Egg hunts

Easter egg hunts are a fairly new experience to me.  For some reason, I have no memory of ever going to one as a kid. My mom says I went to a few, but she was afraid I would end up eggless, so she didn't want to take me. I have a different attitude, and make sure the kiddies get to go to one every year. As a toddler, my daughter was a true princess primadonna.  She would select an egg color she wanted, go out and look at the eggs before deciding whether or not it was perfect enough to grace her basket.  Her first hunt ended after selecting one egg with a nosedive on the tennis court used for the 0-2 age group.  She managed to skin her entire forehead and left a pitiful, bloody wailing mess.  She cheered up a little after eating the candy she found and recovered much more quickly than her traumatized parents and grandparents.  This was not what I was expecting but I refused to give up.  My child was going to experience this, and hopefully have fun doing so.  The following week, I dragged her to another hunt ( this time on a grassy field) and tried again.  I came prepared with an egg filled with m&m's in my pocket just in case she left with an empty basket.  The bunny started the hunt, and off she toddled.  She made a beeline for a certain peach colored egg and grabbed it.  After that, she wandered around, gathered a few dandelions and picked up a green top half of an egg. Relieved and amused by her successful adventure we examined her choice of egg. Amazingly enough, the sole egg she selected was the top prize egg for her division, and she proudly claimed the huge lime green bunny for her own.  Now we were preparing for little man's first hunt.  The night before this coming of age event, I presented him with his Jake bucket.  I sprinkled a few plastic eggs on the living room floor and told him to put them in his bucket.  Delighted, he scampered around and tossed them in his bucket.  When he finished, he sat down, dumped them out on his head, and started over again.  This continued over and over again  to Daddy and sister's delight.  By the time he was finished, he was saying "I am speed...fast" in his serious Lightning McQueen voice and having a marvelous time.  I was just happy he knew to put them in the bucket...regardless of color.  The next day was a blustery, cold day.  Armed with his bucket, he struggled to free himself from my firm grasp.  "I fast!" he muttered over and over.  Since parents were supposed to accompany his age group, I told him that I would carry his bucket.  He looked up at me with his innocent blue eyes and said, "yes I FAST Mommy!"  I had little reason to doubt this, but since there were so few eggs, so many kids, and 4 year olds mixed in with the 2 year olds, I checked that the filled "security" egg was still safe in my pocket.  When the time came, he bounded off, finally freed from my hand, and dashed for the first two eggs he could see.  He grabbed one in each hand, tossed them in the bucket and dashed for the next two.  In the thirty seconds that the hunt lasted, he managed to scoop up eight eggs.  He was absolutely thrilled to pieces.  There were no little slips of paper or age appropriate candy in any of his treasures, but he proudly carried his eggs to the car.  He held onto the empty plastic, mismatched eggs like they were gold.   To him, it was just the joy of the hunt and the plastic eggs were his treasure.  He didn't want a prize or even candy.  Each had their own victory to remember, she has her bunny, and he has his eggs.

Toys that inspire imagination

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to take my son to FAO Schwartz.  This toy store holds many happy memories from my childhood.  Whenever we traveled to New York City, we would explore this fantasyland.  I couldn't wait to take a picture of my children with the toy guard at the door like a typical tourist.  My daughter couldn't wait to see the unique toys inside.  My son was simply glad to get out of the oppressive heat.  When we finally made it to the toddler toys, he had almost fallen asleep.  Suddenly he sat up and reached out eagerly for these unique, bright red and yellow boxes.  He was completely fascinated with these toys from England by a company named Wow.  I took down a box and started to read about these toys that I had never heard of.  I was impressed that they actually do SOMETHING without batteries!  At this stage, little man was insistent that toys had to move, make noise or light up.  I liked the sturdy construction of the toys, so we decided to purchase a Fireball Frankie.  This was the beginning of an addiction.  Hours were joyfully spent watching Frankie race across the room to win race after imaginary race.  I noticed that Amazon had quite a selection of these hard to find toys.  This allowed Ronnie and his rocket to fly to our home for his birthday.  Once again, I found a toy that was constantly and repeatedly being played with.  Soon we started amassing quite the collection.  Halloween brought Stanley Sweeper, guaranteed to be cavity free.  As Christmas approached, I added several more and even convinced others to try these captivating toys.  There was a tragic day over the winter when George and Lucy fell down a vent to their sad demise.  I sent the company an email about the situation.  A week passed with no response, and I had pretty much forgotten the entire situation when we received a small package in the mail with replacement people.  Instantly Fred was brought back to top billing for toy in the house.  All in all, we have acquired ten of these classics and have hit toy gold with each one.  These are quality toys by a company that stands behind their product.  I tell all of my friends with little ones to check them out on Amazon.  I only wish that we could find more toys like this on our toy shelves in the store.  If there is a preschooler in your life, check them out at www.wowtoys.com. You will be glad you did.

Portrait adventures!

Several times a year, I become a glutton for punishment.  I return for every holiday, birthday, and major occasion.  For some reason, I can never be satisfied with the countless snapshots I take of my children.  I want the portraits on "fancy" matte paper taken by someone other than myself.  I put days of planning into these excursions, ensuring that clothes, accessories, nails and hair are as good as they can be.  I try to predict what roadblocks my kiddies might put up on the road to picture perfection and ways to bypass the problems.  I come prepared with favorite toys, snacks and other small bribes to ease the situation.  Yes, I have pictures of smiling faces with m&ms or Swedish fish visible to the trained eyes.  I think this little quirk simply adds to the memory.  I don't want perfection, but I do want nice, happy pictures to remember these moments of childhood.  Today we were briskly greeted at the door and presented with a long, specific list of required shots for today's session.  I resisted the urge to laugh in her face and say good luck.  Instead, I  advised her to be flexible with her order in order to get more cooperation.  I admitted that my little angel might not remain an angel. These are my kids and I do have some insight to their behavior and quirks.  I looked at the chairs and told her that "thinking chairs" could save the day.  She ignored me, obviously irritated by my interference because she knew best.  Chairs did not belong her Easter shots!  I was told to stay far to the side as to not interfere with the lighting.  I visually confirmed his safety in the room, stepped aside as ordered, and let the show begin.  She would tell him to stand somewhere, place him where she envisioned, walk away to take the shot and realize that he had not only moved, but was trying to flee the room by that point.  Once I thought she might get a shot, but she ignored his cooperation to tell princess to cross her ankles.  Priorities! The moment was lost, as little man ran for the hallway.  She tried repeatedly to get him to stand with his feet perfect next to his sister.  It was hopeless, and by now he sensed her frustration and viewed it as a game, gleefully running off the background when she moved away. We had passed the point of  success.  Finally, she relented and used a "thinking chair."  She was stunned as she watched his demeanor change.  He eagerly raced over, climbed up, and beamed at the camera.  Now I watched her gather chairs from various nooks and crannies to add variation to the shots.  Perhaps this interfering, controlling mother might know something.  The session rapidly concluded and was quite successful.  It also followed the exact order that I had tried to suggest in the beginning.  Imagine that!  Fortunately, no blood or tears were shed at today's session...only laughs and scampering feet.  It is possible that the managing forces behind these required shots should rethink their rigid requirements and allow parents to help when able.  It might alleviate frustration and allow them to actually function on their schedule.  I am sure that many say that it is my fault that my two year old will not stand still upon command, perhaps it is.  Or perhaps we should all try to learn to live more freely and express our own individuality.  Maybe we would all be happier in a thinking chair instead of standing on a little taped square because that is what others think is best.  Best might be a little different for some.

The chore chart

For the past several months, the princess has been hinting that she wants an allowance.  I guess this is a right of passage for all kids.  I remember receiving an allowance in 6th grade.  Those two dollars a week gave me such a feeling of wealth and independence.  But, how much does today's child receive?  I felt $5 a week was good, but hubby wanted $10.  I decided to make a chore chart for her that will enable her to decide.  $5 will be easily earned,$10 will require extra thought and effort.  She will be paid for what she does.  Every day, she can receive a check for basic things: making her bed, picking up after herself, reading, practicing her guitar, completing her homework, and respectful behavior.  If she gets 7 checks in a week, she will earn $5.  Every check she loses will deduct $1 from her possible $5.  She can also earn stickers for going above and beyond her expectations.  All day, I was cross examined about if she was getting a check mark and how could she get a sticker. There was no concrete answer for stickers.  Sometimes we will ask her for help with things, other times she can step in when she sees a need.   For example, tonight little man had a meltdown in bed.  I was oblivious on the treadmill.  By the time hubby got me, little guy had calmed down and sounded fine.  When I got to his room, she was sitting next to his toddler bed, holding his hand and reading him a story.  Once I had managed to cherish the moment for a second, I took her place reading and settling him down.  I thanked her for helping, and waited to be asked if she would get a sticker for it.  Happily, the quetion never came which made the gesture and kindness all the more heartwarming.  That definitely earned a sticker!  I'm curious to see what this chart will become.  Will it become a reinforcement for good behavior, or will it be forgotten in a month or two?  Let me know what you think.  Should kids have to earn their allowance?  How much should a child get in 2013?

The return of the hot wheels!

Now that I have a son, I have finally discovered the greatest toy for a single dollar.  This timeless toy has been around for over fifty years and has cost around a dollar for as long as I can remember.  It is the hot wheels.  These 97cent cars have held up better to the terrors of toddlerhood than their much more expensive toddler aged counterparts.  Fortunately, this child does not put foreign objects in his mouth because I do have quite a few spare tires found with hubby's childhood collection that proves they are destructible.  Little man loves to spend the entire day telling me about these cars and racing them on any surface in the house.
One day, the car aisle was in shambles as a baby boomer searched desperately around the freshly stocked cars for the few needed to complete THAT year's collection.  When he was done, he showed me his printed check list and pictures of all the cars he had amassed since the creation of hot wheels.   It was mind boggling! I had never fully comprehended the sheer number of different cars created in a year.  This created a small, nagging fear in the back of my mind which I promptly tried to dismissed.  After  all, little man couldn't possibly realize all the differences yet, could he?
 My son's obsession with cars began around the age of six months.  Now I have become quite the toy car expert.  My father has been grooming me for this my entire life.  He literally has thousands of model cars ranging from matchbox to Franklin Mint.  My amazon wish list even has dad's only remaining desired car toy; a Yat Ming 1:18 1961 Chrysler Crown Imperial listed in hopes that someday it will be reduced from the $80 it lists for.  I know my car toys.  When I visit dad, the guest room is little man's fantasy....and mommy's  nightmare.  Walls of bookcases, completely covered from floor to ceiling with some of my dad's  prized collection.  My little climber is in pure heaven, and I have visions of crashes and concussions followed by broken limbs, rear view mirrors, bumpers, and fenders dancing through my head all night.  So far, casualties have been limited, but little man is only two.  Thankfully for the budget, hotwheels have managed to almost equal the boy's hero...Lightning McQueen and friends.
Traveling up the car toy aisle got progressively easier and cheaper as the year progressed.  Somehow, he could remember which ones we had, and which he thought he needed to have.  Most of the desperately needed cars were at home, waiting by the train (or car in this case) table a friend graciously gave us.  The days of peace have reached an end.  Now there are, according to the hotwheels website, 250 new cars available.  These seemed have finally reached our shelves.  Yesterday in the car aisle, little man's eyes lit up Christmas morning when he saw all of this year's creations.  It was a cute, if not imminently expensive, Kodak moment.  I should have known.  Any company that has been in business for so long, knows what they are doing.  What they are losing in initial cost, they are making up for in sheer volume and quantity.  I guess the new 2013 hunt has finally begun.

Lost in cyberspace! My intro part two!

I have often heard that once something is on the Internet, it will be there forever.  Leave it to me to lose my first post somewhere out in cyberspace.  Since that was my was of introducing myself, I will try to do that again.
I am a stay at home mom in Pennsylvania.  My oldest child, a precocious daughter, is 9 going on 19.  She is in third grade and loves math, science, rollerblading and cheerleading.  One year, she wanted a brother for Christmas, and got her wish...nine months later.  I suffered from empty nest syndrome from the moment the bus had pulled away on the first day of kindergarten.  Now that she wanted a sibling too, there was more incentive to have two children.  My son is a sweet, rambunctious, adventurous little man who loves to cuddle, climb, and play with cars.  He is absolutely in love with everything to do with cars and already has a love for car racing to challenge the most avid of fans.  This amuses and alarms me....I may need help in a few years if he decides to try to race one himself!
So far in life, I have had many jobs.  I have worked a McDonald's drive thru window, printed pictures at the mall and waited on people in department stores.  I have been a student and a teacher.  I taught high school for the school district of Philadelphia and drama at a small school in the country.  I taught summer school, worked as a substitute teacher, and even as a prevention specialist.  All of these jobs never fully prepared me for the moment I would undertake the most difficult, demanding, rewarding, and long lasting job I could imagine...the job of mommy.  Since a rainy December morning in 2003, I have never fully known what to expect next.
As a stay at home mom, please don't ask what I did all day.  Some days we do ambitious activities and others, it is something simple like sitting on the pee-pot, as my son calls it, for over two hours in a day without success.  Both are reasons to celebrate, the second because
1.  I managed to have little man sit ANYWHERE for an extended period of time, and
2.  Someday, it WILL work!
Life is full of adventures and unknown events.  One thing that I do know is that the greatest job I have ever had can also be called, the diaper changer in the house!

Anything can be a toy

My children have become tired of the mountains of toys that they own, so today I decided to pay attention to what they really want to play with.

1.  The heating ducts.  When my daughter was small, I rigged the ducts with a mesh and duct tape to prevent her from throwing more toys down it.  I reinforced them for little man, but he is more determined than a half a roll of duct tape.  While I made lunch today, he broke one loose and proceeded to "feed it" fruit snacks, two race cars, a beanie baby, and one small book.  I think I managed to successfully remove everything, but I can't be sure.

2.  Daddy's shoes....clomping around in his work shoes proves to be timeless as this entertains both until they manage to crash to the ground.

3.  Any cabinet door....opening and slamming one shut can provide countless giggles.  I never realized how sturdy my cabinets were until this point.  

4.  Closing any door that can be found.  If little man ends up on the side of the door that I am not, this  changes to mass pandemonium and panic ensues until he is set free again...only to repeat the process a few minutes later.

5.  Blankets and towels act like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak and allow two year olds to wander around making scary noises and screeching "Boo, I'm a ghost."  Appropriate response is to pretend to be scared.  Lack of proper response will cause volume of boo to become utterly deafening.

6. Try to fit under the bathroom door to see what might possibly be taking Mommy so long.

7.  Crawling through the open shelf of end tables and getting stuck between the far wall and end table so that one must be pulled out by a panicked, kicking foot.  

And the most entertaining item in the house.......

8.  The coffee table.  It  can be a racetrack, dance floor, trampoline, climbing wall, cabinet to hide in, chair, bed, and sliding board.  The possibilities are endless and attempts to curtail these innovations will be ignored.  Any pretense of acknowledgement will be forgotten when the next idea surfaces, or mommy looks away.  Whichever happens first.  I hope Santa is taking notes for next Christmas!

But mom, everyone else has a phone!

Recently, my daughter has decided that she absolutely must have a phone...for school.  She is in third grade.  I see the desperation in her voice and eyes as she tries to plead her case.  It reminds me of myself in the 80's.  I was in Bloomingdales admiring the new Swatch watches that had just came in.  I wanted the pink watch with a scented band so desperately that it hurt.  I got the watch for my birthday  and I can still feel the excitement that filled me as I proudly strapped the plastic, sweet  smelling band to my arm.  I must have looked ridiculous to the teacher as I sat, proudly sniffing my wrist all day.  While I can relate to her plight, I now am on the other end of the situation...and it isn't fun.  I can't believe that many third graders have phones in our little land of suburbia.  I was fairly certain that this request would come in a few years when she entered middle school.  I remember telling her repeatedly in kindergarten that even though one little girl already had a phone, she had to have "double digits" in her age before she could.  Unfortunately, she will be double digits this year.  I should have learned my lesson with age restrictions with the age I put on gum!  As  a toddler, she knew she had to be four for gum. She woke up before the sun on her fourth birthday to remind me that she had reached the magical gum chewing age.  After breakfast, we had to go and buy some.  She has always had a great memory, especially for things that I would like her to forget.  Am I being too overprotective, or trying to keep her my baby girl too long?  Is she really old enough for her own phone?  Personally, I think I am doing the right thing in saying no.  I still think that she should be playing outside, riding her bike, rollerblading, and drawing chalk pictures on the walk and not sitting in her room texting someone else who should be outside, just being a kid.

My toddler, translated...

When my daughter was about to turn two, friends, family, and even talkative strangers warned me about the "Terrible Twos!"  There were nights that I feared my little princess would change into a unimaginable mess when the fateful day arrived to put another candle on her cake.  They were wrong.    Instead of a terror, I was presented with a funny, creative, mini person that interacted more comprehensively with me as each day passed.  I ADORED that stage...with the exception of the unmentionable trip to Kohls shoe department that resulted in a memory to be shared at another time.  (We still have never returned to that scene seven years later).  I often would just look at her happy face as she started to express, in words I could clearly understand, what she would like to do, see, wear, or eat.  She sometimes would put up a little fuss when her requests were not met, but she saved the real explosions for the age of three.  My little man is now at this magically entertaining age.  It began on the long, one day/one car, almost nonstop, drive to Pennsylvania from southern Florida with my dad, stepmom, myself and my two children.  He decided to sweetly ask for "goofies" when we reached the Georgia border.  By the time we reached North Carolina, he was hysterical and we had frantically offered everything we thought could possibly be goofy.  At a brief stop, he grabbed the lone pack of goldfish crackers wedged out of sight under the seat of the car....goofies.  I will always remember the night I realized the toddlerese he said with a kiss after "I wuv you"at night was " my best friend."  It still makes my heart smile like when he grabbed my hand in a store, kissed it and looked so sweetly and intently at me as he called me "MY mommy."  Yes, he is a charmer at times.  Regrettably, and typical of human behavior, not all translations are so endearing.  As days pass, his toddlerese is clearing up and some other terms are surfacing.  The tirade with foot stomping and shrieks of protest before going up stairs tonight suddenly emerged as  "NO HEATHER, I WON'T DO IT!  I'M NOT GOING UP! NOT DONE YET!"  What happened to my little love bug?    For that matter, what happened to mommy...now I am Heather?  Now that he is tucked in bed, I have to smile because I know that this too will pass, and honestly, he looked darn funny.  I say two is terrific, not terrible! These kiddos still have a lot to learn, and a parent, I am still learning every day too.