kids

I can’t imagine not doing anything ever again

~ Jeni ~ 2 Comments

On my old blog, I once referred to camping as “Yelling At Kids in Nature(TM).”

Like the photographer, poison ivy is attractive in certain light, but mostly an irritant best avoided.
Like the photographer, poison ivy is attractive in certain light, but mostly an irritant best avoided.

Little has changed.  There’s still lots of yelling.  Mostly THEM yelling while we growl at them to be quiet, a reaction we’re cured of three days in, when we realize that our neighbours are hearing impaired and/or tolerant of loud children and/or both.

One thing that has definitely changed is my impulse to want to catalog and archive everything. This time, there were whole entire days where I didn’t take even a single photo.

Which means that rather than a week’s worth of posts that replay my vacation in near-real time, you get a bunch of random lists so short and scattered you’d think I wrote them on the inside of a dew-dampened Kleenex box.

Which I did. Enjoy.

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Toys don’t balance themselves, you know

~ Jeni ~ Leave a comment

We’ve got a situation here in our house.

It’s not one that’s unique, or even notable, really, except for the fact that it’s rapidly reaching crisis proportions and action – some kind of definitive, decisive, headline-worthy action – was called for.

The situation is that we’re drowning in toys. Duplo, Lego, puzzles, dolls, games, train sets, random feathers and half a magnetic alphabet. You get the idea.

I decided yesterday that enough was enough. I took the kids out to a $3.99 a plate* dinner and informed them that sometime in the next few weeks, new rules would be coming down that would govern the in- and outflow of toys.

I call it The Balanced Toy Act.

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Dear Walter: You’ll be great

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Yesterday, my son decided that he wanted to write a letter to his bear, Walter … so he did. As I described it on Facebook:

“The letter included Walter’s name, my kid’s name, a drawing of each, a drawing of a house and a drawing of a cave. Oh, and a drawing of some hydro wires. Then he made a bracelet for Walter, and included a set of keys (not ones we actually use). Then we weighed it (52 g), so we had to put five stamps (stickers) on it. Very productive afternoon.”

Inside the letter, he traced the letters I’d written. On the envelope, he printed them all by himself. I posted pictures of both, and his grandma (my mom) made a sweet and benign comment about how he is a “budding writer.”

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Santa, maybe?

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A reasonable facsimile of my dad.We don’t do Santa Claus … yet.

The kids are still on the young side for it being a (cultural) necessity; by this time next year, my son will have been in Kindergarten for a few months, so I suppose some combination of both myth-learning and myth-busting will be unavoidable.

If I had my choice, we’d avoid the whole thing entirely.

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Three worst theme songs in kids’ tv

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I have two kids, aged 33 and 13 months, so children’s television features prominently in our lives. Happily, my kids are fairly discerning when it comes to what they actually want to watch (Toopy and Binoo) versus tolerate as an auditory backdrop (everything else).

As an adult, though, I don’t possess the same filtering skills and am subjected to what I consider to be an awful lot of awful music through these shows. Theme songs are the worst, and these three are the worst of the worst:

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Here’s your amen

~ Jeni ~ Leave a comment

I never thought I’d see the day that I’d be quoting an article by David Plotz, being the staunch Dickersonian that I am, but damned if I don’t want to just share the whole damn thing: Yes, I Ignore My Kids To Text and Email.

His piece, in response to a blog that showcases photos of parents neglecting their children in favour of electronic interaction, took on the “better parents” that would have us believe that such diverted attention is the equivalent of abandonment.

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