prematurely graying mother of a preschooler do? There are options. Eco-friendly brands that contain few harsh chemicals are out there. The trade- off is the amount of dye the product deposits, which may mean frequent coloring. Henna, the crushed leaves of the Lawsonia inermis plant, is touted as the only natural hair color. The downside is it only comes in one color, flaming orange, and you can't really be sure how it's going to look when applied to your hair. It's also important not to get henna, mixed up with black henna, which is not really henna and contains a toxic chemical called PPD.

I think I'm ready to try a few products. I'm hoping at some point I can find something that works for me. If I can't find the right fit, I may have to tell vanity to take a hike and just live with gray hair.

We went out to dinner recently and when our server asked us what we'd like to drink, Kellan piped up, "I need milk!" That was a bit embarrassing. He knows to ask by saying "please," but lately he says "I need" when he's making requests. Statements like "I need a treat" or "I need to wear my pj's all day" really irritate me. Where does that come from?

Then I said something that made me realize why he says "I need" so often. Kellan was standing up on a chair and I said, "I need you to sit on your bottom!" Well, there you go.  It's me! I also wondered if it was just as irritating for him to hear me telling him what I need.

Communicating with my child keeps getting easier as he grows older, but there's plenty of room for improvement on my part. Lately, I've been more conscious of how I engage with Kellan. Framing requests differently sometimes makes him feel like he has more say in things. Instead of telling him to stop jumping on the couch, I ask him, "Can you hurt yourself when you do that? It's a bad idea to jump on the couch."

Of course my efforts to communicate better depends on other factors, from my level of patience to Kellan's willingness to listen, but as long as we make some progress it's good enough for me.

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but my son started falling asleep on his own just three months ago. Before that, he needed my husband or me to lie down with him until he fell asleep. We tried all kinds of incentives and punishments, but things didn't get better for us until a couple of months before his third birthday. When I'd hear other mothers talk about how easily their kids fell asleep on their own, I'd wonder where we went wrong.

Thankfully, Kellan falls asleep without much of a fuss on most nights. But on the nights when he does put up a fight, it's a full- scale battle. The first stage is all about politeness. "May I have a bowl of Cheerios and milk? Please Mama?" When we refuse to give in, he moves on to desperation stage, where requests to read one more book or have one tiny bowl of cereal is amped up and repeated over and over again, sometimes to the rhythm of pounding feet on the wall. Finally comes the hysterical phase, and I hope the neighbors don't hear him wailing through an open window.

It seems like there's always something - illness, new anxieties, changes in routine - that sets us back to square one in our bedtime battles. We've noticed Kellan talks about monsters and feels separation anxiety at night. We're doing our best to reassure him and I am trying extra, extra, extra hard (notice all the extras?) not to get exasperated when he wants to cling to me like a peach to its pit.

 

I've been reading up on increasing our chances for a peaceful bedtime routine. One thing that's worked for us is to let him pick his three bedtime books and remind him that the lights go out after we've read them. He also loves when we tell stories, so we sometimes negotiate a make-believe story in the routine as well. If we hear him playing with a toy in bed, we just let it go. As long as he's happy to wind down on his own, I have no problem letting him talk himself to sleep. I check in on him to make sure he's not sleeping on top of something.

I remember not being a great sleeper when I was a kid and now I have a whole new appreciation for my parents.

Between painting, coloring, and doodling, we go through a lot of paper at our house. I try to get Kellan to use both sides  of every sheet of paper, but I know we aren't being Earth-friendly when we easily go through a 50-sheet sketchpad in a week. It's not only the paper we use, but also the pollution and environmental destruction caused by the paper-making industry that makes me want to find an alternative.

I started thinking about what we can to do use less paper. Kellan's preschool reused brown paper bags for art projects. One day he came home with a decorated "vest" by cutting down the middle and creating holes for the neck and arms. We reuse grocery store bags, so I could set some aside once bags get too shabby to reuse. Newspaper could work too. Half the time our newspapers end up in the recycling bin unread. We might as well give it a second life. Unfortunately, paper with paint can't be recycled so I probably haven't found the perfect solution.

I've been curious about banana paper, a sustainable product made from banana plant fiber and reused paper products.  Ecopaper and other websites sell it and, while it does cost more than the average pad or ream of paper, you can feel good knowing another tree wasn't cut down to manufacture it.

Do you have any paper saving methods?

Kellan appreciates hotels, more than a kid his age should. If we offered to live in one, he just might take us up on it. He asks to go back to hotels where we've stayed months ago and it surprises us that he still remembers.

For the 4th of July weekend, we went to the central Oregon coast. Our room had a balcony with a view of the ocean and easy access to the beach. You'd think a kid would be ready to sink his feet in the sand as soon as he got there, but oh no. Kellan was more interested in the hotel room.

"I love it!" he exclaimed when we first walked in. He was especially excited about the bunk bed in the second room that he was going to sleep in. He wanted both Erik and me to join him on the top bunk so we could just hang out. "Don't you want to go to the beach?" we asked hopefully. You would think two hours in the car would make anyone ready for the outdoors, but he told us he wanted to play in his room.

Eventually, we were able to coax him out and he forgot all about the bunk bed once he was splashing around in the water. I think the ocean definitely trumps a bunk bed. There were plenty of crabs, anemones, and starfish to check out too. We pointed out the birds and waved to airplanes that flew by. The weekend was over much too quickly.

Now that we're home, he asks to go back to the hotel at least once a day, but he also talks about the beach and the animals he saw. I'm glad he came away with more than just an appreciation for cool hotel rooms.  Oh, and that bunk bed? He didn't want to sleep in it after all. He insisted on sleeping in our bed. So Kellan may love hotel rooms, but I prefer home sweet home.

This week Kellan saw his pediatrician for his third year well-child check-up. I had been preparing him for the visit and I debated whether I should tell him about getting immunization shots. It's never easy to witness your child being vaccinated, but I wondered whether keeping the information from him would be a benefit in the long run.

It just didn't feel right to spring the shots on him during the visit, so I told him the night before and the morning of the appointment that he would have to get shots. He said he didn't like shots, but he didn't seem too anxious about it. I think he vaguely remembered getting his last round of immunizations, but it wasn't fresh in his mind, so he didn't put up a big fuss. If that was the case, I wasn't going to emphasize the fact that he was going to get poked with a sharp needle.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents should prepare their child in advance of shots no matter how old he or she is. The challenge for me was even working up the nerve to tell him in case it caused him anxiety. The rest is pretty intuitive: be reassuring, comfort your child, and hold your child for the shots when it's possible.

Kellan sat on my lap for his shots, and even though he started objecting once the doctor said it was time, he didn't try to wiggle free or cry beforehand like the last time we went through this. He cried, but it lasted less than a minute. Once we left the doctor's office he assured me, "I'm not crying anymore." Talking about what to expect was the right decision for us. He handled it just fine. My little guy is growing up!