Tag: texas

Ghost Stories

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Halloween weekend is upon us!  Some good, old fashioned, scary story telling never ages.  I asked around friends and family for their favorite ghost stories from their childhood.  The nice thing about most of these stories, we have all heard them enough that we can put our own spin on it!  You can creep it up or creep it down.  Just remember, you reap what you sew with scary stories and kids.  You creep the story up, you will have a bunk mate for the evening.  Happy Halloween! 

La Llorona

  Once there was a beautiful woman named Xochitl.  She fell in love with a wealthy rancher.  They were married and had two children together.  One day Xochitl saw her husband kissing another woman.  In a fit of rage, she drowned her two children in the river by their house.  Realizing what she had done, Xochitl flung herself into the river drowning.  When Xochitl went up to heaven, they would not let her in until she finds her children.  So now she spends her days by the river, forever weeping and forever looking for her lost children.

Bloody Mary

There once was a little girl named Mary who lived in a cemetery with her family.  Her father was a gravedigger.  When he buried a body, he would always leave a string leading into the grave with a bell on the other end.  That way if anyone was buried alive, they could ring the bell and the gravedigger would be able to dig them up.

One day a terrible disease swept through the village.  It would cause people to fall into a deep sleep before dying.  They would check to see if the person was alive by placing a mirror under their nose.  If the mirror fogged up, then they were still alive.  Mary came home sick one day and fell into a deep sleep.  Her parents were devastated when they place the mirror under her nose and no breath fogged up the mirror.

They buried Mary behind their house in a grave with a string attached to a bell.  Shockingly, Mary wasn’t dead.  She awoke inside her coffin.  She pulled the string on the bell, but she pulled too hard and the string yanked the bell off its hook.  Days later her mother went to visit her grave, and saw the bell on the ground.  Realizing what happened they dug up Mary’s grave and found she died with a petrified look on her face and scratch marks on the ceiling of her coffin. 

To this day if you light a candle in your bathroom with the lights off and call Bloody Mary three times, Mary appears and scratches your eyes out!

Hook for a Hand

Once there was a teenage couple who went out on a date.  At the end of the night, they decided to go drive into the woods and gaze up at the stars.  As they are parked, they heard a radio story about an escaped inmate from the nearby insane asylum.  This inmate had previously killed several teenagers with his hook he had instead of a hand.  The girl got scared and decides she wants to go home.  The guy starts his car and pulls out of the woods when he hears a long scratching noise down the side of his car.  They continue home and when he gets out of his car to check the damage, he sees a hook stuck in the car door handle.

Babysitter ghost story

A young woman decided to take a babysitting job on Halloween night.  When she gets to the house the parents let her know the kids are already asleep.  She is welcome to watch TV until they get home.  The parents leave and the babysitter goes to check on the kids who are sound asleep in their beds. 

She comes downstairs and turns on the TV.  The house has a lot of odd collectibles all over the shelves.  The oddest being a statue next to the TV.  It appears to be a large gnome dressed in overalls and a small red hat.  Even though the gnome is just a statue, it makes her feel really uncomfortable.  She feels like it’s watching her.  She decides to take a blanket and place it over the gnome.  Then she plops on the couch and turns on a scary movie. 

After the movie is over, she gets a call from the parents checking in on their kids.  The babysitter goes upstairs, and the kids are still sounds asleep.  She tells the mom the kids are asleep and that everything is okay.  She asks if she can move the gnome statue because it is kind of creeping her out.  The mom pauses on the phone and says “we don’t have a gnome statue.”  The babysitter rushes down stairs to where the gnome statue was sitting next to the TV all night.  But all that is there is the white sheet on the floor.

Nanny Tales: Potty Training

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In my time as a nanny, I have had the pleasure (cough) of potty training four children.  I would never describe myself as an “expert in potty training.”  Mainly because it is a weird thing to brag about.  But I do have some hysterical stories from my attempts to help toddlers through this major milestone. 

Sam

When I started working for Sam’s family, he was about to turn three years old.  He had fully mastered peeing in the potty, but pooping was not going to happen.  Sam’s older brother Adam had been potty trained for several years.  The boys’ parents had used pennies as a way to encourage Adam to use the toilet, and were doing the same with Sam.  A common theme throughout all my potty training experiences is bribery.  More importantly, the right kind of bribery.  Now while Adam had been cool with getting a penny every time he used the potty, Sam didn’t really see the value in money.

I made the strategic decision to switch from pennies to M&Ms.  Sam would get one M&M if he peed in the potty, and two if he pooped.  After one day, Sam stomped into the kitchen and demanded “I WANT MY M&MS!’.  I calmly explained, he would have to go poop on the potty.  Sam turned on his heels, stomped into the bathroom, and let out a deafening trumpet of success.  He came stomping back out of the bathroom and declared “THERE”, and pointed to his masterpiece.  He received 2 M&Ms.

Lizzy

Sam’s little sister Lizzy had a different kind of adventure toward potty training.  Suddenly Lizzy would be missing for long stretches of time, and inevitably I’d find her in her mom’s closet pooping in her diaper.  It felt like it was time to start potty training.  We got out all the books, all the potty chairs, and the giant bag of M&Ms.  But as much as we talk about it, and sat on the potty, Lizzy would somehow disappear to go poop in Mom’s closet.  One day I even tried not putting a diaper on her, and watching her like a hawk so she couldn’t escape.  But somehow, she escaped from my site, and YES I had to clean poop off of the closet floor. 

As luck would have it, we were seeing her pediatrician that week.  I asked the doctor what the deal was.  Lizzy showed all the signs of being ready, but wouldn’t do the deed!  The pediatrician simply told me, Lizzy wasn’t ready.  Even though she was exhibiting the signs, Lizzy was still too scared.  I decided to leave all the potty-training things out, but I completely backed off.  We didn’t talk about it.  We didn’t practice it.  We just left everything alone.  Then one day, I was getting Lizzy ready for a bath.  I was focused on getting the water going when Lizzy gasped!  I turned and there she was sitting on her potty.  Her eyes were as big as saucers as we both listened to the pee go in the potty.  I screamed with excitement and showered Lizzy with kisses.  Adam and Sam ran in and we all had a big celebration around a little toilet filled with pee. 

Peter

I started taking care of Peter when he was eight weeks old.  I had learned by then to take my time with potty training.  When he is ready, he is ready.  Peter started showing the signs of being ready to potty train.  I’d come to get him at nap time, and would be greeted by a bare butt and a wet diaper dramatically flung across the room.  I lost Peter in the park for a few minutes and found him hidden behind a bush to pee.  It was obviously getting close to time.  I advised Peter’s mom to just buy a little potty to have for when Peter was ready.  That night when Peter’s mom showed him the potty, she simply explained that when he needs to poop and pee this is where he sits.  Peter shrugged and said “okay”, and proceeded to sit on the potty and pee and poop.  What.  The.  Heck?  It is never that easy.  NEVER!!  His mom and I hypothesized that at Peter’s Mother’s Day Out, there was a little girl in his class potty training.  We think he must have seen her and gotten used to the idea of using a potty before we even brought it up!  Maybe the universe decided to give me a break on the third toddler.  They knew I’d be potty training a lot of kids and thought “Make this one super easy to potty train.  Give her a break.  But then make him wet the bed for like four more years.  Don’t let her get cocky.”

Josie

Peter’s little sister Josie was my most recent potty trainee.  When you get to the fourth one, there just aren’t that many surprises.  Oh, you’re hiding behind the couch to go poop.  Oh, when I put you on the potty you hold it in because you’re afraid for it to come out.  Oh, there is a soaked diaper wedged in the back of your drawer.  The routine becomes the routine, and you just wait until they are ready to take the plunge.  She did ask if she could sit on my lap while she went to the bathroom.  That was a new one.  The one thing we had working for us was Josie’s love of accessories.  The idea of having her own princess underwear was a big selling point for potty training.  Then the understanding that if she peed, she would be peeing on one of her favorite characters!  Heck no, give me that potty chair!

Potty training is a literal dirty job, but I’m happy to do it.  If I could give any advice to parents, I’d say that potty training is like the weight loss secret of the kid world.  No you can’t do it in a weekend.  No there is no quick fix or easy way to do it.  It takes time, it takes patience, and if you keep at it you will reach your goal!

A Trip to Mesa Rosa

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I put out a post on Facebook asking for parents’ favorite place to take their kids for dinner.  This particular TexMex restaurant popped up several times.  I grabbed the six-year-old and the four-year-old and gave Mesa Rosa a try! 

I am a big weirdo because I love taking the kids out to dinner!  But I have very specific qualifications for restaurants I go to with the kids.  It must be a noisy restaurant.  Nobody wants to be that person with the loud, obnoxious kid in a restaurant.  But in noisy restaurants, if your toddler decides to hate the world, you only feel vaguely like you want to crawl under the table and hide. 

Having an outdoor section is also a big plus.  Sitting outside with kids, even when there isn’t a world ending pandemic, can help save a life!  Outside there are more things for kids to look at and enjoy.  They can be super noisy and you won’t be disturbing an entire restaurant.  I don’t think you need a playground to have a kid friendly restaurant, but I really appreciate how many Austin area restaurants do.  It’s nice to have a restaurant experience, that isn’t fast food related, where you can sit and enjoy your meal while the kids play on the playground.

It can’t be a breakable restaurant.  There are some great kid friendly restaurants that have good food, and a great atmosphere for kids.  But any place that brings us glass cups for our drinking water, is just asking for trouble.  We need plastic cups, cups with lids, and if you have some plastic plates wrapped in bubble wrap, we can probably get through a meal without breaking anything! 

I took the kids during the week to Mesa Rosa.  We went right around five, so it was pretty dead in the restaurant.  The inside is your standard TexMex style.  Fun pictures and bright colors cover the walls.  We heard there was great playground so we asked to sit on the patio.  The patio is fabulous!  This is the type of patio that Covid conscious people wish all restaurants had.  It is a huge patio with tons of room!  It opens up into a truly awesome playground.  It can be tough to see your kids from certain areas of the patio.  But there is still enough space for them to easily run back and forth from your table to play.

The playground itself is pretty awesome.  Lots of room for the kids to run.  They even have a water cooler to the side, with little paper, cone cups for kids.  Do the kids just end up pulling out all the cups to play with them?  Yes, they do.  But it is still a nice gesture from the restaurant.  The kids were on the playground the whole time.  When the food came, they’d run back to get a small bite, and chug some water.  Then it was back to the playground.  You’ll definitely be able to enjoy your meal and a few drinks without having to worry if the kids are having a good time. 

If I’m being honest the food is only so-so.  It is your average TexMex cuisine.  The kids ordered burgers and fries and only ate a few bites because the portions are HUGE!  You can certainly find better TexMex food in this area.  But overall, it’s an enjoyable outing with your kids.  You can sit back and enjoy some chips and queso, let your kids run around on the playground, and then wonder how they got a giant bruise on their head in under five minutes.

The Great Snack War!

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The great Snack War has been waging in American kitchens for years!  Kids and adults need snacks throughout the day.  But while we all know we need the healthy snacks, the bad snacks are just……so good!  How do we help not only ourselves to be better eaters, but our kids too?  I have several strategies below to help you win your next Snack Battle!

Don’t Buy It

There is a reason why people are very disappointed when they raid my pantry for snacks.  I have not bought cookies or chips in years.  Why?  Because they last about five minutes once they enter my house.  Self-control is difficult for most adults.  It is next to impossible for kids!  If you don’t want your child to eat the unhealthy snacks, do not buy them. 

Look Out For “Healthy”

The food industry is really good at making bright colorful packaging, slapping some buzz words like “real fruit juice”, and convincing you it is healthy.  But we all know the truth.  Veggies Straw are just skinny potato chips.  Fruit Snacks are just gummy bears shaped like fruit.  It can be hard to market healthy food, because actual healthy food is boring to advertise.  A banana is just a banana.  I suppose they could put some more fun stickers on bananas!  Brand bananas for boys called “The Ultimate Banana” and for girls like “Princess Banana”.  But at the end of the day, there is only so many ways to make healthy food look “cool”.

Snacks For Home

Snacks at home are a lot easier to plan.  You have good storage and are able to prep snacks for the week!  Fruits and vegetables should always be your number one choice for snacks.  Always have a fruit bowl filled with easily accessible apples, bananas, etc.  If your kids don’t like certain fruits, don’t give up!  There are a lot of fruits out there to try.  Great vegetables to have on hand are pickles, carrots or celery.  Dips like hummus or guacamole are filling and perfect to have with your vegetables.  Great items to have stocked in the refrigerator are things like yogurt and string cheese.  Healthy pantry snacks for kids, who need something to crunch, are items like nuts, trail mix, or plantain chips.

Snacks For School

Snacks for school can be a little bit trickier.  It can be tough to plan ahead and schools often restrict certain snacks kids are allowed.  Here in Texas the heat can also play a big factor in what snacks are best for kids to take to school.  While yogurt and cheese are great snacks, school lunch-box ice packs only do so well for a long school day.  Fruits and vegetables should once again be your top choice.  Dried fruits and vegetables are a great option if your kids don’t keep their lunch boxes indoors during a school day.  If nuts are allowed in your school, trail mix is your new best friend!  If not try some popcorn for your kids who need that crunch! 

Controlling The Snacking

While in a perfect world, you’d have a house full of healthy snacks and your child would skip merrily home from school and say “dear mother, might I please have an apple before supper?”  But life happens and we all just do the best we can to keep our household happy and running.  There are other ways to keep the unhealthy snacking at bay.  Having snacks be a part of your normal routine is a good way to start.  If children have expectations of one morning snack and one afternoon snack, the angry demands for more snacks goes down.  Also keep in mind, kids get ravenous when they go through growth spurts.  This is when begging for snacks is at an all-time high!  Best way to see if your kid is going through a growth spurt, offer your kids a healthy snack, if they take it, vacuum it down and immediately ask for more, then it’s a growth spurt.

Another good trick to control snacking is a snack box.  Make a nice box for each one of your children.  Every day fill the box with the number of snacks your children are allowed to eat.  Tell them they can eat these snacks whenever they want.  But once the box is empty, that is all the snacks they get for day.  It helps give some control to the kids.  They pick what snacks are in the box and when they can eat them.  Also take the blame off of you when they eat everything in their box! 

The Snack War is one we all battle.  Best we can do is try and give our kids the tools to fight that battle as well.     

Volunteering with Your Kids

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Volunteering may seem like an activity for older children and adults.  Many volunteer projects involve large scale clean ups, or manual labor that are next to impossible for the younger crowd.  But while it is easier to get your middle school and high school kids into volunteering, it is not impossible to get your elementary and even preschool kids into the practice of helping their community.

Knowing where to start can be one of the hardest parts.  If you are members of a church or any other religious organization, you are already ahead of the game.  Even if there aren’t programs specifically for younger kids to be a part of, plenty of people within your community can do with some help.  Helping an individual can be just as rewarding as helping a large group.  Your neighbors are also a great source of volunteer opportunities.  Reaching out to elderly neighbors or people who need a helping hand are great ways kids can help people around them.  Below are some other ideas that even your toddlers can do!  It can be a struggle to teach toddlers independence let alone helping out other people.  But simple things can imprint those lessons early. 

Donating Items

You know that thought you have every year?  The thought that your kids have way too many things they never play with?  Here is your solution.  Before every Christmas or birthday give your child a box and ask them to fill it with toys they don’t play with anymore.  Even little kids have items they don’t really like.  It can get kids in the habit of giving away things they don’t need, as well as clear out space for new toys! Send your gently used toys to your local daycare, hospital, or children’s center.  It is a great opportunity to talk to your kids about children who are less fortunate.  It also teaches children to treat their toys with better care and respect.

Helping the Homeless

Here is Austin we have a large homeless population that is very visible.  It naturally brings up questions from kids.  There are great ways kids can help the homeless community.  One of those ways is making small kits to pass out to homeless neighbors.  Head to your local store and get several large Ziploc bags.  Then go pick up some travel sized items for the homeless.  Some of the best items for the homeless are chap stick, deodorant, sunscreen, socks, tooth paste, tooth brush or any other small toiletries.  Have your children fill up the bags and then pass them out!

Cleaning up Your Local Park

When taking kids to the park, I’ve gotten in the habit of picking up random trash I see on the playground.  It has always been a pet peeve of mine when people throw trash on the ground when there are trash cans close by.  After doing this for a while, my little one came up behind me with an empty juice box she’d found on the playground.  People think of park clean-ups as a big weekend project.  And while those projects are great things to do, park clean ups can be made way simpler for little kids.  Simply acknowledging that we should pick up trash will encourage kids to keep an eye out for litter in the park. 

Fun Run

We live in a great city for runners.  There are so many great races to enter with your kids.  Look for races that specifically host fun runs.  Also look for races that allow strollers.  Your little ones can dress up and relax in the stroller while enjoying the spectacle of a race!  If there are charity runs that are too long for kids in a stroller, make your own water or snack station.  Kids get a big kick out of passing out water and treats to runners zooming by. 

These are just a few ideas for getting your littlest family members in the habit of volunteering.  It is such a rewarding thing to do as a family.  There is no shortage of volunteer opportunities especially around the Austin area.  Our kids are a part of our community and it’s important to teach them to make it better too!

Pinballz Arcade Lake Creek

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If you are looking for an activity to escape the heat this Labor Day weekend, try a trip down memory lane to Pinballz Arcade!  Pinballz’s Lake Creek location has expanded from their namesake pinball machines, to an epic play zone with go-kart racing, ax throwing, bowling and other awesome activities.  You will probably enjoy this place as much as your kids do!

Getting to Pinballz Lake Creek is pretty simple.  It is tucked back from the highway, but very easy to get to and find parking.  Once you get inside, you are pretty much left to your own devices.  Kiosk machines line the front where you can get your gaming card for the day.  If you want to do the go-karts or any of the other larger games, you do have to sign up with someone.  Otherwise, you are on your own! 

All of your standard arcade games and pinball machines are to the left of the entrance in a bright colorful line!  It may be hard for you or your kids to keep your focus with all the bright lights beckoning you to each game.  A lot of the games you can play with your kids, which everyone gets a kick out of.  If you’re a competitive parent, you might need to continuously tell yourself, “It’s only a game.  It’s only a game.”

Past the first round of arcade games is the eating area.  It is nice and spread out.  It is easy to move tables for the size of your group.  The food is standard concession stand food.  It is not good or bad, and it keeps you full.  One nice accessory I have always appreciated about Pinballz, is the cup holders at every single game! 

If you really want to be nostalgic, past the eating area is a large cluster of classic arcade games like Asteroids or Galaga.  It is pretty cool to see what old school games they have collected.

Tips:

Cost  The nostalgia of playing arcade games comes with the cost of playing arcade games.  Remember as a kid your parents would give you some money and tell you not to spend it too fast?  Then the money was gone in about 15 minutes!  Pinballz is unfortunately not immune from the arcade money vacuum.  Every so often they have deals with two hours of unlimited playtime or half off games.  But every game play cost money, and they don’t have an unlimited gaming card like Dave & Busters or Chuck E Cheese.

Meeting Spot  Pinballz at Lake Creek has gotten huge over the past year.  Even before they added their go-kart racing, it was hard to keep track of little ones running by arcade games.  The large eating area is where most parents set up camp.  It is a good idea to stake out your meeting place before you wind up the kids and let them go!

Food and Drink  No outside food or drink is allowed at all!  I walked in with a Gatorade bottle and they made me throw it away.  There is pretty good food and drink to buy.  But don’t expect to bring water bottles or snacks for the day.

So should you make the trip to Pinballz Lake Creek?

0-3 (Proceed with Caution)

Pinballz Lake Creek does have a really nice play area for the smaller kiddos.  The games are their size and easy to navigate.  It is only one little section in a giant area.  While they can definitely accompany their older siblings and have a good time, outside of this little area there isn’t a lot for this age group to do. 

3-6 (go now)

While this age group may also be too small for a lot of the activities, there is still plenty for them to do.  Lots of games for them to try or lots of claw machines for them to get frustrated with.  This age group will have a blast!

6-10 (go now)

Head to the bank, pull out that pesky retirement fund and go!  These kids will be in heaven!  They can do so much throughout this whole area.  They can do almost every single activity available.  They might have to wait a while before they can do ax throwing, but most parents are okay with that.

A Trip to Q2 Stadium

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The new Q2 stadium, home of Austin FC, has been an entertaining force to be reckoned with this summer!  While the team itself has had some bad luck in its first year, the experience of watching them play is something truly amazing!  Being in that stadium, listening to chants of “Alright, Alright, Alright, Austin FC” just feels so amazingly Austin!  Taking kids to sporting events comes with its own set of challenges.  Q2 Stadium is not immune to any of these, but with some planning, the whole family can enjoy the experience.

Getting There

There are multiple ways to get to the Q2 Stadium.  If money is no object, park at the stadium.  The parking lot is stupidly expensive, but easy to get your kids from point A to point B.  If you don’t want to spend an arm, but maybe just a leg, several businesses around the stadium offer parking.  The walk to the stadium is a bit longer, but you still have the luxury of bringing your own car.  The bus and the MetroRail are the cheapest of the options.  Both drop off and pick up only a few blocks from the stadium.  I didn’t mind taking the bus and it was nice not to worry about traffic.  However, it is a long ride at the end of the night to your station.  Once you get to your car, you still have to drive home.  This would be about the time kids start to have their emotional breakdowns.

Finding Food

The food might be my favorite part of visiting the stadium.  A lot of your local favorites like Taco Deli are there.  There is also a fabulous convenience store if you just want your standard chips and drinks.  When you get there, do a lap with the family and look at all the food options. And let’s not forget the Queso bar.  Let me repeat that.  The QUESO BAR!  It doesn’t get more Texas than being able plate your own nachos with your choice of queso! 

The Game

Y’all, it is just so much fun!  The fans make the experience.  Even if you have never played soccer a day in your life, you will get up and cheer with the fans.  Between the drums, the lights and the singing, you can’t help but get into the spirit of everything! 

Tips:

Guest Services

Q2 Stadium has a Guest Services station in the main concourse.  They offer stroller parking and also provide emergency wrist bands for children.  The wristbands contain contact information on them in case you get separated.  It should be the first place you stop once you get into the stadium.

Have a meeting spot

It’s easy to lose track of your kids in the massive amounts of people and action.  Make sure your kids know where your seats are.  Make sure they know who the stadium workers are and what they are wearing so they can ask for help.  You should also have a meeting place if you get separated.  Guest Services would be a good spot to take your kids to see.  The stadium itself is very easy to find your way around.  It is one big circle, so even if you get turned around, you will easily end up back where you started.

Headphones

For your littles, a pair of noise cancelling headphones will be a big help.  The stadium isn’t as loud as a rock concert, but loud enough for kids to feel overwhelmed.

Beat the Heat

Summer is winding down, and the soccer season goes well into the fall when temperatures are nicer.  But the Texas heat, mixed with Texans’ body heat, is very tough.  Make sure your kids are in their summer clothes.  Bring portable fans or cold towels to help cool you off.

So should to take the family out to visit Q2 Stadium?

0-3 years (proceed with caution)

Almost all the games start around 8 pm.  There are two afternoon games in October, but besides that, it is probably too late for the littles.  With a pair of noise cancelling headphones, they would definitely get a kick out of watching all the activity around them.  But the heat and the noise could very easily lead to a meltdown.  Some of the amazing things Q2 Stadium offers are nursing rooms, cooling off rooms, and changing tables in the women’s and men’s room!

3-6 years (proceed with caution)

Similar issues with this age group as with the babies.  The games start a bit too late for this crowd.  And once the game is over, there is the walk back to the car.  And unless you are parked in the stadium, it is a long trip home.  They will absolutely love the games and the food.  The afternoon games this October would definitely be better for this age group.

6 and up (Go now!)

Get your kids and their soccer teammates and go have some fun!  Still a late hour for these kids, but they won’t care enough to have a meltdown.  The fans are amazing, and they will love getting into the spirit of everything! 

Always Be Prepared

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School is back and with a new year, comes new injuries.  While I’ve always had my Mary Poppin’s bag filled with extra clothes, baby wipes, and snacks, I decided to tap into my inner boy scout and learn “what are the best things to have in your own first aid kit.” 

Kids are very determined to hurt themselves.  Having the right items stocked in your house, helps you prepare for even the craziest of accidents.  Once I looked at the recommendations for first aid kits, I immediately became overwhelmed and turned off my computer.  Warning!  It doesn’t take much to go from buying bandages on the Red Cross website, to building a bomb shelter.

We all know what our medicine cabinets really look like.  A scattering of random Band-Aids litters the bottom of the drawer, random medicines loosely stacked on top, and a perfectly put together travel kit someone gave you as a gift (but you’ve never used).  A good habit to get into is regularly going down the pharmacy aisle in the grocery store to check what needs to be restocked in your own home.

A dedicated first aid kit for your sitters and nannies is good to have on hand .  As much fun as it sounds, digging through someone else’s medicine cabinet looking for Band-Aids is always uncomfortable.  Below are some good items to have readily available for anyone in your home.

Butterfly Band-Aids:  Everyone has a story about busting open some part of their body that should remain closed.  These little dudes can take care of most cuts. 

Dermoplast Spray:  This antiseptic spray is also a pain reliever! A double whammy for keeping wounds clean!

Benadryl:  No one found out they were allergic to something in an easy way.  While it would be nice to be able to keep EpiPens in your first aid kit, they require a prescription. 

The Red Cross has an amazing website where you can shop for first aids items and premade kits.  Items like a breathing barrier or an aluminum finger splint aren’t things you will probably need, but they can’t hurt to have on hand (pun not intended).

The Red Cross recommends keeping a first aid kit in your car as well as your home.  I decided to head on over to Target to make myself a small, travel first aid kit.  It was a bit overwhelming walking through the pharmacy trying to decide what I would need, and if I was missing anything vital.  I decided to look back at my years of taking care of kids, and try and remember all the things I wish I had.

Tweezers:  “I’VE GOT A SPLINTER!!!”  Dear Lord have mercy on me when a kid gets a splinter.  We all know getting a splinter in the kid world is basically the equivalent to getting your arm chopped off.  Having a pair of tweezers on hand would have saved a couple of afternoons at the playground.

Gauze:  I have seen quite a few knocks to the head in my day.  If you’ve ever seen any wound to the face you know, it bleeds a LOT.  A small cut on the lip or a nose bleed, and suddenly you’re in the hallway of The Shining.  Wipes and Kleenex just don’t do the trick when it comes to stopping blood.  Gauze are the best solution to stop the blood and get back to fun.

Tylenol, Benadryl, Dramamine:  Seeing your kid sick is the worst.  Seeing your kid sick and being unable to help because you’re not home is miserable!  Keeping a few of these medications on hand for an emergency can help you make it home. I bought kids’ chewable of each medicine.  Putting liquid medicines in a car is not an experiment I’d like to try in the oppressive Texas heat.

There is a lot of information out there on how to be best prepare for an emergency.  It can get overwhelming very quickly. I found it very helpful to think about what I experienced as a child, and as a childcare worker.  It is always better to have these items and not need them, than need them and not have them.  I certainly never needed a snow shovel in Texas, but ask me about this past February.

Having a first aid kit and updating it regularly is a good habit for everyone to get into.  Go check out the Red Cross website and see what they have to offer!