8 Tips For Surviving Your School's Fair

This evening, I'm sitting in a lawn chair parked in front of my daughter's elementary school. After seven hours of being cooped up learning on this lovely Summer day, she sprinted back to school for this, the event of all events, The Spring Fair. This annual gathering promises an evening of delight complete with inflatables (water and dry), a tiny train, carnival games, crafts, and the opportunity to cavort with her friends.

I'm less enthusiastic. Because she is my second child, it's my 10^th year at this fair and they haven't changed the line-up in all of those years. So as I sit in my chair, let me share

8 Tips For Surviving Your School's Spring Fair

1.  Review With Your Child That They Are ONLY To Go Home With You (or whomever you designate). Our community is pretty safe, but I don't want Diva thinking that if she can't find me she can leave with someone else. Stress this before you even GET to the venue. 

2.  Prepay if you can. I ordered armbands the day they were announced. Kids are so excited by the prospect of fun, fun, fun that all they want to do is run off. Save yourself trying to find exact change with a hyper child by your side, grab a pre-paid armband, and set your kid free. 

3.  Set Up A Base Camp So They Can Find You.  If your child is old enough that you don't have to follow them, set up a base camp, preferably near some sort of reference point like a big rock, tree, bush, window, etc. Tell the kid where you're going to be and stress that they MUST check in periodically. They'll have to anyway if they want to buy food.

4.  Bring Cash.  Don't kid yourself that you're going to get away without buying anything at this event. Sure, you can bring all the organic, GMO-free stuff you want, but all that will happen is that your child will either A) wind up staring at his friends who are eating pizza or B) begging their friends or you for the crap they're serving. Bring water and maybe a snack or two, but resign yourself to the fact that you WILL be buying something. 

6.  Sit AWAY From The Loudspeakers.  For some reason, PTA people and school personnel don't like telling disc jockeys and entertainers that they're TOO FUCKING LOUD and that the noise level is GOING TO MAKE OUR KIDS HARD OF HEARING. Make your base camp away from the speakers and you can mitigate hearing loss for the both of you. You might even have a prayer of talking and listening to other parents.

7.  Be Prepared For A Tantrum When You Leave.  Understand that if you try to drag your kid away from the event before it officially ends, you're pitting yourself against a tired, wired-up kid who IS going to have a tantrum. Fortunately, it will probably be so loud there that no one will hear you arguing.

8.  Enjoy! The time is coming when you'll be dropping your kid off at an event and you won't get to see them having fun with their friends. Take some photos when they're not looking and remember how they look now. They'll only be this little once. 

We're home, and the Fair is now a memory. After being covered in foam and having her hair sprayed red and white, she's upstairs recuperating. Watching her have a blast was wonderful for me; I wouldn't have traded it for anything. Use these eight tips and you'll get through the Fair with a minimum of problems and, hopefully, a good amount of pleasure!

THANK YOU FOR READING! 

Yeah.  That's me...right....

How To Protect Your Kids' Hearing, Ironically Enough, At School Events

I went to a fundraiser at a school the other night. The kids had fun and the PTA made oodles of money. Some people came home with prizes (it was Tricky Tray, after all). What I came home with was ringing in the ears.

Unless you want your child to wind up wearing a hearing aid, help protect their hearing.

At most school events I've been to where there's a DJ, the music is played louder than a jet on a runway, even if the venue is inside. I understand why it's loud - so attendees can hear it over the noise of the kids. I just have NO idea why it has to be dangerously loud! Unless there's dancing, music is merely background noise. And at a school event that's supposed to foster camaraderie, having very loud music does the opposite: it forces people to scream at one another, inhibiting conversation. Plus it can have serious health consequences: loud noise can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss as well as ringing in the ears (tinnitus). 
 


We give our kids headphones to protect their ears when they mow the lawn or use a leaf blower. We encourage them to keep the volume reasonable when they use earbuds on their MP3s or other devices. Yet children are exposed to noise that's just as loud when they go to large parties or, pathetically enough, at many school events. 

 

According to many websites including the National Institutes Of Health hearing loss caused by noise is completely avoidable. And once your hearing is damaged by noise, it CANNOT be repaired. So the best thing to do is protect your hearing now so the damage doesn't occur in the first place. And it's up to us, as adults, to help our kids do that. 

We need to speak up at events to protect our children's hearing!

 


It amazes me that whenever I attend these loud school events and ask the DJ to turn the music down, I am invariably told that they've been asked by the kids to turn the music up. So that's what the DJs do - listen to the children who don't realize the damage loud music can do to their bodies. It's time that school administrators and the PTA representatives, who are paying these companies, realize the harm that loud music does and work harder to protect our children by speaking up to monitor the volume at these events.



I heard plenty of parents the other night shouting to each other about how loud the music was, yet no one else approached the DJ to ask him to turn it down. Why? If enough of us had complained, he would have overruled the children and done so. If it was about to affect his paycheck, he'd have dialed the volume down. 

 
So what can you do, outside of keeping your kids home from these events?  

• My kids are acutely aware of the dangers of too-loud noise and that's given them the confidence to move away from amplifiers at school events. 
• Physically, giving them earplugs to wear is probably the easiest, most affordable, and least embarrassing solution for them. There are tons of earplugs on the market designed just for kids. If your child is small, obviously you'll want to insert them, and you'll want to make sure your kids are used to them before they wear them outside the house.
• There are also ear muffs designed specifically for children. My kids use them when vacuuming or if my son is using the leaf blower outside. 
• Lastly, if the schools won't protect our children from hearing damage, it's up to us. Speak up to get the DJs and those in charge of event sound systems to turn the music down! 

--

Thank you for reading!  

My 5 Favorite Free iPad Apps

Once upon a time, I had a Kindle Fire. I loved that thing and when it died, the day after the warranty expired, of course, I was quite sad. Unfortunately, it died at the same time that my laptop did, so when forced to choose which device my limited means would replace, I opted to replace the laptop. Junior, who had been the #1 borrower of my Kindle, was also upset, however, he did have the money to get his own tablet but chose, instead, to get an iPad Mini.


Curious about our newest Apple, I stole, errr...borrowed, it the other day while Junior was at school. After playing with it for a few hours and downloading some free apps from the App Store, here are my five favorites:

1. The Kindle App – When I had my Kindle, I downloaded free books from my local library with the added benefit that when the borrowing time was up, they'd just “magically” disappear from the device. The Kindle app gives all the benefits of reading on the Kindle with access to many of the free books Amazon's Kindle Store offers. The app replicates all of my favorite features of the actual Kindle including access to Amazon's Whispersync which “automatically syncs your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across devices (including the Kindle), so you can pick up your book where you left off on another device.”
   
   
2. Dictionary.com (Dictionary and Thesaurus) – Being a word-a-holic, I love looking up words and this app gave me speedy access to more than two million words and definitions. The best part is that it works offline, so even if I didn't have Web access, I could use it.
   
   
3. Police Scanner + - I really enjoyed listening to police scanners when I was a local reporter and still do even though I'm not writing for our local website. With this app, I can listen to more than 40,000 police, fire, EMS, airport, railroad, comedy, talk, and music stations – FREE!
   
   
4. Soothing Sounds Light – The kids and I sleep with separate noise machines and we always schlep one whenever we travel. Soothing Sounds has a customizable sounds library and the manufacturer boasts that “you'll never hear the same 10 seconds of sound.” That means you won't hear the same bird chips every X-amount of seconds, something that drives me crazy with other noise apps. You can change the volume and intensity of each sound, meaning that you can either hear ocean waves gently lapping on a shore or hear the crashing of those waves on rocks. You can even save the combinations of intensity levels that you've created and re-play those at will. Use it as background noise during the day or while you sleep.
   
   
5. Sticky Notes Reminders & Notes App With Alarms & Sharing – Use Sticky Note reminders without the individual papers falling off your device or marring your screen. Create notes in dozens of styles, add alarms to the notes, password protect them, and share them with others. The best part of this app, however, is that you can add notes to your lockscreen so you don't have to unlock your device to view them.
   

Ok, so since the iPad Mini isn't mine, I had to delete all of these wonderful apps, but it was fun poking around the App Store to see what developers have come up with to make our lives “easier.” It may just be time to start saving up for a Mini.


–


Thanks for reading! Please check back in with me in a day or so for more fun!