Strollerderby : family activities

What's More Embarrassing: Pics of You or Your Kids?

Madeline Holler — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:27:00 GMT

Apparently, the way I use Facebook embarrasses my kids. Yes, I did the 25 Things. Yes, I was tagged in a photo from high school (nice asymmetrical, there, Madeline). Yes, I update with my life's minutae, like the fact that my in-laws percolate their coffee and that sometimes I'm tired and want ice-cream.

According to this "Facebook Survival Guide for Awkward Adults" on MSNBC, however, my biggest FB-user/parenting fail is this:

I use my kids' photos (and, yes, the dog's) for my profile pic.

Here's what Daniel Harrison has to say about that:

Listen, your kids are adorable, and while we're at it, let's extend the fiction to say we're glad you finally got someone to marry you.

Nevertheless, those crowning achievements do not belong in your profile picture. Nor, by the way, does a picture of a dog (unless, that is, you really are a dog, in which case, congrats on getting online. That's impressive! Good dog!

Problem is, Mr. Harrison, there are no pictures of me to post.

I don't know how things are in your family, but I'm the one who picks up the camera to record the actions and travels and daily life of our family. If you were to dig through the gigabytes of our digital images or thumb through our few family photo albums, you would think my husband was some kind of heroic single dad -- frolicking with his kids on the beach! Making goofy faces while eating donuts! Dozing off on the sofa with a tiny, sleeping newborn in his arms. How does this guy do it, you would ask, all by himself and without the soothing touch of a mother's hand?

Where am I? Oh, see that ant-sized woman in the red shirt surrounded by lots and lots and lots of background? The tangled mass of wind-blown hair with six chins and a pissy glare? That person, indelicately bent over, petting a goat and unaware that everything under her shirt is fully exposed? Me! All of them, me!

See?

In fact, it's so rare to see me in a nicely composed photo with my kids or, hell, the entire family -- much less, by myself -- I almost don't recognize me when I do happen upon one. What other choice do I have but fill Facebook's weird TinTin-esque default silhouette with mugs of my crowning achievements?

For those of you partnered with crappy picture takers, how do you squeeze into your family photos? Single parents -- real ones -- how do you get pictures of you and your kids? While I'm at it, what's filling your profile pic?

12 Baby Names That Really Won't Make a Comeback

Growing up on Facebook

Strollerderby's on Facebook!

Photo: MSNBC.com

Ballpark Perks for Parents Rock (or Rox)

Amy Kuras — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:03:00 GMT

There are few things I enjoy as much on a summer afternoon as a good baseball game. I admit to being more of a cultural fan than someone who has the slightest idea what the infield fly rule actually is, as I tend to be there more for the atmosphere and excitement than the actual game play. But sipping a cool drink under the warm sun, watching nine innings go by is one of the best ways I can think of to spend time in the nice weather.
And I have been to exactly two games since my daughter was born.
Part of it is my team actually ceased to suck there for awhile, so my season-ticket-holding connections were avidly seeking more tickets instead of trying to palm off the ones they had. But the major reason is that the nuances of America's pastime are pretty much lost on my three-year-old, and I am sure any three-year-old. And after spending the one game we took her to as a baby in our sunbaked seats terrified of heatstroke and blistering sunburn, this summer doesn’t look good either with a new baby.
Which is why I think the minor league Brockton Rox well, rock for this idea: the team has converted one of its luxury suites to a "Rox-A-Bye Baby" suite where parents can go with their babies and still enjoy the game. Now, this is the most minor of minor leagues, and the team isn't even affliated with a major league team, so the luxury suite might be a room with wall to wall carpeting and a window fan, but still. As insanely expensive as tickets to major leauge games are, I'd like to see more teams adopt this sort of thing. Does your local ballpark do anything special for parents of young kids, and would it make you more likely to go to a game if it did?

T.V. Dinners - Eating While Watching Not As Bad As We Thought

Alisyn — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:38:00 GMT

You want the good news, or the bad news first? Okay, first the bad: It's not ideal to regularly eat in front of the television. Now, the good news: eating in front of the television is not as bad as we had previously thought. (Hear that? That's the sound of millions of families turning up their television sets as they breathe a sigh of relief....)

When University of Minnesota researchers began a study of family meals, they were surprised to find that kids who ate while watching T.V. were only marginally less healthy than their non-T.V.-viewing counterparts. Whether the T.V. was on or off during family meals didn't matter nearly as much as having the family sitting down together to eat - whether in the dining room or in the T.V. room, families who eat together eat have healthier kids and diets. Far fewer vegetables and calcium-rich foods are consumed by kids who eat alone, which isn't terribly surprising - is there a kid in the world who would make themselves broccoli for dinner? And interestingly, girls who ate with their families consumed up to 14 percent more calories than girls who didn't, suggesting possible links between body image, food and family.

So go easy on yourself the next time you sit down to dinner with the T.V. on, and rest assured that if it brings your family together for meal time, then that $100 digital cable bill is totally worth it.

Sunday Night is Family Night

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:04:00 GMT

I remember Sunday evenings as a kid... Listening as my parents moved around in the kitchen assembling a meal of some kind while we kids cozied up and watched "Wonderful World of Disney." Sunday nights were a time of relaxing family togetherness, before the weekly busyness overtook us and left us frazzled, cranky, and all tired out by Friday evening.

Sundays in the Pacific NW are usually gray and rainy, which lends itself perfectly to a family movie night with popcorn, pajamas, and cuddles under blankets. Even though our chosen views are still more Diego and Dora than A& E's Pride and Prejudice (Colin! Firth!), I have hope that we'll get there some day. Our other favorite is to watch one of the National Geographic selections "Blue Planet" is particularly good.

It's not always movie night. Sometimes we just all snuggle up and read books. It's fun to pretend we're not soon going to be enveloped in the rush-rush of the work-school week. Whatever happens for us during the week, Sunday night is a quiet, cozy family time that is cherished (most of the time) by each of us.

Enter, Impregnate and Win!

Madeline Holler — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:30:00 GMT

Couples in the central Russian region of Ulyanovsk will be given time off work today to go make baby.

Those who wind up pregnant after this state-sanctioned booty call may qualify to win a UAZ-Patriot, which is a locally made SUV (buckle up!), provided mom gives birth on June 12, Russia’s national day.

Winners of the grand prize (the SUV, silly, not a healthy baby) will be selected based on “respectability” and “commendable parenting.” Like working it for time off and a four-wheel drive?

Ulyanovsk’s mayor started the incentive program a few years ago to build up his town’s dwindling supply of people. Last year, 500 couples signed up for the day off to get it on, increasing the local population by 78 (and one UAZ-Patriot).

Break out the Stoli! We’re having some babies!

Family and Enviro-Friendly Bike Share Programs Sweeping The Globe

Alisyn — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:19:00 GMT

If you are lucky enough to live in Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm, Oslo, Amsterdam, or a half dozen or so other European cities, you have probably been reaping the benefits of your hometown's bike sharing program for years. But here in the U.S., such programs are just getting started in progressive cities like New York, Portland, OR, and Berkeley, and are off to a great start.

Typically, users pay a membership fee, locate the nearest bike via the web, ride off into the sunset, and then drop the bike off at the same station or a different one. The programs are underwritten by companies that put advertising on the bikes. The cost of the program pales in comparison to adding to freeways or extending subway lines, and is an environmentally friendly way to get around, not to mention a great way to get, and stay, in shape. Kids bikes aren't yet part of the program, but kid seats and trailers can be easily attached and detached, making biking fun and easy for the whole family.

Grassroots bike share movements are popping up all over - does your city have a bike share program? If so, do you use it? If not, what would it take to get you on a bike?

Board Games That Might Not Bore You. I Mean, Are Great for the Whole Fam!

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:03:00 GMT

If I have to play a game of golf with my kid, the one where I inevitably get the broken foamy club, or a round of Simon Says where every single command begins "Simon says," for the rest of my God-given parental life, then please kill me now.

It's not that I'm a stickler for the rules or a game hater. It's just that as much as some of us want to let our inner children soar during Red Light, Green Light and Candyland, quality family times can sometimes be mind-numbingly dull. Give me a board game that doesn't have 8,000 pieces that are sure to end up in someone's esophagus or buried in the carpeting, has a theme that doesn't feature licensed characters and something to do that will be fun for longer than 30 seconds. After all, we're TRYING TO BOND as a family here, people!

Maybe staying relatively alert and engaged will be a bit easier with this list of new family-friendly games where the fun and challenge might actually include you. Cranium Zooreka looks to be a classic board game with funny twists and an eco-theme that even includes gorilla babies. Who can resist gorilla babies? I Spy With My Eagle Eye is one I think my toddler would love and seems like a great game to throw in the carry-on for trips. Nerdy Wordy would be fun for kids beginning to grasp spelling and reading and older and is sure to bring out the crazy logophile in every geeky parent.

Family Surfing: A Site We Like

Kelly Mills — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:05:00 GMT

There's debate over the benefits of family video game playing and T.V. watching, but around our house, we surf together. The internets. You know, we use the Google to find stuff we like, and then gather around the monitor as a snuggly family, screen light reflecting off our pasty faces, and we laugh. I think I've seen almost every wacky kitten video ever posted on Youtube.

The current favorite is Cute Overload. Lots of baby animals, pets wearing clothes, strange interspecies co-mingling, and so on. We wuv the widdle animals, oh yes we do. In fact, every time I try to sneak off to fold laundry or make dinner, I hear, "Mom! C'mere!" or "Sweetie, you've got to see this kitten and turtle. Awwwwww." Someday I may actually get my laptop back to do actual work. And since many of these things have no audio, there's real human interactions happening too. How 1900's! I doubt this is messing with our child's social skills, unless people actually expect her to make eye contact.

A Family that Drags Together, Stays Together?

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:02:00 GMT

Family fun group activities to me have always meant playing Sorry, or swimming, or playing water polo, or reading scriptures (I was raised Mormon). But for the Plaizier family, fun means drag racing.

Papa Plaizier, a legendary Funny Car driver, is joined this year by daughter Ashley, while sisters Brittany and Courtney compete in a different class within the same sport.

Shared family activities are sometimes difficult to cultivate, and when your kids are young (too young really yet for organized sports) it's hard to imagine the day when you'll be cheering on the sidelines of a soccer game. But stories like this give me hope (and something to look forward to.)

Addams Family Becomes a Musical. Hooray!

Kelly Mills — Fri, 25 May 2007 14:02:00 GMT

Producers have announced they'll turn the Addams Family into a musical. While some might feel this is a Hair-brained idea, that it will make a Miserables show, and that any commercial version of the Charles Addams drawings is only a Phantom of the great cartoonist's work, I was happier than a bag of Cats to hear about this. I even made my special Funny Face, the one I make when I get really good news. Too bad this one won't come out until 2009 or so.

Nope, no need to slap me. I'll just go calm myself. Mommy needs a little sleep.

Okay, back. I'm thrilled about this, because I love a good musical, and I bet Addams Family will lend itself better to the musical format than so many of the stories I hear about, like, "We're going to make a musical out of Sophie's Choice." The macabre always makes for a good song-and-dance number: the Buffy musical, anyone? By the way, in case you have a love of Addams Family things, the movies are not so good for little kids (or adults, despite the fact that I heart Raul Julia) but the board game rocks. We play it constantly.

MythBusters: Just Part of Raising a Geek

Kelly Mills — Mon, 07 May 2007 12:31:00 GMT

As utter dork parents, we are doing our darndest to make our daughter the kind of kid who will play Dungeons and Dragons, correct her teacher during the physics lesson, join the drama club, and have thick tape holding her glasses together. In other words, we are grooming her for total geekdom. As my better half said recently, "It's gonna make the whole dating thing so much easier on us."

Therefore I was pleased to see other parents encouraging the same kind of behavior. Geekdad from the ubergeek source, Wired, put in a plug for kids watching one of our favorite shows, MythBusters. We adore this program because the hosts are appropriately hilarious, cute, and dorky; they encourage experimentation and skepticism; and best of all, they blow lots of shit up. Heh heh, cool.

I, like Geekdad, highly recommend this program for all ages. In fact, we just turned my engineer stepfather onto the show, and now he watches it religiously. Explosions and critical thinking for the whole family served up by funny people: what more could you want?

I'll also give a shout-out to another one of the dork programs we watch as a unit, called How It's Made. It's a completely straightforward look at how, um, stuff is made. They cover everything from a crayon factory to fish husbandry with the same unflappable delivery and bad puns. It's low tech and literal and Canadian and we like it. See? You can learn things from television.

Baby Loves Disco: The Family-Friendly Dance Party is in Full-Swing for Spring

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:01:00 GMT

The Baby Loves Disco dance party phenomenon is sweeping the nation, and chances are, if you live in a big city and have kids, you've heard parents extolling its groovin' music, breastfeeding-friendly "chill-out zones," and organic snacks. If not? Click here.

This weekend, Baby Loves Disco heads south to kick off their Atlanta shindig at the Loft where there are plenty of tickets available. The rain in the Pacific Northwest can't stop (won't stop) the music. The shows in Portland and Seattle are sold out this weekend, but if you feel like road trippin', there are still tickets available for the San Francisco event on Saturday at Ruby Skye. Get 'em while they're hot!

See you at the disco! No, really! I'm goin'! Cuz there's nothing I love more than wrangling two kids hopped up on juice boxes dancing with scarves when they should be napping. No whining, baby. No whining on the dance floor...

TV Dinners Bad for More Than Your Brain

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:31:00 GMT

Plopping the fam in front of the TV during dinner time does more than dull any type of conversation. It can actually make your kids unhealthy.

A recent health survey shows kids who eat with their families in front of the television eat fewer fruits and vegetables. Turn off the tube, however, the veggie intake soars. And here I thought dinner-time TV was a bad idea because the only thing on at the time is usually umimportant things like the news.

In short, the survey of 1,300 families with preschoolers showed that family dinner time = good -- while family dinner time + TV = bad. Just wait till the World Series and we'll see how quickly that equation changes.

Can You Be a TV-Free Family? Just a Week?

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:01:00 GMT

The Wall Street Journal's must-read parenting blog, The Juggle, is doing the unthinkable, the unconscionable -- going TV-free for a week. The reason? TV is a life-sucking force that leaves you up later and later and later until, finally, you're watching informercials at 3 a.m. and wondering who on earth will wake up with the kid in just a few hours.

OK, so maybe it's not that bad. But it can be quite addictive. Just like The Juggle, my wife finds herself sucked into an extra 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and before you know it -- that cry-a-thon known as "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" has turned into "Iron Chef America" followed by the news and whatever else is on. "I've got to go to bed!" my wife says, rubbing her eyes.

To counter this phenomenon, the Juggle's Sara is going TV-free for a week, and is inviting people to join her. All you have to do is make it to next Wednesday, filling your extra time with reading and family activities and whatever it is people without TVs do all day instead of "Grey's Anatomy." Can you do it? Do you want to?

New Use for Old Toys: Rehabilitation

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:28:00 GMT

Get out the wooden tops, jacks and marbles, Ethel - classic toys are finding new life as rehabilitation tools for seniors. In various nursing homes and senior centers on the East Coast, a new program, administered by the Teacher Place & Parent Resources in Burlington, Vermont, uses classic toys to improve memory and hand-eye coordination.

Providing a basket of toys allows families to have a focus for their otherwise occasionally tongue-tied visits. Toys have a way of bridging gaps between generations and smoothing over differences and troubled history, especially old favorites that do not depend on wild videos and overcharged batteries to function.

Games without clear winners and losers tend to build rapport rather than create tension, but I'm not ready to toss out my Sorry and Monopoly Games just yet. I think learning to lose graciously (which I'm still learning) is one of life's most difficult lessons. If I can eventually use some of these lessons to ease my folks on down the aging road, than I'm glad for them.