The Land of Ozz

I have been considering this for a while and I believe now is the time.  I will begin a series on “The Father’s Mandate” as defined in Chapter Four of Growing Kids God’s Way.  I will be cross posting these articles here and on GrowingKids.org.  Follow me on Twitter to get notified when the posts go live.

Gingerbread Train 2007

We are building our shopping list for our annual Osborne Family Gingerbread Train. You can see the 2006 Gingerbread Train on Grill’n Time. I realized tonight that I never uploaded pictures of last year’s train. You will have to follow me on Twitter or Facebook to see more detailed pictures of last year’s train.  I will be posting them later tonight.

No, we have not jumped to the Attachment Parenting camp.  My wife jokingly admitted to co-sleeping with our 15-month old for an hour or so each morning during our recent trip to Washington, D.C.  Josiah was sleeping through the night in a pack-n-play in the same room with our two older boys, but he was waking when I left for work.  Sherry brought him in an had him lay with her for a little more than an hour until it was time for the rest of the gang to get up.  Both she and Josiah were able to easily go back to sleep this way without waking Riley and Caden.

Babywise and Preparation for Parenting are pretty clear on the subject of co-sleeping and we completely agree with the Ezzos on this subject. That said, there might be a night or two when you can safely deviate on the co-sleeping issue with an older kid without messing up all the great nights of sleep you have been given by following the priciples taught in Babywise? An yes, I know that a 15-months old is well out of the ages covered by Babywise but I thought the title would be cute and catchy.

This post is really not about co-sleeping an, but it is about the two big C’s of parenting.  The two big C’s are Context and Characterization.  What is the context of the situation?  Are you characterized by this as a parent?  The context of this situation was pretty obvious in our case.  Sherry was considering the preciousness of others and wanting to allow our older boys to get the amount of sleep they needed.  I am sure this was also the easiest way to get Josiah back to sleep for an hour or so without having a big power struggle.

We are certainly not characterized by having our children sleep in the same room with us even though there have been some (a lot of) occasions where Sherry or I would bunk in the same room with Caden for health and safety reasons.  Caden has got very congested with a cold in the past and he has required frequent suctioning at night to help him avoid aspiration of his secretions.  At four years old Caden still does not swallow at all, not even his own saliva.  If we didn’t help him keep his airway clear then we could have ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.  We ended up in the hospital a few time anyway, but I am sure there would have been many more hospital stays if we had not taken the extra precautions.  Other than those occasions I can probably count the number of times we have slept in the same room with our kids on my fingers. Most of those other occasions happened when we were visiting relatives or friends.

So it is not unheard of for a Babywise mama to co-sleep with a child, but you can be assured that in our family it will only happen on special occasions based on the context of the circumstances.

While I understand the arguments from folks including other Christians for and against how to handle Halloween, the bottom line is this.  Whatever your convictions are, no one has a right to come in and harass you over your decision.  When I get the “what are you going to be/do on Halloween” question I respond with a simple “our family does not participate in Halloween”.  Most folks just say “oh whatever” and move on, but it is often the fellow Christians who rise up at me with a bitter response.  For some reason there are some Christians who seem to be offended that another Christian can act on a different personal conviction.

Explaining convictions to our young children is one of the most difficult things.  Finding a way to say that people who participate in Halloween are not bad and are most are just having fun is hard when you are not joining the fun. We tell our kids that Halloween is an activity that we choose not to participate in as a family.  This is just one more way that we build family identity and set ourselves apart from the world.

I want to share a note my wife left on a parenting forum this week concerning this subject:

I have found a good book that we read every year to communicate the
spiritual issues of Halloween. It is called Mommy, Why Don’t We Celebrate Halloween?
by Linda Winwood. I find it gives enough
details about the spiritual side of the holiday without going overboard.

I too have struggled with the balance. As a child, I remember sitting
under the kitchen table with all lights turned out (and of course not
a word was spoken)! Those kind of actions left me fearful of the
holiday and in a sense elevated evil’s power over the power and
authority of Jesus. I rebelled when I was older and indeed
participated fully in celebrating Halloween. My moral warehouse
wasn’t being filled with any reason WHY! I had no idea why we were
sitting in the dark except the explanation that “Halloween is the
Devil’s holiday.” This was hard to understand when on the outside
nothing looked “evil” in fact it looked pretty fun!

A couple of years after my oldest child was born I felt my heart being
pulled away from participating in the holiday though it wasn’t until a
year later that I learned the origins of many of the rituals of
Halloween. Even with that being said, we are very careful to include
our own fun. Building a strong sense of family identity makes the
perfect opportunity to bring balance to this holiday. There are many
things we do or don’t do because of our convictions based on the Word
of God. Our children already know (and Riley will tell you) “We’re
the Osborne family and we do/don’t do _________” and they know why we
do or don’t do things.

The balance? I think that comes in creating our own fun as a family!
We’ve had a family movie night on Mom and Dad’s bed before with
popcorn and candy. This year we are looking forward to games, movie
and sleeping in the living room (which is on the back side of the
house :)! We’ll put up a little tent in the living room and we have a
huge cardboard box to imagine with. We’ve been saving that box
knowing how much fun they’ll have!! I wonder how much sleep we’ll all
receive….?!

Have a blessed Fall season!
Sherry for The Osbornes

For those Chritians who are led to ignore Halloween or find other alternatives, God bless you, you are not alone even though it may seem so on some days even within your own church family.  For those who are led to minister to people during this time of year or just have a good time dressing up and collecting candy, God bless you.  You are not judged by our family either way.  You are viewed as folks with different convictions.

Previous posts on the subject of Halloween:

Halloween II - Why Christians should not celebrate
Halloween - Should Christians Participate?

My big boy Caden was hospitalized yesterday.  He was admitted for a “fever of unknown origin”.  The 104 degree fever popped up while Caden was already on a pretty strong antibiotic for a sinus infection.  A major concern is that this illness could jeopardize the scheduled heart surgery that could take place as early as 9/22.  I am keeping my twitter pretty current if you want to follow more real-time progress.  I will be also be updating Caden’s Page with major changes.

The doctors are trying to identify the source of the fever so they can treat it.  We also have to consider potential evacuations with Hurricane Hanna if we do not get discharged before the storm arrives here in chucktown.  The latest predictions have it headed this way (Charleston is in the center of the five day forecast track). Apple pick’n in NC is looking better by the minute.  I just hope we can blow this Popsicle stand in time to beat this storm to the county line.

The good news is that Caden has O2 sats of 96-100.  The bad news is that it is taking 10 liters of blow-by oxygen to get the sats up.  Please keep Caden in your prayers.

The following video is of our visit with Aunt Robin and Uncle Mac on our way to see Grandma and Grandpa over the Memorial Day weekend. Riley and Caden both got to drive Mac’s truck through the pasture.

The beginning of the video is basically a slide show of still pictures. The last part of the video is of Riley and Caden driving the truck.

Having trouble viewing YouTube videos at work? You can download a copy of the video here (6mb file).

We recently went through the task of rearranging car seats for our kids. Riley is moving into a booster and Josiah has out grown the infant car seat (carrier). We have a fairly nice Britax that we got when Riley was less than a year old. It is in good condition and has never been in a vehicle when an accident occurred. The seat is nearly six yeas old and I was wondering whether or not the seat is still usable despite its appearance. I have heard that car seats expire. Is this a true statement?

I probably would not have even given this a thought but rather let common sense dictate whether or not to replace a car seat. But, sometime last spring we had a fire rescue team at our church one Sunday afternoon doing inspections on the installation of our car seats for anyone who wanted to participate. Ours were all installed and being used correctly, but the technician did give me a little feedback that I found interesting. One of the things he told me was that Riley’s Britax seat was expired. “DO WHAT?,” was my reply. This guy proceeds to tell me that car seats expire after five years. Don’t get me wrong. I get the concept. These things are made of mostly plastic and plastics can become weak when it gets pushed and pulled on enough. The belts can become weak when they get enough acidic spit up, juices, and other foreign substances on them over the years. All that said, you would think that the manufacture would have this plastered all over the boxes that these things come in. After all, that would equate to a fresh sell ever five years. Anyway, I heard what the guy said and went on about my business since this just did not seem to make sense to me. How can you you pick a number and say that in X number of years a car seat will expire? In my opinion you can’t.

Here’s the thing about those expirations. There is currently no federal law requiring that child safety seats have an expiration date. I have also found no state laws referring specifically to expiration dates. If you find that a seat has an expiration on it, you are not likely to get put into jail for using it past its expiration date, but you should certainly contact the manufacture to make sure you understand why they put that date on the seat. A report from AAA says that you are required by most state laws to “use seats in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions.”

Yes, some seats have expiration dates on them? Why? The explanations vary. Maybe the seat nmaufactures are trying to ride the wave of fear created by the technicians who tell us that the seats to expire. Many “convertible” car seats are sold touting that they can be used for 5-35 lbs rear facing and from 20-50 lbs forward facing. Those seats would need to be replaced before one child outgrew them if they were to expire in five or six years. For instance, the average boy will reach 20 lbs between 8-9 months of age based on the CDC Clinical Growth Charts that most of our pediatricians use. That same average boy will reach 50 lbs at about 7 years of age. That means that the average male child would be required to get a new seat before reaching the maximum allowed weight for most convertible seats simply due to an expiration.

The bottom line is that opinions rather than facts seem to be driving the five or six year expiration dates. The expiration age varies depending on who you talk to. Some Child Passenger Safety Technicians claim to have been taught that seats expire after five or six years depending on who trained them. One organization that offers certification classes for these technicians says, “Make sure the safety seat is less than 10 years old (preferably less than five), the expiration date stamped on the plastic has not passed, and it has never been used in a crash.” Reference

From left to right: Sherry (aka Mrs. Ozz or Mommy), Josiah, Caden, Hank (aka TheOzz or Daddy) and Riley

I am introducing the family because you will be seeing more of them on The Land of Ozz in the near future. The Land of Ozz will begin some slow changes over the next few weeks. Mrs. Ozz has expressed a desire to begin blogging. We talked and decided that having her join me here on The Land of Ozz is the better solution than creating and maintaining a whole new blog. My posting has been light anyway and the readership has declined as a result. Mrs. Ozz will be blogging on some of the same general topics plus much more. As a result of the “more”, I plan to add sort of a His and Hers blog roll as well as a His and Hers category list. I also hope to offer feed subscriptions by author.

So the “Ozz” in “The Land of Ozz” will begin to take on a new meaning. The blog title moving forward will represent the Ozz family instead of just one Ozz (myself). The blog design will be reflecting some changes too. I more than welcome the feminine touch to the look and feel of this blog. Mrs. Ozz has been reviewing WordPress themes and I expect to make a change to this blog’s design in the next week or two.

Our family hosted a pizza party this passed weekend. The party was very family friendly and did not have any beer, but did end up with a deer. More on the deer in a minute. We had about twenty five friends over for lunch including their children. It was a great time to celebrate the beginning of a New Year. The weather was great for grilling the pizza. Sherry and I have decided to make this an annual event. We intended to have the party on New Years Eve, but ALL of our boys ended up sick enough to be put on antibiotics a few days before the big event. Our two oldest, Riley and Caden were even put on breathing treatments due to wheezing. The big plan was to have a mock up of the “ball drop” at 7PM on New Years Eve in celebration of Zulu New Year. The Zulu New Year was an idea some of us dad’s came up with we would not miss out on the coming in of the New Year…somewhere.

Anyway, about the deer. The big event of the day for me came when I sat down with my good friend Chad after most of the guest had departed. Chad and I were enjoying the cool breeze on the screened porch as we looked out over our backyard into the wetlands protected area behind our house. Chad asked if I had ever seen any deer in my backyard or in the wetlands. I told him no, but I had seen deer tracks. He went on to tell me about the deer he saw in his backyard a few days earlier. Well, it was about 5 or 10 minutes after Chad asked me about the deer when we both just happened to be looking in the same direction at my next door neighbor’s yard. My neighbor has a privacy fence and we were entertained by the leaves swarming up over the hight of the fence as he used his leaf blower. Then, in the flash of an eye, a full grown whitetail doe came flying through my yard (front to back). I could barely believe my eyes. I told Chad that I was so glad we were both looking in that same direction at that moment because he would never have believed me if he had not seen it for himself. I have lived in this house for six and a half years and never once seen a deer. I had not five minuted earlier told Chad as much and then there comes a deer out of my front yard.

A few minutes later my new neighbor from three doors down came walking up. He introduced himself and asked if we saw that deer run through the yard. He said it came running right past him as he was sweeping his driveway and then it took a hard turn into my yard. I think he was as surprised by it as we were and maybe he just wanted someone to verify that he was not crazy.

It was an unbelievable end to a great pizza party to see a full grown deer run through the yard at 2pm. I think the next time Chad comes over, I would like for him to ask me if I have ever seen bags full of $100 bills fall from the sky into my backyard.