What we’re reading today:
1. Kids get potty trained at different ages, but they have to be into it.
2. A 12-year-old rescued a 12-year-old. Brave girl, well done.
3. When are you sharing your wonder and awe at your kids and when you are just bragging?
4. Because it’s always the parents’ fault, should we be blaming British parents for what’s going on in the UK?
5. More kid heroes: These boys saved their mom from her violent sex-offender husband.
Photo by BarrettB via Flickr
Cynthia Kinnunen blogs about sharing stuff from your childhood with your kids
Camping with the kids. It can be a little like ripping out your fingernails if you don’t come prepared. But if you give some thought to where you’re headed, who you’re going with and that you’ve packed most of the right things (including some extra sanity), it can actually be a lot of fun.
We took our kids camping again this past weekend. While we visit the inlaws’ cottage several times per year, we only end up camping about once each summer these days. Know why? Because we still have three kids under 9 and we’re not total gluttons for punishment.
What we’re reading today:
1. Kids love TV. Efforts to get kids to watch less TV and generally spend less time looking at screens have thus far failed.
2. New water treatment rules in Ontario. Less wading in pee, but with non-circulating water pools needing to be drained and refilled every four hours, it means more waiting around.
3. There is a ton of pain and discomfort when you’re pregnant/giving birth, but at least you didn’t have to give birth to a 16 lb. baby. OK, you moms of twins or more know what it’s like to have 16 lbs-worth of baby in your uterus, but still — wow.
4. An arty photo David Beckham snapped of his wife Victoria while she was pregnant and sunbathing has the Motherlode discussing the pregnancy photo chronicling thing.
What we’re reading today:
1. Do you worry about how your going to wean your baby and how she’ll react to it? One mom found out that her baby was ready before she was.
2. Is this 6-year-old a little too free range?
3. Your kid’s whining is the most distracting sound on the planet.
4. Be super careful watching your kids around portable pools — throughout the summer, one kid dies every five days. (Portable pools could mean above ground swimming pools, little inflatable pools, whatever.)
5. American president Barack Obama shows his wife how to calm a fussy baby:
Photo by xoclate via Flickr
Our Beachy, Summery Bunchbrary
Welcome to summer! It’s June 21st and all we can think about is, “How fast can we get to the beach?” Days are long and it’s a perfect time to be out swimming, grilling hamburgers and riding our bikes to the ice cream parlour. Here are five movies that deal with all that is awesome (and a couple things that are scary) about summer.
1. Gidget (1959)
Frances isn’t into the idea of just sunbathing in a bikini in hopes of attracting some surfer dudes. After an incident with some kelp, she becomes interested in surfing and is given the name Gidget since the surfer dudes consider her a girl midget. Yes, it deals with some mature themes towards the end, when Moondoggie thinks that Big Kahuna is into Gidget, but mainly it’s about surfing and Gidget having the best summer ever.
What we’re reading today:
1.How do babies learn language? Researchers have found that babies have a eureka moment where a word and its meaning just clicks, rather than building up that association over time.
2.Speaking of language, how did we come to call a child born out of wedlock a love child?
3.Prozac’s active ingredient has been found in the Great Lakes and it’s killing E. coli. So, is this making swimming in the Lake Erie safer, or is this stuff also killing non-harmful things and we’re just further messing up this eco-system? We’d love to find out as Great Lake Swimming is awesome. (As are Great Lake Swimmers)
4. A Geek Mom on the importance of storytime. Or is that just the importance of Curious George?
5. And not like you need us to tell you this, but tell your daughter she’s pretty. Some girls don’t grow up feeling it.
