First of all, I’d like to say THANKS to Daddy A, who so kindly filled in for me for February with his illuminating posts of life from the other side (aka Daddy’s). My deepest gratitude and thanks. I wouldnt be able to pull off the busiest month of the year without his time and effort for this blog.

February is a crazy month in my household. Its the month where most people buckle down to the routines of the New Year, but in our family, its the month of birthdays, followed by the yearly growups-only trip my husband and I take, away from the kids.

So after the meyhem of a seemingly endless stream of birthday celebrations culminating in the Pirate Party I obsessively blogged about, hubby and I took off to Hong Kong for a fabulous, ultra-luxe holiday. Its become a sort of tradition, these child-free trips right after the birthdays. I’m not sure how it started, but I suppose it arose from the need for some quality grown-up time after a month (or two - Christmas too, remember) where our lives just seem to be consumed by our children.

Wonderful as it was to have long conversations with my husband without whiny interruptions, shopping trips at leisure where I could actually browse as long as I pleased and try on as many things as I liked without rushing, and late breakfasts where I could read an entire newspaper, going home to our five-year-old and two-year-old was the biggest thrill of all.

And lastly, something very “pre-school” that my best friend sent me: (I promise this is the past pirate thing!)

Alexander Ratcliff from Spokane, Washington is the grand prize winner for the Riddles contest. His winning riddle is:

Q: Why wasn’t the child let in to the pirate movie?
A: It was rated arrrrrrrrr (delivered with an appropriate pirate squint)

“Where do babies come from?”

Ah, the dreaded talk. It’s the moment that parents don’t really look forward to. And sometimes it’s the moment that kids (especially those old enough to understand) don’t really want to go through. But then when is the right time to have “the talk” and what is the most appropriate way to go with it?

This is especially true with conservative societies. Some people would rather sweep things under the rug, escaping responsibility because talking about it might be considered taboo.

To the contrary, the topic of sex should not be something hidden behind an iron curtain. As parents, we should understand that humans are sexual beings at–and even before–birth. We were made to be male and female, and there should be no malice with how we discuss these matters with our kids. Reproduction, after all, is a God-given gift. These things should be handled with openness, and yet with sensitivity.

So do away with the “birds and the bees” or the “Mr. Pelican” talk. It’s time kids learn about the truth.

It’s important for parents to be there to guide kids about matters about sex. Children today can be overwhelmed by inputs from the media and from their peers. For all you know, they could be getting the wrong ideas and false information about sex. These could lead to dangerous situations later on (such as unreported sexual abuse, teenage pregnancies, and the like). It’s best for kids to be aware of themselves and their sexuality so that this could not be exploited by other people.

The Mayo Clinic has a great introductory article about having “the talk” with your children. It involves dealing with human sexuality at various stages in a child’s life. This is probably a good reference when you feel the time has come for that talk.

Incidentally, this will be my last post here on the Parenting blog for a long time. Lara has come back from taking care of the Pirates stuff. I will perhaps post here from time to time, though. And of course, I’ll still be around as your host at several other Splashpress blogs like the Blog Herald, Jack of All Blogs, Gadzooki.

Much has been said about full-time motherhood and how great it is for moms to be able to spend their time with their kids while dad goes to work every weekday. To many mothers out there, motherhood is a full-time job. It’s actually more full-time than your regular nine-to-fiver. It’s a job 24/7, 365 days a year (add more during leap years). But what about the full-time dad?

Hello folks. I’m Angelo and I’ll be filling in for Lara while her family takes care of some pirate matters. Why all this talk about the full-time dad, you ask? I consider myself to be one.

Well, actually fatherhood is also a full-time job. And having to go to work to make a decent living for the family is considered part of that. But in my case it’s different. I work at home. That’s not your usual setup for fathers, but I do know a handful of dads who do the same.

My work and business involve going online and working on Web and content development projects. So that means I can practically work anywhere there’s a decent Internet connection. And I sometimes do work at cafés outside of the house. But most of the time, I’m right here in my home office.

Working at home can be both rewarding and difficult, especially when you have one preschool-aged child and a toddler like I do (another one’s on the way!). Want to find out why? Watch this space. I’ll be writing about my experiences every other day here on the Parenting Blog.

Ok, I admit that maybe I am a teeny-weeny obsessed with pirates these days. My sister insists that I am, and although she was down with a nasty bug, managed to send me this email about the “Pirates vs Ninja” debate.

Its rather interesting if you asked me. The pirates are winning, with 263 votes, as opposed to the ninjas with 258. Here are some of the insightful comments on debate:

For the Pirates:

” Ah, the anachronism that is the ninja! Are there even any ninjas
left in the world, to fight the pirates? I am pretty sure that
the true ninjas went the way of the samurai (speaking of which,
in the movie THE LAST SAMURAI, ninjas and samurais duke it out,
and I am pretty sure that was anachronistic too) I say NAY!

Yet modern pirates abound! See The Outlaw Sea: A World of
Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by William Langewiesche. Pirates still
kick trash, even in a world of atom bombs and blackberries. In
fact, pirates probably use blackberries. Blackberries, eyepatches
and parrots. Yar, matey! “

For the Ninjas:

“Ninjas have the advantage on land. I mean, you can’t even see
them until it’s too late, and then you’ll never see them because
you have no head.

But on sea, pirates are dangerous. But a ninja could sneak on
board. And pirates are too loud. Yell and say yar, and are
usually drunk, so it is all ninja!”

[tags]pirates, convince me, pirate vs ninja, debate [/tags]

For the invitations, I pulled out my inner-Martha and made “message in a bottle” invitations. It involved a couple of nights work (those short precious hours between the time when the children have gone to bed and tired Mothers cant keep their eyes open for one minute longer), a printer, left-over coffee, tea, and my trusty stove’s gas burner. Throw in some sand and old shells lying around the house (from the last beach holiday), a bit of string, glass mineral water bottles, and hey, presto!

As luck would have it, both mine and my husband’s printer were acting extremely temperamental (and headed for the junk yard), so I went ovet to my sister’s house, parchment in hand. We found the perfect font, and in a few minutes, cooked up the wording:

Ahoy Matey!
Captain Natasha will be in harbour
On February 11th, 2007
at three o’clock in the afternoon
in search of a motley crew
and will navigate her way to
The Pooldeck (of our apartment building)
to meet suitable recruits
for a swashbuckling adventure bash!!

No liver-belly cowards or landlubbers need attend.

Now soak in coffee, burn the edges, tie and stuff in the bottle, seashells and sand. Easy and fun. And expect to get lots of compliments from the parents!! Oh, and I also put the bottle in a brown paper bag, with a “jolly roger” drawn on with a felt tipped pen. Those skulls get easier to draw once you’ve done them at least 10 times.

[tags]invitation, message in a bottle, pirate, birthday[/tags]

All is finally back to normal here at home. The kids are healthy, Daddy is back from his trip, and Mom is back to pirate mode. One of my major coups this week has been finding the perfect birthday cakes, and thanks to my internet-research-savvy sister, she found me a girl who makes the most fabulous birthday cakes and pretty decent prices.

I love to bake, but in all honesty, one of those fancy “themed” or shaped cakes are totally beyond me. I’ll just leave that to the experts, thank you very much. So when I found this girl called Erika, (a pastry chef in her twenties, baking from home) who could pull off not just the cakes, but matching cupcakes and cookie lollipops in pirate theme, I was thrilled. She sent me a few sketches for approval, and asked for any other input I may have to make the day as special as she could for the kids.

A few more sketches and emails later, we were set! The pirate cake is actually going to be a huge treasure chest, with booty richly overflowing out. But thats not all. Places on a cake board decorated like a desert island beach, she is going to make an edible replica of the treasure map I drew for the party! Add to that some mini-moulded pirate candles we bought to place around the map (5, of course), and we’re set. Exciting stuff aaargh!

[tags]pirate, pirate birthday, pirate cake[/tags]

Amid all our pirate excitement ( We had been practicing our pirate lingo at home, the birthday girl happily calling everyone in our household “Landlubber!“), I came home (with my find for the day no less, gold and black pirate hand hooks on sale for just 50 cents each!) to find my nearly-two-year-old boy (also a celebrant-to-be), vomiting.

Our nanny said that it was the second time that day, and she didnt’ seem to be too concerned. We gave him some water, and 5 minutes later he vomited it out. Then we tried juice. It came out. Then an ice lolly. Out. Ice chips. Out. More water. out. This went on for the next 2 hours. He was vomiting absolutely everything within minutes, it was of the frightening “projectile” sort.

I had of course called my pedia Dr.J by now, who told me that if I wasnt able to replace what he was vomiting out in the next hour or two, he’d probably have to be admitted to hospital that evening. Two hours later it was the same. He was vomiting every single thing that went in his mouth. He was also criying by now, and saying “Mommy, owie!”. It was heartbreaking. After a few more calls to Dr.J, I called my Mother to come and spend the night at our place and we headed for the hospital.

[tags]vomiting, sick kids, virus[/tags]

If you’ll notice from my previous posts, despite my pirate-fervor, my ability to “piratespeak” is simply pathetic. I can muster an “aarrgh” or a “shiver me timbers” with as much pirate gruff as that chap Orlando Bloom….which is no way the mother-pirate of the pirate lass celebrant is meant to be.

So getting into the spirit of things, I started doing more research on brushing up my “pirate”, and just discovered that “Speak Like A Pirate Day” occurs on September 19th, the day after my birthday! Lovely. Why have a holiday for these romanticized skurvy-ridden criminals? Heres what the folks at International Talk Like A Pirate Day convincingly say:

Make no mistake. We do. But it’s a little hard to articulate why, especially when you’ve made the mistake of referring to your wife as a scurvy bilge rat and tried to order her back into the galley.

Talking like a pirate is fun. It’s really that simple.

It gives your conversation a swagger, an elán, denied to landlocked lubbers. The best explanation came from a guy at a Cleveland radio station who interviewed us on the 2002 Talk Like a Pirate Day. He told us we were going to be buried by people asking for interviews because it was a “whimsical alternative” to all the serious things that were making the news so depressing.

In other words, silliness is the holiday’s best selling point.

Before we go any further, there’s something we need to be clear about. Pirates were and are bad people. Really reprehensible. Even the most casual exploration of the history of pirates (and believe us, casual is an accurate description of our research) leaves you hip deep in blood and barbarity. We recognize this, all right? We aren’t for one minute suggesting that real, honest-to-God pirates were in any way, shape or form worth emulating.

So what is it exactly that we’re celebrating here, if not pirates? What, you’re wondering, is the point?

We’re going to be painfully honest here, perhaps fatally so.

The point is, there is no point.

Its the last line that sold me. I love a little nonsense in my sometime serious world of parenting. Besides, it will thrill my little sea urchins em sure. Next post get ready for my favourite pirate lingo.

[tags]talk like a pirate day, pirate talk[/tags]

After my soon-to-be 5-year-old saw a fabulous pirate girl costume at our local party shop, it was a done deal. Its going to be a pirate party!! Luckily for Mom, the shop was on 50% off (hurrah!), so we stocked up on plates, hats, cups and so on. Next up was research time on the internet, as I was more of a girly kid in my youth, preferring princesses and castles to dirty, brazen-mouth pirates. I think my daughter takes after my hubby in that respect!

Online, I found some pretty great resources, like Birthday Party Ideas, which I would highly recommend for any parent planning any party. Written by parents who so kindly share their experience with loads of tips and advice, the site has all the birthday party themes any kid would want, with over 150 categories of fantastic birthday party ideas. I love it!!

For Pirate Kids party fayre, the site Pirate Party Food has some easy kid-friendly recipes to give you some creative ideas when planning for the party’s menu.

More ideas which came in handy were found at Boardman’s Birthday Party Ideas, like some thorough instructions for the invitations like how you should dip the paper in coffee for that old ragged look, and very pirate-y wording like:

“Aye…..ye be invited fer some birthday spirits at Captn Tyler’s Buccaneer Bash
Chart yer course fer the “location” ? day of month
We be a meetin at “time” fer some swashbuckling fun, grub and kiddie spirits.
Wave yer flag if ye be attendin or hav yer mum send message by yer phone to “number”
Sees ye there…..aarrgghh!

Yesterday we hit the shops in search for pirate loot for the prizes etc, and although we did find a good amount of stuff, I’m still kicking myself for not being more organized and getting stocked up at Halloween when all the pirate-y goods like skeletons, skulls and so forth were everywhere. But such is the last-minute decision making of 4-year-olds! I’ll have to search for my inner Martha now. Aaaarrgh!

[tags]Pirate party, kids’s party, birthdays, 5th birthday[/tags]

If you haven’t worked out your childrens’ Halloween costume yet (which is highly unlikely), you may be needing some last-minute-ideas. As our society is sadly at the whim of Hollywood, some of the favourites this year are in the film category. So think of Pirates of the Carribean, Superman (this one is a mainstay really), Princesses, Angels and Devils.

If you already have stuff at home you can recycle, all the better! As my daughter has three Halloween parties over the weekend, two of them on the same day - I didn’t want to spoil the “Jessie” costume for the later event, so I made her a “makeshift” angel costume from what we had at home. Namely:

1 pair of feathered angel wings (bought about 3 years ago and still in good condition)

1 “magic” white shirt (her Grandmother got this in Vegas, its “magic” because its as tiny as a doll’s shirt but expands to fit everyone - even my husband, who is a pretty big man- it also has an “icing-like” texture which goes perfectly with the look)

1 white crinkle skirt with silver sequined garter. (the Issey Miyake crumpled look complemented the rest of the outfit well)

1 pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers (ok, this did not really go, but it probably wont fit her next month, and she loves it, so hey)

It took about 5 minutes to assemble, then topped off with a nice bubbly white hair accessory - voila!!

[tags]Halloween costumes,kids costumes,Toy Story,Angel costume[/tags]