I’ve been thinking a lot about summer camp lately.  Yes, both of my kids are under the age of 5, ut yet summer camp is invading my thoughts everyday.

You see, my daughter goes to a Montessori pre-school.  The key word beings school.  They take the summer off and run a summer program.  However, the summer program is more expensive than the regular school year program and we like to keep our options open.

Summer camps have been advertising since early January.  Last year I had no clue that you needed to have your camp plan taken care of before Spring.  But that was a lesson learned and this year we were ready! My holiday season included: Thanksgiving grocery shopping, Christmas shopping and Summer Camp shopping!

So how do you find a summer camp?  My best suggestion is to ask.

• Ask your neighbors, local friends with kids, etc.  As you know, other parents are often the best advisors.
• Then, check other people’s reviews on the camp.  Just because one person had a good experience doesn’t mean that the majority of people have had positive experiences.
• If possible visit the camp.  This requires some pre-planning - you’ll want to visit while the camp is in session, so you’ll need to make your list of camps at least the summer before you’ll need one.
• Talk to kids who have gone to the camp.  Ask them about their counselors, the activities, other kids, etc.
• Talk to the camp director.  Ask him or her to send you a calendar of activities, reccomendations, demographics, etc.
• Talk to your child about what they like to do.  This of course depends on your child’s age and ability to tell you what they like, but it is invaluable information.
• After all that, the decision is up to you.  Good luck!

Do you have a summer camp you love?  Let us know!  Email me at andrea (at) PARENTise (dot) com

Lately I’ve found myself running.  I run at home, I run on the road and I run at the gym.  As a Mom to 2 little ones I find myself running a lot - but this is different.  I’ve been running on purpose - with a purpose.  I’ve joined Team in Training - a great program that raises money to help fund research to cure Leukemia and Lymphoma by training ordinary people like me to perform in endurance events and .  I’ve chosen to run a 1/2 marathon - other events include marathons, triathlons, century bike races and more.

The funny thing is that I used to run - in high school I ran Winter and Spring track - specializing in the sprints and hurdles.  The key word is sprints - I’ve never enjoyed running long distances and I’ve even been known to say that I won’t run more than a mile unless someone is chasing me.

Well - that is no longer true.  I’ve undertaken the Team in Training program for many reasons - I’m raising money to help cure Leukemia and Lymphoma, I’m training to do something that I’ve never done before and I’m showing my girls that exercise and fitness are important.

I struggle with teaching my kids many things - but teaching them that fitness is important and not just about weight loss is a big one.  Over the past few weeks my kids have been watching me run - Mommy running on the treadmill, Mommy running outside past the Y, Mommy pushing the stroller running…Mommy running A LOT!  While I was running today my daughter said that she liked running with me and wanted to do it again.  Then she asked if I would show her my muscles!

It was a great moment for me.  To me it meant that she liked being outside and doing an activity with me - but equally importantly - she liked doing something that required physical activity.

So, I’m doing Team in Training for a lot of reasons - teaching my girls that fitness is important and that Mommy is strong is just one - but it’s a really good one!

If you’d like to help me on my journey to raise funds to find a cure for Leukemia and Lymphoma - you can make a donation on my fundraising page. Thank you!

I love going to the movies.  I haven’t been going so much since the kids were born.  When my children were babies - sleeping more than 10 hours a day, not speaking, able to be comforted by shushing and rocking…etc. - I used to take them to the movie theatre in the middle of the day and enjoy a flick.  They slept through it - I got some time to do something I love and we were all happy.

I wish I had known about Baby Nights at the movies.  What a great thing.  A special showing for you to bring your baby - so if something should happen - the baby wakes up, starts crying, needs to eat, etc. - you don’t have to run out of the theatre with your head down and the diaper bag dragging behind you.

I like that idea.  I wish that had one for toddlers.  If you know of one - let me know.

Here’s one I found recently: http://www.thecolonialtheatre.com/ Have you been?  Did you enjoy it?

If you know of a good place to go please share!

I think we made a mistake with our kids names.  No, not the mistake that my mother thinks we made (she’s not into the gender neutral names) - but a mistake that I couldn’t have anticipated until I actually became a parent of a child who could speak and tell me what she wanted.

You see, while I love my kids names - the names are somewhat unique.  Mind you - I didn’t name my child Tu Morrow, Moxie CrimeFighter, Pilot Inspektor, Bogart or even Audio Science.   No, my girls have fairly ordinary names in comparison, but they don’t fall into the Christina, Julia, Logan or Brooke category either.

So, what is the problem.  The issue we’ve come across is that when it comes to personalized cups, key chains, magnets, etc. my girls names’ don’t appear.  In the past 2 weeks we’ve visited two stores that had cute personalized cups.  My oldest daughter went through each of them - finding the names of kids from school, cousins and neighbors.  She didn’t find her name and she didn’t find her sister’s name.  She wanted to know why.  I told her that she was special and her name was only on special things.  She accepted it.

It worked in the moment, but I have a feeling that is going to wear thin after a while.  I think I should prepare for a meltdown one day when she can’t find the barrette with her name, or the bookmark or the door hanger…the list goes on.  I’ll probably also have to invest in some customized items.

If only I had known I might have named them differently…or not.

The holidays are such a great time of year.  Friends call just to say hi, families get together and are nice to each other.  Giving is considered part of the fun and…if only it were that easy.

As parents, the holiday times often mean shopping for just the right gift - budgeting to make sure that you can afford everything, hiding things, putting things together, making sure the batteries are in the package, getting kids to sleep in time to build the bike or wrap the presents.

Whatever holiday you celebrate - I’m sure you agree - celebrating holidays as a parent is much different than celebrating holidays without kids.

This is the first year that I’ve really “gotten” that.  My daughter is old enough to be aware of all of the holiday hoopla going on around us.  She noticed that we didn’t have our lights up - but the neighbors did…they went up that night - nothing like a little kid pressure.

She started asking about Santa - something we didn’t really anticipate having to talk about.  We had to make decisions - do presents go under the tree before Christmas Eve or not until after they go to sleep.  (The conundrum being that if Santa brings the presents than how did they get there before Christmas).  Do we let her tell us what she wants from Santa or not?  Should we even talk about Santa?

This year - I’ve struggled the most with teaching her about the true meaning of Christmas as well as teaching her about the cultural meaning.  We’ve talked about the birth of Jesus - and how Christmas is really about his birthday - but I think that Santa and his elves is getting more air time in her head.

Even now - as I write this - the holiday is almost over and I don’t feel like I have a handle on it yet.

Ahh…the Holidays - there is nothing like them…

Guest Post by: Michelle Eisenberg

Imagine having a boss who contradicts you, micro-manages you, changes his mind every 5 seconds, and screams when he doesn’t get his way. Now imagine that boss is a mere 3 feet tall, still wearing diapers, and has the look of an angel when he’s asleep.

Welcome to the Terrible Twos, whose primary symptom is “medically” known as “negativism.”

Does this sound familiar?

“What color is this milk, Mama?”

“It’s white.”

“No it’s not, it’s red.”

Or how about:

“Mommy needs to cook dinner now, sweet pea.”

“No. You don’t want to.”

What seems like “bad behavior” the parenting gurus all say is a completely normal part of how toddlers figure out how to be people – by testing reality and imagination, by asserting their self-determination, and by experimenting with conversation. So much of their day-to-day existence is determined by other people, they try to exert control over whatever they can, social boundaries and patent logic be damned!

Sure, there are little reverse-psychology tactics that work for a while, or you can just change the subject rather than letting one of these exchanges escalate. But your contrarian will likely be this way until he or she is truly old enough to be reasoned with.

So that leaves it to the parent to truly be the bigger person and not let the constant “no”s drive you mental.

A friend once asked me what I thought was the hardest part about being a parent. Without hesitation, I said that for me, it was accepting not being in the driver’s seat. 9 times out of 10 (maybe 8 out of 10 as they get older and you get wiser) any given decision you make – skipping a shower, leaving the birthday party early, driving around until naptime (in the back seat!) is over – revolves around what your kid needs. It’s just what you do as a parent, and sometimes it makes you feel like a chump, and sometimes you are deeply humbled when you realize that somewhere along the line someone went through all of this for you, too.

Make no mistake, though, there will be times when that normally-so-adorable little person hits you in anger, tells you to take off your glasses for the fortieth time, or insists for the thousandth time that his (perfectly comfortable!) pants hurt him, you will want to scream and rant and be obnoxious right back.

But you can’t. Because then you’d be acting like… a two-year-old.

As a parent of two young children, I struggle with how to teach my kids about giving.  My 3yo has giving birthday presents down to a science, she can pick out the present, sign the card and happily deposit the present in the appropriate location at the party - but - how do you push through that and help children to realize that giving is more than giving to people you know - or giving toys.  How do you teach children to that others have so much less than they do…that there are others who don’t have toys strewn around the house - or the luxury of not liking what’s for dinner.

With all this on my mind - I was so excited to click open the latest edition of Classic Play - The Giving Issue.

With a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmellows) I read about a Mom who introduced her son to a leukemia patient who was an honoree of Team in Training. I got some great ideas from a Mom who brought her kids to see a house being built by Habitat For Humanity. I even got some input from another Mom who deals with the dinner time - “I don’t like that” - whining the same way I do - by saying - there are starving children in (pick a place) that don’t have food.

I feel ready to get my kids started with giving this year. I only hope they get as much out of it as I want them to.

Last night my husband and I took our 2 little ones to the local Picture People studio.  We’ve been to the studio before and it’s never been a bad experience…and last night wasn’t either…but…and there is always a but - it wasn’t good either.

They had a Santa there - which was nice - but many young kids are scared of Santa - so it didn’t seem to be a really great idea.  More interesting was that the Santa didn’t really seem to have a role.  We weren’t asked if we wanted the kids to sit with him - he was just there.

Add to that the fact that my kids take a long time to warm up to strange men - strike that - they take a long time to warm up to men in general.  By men I mean anyone from my brothers to our good family friends.  So, when the photographer came to take us back to the room, I knew we were in for it.

When he started shooting and the kids wouldn’t leave our arms - I knew the night was shot.  But it was officially confirmed when he started commenting that he knew he had THE shot - I could tell that there wasn’t a single shot I was going to be ecstatic over.

When we finally sat down for what I fondly call “the sales pitch” - where they show you your pictures and try their darndest to upsell you to their picture packages and frames, I became completely deflated.

The great shots he had gotten - not so great.  The kids weren’t looking at the camera, one or the other of them was facing in the wrong direction and/or they were just not great shots of my special little ones.

Now in their defense - taking pictures of an under 2 and a 3 year old is difficult, but - still - it just didn’t go well at all.  I expected better.  I expected better for many reasons - first because they aren’t what I call cheap - or even reasonably priced - they are on the expensive side - we paid about $40 for 6 photos.  Secondly, they are a “leader” at what they do.

I don’t know if we’ll go back - but to be honest, I’m not sure where we’ll go.  I would love to have a photographer come to our house or to a studio and take customize photos.  But that’s too expensive for us.  I’d be happy to take the photos myself - I love to do it - but we don’t have a backdrop.

Any thoughts?