holidays

“How old are you?” “Two!”

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Dear Lord, my kid is two. How the hell did that happen?

There’s the obvious answer, which I think whenever someone says, “He’s so big!” – “Well, yes, they do tend to grow.”

But as someone who has been there every day, the movement of time and his growth is different to me. I talked about this in my post on his six month birthday and I think it still holds true: kids break the space-time continuum. There’s such a mix of how we as parents process change. Some days, Chris and I gape at his expanding vocabulary or some other new feat. Other days just seem like a repeat of the one before, a well-worn routine. Some days I wish I had infinitely more hours with him and some need to have ended before naptime. Some of those are actually the same day. All of them are exhausting, whether in exhilaration, frustration, or some combination of the two.

And yet, they are each just days. Each moment is longer to him than an adult, so it’s longer to me too. I used to think more in months and years, but those timespans now seem too long to contemplate. I have to plan further ahead now – no impromptu Saturday treks into the city – but each moment is more drawn out, more intensely felt. In my late 20s, a year used to feel like not so long after all; now it again feels like an eternity, as it did when I was a child.

Looking back just a year ago, Sprout’s changed so much. While he couldn’t even walk then, now he’s running, climbing playground equipment, and jumping on the bed. (So much jumping.) On the morning of his birthday, he was even tooling around on his present, a classic blue Schwinn balance bike. His reaction to his first birthday cake was ambivalent, as he made a mess without much of it actually ending up in his mouth. But when he saw the cupcakes we bought him for his second birthday, he started yelling, “cupcake, cupcake!” He’s maintained his ability to quietly observe, but often not-so-quietly observes, pointing and labeling everything that excites him, especially basketballs and buses. He requests songs and tries to sing, even when he knows fewer than half of the words. He knows the names of his favorite books and animals, cherishing them both. He’s willing to try new foods, but also spits them out without regret, handing them over to me with a definitive “no.” Whereas I couldn’t tell when he was little if he was enjoying something, now his smile is so big it consumes me. Even when he’s focused too hard to smile, his eyes dance.

I’ve enjoyed this past year so deeply. Although some people love caring for a newborn, my favorite thing in parenting has been watching Sprout’s personality blossom. While it started emerging in his first year, it truly became so much more vibrant this past one. I also love that when I share my favorite things with him, he’s starting to appreciate them. Even when they don’t work out perfectly, that time spent together is beautiful.

Happy second birthday, to my sweet, lovable, brilliant son. May we have an even more incredible year together to come.

In (Belated) Honor of Mother’s Day

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Knowing I’m the mother of a small child, multiple people this morning asked me how my Mother’s Day went. I could definitively say that it was wonderful. For breakfast – not in bed, too many crumbs – Chris made french toast with farmers’ market strawberries. At church, my friend Teresa took Sprout to kids’ class for the first time and said he behaved fantastically. The little bit of marker on his shirt was very much worth it for the hand-made card. In the afternoon, we hiked the Rock Creek Trail, a paved path that runs 20 miles from the suburbs into the heart of D.C. We saw a thick black water snake, ducks, three white-tailed deer, fish, and plenty of squirrels. Sprout loved his perch up in the baby backpack. Instead of a hotel or restaurant brunch, we went to Taiwanese dim sum for dinner, where we got a ton of food for $30, including as many noodles as Sprout could shove into his mouth. It was a Mother’s Day very much suited for this particular mommy, without any of the commercial trappings but with all of the love I could imagine.

But as lovely as my day was, I know Mother’s Day can be incredibly painful for many women. Whether because they wanted to be mothers and could not; have lost children to physical illness, accidents, or broken relationships; or have no contact with their own mothers, this particular celebration can feel very exclusionary. That’s why I loved the Litany for Mother’s Day that we printed in our church bulletin yesterday. My friend Rev. Deb Vaughn, was guest preaching, and I thought it was incredibly sensitive of her to include it.

Even if you aren’t familiar with the particular stories of these Biblical figures, I think their experiences ring true to many people:

We remember Sarai who was taunted by others in the household because of her inability to have children.
All-encompassing God, we pray for those who feel excluded when we emphasis one kind of family as normal.

We remember Esther, who was adopted and raised by her cousin.
God who embraces us all, we pray for those who cannot be raised by their parents, for a short time or permanently.

We remember Jochebed, the mother of Moses, who placed him into a raft on the river.
Saving God, we pray for parents who struggle to raise their children in oppressive circumstances.

We remember Hannah, who loved her child so much she handed him over to another to raise.
Loving God, we pray for parents who have placed their child in another family.

We remember Naomi, who grieved the death of her sons.
God, who grieves with us, we pray for parents who mourn the death of a child.

We remember Ruth, who gave up her family to be family to another.
Inclusive God, we pray for those who choose to be family to those isolated by culture or language or distance.

We remember Elizabeth, who had a child in old age and we remember Mary, who had a child as a teenager.
Ageless God, we pray that as a community we accept people of varying life stages and responsibilities and relationships.

We remember Rachel, crying for her children.
God of justice and hope, we pray for those whose children are killed, and look to a time when children can live safely in their communities.

We remember Lois and Eunice, who taught Timothy faith by example.
Faithful God we pray for those who teach us faith by their lives, may we remember that we also teach about you in the way we live.

We remember other people, not named in the Scriptures, like the mother of the prodigal son.
Companion God, we pray for those who wait for a phone call or a visit, cut off from family and friends by distance and disagreement.

Nurturing God, we give thanks for those
who enrich our lives by their presence
who teach us about your abundant love
who encourage us to journey in faith.

(c) Rev Patty Lawrence

I hope that no matter your circumstance in life, no matter if you are a parent or not, that you have or are able to find a family – whether biological or not – who loves you as mine does. That is my Mother’s Day hope and prayer for all people.

Easter with All the Trappings

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

While I celebrate Easter as a Christian, I also appreciate its spring celebration aspects as well. Needless to say, rabbits and eggs are much more about fertility than Jesus. So somewhere between the seasonal, commercial, and religious, we celebrated Easter in its many weird forms.

We were partly motivated by my in-laws visiting for the weekend. Because it was too cold to do anything outside, my mother-in-law wanted Sprout to get photos with the Easter Bunny. While I have conflicting feelings about Santa, I’m just apathetic about the Bunny. Considering Sprout’s highly negative reaction to Santa at Christmas, I didn’t have high hopes for the Bunny. I was mostly right. Sprout stood calmly in front of the Bunny, leaning forward to peer at him from a foot or two away. But when we tried to put him on the Bunny’s lap, a wordless look of panic crossed his face. He held out his arms, looked at me and pleaded, “Mama mama!” After only a few moments, I declared it a lost cause and picked him up. I’m not going to try to convince my kid to grin when he’s terrified. The photographer got in one photo before he got properly upset, but he’s far from smiling. My mother-in-law was happy with it though, which was enough for me.

Our other Easter activity that day – dyeing eggs – went over much better. Sprout knows the word “egg” and is starting to learn his colors, so it combined two exciting things for him. I’m not sure, but I think he jumped to the conclusion that the different shades of colored water were paint. (He’s familiar with the idea from the book Mouse Paint, where white mice jump into jars of paint and mix them together.) So when we showed him what happened when you drop a white egg in colored water, much like a white mouse climbing into paint, he caught on very quickly. Despite our cautions to be “gentle, gentle,” he dropped almost every egg into its respective cup of water from a substantial height. Of course, he managed to avoid getting splashed – it all ended up on my mother-in-law’s shirt instead. Thankfully, food coloring does wash out.

The next morning, our dyeing paid off, despite my initial hesitation. While I was afraid Sprout was going to step on them, my mother-in-law convinced me to do a gentle introduction to egg hunting with him on Easter morning. We spread the eggs out on the rug and gave him the carton to put them in. He methodically picked up each egg, looked it as we named the color, and placed it neatly in the carton. The adults actually came much closer to stepping on the eggs than he did! His basket was filled with plastic eggs, which he also loved playing with. Even now, he’s constantly picking them up, opening and closing them and putting them back in the basket. Woe to me for thinking a toddler wouldn’t like filling something up and dumping it back out!

Sprout only received one Easter basket, filled to the brim with sweets. I knew that my in-laws were going to give him candy – even though they knew we would eat most of it – so I didn’t want to do that as well. Besides, candy is one of those things I won’t bother giving him until he asks for it. Instead, I bought him two spring related presents – a set of real gardening tools made for children and the complete collection of Beatrix Potter stories. Both are fabulous, although I severely underestimated how much of a tome the stories were. Hopefully he’ll understand that we can’t read them all in one pre-bedtime session!

After we opened baskets, it was time to go to church. While we had family Easter egg hunts in the past, we included the general public this year for the first time as an outreach event. One of the other church members brought 200 eggs to hide, which I thought was going to be more than enough. Of course, any time you’re overly confident about something, it backfires spectacularly. Much to my surprise, 10 minutes before the hunt was supposed to start, we had a tremendous group of children and parents all over our front churchyard. And a bunch of kids were putting eggs in baskets before I had the chance to say, “Go!” In literally less than 5 minutes, all of the eggs were gone. Knowing that other families were going to show up a little late, I scrounged eggs from Sprout’s basket and that of the church kids’ and re-hid them so they would at least have something to look for. Thankfully, the same folks who brought the eggs also brought extra goodie bags of random toys and candy, so all of the kids that had very few to hunt for at least got goodie bags. We also had a plethora of sweets, so my fellow-church goer Jan made sure every kid got a cookie or cupcake. Thank goodness for extra cookies. I still felt terrible when we had to tell families that there weren’t any eggs left though. At least we have some lessons learned for next year.

The day finished off with dinner at a restaurant modeled after an Adirondack or Rocky Mountains lodge, all wood crossbeams and duck decoys. My father-in-law – who is a pickier eater than Sprout – enjoys the food and the decor. Plus, as Sprout loves running up and down a ramp it has decorated with twinkle lights, we acquiesced to his request of “walk, walk!” several times. He also managed to put away a truly ungodly amount of macaroni and cheese.

Except for a few bobbles, our Easter turned out pretty darn well.

Halfway through the Dark – Traveling Home for Christmas

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

In the midst of winter, we rage against the darkness with as much love and joy as we can muster, celebrating with family and friends. I celebrate Christmas, but it is only one holiday among many, whether it is New Years, Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or earlier in autumn, Diwali. We prepare ourselves for the coming cold by surrounding ourselves with light. This year, our family was so fortunate to be surrounded with love, even when we stumbled a bit.

Unlike many families, Chris and I never had to worry about sharing Christmas between two sets of parents. As we were high school sweethearts, our parents still live four miles apart. For the past several years, we’ve actually done a joint holiday, where we open presents separately at each house in the morning and then all have dinner together. This year, we stayed at Chris’ parents house for the whole week, along with his sister and brother-in-law.

But unlike previous years, we had a toddler. While Sprout was in our midst last Christmas, he was barely sitting up, much less mobile. He required constant supervision, but at least stayed where you put him. Last Christmas Day, we were able to prop him up in a laundry basket while he looked adorable in his little Santa pajamas. This year, he was everywhere all at once all of the time. Between the relatives and an endless parade of guests (Christmas Eve, Christmas dinner, the day after Christmas), plus the tree and decorations, there was a palable sense of excitement. Needless to say, there was none of his normal interest in sitting quietly by himself flipping through a book.

Adding to this chaos was a number of non-human friends. My sister and brother-in-law brought their schauzer puppy, Jasper, who is about half Sprout’s size. They became fast friends. Sprout would slowly pet him on the back saying, “Niiiice” in a tone that my sister-in-law likened to Borat. While he did become bolder over time, I was proud of how gentle and kind Sprout was to Jasper. Occasionally the constant petting became a bit much, but in general Jasper was very tolerant and enjoyed Sprout’s company. One of them was almost always following the other around. When I took Sprout over to my parents’ house, Jasper was genuinely excited when he returned. He was even protective of Sprout, barking when he thought he was doing something dangerous.

The other non-human friends were a bit more – mechanical. My mother-in-law loves singing animatronic Christmas decorations. In addition to her “people” (little synchronized carolers), a singing stuffed Santa, a set of Disney characters playing instruments, and a penguin, she bought Sprout a singing Christmas tree that was about half his height. To the tune of Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, it bounced, its mouth moved, and its little lights blinked. It was cute the first few times. On repeat number 10, it became intensely grating, especially when Sprout turned on all of the singing creatures simultaneously. It also bothered me that they mesmerized Sprout even more than TV. We hoped Jasper would attack them and force a retreat, but he seemed to enjoy them as well. Which meant the rest of us either had to tolerate the same recorded songs over and over and over again or whining that we hid the toys on him. We settled on some combination of the two, along with a heavy dose of distraction. Even my mother-in-law became sick of them eventually – it took a toddler for her to realize that someone could love her “people” even more than she did.

While Sprout was wonderfully careful around the dog and fragile decorations, we started to see some of the fabled toddler defiance emerging. He began saying “No!” with a snotty edge in his voice and a pout. He degenerated into mini-meltdowns a few times, both conveniently in public, at restaurants. Thankfully, getting away from the table helped calm him down significantly. I know that won’t always work in the future, so I’m working on my bag of tricks, including deep breathing (for him and me).

I couldn’t blame him for being on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster – everything was so confusing. After an absolutely bonkers December with the first two weeks spent traveling, we bopped from house to house several times over the course of the week. On the way there and back, we slept over at my aunt’s house. Once we were in upstate New York, we spent half of the time at my in-laws and half the time at my parents’ houses. And we weren’t alone in those places. As Sprout is starting to be afraid of strangers, the crowd of unfamiliar extended family and friends must have been disorienting. Considering how much was new and overstimulating, he did extremely well.

With all of the other thrills, he wasn’t that excited by Christmas Day. He’s too young to enjoy anticipation, so unwrapping presents confused him. His very first present was a Little Tykes slide and once he saw that, he wasn’t interested in sitting still enough to open anything else. To him, the wrapped presents were just fancy boxes.

Eventually, he did open them all with a bit of help. I wouldn’t say otherwise (of course), but I was extremely pleased with what everyone got him. While I wrote a list, I knew folks were going to buy items that weren’t listed. Fortunately, all of our relatives stuck to giving the types of toys we value – active, creative, practical, durable, and not electronic.

Chris and I chose to make the trek up to the great, cold north so that we can spend it with our family and old friends. It was worth every mile.

Why I Will Never Buy Elf on the Shelf

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 12 Comments

The Elf on the Shelf is more than just an annoyance – it also promotes a lot of terrible values. Here’s why I will never buy Elf on the Shelf. 

Why I Will Never Buy Elf on the Shelf (Photo: Picture of the Elf on the Shelf with a No Sign Through It)

Wandering the bookstore in December, looking for gifts, I really hope that my four-year-old doesn’t notice – or at least doesn’t care about – the Elf on the Shelf prominently displayed by the check-out counter. While I know it’s a beloved tradition in many families, I kind of hate the thing. Besides its aesthetics, it stands for a bunch of values that are the opposite of what I want to teach my kids.

For those who have had the good fortune of avoiding the Elf on the Shelf, it’s stuffed elf that comes with a book. The main idea is that the Elf is a spy for Santa who watches the kids all day and reports back every night. Each morning, the parent puts the Elf in a different place, some of which involve increasingly complicated scenarios. While I normally love toys that come with books, the only thing the Elf on the Shelf is good for is these hilarious photos that reveal the Elf in some very compromised situations.

Here’s why I will never buy the Elf on the Shelf:

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A Puppet Show for the Tinest of Tots

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

When I was a little girl, my mom brought me to the summer home of the New York City ballet every year. At a young age, Chris knew the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack and was in three high school plays. So it was inevitable that we were going to introduce Sprout to the theater. I found the perfect opportunity at a local children’s theater company, which puts on shows for little ones called Tiny Tots. The shows are a half-hour long, the lights stay on, they understand if you have to leave in the middle of the performance, and tickets are only five bucks a person. As I wanted to do one, single family holiday activity before Christmas, their presentation of “Nutcracker Fantasy” was perfect.

Evidently, we weren’t the only parents with the same train of thought. There was a whole mess of toddlers (clearly the correct word for a group of toddlers) with their parents in the theater’s lobby. They were quite well-behaved, even when we had to wait in line to get in and again for the show to start. The theater was small, with a carpeted floor with a single long step across the room and bench seating along the wall. The stage was simple – curtains on the sides and a draped balustrade along the back.

As everyone finished settling in, our puppeteer came out for a brief introduction. Explaining that he used to work on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (!) and The Muppets (!!), he said he was familiar with all sorts of puppets. While describing the difference between mouth puppets that talk and marionettes on strings, he demonstrated of how to construct a muppet of the Nutcracker King. It was a nice introduction to the kids who had only seen mouth puppets (otherwise known as muppets) and held everyone’s attention while they seated a few more families.

He then moved on to the actual show, which mainly consisted of the fun dance parts of the Nutcracker. One marionette was a snow lady with naughty little snowflakes that ran away. A poofy poodle juggled snowballs. A Chinese acrobat did flips and balanced a plate on his head. Individual round, green puppets (“I think they’re trees?” I whispered) came together to form a Chinese dragon. A turtle on roller skates jumped and flipped. Elegant plants swooped to the famous Dance of the Flowers.

As his background would suggest, the puppeteer was very talented. His fluid, tiny gestures made it appear as if the puppet itself was doing all of the work. Even though they didn’t speak, each character had a distinct personality and interacted with him in their own unique manner.

Each section followed the same pattern, so it was easy for the little ones to follow along. The puppeteer gave a short introduction to each character, often referring to them as “my friend.” He then brought out the marionette, who did some sort of trick. In several cases, the character was “not very good” at the trick, so they had to try it a couple times with the puppeteers’ encouragement. While most of the puppets’ incompetence was on purpose, one of the dog’s strings broke and a snowball actually fell into the audience. In the end, the character succeeded at the task and moved off-stage. Each vignette was only a few minutes long.

Despite the simplicity of the set-up, there seemed to be a level of confusion among the adults. I heard at least one person say, “Where’s the Nutcracker?” I suspect there were also some parents who agreed with a Yelp review that complained you could see the puppeteer. Neither of these things bothered me though. The plot of the Nutcracker is notoriously thin and toddlers wouldn’t be able to follow it anyway. While some of the characters weren’t in the original story (I don’t recall any frogs on roller skates), the kids didn’t seem to care. Being disappointed at seeing the puppeteer I think is due to a bit of a lack of imagination on the adults’ part. I’m not a great puppeteer and I’ve had children much older than toddlers talk to a puppet I was controlling as if I wasn’t present at all.

In contrast to their parents, the kids were totally mesmerized. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of calmer, quieter non-sleeping toddlers. Sprout watched the whole thing on my lap, thoughtfully chewing on his hand. The kids started getting a little antsy towards the end, but even that was limited to a few comments and squirms. Parents in the audience only brought a few kids out into the hallway, which was impressive for a packed house.

Overall, I was quite impressed, although there were a few things I would change. The design of the Chinese acrobat puppet played off unfortunate racial stereotypes. While I understand that communicating facial features of people of color can be particularly challenging in a puppet, I wish it wasn’t so Fu Manchu-esque. The other thing that grated to me just a bit was that the puppeteer was somewhat demeaning to the puppets who didn’t “want” to try their trick. As the characters were a bit kid-like, I thought he could have a more encouraging tone.

Considering that the show was a great introduction to the theater, Sprout loved it, and it was cheap, we’re sure to be back to the Tiny Tots show in the future.

Thankful for All of Our Families

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

We have so much to be thankful for. That’s never been more apparent than this past Thanksgiving, when we had not just one, but two different feasts with our church and biological families.

Usually, we trek home to upstate New York for Thanksgiving. But as it takes us close to 10 hours to get there and we’re going home for Christmas, we had no desire to make that drive twice in a month. Plus, a quirk of bad work scheduling means that I am traveling the first two weeks of December.

Instead, this year our parents came to us. I’m an only child, so it was simple for my mom and dad. For Chris’s parents, it was a bit more complicated – his sister lives in Las Vegas. As they couldn’t be on two coasts simultaneously, we delayed our Thanksgiving until Saturday.

Nonetheless, we carried out some Thanksgiving traditions on Thursday. Chris baked off Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, a treat his family has every holiday. We plopped on the couch for the Macy’s parade, which enthralled Sprout. He grooved to the Broadway numbers, tried to lift his leg like the Rockettes, “toot toot”ed at the Thomas the Train balloon, and loved the Sesame Street float.

With the afternoon free, we joined our church’s Thanksgiving dinner. We have one every year for congregants who aren’t leaving town, along with any family or friends they bring. This year, it was Chris, Sprout and I, my parents, another couple from our church with a small child, my pastor and his family, and one of my pastor’s homeless friends. The table was full of conversation and laughter. One of the more amusing incidents was my pastor’s son describing an imaginary Blue’s Clues parody that involved Blue rabidly attacking the videocamera and Steve using Slippery Soap to take a shower. While it was pretty funny, his dad shut it down before it got even longer and more inappropriate.

After dinner, several of us participated in the nerd-traditional post-meal activity of playing video games, namely an eight-person game of Super Smash Brothers. I couldn’t figure out where my character was half of the time, but it was a lot of fun. While the babies couldn’t play, they kept busy building towers out of Megablocks. Later on, we put them on the piano bench and they played the cutest little duet I’ve ever seen. While it sounded like a modernist sound piece, they were tapping on the keys rather than banging, which was impressive for a couple of toddlers.

That night, we pulled out the board and card games. After a couple games, my dad headed to bed while Chris, my mom, and I stayed up with a bottle of red wine. Although I had earlier insisted that six bottles of wine was too much for the weekend, I was clearly wrong. A couple of glasses each fueled a conversation about drunken escapades, poorly thought-out decisions, and other quirks of adulthood that was so engaging that we completely lost track of our game of 500 Rummy.

My in-laws arrived on Friday night, making the party complete. I’m extraordinarily fortunate to have a great relationship with them. As Chris and I were high-school sweethearts, I basically grew up with them.

Despite all of the company, I was relaxed. While I sometimes get defensive when visitors help with the dishes or clean my house, I accepted the assistance. As the grandparents adored playing with Sprout, I was happy to give them that time. At work, I’ve been sprinting from one project to another, so it was good to physically and mentally rest.

Thanksgiving dinner was similarly lacking in disaster. The menu was fairly traditional – turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, canned cranberry sauce (with ridges, of course), Crescent rolls, green beans, corn, and carrots. As it was the first Thanksgiving we ever hosted, we made some compromises – my family’s sweet potato casserole instead of his apples and yams, his canned cranberry sauce instead of my cranberry jello mold. We made about a million trips to the store and ran the dishwasher about 10 times, but that happens any time Chris takes on a big cooking project. The only thing that didn’t go quite according to plan was that for all of our existing kitchen equipment, we had to buy a turkey baster after the bird already went in the oven.Our Thanksgiving turkey.

We even had time for some family activities. Heading over to the park, we found out that Sprout is very interested in basketball but tragically a little too short to play it yet. Our park has a “funnel ball” game, where you toss a ball up into a big funnel and it falls out of one of three holes. The adults were playing it, although we weren’t very good at actually getting it in the hoop. After watching us, Sprout took his ball, walked up to the pole supporting the funnel, stood up on his tip-toes, and threw it as hard as he could. Which was about three inches. And then he did it again and again. He was convinced that if he just tried hard enough, he would get it in. When we lifted him up to help him out, he was just pissed that he was still too short to get it in the funnel. He finally got so frustrated that we had to move on to a different part of the playground to prevent a full-blown tantrum. I had to admire his can-do spirit though.

The last day, we went to the National Zoo to see their Christmas light display. Needless to say, it was far more successful than our last trip there. While many of the exhibits were closing when we arrived, we saw some animals who are often hiding in the heat. Sprout watched the furry beaver intently as it ambled along and then splashed into the water. As he woofed at the wolf, it sulked by and then cast an intense gaze on him. He also liked the farm animals, especially the huge Holstein cow who had an astoundingly low moo. But his favorite part was the holiday train display, where he just stared at the three levels of trains going around and around and around for a good ten minutes.

I’m so grateful that I could spend the holidays with so many people who are both weird and wonderful.

The Best Ethically-Made Toys for Your Holiday Gifts

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 12 Comments

Ethically-made toys can be challenging to find, but these companies make toys in an ethical manner. 

The Best Ethically-Made Toys for Your Holiday Gifts (Photo: Toy fire truck, pounding hammer toy, stuffed raccoon, green wooden toy car)

Browsing the internet and flipping through catalogs, I sigh and frown. I wonder if the toys I’m buying my kids for Christmas won’t just make them happy, but will also do good in the world. While I want them to enjoy them, I don’t want their toys to cause toxic pollution or be made by people who are underpaid and treated poorly.

Ideally, I’d love to buy perfectly ethically-made toys, with workers paid well in safe conditions, materials that are sourced in environmentally-friendly ways, and production that supports local economies. Of course, I also want them to be high quality, encourage creative play, and be usable over a long period of time.

While there’s no such thing as a perfect product, the companies that produce these ethically-made toys get about as close as possible. This post is not sponsored and I do not have affiliate links with these companies. I just personally like them and want to encourage ethical shopping.

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A Halloweening We Will Go

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Halloween is a holiday that is a hell of a lot more fun with kids. I love Halloween, but as an adult, I’ve found it oddly dissatisfying. As a teenager, I imagined celebrating Halloween as an adult would be mysterious and attractively dark, like a Victorian masquerade ball. But instead, I found out that people’s costumes are less interesting, parties are less well-attended, and it’s just another excuse to drink. While I suspect adulthood in general would be disappointing to my teenage self, I did rekindle my love of the holiday this year through a series of activities with Sprout. With a kid, you once again have an excuse to participate in all of the Halloween activities you remember nostalgically.

Our Halloween started early, with the Silver Spring Zombie Walk followed by a whole week of activities. My newly retired mom came down for the week to celebrate with us, bringing Sprout’s costume with her. She sewed all of my beautiful, original Halloween costumes, so of course we wanted her to make Sprout’s as well. (Unfortunately, her craftiness did not pass on to me.) We ended up picking a dinosaur, as he refuses to wear hats and it was the one toddler costume that didn’t need head-gear to be recognizable. Although I wasn’t impressed with the photo on the pattern envelope, my mom turned the costume into something spectacular. She found scaly, shiny green fabric that gave him a lizard-like feel. She added spikes up the back even though the pattern didn’t have them. She raised up the tail so it didn’t drag on the floor, increasing its aesthetic attractiveness and scientific accuracy. (Although I don’t think any dinosaur with spikes walked upright.) It ended up coming out better than the most expensive store-bought costumes, and of course, it was made with love.

Fortunately, Sprout really liked it. He didn’t fuss while we were putting it on, except for the head piece. (We have exactly two photos with the hat, both with me trying to shove it on and him in the process of pulling it off.) At first, he had a lot of difficulty sitting down because the tail got in the way. But once he figured that out, he seemed to enjoy the costume quite a bit while it was on.

That was a particularly good thing because we put it on him as often as possible. Early in the week, he wore it to a Halloween party at one of our town’s community centers. Despite the variety of activities, he spent most of his time sticking googly-eyed stickers on a pumpkin. But he was far from the only one enamored by the stickers and the fact that he didn’t try to eat them is definitely something for the win category. Later that week, they attended an party at the local kiddie gym that teaches his movement class. There, he cemented his tendency to be a bit of a thrill seeker by going down the baby roller-coaster multiple times all by himself.

Of course, Halloween evening was the pinnacle of the activities. I worked from home that day, so I was able to enjoy the whole evening with my family. We started the night with the annual neighborhood Halloween parade. The fact that my town and its neighborhoods put on numerous events is one of my favorite things about where I live. The parade had close to 75 parents and children, with a full spectrum of adorableness. Among the kids, there was a lightening bolt, a police officer (with his dad as a prisoner!), the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon, a train, a truck with working headlights, a bunch of princesses, Pooh Bear and Piglet, and many others. I wasn’t the only parent in costume either – quite a few adults got in on the action, with funny hats and full costumes. There was even a friendly dog in a purple and green tutu, which slobbered all over Sprout’s face when he got too close. We dawdled along, with the pace being slow enough that Sprout could walk on his own in parts. When he started going too slow and backed up the group, I would scoop him up and hustle to catch up to the rest of the group.

After the parade, we did an abbreviated trick-or-treating route. He was too little to know what was going on, but he also likes trying new things. Also, we knew our immediate neighbors would love to see him in his costume. At first, he was confused as to why he was standing in front of a closed door and would turn around towards us. When someone finally opened the door and greeted him, he got really excited. By the last house, he had the routine down pat, except for the words, of course. Our neighbors were so charmed that they gave him handfuls of candy.

For his hard work, we allowed him to eat a single piece of candy. As most candy is either too small (choking hazard), too chewy (ditto) or has peanuts (haven’t introduced yet), it was surprisingly hard to choose one. We finally picked an Almond Joy and plucked out the almond to avoid the aforementioned and ever-present choking hazard. He loved it, gobbling the whole thing right up. I’m not looking forward to the day he realizes what happened to the rest of his candy.

The one single disappointing thing about Halloween was that we didn’t carve a jack-o-lantern. We left our hard-earned, beautiful pumpkin outside since we picked it a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, we had a number of warm and rainy days. By the time we went to carve it, it was so mushy that it wasn’t structurally sound. As it was the night before Halloween, we just used Sprout’s pumpkin with way too many eyes instead.

Parenting offers you the chance to see the world through your kids eyes, but this Halloween, I also remembered what it was like to see it through the eyes of myself as a kid.

What Kind of Monster is Your Kid?

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

What Kind of Monster Is Your Kid? (Pictures of vampire, fairy and Bigfoot)

Wrapping up my son in a blue hooded towel with three eyes as I pull him out of the bathtub, I exclaim, “Who’s the cutest little monster?” Looking in the mirror, I want to keep him that adorable size forever. Seven hours later at 3 AM, I hear the shriek of the banshee and shudder. Then he’s a monster of a completely different type.

While our children are often the cute Muppet monsters, on their worst days, they can wander into old-fashioned horror movie territory.

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