Two things I love: tools that make my life easier and anything that makes me look like a fun mom! Play Today DC does BOTH! There are many web sites that help parents find local events and family-friendly things to do and I love them all, but newcomer Play Today DC has a very clean sorting interface that allows you [...]
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Clifford the Big Red Dog and his friends from Birdwell Island are at Baltimore’s Port Discovery as part of a traveling exhibit. If your kids are fans of this lovable canine and his adventures, I highly recommend visiting this well-planned exhibit as a lot of activities are packed into a small space. The exhibit is set [...]
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The Nutcracker with puppets? A purist at heart, I couldn’t quite fathom it. After all, the Nutcracker I grew up with was performed by the Miami Ballet Company, one of the few licensed to perform George Balanchine’s version of The Nutcracker™. But the JavaKids’ first exposure to a live version of this classic tale was yesterday at The [...]
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Motherhood is an endless “To Do” list and taking my kids to Sesame Place has been on my list. Summer 2011, however, became The Summer That Swim Team Took Over Our Lives, so we never made it. Luckily, Sesame Place has opened its doors with a winter offering, “A Very Furry Christmas.” The theme park has [...]
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Legos seem like they’d be the easiest thing to organize (they snap together, so modular, so neat!) and yet they are the cause of so much playroom clutter, both by my own informal visual inspection and according to online anecdotes. Somehow they morph from the initial single bin or box into overflowing containers, toppling towers of boxes, or [...]
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Despite many pleas from the children, I have not taken them camping yet, which means we haven’t made what I will call REAL s’mores. Yes, I have one of those s’mores makers that were all the rage a few years ago and I vaguely recall making some s’mores with them that way, but having been a Girl Scout, [...]
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Volunteering is the theme of this month’s Yahoo! Mother Board (yes, I’ve joined something else!) and I have to chuckle as I read the posts of the other bloggers because some of them talk about super-volunteers and some talk about slacker moms and I can say that I fall squarely into both categories, depending on which segment of my “world” you talk to.
As previously posted, I am the incoming President of the local Junior League. I commit many, many hours to this organization and part of their mission is to promote voluntarism (small nit, you can say voluntarism or volunteerism, there is a very minor difference not worth quibbling over in this post). I serve on another community board and serve my community in other ways. However, there are other groups which ask for my volunteer time and which I used to be more involved in and which I don’t. Yes, part of it is a matter of time — a girl can only be in so many places at once. But part of it has to do with volunteer appreciation.
I’m not talking about luncheons or awards or certificates or anything like that. In fact, I personally don’t like those things much, though I know some people find those types of recognition extremely gratifying. I’m talking about actually appreciating the skills and time I have to give. A particular organization I used to give not a lot of time to, but at least some, simply failed to see any value in my organizational, technical or communication skills. My tendency to turn to the Web to solve problems was apparently against their organizational culture. From time to time they’d throw me a bone and let me do a computer-related task, but mostly they did not want to learn anything new and they didn’t want me to ever suggest anything new. My skills and experience were of no interest to them, they wanted to do things the same way they’d always done it and I either needed to get with the program or get out. When I made one last suggestion to try to solve a problem and was greeted with, “Not everyone is like you and wants to use the Web,” I realized what my answer was. It was time for me to get out. Get out of the way. I’m the “slacker mom” because I don’t volunteer there any more, but I don’t volunteer because I don’t find it enjoyable. Every time I try to just show up and do shift work (vowing to “shut up and show up”), I’m reminded just how much of an outcast I am in that organization and I come home wishing I had spent my time elsewhere. Life is too short to feel miserable during your volunteer time.
Contrast that to my volunteer experiences with Junior League or my involvement with Leadership Fairfax or my other Board work, where my skills and experience are not only welcomed, but the organizations are always asking for more of it. I walk away from these experiences feeling recharged, energized, and willing to do just about anything they want me to do. I have done everything from shift work to long-range strategic planning – even in the same day – and I always walk away feeling exuberant. Naturally the mission or cause is the primary reason for volunteering, but knowing that you are valued as a volunteer keeps you coming back.
When I go to my children’s schools, I go there because of them. But I appreciate how the teachers’ faces light up and they say “thank you!” Cutting construction paper flowers is not my life’s purpose, but if it makes my son’s teacher’s life a little bit easier, then that’s a good use of my time. The fact that she seems so grateful makes me all that much more willing to do it. Not once has my help been turned down or turned away nor have I been shamed for not having more time to give. They are willing to take me as I am and take what I can provide.
I’ve just finished a half day of training the League’s incoming leadership about being inspiring leaders. If there is one thing they’ve taken away from today’s training, I hope it is that part of being a good leader is remembering how to treat your volunteers. If you are in the role of recruiting or managing volunteers and find yourself surrounded by “slackers” you may want to ask yourself what kind of message you’ve been sending. Did I use to be your volunteer? Your “slackers” may be someone else’s star volunteers — see if you can keep them from running out the door!
Check out Volunteer Fairfax’s Volunteer Bootcamp – a great training program for managers of volunteers! I have no affiliation with them, I just think it’s chock full of great info!
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I had the grandest of plans to blog in advance about all that I would do for
I am a very, very imperfect mother when it comes to setting an ecological example for my kids. But I’m trying. And I keep trying. That is perhaps the most important lesson of Earth Day — it is not about a date and it is not about perfection — it is about raising our awareness and helping us improve bit by bit — sometimes by small steps, sometimes in great leaps. Here are a few of the things we’re working on in the Java household:
Last year I was so sickened by the amount of plastic found in our oceans that I vowed to make a more concerted effort to use cloth or reusable shopping bags. My track record is far from perfect, but I’m getting better. While many of the bags I use are freebies I have received at various conferences, I also like the products from a company I saw at BlogHer’s expo last year, Blue Avocado. I still forget to bring my bags in a lot of times, but I’m forgetting less often.
This is the year I’ve told myself we’re going to start composting. My grandmother has always had a compost pit — a simple operation that involved little more than a cylinder of chicken wire and taking the kitchen scraps out to it. However, living close to a wooded area, I want to make sure I don’t attract any unwanted visitors to the yard, so I’ve been looking at different options and was very intrigued by Julia Roberts’ appearance on Oprah when she discussed her composting habits and an expert brought up vermicomposting — using WORMS to help compost. One benefit of vermicomposting is that you can compost items like meat (in small quantities), which you can’t in traditional compost pits/bins. Now that the weather has warmed up and with Earth Day as a reminder, I’ve been researching worm bins
This led to asking my very wise friend Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes how she composts, and because she is truly magical in all things garden-related, she shared with me her MacGyver-like version of composting. One day, when I grow up, I want to be Andrea. Or have her adopt me. One of those.
Another one of my good intentions is to have a rain barrel, and lo and behold, BJs Wholesale has rain barrels that have a conversion kit to attach to your rain downspout and is sealed so that mosquitoes won’t lay eggs in your barrel. I’m still working on convincing JavaDad about this one, as he would be the one who would do the actual “converting” of the conversion kit.
We have become significantly better about recycling in our home this year once I finally found this online chart for what our disposal company accepts in the recycling bins. We’ve always recycled cans and the more obvious recyclables, but I had no idea that we could recycle “plastic film” in our area. I am, however, considering changing our trash hauler to a competitor who provides the RecycleBank rewards program — they have specially coded recycling containers and weigh your recycling each week and allow you to earn points to redeems for gift cards for a wide variety of retailers. In other words, it literally pays to recycle! Since we live in a neighborhood where we have a choice of three different trash haulers, this is a perk worth considering!
I still remember how “radical” a film about ecology seemed in the early 70s when I was in elementary school (I think my memory has mashed-up multiple films as it is a hazy recollection of a scare-fest about DEET and then something about the many uses of bottlecaps), and marvel at how ingrained the reduce>reuse>recycle message is in my children’s minds and lexicon today even at the tender ages of 6 and (almost) 4. Mommy may be imperfect, but through media, school, and dare I hope, even at home, they are learning a little bit about taking care of this precious planet — every day of the year.
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Disclosures: This post topic was partially inspired by my participation in the Yahoo Motherboard group. There is a link to worm bins on Amazon using an Amazon Associates link. Purchases made through Amazon affiliate links on this blog yield a small referral fee. This applies to all purchases made on Amazon regardless of whether the product the consumer purchased was mentioned by me or not. The consumer’s purchases are confidential; I don’t know who has purchased items using my blog’s Amazon Associate links.
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What’s that you say? The Cat In The Hat hasn’t visited you today? How sad, how terribly, terribly sad for you! Come to our house, and join in the wackiness too!
Okay, Dr. Seuss I am not — but JavaMom’s silly mom, I am! I am. Here and there, and everywhere. (Oops, sorry, read Green Eggs and Ham a few too many times today!)
In case you have been under a rock — or don’t have very small children — Dr. Seuss’s birthday is March 2, and for the past few years my son’s preschool and now his kindergarten has used this as a time to celebrate all things Seuss. His preschool (now JavaGirl’s preschool) used to also have Wacky Wednesday the first Wednesday of Seuss week — the kids would show up dressed crazy (two different shoes, mismatched clothes) and were quite delighted to find that the for some reason their classroom was topsy turvy as well.
Somehow this morphed into wacky things happening in our house as well on these Wednesdays and when a very young JavaBoy asked who was responsible for such shenanigans, we shrugged our shoulders and asked him, and he said, “I think the Cat In The Hat did it!” And thus, a new tradition was born! Sometime late Tuesday night, while we are all asleep, the Cat sneaks into our house and makes things wacky!
The Cat In The Hat seems to like to do a lot of things with shoes — he’s put them up on walls, on ceiling fans, and on the legs of chairs and tables. But he’s done other things like put dolls and stuffed animals in all the chairs and seats in the house, turned things upside down, and made some subtle changes to see if JavaBoy will catch on. (JavaGirl is just now old enough to start enjoying Wacky Wednesday.)
Since JavaGirl’s preschool is not have a Seuss week this year, I had almost forgotten about our annual visit from The Cat until I heard JavaBoy mention it to his kindergarten teacher. Apparently this visit holds a lot of meaning to him as he not only mentioned it yesterday, but many times today. Fortunately I was able to confirm with The Cat that he does have us on his schedule for this evening.
I wonder what he’ll do tonight…
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