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Okay, where the heck are they?

Sometimes the things parents try to do for their kids borders on craziness. Seriously.

Have you heard of WebKinz? They are ALL the rage, at least among grade school kids. They are stuffed animals (think Beanie Babies), with the added bonus that this cuddly little critter can become a living, walking, talking Internet animation when you type the secret code into the WebKinz site.

Voila'! Boogie's pink, sparkly pony suddenly walks, talks, plays games and works in a garden. Awesome! But it gets better. Kids can earn KinzCash by playing games, doing jobs and answering trivia questions while they are logged in. (See, there's the 'it's okay because it's educational excuse.') KinzCash buys clothes, furniture, toys and a vast assorted whatnot and thingamagigs for the kid's little online friend.

My Aunt got Boogie's first WebKinz, the pink pony, for her for Christmas. "Cool!" I thought. "She'll love this! An online gamer is born! Maybe we'll play WoW together when she can read a bit better!"

Hey, a mom can dream, right?

Little did I know what we were getting ourselves in to. She's played with the pink pony, "Twinkle Toes" for a few months now. But she discovered there are all kinds of other WebKinz out there, including the coveted WebKinz of the month. If you get those, you get extra surprises and items when you enter their secret code into the site.

Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to find the WebKinz of the month if you don't park your butt at the store at the crack of dawn and snag one as soon as they open? Oh, and not just any store carries them. Only certain stores do and those stores seem to be few and far between. I spent Mother's Day hunting down one of these stores that was actually open to try to find the Panda WebKinz of the Month.

Extensive web searches, phone calls and gas-guzzling trips around the metro east found ONE. ONE! of these stores open. And no Panda.

Boogies has also discovered that she is barred from entering some extra special, super secret places in KinzWorld. And she can't walk around town.

The super secret, extra special places and town walking require - you guessed it! - the purchase of additional real life items called WebKinz Charms. Joy!

I thought the WebKinz of the month was hard to find, but I had no clue how impossible these charms are to find. Hours of web searches, phone calls and store visits has yielded exactly ZERO WebKinz Charms. And most stores didn't know when they would have more available, if ever. Apparently the WebKinz makers are creating their very own shortage of these things so they can laugh at parents who are practically pulling their hair out trying to find them. All so their kid can see what the Enchanted Forest (Charms needed to enter here) is all about.

I'm going to be really, really mad if the Enchanted Forest is lame. The graphics better be screamin', that's all I have to say. But, we never may get to see the danged land of magic and fuzzy bunnies if we never find a charm!

Has anyone had any luck finding the WebKinz Charms? Where? Who's arm and leg did you have to trade in to get one?

I'm desperate here. Desperate. I totally get the Tickle Me Elmo rage from a few years ago now. I never thought I would go to the measures I've gone to so far for a silly TOY. Sheesh.

The cutting phenomenon

A few days ago a co-worker told me about one of her daughter's friend. This friend is apparently a "cutter" and the co-worker's daughter doesn't know what she should do.

Our family, unfortunately, has a bit of experience with cutting. When Gabby was in 7th grade we learned she had been cutting herself. How did we find out? A friend of hers, concerned about her, told the school counselor, who, in turn, told us. And we took it very, very seriously.

Do you have any idea how that makes a parent feel? To live with a kid who was actively mutilating herself and we had NO IDEA? Talk about feeling clueless, useless and the absolutely WORST parent on the planet. Not a fun place to be.

We immediately got her into counseling and I got on the 'net and started researching this "cutting" thing. I'd never heard about it before. I couldn't fathom why anyone would want to cut themselves, to hurt themselves on purpose. I couldn't imagine what was so awful in Gabby's life that she felt the need to hurt herself. Why would she do this? What was going on in her life that we didn't know about? We should have known, right? There should have been clues. We should have watched closer, been more aware.

I was scared. Then I was angry and confused. Frustrated and helpless feelings soon followed. Counseling helped. It helped her, and it definitely helped us.

My biggest problem was getting past the feeling that it was somehow MY fault that she was cutting herself. I knew I had failed, somewhere. Maybe I was too hard on her, maybe too strict. Maybe I just expected too much from her.

But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't any body's fault. Gabby cut because 1. She was stressed and had never learned how to properly cope with normal amounts of stress and 2. because she was depressed. She didn't know what else to do and feeling the pain of the cut she inflicted on herself made her feel "alive." The counselor helped her learn new, non-destructive ways to cope with the stress, (she now writes poetry, pretty darn good poetry) and we slowly got to the bottom of what was causing her depression and helped her out of that deep, dark hole.

And when we got those things figured out, the cutting stopped. Just as abruptly as it started, it ended.

But I am still wary. I catch myself secretly examining her arms, looking for new tell-tale scabs on her arms. Asking her subtle questions about her social life, her feelings, her attitude. I haven't found any more self-inflicted slices on her skin, thank goodness.

We also learned that cutting among young teenagers tends to have a "mob mentality." One of them hears about it and decides to do it, and pretty soon, everyone in that teen's group of friends becomes a cutter. It has become the "in" thing to do among some specific groups of teens.

The worst thing a friend can do is keep the cutting a secret. Tell someone. A teacher, a trusted counselor. A parent. Because while cutting doesn't typically end in suicide, it is a cry for help, a physical manifestation of emotional turmoil and pain. And they need professional help to figure it all out. If they are cutting, they can't figure it out alone. Being a teenager is tough enough, I believe it's our jobs as parents to help them get through these years as unscathed as possible.

More information about cutting can be found at KidsHealth and from the teen's perspective at Discovery Health.

It's an earthshake!

Shaking through a bit of an earthquake as an adult can be quite disconcerting. The planet isn't supposed to move around under your feet, and when it does, it can be scary.

For kids, it's even scarier, because they don't always understand what's going on. Boogie understands tornadoes, and she respects the damage they can do and knows the signs to watch for during the spring. She understands the danger of fire and knows how damaging torrential rain can be.

Earthquakes are an entirely new animal for her and she was confused about what happened Friday morning when our whole house shook and the animals freaked out. Of course, being the wily little 7-year-old she is, she took the opportunity to blame the earthquake on the current, highly disorganized state of her bedroom, but I wasn't buying it.

I floundered a bit when trying to explain why the earth moved. "Ummm....the earth's shell has giant cracks in it and sometimes they bang into each other and make the rest of the earth move."

"The earth has a shell?" she asked, even more confused.

"Yeah, like an M&M, but bigger. And sometimes it moves," I replied.

"Oh. But it doesn't taste like an M&M, right?"

*sigh*

Surprisingly, that was good enough for her. It probably helps that she's a huge Land Before Time fan and has seen the "EarthShake!" episode more times than I care to share. So she got it. Having the earthshake move from animation on the television to real life in her bedroom was oddly exciting for her. She's a weird kid.

I found a pretty cool website run by the U.S. Geological Survey to help kids understand why the earth sometimes moves. It's fun. There are experiments, animations, activities and kid-friendly explanations for this geologic phenomena.

This is cool. It is a book written by a kid and then uploaded to the Web. Nothing explains something better for kids than a kid who has been there, done that.

The Earthquake ABCs is fun to go through, too. All written and illustrated by kids.

Horton the heretic

Boogie asked nicely at first and I kind of pretended I didn't hear her. Then she begged. And begged a little more. And then she batted those big green eyes and said "Pleeeease Mommy?" and I was sucked in to her adorable-ness. I really didn't want to give in because I'm not a big fan of Dr. Seuss on the big screen, but I caved any way and took her to see "Horton Hears a Who."

Did you know some theaters have "family showings" of many new movies? I never knew that. The showing we went to was in the afternoon and "Horton Hears a Who" was packed with moms and little kids and more than a few babies. Sure, some of the babies cried, but I'm a mom, I really didn't care. You learn to tune them out after awhile.

The lights were dimmed, but it wasn't completely dark, which makes those middle-of-the-movie bathroom breaks much less hazardous! The sound was turned down to a tolerable level. I don't know about you, but most of the time the movie is ruined for me because the sound is turned up so loud it actually physically hurts my eardrums. I typically walk out of the theater with my ears ringing. It was nice to be able to lean over to Boogie, or her to me, and whisper about the movie. Yes, we are movie-chatters. I know we're annoying in the theater and I'm sorry for that, but, you should hear us at home!

I wish I could tell you all about "Horton Hears a Who," but I can't. I fell asleep about halfway through the flick, which I tend to do if a film doesn't capture me right away and keep me on the edge of my seat. I think I was only in la-la land for 10 or 15 minutes, but I don't know for sure.

I can tell you, from what I did see, it was a cute movie. Horton was funny and adorable. How can you NOT like a big, clumsy, goofy-looking elephant who deftly and carefully carries around a flower with a speck on it and believes in something no one can see and no one but him can hear?

The little kid in me got the message that no matter how small you are, you can make a big enough noise to be heard and everybody's voice matters. I think that's the message Boogie walked out with.

But the grownup side of me heard an entirely different message in Horton's quest to convince everyone around him that just because they couldn't SEE Whoville didn't mean Whoville was a figment of his imagination. Think about that for a minute....just because you can't see it or hear it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. More than once I had the feeling I was sitting in a pew rather than a movie theater seat.

But, no matter what message we walked out with, Boogie LOVED it. I know this for certain because not once did she wiggle or bounce in her seat or kick the person in front of her. And not once. NOT ONCE. Did she ask to use the bathroom. Which is a record for her. We rarely get through an entire movie without having to make a least two trips to the bathroom.

In the end, Boogie and I agreed: We were both happy that the little people in Whoville were able to make enough noise to become real to the non-believers. It would have really sucked to watch their little world get tossed nonchalantly into that giant pot of boiling oil.

Water, water everywhere

I can't decide which is worse: This incessant rain or snow.

Both require parents to come up with extra indoor activities for the young'uns to do on a wet or wintry weekend. As easy as it would be to park them in front of the TV or a video game, we like our weekends to be a bit more activity-centered. There is nothing that drives a parent batty faster than the endless "I'm boreds" once the allure of free-for-all TV shows and video games wears off.

Snow is easy. Bundle 'em up, dig out the sled and send them out for a couple of hours to romp around in the white stuff. Between sledding, snow angels, snow ball fights, building snow men and the cold, they are worn out when they come back in for a mug of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. Snow is fun. Sure, it's wet and cold, but it's FUN. And baking a batch of cookies really tops off a day of fun in the snow.

Rain. Not so easy. Sending them out in galoshes and an umbrella doesn't scream "FUN!" to them, or to me. Especially when it's not only wet and muddy, but also cold. Boogie will splash around in puddles and has been known (more than once) to entertain herself by getting down and dirty by making mud angels in a big mudhole. It's great fun to see how much mud you can convince to cling to every body part and become a giant mud girl.

But not when it's also chilly. And windy. And still pouring rain. I've suggested building mud men or mud castles, having a mud-ball fight or even digging trenches to route the standing water OUT of the yard, but my ideas aren't greeted with too much enthusiasm. Well, the mud-ball one was, but the clean-up afterwards wasn't so much fun. And guess who gets the clean-up job? It wasn't Gabby or Boogie!

So far our favorite rainy day activity during the recent deluges has been to walk down to the creek and see how high it's gotten. Once we're there, Boogie's favorite game is to stage stick races. Everyone has to find a stick and toss it into the rushing water at the same time. Then we get to stand there and watch which one reaches the chocolate-colored rapids first. Great fun! My stick never wins. It always gets stuck on something and refuses to take a trip down the rapids.

Then, for even more fun we walk up to the pond and see how much more of the dam we've lost during the latest flood. We watch crawdads climb up the bank, stage a few more stick races over the waterfall and try to guess how many feet of dam we've lost so far. Then, we toss a few rocks into the cavern that's opening up and hope it doesn't rain too much more before we can get a load of riprap in to fix the giant hole.

Movies NOT to watch on a rainy day: "Finding Nemo" or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Too much water in those particular selections.

Movies recommended for rainy day viewing: "Aladdin" or "Happy Feet." Not much water in the desert and I can deal with frozen water and snow far better than I can deal with oceans of water on a rainy day.