Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in houston, TX

4 Fab Houston Spots for Parents to Work While Kids Play

June 09, 2009

Working at home with kids can work when you create a good routine, but even so, every now and again you need to break out of the routine, shake off the home dust, and try a new thing. We all benefit from a change in scenery (and dynamic!).

It's hard to think or know where you can go to work and entertain kids, but as a full-time work at home parent, I've found a few good spots, and I'm glad to share those with you. They vary quite bit, but offer a good selection and eclectic choices.

Fun Places and Play Places (where kids can run, play and be loud while you work!)

Example: SpaceCenter Houston! There's a huge play structure that kids love, from the padded ball area for the littlest ones to huge climbing areas for older kids. SpaceCenter Houston does offer wi-fi (I called and verified) but there is no plug available so make sure your laptop is fully charged! There's also a food court, so you can take a food break. We can go for quite a while at the Space Center.

Example: McDonalds! I used to avoid McDonalds---calories, fast food, and high-priced wi-fi. But, now McDonalds has partnered with a number of carriers, and I can log in using my SBC Global address for free! There are usually friends we know at the local McDonalds, or at least nice kids, so the children play and I write or edit, as need be. I can usually eke out a couple of hours, if I schedule it around lunch time.

Example: YMCA! The downtown location offers wi-fi and is covered by the free Houston downtown wi-fi, too. According to some moms, many local YMCAs offer wi-fi and kid activities. Check with yours and see what you can do. You may need a membership.

Quiet Places (where kids can be entertained, but more quietly)

Example: Local library! Local libraries offer free Internet access. Find out when storytimes are, and work around those. My library has rooms like study rooms. I like to use those because then we are sort of in our own bubble. I can borrow books for the kids and bring a few toys or coloring books, too. Our "breaks" can incorporate story times or just a change of scenery.

Example: Coffee shops! To be competitive with big chains, I find a lot of mom and pop coffee houses offer a very "den-like" atmosphere. Near me is the Coffee Oasis, which offers free high-speed wi-fi, a fax machine, a copy machine, and good sandwiches and fresh pastries (coffee and tea, of course, too, among other great drinks). It also has book shelves with books, games, and a cute little room with a kids' table. They also have a meeting room I can use if it's not booked up. A quick scan of Houston area coffee shops shows most offer good spaces and free wifi.

Eat, drink, work and be merry

A number of kid-friendly restaurants offer free wi-fi, good food, and space to hang out. I've had a meeting (with kids) at Berryhill's. Unfortunately, the favorite Lupe Tortillas doesn't offer wi-fi, but f you have a connection card, you could probably make it work. Birraporetti's, with those lovely big booths, also offers free wi-fi.

Find The Zone

The city of Houston offers free wi-fi coverage throughout downtown. This covers a number of family friendly and work-friendly places, including parks, Bayou Place, libraries, the downtown YMCA, and more---anything central within the coverage area. You can see a map of downtown Houston covered by free wi-fi and get more information at the Houston wi-fi Web site.

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Summer Survival Game Plan for Moms (who need to get things done)

June 08, 2009

Oh summer. Today I and many other moms let out a collective groan on this, the first full of summer with kids at home full-time. Many camps and activities haven't yet begun, and all of us are trying to keep up with our workload---regardless of whether it's home chores or an assignment from a boss---while managing kids who aren't used to free-range summer life at home yet, and who are probably a little testy or troublesome. At the least, there are moments when they feel more like Impediments to Getting Things Done than the usual Treasures and Joys we view them as.

So what is there to do?

Create a plan!

Here's what we do....

Early morning: Take it easy because you can.

The girls and I normally have to hop out of bed and make a run for it. So, the good thing about summer is the chance to take a minute and breathe. The mornings really offer that chance. Although the temptation might be to hop up early and get some work done, think about sleeping in a bit (for us that means 7 a.m., maybe) and having some cuddle time.

Breakfast: Consider letting a few rules slide and eat out of the kitchen.

The kids enjoy a bit of couch lolling and show watching first thing in the morning. They may get up early, but they're a little slow to the start line. In the summer I let the kids eat breakfast and watch a show.

Exercise: Load up the bike and take a ride, go for a walk, or use one of the kid-friendly exercises

Get those willies out, have a bit of fun, and freshen up your own mind. Plus it's good for you.

Important Thoughts: Work is a lengthy composition, with parenting as frequent intermezzo

The rest of the day will be a careful balance between tending to your kids and your work. If you're like me, constant interruptions get your mind off track and make it hard to keep focused and moving along at a good pace.

In a full symphony, there is sometimes an intermezzo, which is a short movement separating the major sections of a lengthy composition. It's also a bit of entertainment between two acts of a play.

So think of your work as the lengthy composition, and the kid activity as the intermezzo. You could consider it an interruption, but you can also think of it as the important mind and body stretch away from the computer and phone.

Unlike music and theater, we begin with an intermezzo and intersperse them frequently among the work acts.

Important Thoughts: Setting up your intermezzo in advance

Nothing is quite so interesting to children as the forbidden fruit. In our house, that's the bins of toys we keep up on the high shelves in the closet. I highly suggest that you pack up activities and toys into boxes, and put them away. Leave out only a few toys. This creates fresh, "new to them" toys and activities for kids---which are always more entertaining than the same old toys they can get to every day. In the summer, the big, big fun for my kids is Taking Down the Bin.

We have junky fast food meal toys, stuffed animals, games, Legos, blocks, and more. You can sort any way you want.

Right this minute my kids just got a giant box of stuffed animals they haven't seen in a month.  They are busy playing with those stuffed animals while I write this. At last glance, they were sorting the animals by type: birds here, bears there, and so forth.

Another bin has plastic animal and people figures and paper and colors. That's for kids to set a scene and draw it. It may just be scribble scrabble with the younger ones, but it's still fun, and they often choose matching colors, so it's a good color lesson.

The blue bin is filled with blocks and cars. I encourage the kids to create a city and roads for the cars when they play with that bin.

The opaque bin is filled with what the kids think of as treasure.  It includes Mardi Gras beads, action figures, whistles, toy cameras and phones, and other little assorted "toys" (aka junk). They love to dig through that and make fun finds.

Get creative with how you create activity bins. Think about burying things in a sand bin for kids to take on the porch and dig through. What about a blanket and doll bin? A wooden toy bin, such as "dress the bear," and maybe even some of those lacing games? A musical instrument bin! A dress-up for playacting bin! How about getting a big box and letting the kids color on that, and add toys to it or make a club house?

My kids love the arts and crafts bin, and sometimes I let them do watercolor body art outside---easy to hose off, afterward.

The idea is simply to create activity bins that are easy to pull out, start the play, walk away, get work done, and clean up easily.

Plan your bins to match the length of time you need for that portion of your work. For example, a bin that might require some assistance should be left to a time when you don't plan on being on the phone. Most activity bins should last anywhere from 30 mins to an hour.

Intermezzo: Activity bin 1

Tip: Turn on some music. Sometimes I pop in a classical CD, and sometimes I turn on Radio Disney.

Work: 30 mins

Intermezzo: Check in, is it time for bin 2?

Always make sure to have the children pack up one bin before diving into another. This way, kids learn to be responsible for cleaning up, and for putting away one thing before moving on to the next. Also, you don't end up with a colossal disaster to clean up in the evening!

Work: 30 mins

Lunch time!

Let lunch be an activity. One of our favorite fun lunches is build-a-cracker. I use the divided lunch plates and the kids choose four toppings for crackers. Favorites here are peanut butter, cheese, jelly, and ham. On the side I add a vegetable and a fruit. They have fun creating their lunch, and then fun eating it.

Let little hands help clean, too.

Think about taking a quick walk, blowing bubbles outside, set up a sprinkler for the kids to run through, or another active activity that lets everyone get fresh air.

Intermezzo: Bin 2 or Bin 3.

Clean up last bin before getting next!

Work: 1 hour.

Intermezzo: Give the kids what I call a "creative play" bin.

I like to give them dress up, some props, a few books, and ask them to get inspired and create a performance to show me. I tell them they have until I call them to get ready.

Work 30 mins.

Intermezzo: Take an activity break.

Clean up last bin before getting next! 

Let the kids do their performance It may only last a few minutes, and you can decide if that's long enough before the next kid activity, or if you should take a longer break and run an errand, bake bread, do a chore, or something else.

Repeat.

Hold up a promise of fun---is everyone cooperating and helping out? Offer a swim in the late afternoon or evening as a reward.

Will this always work as perfectly as it sounds here on paper? No, and never expect it to. Or count anything as a failure when it doesn't work. Just try the next idea. If there is fighting or bickering, try separating the kids into different rooms with their own play bins. What "play on my own" things would interest each of your children?

Keep it creative and workable for you. Take this game plan and customize it day to day and for you and your kids. Different ages have different abilities, different jobs have different requirements (regardless of whether you are meeting an employer's demands or doing a load of laundry), and different kids have different interests.

And don't try to shoulder too much on yourself. I find that mother's helpers now and again are wonderful. A 12 to 14 year old who loves kids and is responsible is a useful helper for a couple of hours, and in my neighborhood that shouldn't cost more than $5 an hour. I'll gladly sacrifice something in my budget to buy a few hours of sanity, whether I use it to go de-stress in a coffee shop or to put my nose to the work grindstone.

Always remember the value of the playdate and trading off of kids.  If you keep some kids for the morning, trade off for the afternoon. Another fun outing is to schedule a fieldtrip.

It doesn't matter what work you do, if you're a mom at home, it helps to create some structure and schedule to get things done. With a good game plan, you can lower your stress, and before you know it, it's been a fun summer that's already coming to an end.

Tomorrow check back for a list of kid-friendly local places with wi-fi---places moms can work and kids can have fun!

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Wait until dark! Quick and easy recipe for a special "date night" at home for moms and dads

May 25, 2009

You've probably seen that Target commercial---the one where the voiceover says, "This is the new dining out," and shows a couple eating a magnificent dinner on their backyard patio.

Many of us are trying to find new, budget-friendly ways to have fun and special times. Parents have some extra challenges trying to achieve this!

When your kids are little it's hard to go out---you need to find a sitter you trust, then you have to find a time that sitter is available, not to mention pay for the sitter. Before you even walk out the door, you've spent at least $50.Then there's the fun of trying to get all fixed up nice to go out---with kids digging in to your clothes and face creams, or hanging on your leg. We love them, but as long as they are little, they aren't too keen on us living a life outside of them. We treasure this time, though, because we know too well that in a few years they'll be begging us to go out and leave them alone. I know how too often it feels like too much trouble and expense.

Still, despite the challenges and some of those mixed feelings you might have sometimes, it's important to make this effort to have couple time outside the home now and again.

So how about some nice, laid-back, budget-friendly fun in the home?

Get a movie and have a nice evening with your partner!

Here's my recipe for a nice summer movie night in...

Ingredients:

You, Partner, Comfy bed or sofa, Casual clothes, Yummy food and drink

1.  Get those kids in bed asleep---try to wear them out during the day, such as swimming at the pool, if possible.

2.  Set-up easy, healthy, finger snack foods. Consider matching the snacks to a theme in the movie.

For example: Revolutionary Road will release to DVD on June 2. This movie about a couple with two children who move to the suburbs in Connecticut in the 1950s is well-acted, and based on a striking and riveting story. It begs for a Rat Pack style movie night.

Pre-packaged food surged in popularity in the 1950s, as did basic but filling food. So go simple and delicious. I'd pair silver dollar burgers with guacamole dip. Two other options are shrimp cocktail with red sauce or bagel bite pizzas. If you want some little appetizers, go with fruit kabobs and/or stuffed mushrooms. You can make any of these things relatively easily or buy them pre-made. I know Target sells them all in their frozen appetizer section.
Quick tip: Easy gucamole: Mix half of a small can of diced garlic tomatoes with salsa and avocado.

For a drink, go with the classic martini! Make it fruity if you prefer. Or, go international with a Daiquiri or a Mojito, both of which were very popular in the 1950s. If you prefer to avoid alcohol, serve ginger ale and/or root beer. Root beer can even double as dessert when served with ice cream as a float!
Quick tip: If you like frozen drinks but don't want to run a noisy blender that might wake kids, get one of the easy freezer bag mixes. You can serve it "virgin" or just add the liquor and freeze. Very easy and most brands I've tried are delicious.

 3. Set up your food on a coffee or side table, kick back, and enjoy the film!

Note: Check MovieWeb to see new DVD releases each week.

Tomorrow I'll list my favorites for most "cuddle-friendly" films coming out on DVD this summer!

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Explaining work and work demands to kids

May 11, 2009

For Mother's Day, my kids delivered a heap of wonderful, handmade presents. In addition to beaded necklace and earrings, countless drawings and sweet notes, my older daughter made a little "book" in which she told a story about me.

Usually, we tell our children stories, typically about made up characters or baby stories about themselves. Until I sat and read what my daughter thought of me, I hadn't paused to wonder how she perceived the things I do. After each prompt on the page, my daughter answered (correctly) that I like chocolate best, enjoy singing in the car, and give her and her sister cuddles every day. The last was most important to her. But when it came to the meal I make best, she'd scratched out "cooked" and replaced it with "gets." Even harder to read was that I dislike working at the computer. I wasn't sure that I had conveyed that, and I wasn't sure whether it was really me she meant, or herself.

Sometimes it's hard to be a working parent, especially one who works from home. The children leave to go to school, as does their father, but I stay home, and work from here most of the time. The purpose of this is that my career can be done remotely, and because we both wanted to make sure there was a primary parent available for the kids.

So how do I explain to my children that home is also a workplace for me, and how do I explain my complicated job to them? How does any parent explain, especially when dealing with a child's resentment of how the work intrudes on what a child wants from a parent?

I've explained to my kids that I'm a writer and editor. This is a pretty easy job to explain. Kids understand some people write, and they understand that someone will always "grade" what other people write. I can also show them books I've co-written and also books I've edited, and the pieces of building a book. I've even published a children's book, so there's actually something I did that is interesting to them, with nice picture as well! My husband is an architect. That's an even easier job to explain. He has shown them how he thinks about designing buildings using legos and blocks, and they've gotten to tour buildings he's worked on.

Handling their frustration and disappointment when work "steals" us from them is harder, but I find the key is following through on my promises. What my kids usually want is my time and attention, so if I promise that at a specific time we'll do a specific thing, and then follow-through, it usually keeps the balance in place, and builds their trust that even though mom is working now, she'll play a game later.

How do you explain jobs and work to your kids? And how do you handle that work-demand and child-demand conflict?

 

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