This sweet little face? His name is Cody. He’s a feisty little guy. And while he’s ruined the carpets by refusing to be house-trained (a post for another day) he is teaching my son some very important life lessons.

Back in January we adopted this itty bitty Daschsund/Beagle mix in need of a home. The deal was ”the boy” would be the main caretaker. My son immediately latched on to the idea. The Star Wars buff named his pup ”Commander Cody” and began referring to Cody as his “son”.

Like many new parents, Seth was excited about this new responsibility and had no idea what he was getting into. But he learned quickly. He enjoyed introducing Cody to pretty much every kid in the neighborhood. He loathed cleaning up the poo and pee. He had to help “puppy-proof” the house. He loved snuggling next to Cody to watch him sleep. Seth even got a little tired and grouchy when he had to deal with a whimpering dog in the early morning hours the first few weeks.

But as Cody has gotten older, “parenting” has changed. Seth has accompanied Cody to lend comfort when Cody got his shots. Seth has had to make arrangements (with me) to take care of Cody when he’s on a sleep-over. And Seth has also been working with him on a few obedience commands. Soon we’ll enroll Cody in “school” to work on a few impolite behaviors. Seth will have to also attend those sessions. 

That’s a lot of care-taking for a little boy to do. But this was the plan. He knew that if he wanted a dog, he’d have to do the lion’s share of the care. I laid out the responsibilities and expectations early on. Once the pup was ours, I got Seth (and the dog) into a routine. Sometimes routines get upset and Seth forgets, but I’m there to help him out. For the most part all of those tasks have become second nature to Seth.

We don’t want our son growing up, assuming the world revolves around him. We want him to understand other people (or in this case a dog) rely on him – even if when he’s tired, distracted or had a bad day. He’s learning how to emphasize and put another being’s needs ahead of his own. He’s also become more patient and experienced a tremendous amount of pride in watching his puppy grow. (He’s now about 17 pounds!)

Both parties have benefited from this new friendship. No surprise – both are pretty lively, love to be around other people, love to run, and love to make a lot of noise. Seth has really enjoyed Cody’s loyalty, affection, and attention.

Cody’s devotion to Seth was very apparent last night when we picked up Cody and our other dog from my parents. (They kept them at their house for a few days while we were out of town.) Once Cody saw Seth, he ran into Seth’s arms, wagging his tail.

Seth hugged then kissed the dog and said, “Daddy’s home.”

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Deals change each day so check the site often. Or  sign up to receive daily notices as to what bargains are being offered. (Today’s deal – 55% off Photo Session – Make believe with Mommy from Pixie Posie – limited quantity available ) Taking advantage of the deal is quick and easy.

You can even find them on Facebook and Twitter @LocalDealSTL. 

Best of all if you refer a friend, you get $5 in LocalDeal credit. (LocalDeal credit is redeemable dollar-for-dollar towards any future qualifying daily deal.) How cool is that?

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It was a typical day in my life as a stay-at-home mom. I had a full basket of clean, folded whites beside me as I changed my 5 year old daughter’s bed sheets. She came up along side of me and asked if I could play a game with her.

“I’m busy doing chores,” I told her. “I still have to put away the clothes and change the sheets on the other two beds.”

Her response was not so typical. “I can help, Mommy. All you have to do is ask.” 

As Oprah would say, that was a wake up call for me. How often do we go through our day cleaning, laundry, cooking – without ever asking our children to help? I am totally guilty and I imagine I am not alone. When my kids groan or roll their eyes, or flat out protest at doing a chore, it’s no wonder. After taking a serious look at my own inconsistencies in this part of parenting, I realize I was responsible for their bad attitude when it came to pitching in around the house. As parents, our job is to grow our child into a successful adult. Teaching them to be self-sufficient and to treat their home and belongings with care and respect is an admirable goal. But, how exactly do you do that?

For me, the important first step was observing my children’s behavior, as well as my own, without changing a thing—and what I found was actually encouraging. I realize that both my kids are amazingly self-reliant in the mornings. Both kids get dressed in the morning, make their beds, and brush their hair and teeth with very little supervision. My 10-year-old son Adam even fixes breakfast for himself and, when feeling in a giving mood, his sister’s too. If he needs a lunch for school, he happily takes care of that, too. With very few gentle reminders, my children move through their morning routine without much fuss, repeating the necessary bedtime routine with the same general positive attitude. If you don’t have a school aged child who can get himself rolling in the morning on his own, with just a little gentle guidance, I would not suggest moving any further until this has been mastered.

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. Using a chore chart worked for my step-sons, while positive reinforcement worked well with Adam. For Elise, it is often threat of a privilege being revoked that motivates her. It’s really about knowing your own children’s currency and working from there. It’s also about realizing that if you have two or more children, their personalities will make this easier to accomplish for some than others. My daughter requires more direct supervision, which may speak to her age or her disposition. Likely, it’s a combination of both.

It’s from here I realized that things went down hill. The problem in the consistency was that there wasn’t any—ever. Summer or school year made no difference. Quite simply, chores are often done faster and better when I do it myself. Combined with the fact that there weren’t responsible for any daily chores, I realized that several days could pass without them helping me at all. When I would ask them to pitch in, they often fashioned their own revolt. This is where my change needed to come from me first and foremost. Knowing myself, I knew that assigning the kids daily chores for which they were solely responsible would have lack of follow through on my part.

The better plan for our family was for me to make sure I have my kids complete chores around the house every single day, varying by what was on that day’s to-do list. The last change was also key: Rather than give them a task to do on their own, I realized they enjoyed doing it if they were doing it along side me. That one is huge. Not only do we get to enjoy one-on-one time but they also they feel that they are truly contributing to the running of our house. Also, I was happier with the finished outcome, without feeling it necessary to ‘do over’.  It did require me to slow down and work at their pace, which I think in today’s society of multi-tasking is a great trait for me to re-learn.

Once I implemented this new way of thinking, something interesting happened. My kids began offering their help and have wonderful attitudes in the process. Adam helped me clean two bathrooms, dust the living room, put away my Wal-Mart goodies, and folded and put away his clean clothes from the laundry basket.  And that was all in the last 24 hours. Elise gets excited about dusting, folding and putting away the clean laundry. More than once they have argued who was going to set the table. And that is one argument that is music to my ears.

Bonnie Krueger is a mom living in West County. In 2009, she began her first blog Inside My Head found at http://bonsbrain.blogspot.com/ . She began a second blog devoted solely to the memory and unique story of her mom– Heart Speaks found at http://bonsheart.blogspot.com/.

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They are looking for fun, high-energy people who are just starting the home-buying process for their first place and would like to share their story with HGTV! The goal is to capture all the trials and tribulations of looking for, bidding on and buying your first place.

Taping takes place this summer.  Ideal candidates will be enthusiastic buyers with a great story to tell and a desire to share their experiences. Singles, couples and families are all invited to apply!

Candidates who complete taping will receive a surprise housewarming gift as part of the show and also a DVD copy of their episode to document their first home buying experience for all time!

Request an application by emailing:  kwoodard@highnoontv.com Or call Kari at (303) 712-3229.

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Most people have heard of Build-A-Bear. But not everyone knows that the organization was founded and is headquartered in St. Louis. Meeting the Build-A-Bear peeps was quite a treat. And we bloggers learned quite a bit about their organization. Like how active they are within the community. And how Bear Exec Maxine Clark is a HUGE believer in empowering as well as supporting adults AND kids who work hard to improve their communities. That was around the time the Build-A-Bear peeps passed out $25 giving cards for us from www.DonorsChoose.org.

The premise of DonorsChoose is simple. Teachers can post project requests. Donors see the request and can choose which project they’d like to fund.

How cool is that?!?

Thousands of kids in public schools are helped by this project each week. And that’s a great thing. Especially since teachers often pay for project materials out of pocket. When I learned that years ago from my sister-in-law who’s a teacher, I almost fell over.

(That doesn’t seem fair at all! And it is why I often give the teacher a gift card at the beginning of the year as well as one throughout the year. Hopefully it can help offset those expenses. Because let’s face it. If you are a teacher you need your money for things like booze. Or at least I would.)    

I’d never heard of this program until the conference. It was easy to find a school (and grateful teacher) who had an inspirational project to fund. You can find schools in every state and almost every school district. Start by picking a state and what types of projects you hope to fun. (Or even what town.) There’s a write-up on each project, how much is needed and even photos of smiling kids.

I found a cool project in a school within St. Louis city. They needed some art supplies for the wee kids.  (You can support projects for kids of all ages.) I found that fitting. Maxine Clark was able to grow a business based on a dream, loads of creativity and a great deal of hard work. Here’s hoping these kids will be able to do that too!

Thanks Build-A-Bear! I’ll definitely be visiting  you guys as well as DonorsChoose.org again soon!

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Thank you, Pixar and Disney, for Toy Story 3.

I took my kids recently to see the final installment of the Toy Story saga. It’s been 15 years since I saw the first Toy Story. I was a senior in high school. Now I’m a mom of three. And the message of this movie was not at all lost on me. Especially given the fact that my daughter sat on one side of me clutching her beloved “Lovey Bear” (a ratted purple square with a panda head on top of it that smells like spit and dirt) and my youngest son sat on the other side, his Sock Monkey nestled snug beneath his arm. I couldn’t help but look at those two little toys, both so loved and content at this moment. What will it be like in fifteen years when they are cast off – no longer needed for comfort and companionship?

Excuse me for a moment while I go sob in the bathroom…

It didn’t even dawn on me when we left the house that they were carrying those toys with them to the theater to see a movie about the fate of beloved toys. But looking at my babies as Andy drove away on the big screen with his faithful companions left to watch his tail lights fade in the distance, I got so terribly emotional. It doesn’t help that I was slightly hormonal, or that it had been a tough week parenting.

As we drove home after the movie, I glanced in the rearview mirror at my children – children who I love desperately. Time goes by so quickly. Yesterday (or so it seems) I married my husband. And then I blinked and it’s suddenly ten years later. If I weren’t such a prim and proper lady I’d let out an expletive. Instead I’ll settle for a simple, WTH! How does it move so quickly?

I read this quote shortly after returning home from the theater:

“When you’re holding your baby and he’s falling asleep in your arms slowly and the evening is slipping away and your mind is racing through the thousand things at the top of your list, and you begin to feel – as all fathers and mothers inevitably feel from time to time – that you’re wasting your time taking care of this little kid, try to remember that next year you won’t be able to hold him in the same way, he won’t go to sleep in your arms, and after a few more years, you’ll be happy to get a hug on the run. Our children are here to stay, but our babies and toddlers and preschoolers are gone as fast as they can grow up – and we have only a short moment with each. When you see a grandfather take a baby in his arms, you see that the moment hasn’t always been long enough.” S. Adams Sullivan, The Father’s Almanac

This parenting thing is hard. “Enjoy it,” everyone tells you, “Because it goes by so fast.” Even a bunch of animated toys delivered the message – in English and in Spanish. What no one tells you, though, is that sometimes you have to work really, really hard to enjoy it. And that is, perhaps, what had me most emotional.

I know it goes by fast, I know I need to enjoy it, I know I need to cherish the moments because they’re over in the blink of an eye – but to be quite honest, I don’t always enjoy being a mom. I love my kids immensely. They are so much a piece of me that I hardly remember life without them. But raising them…it’s hard.

Of course, it’s supposed to be tough now. “Put in the hard work when they’re young so that when they grow into teenagers you can reap the rewards of that hard work.” This is another piece of sage advice I cling to. On the days when it feels like all I do is battle, I remember that it’s better to battle them now when the environment is controlled than to battle them as teenagers when the battlefield is full of hidden mines and has a much larger scope.

But I would be lying if I said that I enjoy every moment of every day. Because I don’t.

I do, however, enjoy more than I don’t enjoy. Stay with me…There are moments (sometimes entire days) when it feels as though all I do is battle.  Everything is an argument. Tears abound in floods.  And the days leading up to our viewing of Toy Story 3 had been one of those weeks.  I went in battle weary.

By the next morning, however, the kids were filled with sunshine and sweetness. They played together without argument (and when I say argument, I mean screaming bloody murder at one another – screaming death matches with the force of an H-Bomb). Many days (or moments, perhaps,) are filled with such sweetness.  It isn’t a stretch to enjoy them.  But there are times when I have to search for reasons to like them.

So I was partly grateful to Toy Story for reminding me, yet again, that the time I have with my children when they’re young is fleeting. The hard times are momentary. There will be more tough days to come – days when loving my children is easy but liking them is hard. But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I dread this time in our lives coming to an end. There are sweet days to come, moments to celebrate, birthdays to rejoice in, milestones to accomplish – but the days of them sitting in my lap, a stuffed animal tucked beneath their arms…those days won’t last forever. And it’s those moments that I cherish the most. I tuck each one away in the crevices of my heart.

And I will now commence to crying once more.

Dumb cartoon movie…

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By Hannah Mayer 

When I was a kid it was my family’s annual tradition to drive to my Grandparents’  house the night before Easter so that we could wake up bright and early the next morning to hunt eggs.  While we practiced this tradition for several years, there is one particular year when I was four that continues to live on in my mind as a festive little holiday memory. 

After a fun-filled day of dyeing eggs and eating Peeps, one by one everyone slowly turned in for the night and fell into a peaceful Easter slumber.  Everyone except me, that is.  I laid there wide-eyed well into the wee hours of the morning, shivering in a pool of my own sweat, the blanket pulled so tightly around my face that I could barely inhale. 

I was terrified IT was going to find me.

IT being the 6-foot pink mongloid rabbit freak my Mom had offered me up to like a sacrificial lamb the week before. 

My Mom and I had stood in line forever – I knew it was a bunny we were waiting for and I imagined that it was going to look exactly like the cute little cotton tailed critters playfully bounding around our back yard. 

Oooh – I hope it’s a white one with pink eyes!  Maybe I will even get to pet it!    

My first indication that this might be an inaccurate assumption was the blood curdling screams of those who had gone before me that continued to grow louder as we slowly inched forward. 

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the front of the crowd and I was able to get my first full on view of the hideous creature sitting before me. 

That thing ain’t right. 

I frantically tried to reason out why she would betray me as she stood there smiling and snapping photos while it inched closer and closer to my terrified face, staring deep into my soul with those dead, black eyes. 

What the HELL, woman?  STOP TAKING PICTURES AND KILL IT!  OH THOSE HORRIBLE TEETH!  HOLY JESUS IT’S GOING TO EAT ME! KILL IT AND KILL IT FAST!   

I couldn’t believe it – the one person I had trusted for the last four years had just abandoned me at the gates of hell.   

Then afterward in the car ride home she told me the unthinkable – IT was coming to my Grandparents’  house next week. 

In the night. While I slept.   

She might as well have told me that a demonic woodland troll that fancies little girl flesh would be permanently taking up residence behind the furnace in our basement. 

Despite the fact that my own Toddler Torture scars have barely finished healing, I’m the first to raise my hand now as a guilty parent participant. 

We took Ellie to watch the fireworks last week and about a mili-second after the first bang she tried to claw her way back into my womb through my mouth, looking at us with confused, crazy terrified eyes that wondered why we were just sitting there while the sky exploded. 

Toddler Torture comes in all shapes and sizes and is in no way limited to the holiday season.  Just ask the 3-month-old baby blistering next to you at the Cardinals game decked out from head to toe in his My ‘Lil Molina uniform, his eyes begging you to please tell his Dad that he doesn’t give a sh*t. 

Why do we do these things to our children?  Is it for our own sick enjoyment?  Some sort of passive aggressive retaliation for all the 3 a.m. feedings, or having a neck to knee blowout the ONE TIME you forgot to bring a change of clothes so you were forced to be THAT woman walking around the Schafly beer fest with a baby in nothing but a diaper?

While I personally find nothing wrong with subconsciously punishing a child with the idea of a 6-foot pink rabbit sneaking into their room at night and saddling them with a lifetime of nightmares and possible therapy, I suspect it’s something more.

Like many women who (despite taking numerous drastic and, in many states illegal, measures) wait until their 30s to get married, the idea of “family life” was so built up that by the time the baby finally came I was bursting at the seams with excitement to introduce her to everything I used to love, whether she  liked it or not.  

But to whose benefit really is dressing a baby in a monkey costume and parading her around the neighborhood? 

Actually the answer to that one is mine but for different reasons than making fond family memories.  It’s called whoring your daughter out for chocolate, people, and don’t sit there for one second and pretend like I’m introducing a totally foreign concept.  I’ve seen it a million times.  

It’s almost like a right of passage, like losing your first tooth or shooting your first squirrel (well, if you’re from where I’m from).  We went through it and so will they.  And, who knows?  It might even keep them safer in the long run.  Always keep a bat within arm’s reach, sweetie, because you never know who might be shimmying his way down your chimney.    

Hannah Mayer is a 12-year St. Louis resident and Mom to 13-month-old Ellie.  She’s new to the Full-Time Mom; retiring from her 10-year career at an advertising agency in January. Her personal blog can be found at www.sKIDmarking.com. Follow her on Twitter @ The_sKIDmark.

Image found at SFGate.com.   

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But he’s also a fast learner. He excels in math. He can hyper-focus when he immerses himself into something of great interest. He has an amazing memory. He can quickly grasp some abstract concepts like God and the soul. He has a big heart. He seeks out ways to be helpful. He is eager to please. He’s snuggly. He is kind to his friends and family. He’s charming. He has a generous nature. He has a large number of interests. He has so many wonderful qualities. 

This is my son. And two years ago a pediatric neurologist confirmed what I’d (and a few of his teachers) suspected for awhile — he has ADHD. We had put off going the medication route but we finally agreed to try it out. (If you’re wondering about the symptoms click here.)

For now, it is working. He’s still the same active little person. His personality and sense of humor hasn’t changed at all. He’s definitely not one of those “over-medicated zombies” you hear about. But at least now he is able to pay attention in class. He is now able to stay on task. When he’s working in a group setting, his classmates don’t have to keep redirecting him. His teacher doesn’t need to keep going over directions and redirecting him either. She’s able to focus on the other kids who need her help.

I’m not saying medicating your child will make all of your problems go away. No way! In fact, he isn’t on the medicine during holidays, weekends or during summer vacation. But it has helped him harness that energy when he needs to focus. As he grows, he will determine whether or not to remain on medication. He will have to learn how to adapt his behaviors, how to channel all of that energy into constructive and positive endeavors without relying as much on medication.

Did you know that Albert Einstein, Ansel Adams, Bill Gates, Earnest Hemmingway, Steven Spielberg, Leo Tolstoy, Socrates, Bethoven, Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, Galileo, the Wright Brothers and Virginia Wolff all have (or had) ADHD? When they combined their energy with their passion for their respective fields, they became legendary.

Now as a parent, it is my job to help Seth discover his passion, nurture his strengths and to help him adapt. There’s no doubt in my mind that he has limitless potential to go with that limitless energy.

Someday he may ask me to take down this post. He may feel it an invasion of privacy. But for now it will stay. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. And I want others to see that too. He has ADHD. It is something he’ll have to learn to work around — like so many others have done before him. Having ADHD is not the end of the world.

In may aspects…. it is merely the beginning.

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Campers can play special online games and quests including marshmallow roasting, jump rope,  and Bear-2-Bear tug-a-hug.
 
Guests will enjoy exploring Camp Happy Heart which is lead by a counselor bear from the Ice Cream Bear Collection. Once registered to join the camp, individuals will be put on a team and given daily tasks to complete in order to earn team points. Guests can also write their own camp- themed story featuring their favorite Ice Cream Bear. At the end of camp, each participant will receive a team poster for their virtual Cub Condo and the winning team will receive a 2010 Camp Happy Heart trophy, interactive camp fire and camp bed for their Cub Condo house.

Build-A-Bear is headquartered in STL. You can find a location closest to you here.

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