Party game ideas for 3 year olds?

I’ve just spent a very unsatisfying lunch hour scouring the interwebs for party-game ideas for three year olds. When will I ever learn that all I need to know about life I can find out by asking my bloggy friends?

There will be six kids, ages 10 weeks, 2 years (two of them), 3 years, 5 years and 6 years. Okay, safe to say that baby Brooke will be happy to simply look on while the other kids play.

Any ideas for simple games that can be played in a relatively small and crowded (with onlooking adults) space would be greatly appreciated!

On nudity in (okay, near) the workplace

For the most part, going to the gym has been a solitary activity for me. Back in the day, when I was first getting into going to the gym, Fryman and I used to go together, and I give him props for getting me into it in the first place. But in the last ten years or so, I’ve been content to go on my own and do my own thing while I’m there.

In the last month, I’ve started meeting up with a friend at the gym on Monday mornings. She arrives a bit before me, and so far we’ve been able to get two elliptical machines side by side to chat while we sweat. Trying to have a conversation while on the elliptical machine has added an entirely new dimension to my workout!

And since we work in the same building, we amble past Timmy’s and grab a coffee and walk over to the building together and use the shower facilities there, which are considerably less gross than the dingy, grungy shower facilities at the gym.

All of this I like very much: the extra encouragement to get out of bed and show up for the workout, knowing she is waiting for me; the companionship; the chance to make friends outside of work with someone who I’ve always liked. It’s all good – right up until the showering part.

It’s surprisingly difficult to carry on a conversation with a friend you like and admire – while naked and getting in or out of the shower.

I’d like to be more comfortable with nudity, really I would. Bodies are beautiful, I agree. No reason to be ashamed. On an intellectual level, I totally agree with you. But in practice? Where’s that extra-large bath sheet?

And why is it so much easier to be naked in a locker-room full of complete strangers than in front of one person you’d like to invite out for a chat over coffee? Would it be weird if I started showering in my bathing suit?

Another dead iPod

My iPod died on Friday night. Again. I mean, seriously. How many times do I have to go through this? There’s no doubt that iPods are to MP3 players what Kleenex are to facial tissue and Frisbees are to flying disks, but there’s a limit to how much patience I have for technology that dies multiple times in the same year. I love the holy hell out of it, but it’s more fickle than a hungry, overtired two year old.

After three hours of useless troubleshooting on Friday night, during which I once resurrected it like Lazarus only to have it die again when I tried to load the music back on it, and reinstalling iTunes not once, not twice, but three times on two different computers, I finally gave up.

We got it last summer from Best Buy, and bless Beloved’s paranoid susceptibility to marketing, we bought a $40 product replacement warranty. When we returned it the first time, less than three weeks after we bought it, they simply took the dead iPod from me and gave me a new one still factory-sealed in the box. I was highly impressed.

Saturday, I headed out into the frigid morning expecting the same service. But much to my dismay, when I showed up at Best Buy with a handful of unresponsive iPod, they told me I’d have to either contact Apple, who offer a one-year warranty, or Best Buy’s customer service telephone number. Either one would take a minimum of 10 days to get a working iPod back in my hands.

I was not impressed. I’ve been pushing myself to do a minimum of two, but preferably three, workouts at the gym each week, and my iPod has been carefully loaded with music to burn calories by. I had made it through my Saturday workout without it, but I have to tell you that listening to Angler and Hunter (rant for another day: why on earth does my women’s-only gym play Angler and Hunter on its TVs on a Saturday morning?) definitely detracts from my energy level and my enthusiasm for the whole workout.

Petulant, I started flipping through the Best Buy product replacement plan (please take a small moment to admire the fact that I had not only kept but could find in a timely manner the receipt and warranty) and read the fine print: even though the warranty covers a period through July 2008, its obligation to replace an item ends after one replacement. In other words, even though I paid for two years of coverage, if I were to get a replacement iPod today and that iPod died again in six months, I would be SOL. Given the fact that I’m on my third iPod in the first six months, I don’t like those odds.

So I called Apple, and they have sent out a box I will use to send my recalcitrant iPod back to its mothership, or at least a satellite repair depot. I asked the very nice lady at the call centre somewhere in Pennsylvania whether they would repair or simply replace it, she said they would make a cursory attempt to repair it, but would likely simply replace it. It should be back in my sweaty little hands in 10 to 14 days.

That leaves my Best Buy warranty intact for the next iPod failure. At least now I know to expect it. In the end, my annoyance with the iPod’s untimely demise is at least reasonably offset by the fairly decent repair and replacement service from Apple. I don’t have anything nice to say about Best Buy, though. A two-year product replacement plan should replace products for two years, wouldn’t you think?

A Friday comment game

I went nearly 48 hours without Internet access while I was in Kingston, and ironically, one of the main things we discussed at the conference was new communication technology and social media. It was really interesting, and I can’t wait to get to work on some of that stuff with my day job.

But today, I’m drawing a blank. I’m playing “stay at home mom” today, because our caregiver is out of town, and I’ve got one of those headaches. I have no idea what to write about.

Hey, it’s been a while since we’ve played a comment game. You seem to like them. Wanna play?

I think it’s been almost a year since we played this one. First person names a famous actor/actress (i.e. Nicole Kidman). The next person names a movie that person played in (i.e. Moulin Rouge). Next person names a person who was in that movie (i.e. Ewan McGregor). Next person names a movie that person was in (i.e. Trainspotting). Hint: IMDB is your friend!

Ready? Let’s start with… Matthew Broderick.

First kiss

Although I truly love to travel, I’m glad that my job doesn’t require me to be away overnight very often. I’m off to a conference in Kingston for the next couple of days, and while I relish the idea of no cooking and no diaper changes and a bed I don’t have to share for just one night, I’ll still miss the men in my life.

I just realized yesterday that this isn’t the first time I’ve stayed at the hotel where the conference will be held. The summer I was fourteen, we took a family vacation to Kingston and stayed at the same hotel. It was there that I met a boy, a boy who was seventeen and lived in Kingston. What he was doing hanging around the inside of a hotel when he lived in town never was clarified. What I do clearly remember was making out with him in the hotel stairwell. It was my first mouth-open “french kiss” as we called it back then. (Do they still call it french kissing? Why do I feel suddenly ancient and out of touch?)

I’d had my first kiss earlier that year at a school dance. I spent the rest of the year with a painfully unrequited crush on the boy who never wanted to acknowledge my existence after the end of that night. But I don’t think I spent a lot of energy that summer pining for the guy from Kingston. I can’t even remember his first name. It might have been Steve.

So, anyway, I’m out of here for a couple days and I’m not sure what my internet connectivity is going to be. Talk amongst yourselves… as if I have to compell you to do that. Tell me the story of your first kiss, and I’ll look forward to reading your stories when I come back Thursday night.

A helmet law for toboggans?

Normally, I tend to favour the legislation of safety. I’m all for car seat laws, and bicycle helmet laws, and non-smoking laws, and seat-belt laws. I think the state has as much of a role to play in these areas as the individual.

On this issue, I’m not so sure. Today in the Citizen, there was an article about sledding safety and it examined the question of whether there should be a law requiring kids to wear a helmet when tobogganing.

Never mind the law part, I got stuck on the question of whether one should wear a helmet when sledding. I have to admit, paranoid as I am about the boys’ safety, putting a helmet on them to go tobogganing would have never occured to me. Not that it’s a bad idea. Lord knows I did enough damage to myself as a child on snowy hills.

When I was six or seven, I caught the sharp edge of a plastic toboggan across the bridge of my nose when I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough one day while trying to walk back up a slippery hill. I clearly remember the look on my poor mother’s face as she opened the back door to let me in and took one look at me, wailing and with blood streaming down my face. Another time, back in the days before snowboarding I did enough damage to my ankle trying to ‘surf’ down a hill on a toboggan that I started the second semester of grade nine on crutches. In fact, I hurt myself when I (wisely, in retrospect) bailed off the sled as it headed at great speed directly toward a tree.

Neither one of those injuries would have been prevented by a helmet. If I’d hit that tree, a helmet might have been a good thing, mind you. I can see no harm whatsoever in suggesting kids wear helmets when tobogganing.

But to legislatively require it? That is, pardon the pun, a slippery slope. (Confession: as soon as I starting noodling this post, I knew I had to work that pun in somewhere!) Legislating something implies we have the desire, let alone the capability, to enforce it. Would there be tickets for helmetless sledders? Would helmets be required every time a child is on a sled? Sure, it makes sense on the big hills like the ones the NCC maintains at Bruce Pit and Conroy Pit (another aside – I love the Canadian-ness of city-maintained sled hills!) but what about the gentle slope in the park across the street? Would helmets be required there? Would a helmet required when I trade our wagon for a sled to negotiate snow-covered sidewalks?

And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, do you put the helmet over or under the toque?

Easy come, easy go

I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

I posted an online classified ad about looking for daycare for the boys, and one of the first people to respond seemed, on paper at least, perfect. I know, nobody is perfect, but I had a hard time finding anything to complain about with this one. She is closer than my existing daycare, wants a maximum of three kids, and when we met in person, I liked her right away. We met for coffee a week ago Friday at Starbucks, and made arrangements to get the kids together to meet each other yesterday. She e-mailed me mid-week last week to ask if she could bring contracts to sign. I was so relieved and happy to have found someone I could trust, someone I genuinely liked, and someone who was conveniently located. It was all perfect – until I opened my e-mail Sunday morning and found out she crapped out on me.

She said she had only one space left as signed two other contracts, which must have happened after we met because she told me I was the first person she talked to, and she said that going to Tristan’s school would mess up the routine of the other kids too much.

I mean, whatever. If you don’t want my boys, I really don’t want them to be with you. I was – and, quite frankly, continue to be rather pissed. Mostly, though, I’m hugely disappointed. I only realized how deeply relieved I had been to have this taken care of when it came unravelled.

I do have a few positive thoughts. Luckily, I showed an amazing amount of restraint and didn’t say anything to our current caregiver. We had told the boys that some friends were coming over to play, but nothing about changing caregivers. And it has become more clear to me than ever that I’m not entirely satisfied with the daycare situation, and that it’s worth some extra attention to rectify it. At least now I know.

I’ve had a few other responses to my ad, but none worth pursing. Not, for example, the one who told me in her contact e-mail that she’s just subscribed to the Treehouse cable TV service, so the kids will always have something to watch. Nor the one who lives 15 km from my house in the opposite direction from downtown. Nor the one who stated emphatically, with at least a dozen spelling and grammar mistakes, that she would work only specific hours with no deviation, and would not charge less than a full-time rate for Tristan, even though he is in school part-time.

Sigh.

Baby it’s cold outside

Back in the day, before we had kids, we lived in a townhouse on the edge of a fairly large urban woods. One of my favourite times to go walking through the trails with my constant companion Katie the Dog was on a sparkling cold winter day. The fresh snow made the world clean and brilliant, and the mud and bugs of spring, summer and fall were absent. I’d daydream about a day when I could bring my future children on a similar hike with melancholy optimism; at the time, we were deep in our struggle with infertility.

Finally, I can bring my boys and the endlessly patient Katie out on just such a day and enjoy a wander in the snow. We can’t go as far, or as fast, as we used to, but Katie didn’t seem to mind. I couldn’t help but laugh at her obvious joy as she leapt over drifts and ran freely down the snowy paths once again, laughing red-cheeked boys running excitedly behind her.





Friday night’s alright for memes

As seen at About Miche and Raising WEG:

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon’s Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

***

You are Spider-Man

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Spider-Man 90%

Superman 80%

Iron Man 70%

Robin 62%

Hulk 60%

The Flash 60%

Green Lantern 55%

Catwoman 50%

Supergirl 40%

Wonder Woman 40%

Batman 30%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

(Or, maybe the supervillan quiz is more your style?)

WWBD?*

So. Birthday parties. My parenting manual seems to be missing the chapter on birthday parties (I may have used them to scoop up the dog barf from the living room carpet last week) and I find myself a little unsure of the protocols.

First issue: other kids’ birthday parties. Now that Tristan is in school, he’s started to be invited to the birthday parties of kids in his class. This is fine and dandy for him, who gets to simply show up and play games and eat cake, but not so fine for his socially repressed and angst-ridden mother. First of all, he’s four (almost five) years old. I’m not so fond of the idea of simply dropping him off at some strangers’ house for a couple of hours, but I’m even less impressed at the idea of accompanying him and trying to make small talk for two hours with people I’ve never met before, people who are undoubtedly not going to be their very best selves what with a house full of junior-kindergarteners hepped up on sugar terrorizing the place.

Do I just drop him off or do I plan to accompany him? What if the party is not in a house, but at one of these Cosmic Adventures / Chuck E Cheese kind of places?

Second issue: the boys’ birthdays fall a little less than five weeks apart. Is there a precedent for joint birthday parties? Can I have the same cake at both parties, since they both say they want a “Cars” cake? (Their favourite part of a trip to the grocery store is pressing their noses up against the cake display and discussing the relative merits of each design, then following up with a free cookie.) And, horror of horrors, can I have a party for one and not for the other? (I imagine this will be the last possible year I might get away with this.)

Third issue: who do you invite to a birthday party? They’re too young to have natural sets of friends yet – when do you transition to inviting kids of your child’s choice from kids attached to parents you are friends with? Because Simon’s birthday is first (two weeks from yesterday), we’ve gotten organized enough to invite my cousin’s son, the boys’ godparents and their daughter, and my brother and sister-in-law are coming from out of town with their two kids . Perfect number of kids for a three year old, IMHO, and a great crowd because (a) the adults outnumber the kids and (b) I dearly love all of them.

My brother won’t be able to make it back for Tristan’s birthday at the beginning of March, and I worry that Tristan will notice that we had a party for Simon’s birthday but not for his. But I’m not sure I want to start manufacturing a party and inviting his classmates because I’m unfamiliar with all the protocol (see first issue above.) And I’m equally reluctant to either have a house full of sugar-crazed five year olds or fork over hundreds of dollars to let one of the party places host it for us. And if you don’t invite the whole class, how do you choose when it’s not obvious which kids your child is close to? And even if we only stick with kids at the daycare, there are too many of them and can I invite some without inviting them all? And do I have to invite the 18 month old little sister of one of his daycare buddies if I invite her big brother, one of the ones I would be comfortable inviting? And, back to question one, should I expect their parents to join us for the duration?

And all that before we even get into what kind of party to have, and what to do, and what to serve…

As you can see, I’m ill-equipped to deal with the trauma of birthday parties. Your input on any or all of the above questions (I think I’m wearing out the question mark on my keyboard) would be greatly appreciated. Don’t do it for me, do it for my poor boys, blissfully oblivious as they are to their mother’s haplessness.

*What Would Bloggers Do?