Archives for October 2019

Let’s face it, our years with children under our roofs slip past us when we’re not paying attention. Suddenly we find ourselves with preschoolers, then grade-schoolers, and pretty soon teens. We do our best to make the most of these years, but sometimes it helps to know we aren’t missing out on our children’s childhood by engaging it full on.

With that in mind, here are twenty-five activities to get in before taking them to college:
1. Sleep out under the stars. Pitch a tent or just drag blankets and sleeping bags out into your yard or balcony.
2. Visit a lighthouse. Take a picture while you’re there.
3. Pick apples, blueberries or another fruit. Enjoy eating produce right from the source.
4. Have a Silly String fight – just because. Launch a sneak attack, but leave an arsenal in plain sight for them to retaliate. Then take what you’ve dished out.
5. Take them to meet a favorite author or sports star.
6. When winder comes, drive around at night looking at holiday light displays. To make it extra enchanting, put the kids to bed first then take them out in their pajamas and give them hot cocoa for the ride.
7. Swim in the ocean. Or at least wade in up to your knees and feel the rocking motion of the waves.
8. Carve a pumpkin. Encourage your kids to grab out the seeds with their fingers and get up to their elbows scooping out the gooey flesh.
9. Build a sand castle. Or create a sand sculpture – turtles and snakes are easy.
10. Serve in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.
11. Eat ice cream sundaes for dinner. Include fresh fruit like strawberries and bananas among the toppings to make it “more healthy.”
12. Own a pet (fish, bird, dog, cat, lizard).
13. Catch lightening bugs. In your hands or in a jar. Have a contest to see who can collect the most.
14. Climb a mountain or go to the top of a skyscraper. Then take in the view from up high.
15. Go on special dates, just parent and child. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s about one-on-one time.
16. Try skiing – water, cross country, or downhill.
17. Teach them how to waltz. Or hip hop or line dance. Get out some music and show them your moves.
18. Take them to a big concert event. Whether it’s kid music or classical, give them exposure to a live performance.
19. Go on a picnic. Grab an old blanket, make up some sandwiches and hit the park or beach for an old-fashioned outdoor meal.
20. Make and take a meal to a shut-in neighbor or friend – together.
21. Plant flowers. Give them a garden trowel and invite them to dig in the dirt with you.
22. Attend a funeral. Then talk about life, death and the future.
23. Go to a theme park. Ride the roller coasters and eat cotton candy.
24. Let them make you dinner – by themselves. Even if it’s PB& J sandwiches.
25. Attend a major sporting event in your city – baseball, football, hockey. Cheer loudly. Enjoy the energy of being surrounded by your fellow fans.

Whatever you choose to do, soak up each moment. It might not slow down time, but it will capture memories you can share with your kids long after you’ve shared a home.

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Wanna hear something ironic? I work for a parenting magazine, and a huge part of my job is finding fun stuff for people to do with their kids and then sharing the great stuff I find with the Staten Island community. I love my job, but I spend so much time looking for fun stuff for other people to do with their kids that sometimes it takes me away from me doing fun stuff with my own kids.

I did the stay-at-home-mom thing for a long time, and believe me, it certainly had its share of ups and downs. But now that I’m working, it’s occurred to me that I never realized just how much of myself I was available to give to my children when I was literally always available. We could pick up and go whenever and wherever we wanted. There were no schedules to coordinate, no deadlines looming, no emails to answer first. If we wanted to go to the park, off we went. If we were low on groceries, to the supermarket we’d go. If we were bored in the house, we’d go for a walk. We were together all the time and they loved it. And I did like it. Well, kind of. As any Stay-at-Home-Mom will tell you, being around the kids 24/7 is extremely draining. There are no breaks, no real help from anyone else. It’s all on you to keep those kids happy around the clock, which is no simple task.

So when the opportunity arose for me to take a job wherein I could keep a flexible schedule and often work from home, well, mentally and financially speaking, turning it down was never an option.

While I’m very familiar with stay-at-home-mom depression, I’m fairly new to this working mom guilt. And, boy, is it a something else entirely. When I tell people I work from home, I think they picture this utopian ideal where I’m simultaneously baking cookies, overseeing fun craft projects, and emailing my boss all in perfect unison. How lucky I must be to accomplish so many tasks at once!

Well, in fact, I do accomplish all of these things at once. But perfection it is not. Allow me to set the scene for you.

It’s 3:30pm on any given weekday. My son is working on his math homework, that vile math homework book open in front of him. He’s crying a little because he doesn’t understand how to solve 15-7 by “making a ten” first. Quite frankly, neither do I, and I’m about to start crying with him. At the very same moment, my three-year-old daughter is climbing on my back, shoving her Princess Sofia floor puzzle in my face and begging me to help her finish it. I glance over at the clock and see that if I don’t start dinner soon, I’ll have hunger meltdowns thrown into the mix. So I get up and head to the fridge to start cooking.

I wash and chop and slice and prep while my son reads his “book buddy” to me, hoping he’s actually reading what it says and not just making up random sentences to avoid thinking. My daughter lingers dangerously over the cutting board, narrowly missing my razor-sharp knife with her tiny fingers as she tries to reorganize the veggies in a futile attempt to “help” me cook. I pause for a quick minute to check my work email, remembering something I’d forgotten to do earlier. I see that I have 15 new emails and realize that the thing I’d forgotten to do has since spiraled into a whole new problem, and I then absentmindedly spend another 20 “quick minutes” attempting to rectify it.

Suddenly I hear the sizzle of hot liquid hitting the stove and I see my potatoes boiling over, which is my reminder to check the oven and find that I’ve overcooked the hell out of the chicken. I look up to find Princess Sofia puzzle pieces and sliced vegetables strewn about the living room— my daughter’s passive aggressive way of displaying her resentment for my ignoring her. My son hands me his homework to check and I try to explain that “We bilted a snwmn” is spelled incorrectly, which immediately prompts a tantrum because, according to him, it IS spelled correctly and I’m the MEANEST MOM EVER and he just wants to go play video games but I WON’T LET HIM even though his homework is DONE!

And then my night shift-working husband emerges from hibernation, complaining about us all making too much noise and waking him up, and demanding to know why the house smells like burnt chicken.

Fast forward a few hours: dinner is over, baths are done, husband’s off to work, kids are tucked in bed. And me? I’m on the couch, laptop open, fingers flying over the keyboard, finally able to get some work done.

The funny thing is that I’m actually lucky. I’m fortunate to be home from work in enough time to make dinner and oversee homework and spend some time together as a family, as hectic as it regularly is. A lot of parents don’t return home from work until well after the kids are sleeping. And as chaotic as the afternoons with my family are, it’s a whole different struggle when you don’t even get to see your kids during the day at all.

The part I hate most is when my daughter looks at me with her heart-meltingly innocent, baby blue eyes and asks, “Mommy, can you play with me?” and I have to say no because I have work to finish. Or when my son’s school sends home a note about another school fair and I try to move heaven and earth to make it there, every single time, because I never want to let him down. Or when I’m up very late, typing away into the wee hours of the night, and I wake up like a sleep-deprived Oscar the Grouch the next morning, ready to bite the head off of anyone who dares ask me for plain Cheerios after I’ve already poured milk on a whole bowl of the honey-nut ones.

I love that I love my job. I don’t know how many people can say that and mean it, but I love having a job I enjoy, a job I’m proud to do. And financially speaking, I really love that I can finally start putting some money away to buy my family’s first home. Or our first trip to Disney. Or maybe even start up a college fund (well, after I’m done paying for my own college loans). As stressed as I feel most of the time, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m sacrificing a lot, I know. But I do believe that in the end, it’s worth it.

I just wish it wouldn’t feel like my kids are the ones making the biggest sacrifice. Hopefully someday they’ll understand why.

By Jeannine Cintron, a Staten Island mom of two. Read her blog at www.HighchairsandHeadaches.com.

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For a woman battling cancer, a day at the spa is probably the last thing on her mind. But it might be the break she needs, if just for a day.

That’s why Debbie Sestokas and Peggy Matzen started the Diva for a Day Foundation, a program that works with individual salons to sponsor a full day of spa pampering for women who need it most, free of charge. Each “Diva” receives the royal treatment on her special day, complete with the works: a manicure, pedicure, facial, massage, blow-out, and makeup application. Divas are even greeted with a fresh bouquet of flowers and a photographer to commemorate the occasion.

Debbie and Peggy are cancer survivors themselves, so their compassion for these women is deep-rooted. “When someone is dealing with cancer, it is so all-consuming,” Debbie said. “We wanted to give these women a little escape from it all; a day to forget about doctors’ appointments and treatments, a day to feel special.”

The Maya Angelou quote scrawled atop their website seems to sums it up well: “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”

A rainbow indeed. In the six years since hosting its very first Diva in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the organization has managed to partner with over 50 salons nationwide and helped to brighten the day of over 600 Divas thus far (and counting). According to Peggy, when a request is made for a Diva in a new location, the foundation will make an effort to seek out nearby salons willing to sponsor her – an undertaking which has helped them cater to women with cancer in 26 states to date.

Peggy says the number of nominated Divas in Staten Island is high, where word seemed to spread quickly about the foundation and the generosity of its partnering salons. The Island accommodates more Divas than any single town, where there are three participating salons thus far.

A.F. Bennett is one of the Diva for a Day participating salons, and they couldn’t be more delighted to team up with such a wonderful foundation. “The experience has been breathtaking,” says A.F. Bennett owner Frank Bennett. “Cancer can make a woman feel robbed of her beauty physically and outwardly, but it can also rob her of her inner beauty as well. We get the chance to turn that around and make her feel beautiful both inside and out. To take her spirits and heighten them to feel beautiful again – it’s priceless.”

Do you have a loved one battling cancer, someone who truly deserves the royal treatment? To qualify as a Diva for a Day, a nominee must be recently diagnosed, currently in treatment, or no more than six months past the completion of their treatment. Click here to visit the Diva for a Day website, where you can link to a nomination form and to see a list of participating salons in our area.

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Summer school recess will be here before you know it. Make sure you’re prepared for camp and other recreational programs.

Many families spend winter figuring out how to chase away cabin fever and endure frigid temperatures until spring and summer mercifully return. Parents thinking ahead to swimming pools and days lounging on the beach can put their daydreams to practical use by planning ahead for their youngsters’ summer vacations.

Youth recreational programs and summer camps can bridge the gap in care between the end of school and the day when classes resume. Due in part to high demand, parents who want to place their kids in summer rec programs or summer camps should being vetting such programs and camps well in advance of summer. The following are a handful of tips for moms and dads who want their kids to have fun and fulfilling summers.

· Ask for recommendations. Speak with fellow parents and trusted friends about where they send their children. Personal recommendations can be very helpful, providing firsthand insight into a particular camp or program. Schedule appointments to visit camps that fall within your budget. Take your son or daughter along so he or she can get a sense of what camp will be like.

· Explore all options. Camps come in more flavors than ever before. Certain camps may be faith-based ministries while others may focus on particular sports. Band camps and art camps may appeal to creative kids. Also, there are plenty of general-interest camps that offer various activities without narrowing in on any particular one. Parents may need to choose between a sleepaway camp or day camps, depending on which camp experience they want for their children.

· Inquire about camp schedules. While many camps are flexible, day camps do not have the same level of flexibility as after-school programs. Arrangements will need to be made if care is required after regular camp hours. Speak with camp staff to see which types of after-hours programs, if any, are available.

· Determine your camp budget. As varied as program offerings may be, camps also can vary greatly with regard to cost. Government-run camps may be less expensive than those offered by private companies. Day camps typically cost less than those that provide room and board. Find out if a particular organization subsidizes a portion of camp costs. Scouting programs often have a dedicated camp and may offer affordable options for scouts. Martial arts schools and dance centers frequently offer camp schedules.

If camp seems out of reach, look into local summer recreation programs at parks or schools. Such programs may not be as extensive as those offered by camps, but they can quell kids’ boredom and keep children occupied during the day.

In addition to camp, remember to plan for some free days so children can just enjoy some downtime. Such days can break up the monotony of a routine and provide kids and families time to relax together. Be sure to check Staten Island Parent’s Family Calendar in print and online for tons of fun events for you to do with the kids!

Summer recreation may be far off, but it is never too early to start making summer plans, including finding camps and other activities for kids.

CLICK HERE to see our Camps & Summer Program Directory!

The sudden outbreak of the Zika virus in Brazil earlier this year has expectant parents everywhere on edge. The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne illness that poses the greatest risk to pregnant women, as it can cause a severe birth defect known as microcephaly.  Here’s what you need to know:

How does it spread? The Zika virus is known to  spread via infected mosquitoes, carrying it from person to person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still determining whether it can also be spread through urine or saliva, but it may be found in semen. Men who have traveled to an affected area should abstain from sex with pregnant women.

What are the symptoms? Symptoms include fever, muscle and joint pain, headache rash, and conjunctivitis (pink eye), lasting for 2-7 days. Unfortunately, only 1 in 5 people will have symptoms, and 80% of cases will go undiagnosed. There is currently no known vaccine or treatment.

What is microcephaly? Microcephaly is a birth defect resulting in an abnormally small head associated with incomplete brain development. There is substantial evidence to show a link between the Zika virus and microcephaly, although other possible causes for the sudden rise in babies with this particular birth defect in Zika-affected areas are still under investigation.

Which areas are affected? Prior to 2015, Zika virus outbreaks were reported in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Currently, the large number of cases in Brazil has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a public health emergency. Many other countries around the world have been affected as well. While some cases have been discovered in the United States, they have all be associated with travel this far. Click here to link to a chart from the CDC displaying the most affected areas.

Is it safe to travel? Pregnant women in all trimesters should not travel to any area affected by the Zika virus. Those who have traveled to such an area should be tested within two to 12 weeks, regardless of whether symptoms have occurred.

If you have a kid who’s really into dinosaurs, you know that just saying they “like” them is not merely enough. My son, for example, was completely and totally obsessed with dinosaurs for at least three years of his life. I think it started the very moment he laid his tiny toddler eyes on his very first T-Rex. It must have been love at first sight. And from then on, it was all he would ever talk about and think about. We had all the books, toys, stuffed animals, movies, TV shows, clothes, EVERYTHING. It was just dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs for his entire toddlerhood and beyond.

Now that he’s a big boy of six whole years, he’s moved on quite a bit. Video game characters seem to be all the rage these days, but I know his prehistoric pals will always have a special place in his heart. And I can’t even believe what I’m about to say, but I actually kind of miss those dinosaur days. He drove me a little insane sometimes, but looking back it was pretty adorable.

If your little T-Rex head is, or was, anything like mine used to be, then you’ll relate to most (if not all) of these things:

1. You’ve learned that there is no such thing as a brontosaurus, and apparently there never was. Yup, your science teacher was dead wrong. Nowadays it’s all about the brachiosaurus.
2. You notice that Dino Dan is clearly on some very powerful hallucinogens, but we’re supposed to just accept it and watch the show anyway, no questions asked.
3. Your visit to the Museum of Natural History starts on the fourth floor, where all the cool dinosaur bones are. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking you came to see anything else (except maybe the giant blue whale- he’s pretty cool).
4. You are way better at correctly pronouncing loooooong dinosaur names than you ever thought, thanks to the little lesson in phonetics under each name. At this point, there is nothing you can’t properly sound out. Micropachycephalosaurus? Epidexipteryx? Xinjiangovenator? Bring it on.
5. You can never have too many dinosaur encyclopedias. And no, there is no limit to how many pages you’ll be asked to read every night.
6. Shopping for kids clothes in a store with not even a single dinosaur tee shirt in sight is a complete waste of time.
7. You will happily pay an inexcusable amount of money for any article of clothing with a really cool-looking T-Rex on it.
8. Three years old is not at all too young to watch Jurassic Park for the first time.
9. Barney does NOT count as a dinosaur. Never has, never will.
10. There is no storage bin spacious enough for your child’s vast toy dinosaur collection. And every time you attempt to close the lid, there’s at least one tail sticking out somewhere preventing you from doing so. Better luck next time.
11. People like to say it’s just a “childhood phase”, which you find hilarious. What kind of “phase” lasts at least THREE YEARS?? We prefer the term “healthy obsession”.
12. Your child learned the difference between a carnivore and an herbivore before he knew his ABC’s.
13. You saved money on Halloween costumes, because he (or she!) just wants to be T-Rex every year.
14. Playing “pretend” has taken on a whole new meaning in your house; there are days that your child won’t answer to anything but “T-Rex”, and you occasionally have to explain to random strangers why your child is roaring very loudly at them for no reason.
15. You wonder if the dinosaur obsession might continue beyond childhood, and your little one will might even someday choose a career in paleontology. And then you can’t help but think of Ross from Friends.