Bigger is Better

4 Boys Plus OneThe Osborne family is growing. We expect the newest of the @OzzKids to join the fun in late July of 2013. The picture on the right was taken on Christmas Eve right after we announced to our family that we were expecting #5. We wrapped a small box with the onesie inside and then wrapped that box inside another and so on until we had it six or seven boxes deep. We passed the box in a circle while playing Jingle Bells (Levi’s fav) and the person holding the box when the music stopped had to open a layer. The news seemed most surprising for Caden and Josiah. You can see in the picture that Josiah was still in shock a few minutes later when we staged this picture. Caden is shown below with his initial reaction.

I think our extended family has finally come to a point where they are no longer surprised. Most thought we were crazy for having another child after Caden given the medical challenges we still battle with him. Caden was born with a deletion of his 22nd chromosome called 22q11.2 (DiGeorge Syndrome or VCFS). This has come with a host of open heart surgeries, back surgeries, exclusive tube feeding, and much, much more. While Sherry certainly does carry a heavier load with cooking, cleaning, laundry, and home schooling, the logistics of dealing with Caden’s frequent hospitalizations has really not changes much with the addition of Josiah and Levi. From the time Caden was born we had one child in the ICU and one at home that required our love and attention. Most Caden Reacts to hearing he will be a big brother againrecently we have just had multiple children at home when Caden has been hospitalized. I don’t expect the future to be much different with the new addition to our family when Caden has surgeries because we will still have children in two different places that need their parents. That has become a normal for our family that we have learned to live with and deal with fairly well.

So the long and the short is that we are very excited to be growing our family. We think that Bigger is Better and thank the Lord for blessing us with another child. We love all of the children God has blessed us with and can’t wait to meet the newest addition to the Osborne gang. As I said earlier, the emotions have been mixed within the family. As shown here, Caden was a little surprised, but pleasantly surprised. I have decided to start telling people that we are trying for 14 kids and that is what the number on my hat represents. It is actually the number of my favorite NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, but I thought that referring to the number as the target for number of children was a great way to stifle the comments about our big family. The idea was not my own, my neighbor came up with the idea during a New Year’s Eve Bingo party that Riley and I attended.

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and a trust that your New Year has begun with great joy and thanksgiving.

 

 

Kindle Fire FreeTime Parental Controls Review

Daddy Life Podcast Episode 32Kindle Fire FreeTime Parental Controls

How Kindle Fire FreeTime works

FreeTime is an App that some preloaded on new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD readers from Amazon.

What Kindle FreeTime does well

– Control amount of time kids spend on the three categories available (Apps, Video, Books)
– Restrict access to parent Kindle system apps, videos, Internet, Music*, Books
– Tracks book reading progress separately between parent and each of the kid profiles in Kindle FreeTime. My wife and my son are both reading The Roman, The Twelve, and The King by Jenny L. Cote. My son generally stays ahead of my wife so his place is saved in his FreeTime profile and does not affect the last read place saved by my wife in the main Kindle OS.

Kindle FreeTime failures with some workarounds

– Music is not accessible from within Kindle FreeTime with apps and services built in by default

Workaround: Install a music playing app. Then add the Music player app to your child’s Kindle FreeTime Apps. WARNING: The music app will burn up app time. There is no way to limit screen time per App so all apps count towards daily limit.

– Kindle opens into the last profile used in FreeTime or the main full featured profile if FreeTime was not active during last shutdown.

Workaround:

–  Kindle Fire has the ability to load a screen lock pin. We share this with our oldest son who is the primary user. We (my wife and I) are diligent to log into FreeTime and enter into Riley’s profile so that the Kindle will open back into his profile when the screen lock pin is entered. He gets to protect access to his apps and books from his younger brothers and we know he is only accessing his content because the Parental Controls password must be entered to get to the root OS of the Kindle Fire.

Kindle FreeTime Feature Requests Wish List

– Five minute warning before time allocation is up
– FreeTime profiles tied to screen lock PINs
– Add a music category that works like video category where parents can choose which songs kids can listen to. Then FreeTime App time is not eaten up by listening to music with 3rd party app.

PARENTING News

The Ozz family is growing.
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Chronicles of a Babywise Mom
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Gun Control – NOW is not the time

Daddy and Caden - Sep 2012The 8 year old boy pictured here with me has probably come closer to death more times than most people reading this post combined. He has had nearly twice as many major surgeries than he has had birthdays beginning with his first, basically an exploratory open-heart surgery at 6 days old, and has averaged 30 nights per year hospitalized since then, mostly due to life-threatening illnesses. During those 8 years I have sat many of day in ICU waiting rooms beside parents who lost children, mostly to what appeared to be much less serious illnesses than what Caden battled while we got to take Caden home. Would I like to do something? Yes! Could I really do anything in the heat of the moment to help the next parent take their child home alive? NO, but now learned over time that I do try to help them prepare for the seriousness of the situation! More on that in a minute. But in the moment there is little than can be said or done to comfort these parents. They are experiencing a grief like most of us have never had to face and prayerfully will not have to face. So what can be done RIGHT NOW?

What we need to do right now is to quietly love on these people who have lost loved ones… especially those parents who have lost a young child.

How you might ask? In my opinion we should start by doing what Job’s friends did at first. They got things right with their initial response to Job’s grief in my opinion. They sat with him without saying a word for seven days and seven nights. There is nothing we can do or say for those hurting right now. Reference: Job 2:13

Am I saying that I am opposed to talking about new gun laws? NO!!! What I am opposed to is talking seriously about new gun laws in the heat of the moment…just as much as I am opposed to talking new laws governing surgeries or ICU procedures before the parents sitting next to me at a children’s hospital have even had a chance to bury their child. I believe we should step back and take a deep breath and realize that this time should not be about trying to fix anything, but simply being there for those who hurt so bad…while we still get to tuck in our kids or other loved ones safely tonight. Getting you and your family right with God, understanding and accepting Jesus’ gift of eternal life through salvation, is the most  important thing you can do, especially given the increased frequency of events like this one at the Sandy Hook school in CT. There is NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW for our family than understanding, accepting, and sharing the message of God’s gift of salvation.

For several years now I have been able to hand off my son to a surgeon or ICU nurse without an overwhelming fear of losing him because of the peace I have. My wife and I get asked often when our son Caden is facing a very serious condition or surgery, “How do you do it?” (remain so calm and peaceful) It is not easy or simple and I am completely convenced that our ability to handle life threaten situations with our son is not within our own power. As said so plainly by Dr. Charleston Stanley, “Obey God and leave all the consequences to Him.”

If you want to have that peace then I am happy to share how I got it. The peace did not come immediately or easily. But it came painfully over a period of years by watching others lose kids and by facing very tough odds of survival with my own child. All this while becoming increasingly convinced that we are not in control of everything no matter how much we would like to be. So we and our children should be focused on what does matter most and what we can control. Those two things are one in the same. We can control whether or not we accept God’s gift of salvation. Podcast episode 19 outlines a pretty good understanding of God’s gift of salvation which is the first step I took towards a peace when facing death. Ephesians 2:8-9 There is more to it, but that is the most significant step you have to take first. I’ll share more on my journey to peace at a later time.

Please pray for peace and comfort for the families as they grieve. Don’t try to do something, because there really is not much a stranger can do at this time other than to lift these hurting people up to the Lord in prayer. None of us will be able to understand why all these terrible things happen in this life. I am certain that God will use these things for the good of those who put their trust in Him. Reference: Romans 8:28 In the meantime, realize how precious of a gift you have to spend another moment with your loved ones and make the most of it.

The Father’s Mandate is a great place to start with the most important mandate being the last one. I share my implementation of the Father’s Mandate in Episodes 12-19 of the Daddy Life Podcast. All episodes can be found on iTunes. Love your children now. Share God’s word with them and teach them the importance of knowing and accepting God’s greatest gift, eternal life through salvation.

May God Bless You and Yours!!!

Photo by: Refuge Studios

Gingerbread Train and Gluten Free Train

JJ Rice Crispy Train Engine

The Christmas season brings out the creativity in the Osborne family. This year we baked gingerbread and created our 7th annual Gingerbread Train. Since we have five year little Josiah who is allergic to wheat and egg we had to get creative to come up with a train that he could decorate that would have no wheat or egg. Our Gingerbread train dough is made from wheat flour and the glue that holds everything together is made of Royal Icing which is predominately egg whites and powdered sugar. More on that train in a minute.

Here are some other pictures of Josiah’s Gluten-free train made from Rice Krispies® treats.

Josiah decorating the Rice Krispies Train

Josiah had a blast with this train project and was so tempted to eat it while decorating. As a matter of fact, as of today the train actually does not exist anymore. JJ has consumed the entire train after dinner each night while we read our Advent story Bartholomew’s Passage.

JJ and his train

JJ’s little train

As the title suggests the fun also included a 2012 Gingerbread Train. The first picture I have to share is of the entire family. Then below that I will show you some individual cars so that you can see some of the detailed decorating Riley, Caden, and their friend Noah did.

2012 Osborne Family Gingerbread Train

Osborne Family with the 2012 Gingerbread Train

Gingerbread Train Engine

Gingerbread Train Engine

Treasury Car

Treasury Car – some years we make this a coal or rock car

Gingerbread Lumber Car

Lumber Car – carries candy cane logs held together with fruit strips

Gingerbread Train passenger car

Passenger Car – Custom Made Osborne Family Addtion

Gingerbreat Train Caboose

Gingerbread Coboose – Riley’s Favorite to Decorate

Gingerbread Train Decorating

Riley and a friend decorating the train

This gingerbread train takes us three afternoons to make. Sherry normally mixes and chills the dough a few days before baking. Then I spend an afternoon with the boys cutting out pieces and baking. This process takes several hours. This year we made a little extra so Riley’s friend could decorate his own train engine and take it home. They are homeschool buddies and spend a good amount of time together during the school year. the picture above shows how messy the third and final day of the gingerbread train process takes. This is the assembly and decorating day. This year I packages each trains pieces in a separate container so it would be easier to figure out which pieces went with which car. It was also the first year that I did not participate in the decoration and assembly of the gingerbread train.

We hope you enjoyed this look at our 2012 Gingerbread and Gluten-free trains. You can get more details on how we make the Gingerbread Train at Grill’n Time. Also be sure to check out our previous six years of gingerbread trains.

 

Gingerbread Train – Christmas Tradition

2010 Gingerbread Train Engine

The Gingerbread Train will be pulling into the station in the Osborne household for the seventh year in a row very soon. This has become somewhat of a badge of our family identity during the Christmas season with close friends and family. We normally begin the process of making the dough and cutting out the pattern sometime in early December. We try to have the train assembled by the middle of December so we can use it as part of our Christmas decoration process. We have begun to take inventory of supplies and are talking about how we might change things up this year.

One change this year is that we are going to try a small gluten free gingerbread companion house. We are also going to try to make some type of royal icing without egg whites to use to assemble the gingerbread house. Our 5 year old Josiah is allergic to wheat, egg, and nuts so he cannot participate with hands on decoration or assembly of the gingerbread train. Any ideas you have on gluten free dough or egg-free royal icing would be greatly appreciated.

If you are a homeschool family this is a great project to work on for art and cooking. There is also plenty of room for creativity in the area of math and geometry. We designed our own gingerbread train cars for 2008 and 2009. You will notice the tanker card in the 2008 photo below and the passenger car in 2009. These were not designs offered by the original magazine article that we used to start this tradition.

Below is a picture of each Gingerbread Train from years past. You can also learn how to make your own Gingerbread Train by following the process we have used since 2006. The entire process is described with lots of picture over at Grill’n Time.

2006 Gingerbread Train

2006 Gingerbread Train

 

2007 Gingerbread Train

2007 Gingerbread Train

 

2008 Gingerbread Train

2008 Gingerbread Train

 

2009 Gingerbread Train

2009 Gingerbread Train

 

Gingerbread Train Daddy Life

2010 Gingerbread Train

 

2011 Gingerbread Train

2011 Gingerbread Train

What fun family traditions do you have centered around the Christmas season?

Luck or Babywise?

Emily Parker over at The Journey of Parenthood has found freedom from that nasty four-letter word that so many Babywise fans face. LUCK. Emily has dispelled the myth of luck in parenting by repeating her results of having a content and well-adjusted child who sleeps through the night and naps like a champ. All too often parents who use principles from On Becoming Babywise are told how “lucky” they are to have such a content baby.

Emily shares har passion for Babywise and the results that the principles have delivered for her entire family. Visit her blog and welcome her into the family of Babywise Friendly BLogs.

Terrible Twos or Terrific Twos

Terrible Twos vs Terrific Twos

An adult that swings between terrible and terrific as often as a two year old usually ends up with a psychological diagnosis. A two year old can take you through the process of loving or despising even the thought of having more children multiple times within an hour if you rely solely on your feelings. So what do we do with these feelings? In short we need to avoid letting our feelings and emotions drive our parenting.

My wife and I were surprised when we were told by our friends Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo that the “twos” are more like a measure of a period of time between the ages of 14 and 40 months as opposed to being an age of two years old. They share this fact with parents to give them comfort in the fact that these behaviors seen during the “twos” are normal and can be experienced for a longer range of time than some parents realize. The Ezzos remind us that kids are going through some of the most dramatic changes they will experience in their entire life. These changes are social, physical, emotional, verbal, and cognitive to name a few.

The picture above represents a difference in responses from my son on his 2nd birthday during a span of 14 seconds. These little “twos” can turn on a dime and we as parents need to realize this in our child’s life and prepare for it. We may want to take it personal and get frustrated or even angry, but  we must remember. It’s not personal and our kids are not out to get our goat.

 There are some things we can do to make this period somewhat more predictable and pleasing.

First-Time Obedience

My friend Maureen over at Childwise Chat blogged about this subject a few days ago. First-Time Obedience (FTO) is exactly what it sounds like. You child is characterized by FTO  when they come to you when call them the first time. You should not have to count, threaten, bribe or even raise your voice. Training FTO is easier than you might think…for the child. Our friends the Ezzos tell us and we have proven the fact that parents are the ones who have a hard time learning FTO.

Self Control

We train self control this using several methods, but the most popular is to use sit time. I am not talking about a reactive time-out to a bad behavior, but a proactive process of training your child to sit for a predetermined amount of time. With the little ones we start out having them site with hands folded and legs crossed for a few seconds. We increase the length of time as the days and weeks of training pass by. Before you know it you have a two-year old who can sit for a few minutes at your request in a public place without getting up. As the Ezzos teach, one of the most important thing to remember with something like self-control training is that you can’t expect your child to do in public what you have not trained in private or times of noon-conflict.

Feed the Beast

Appeal to your child’s development process. Given them activities that will reach them through all of their senses. My wife likes to do things with things like sidewalk chalk. Your kids get to make a mess of the driveway and at the same time they are seeing bright colors as they feel the resistance of the chalk against the concrete as it make s very distinct sound.

Make Use of Time

Know your child’s best times for going out or having friends over. There are times when having a play date with a friend is just not a good idea. Your child needs to be rested and can’t be hungry if play dates are going to be successful. In most cases kids at this age have a short attention span so you should not expect your child to play nice in the sandbox with three other kids for an hour and a half while you talk with your friend. Kids need room to move.

Be Directive

It has been said a million times but we parents have such a hard time getting this one through our thick heads. As parents we must direct our little ones rather than constantly chasing them around saying “NO”. Rather than be reactive to what they should not be doing we need to work on being proactive and telling our kids what they should be doing. Do these things and have more terrific moments than terrible moments.

What things do you do in parenting to bring about more terrific two days?

 

Sensory Bins

Caden with his sensory fidgetSensory items are very familiar to our family. As the parent of a special needs child with developmental delays, we get creative in terms of finding objects our Caden can use to fidget with. One of my fellow Babywise Friendly Blogger friends has posted some great tips for creating sensory bins for home. Bethany from The Graceful Mom has collected resources from other Babywise friendly moms in forums and shared them in a blog post today titled Babwise Week: Sensory Bins. Bethany reminds us that sensory items are great for all children in their developmental process. She uses then in her regular routine with her preschooler.

Just this week I was at the hospital for an extended day of appointments related to Caden’s surgery, actually scheduled for today. My smart phone battery was drained and I didn’t have my charger or my wife’s iPod touch for Caden to watch movies or play games. Instead I got creative by given Caden an oversize pink paper clip and a condiment cup from the cafeteria. He is shown in this picture playing with these items as he browses books in the pediatric Cardiology waiting room at the Children’s Hospital at he Medical University fo SC.

 

Do You Teach and Require Obedience?

I am amazed at the number of parents who seem to be allergic to the word obedience. And parents are even more adverse to the term first-time obedience…unti they experience or witness it in action. Then they want to know all about how to get it in their family.

Maureen over at Childwise Chat has served up a great summary post on the subject today. She asks us parents, “Is obedience an option?” Then she leads us through a review of some of the common mistakes parents make that create roadblocks to obedience. She shares some of her observations of the barriers taught by the Ezzos in Growing Kids God’s Way and in On Becoming Childwise: Parenting Your Child from 3-7 Years authored by Gary Ezzo and Dr. Robert Bucknam. Some of the issues shared by Maureen are threatening, repeating, bribing, and negotiating with yoru kids and much more.

Don’t worry if Maureen’s blog post leaves you hungry for more on the subject of obedience. She has authored an ebook on the subject endorsed by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo titled Live in Harmony With First-Time Obedience: How to Use Love, Authority and Consistency to Teach Your Child to Obey the First Time, Every Time

The More Kids the Easier

A fellow Babywise Friend blogger has provided a great perspective on the difference between having many children verse one child. Valerie Plawman over at Chronicles of a Babywise Mom shares her encouragement as a mother of multiple children. She passes no judgement on parents who choose to have an only child, but instead offeres a unique and uplifting view of life as a mom of four children. She says:

“Seven years ago, I counted down the hours until my husband got home. Today, when he walks in the door I am shocked that the day is almost over. My children keep things interesting.”

What a joy that must give to her husband. Life as a stay-home mom of multipel children can and should be viewed as a benefit rather than a burden.