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.
Babywise Friendly Blog Network – Check them out

The Journey of Parenthood
Childwise Chat
Chronicles of a Babywise Mom
Daddy Life
Graceful Mom
My Baby Sleep Guide
http://www.babywisebooks.com/


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Teach the Value of Giving and Receiving

child opening gift

Source: everythingellee.blogspot.com

By Maureen Monfore, www.ChildwiseChat.com

The holidays are upon us! How will your children handle the holiday?

In many homes, Christmas becomes all about the gifts: shopping, wrapping, and receiving. And for children especially, who aren’t necessarily involved in the shopping, Christmas is an indulgent time that’s all about receiving. I’ve seen many a child who opens a gift and tosses it aside to open the next one.

Christmas is a fun time with children, but it also makes parents cringe when they think of how her children might react to their various gifts. Will he say “thank you” for every gift? Will he even acknowledge the giver? Will he stop to express sincere gratitude before moving on to the next gift? Will he say something special like, “I’ve always wanted this.”

Don’t leave this to chance. Don’t teach gratitude in the moment. Plan ahead and start teaching the value of giving and receiving now.

Every year, I like to take the time to assess my kids and how they might behave at Christmas. I want to make sure they will give and receive at Christmas with grace and gratitude. My children are 8 and 5 now, so they should be old enough to understand the value of giving and receiving, but I’m not going to leave it to chance. In fact, as children get older, they tend to get a little greedier.

When my boys were little, they would open one present and go off to play with it. The adults would encourage the child to open the next gift, since the idea is that we all sit around and open gifts at the same time. Honestly, though, I’d prefer that they open one gift at a time. It can help mitigate that greediness.

So over the years, my kids have learned that opening gifts is part of our Christmas tradition. And they know enough to expect several gifts. They are also involved in the process of creating a Christmas list. While everyone likes to know what my children like, I’m beginning to think that the Christmas list isn’t such a good idea. It sets the expectation that they can request their gifts and that they will receive everything on their lists. Last year, I cringed when William said something like, “I didn’t want this.” It was an innocent comment; he just thought he was only getting what was on his list, and the gift wasn’t something he put on his list. Sadly, I had to teach him in the moment, in front of the giver.

It’s moments like that that have taught me that I need to train my children in how to behave at Christmas. I need to shape their attitudes.

So how do I do this?

First of all, have a dialogue about the reason for the holiday. We discuss what will happen and why we give and receive gifts. We explain how other family members will feel when they give my kids gifts.

Then, we do a little role-playing. It’s a good idea to sit around on the floor, opening imaginary presents. I like to play the bad kid, and show them what it’s like to say insensitive things after they give me a gift. Then we’ll try again, and I’ll be the good kid. Make the experience fun to make it memorable.

I also make a point, in these last few days before Christmas, to remind them to say thank you at every turn. Whether I’m getting them a glass of water or making cookies with them, I have them say thank you. If I get any negative attitude about this, I stop to explain the reason for gratitude.

Then on Christmas morning, before opening gifts, explain again what it means to give and receive. Remind the child of the role-playing you did and give all indications that now is the time to display grace and gratitude.

One final thing to teach is the sign language sign for thank you. If you have done all your teaching and the child still forgets to say thank you after opening a gift, you can stand behind the receiver, call the child’s name, get his eye contact, and quietly do the sign. Your child then gets a cue to say thank you without you having to verbally remind him in front of the giver.

Maureen Monfore is the author of www.ChildwiseChat.com and the eBook, Live in Harmony with First-Time Obedience. A mother to two young boys, Maureen recognizes the value of obedience and heart training in our children. She relies on the teachings of Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo to show her the way. Her eBook is currently on sale for the holidays, for $7.99, which is 20% off the regular price.

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?

Schools Cancel Halloween Parties

An Illinois school district is taking fire from parents and media because the district is canceling Halloween celebrations. They cite their reasons as being related to inequalities between children who can’t afford to buy a costume and potential religious and cultural belief conflicts. Parents are up in arms because the school district has mad this decision with no parental input.

You might be surprised to know that I am not in favor of canceling Halloween celebrations even though I have plenty of opinions on Halloween. I am not going to get into my opinions on whether to do Halloween or not. You can listen a podcast episode on that subject or read my opinions and debate that topic in other blog posts about Halloween.

I am not surprised by this school district canceling Halloween celebrations because I expect this from a public school system. However I do not like it one bit. This decision strikes at the heart of a much larger issue. The courts have repeatedly upheld the position that parents forfeit their rights to make decisions regarding education when they drop their kids off at the front door of the school. While Meyer-Pierce has stood the test of time since the 1920’s in support of parent rights, there has been a familiar tone coming out of court decisions in recent decades that state that parent’s rights “do not extend beyond the threshold of the school door” (PDF). This line of thinking can be summed up by basically saying that once you add your child to a larger community the appointent leaders of that community have the right to make and enforce rules that contribute to the community at large and are not required by law to take into account every single parent’s opinion. It’s not practical to please all parents so they are forced to do their best and you are stuck decisions based on whatever values and priorities the administration members happen to possess.

The school systems are going to do what they deem best for the group. Like it or not many schools will continue to remove activities that point out inequalities and unfairness in the name of the greater good. Look at an article from a couple of years ago published in Sports Illustrated touting the defunding of football because only one sex can play the game. This is all a slow fade aimed at feeding the beast of political correctness that haunts our culture. Don’t be surprised to see Christmas parties struck from the list of approved activities in the near future. My opposition to banning Halloween parties is not because I fear Christmas parties will be next. I am actually surprised Christmas parties didn’t go first. What I am opposed to is a select few government bureaucrats making decisions that should be individual and personal. If you don’t want to “do Halloween” because your family has religious beliefs against it then keep your kids home from school on October 31st.

Do you agree with this school district’s decision?

Halloween and Mediocrity

Halloween and Mediocrity EpisodeWhat do we do on Halloween instead of trick-or-treat, festivals, or costume parties? Our family enjoys each others’ company like we do many other nights throughout the year because in our family we believe that Halloween is Optional.

Ericka over at Large Families on Purpose asks if you are going to have a “Happy” Halloween? Her birthday falls on October 31 and that seems to make people think that she is an expert on the traditions of Halloween. And given her blog post and the number of positive responses, I would say that she is more than an expert than most on this subject.

Family Travel Adventures

Check out our Daddy Life Facebook Fan Page to see us kissing the yard of bricks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We were traveling with our son Caden who has servere medical special needs related to 22q11.2 (DiGeorge Syndrome).

Mysterious backyard sound – What or who is that Owl talking to?

TECH TIME

Amazon Kindle store does not filter adult explicit and erotic book results from searches.

 

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Traveling with a Medically Special Needs Child


Caden

We have been home from our vacation for over a week now. This year’s road trip included six of us in a minivan for about 1600 miles of driving over a period of seven days. From a medical supply perspective, during the seven day trip Caden went through more than a dozen oxygen tanks,  received nearly two dozen tube feedings, and he spent a total of almost 5 hours on The Vest®.

Now before I go into more details, I want to give a disclaimer. I am not complaining about excitement created by missing oxygen tanks or all the gear required for Caden when traveling. I am trying to educate folks on the complexities associated with moving a medically special needs child around even though he does not “look special” to many people as seen above with the first fish he caught. One of our very dearest friends mentioned that we should not have that much to pack for this trip since Levi does not need a pack-n-play any longer. That last part is true, but most folks forget or don’t realize just how much gear goes along with being exclusively tube fed and having to be treated daily to prevent pneumonia and micro-aspiration due to the lack fo swallowing ability. Caden’s care is not as simple as grabbing a box of tissues and a suction machine like most folks see us do when we are out and about around town.

Medically Special Needs Child Travel Supplies

The medical equipment required for any over-night trip with Caden requires:

  • Tube Feeding Supplies* (Formula, feeding pump bags, a feeding pump with charger)
  • A spare G-Tube button
  • Extra feeding tube extensions
  • Syringes
  • A suction machine and charger
  • Oxygen Supply (1.5 liters during sleep hours)
  • Tissues
  • Bed pads
  • Spare linens
  • The Vest®
  • A jogging stroller (Caden does not have the stamina to walk for long, especially in the heat.)

The picture above may help put things into context. This picture includes most of the items listed above (minus three days worth of oxygen). This stuff took up the entire back storage area of our Kia Sedona van plus the floor space under Caden and Levi’s feet and the stroller when on the roof. The picture does not include any clothes or toys for Caden or anyone else in the family.  The basketball was added to the picture for scale.

Now that the trip is over I realize that we might have been able to carry enough oxygen to last the full week on the road. However, it would have been a tight fit. The fear of the unknown and the thought of a possible pneumonia while on the road made me very nervous about how we might get additional oxygen for Caden while 750 miles away from our home supply (over three dozen tanks in our garage) if needed. That is where the real story of the week came in.

I went ahead called the medical supply company that we use about three weeks before our trip. They are a national company and I arranged to have enough oxygen delivered to the Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center in Hillsboro, IN to last us through the Labor Day weekend. We arrived on the Friday before Labor Day at approximately 3:30pm. I immediately checked in with the camp director to see if the oxygen had arrived. It had not. Caden uses about two standard E bottles (one shown in picture above) of oxygen per night when a concentrator/generator is not available.  I knew we did not have enough oxygen tanks to make it through until Tuesday when the medical supply offices opened back up for business. As I mentioned earlier, we could not comfortably transport enough for an entire week while traveling and so we only had a little in reserve after one night in a hotel already. I  realized that it was late in the day on a Friday of a holiday weekend and I tried to contact the office in Lafayette, IN where the oxygen was supposed to come from. I got nothing but a busy signal after about seven attempts within a 30 minute period. At this point it was a few minutes before 4 PM and I was about to start driving to Lafayette to pick up the oxygen tanks myself when I decided to make one last attempt to contact the medical supply company via their toll-free service. I was transferred to a lady at the Kokomo, IN office which was about 20 miles further away than Lafayette. The lady calmed my nerves and assured me that she would get oxygen delivered even if it had to be done the next day on Saturday…which was fine with me since we had enough to make it through one more night. She even gave me her cell number in the event we had trouble getting what we needed. Come to find out the lady had a delivery truck in Crawfordsville which was only about 15 miles away from our location at Twin Lakes and they had the tanks on their truck that we needed. She diverted them to Twin Lakes on Friday evening (arriving after 5pm) and they gave us the tanks we needed. The two guys on the truck were super nice and seemed genuine in their efforts to help in getting the supplies we needed.

JJ playing OctaballSo the weekend started off on a positive note even though we had a little scare. We ended up having an outstanding time visiting with friends from all over the country for the weekend. In addition to a variety of planned activities coordinated by our friends Joey and Carla Link the boys fished and played Octaball.

We continued our vacation with a tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) and then spent two nights in the Cincinnati area so that we could visit the Creation Museum. These two stops rate a blog post each so I will save that for another day. The boys loved kissing the Yard of Bricks at IMS and we we all enjoyed our fourth visit to the creation museum where we got to meet Dr. Georgia Purdom and Buddy Davis.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday JJ

JosiahToday our favorite rising kindergartner turns 5 years old. Josiah is an extremely intelligent and charismatic little boy. Even though he has carried the nickname Tinker since shortly after birth I have recently added the nicknamed him Kool-aide. I got the idea from a co-worker who caries the same nickname. JJ and my co-worker both seem to command attention when they enter the room simply by being there. It’s sort of like the character from the old Kool-Aide commercials where the guy burst through the wall and days “Oh Yea!” JJ also seems to have the right thing to say at the right time. He is especially aware of his surroundings and often compliments people on their clothing or accessories…that he genuinely likes. He is a great story teller and an all around fun kid. Please join me in wishing JJ and very Happy Birthday.

Happy Fathers Day

To all the dads I wish you a happy Father’s Day.  I hope you got a new tie for Father’s Day. In the eyes of your child, you are the greatest!!!

Happy Daddy Dad