It’s odd how the brain works.  I only tend to recall a select few memories from childhood and they’re not the ones you’d think.  Disney World? No. Hitting my First Home Run?  No.  Oddly, some of them revolve around negative events even though I had an incredibly positive childhood comparatively speaking.  I’ve read that this is an evolutionary relic where humans tend to remember negative events more prominently as a survival mechanism but somehow my Dad yelling at me for sneaking up on him (Vietnam vet – not a fan of the sneak attack), being made fun of by classmates, etc. tends to stand out.  As a parent though, even as a father of 3 kids with the oldest at 6, I already have some very prominent memories that will likely stick with me for a lifetime.

My favorite and most memorable moments with my kids that tend to stand out in no particular order:

Teaching my son to ride his bike – Probably my most prominent memory of late is my oldest learning how to ride his bike without training wheels.  After several attempts throughout the spring and the ensuing falls and yelling at dad, he finally got it and as I was running alongside him and gave him a push, off he went.  He was trying to conceal his smile and look cool, but I could tell how excited and proud he was.  I’ll probably always remember that moment.

Adventure Guides Trips – As I mentioned in my coverage of the Adventure Guides program we’re in, my oldest absolutely loves these trips and we’ve had lots of memories.  My most prominent one is sledding off a massive jump they set up on a hill outside our cabin this winter.  With my youngest son and daughter to join the fray eventually, I’m sure there will be several more.

First Fish – Seeing how excited my middle son got over catching a fish is something I’ll always remember.  He’d heard stories about his older brother catching fish and kept asking me to take him fishing so we went to the local creek and caught him a small bass.  He was going nuts!

Laughing and Playing Ball – My daughter just turned 1 and the thing I remember most is the first time I started rolling a ball to her and how much she was laughing throwing it back at me.  She was giggling and lit up and it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

What are Your Most Memorable Moments?

It’s that time of year again where you’ll need to start lathering up the kids and avoid those nasty sunburns and ward off cancer risk years into the future.  The problem is, you may not be getting what you paid for – and you may actually be harming your children in the process.  While I don’t subscribe to every naturo-whack news article on how everything man-made is a scheme or evil, but based on multiple studies I’ve seen from legitimate sources, there are in fact many sunscreens on the market that should be avoided.

The most prominent recent report comes from the Environmental Working Group in their 2010 sunscreen report.

Some notable sunscreen findings:

• While many sunscreens prevent sunburns, that may be little help in warding off dangerous rays or even harming you due to presence of other chemicals.
• The FDA can’t even back up the claims of manufacturers: “FDA is not aware of data demonstrating that sunscreen use alone helps prevent skin cancer”…sunscreens should not be the first choice for skin cancer prevention and should not be used as the sole agent for protection against the sun” (IARC 2001a).
• Overuse of sunscreen can actually impeded your body’s ability to produce vitamin D – the law of unintended consequences.
• The vitamin A that many brands have in their formulations has recently been found to be harmful in animal studies and may actually increase your risk of cancer (source)

The Best Sunscreens:

Aside from actual clothing and hats which are your best bet, when going full monty, the report suggests the following as top picks for combination of effectiveness with safety in mind as well:

All Terrain
Aquasport Performance Sunscreen, SPF 30
TerraSport Performance Sunscreen, SPF 30
KidSport Performance Sunscreen, SPF 30

Badger
Sunscreen for Face and Body, Unscented, SPF 30
Sunscreen for Face and Body, SPF 30 Lightly Scented
Sunscreen for Face and Body, SPF 15 Lightly Scented

Beyond Coastal
Lip and Face Screen, SPF 30

California Baby
Sunblock Stick No Fragrance, SPF 30+
Sunscreen Lotion No Fragrance, SPF 30+
Sunscreen Lotion Everyday/Year-Round, SPF 30+
Sunscreen Lotion, SPF 30+, Citronella
Sunblock Stick Everyday/Year-Round, SPF 30+

Caribbean Solutions
Natural/Biodegradable SolGuard, SPF 25
Sol Kid Kare Natural Sunscreen, SPF 25

Desert Essence
Age Reversal SPF 30 Mineral Sunscreen

Episencial
Sunny Sunscreen, SPF 35

Estion
Sunscreen with Zinc, SPF 38

Jason Natural Cosmetics
Sunbrellas: Mineral Based Physical Sunblock, SPF 30+
Sunbrellas: Chemical Free Sunblock, SPF 30+
Earth’s Best: Sunblock Mineral Based, SPF 30+

Kabana Skin Care
Green Screen Organic Sunscreen Fragrance Free, SPF 20
Green Screen Organic Sunscreen, SPF 22, Skin Tone Tinted

L’uvalla Certified Organic
SPF 20 Sunscreen Face/Body

La Roche-Posay
Anthelios 40 Sunscreen Cream

Little Forest
Sunscreen Lotion For Babies and Kids, SPF 30+

Loving Naturals
Sunscreen, SPF 30+

Miessence
Reflect Outdoor Balm, SPF 15

Purple Prairie Botanicals
SunStuff, SPF 30
Sun Stick, SPF 30
SunStuff, SPF 15

Soleo Organics
All Natural Sunscreen, SPF 30+
Soleo Organics/Wyland Organics All Natural Sunscreen, SPF 30+
Soleo Organics/Atlantis Resort All Natural Sunscreen, SPF 30+

thinkbaby and thinksport
Sunscreen, SPF 30+

Trukid
Sunny Days Face and Body Stick, SPF 30+

UV Natural
Baby Sunscreen, SPF 30+
Sunscreen Sport, SPF 30+
Sunscreen, SPF 30+

Vanicream
Sunscreen Sport, SPF 35

There are other criteria; the list above looked at the popular sport category.  I was surprised to see that major brand names didn’t make the list, but in looking at major brands like Coppertone, many of them got an intermediate ranking, so at least they weren’t on the worst-list.  But forward this around, it’s a good independent resource to protect your kids from the dangers of both the sun and chemical exposure.

I’ll be the first to admit that neither I or my children have perfect diets.  We practice “everything in moderation” as opposed to the extreme rigidity of some of our friends where everything has to be 100% organic, absolutely no processed foods, nothing in a box, no additives, no fun stuff like ice cream, etc.  However, at the other end of the spectrum is a growing majority in America.  If you look around, there are a lot of overweight kids – a much higher proportion than I recall seeing when I grew up.  And once you put on the weight it’s extremely difficult to take it off.
So, we do worry about our kids, especially one of our sons who started off with some pretty severe gastro issues stemming from a premature birth.  He still hasn’t come around and is a very picky eater.  Unfortunately, he tends to favor snacks like crackers, cookies and sweets over fresh fruits and vegetables if given the choice.  So, we’ve come up with some general guidelines and tricks in an effort to ensure he has the best shot at a healthy stature as he matures, which has lifelong implications:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup – We cut this out everywhere we can.  Virtually all boxed foods, even if they’re not known as “sweets”, have high fructose corn syrup.  This stuff’s just plain nasty.  Not only does your body not metabolize it the same as natural sugars, but it actually has a different response in the brain while eating.  Ever notice when you’re eating that bag of snacks you could just go on forever and keep digging in?  When you’re ingesting high fructose corn syrup, it tricks your body into not sending/processing the same signal that signifies that you’re getting full and you just keep eating it.  It’s nasty, it’s tricky, and it’s likely one of the primary factors in the current obesity epidemic in America.
• Fresh Fruits and Vegetables – We try and have fresh food in the fridge at all times to ensure we don’t have to resort to the packaged stuff if the kids are hungry or something happens with the timing of dinner or we take a road trip or whatever.  Even if it’s the same thing (my one son will eat apples all day), it’s way better than a bag of snackfood.
• Tricking Your Kids – Since our picky eater only eats apples, we trick him into eating other stuff with none other than…the freezer!  For instance, he won’t eat blueberries.  We wanted to get a little diversity in his diet, so my wife tried freezing them.  Now, these frozen blueberries for some reason were some sort of dessert or snack to him.  Even though it’s the same food, he was much more receptive to it.
• Making Our Own Baby Food – As I’d highlighted in this article on homemade baby food it’s both healthy and a huge money saver for the first year or so of our daughter’s life.  And it’s easy!
• Avoid the Juice Drinks! – While many juice drinks say “all natural” on the label, it’s often not actually “natural ingredients” by any rational person’s definition.  When you read the label, you see all the added ingredients, not to mention that juice is SUGAR! While eating an apple or strawberry is eating a natural sugar, if your kid’s sipping on juices all day instead of water, they’re ingesting way more sugar than they need.  Not to mention, it’s also bad for their teeth.  We have a few friends whose kids have already had multiple cavities and EVEN A ROOT CANAL for a 3 year old.  Their kids drink juice in a sippy cup around the clock.

There are surely some other tips and tricks and I’d love to hear them.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a diet blog and our kids aren’t freako-natural, but there are some reasonable limits that parents can set and easy to implement changes to childrens’ diets that can ensure they at least have a decent shot at a healthy life in adulthood.  I’m realizing now in my thirties just how difficult it is to take off a few pounds.  Imagine starting off as a teenager 50 pounds overweight!

When Mom’s out for the day and it’s raining out, boredom can ensue.  Today, the wife took our daughter to a baby shower for the day, so I had the two boys.  Confronted with a lousy forecast and the novelty of new Christmas toys long gone (sad, isn’t it?), I started thinking about some neat stuff to do with them instead of plopping them in front of the TV.

We considered seeing a movie but there was nothing playing that we found interesting.  And that kind of defeats the purpose of avoiding a day full of television – it’s just a higher priced screen.

Bounce Places – We’ve been to a few of these for various birthday parties.  Whether it’s BounceU, Kids Rule, or whatever the name of the chain is, they’re pretty much the same place.  Kids take off shoes, go nuts running and bouncing through various large blow-up obstacle courses and it tires them out while Dad gets to bounce around and act like a little kid with them.  That was our first stop today.  For twenty bucks, we spent 90 minutes of quality time together going nuts.  Today they allowed walk-ins, but some days they don’t so just find a place near you and call ahead.

Arcade -This was going to be our second choice, but the place I had in mind was closed on Sundays, so we didn’t get over there.  Regardless, we don’t have games in the house (yet) and they rarely make it to an arcade so I figured this would be a fun way to spend an hour or so.  Maybe next time.

In the House: Hide and Seek -There are a million things you can do in the house on a rainy day, but we rarely play hide and seek and our 3 year old absolutely loves it.  It never gets old for him, even when he hides in the same spot every time!  Our five year old’s getting to that competitive stage where he really tries to find crazy spots to hide.  Anyway, that’s always fun for a good thirty minutes.

Arts and Crafts -My wife’s real good about stocking the house full of arts and crafts for the kids.  We have an endless supply of paper, stickers, crayons, markets, glue, etc.  So, we basically just wing it and throw together some ridiculous contraption and then present it to Mom when she gets home.

Bath – The Closer - So Mom doesn’t have to walk in and do a bath first thing in, I’m starting bath time now.  I’ll let them splash around in there for a while and chill since I usually move things along more quickly during the week and we’re starting early.  When she pops in, I can say, “They’re bathed – alright I’m gonna finally take my shower for the day after I hit the elliptical for a couple minutes” or whatever.

While a rainy day can stink since we do so much outside when it’s nice, there’s no reason to totally squander a good day with the kids.  They grow up so fast, so we might as well make the most out of these individual moments when the family’s not together and we’re not in our typical routine.

What are some of your favorite Rainy Day Activites?

I’ve been both amused and disturbed when my 5 year old quotes me an infomercial outlining the benefits of the giant cupcake maker, the magic doorsweep or the snuggie.  On one hand, it’s funny what an easy sell he is and how enthusiastic he is about a piece of crap made in China that falls apart once it arrives, but at the same time, it demonstrates just how impressionable young kids are to even small doses of commercial television.

When I was growing up, I don’t recall infomercials like this during kids’ shows.  I also didn’t desire or possess much in the way of material things.  While my friends were all getting the Commodore 64 and wearing expensive parachute pants, my Dad bought me cinder blocks to build a fort in the back yard and I got “practical gifts” like flashlights and pocket knives.  It’s not to say I didn’t want what my friends had at the time, but I think I have a different appreciation for the receipt of gifts even today as an adult compared to friends and kids today.

This is of course, is partially a reflection on us as parents and how we’re raising our kids, but we’re pretty much mainstream, or actually, a bit on the frugal side compared to virtually everyone we know and associate with.

I tend to try and focus our spending on memorable life experiences over material things.  I’m sure the kids will look back more fondly (and so will we) on a trip to Disney rather than boasting that they had a full collection of games for the Nintendo DS when they were growing up.  However, with every holiday and birthday seemingly being met with gifts, gifts, gifts, it seems to diminish the thrill and appreciation of subsequent gifts.  I’m often overruled by my wife, and sometimes rightly so in retrospect.  But I wish on some levels that life could be simpler, easier, less wrought with chintzy crap from the dollar store.  It’s not just the money, it’s the mindset that entices kids to desire more and more “stuff” regardless of its complete lack of utility or enjoyment after the first 5 minutes.

What are your thoughts?

Am I an old fart who forgot what it was like to be a kid or is this generation being subjected to vastly different consumerism than ours?

Is it me or are some parents (usually moms dictate these terms) overly rigid with their kids’ napping schedules?  I don’t mean to knock moms trying to do right by their kids, because I realize that some kids are completely off the wall if they miss their nap for the day or something, but there are some parents who are so rigid with the napping timeline that it’s a little over the top.

We have some acquaintances that absolutely will not budge by even 30 minutes on plans or a get-together if it doesn’t adhere strictly to their child’s standard nap time.  In one case, my wife hangs with a small mom group and when it hits 11:30, one mother abruptly packs up and jets out of there without barely saying a word.  She murmurs something about Johnny’s nap time and how he can’t start late.  I mean, what would happen if instead of laying him down at noon, he went down a 12:15?  Does he turn into a pumpkin?  The kids were having a great time and boom – end of story.  No flexibility.  We have another friend that won’t drive to our house during the day because their child wouldn’t get a full nap at their usual time.  Meanwhile, it’s OK for us to drive to them and have the kid nap in the car or shift their nap time.

Maybe we’re just too lax or real lucky, but since we’ve had to be pretty flexible after moving and drive our kids all over the place to maintain friendships, make doctor’s appointments, hit speech lessons, etc., our kids nap times have moved around to accommodate schedules, not the other way around.

Here’s the funny part…twice per year, times shift by an hour for daylight savings.  The moms have no trouble shifting a noon nap pre-daylight savings to noon post-daylight savings (a whopping 1 hour shift in the span of a day), yet they wig out at the thought of starting or ending a nap 15 minutes from the “clock” time to accommodate a particular situation.

Can someone please explain this to me?

With our kids off from school today, my wife put on a movie for the boys (5 and 3), but it wasn’t Disney and it wasn’t the usual cartoon fair.  She put one of the 1-year birthday videos I made for each sons just prior to their first birthday.  Even after seeing it several times, the kids still love watching their videos (and each other) and there’s just something “authentic” or heartwarming about watching them reminisce about being smaller and how silly we were with them and what it was like being a baby.  Without patting myself on the back too much (because I’m totally deficient in so many other facets of fatherhood and husbandry), I’m really glad I took the time and energy to put together these videos for the kids and I’ll have to do the same for our daughters as well, now 7 months.

Background: Throughout each of our kids’ first year, like many families, the video camera was on all the time and we took plenty of snapshots.  Now, that’s normally where it stops.  Most families have countless hours of video of their child’s first feeding, first roll, first steps, first word, etc., but it never gets put to good use – perhaps a YouTube vid forwarded to family members if anything.  Well, for whatever reason, leading up to our son’s first birthday, I was inspired enough to hunker down and spend probably 20-30 hours total split across a few weeks uploading and editing about 15 hours of video I had captured from his first year.  I figured out how to use some standard video editing software rather quickly and easily, tried out a few digital tricks, and I was on my way!  I’ve used Pinnacle and the Microsoft Movie Editing software for videos now.
I added several of our best shots and then envisioned a theme for the video.  I basically went through each major holiday and milestone, inserted video and pics, made sure to include all the family members I could muster up, and put music to the different sections.  These days, with massive archives of personal music and iTunes, it’s easy to get say, Christmas music for a winter section or a scary song for Halloween, etc.

At each first birthday party, with the whole family there, we put the video on and watched it together for the first time.  People were completely blown away and loved it.  Many, including my wife, cried at the end when I cycled back through the first year and said, “Kev’s growing up”.  I had one wedding planner ask me if I wanted to start doing videos for weddings.  It’s not that I had any great talent at all, nor did I have any prior experience.  It’s just that nobody takes the time to do this.  But, since this will be something our kids (and us) have forever, the grueling weeks of 1-2 hours a night in the basement toiling away at uploads and editing were well worth it.

Lessons Learned

Now that I’m about to start editing my third one, I’ve learned some important lessons I’d like to impart:

• Don’t get so wrapped up in perfectionism and editing each frame to perfectly coincide with a musical queue, digital tricks, etc.  This will end up taking up 80% of your time for only marginal benefit.  I learned this the hard way on my first video.
• Don’t keep watching your partial video hundreds of times throughout the editing process.  This wastes valuable time and drains your energy/creativity along the way.
• Do batch processing.  Download ALL the video at once, just let the tape run, record on your hard drive and go in and edit later.  This is much quicker than what I did the first time, which was to watch little bits and pieces on the camera and then decide to upload little snippets for inclusion in the video.
• DON’T MAKE YOUR VIDEO TOO LONG!!!…Especially if you want anyone else to watch it.  My first one was probably 30 minutes, second one 25.  I might make the next one 20 or so.  When you pop on a video for a party or perhaps another couple who’s thinking of doing the same thing, they don’t want to sit through a 3 hour compilation of every little thing you’ve captured.  I was at one party where someone put on a video which was practically an unedited running stream of 45 minutes of less than gripping video.  Everyone felt imprisoned and couldn’t just get up and leave but you could tell everyone was annoyed.  It’s much more effective for both immediate effect and subsequent viewing to have a nice story to tell – break up themes, and keep it relatively watchable.

Most Importantly – Just Do It!  Upon reading this, you may be one of the millions of moms or dads out there with hours and hours of footage and thousands of beautiful pictures just sitting on a hard drive or tapes somewhere.  Take the time and effort to chip away at this in a methodical fashion and your kids will love you for it.

My wife sure can pick ‘em.  She took the kids to the library and the kids wanted a book on whales.  They love whales and nature.  I was reading it to them tonight and it started to get more and more graphic.

• It kind of started with a whale in a net.  When questioned on the net, I said, “Oh, those men on the boat were just playing hide and seek with him”.
• Then, there was some blood-filled water from a recent whale killing.  I said “Oh, he must have gotten a bloody nose by bumping a ship or something”.
• Then, there are Japanese harpooning a whale, then a dead rotting carcass on the beach and it was pretty much downhill from there…

Apparently, the book was affiliated with Greenpeace or something (nice, happy whale picture on the front – the horrors of the human plague by page 3) and the kids were horrified by the time I got to the end – but I couldn’t just stop reading the thing to them cold, I didn’t want to abruptly stop as if what I had said previously was false.  Well, they’ll have to learn what people do to each other and animals someday; just figured 5 and 3 was a bit young.  I guess we need to skim library books from now on for gratuitous violence.

Maybe we’ll go back to Magic Schoolbus tomorrow night!

We’ve found that our 5-year old tends to become obsessive over various interests.  I don’t know if this is normal since he’s our first, or whether Kevin has an abnormally obsessive personality.  After enduring the same 3 notes of “Carol of the Bells” on his toy piano over and over for hours, days, weeks on end around Christmas time, with the Spring thaw came his love of insects.  We thought we were over the hump last year when he was fascinated with “Brood X” and collected an entire jar full of cicada carcasses and winter came.  Well, this year brought a new brood of cicadas and the cycle started all over again.  Every spider, beetle and ant Kevin encountered continued to bring wonder and amazement.  He sleeps with a book entitled “Amazing Insects” which is full of insect facts for kids.

Indulging Your Child’s Love of Insects

Figuring that this may be the only time in his life that he’s this enthusiastic over anything, we caved and further indulged his love of insects.

1. This spring, we purchased a butterfly house and caterpillars. Watching them hatch, eat and eventually be let free to fly away was such a big deal to him. When butterflies were flying around our porch later in the year, we told him they came back to visit him and he was thrilled.

2. While on vacation, we found a local Butterfly House that allowed you to hold little sticks with sugar on them to attract the butterflies and they’d come right up to you.

3. To cap it off, we found out there there was an exhibit in a nearby city entitled, “BugFest”. On a whim, we researched it that night and went that weekend.  It was really something.  We arrived and they had beetles baked into crackers you could eat (Survivor Style!), insect-crafts, educational time with entomologists, and best of all – Amazing Insects!  They had these crazy leaf-looking insects, crazy spiders, a rhinoceros beetle, every exotic insect you could think of.  Kevin was amazed – and happy.

While not every kid is quite as enthusiastic as Kevin is about insects, it makes him happy and it beats being enthralled with a video game console or television.  While it would be nice to get a break from the incessant chatter about how he befriended a new beetle today and how many cicada carcasses he collected, we’re thrilled to indulge his passion.  Our 3-year old has a passion for dinosaurs that I’ll be blogging about next – subscribe for free in a Reader if you want to hear part 2.

What are your kids’ silly passions and how do you indulge them?

A major concern for many parents is what their kids are up to online.  This is an entirely new realm for the current generation of parents and for anyone that’s never seen the oft-publicized “To Catch a Predator”, it’s evident that there are literally thousands upon thousands of predators online seeking to exploit children.  Aside from this, some parents just want to know what sort of topics their kids are so intent on instant messaging and texting to each other.  With this in mind, I’ve collated a list of a few common abbreviations that parents inevitably see on their childrens’ correspondence, but have no idea what the heck they mean.  The following monikers are probably being used by your children and their invisible friends with the assumption that you have know idea what they’re up to when you glance over their shoulder at the monitor and with this list you can arm yourself with some nifty chat/IM knowledge:

9 – Parent is watching

?4U – I have a question for you

^5 – high five

<w> – wink

@-/- – a rose

:~) – cute

;-P – sticking tongue out

A3 – Anytime, anywhere, anyplace

AAP – Always a pleasure

ASL – Age/Sex/Location

BF – boyfriend or best friend

CAM – Camera

CU – See you

F2F – Face to face

ILY – I love you

L2G – Like to go?

PCM – Please call me

SYS – See you soon

WUF – Where are you from?

While every one of the aforementioned abbreviations could be completely innocent in nature, many of these (especially those in red) could also be code for a predator’s desire to take advantage of your child.  Remember, kids think they’re invincible and nobody can pull one over on them.  But the reality is, thousands of children per year are exploited and as evidenced by the widely publicized television coverage and perv dragnets, there’s an army of them looking to step in and continue the cycle.

Can’t remember all these?

Just bookmark this page or subscribe in a reader and you can always jot down the perplexing jargon you see on your kids’ device and check it out.