Monroe Parenting

I have HAD IT with morning radio programs! This has been an ongoing problem I’ve noticed for the last few weeks, but this morning just drove me over the edge. … I usually leave for work at 6 a.m. to take the kids to my mom’s, and I feel that that early in the morning there should be at least something for us to listen to in the car that isn’t vulgar, profane, or grossly child-unfriendly.

I used to listen to 95.5 in the morning, but in the last couple of months they have become absolutely impossible for me to listen to with the kids in the car. This morning they were discussing girls who are being called sluts in middle school because they have large breasts (and of course, they were going into major description, especially when some woman called in to say her nickname in school was B-J Betty!). Great. I do not need Caitlyn adding the word “slut” to her vocabulary! (In case you’re wondering why I left it on that station so long that I heard all that, it only took less than 2 minutes for me to understand what they were talking about and I had the radio turned very low so I could “check” to make sure the topic was okay first.)

Anyway, I quickly flipped over to 96.3 — they were discussing women who dislike it when men lick their throats and stick their tongues in their ears. Okay! Moving on! There is no reason she needs to be thinking about that either!

To be on the safe side, I switched over to a country music station just to find something decent to listen to. The first button my finger came across was 99.5 and the Dr. Don show. The American Idol music came on and they announced they were interviewing former contestant Amanda, who was the rocker chick. Caitlyn was very excited when she heard the theme music, so I sighed in relief thinking I had found something we could listen to. That relief was short-lived when Grunwald asked Amanda if she would give them a ride on her motorcycle the next time she came through Detroit. He said he would have no problem riding on the back and being her b*tch, which Amanda then loudly repeated.

Ahh! Where could I safely turn to?! Where?! Oldies, yes the Oldies station, 104.3! Ah yes, the lovely sounds of Dick Purtan and his people. Can’t go wrong there….right? Right?! Wrong! They were talking about a news story that happened recently where airport security forced a woman to remove her nipple rings with a pair of pliers. Not only does the thought of that make ME cringe, but I definitely do not need Caitlyn thinking about sticking metal objects on her chest!

Faster than a speeding bullet, I flipped over to Radio Disney on 910 AM. The sound is tinny, the music is cheesy, but at least my kids won’t be hearing anything inappropriate!

So there’s a good side and a bad side about taking the kids to church on Easter Sunday before the sun is even up. The best part about about attending church at the crack of dawn is that it’s too early for the kids to act up. They weren’t quite awake yet and just kinda sat in the pew in a daze, looking around at all the people and taking everything in. I didn’t even have to whip out the coloring books or markers, and most of my emergency snacks stayed packed in the diaper bag.

(On a side note, usually I have to pack the bag full to the brim full for church so that I’m ready for anything — extra clothes “just in case”; magna doodles; Crayola Color Wonder markers and paper, which is great because the kids can doodle anywhere but the marker will ONLY show up on the paper; water bottles/sippy cups; snacks; diapers; etc., etc. Whatever works to keep the kids happy and quiet so that they don’t bother other people and refrain from becoming interested in drawing on/pulling pages out of the hymn books.)

Now, onto the downside of attending early church: Since the kids had to get up around 5, this meant that their whole schedules were thrown completely off. And by 10-10:30 a.m. Caitlyn had the worst temper tantrum meltdown I have ever seen. She was flailing her arms about, jumping up and down, and her voice reached octaves that would shatter glass. That definitely signaled it was nap time!! Of course, after she snoozed for three hours she was happy as a clam for the rest of the day, but boy it sure was touchy there for a while!

I’m sure I will not have a chance to blog tomorrow, so I thought I would wish everyone a Happy Easter a little bit early!! And, to continue that warm fuzzy feeling, I thought I would share the kids’ Easter pictures.

Recently, one of the people at story time was handing out fliers for a new kids play place called “Zoobilee” in Ypsilanti. I wanted to know more, so I went to the Web site and it looked like a fun place. Giant slides, tunnels to climb through, tasty looking food at a reasonable price — so I thought, ’sure, why not check it out?’

Since I was on Spring Break last week, I had lots of free time so the kids and I picked out a day and off we went. The experience that I was expecting from what I had heard and seen did not quite match up to what actually happened. When we got there, it was evident the business was brand new because the door was nothing more than a couple of pieces of wood with a banner hanging next to it saying “Yes, we ARE open!”

We did notice after we walked in that, yes, the slides in the photos were there and the climbing play structure looked like fun, but the whole thing had a kind of warehouse feel to it. The lighting back by the tables wasn’t that bright, except for the sun that shone through the front windows. There was no music or noise really at all except for my kids and a few others running around.

We really couldn’t see the kids when they ran around the front of the structure from where we were sitting at the tables, but that was okay because there was no way for Keegan to access the tunnels or slides without assistance. He was just too short to be able to climb up into it by himself. (True there was a “toddler area” but there was nothing to do in there besides climb on a few soft blocks or sit on a squishy rocking animal. Keegan quickly lost his interest in this area.)

Anyway, because he wanted to go down the slides, I had to climb up the levels with him, pushing him ahead of me as I went. Now let it be said that I have a quasi-fear of closed spaces, so this was NOT my idea of fun! Eventually, we had worked out a relay system so that I didn’t have to continually climb up the ledges. My mom would catch Keegan at the bottom of the slide and walk with him around the back of the structure. She would hand him to my sister Lauren, who was halfway up one of the ledges, and then Lauren would hand him to me. From there, he could just walk over to the slides by himself and zip on down to where mom would be waiting again. Caitlyn was running circles around us going here, there and everywhere, but eventually she got kinda bored with it, too.

The food wasn’t that bad — well, the adult menu was pretty good anyway. (I guess once you’ve eaten Chuck E. Cheese food multiple times, than you just get used to food at kid play places….). The kids food on the other hand was kinda dinky. I originally had thought that $2.99 was a fantastic price for a chicken tender kids meal — until it came out and it consisted of nothing more than THREE dinosaur nuggets and a couple of french fries. I could go to Meijer and buy a whole package of those for $1.99!! The drink was included in the price though, and a tony container of bubbles, so I guess that’s where the majority of the cost came from.

It cost $6 for Caitlyn and $3 for Keegan to get it, but we were only there for about 2 hours and there wasn’t that much to do. One other thing that bothered me was the lack of safety by the front counter. First off, there was no gate blocking access to get behind the counter. I lost count of the number of times Keegan ran around the front of the play structure and took a detour to run behind the counter and into the kitchen. Not good! That boy is way too fast and who knows what he could have gotten into!

On the other side of the counter is the door to enter and leave the building. There’s no one standing there making sure the kids leave with who they came with; the door is at kid level, and the handle is on the inside so any kid could just open it and walk on out if they wanted to. That made me a bit nervous, so I felt like I had to watch the kids like hawks the entire time we were there.

All in all, the kids had a pretty decent time, but I don’t know if it’s something we’re going to rush back to do.

Here are some pictures of the kids playing:

Caitlyn getting ready to climb into the play structure.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

My sister Lauren with Keegan and me with Caitlyn.

Keegan riding the dinosaur.

Caitlyn and Keegan just chillin’.

Mondays are the days that I get to spend a few hours in the early afternoon with just Caitlyn. My mom keeps Keegan while Caity and I go to story time and then out to lunch. Afterward, we pick up Keegan and settle in for the afternoon nap. …

Anyway, this past Monday Caitlyn decided she wanted to go to Applebees for lunch. So after we finished up story time in Dundee, we came back to Monroe to have lunch before we ran errands. Joining us was one of Caitlyn’s Webkinz — Rosebuddy the dog (whose photo can be seen in the birthday entry). This “dog” had been driving me bonkers all day. She had to take it to story time, where it proceeded to bark — loudly — along with the songs and would not allow Caitlyn to partake in activities without its assistance. Caitlyn thought it was just adorable the her doggy wanted to join in. I, on the other hand, was getting tired of hearing her howl.

So when we went in to lunch, it started up all over again. I told Caitlyn to tell the waitress what she wanted to order and instead of telling the waitress what she wanted, she proceeded to order “dog food” for the stuffed animal. I apologized profusely to the woman because I knew she was busy and Caitlyn would just keep going and going and going with this. She gave me an understanding look and told me that she had a little one of her own and knew how it was. She listened to Caitlyn’s every word and even wrote down the puppy’s order.

When our food came out, there was an extra plate on the serving tray. This plate held two small dipping sauce bowls — one was filled halfway with water and the other contained a mixture of croutons and bacon bits. This was “dog food” for Rosebuddy, and Caitlyn was thrilled. In fact, since Rosebuddy was so busy “eating” her own food, Caitlyn stopping lollygagging around and ate almost everything on her plate. I was so impressed that she even got to order dessert that day.

So I owe a big thanks to Sunshine, our waitress, at Applebees for indulging in Caitlyn’s imagination and helping us to have a fantastic time at lunch!

Keegan practicing his mad-gaming skills for his teenage years….

Evening News Managing Editor Dan Shaw has a few requests to make regarding the Monroe Parent Web site. Click here to find out what he has to say.

We took the kids to see “Horton Hears a Who” last night and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised! After the debacle otherwise known as “The Grinch”, I was a little hesitant to see another Seuss movie on the big screen. But since the movie stars a giant elephant, Caitlyn really left us no choice. So we settled on the 7 p.m. showing and off we went.

We got the kids settled in with their big bucket of pop corn and barrel, I mean cup, of fruit punch, and I began to wonder how in the world this Seuss book could be stretched into a full-length film. There’s just not that much going on in it. Horton finds a speck, hears shouts from the speck, and pledges to protect it on a clover at all costs. The rest of the jungle animals think he’s crazy (which is helped along by an overbearing kangaroo who needs to have complete control of everything — in the movie voiced by Carol Burnett), and Horton is forced to flee to get the Whos to safety. That’s about the jist of the book.

The movie expanded on that a bit by creating a fantastical world where the Whos live and gives their lives more meaning than simply existing on a speck. They have jobs, homes, families. The mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters and 1 single son. As Horton says, “A person is a person no matter how small.”

The end of the movie does get a little frightening for younger kids as the jungle animals try to rope and cage Horton and boil the speck in oil to put an end to his delusions, but it all turns out okay in the end (naturally). By the time the credits were rolling though I could honestly say that I had a good time watching the movie with my kids — and that’s what makes a good family film.

Now that I have a minute to reflect on Caitlyn’s birthday, let me tell you what her favorite thing was ….. Perhaps it was the trip to Chuck E Cheese?? No. Was it the really cool elephant items Mommy hunted down for her? No. Was it the special birthday breakfast made especially for her? No, no, no.

Despite all of my planning, I was upstaged at the last minute by Dave, lol. He decided to go to the Apple store and buy Caitlyn the Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham computer game. Now that in and of itself is VERY cool, but do you suppose he just wrapped it and let her open it when she got up that morning?? Oh, no, no! He had to go one step further and make a scavenger hunt for her to locate the gift first!! He took pictures of her favorite stuffed animals and then hid them around the house.

So when she got up that morning, propped up next to Pinkie the pink elephant was a picture of Big Duck. Caitlyn knows Big Duck lives in the bathroom so she ran in there and found a picture of Ella the elephant. From the picture’s background, she could tell the elephant was on the toy box. When she got to the toy box, she found a picture of Rosebuddy the dog sitting next to the computer. And next to the computer was a picture of Moo Cow sitting on the staircase. When she got there, she discovered her cow sitting on top of her new game. And that was ALL she talked about. All. Day. Long.

It’s party time!!

So last Sunday we busted out all things with pink elephants in honor of Caitlyn’s 4th birthday. Dave and I were a bit exhausted since Keegan had kept us up almost all night coughing, but since he seemed to perk up a bit as the day went on, we thought we were in the clear.

Caitlyn put on her pink elephant shirt (seen in the photo above) and waited anxiously to greet her guests. She was quite the little hostess!! And she couldn’t wait to blow out the candles on her cake:

I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful that cake smelled! Mmmm, like a field of cherries (which would be about right since the cake was cherry chip!). Caitlyn and her new elephant, Pinkie, (made by my friend Katrina’s mom) danced in front of the cake while everyone sang.

After everyone finally went home, we ended up having to call the doctor for Keegan because it sounded like he might have croup. On the doctor’s advice, we took him to Dundee Urgent Care where he was diagnosed with the same nasty upper respiratory ickiness that everyone seems to have right now. A little Benadryl and some rest and he was just fine. Now why didn’t I think of that?!