It is terrible here in Illinois.  This is what my house looks like this morning:

We broke our back door trying to open it this morning.  My house is a sheet of ice.  We have about 4 inches of snow.  On top of that, we have freezing rain, so it is definitely an interesting combination we have going on out there.  We watched the traffic report starting quite early this morning, and at this point, Bill isn’t even going to try and go to work.  The bad thing is that he left his laptop at work, so he’s trying to do what he can from his cell phone.  It actually was hailing and snowing at the same time this morning if you can believe it.  We are hoping to take the kids out a tad later and maybe build a snowman.  However, the snow is more like ice chunks, so I don’t know how easy that is going to be.

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Remember that Prius we went on the waiting list for back in July?  Well, we had one false start about 3 weeks ago when they told us our car was in.  However, when we got there, it was the wrong car completely!  Needless to say, we were not happy campers.  However, there really wasn’t much we could do besides complain.  Well, we got a phone call today (after we noticed the missing mailbox — see post below), and guess what they said?  No, it wasn’t for discount furniture. Our new car was in! I was still a little nervous that it was going to be the wrong one again.  However, it was the right one!  Though things weren’t as smooth as it seemed.  The car actually came in yesterday, but our sales guy doesn’t work on Fridays.  When they logged the car into the system, they actually mixed up our car with another blue Prius that came in today.  Now, our sales guy called and said it was here quite early this morning.  I was out and had to come back home.  We then fed the kids breakfast, and took them over to Grandma’s house.  In the meantime, the dealership was looking for our missing car.  From the sounds of things, they had found it shortly before we got there.  I can only imagine how bad our salesguy was freaking out.  All in all though – we got the car we wanted with the package we wanted.  We are happy campers.  It was too darn cold to take pictures today, so hopefully I will get a chance to get it up tomorrow.

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Which is why I haven’t been posting here too often.  This last week has been a long and trying week for us.  Nothing major has went wrong — just a ton of little things.  I took last weekend off, and I just never got back into the swing of things. The highlights of my week — Will getting diagnosed again with impetigo and we got new cable, satellite, and phone service.  I’ve got a ton of catching up to do, so I’ll be posting a tad later with the other events.

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It is amazing that we are given this little gift of life without a handbook.  We try our best to keep them safe. However, there are some things as parents we should know.  I was lucky enough to be invited onto a phone call with the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children and learned a lot of information about keeping my kids safe.  My goal is let you know what I have learned, so your children don’t become a statistic.

Did you know that most abduction attempts occur after school?  It is usually between the hours of 2 pm – 7 pm.  Almost half of nonfamily abduction attempts happen when a child is walking to or from school (or some related school activity).

Did you know that the majority of children affected by abduction attempts are girls between 10 – 14?

Did you know that only 58% of parents have talked to their children about this?

This is scary information.  I remember when I was a kid, and I could go play outside myself.  Now, I would never let my kids outside by themselves!  I am so glad to see that Duracell and The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) have teamed together to give us parents a handbook to start a conversation with our children.  Best of all, this is free of charge!  The Child Safety Handbook can be downloaded right from the linked site.

Now, we were able to ask questions and mine revolved around what to tell my 4 year old daughter.  I don’t want to scare her, but I also don’t want to not have this conversation with her.  The advice I was given for her age is that we really need to get away from “stranger danger”.  The problem with stranger danger is that it portrays strangers as these scary bad people, and that is not what strangers look like.  We need to talk about the situations that have been tried and are effective — like the puppy trick.  We need to teach our children that it is okay to say no to stranger and that if an adult needs help, they will ask another adult, not a child.  Our response cannot be fear based, and we must also reassure our children.

I highly recommend downloading that handbook.  You will find a ton of helpful information no matter how old your child is. The Power of Parents Child Safety Handbook provides safety tips from the experts at NCMEC for four age groups: infant to toddler, ages 4-6, ages 7-11, and ages 12-17. The handbook outlines age-appropriate tips and scenarios that parents need to be aware of, as well as some outside influences that may be impacting their child’s actions. If reading this handbook could potentially save your child, it is well worth taking the time to download and read it.

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Last week, Will decided to pick up the phone, dial, and then try to talk into the phone.  Instead of stopping him, of course, I went and ran and got the camera.  I ended up calling my mom, so the poor boy would have somebody to talk to.  Of course, we can’t understand a word he says, but he talked to my mom for about fifteen minute.  It was super cute.  I figure if he is trying to make phone calls at one, it won’t be long before he does some unlocked cell phones tricks!  The best part — instead of holding the phone with his hand to his ear, he kept trying to hold it with his shoulder.  Of course, that didn’t last long and he’d go “oh oh” every time it fell.  Needless to say, if you call my house and hear gibberish, Will probably picked up the phone.

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