Category — Volunteering & Charitable Donations

Look! Here’s our sweet neighbor Kira:

Kira with hair

Kira and the rest of her family are some of our favorite neighbors. And let me tell you: in this delightful neighborhood, the competition is fierce. Our cat Isis came to us through Kira’s family, their family hosts the annual Christmas caroling party, and Kira and her older brother and sister are always extraordinarily loving, kind, and patient with my girls and any other little kids they happen to meet.

And I’m telling you about her because on Saturday, March 24th at 1 pm, Kira will be shaving her head as part of the St. Baldrick’s Shaving Event at Proctors.

St. Baldrick’s is a volunteer-driven fundraising organization in which volunteers raise money for children’s cancer research by shaving their heads in a show of solidarity with kids in treatment for cancer. You can read more about it here. Sometimes “shavees” are raising money in honor of someone, and Kira’s shaving as part of “Team Audrey.” Audrey is another neighbor and student at our local middle school who completed treatment in April 2011 for Acute lymphocytic leukemia and is now cancer-free!

Anyway, when I first found out that Kira was shaving her head (on Facebook, of course), I yelled it over to Cute W and he said, “Wow, that’s ballsy!” First, YES. But second, we need a gender-neutral version of ballsy. Gutsy is close but not quite strong enough. Ponder that, please, and let me know what you come up with.

I thought she deserved a little promotion, so you can make a donation here.

Madeline Musto died last night. I didn’t hear that before I wrote and published this post. Oh, no. That poor family. They’re in our thoughts and prayers.

Madeline Musto, an adorable 5-year-old girl from Schenectady, was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. I’ve been hearing about her via email lists, and the TU Parent to Parent blog, and the TU Schenectady blog, among others. The family is asking for prayers for her, and if you don’t pray, you can always send some healing thoughts. They are also accepting donations as they research possible treatment options. The family’s web page for updated information is here.

I was going to add this note to last night’s post, and I couldn’t do it. It just deserved its own post, and I don’t even know them, so really, your time would be better spent checking out the words and pictures from the family photo shoot than anything that I could say.

Then I remembered that I don’t think that I ever shared the following essay, which I’d put on another blog in May 2010. And it seemed related, so here it is edited a bit.

It Happens

Years ago I ran into a moms’ group friend who was carrying her toddler because his entire leg was encased in a cast. “What happened?!?”  I gasped.  She shrugged. “He was just running in the back yard.”

I think that it was possibly one of the most frightening statements I’d ever heard. Because, of course, my daughter ran in the yard all the time.  I had been under the impression that children running in the back yard was a good thing.  Fresh air!  Exercise!  Joyful playing!  Now it was just another moment of daily life fraught with peril.

It’s not that I was unaware of danger.  As soon as M was born we understood her fragility–she was rushed into the NICU for meconium aspiration.  It was only a couple of weeks later that my husband and I were home with her, getting sucked into a short-lived tv reality drama based in a children’s hospital.  We’d sit on the sofa, tears streaming down our cheeks, and cling to our own fully-recovered baby girl.  Still, as day passes into night again and again, and you repeatedly wake up to your own lovely child, safe and sound, it begins to seem quite possible that you’ll all live happily ever after.  Until you run into someone whose kid got hurt pretty badly doing something completely normal.

Because, you see, I would have felt enormously better if this toddler had been up on the top of a very large climbing structure, or if he’d managed to escape the house and gotten onto the street, or if he’d been–I don’t know—riding on a mechanical bull.  Because my little toddler girl would not be allowed to do that.  It is so much less frightening to find fault with the parents, because then, you can imagine that your own children are safe. I think it’s what makes today’s parents so careful.  Because the only thing worse than having something terrible happen to your own kids is having something terrible happen to your kids and being the person who’s blamed for it.  And then having the blame go viral.

So we see something awful and frightening and we lash out at the parents for letting it happen.  This is on my mind because of the recent Single Ladies brouhaha (if you need background, you can see the TU Parent to Parent blog here and at the moment you can still see the video itself  here).  But so much of the anger is really rooted in fear, fear about what can happen to our own children if we’re not constantly vigilant.  I always tell my girls that parents act angriest when they’re afraid.  I never shriek at them.  Unless I think they’re about to be hit by a car.

That’s all part of the reason why the moms in my neighborhood have been so uneasy lately. Because sometimes it’s nothing that the parents did or didn’t do, it’s nothing you could ever anticipate.  A beautiful 13-year-old girl died suddenly of a brain aneurysm just over a week ago.  “She’d felt a little bit light-headed, but that was it.  They’d gone to the doctor just in case,”  one mom murmured to me.  Meanwhile our local strep epidemic seems downright sinister since reading the recent TU article about strep entering a child’s bloodstream and leaving him with amputated limbs and a fight for his life.  I’m not the only mom who’s been starting each morning with detailed questions about how everyone is feeling.   We were talking about this, in hushed tones, at nursery school pick-up when another mom corrected me, “No, sometimes there aren’t even symptoms.  I know a little girl who had no sore throat, no headache, nothing at all.”  And we all stood there in a circle, stunned.  How are we supposed to process this, how can we live so unbearably close to tragedy every day and function as mothers without choking on our own hearts?

When a neighborhood girl was diagnosed with cancer, families stumbled over each other to make them meals.  We all wanted to help, of course.  But was I the only one who selfishly felt that helping  another family might provide me with some sort of karmic inoculation against having the same thing happen to my own kids?  With all the recent news, the same irrational reasoning prompted me to finally get  myself on the National Blood Marrow Registry (you could do it now, too:  if you’re intimidated by vague talk of payment, I’ll end the suspense and tell you that it’s a suggested donation.)  And of course it doesn’t help.  Or, really, it could help someone, but any number of virtuous acts can’t buy your family a free pass to health and happiness. Who hasn’t heard about a life tragically cut short in the middle of good deeds, kindnesses, attempts to make the world a better place?

I listen to stories of survivors who say that they are grateful for what medical tragedies and family losses have taught them, and for how their lives have changed.  They find greater value in the everyday pleasures of a blue sky or fireflies.  Food tastes better, they are more patient and kind, they hold their children close and breathe in their scent and fix each moment as a memory, just in case.  And so I try my best to do these things myself, now, in desperate hope that the gods or God or Fate will take note and withhold all such lessons from me and my family.

Hooray for Bekki, who won the Snip-its Giveaway!

If you’re sad that you weren’t a winner this time, you might want to “like” the Snip-its Facebook page so that you can hear about other discounts or special offers. Or, if you read this week’s KidsOutAndAbout.com e-newsletter, you’d know that there’s another giveaway over there! Speaking of which, if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, go ahead and sign up to receive the weekly e-newsletter.

Meanwhile, if you weren’t distracted with that other story about women’s health that was all over the news today, you might have heard that Friday, February 3rd is Go Red for Women Day to raise awareness about women and heart disease. I just happened to wear red today, but I have two fun links that are heart-related, so I thought that I’d take the opportunity to share.

First, here’s an amusing little official Go Red Video by Elizabeth Banks from Parenthood. I first saw it on Ask Moxie, who is smart enough to answer all sorts of difficult and sensitive topics for mothers and actually embed videos into her blog post, which I remain too technically inept to do myself. Yes, tech friends, this is a cry for help.

Second, do you know that Kina Grannis song Message From Your Heart? I’ve been on a bit of a Kina Grannis kick lately, but even if I weren’t, the song is really quite apt for occasion. But wait, when I went to look for that link, I realized that this video won her a big  Doritos contest for Super Bowl XLII (aka 2008). Okay, I missed that part completely. Where was I? Probably chasing children or hovering in the kitchen because another hot dip had just come out of the oven. So it’s a doubly timely link, for heart health and Super Bowl hype (did you need a recipe?). Gosh, I guess Doritos has been doing these contests for years. Huh. I only notice Doritos these days when I’m rolling my eyes at their obnoxious and sexist ads. If you, like me, are on approximately a 4-year delay when it comes to pop culture, maybe it’s new to you. Kina Grannis has a more recent super-fun jellybean In Your Arms video.

J loves the Message From Your Heart song, but she insists that the “Taking blood and making art” line is really “Taking love and making art.” It sort of fits, I’ll admit, but it’s wrong. This drives me a little nutty. Actually, J gets this from her father. Cute W frequently gets lyrics wrong, and he’s often emotionally attached to the incorrect lyrics. It’s become a bit of a running joke in our family. Right now, the girls love to sing, “I got the moves, Mick Jagger” instead of “I got the moves like Jagger” just because they know it makes me squirm. Hey you guys! That one’s from 2011, isn’t it? Thank goodness for Zumba! I get cardio (heart healthy!) while learning about pop culture. Woo, hoo.

Here’s a guest post from Fazana. For more on Jazzy Sun Birthdays, check out the Facebook page. Thanks, Fazana!

Hello, Capital District families!  My name is Fazana and I am a stay-at-home mom to a creative and sensitive seven-year-old daughter and a spirited and active two-year-old son.  I’m thrilled that Katie has given me the opportunity to let you all know about Jazzy Sun Birthdays, a project that I started six months ago and in which I believe many of you might be interested.  What is it I do?  I host personalized birthday parties for homeless children.

I believe that allowing children (particularly those who have been exposed to much more hardship than most of us can begin to imagine) to experience some of the simple joys of childhood is important.  Giving a child a birthday party may not be poverty-fighting, but it is smile-producing!  Most of the children in our lives are fortunate enough to be shielded from the harsh realities of the world.  Even if they are exposed to them, it is likely to be in a second-hand fashion.  The children I reach are those who know first-hand what it is like not to have a roof over their heads and possibly had their parents struggle to figure out the source of their next meals.  Celebrating their birthdays with cake, decorations, games, presents and goody bags will help them feel less like “homeless kids” and more like “regular kids”, if only for a few hours.

I have always loved throwing parties for family and friends–from surprise birthday parties to bachelorette parties to baby showers.  After I gave birth to my first child, I added children’s birthday parties to my repertoire.  I have derived great pleasure in putting together theme parties (often on a shoestring budget) for my children.  The joy in their eyes evident during each party is something I wanted to replicate in the eyes of children whose lives are in a state of flux.  There is a lot of focus on homeless children during the holidays in December but a birthday is a very special day for any child (and most adults!) because it is his/her day to shine.  Hence, the birth of Jazzy Sun Birthdays!

I am currently volunteering my time with St. Catherine’s Center for Children and hosting parties at their transitional shelter for homeless families in Albany County.  I hope to work with additional organizations (such as Joseph’s House in Troy and St. Paul’s Center in Rensselaer) in the near future.  At present, I do the following at the family shelter run by St. Catherine’s:

1)      Host age-appropriate theme-parties on the third Saturday of each month for all children whose birthdays are in that particular month.  (Past themes include Dora the Explorer, Disney Princesses, Justin Bieber, Mickey Mouse, Transformers and Spiderman.)

2)      Provide birthday children with 3 to 4 gifts, one of which is a book.

3)      Provide pizza and cake along with party games and arts and crafts activities.

4)      Distribute goody bags to party attendees (i.e., other homeless children living in the shelter who are not celebrating their birthday).

5)      Provide a photo book to each birthday child containing pictures taken during his/her party so they will have lasting memories of the event.

As most of you know, throwing a child’s birthday party generally takes a lot of time and resources.  I pound the pavements (usually with my toddler in tow) and send countless emails to try to get as many items as possible donated or sold at reduced prices since my funds are extremely limited.  For each of the past six months, different pizzerias have donated pizzas for the parties.  I am grateful that most of the cakes to date have been donated by individuals who simply heard about the mission of Jazzy Sun Birthdays and wanted to help out.  Many different people have donated gifts, party supplies, and goody bag items thus far.  When I do have to purchase items out-of-pocket, my go-to places are Dollar Tree, Yankee Dollar, Walmart, the clearance rack of Party City, Marshalls and Craig’s List.

To ensure that Jazzy Sun Birthdays continues to thrive and grow, I am constantly on the lookout for more wonderful individuals and groups who are willing to lend a hand and/or donate items.  I take advantage of all opportunities to get the word out about the project; hence, my excitement about providing a guest post here!  So…how can you, your friends, your family, and/or your colleagues help?  The beauty of this project is that anyone can be a part of it, no matter how busy your schedule or how tight your finances.

The following is partial list of ways to help:

1)      Volunteering at a party by helping with arts and crafts, serving pizza and cake, overseeing games, etc.

2)      Putting special skills to use by face painting, making balloon animals, taking photos, etc. during parties.

3)      Making up goody bags for 25 to 30 children.

4)      Helping with the purchase of gifts/party supplies.

5)      Baking a half-sheet cake.

6)      Thinking of craft projects to go with the theme of the party.

7)      Donating leftover party supplies/decorations and/or unopened gifts to the project.

8)      Spreading the word to people you know about Jazzy Sun Birthdays so that I can acquire more volunteers and/or donors of funds/gifts/supplies.

9)      Connecting me with business owners who might donate items such as cakes, pizza, paper products, gifts, books, etc.

I would love to expand to more shelters and make more homeless children feel like kings and queens for a day.  If you would like to help me do so, please contact me at jazzysunbirthdays [at] yahoo [dot] com.  Also, please “like” the Jazzy Sun Birthdays page on Facebook so that you can view photos of past parties, get information about upcoming ones and provide advice on gifts or craft projects, among other things.  If you’d like more background about the project, check out the article about Jazzy Sun Birthdays in the September print edition of Capital District Parent Pages. Thanks for reading this guest post!  I hope to hear from many of you soon!

I linked to a couple of places for hurricane relief, and here are a few more.

A reader wrote me with this:

I am a teacher in the Schalmont School District and many of our families in the Rotterdam Junction area lost everything in the flooding after Irene.  The district has set up a donation center at Jefferson Elementary School (100 Princetown Road, Schenectady, NY 12306).  For more information you can follow this link to the district homepage.

Many of these families have small children and lost everything so we are really hoping the community support will turn this tragedy into something positive.

Here’s a Facebook page for helping Schoharie County with hurricane relief.

Here are a bunch of links that the Downtown Schenectady Improvement Corp. sent out via email:

• The Chamber of Schenectady County will be accepting donations of non-perishable food items, canned goods, diapers and more. Call 518-372-5656 for information.
• The Galesi Group is offering short term warehouse provisions to local businesses for temporary real estate and warehousing needs. Call 518-356-4445.
• 1st National Bank of Scotia is offering special loans for those in our area affected by Tropical Storm Irene. Call 518-370-7200. More…

Guess who is leaving our household?

That’s right:  it’s the Barbie Island Princess Head! She has never been a particular favorite of mine, and now J’s decided that she’s ready to move on.  She brought her to me saying, “Maybe we could give her to someone who needs some toys.  If they don’t mind that her hair is so messed up.”  That’s some progress for her, actually.  I assured her that I could tidy up the hair, which was one of my exciting household tasks today.  She’s looking lovely, don’t you think?  So lovely, in fact, that I decided to quickly pop her into a plastic bag before J had second thoughts.

My kids struggle to be charitable.  I was thinking about this the other day, when the girls went to their friend’s birthday party.  Virtuous family that they are, they requested donations for Bethesda House in lieu of presents.   M was enthusiastic, and she spent quite a bit of time pondering what items to bring (a selection of kids’ toothpastes and toothbrushes).  But although in theory both girls agree that asking for donations instead of gifts is a good idea, neither of them can bring themselves to actually go through with it for their own birthday parties.  And, really, I can’t bring myself to push it.   Even when an aunt suggested an animal from Heifer International as a possible Christmas gift, the girls lobbied hard for a decorative bowl instead.

We do have a tradition of purging to make room before Christmas.   That generally works quite well, although it’s not always a smooth process.  One year–I think it was year before last–I had a heck of a time.  We were traveling for the holidays, so I was behind schedule when I finally got a chance to bring the boxes of hand-me-down clothes and toys to be donated–I think it was at the Schenectady Inner City Ministry.  The timing was particularly poor because not only was I racing to drop off during the designated drop-off time, but I had both girls with me, which was a significant risk.  Even when they say that they’re ready to part with something, it’s safer to make the item disappear immediately, never to be seen again, so that there’s no change of heart.  In this case, I knew that I had a particularly enticing item.  We’d bought a Barbie swimming pool and a bikini-clad doll for one of M’s friends for her birthday.  Then her party was canceled due to illness, and then it was never rescheduled, and then I forgot all about it, and eventually I had a brand-new pool and doll with no receipt to return them.  To make matters worse, J saw these items  at some point during the months-long process, and oh, how she coveted the pool and doll.  I told her no because we already had a Barbie pool.  I mean, how many freakin’ Barbie pools could a single household possibly need?  J, however, was pining.  The Barbie pool that we had, she argued, was really M’s pool.  J didn’t have a pool of her own! I know:  heartbreaking, isn’t it?

So as I was hustling both of my children into the car with several boxes full of who-knows-what, I was careful to camouflage the Barbie and her pool by placing a huge bag on top of it.  Silly me.  I’d forgotten that M prides herself on being a heavy lifter.  At the airport, in fact, she regularly astounds passers-by with her ability to swing ginormous duffle bags off of the luggage carousel.  So I should have known that my tremendously efficient elder daughter would “help” me by choosing to pick up the one bag that I didn’t want her to carry, exposing Barbie and her pool.  We’re ferrying stuff from the back of the car into the donations place when J bursts into tears because she sees the Most Beautiful Doll Ever  leaving her world.  I’m already feeling quite harassed.  I’m sweating over these boxes, M is practically swallowed up by a huge trash bag full of clothes, and now J is crying as if her heart is broken.  But then, can you guess the reaction?  Because when you’re in the parking lot next to a major charitable hub, there are always people hanging around.    And three or four friendly old homeless guys see why she’s sad and are perfectly nice.  “No, sweetheart!  You don’t have to give away your dolly!” shouts one.  “You take that back, princess!”  another encourages.  “You take it right back!“ Oh, man.  None of these thoughtful men have seen the tremendous supply of beautiful dolls and other fabulous toys in our perfectly comfortable playroom.  But Josie continues to sob and everyone is on her side.  I caved.  I just didn’t see a way out.

To make matters worse, after we all got home, the acquisition of one pool made the girls decide that they needed to get the other pool from where it had been lying, neglected, for months in a pile of leaves in our screened porch.  They wanted to create an entire Barbie resort in my kitchen.   So an hour later I am upstairs packing and I come downstairs to a trail of leaves from the door to the kitchen and a flood in the kitchen.  What a freakin’ disaster.

So, come to think of it, I guess giving away the island princess really is progress.

I’m already getting alerts about spring break camps and even summer camps, so information on those is coming soon.

So, the Children’s Museum at Saratoga sent me an email about discounted Great Escape tickets, and it linked to this groovy promotion for nonprofits: buy tickets for $19.99 for one of the specified days–tickets are usually $40.99 + tax.  For each ticket bought, $5 goes back to the nonprofit that promotes it. If you want to purchase through the Children’s Museum, you can call them at 518-584-5540. Really, this is an excellent mutually beneficial arrangement:  the nonprofits get an easy fundraiser, the parents get a price break, and Great Escape folks get great advertising and people in the park early so that kids will spend the rest of the summer asking when they can go again.  Yeah, we know that’s why they’re doing it.  I’m okay with being manipulated like that.  We haven’t ever been to Great Escape.  So, now that my kids are 5 and 7, can we handle it? Is it worth the money?  Do I need to buy these tickets?

Pondering the splendor of Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom reminded me that there was another email going around about White Water Bay, the indoor water park at Great Escape Lodge, explaining that sometimes day passes are available, with the cheapest at $25 for a half day.  So I thought that I’d supplement today’s post with information about that.   Well first, if you follow the links, it appears that you can buy them online.  But click it, and, for me at least, it always said “Not available at this time”.  Huh.   So I called the phone number that they told me to call.  Actually, they gave two phone numbers.  I started out by calling the more general number, 518-824-6000.  I waited on hold for nine minutes (because my phone times each call, a helpful feature).  Then a lady answered and told me that I had to call the hotel directly, which was the other number, 518-824-6060.  Okay, my bad.  Of course that’s going to be a better number.

So I tried the second number, pressed various numbers which put me into different voice mailboxes, was briefly distracted by a kid dispute over a balloon, and then got cut off a couple of times.  Finally I called and wasn’t cut off, and after over 5 minutes, another lady answered.  When I told her that I was interested in purchasing day passes, she told me to call the 824-6060 number directly.  I told her that I had, and then she explained that if you’re on hold too long at the hotel, it bounces back to the main line, where they can’t help you, so you just have to call again. No, I’m serious:  I thought that I misunderstood, so I repeated it all, and that’s what happens.  Okay. . . .

I was feeling a little bit bad for all of those phone-answering folks–because I’ve been there, man.  So I just tried again as I was typing in the last paragraph, and I only had to wait on hold for 3 1/2  minutes.  The lady seemed quite surprised that the online feature wasn’t working (although I remember feigning that sort of surprise, myself, back when I worked customer service), and she told me that the day passes are basically always available.  Hmmm.    Maybe it took so long earlier today because all of the parents had finally gotten their kids back to school, and then they said, “That February break went on forever.  For the love of all that is good and holy, I’d better plan something immediately so that I don’t completely lose my sanity during April break.” Perhaps it was just bad timing on my part.

So anyway, I was grousing about this to my friends over lunch, and one of them knew someone who’d gone to the indoor water park and loved it, and one of them had a friend who’d arrived to find out that the whole place was shut down due to an “accident”, and they waited some ungodly amount of time for them to clean and sanitize the place, and then just as everyone was allowed back in, “it” happened again.  I wonder if there’s a Poop Guarantee of some sort?  I can’t bring myself to call back and ask.

Anybody have endorsements or warnings to share on this one?  What age is the “right” age for going?

I apologize for the re-post. . . somehow this post completely disappeared from my blog.  I’m still baffled.  But I wanted to keep this available.

The news from Haiti is so horrible.  I thought that this site, which talks a little about how you can give most effectively when there’s a disaster far away, was interesting.  It’s one of many links that I found from readingAndrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish.  I love this blog so much–it’s got a great mix of the serious and the goofy.  But what I love most is that when something huge happens internationally, he finds these compelling, intelligent first-hand accounts, like a missionary in Haiti blogging about how he tried to  dig girls out of the rubble, or raw footage and tweets from students protesting in Iran .  People say that the world is all connected now with technology, but I don’t think that I ever felt it until I started checking out his blog–now I feel it viscerally.  He’s unbelievably prolific, so you might not have the time or inclination to keep up with it, but it’s easy to do a keyword search, too.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Berkshire Bank is giving away 4 grants of $5,000 each to area non-profits.Anyone can vote (once) on which institution should receive a grant, and the ones with the highest number of votes will win the money.  You can click the link to vote now.  Then, if there’s a local non-profit that you want to plug, please plug away in the comments.

In my own neighborhood, we’ve recently lost Laura, a friend & mom of four daughters.   Her sister Anne is selling Barefoot Books as part of a benefit that she & others have organized for the local Gilda’s Club, an organization that supports people with cancer and their family and friends.  If you’re not familiar with Barefoot Books, the books are great, so even if you’re not sure if you’d like to buy, you should click & browse.  Laura says that last year this Gilda’s Club was in danger of closing because they rely solely on donations, and any of her book sales in January will go toward supporting it.

Short on cash?  Maybe you can give blood.  I was at the Crosstown Plaza donation center yesterday and I couldn’t help chuckling because it’s got to be my favorite volunteer activity.  Seriously.  First, people ask, in all seriousness, if anyone’s paid to have sex with me lately–wow!  I feel cuter already!  Then, I lie down quietly for a little while.  There are even magazines if I’m in the mood.  Finally, I am served cookies & juice or coffee.  And sprinkled throughout:  profuse praise & thanks.  No, honestly. It’s my pleasure