Who out there found themselves short on the time and/or funds to take a proper family vacation yet this year? *raises hand*

So when the folks at Coleman asked me if I wanted to try out some of their camping gear to have a “staycation” in our backyard, I jumped at it. I mean, kids are pretty much happy anywhere as long as it involves a bit of adventure, right?

Sure, it helps that we live on a river so the back half of the yard feels like a campsite, anyway (ignoring the giant trampoline looming 30 feet away in the neighbor’s yard), so we pitched the tent, blew up the air mattress, loaded fresh batteries into the lantern, and set up camp. It was my kind of camp, too, the kind within a 20 second walk to indoor plumbing. We got a roaring fire going, had a platter of hot dogs, buns, graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows at the ready, along with a cooler full of pop, water, and quite possibly, some beer. Let the staycation begin!

The first staycation activity involved watching my husband try to cook a hot dog over the fire, and realizing that metal shish kabob skewers aren’t the best choice for the task as wouldn’t you know it, they conduct heat! “Mom, why is Dad swearing and running back into the house?” Fortunately on his way back out he brought a Swiss army knife, and we went old school whittling down some sticks that were in the yard.

After gorging ourselves on hot dogs and gooey s’more-y goodness, we piled into the tent where my oldest son may have broken the record for the most tedious, non-scary ghost story in history (I love you son, but here’s a hint: your ghost story should involve something like, say, ghosts) — the bright side is that it made us all sleepy (that and possibly the aforementioned beer), and we settled in to go nighty night amongst nature. And you know what? Nature is freaking loud! So while I didn’t get the best night sleep, when the boys woke us up at the butt-crack of dawn and declared our little overnight the “most awesomest,” it made it all worth it.

In fact, it even inspired us to make plans for an even grander adventure next month — camping at a state park a whole 90 minutes away!

So what’s your idea of a perfect staycation? Leave your comment below by Wednesday, September 22, and we’ll pick one at random — that person will receive a little help from Coleman for you to take your adventure to the forest preserve, beach or even just your own backyard like we did. We’ll send the lucky commenter a 50 quart wheeled Xtreme® 5 Party Stacker™ cooler and two 2 gallon Party Stacker™ jugs, courtesy of Coleman! Be sure to leave a valid email address when you comment, as that’s the only way we’ll have to reach you if you win.

The post The art of the ‘staycation’ (plus a giveaway!) appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

One way of doing this is by doing little things to make each child feel special. With my own children, giving them a daily allowance to spend on tchotchkes always made them proud. Other ways are bringing the comforts of home with you -– a child’s favorite toy, pillow or family picture to put next to his bed. Little things like letting them pick out the activities and restaurants will give them added confidence in their strange surroundings.

It’s also important not to force kids to do activities that would cause further anxiety. While vacation can be the perfect opportunity for trying out new adventures, a child might also have some homesickness and fears may escalate.

Also, just because you’re on a “family vacation” doesn’t mean you have to spend every waking moment together. As all kids are different, your children each likely have different interests (especially if they are different genders or farther apart in age). So don’t be afraid to split up once in a while and let your kids pick different activities to do if that’s what they want — besides helping eliminate complaints, some one-on-one time with mom or dad in a strange land will probably be appreciated, too.

Read more about traveling with kids from our Family Vacations Tipster.

This post sponsored by Toyota

The post Making each sibling feel special on vacation appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

The studies they cite show that toddlers who are given clues to find hidden objects via TV are less successful at finding the objects than the children who are given the clues in person. They summarize by saying:

“So while toddlers can understand what’s going on on TV, they don’t think about what they see on TV the same way older kids and adults do. They don’t connect it back to the real things they encounter in their world, so they can’t learn from TV. Whatever it is your toddler gets from watching TV, these researchers say, it’s not learning.”

I see this phenomenon in my kids clearly. They can both watch an episode of Play with me Sesame and have very different experiences. When my 5 year-old daughter watches the program, she gets up, sings along, dances, and responds to the character’s questions. When my nearly two-year-old son watched the same program alone the other day, he sat mesmerized by the 20-minute program – the lights, the colors, the sounds, but he clearly didn’t appreciate the humor and didn’t understand when to sing and dance with the monstery muppets. When the two of them watch together, I used to think that my son mimicked the program, but now I’m realizing that he was modeling his response after his sister.

So, why do we park our toddler’s in front of the boob tube if it’s not really enhancing their cognitive development? Why are products like Baby Einstein still a staple in nearly every baby shower across the country? Well, while I don’t expect my toddler’s brain to get bigger with Elmo’s help, he is entertained and out of my hair for about 20 minutes while I can change my clothes and start dinner.

After all, it’s not as if I’m telling him to play with my steak knives, right?

The post This is your brain. This is your brain on Elmo. appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

In this universe, I’m just your average, garden-variety ineffective parent whose favourite method for calming down involves a large glass of shiraz and an even larger block of chocolate, and whose body would simply snap in half if made to do the downward dog.

When my mother was a stay-at-home-mother of four she went to yoga classes once a week – we used to say she was going to Yoghurt Classes – and she once told me that yoga saved her sanity in those days. So one day I went to a yoga class for new mothers and stretched for about 50 minutes before being told to lie down and listen to the lovely music and breathe deeply and just as I felt the tension melt away and the thoughts leave my troubled mind and just as I reached that state of blissful contentment… I fell asleep. I might have snored. Well, at least I didn’t neigh.

I really love the idea of meditation, but although I have tried I just can’t do it without the snoring. So, like all good mothers, I am living the life of a calm and contented human being vicariously through my children. My kids are learning to meditate. In our house, every day ends with reading from a book called The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children by Marneta Viegas. There’s a good reason why this is a good thing.

Both my girls have Anger Management Issues and I’m entirely responsible. I would like to be able to tell you that I am a slightly smug and contented person with nary a cranky bone in my body but that would be lying. I do have a cranky bone in my body, and I suspect it might be one of the big ones. Like the femur. Or pelvis. I have a cranky pelvis on account of all the kids I’ve birthed. They were both posterior, so it makes sense really. My pelvis has a lot to be cranky about. Anyway my point is that every now and then I get a bit cranky and I wish I could clear my mind of all my negative, cranky thoughts and just calm the heck down (without falling asleep) and I also wish that I hadn’t passed on my cranky pelvis gene to my kids. I have a tendency to fly off the handle a little and maybe raise my voice from time to time and yes, I’ve been known to slam the odd door in frustration. And sometimes they slam the door too. They inherited their father’s nice straight nose, they got my Issues. Whenever Ella yells at Madeleine I cringe a little because I know that she learned that behaviour from me. And when Madeleine yells back at her I know she got that from me too. It’s cute, really, how alike we all are.

I am a firm believer in meditation and all that positive-visualisation stuff. I’m not a religious person so I don’t pray. I suspect that a lot of people who do pray to a God or some other Higher Being get some of the same benefits of people who meditate regularly. It’s doing something good for your soul, isn’t it? I believe that spending some time each day just clearing your mind of negativity and instead filling your heart with peace is good for you, good for your relationships and good for the earth. The thing I’ve always said I want for my kids, more than anything else, is for them to be happy. I can give them love and stuff and food and pony rides and all of these things will make them happy but true happiness must come from within and…

… and I’m starting to sound a little preachy. Sorry ‘bout that.

The bottom line is that I feel more than a little bit responsible for making them short-tempered cranky-pants and so it’s my responsibility to help them find some peace. This is why I got the Meditations for Kids book. At bedtime, after we’ve tucked them in, I read one of the meditations and they go off to sleep all calm and at peace, dreaming about rainbows and fairies and clouds. And my last contact with them at the end of the day is positive and happy, which is lovely for all of us. I hope that they will both grow up to be the sort of people who don’t throw tantrums and slam doors like their mother did. And I hope they don’t have odd-shaped pelvises and babies that want to come out the wrong way up.

Oh, and I hope that when they find their inner peace, they don’t disturb everyone else with their snoring and neighing.

The post The search for inner peace. And quiet. appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

With that said, I spent the entire morning helping my expecting sister fulfill her baby registry at my local Babies R Us — and I was left in a panic! While my sister’s traditional tastes were more than met with the store’s inventory, my desire for streamlined mod prods was left unanswered.

I was most disturbed by the “bouncies” or baby loungers. They are necessary, I know that. I do not diminish their need or usefulness — but they were not good! These little baby pods lay front and center in one’s living room (typically), and I would think they could be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. For expecting parents craving modern and contemporary design, Babies R Us just fell short.

So, after hours of pastel pink and blue, I came home to my trusty computer. I began searching and found, of all things, the bouncer that Halle Berry has provided for her little one. Now, I don’t believe in jumping on the celebrity bandwagon, but this it good:

The Bloom Coco Lounger Plexistyle – available at Nomi for $350. Nomi is definitely worth checking out if you like more modern designs – and have a more liberal budget!

This posted originally appeared on Behind the Curtains.

The post When Babies R Us just won’t cut it appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

I know I run the risk of being accused of puffery, given that one of the proprietors of Cool Mom Picks also likes to write about blow jobs for this site, but I don’t give a shit. For the “gifting challenged” like myself, their Mother’s Day gift guide is an invaluable resource. Every year I stress about finding a good gift, only to end up with either flowers or the ultra-lame “take the kids off her hands for the day” non-gift. The thing I like most about their guide is it’s not some list dreamed up by a marketing department, full of things they think mom’s want, but rather the gift recommendations are hand-selected by Kristen and Liz and are items they wouldn’t mind unwrapping on Mother’s Day morning themselves.

Dads, don’t be an asshat and once again try to pass off breakfast in bed as a legitimate gift — go check out the guide, pick something handmade and personalized, and be a hero.

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I asked, “Went in where?”

“Into Mom’s Laundry!”

I like that. I like that very much.

This is common knowledge for us old timers, but here’s a tip to you newlywed men out there: if you want to someday be able to retire from doing laundry, simply feign incompetence. But this is not as easy as it sounds. If you are of reasonable intelligence you can’t go the bumbling idiot route or she’ll never buy it — for instance, a red sock in the load of whites is way too obvious. No, you have to be more subtle. Use a bit too much or too little laundry soap, use the wrong water level or temperature, forget the dryer sheets, and my absolute favorite, consistently fold items in a neat but completely wrong way. It will be a needling irritation that builds and builds until your wife banishes you from laundry duty forever.

You’re welcome.

The post It’s all yours appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Available for purchase and personalization at www.mypacifier.com. Prices start at 3 pacifiers with customized names for $15 — not bad!

Fremont, CA (PRWEB) August 27, 2006 -– Less than a year after coming to America, mommy-invented MyPacifier™ Personalized Pacifiers have gone to top A-list TV actors in celebration of this year’s TV award season as part of the Madison & Mulholland Ultimate TV Nominee Gift Bags.

Madison & Mulholland, the premier VIP gift bag and product placement company based in New York City, prepared Ultimate TV Nominee Gift Bags which are being gifted to top A-list actors including those from ’24’; ‘Desperate Housewives’; ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ ‘Lost’ and others. The selection of MyPacifier™ for the gift bags shows that it’s not just expensive items that Madison & Mulholland looks for, they also search for the latest unique products that will bring about “oohs and ahhs” from the receiving nominees. MyPacifier™ was fortunate to be selected by Madison & Mulholland as one of the creative new products to be included in their Ultimate TV Nominee Bags. MyPacifier™ Personalized Pacifiers are certainly one of the more affordable items to be included in the gift bags, coming in at a price of only $15 per set of three.

The MyPacifier™ story started when a young mother in Denmark experienced the pacifier swap problem. Pia Callesen, the creator of MyPacifier™, says “When I went to day care to pick up my son Frederik, more often than not I found that his pacifier had disappeared and Frederik had another child’s pacifier in his mouth. I began searching for a pacifier product with a name on it, but I got the same answer in all the shops, ‘buy a permanent marker pen and write his name on the pacifier.’ I thought it should be possible for all parents to buy a quality pacifier with their child’s name engraved on it. Apart from looking good, it could then also survive repeated sterilization.”

The post I think this just may be the best baby gift ever appeared first on Imperfect Parent.

Click here to see the far-out highchair

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Check it out at Secret Agent Josephine. Trust me all you “makers of things”, you will be creamin’ in your pants over this one.

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