Childhood obesity is a huge epidemic in America, but it doesn’t have to be. Parents need to take charge of their children’s health and teach them healthy habits. Here are some tasty tidbits:

There are the equivalent of 15 packs of sugar in one soda.

Washington State University did a study: they gave children one can of cola or a candy bar - all that sugar decreased their immune function for 6 hours,

The average American child eats 5 lbs. of sugar per WEEK. That’s the same as an entire standard sized bag of granulated sugar.

Kids should be eating greater than 5 fruits and vegetables per day, and french fries don’t count. An average serving is the size of a child’s palm.

Feed your kids breakfast daily - while you’re at it, feed yourself too.

Avoid restrictive behavior - treats are okay every once in awhile.

Good nutrition prevents 70% of diseases.

TV Time - the AAP recommends no tv under the age of 2. For over age 2, they recommend less than 2 hrs of screen time per day (tv, computer, etc.).

Don’t keep a tv in the room your child sleeps in.

Studies haven’t shown higher IQs from watching Baby Einstein.

Give your kids at least 60 minutes of activity per day - it doesn’t have to be all at once.

Most importantly - the parent must be the role model. Kids will do what you do, not what you say.

So I had all those munchkins at my house last weekend and I changed a lot of dirty diapers. I wasn’t counting or anything, but I’m sure I set a personal record. I think the experience actually scarred my psyche a little bit because I keep having these moments in which I smell poo. It’s happened to me while in several different parts of the house. I’ll walk around and sniff, sniff, sniff, trying to find the source of it but with no luck. I’m pretty sure my olfactory receptors are damaged. Hopefully not permanently.

And while we’re on the subject, I have to confess that I uttered the s-h-i-t word in front of my niece on Saturday, but it was only because I dropped some s-h-i-t on the couch while I was changing her diaper. Sorry, Kari. I don’t think she heard me, but if you hear her say that word, you know where she got it from.

I’ve had this post saved on my computer for awhile now and today is as good a day as any to finally post it. It’s a guest post from my 15-month old son, Luke. I’m starting him on blogging early, though I think Daddy would rather we spend more time working on his fast ball. Here’s what he had to say (hopefully it doesn’t stir up too much controversy):

My sister is catering a wedding this weekend (an outdoor wedding, and it’s been raining ALL DAY, doesn’t that suck.) and I offered to watch her two kids. My niece is 2 1/2 and my nephew is 6 months old. My son is 15 months old. I have all three with me and I let Mike go to the football game today.

Yes, I am certifiably nuts.

But you know what? It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I’ve had them since last night and I’m not dead yet! I’ve actually been having a blast spending this amount of quality time with my niece and nephew. Charly is always adorable, and she knows it. She has figured out that she can ask for what she wants. The thing I admire about her though is that even though she keeps getting shot down (no, you cannot have marshmallows for breakfast) she is not afraid to keep asking. That is the kind of thing that will lead you to success in life.

And then there’s Aydan, the babe. Since Luke is all walking and driving now I had started to miss that cuddly baby stage. Aydan is extremely cuddly. So far I have only known Fussy Aydan, so I am enjoying this time of getting acquainted with Charming Aydan. A charmer he is, folks. He erases all the memory of his fussy time with one look into your eyes and a quick flash of that bright smile. He looks just like his daddy and is proving to have his personality as well. It is so great getting to know him better.

I’ve been wondering this whole time how you mothers with multiple children ever get time to blog, but I’ve discovered the answer: NAP TIME. How I managed to get them all napping at the same time I’ll never know, but it’s wonderful. Simply wonderful.

And now it’s over. I hear voices. Not sure who the voices belong to, but I’m positive they’re not in my head. Better go investigate!

It’s so silent in my house right now. Luke is sleeping. The cats are sleeping. Mike is out playing darts. (He’s in a league. Yes, they have leagues for that.) I don’t have the tv on, though I will definitely by 10:00 to watch Top Chef Season 4, Episode 2. I am looking forward to that, but right now it’s just nice to rest. I have returns to work on but most are waiting for information. Tonight I’m taking a break. I need it. This has been a rough week so far. There is crap going on at work. I don’t really want to talk about it but I will say that I think it’s all going to be okay. I’ve been praying a lot and trying to remain adultish in how I behave and both those things seem to be helping. Yes, I realize I’m using words that don’t exist. It’s just one of those make-up-words days.

When I happen to have a collection of nanoseconds all in a row I tend to think about how my life looked before I was a mother. Days and weeks slipped through my fingers much more quickly. I spent my Saturdays loafing around the house and watching Lifetime movies. I spent all kinds of hours agonizing over my laziness and wallowing in guilt for not folding the laundry or vacuuming the floors. I use to analyze my life and who I was and where I was going. I was a woman of extreme thought and melancholy. Now I have become a woman of action. I have no time to waste so I do not waste time. I vacuum when I can and I fold laundry while playing with my son. I do not sleep until 11 am on Saturdays and I don’t take naps. I cherish every minute. Even when Luke naps, I can’t bring myself to nap at the same time because when you are asleep you are unconscious and you wake up feeling like you lost all that time. I want to be awake to enjoy the peacefulness and the lack of responsibility. It is such a wonderful feeling, but after awhile you start to feel weird. Weird, like something is missing. That’s when you realize that you don’t mind the responsibility so much and you look forward to the end of your baby’s nap when you can see again the light in his eyes and his big toothless grin (Yes, he’s ten months old and still no teeth).

My life has changed so much. I knew it would, that doesn’t surprises me. What surprises me is how well I’m handling it. Even though I had been waiting eagerly all those years to have a baby, I still always had some apprehension that maybe I wasn’t up for it. Maybe I wouldn’t have the energy or the patience or the mental capacity. I didn’t have those things much before and what surprises me is that God is giving me all those things now, now that I need them (the verdict is still out on the mental capacity). I cannot believe all the things I am able to accomplish in a week and still have all my hair by Sunday. There are days when I plop down and say I’m so tired I can’t do a thing more, but then I rest for five minutes and somehow find the motivation to do what needs to be done. Anyone who knows me knows that is a miracle. I am the queen of relaxation and finding the easy way out.

I don’t have a caboose for this train of thought. I’m terrible at openers and closers. Why don’t I just leave you with these famous last words: “Don’t touch the red button!”

Sorry, I have a weird sense of humor.

From a January 2008 podcast of “A Prairie Home Companion’s News from Lake Wobegon”:

I had a boy under the old system of parenthood, back before most of you were born. This under the old system, where men were out busy hunting and fighting heathen savages and we were just brought into villages for breeding purposes then we wandered off again and we’d come back to see the child after the child was born. We’d walk in smeared with blood and one ear half chewed off wrapped in animal skins and we’d walk in and look at the child and we’d grunt and then we’d go off and hunt and fight some more and eventually the child sort of grew up on his own and you came  back and here was this young man there.

And now to have a child under the new system of parenthood, in which parents are assumed to be vitally involved in every step of their child’s life and arrange their children’s social life and read every book available on the subject of childrearing, which is like having a second unpaid job.

Makes me nostalgic for the old way that I grew up under. (more…)

I have been reading “Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds” by Susan Gregory Thomas and it is fascinating. In the book, the author mentions an 1899 meeting of the National Congress of Mothers, a meeting that marked the start of “professionalizing” the art of childrearing. What followed was a big shift from the days when mothers sought advice and guidance from their mothers and grandmothers as new emphasis was placed on the knowledge and expertise of doctors and other professionals. This intrigued me so of course I had to Google it. I found a wad of information, including several archived articles from the New York Times. Here is one I found particularly amusing: 

It’s funny, mothers now have more instruction and understanding on childrearing than we know what to do with, yet this nation seems far from a state of perfection. Things have changed a lot since 1912 but in a way it seems like we are dealing with the same issues they were.

By the way, the National Congress of Mothers was later renamed the National Congress of Parents and Teachers in 1924 but is better known today as the PTA. You can find a complete history at the PTA website.

This is a great article courtesy of the Parenting Squad: Yes, You Can Drink While Pregnant. 

Experts tell us that consuming excessive amounts of alcohol is harmful to a fetus, and since pregnant women can’t be trusted to know the difference between excessive and moderate, they just tell them to abstain from drinking altogether. The truth is that a glass of wine or beer now and then will have no adverse effects on a fetus. Your liver will metabolize almost all of it before it reaches the placenta, and whatever may be left is super minimal.

This quote from the article speaks to one of my favorite soapbox subjects, kids and nutrition: (more…)

I’ve asked this before but I’ll ask it again - why do we buy our kids toys? Note this photo of my friends’ children cleaning the cat hair off of my kitty condo. I wish I had it on video, because they were actually arguing over who got to clean which spot. “No, I want the bottom!”

I was talking to someone awhile back about the Montessori school their child attends. They told me that the school does not allow fiction books in the classroom. They feel it inhibits children’s natural creativity. That could be considered an extreme measure, but I believe there is some validity behind it.

I don’t remember having an obscene amount of toys growing up. My best memories were of writing plays and acting out talk shows and cooking shows with my brother and sister. We were all about make-believe. I remember one summer when Kari and I made up play names and created our own driver licenses. Our grown-up characters lived in Pretoria, Illinois. (We had never been there but I heard about it in a song. “We are marching to Pretoria, Pretoria, Pretoria!”) We had wallets with fake credit cards and we would carry them around in our purses.  Oh, we were cool back then.

The fake credit cards I played with as a child were the paper kind that came with wallets, sort of like the flimsy photos of strangers that come with new picture frames. Now they sell fake credit cards with children’s toys. Dave Ramsey was just on CBS News to talk about this issue. The whole thing really gets under my skin. Here I am every year with Financial Peace University trying to teach grown adults how to stop using credit cards and climb their way out of massive consumer debt, and meanwhile corporate America is spending billions of dollars to raise up more people to get right back into it.

Here are some scary statistics:

• Most teens (51%) agree that it is easier to buy things with a credit card than cash.
• Given the choice, almost one in three (29 percent) teens would prefer buying things with a credit card than cash. This represents a 61% increase over last year (18%).
• Almost three in ten teens (29%) are already in debt.

These numbers make me sick to my stomach. Credit cards are not for play. Consumer debt has destroyed so many people’s lives (if you don’t believe me, listen to ten minutes of Dave Ramsey’s radio show) and yet these credit card companies are making it into a game. Why do they do it? Because they know if they familiarize kids with a certain item or brand early on, when they are old enough they will become customers for life. It’s kiddie branding, it is certainly not a game I want to play.

Technorati Tags: Holidailies, kids, credit cards,  finances, Dave Ramsey, FPU, kiddie branding, consumer debt

A coworker was asking me what the lyrics were to the Little Bunny Foo-Foo song. Do you remember? Little Bunny Foo-Foo hops through the forest, scoops up the field mice, and then bops them on the head? Well we couldn’t remember the rest of the song so of course I had to show off my internet searching skills to find it. I quickly found the lyrics on www.bussongs.com. I also found lyrics to a lot of other great songs! I have been singing songs to Luke but I am always forgetting the lyrics. This is great, now I know the second part to Pop Goes The Weasel and I can stop singing “la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la…” The La’s get old after awhile.

I’m a big fan of sing along songs. As a young girl I remember singing along to Raffi songs with my mom on car rides. I remember she also had a giant book of sing along songs that we would sing from. It had a white cover and there were picture diagrams of hand motions that went with many of the songs. One of my favorites from the book was “On Top Of Spaghetti.” “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball… when somebody sneezed!” I still think of it whenever I eat spaghetti with meatballs.

I remember singing with my cousins in the basement at the cottage up north. We used to jump around and make up our own motions and dances. We would sing songs we thought we knew, but as I got older I was amused to discover we had been taking some major liberties with some of the lyrics and melodies.

If you like to sing silly songs with your kids, or just by yourself when you are driving to work and back, check out www.bussongs.com. I think some songs even have sample audio in case you don’t know the melody!