Bored On A Weekend? Try This

I have a whole new appreciation for the Louvre, thanks to the 12 year old. Turns out it doesn’t just have the artistic masterpiece thing going for it. It’s also filled with funny photo opps.

Who knew?

That’s one of the secret perks kids offer: a whole new perspective that makes stuff better.

Our Louvre visit was the best museum trip I’ve ever had. Because – for once – I listened to the experts who say if you want your kids to like museums you have to visit them a whole different way. One that's opposite every instinct in your museum-loving brain.

 We didn’t try to see everything. We saw 12 things.

We didn’t spend the day. We spent 2 hours.

We didn’t rent those annoying audio guides. We rented Jacque, the cutest Frenchman who took us on a personalized kid scavenger hunt.

We didn’t actually rent Jacques. That sound seedy and kinda illegal. We hired him through his company – Tour Musee – which offers museum tours people actually enjoy.

The tour was perfect for kiddo attention spans. And mine too! As we scavenger hunted, Jacques gave us the Reader’s Digest version of the museum’s biggies and why they’re important.

Like the Mona Lisa. She’s famous because she looks so real, like a living lady on the canvas, following you with her eyes. So she’s basically a hologram. From the 16^th century. That's a BFD. Now I get all the fuss.

Don’t rule out museums for a good outing. Even if you’ve been burned by them before. It’s not just the Louvre that’s catching on to the fun-museum trend. Most art museums now offer interactive ways to engage kid visitors. The bonus is it’s really fun for adults too.

The Denver Art Museum lets you check out backpacks filled with games and small art projects. These projects correspond with the paintings on display to make them more meaningful and fun.

When the soaring summer temperatures get you down, head to your local art museum. For more than just the air conditioning!   

Happy summer, guru girls & guys!

4 Steps To Building Resilience

This is me, in a rare show of cooking resilience. This was the 6 layer rainbow cake, which took 6 hours to complete.

So China is constructing – from scratch – a bunch of islands in the South China Sea.

Huh.

I can’t find the motivation to construct – from scratch – the chopped salad from Maggiano’s. And it’s not from lack of desire. I love that salad. But only enough to google the recipe, see the 36 required ingredients and give up.

If I’d been born in China, the government would have deported me immediately for lack of work ethic. All the parenting books say it: resilience is what we’re supposed to teach our children.

This is because kiddos will have some life goals that won’t be easily achieved. They will try and they will fail. When this happens, they should not take their recipe book and go home.  

They should try and try again. Just like those Chinese island builders who are facing down rough seas and mad neighbors (the Philippines and Vietnam aren’t so psyched about the new island thing).

Here’s how you build resilience in your kids (according to the parenting books, not guru girl, who clearly has some learning to do on this subject).

 When your kiddos encounter a problem:

1.      Do not leap in to rescue them. Instead say, “How are you going to handle it?”

This is possibly the hardest question in the human language for parents like me to utter. But it is important. The problem is your kid’s. Not yours.

2.    Help brainstorm. When your kid says she can’t possibly think up any ideas to tackle the problem, respond,”Do you want to hear what some other kids have tried?”

Then succinctly offer some ideas. Finish up with the key phrase,”What do you think?”

3.    Listen & Encourage. Listen to what your kiddo says. Give her parting words of encouragement. Something like, “You got this.”

4.    Do this even if you think her plan is questionable. The point is she’s come up with a plan. On her own. One that she’s going to try! This is cause for celebration! 

 (Of course if her plan is truly terrible or dangerous, you want to gently guide towards other solutions.)

5.     After the plan has been instituted: Hug. Either the plan worked or it was an epic fail. Either way, give your kid a hug. Of congratulations or solace.

In the latter scenario, go back to Step 2 and come up with a new plan. It helps to also share your own epic fails at this point.

Frighteningly, we are the role models for our kids. They need to know we’ve messed up and yet bounced back to be the stunningly well- adjusted adults they admire.

Warning: once you tell your kid your own stories of defeat they will repeat them. A lot. It will be embarrassing.

It’s worth it if we can grow a generation of little people into the kind of big people who have a resilient, can-do attitude. The kind that build islands out of oceans.*

* Only, unlike China, let’s not use ours for military purposes. Maybe our new islands could host puppies and kittens instead.

Fish & Other Fall Festival Mishaps

I have made it through not one but two Fall Festivals at school. Both went surprisingly well, despite some unexpected setbacks.

The middle school festival was a runaway success. Remember, my cupcakes were among the featured dessert items there. But despite my careful planning of a cupcake theme, they didn’t turn out quite as I envisioned.

They were supposed to look like goldfish in a bowl.

The result? Not so much.

So then I worried no one would buy them. It turns out I overestimated my creative cupcake abilities, but I underestimated the sales skills of the 11 year old. She talked those cupcakes up to her friends, who then bought them up and ate them up. Hurray! Total win!

The fall festival at the elementary school was no less fraught. I signed up to volunteer for “concessions”. In my mind concessions meant I’d stand behind a snack table, sell potato chips and chat with other moms.

There is a dark side to concessions no one talks about. And that dark side is this: when hot dogs are being offered, someone has to make the hot dogs. And pop them in buns and wrap them in foil and slog them to the sales table. Guess who that someone was last weekend?

On the bright side I now know how to operate a large, hot dog steam unit (you can make 60 at a time!), and at least I didn’t have to wear a hair net.

But while I was busy with Operation Hot Dog, my fella was busy breaking one of our most important house rules: Fish are not allowed as pets.

Guru Guy let the 8 year old play a game where winners were rewarded with a goldfish. A live, swim-in-a-bowl goldfish.

Guess who won the game?

Guess what house now has a goldfish?

Fish are not allowed at our house because all of us hate cleaning the fish bowl, and it gets really disgusting. We know this because we had a beta fish who lived at least 5 years.

I danced a jig when he finally died and the house rule – No Fish! – was born.

But now we have a fish and a special fish tank on order. My Fun Fish Tank is supposed to be self-cleaning. My fella read all the customer reviews and they agree it actually works.

The tank had better work, harder than guru girl at the hot dog table, or else that guppy’s gonna get grossed out by his living conditions.(Click this link to learn more about My Fun Fish Tank, available for $14.99 online or from Target.)

In all seriousness, fall festivals remain one of my favorite fall things. Even when they involve goldfish.

Many thanks to the volunteers who make them happen, especially the volunteers who, unlike guru girl, have a good attitude and basic competence ;)

How The Yellowstone Trip Really Went

How The Yellowstone Park Vacation Really Went

It is a Federal offense to open someone else's mail. But it is not a Federal offense to read a certain someone's letter before it is mailed. If that certain someone is your 8 year old who has entrusted you to fill out the envelope and pilfer the junk drawer for a stamp. 

This is part of the letter the 8 year old wrote to her favorite pen pal: her 2nd grade teacher. 

The letter is pictured above but a bit tricky to read. 

My favorite part is the following: "Yeah, during our vacation we drove to Yellowstone and I got car sick and threw up. Any-hoo! And on the way back to Denver I got a new movie and I watched it 12 times because I couldn't watch these movies: Frozen, Despicable Me 2, Croods, Soul Surfer and Little Mermaid. And we almost ran over a buffalo! Please right back." 

The letter closes with a particularly vivid drawing of us in the car, almost hitting the buffalo. I am pictured above the caption "freaking out", my fella is pictured above the caption "doesn't care". 

That about sums up how the trip went and why I am still recovering. Better leads on home organizing/shopping/clothing next week, I promise! 

July 4th Favorite Things

It's 4th of July and you know what that means... The baking of my annual 4th of July cake from (of course) a Pillsbury mix!

The Guru Crew dancing in the parade.

Dressing up in patriotic head gear.

Except this year none of these things are happening.

Because we are, officially, out of gas. 

We just got back from Yellowstone Park, which is a whole lotta park that requires a whole lotta driving. 

Today I am all about the shortcut. Because for the past week there have been no shortcuts. In Yellowstone Park you have to stay on the trail or risk a scary encounter with things grizzly or geothermal.

Thus, today's shortcut blog entry... My favorite 4th of July things... 

See above.

Happy 4th of July, everyone! May you celebrate your favorite things today too!

1 Great Family Game For Summer Trips

This is me, on vacation, torturing the 8 year old who has a 

banana phobia. If I'd only known a fun & easy family game to play instead...

Sometimes parenting advice makes me cranky.

Like the recent newspaper piece that said it’s easy to fight childhood obesity: just exercise with your kid 2 hours a day.

What exactly is easy about that?!

Who has an extra 2 hours a day?! Parents or kids?

If we tried to meet this quota, my crew would have to give up home cooked meals in favor of the fastest of fast food – a switch that would actually promote obesity.

No, that “exercise 2 hours a day” is advice that is bad. But here is some that is good. It’s an easy, fun, free, family game! Perfect for road trips, airports and long restaurant waits.

The game is called “I’m Thinking Of A Time When…”

You pick a memorable event from your family’s past and your crew asks “yes” or “no” questions to figure out the event. It looks like this:

Guru Girl: I’m thinking of a time when…

11 year old: Did it happen in Colorado?

GG: No.

8 year old: Did it happen in Costa Rica?

GG: Yes!

Guru Guy: Was it on the beach?

GG: No.

11 year old: Was it at a restaurant?

GG: Yes!

8 year old: Was it when Daddy did the crazy dance to the bananas song?

GG: Yes!

Each round takes surprisingly little time to solve, and kids LOVE it!

You celebrate family highlights and low lights and everything in between.

It reinforces the idea we’re in this together, for better, for worse, crazy banana song dances (and photos) included.

Here’s to making some embarrassing vacation memories, guru girls & guys! 

3 Gotta Get Baby Gifts

I have nothing against diaper cakes, the baby shower standby. But, as you know, I have a thing about spending money on necessities. I believe if an item isn’t fun to buy, it should be free. And diapers definitely fall into this category.

This irrational belief system of mine makes household budget discussions excruciating for my fella, but it also means if you’re a mama-to-be you’re never going to receive something as utilitarian as a diaper cake from me.

I will, however, spend exorbitant amounts on cutesy items. Like wine charms and pig-shaped corn-on-the-cob holders. Is it a spendy item that I’ll use once and then lose forever in the junk drawer? I’m in.

It’s a problem.

But awareness of a problem is the first step to conquering it. So I now confine myself to purchasing cute-but-unnecessary items as gifts for friends.

It fulfills my weird, shopping impulse and kickstarts good times at the party.

So I was very excited when I opened the catalog to Papersource, my favorite knick-knack store. It had not 1 but 3 absolutely adorable, absolutely unnecessary items for a baby. The following, as pictured above:

 -- Baby Glasses for $14.95.

-- Baby Bandana Bib for $22.95

-- Stachifier mustache pacifier for $9.95

Click this link to check them out. (This takes you to paper-source.com where you can read more about these items.)

Get all 3 and your friend will have one tricked out, hipster baby. And that’s really what she’s going to need. And also maybe a newborn who readily sleeps and breastfeeds and is easily entertained by stuff like ceiling fans.

Since she’s probably not going to get a baby who does all that stuff (like the Yeti, they don’t exist), the least you could do is get the hipster stuff. This way motherhood will fulfill some of her fantasies. The cute accessories ones.

Clearly, I’m joking when I say that because motherhood is a pretty rocking gig, even when it doesn’t feature life necessities like sleep.

It does feature a little person you can dress up any way you like. Even in mink coats in June. 

                                        Me, many moons ago, at my own baby shower where I received many favored, dress up items.

Even when that little person becomes a big person, who is heading off to middle school in August. A fact that puts a big, old lump in your throat and your heart. Which your little person knows. 

Which is why she still lets you dress her up in mink coats in June. They just don't fit quite as well anymore.  

The Modern Love Note In 2 Easy Steps

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who has the most embarrassing mother of all? Am sure this is not what the 11 year old is asking herself in this pic. 

The Kissing Fairy is retiring soon.

Because she has officially gone from making the Dynamic Duo feel loved to making them feel embarrassed.

So the Kissing Fairy is hanging up her wings, which means no longer shall she exclaim,” Does anyone hear that?” before erupting in kissy noises and swooping down on the Dynamic Duo.

But the girls still need to know they’re loved. What is a Kissing Fairy to do? 

Adopt the mirror love bomb, of course!

Instead of mortifying your offspring with public displays of affection, be passive aggressive about it! Scrawl your sweet nothings on a mirror with a dry erase marker. *Bonus!* The writing disappears from the mirror with a quick swipe of Kleenex – unlike lipstick writing, which is too messy and Fatal Attraction-y to qualify for this kind of wholesome exercise in love.

Mirror love bomb that special someone today!

Double Your Money With Smart Piggy Bank*

Double Your Money With Smart Piggy Bank*

*if guru girl is your mom

(don't you hate the fine print?)

The Dynamic Duo are always looking for ways to make some bank. Turns out all they have to do is lose a tooth or two.

“Parents” magazine just reported the tooth fairy is pretty generous these days. $3.70-per-lost-tooth generous. On average.

No wonder the Dynamic Duo have so much cash squirreled away in their crayon banks!

Teaching kids money management is a tricky thing. It’s something many of us put off because it’s complicated, and we don’t want to do it wrong.

Do you give kids an allowance?

Do you tie the allowance to chores?

Do your kids get free reign in how they spend the allowance?

(Here’s what that question really means: if the 10 year old wants to take $40 she’s saved up and blow it on a bunch of plastic jewelry from Claire’s, do you let her?)

If you opt for an allowance, do you remember to get cash and give it to your kids every week? Or do you forget for awhile and let those little extortionists demand vast sums when the topic comes up?

And lastly, when your kiddo sees something at the store that she wants to buy does she actually have the allowance money with her? Or do you buy it for her and then forget to have her reimburse you when you get home?

Allowance management systems are complicated! But we all want our kids to be responsible about money, right?

In order to be responsible with money, experts say, kids have to have experience handling it. That means my fella and I have to suck it up and do some work on the allowance front.

Luckily, there’s an app for that. Not really an app, but a website. “Smart Piggy Bank” is a website that allows the parent to act as banker. You don’t give the site any financial information. You just set up an account for your kiddo by typing in a name. It can even be a fake name. Like Justin Bieber who recently changed his Twitter handle to Bizzle.

Then you set the amount you want deposited in the account each week and set the interest rate you’ll pay your kiddo for her savings. No real money is actually in the account. It’s just a tracking mechanism.  

Your kid can jump on the computer and pull up her account to check for funds, just like you do with your real bank account. She can record withdrawals and other outside deposits (like birthday gifts from grandparents) too.

Because it’s online it’s easily accessible at, say, Target when the 8 year old wants to buy more silly socks. I’m envisioning pulling out my phone and my kiddo pulling up her account to deduct the sock money right then and there.

The Dynamic Duo are a lot more thoughtful about their purchases when it’s their money so I’m thinking the extra time in the Target aisle will be worth it.

I’m opting for this account versus an online one at our real bank because it lets me set the interest rate for savings.

I’m going to set an astronomically high interest rate.

Because it kills me when the 10 year old spends $40 on plastic jewelry. And I think she’ll be motivated to save more of her money if she calculates that she’ll double the amount by year’s end. (Unless, of course, my idea backfires and the 10 year old then buys $80 of plastic jewelry.)

We’re going to give Smart Piggy Bank a try. (Click this link to go to smartpiggybank.com)It can’t be worse than our last allowance management system, which consisted of plastic baggies filled with money, which I carried around for each kid in my purse.

That system gave the kids no lessons in savings but gave their mother both a back ache and broken purse strap from the weight of all those damn quarters!

At least Smart Piggy Bank will save my posture and the guesswork of “Did I give the allowance last week?”

Happy banking, guru girls & guys!

Generosity Challenge: Unexpected Results

                                       Mystery gifters, in action.

The 8 year old gave her money to a boy at school.

He is actually more than a boy. He is her crush, and the money is more than just money. It is the 8 year old’s portion of the Generosity Challenge.

Which I thought I explained she was to give away anonymously, in a surprising way, to strangers. Not to the boy she’s crushing on, whom she walked up to and threw the money at.

Huh.

Like so many things in parenthood, the Generosity Challenge is something I envisioned one way, which went down in a completely different way. (Crying it out and the first day of kindergarten are other parenting events that spring to mind.) 

I think it’s the universe teaching me yet another lesson in control. Specifically: I have none and should just quit trying. Life is not a Hollywood movie that needs to be directed by me. It plays out just fine on its own.  

Because, despite all my pontificating, the 8 year old grasped the real point of the Generosity Challenge: it’s about giving. It doesn’t matter who you’re giving to – stranger or friend. It’s about looking at how you can make someone else’s day better instead of just worrying about your own.

Here’s another unexpected benefit of the Generosity Challenge. It pays dividends beyond the initial $10. Because you’re happy when you’re actually giving the money away. (Or in the 8 year old’s case, throwing it at cute boys.)

You’re happy when you’re brainstorming surprising ways to give it away. The guru crew had our best dinner conversation ever while we spitballed ideas.

And then you’re happy because you become hyper aware of all the generous acts going on around you. Yesterday, at a traffic light, a lady’s car got stuck in snow on a hill. Her wheels just kept spinning. The guy in the lane next to her got out of his car and pushed this lady’s car up the hill. Her car wasn’t even in his way.

That’s generosity. Just like the 10 year old hiding money in jackets left at her school’s “lost and found” is generous. And my fella hiding money under cereal boxes at the grocery store is generous. (He hid the money low so hopefully kid shoppers will be the recipients.)

And me? I wrapped my money in yellow paper that looks like a parking ticket and tucked it under the windshields of several cars parked at meters. I love the idea of someone being bummed out they got a parking ticket and instead finding some coffee money and a note that says “Enjoy”.

You gotta try the Generosity Challenge. By yourself or with your family. It’ll bond you up, make you feel better about the world we live in and – bonus! – you don’t have to set foot in a yoga studio for any of these healthy benefits.

With my new, technical expertise, I’ve enabled the “anonymous comments” button on the blog so you should be able to easily post in the comments section. Tell us how the Generosity Challenge went for you. Where’d you spend the Benjamins? How’d it make you feel?

Go get happy, guru girls & guys!  

10 Easy Ways To Be Happier

There are few things in life that make me as visibly happy as the 8 year old is in this picture.

When do we lose that ability to be completely engulfed in the sheer fun of living? The thought made me a little sad. Then I read a magazine article that says you can buy happiness.

"Hot dog! Sign me up!" I thought and flipped quickly to the article… which then went on to detail a research study. Hate when they do that. Reading research studies is such a slog!

But it turns out this particular study had some good findings about happiness and gifts, two things I very much enjoy. So I kept at it. The researchers found that in every country, except one, folks became pretty darn happy when they gave someone a present. Happier when they gave the present than when they got the present.

Generosity makes us happy. (Unless you live in that one pesky country.) Which we do not.

The take away? Being generous is good. Good for other people and even better for you. Got it.

But sometimes it’s hard to be generous. We’re time pressed and money pressed and creatively challenged. The article had an answer for this too. It said to do an experiment, yourself or with your family.

Give $10 away. You decide how. One lady got 10 one dollar bills and hid them in different library books. Another bought the meal for the person behind her at the drive through.

I can’t wait to try this idea out with the guru crew. What a great, visible way to spread the love. You’ll brighten someone’s day and – bonus! – get to enjoy the feel good vibes yourself.

Gift away, guru girls & guys! Will let you know the results of our family experiment once it’s underway.

5 Things A New Mom Needs More Than A Push Present

We got ourselves a baby craze going on in Hollywood. Celebs all over are preggers. Drew Barrymore. Olivia Wilde. Kerry Washington.

Naturally, this makes me think of baby bling. Others call it a “push present”, but I find this term offensive. Because it conjures up images of the grittiest part of labor. Yuck.

I much prefer the phrase “baby bling”. Better term but the concept remains superfluous. When you are a new mom you do not need something new and sparkly on your arm, you already have that. It’s called a baby.

Instead, here are 5 things New Mom really, really needs (to be purchased by her baby daddy or particularly awesome family and friends).

1.      Meal delivery service – There are lots out there. Freshology will deliver healthy, pre-made dinners. Or if this is too spendy, go to a make-your-own-meal place like Supper Solutions and whip up a ton of meals that you can deliver to New Mom’s freezer yourself.

2.    Month of massages – Who cares about the muscles being worked? New Mom will sleep through the massages because no one will be crying in the room next door. Unless there’s particularly tough shiatsu going on over there.

3.    House cleaning for a season – The first 4 months with an infant are about one thing only: keeping that baby happy.

You really shouldn’t try to do anything else or you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. But houses get really gross really fast and New Mom will be home more than ever. Get her a cleaning crew and she will cry, thank you and cry again.

4.    A standing babysitting date – This is a time you guarantee you will be there every week to watch the baby for 2 hours. This allows new mom to count on you and actually schedule appointments. You don’t know the gift you are giving New Mom when you do this. The biggest surprise a baby brings is the complete and utter change of your life focus.

Suddenly your schedule isn’t about you. It’s about the wee one. This gift allows New Mom to have the focus on herself for 2 hours a week. This is awesome.

5.     Gift certificate for a manicure – Because when New Mom’s under eye circles make her look like a Goth, her hair is greasy and her girls feel like they’re on fire from breastfeeding, she will look at her glossy, manicured nails and see that not all of her glam self has been lost.

That manicure is more than a $15 and 20 minute investment. It is a symbol of the future. A future when every bit of New Mom will be as polished as her manicure. It is a sign of hope in a time of spit up and explosive diapers.

Babies are terrific. So are the dads and family and friends who pitch in for the important stuff. Celebs may have glam squads for the red carpet, but it’s those of us who have glam squads for life that are truly lucky!