Do's and Don't to Children's outdoor clothing

It never ceases to amaze me the short sightedness we have with regards to our children and their outdoor clothing.
From the parents who buy everything too big to guarantee that the clothing will "last/fit" for a long time to those who buy what fits perfectly right now or rely solely on hand me downs and consignment.

Now of course all of the advice below can always be thwarted by a child's ability to exceed our expectations growth wise.  They like to keep us on our toes.

Between my son and 11 years of working in child care I have come to learn a few things about out door clothing and children.

Shoes and boots... shoes and boots are the one item you don't want to be buying too big.  There several reasons for that and the biggest one being it's not good for the development of their feet.  It can do damage to their muscles and bone structure if they are wearing shoes that are too big.  The other big reason is because it is a safety hazard.  Children wearing shoes or boots that are too big are constantly tripping and falling when they walk, run and climb.
If your child is not walking, robreeze makes an awesome line of soft bottomed shoes/boots for outside time, mostly important for warmth.  Otherwise the little ones should be going without shoes until they start walking. Slippers and such for when you are out and about is fine.

Do buy boots and shoes with velcro fasteners.  They are easy for both parent/care giver and child to get on and off.
Do not buy boots or shoes with laces for young children.  Young children cannot tie their shoes.  Shoe laces also come untied easily and become a tripping hazard.
Do not buy boots or shoes with zippers.  WHY?  Because the zipper pulls break incredibly easily and then getting the shoe/boot done up becomes increasingly difficult.  OR the zipper will start splitting from the bottom now making the shoe/boots useless as the can no longer stay fastened and therefore fall off the foot.
Shoe/boots with pull strings for fasteners are okay for children who have the dexterity to do them up themselves.  They are okay for young children, but not so helpful in the preschool age when you are trying to foster independence and encourage putting on/taking off their own clothing.
Also used shoes and boots may be cheap, BUT consider this: Their are studies that have shown it is unhealthy for us (not just kids) to wear used foot wear because they don't offer the support our feet need (the support having been worn down by the previous owner) and because we have a unique foot print that we imprint into our shoes.
So yes, you can buy used shoes and boots but look at the inside of the shoe carefully.  If it looks well worn, chances are it's not going to be comfortable for your child and it will not have the support you child's foot needs.
If you do buy used also look at how worn the velcro is, pay attention to the soles, especially where they meet at the toe and heel.  And if you are buying tie ups, look for wear around the eyelets.
One thing I have learned, in young children, especially ones who drag their toes when they walk, buy hard toed or rubber tipped toed shoes (or boots) over material (cloth) toes.  You will get way longer use out of hard toed style shoe/boots and you won't find yourself having to replace a pair of shoes while you are out shopping because the kid stumbles, catches his toe on the edge of a sidewalk and rips the sole from the material of the shoe and now has what I call a "talking shoe." This happened only a mere two months after purchasing that pair of shoes.
Rubber boots -My only advice on rubber boots is to ensure a wide opening at the top for getting feet in.  The narrow ones, though nice looking are hard for younger children (especially the preschoolers) to put on by themselves.  Oh and don't buy thing rubber boots, they can puncture too easily.  And I love the boots that come with handles on the sides!!

Crocs.. are great for quick errands and the beach.  They are not great for outside play time.  They are loose fitting and can cause blisters, twisting and slipping when running.  They fall off too easily and they make your feet smell.  They are not a cheap replacement for summer sandals.

Flip Flops...  Just don't.  They aren't good for your feet.  They do not stay on.  You cannot run/jump/climb safely in them.  The ease of putting them on does not make up for their being incredibly unsafe for outside play.

Coats -  Coats is one of the items you can buy a little big.  A little big, not so big the child has to have the sleeves rolled up several times and the coat hem (unless it is designed that way) hangs to their knees.  A coat that big is drafty.  How is the coat keeping the child warm if it is so big that you could fit two of them inside?
On the other hand buying a jacket with no room to grow becomes increasingly frustrating as the season progresses and their sleeves are only reaching 3/4 of the way down their arms and the coat barely zips up.
In my experience, between my own son and 11 years of child care, about half a size bigger then the size the child is currently wearing is in the fall is best.  Unless you are looking at a one piece and then consider a full size depending on your child's body type --especially if they have long legs and long torso.  Otherwise you find yourself having to find a snow suit in February (not that I have personal experience or anything... sigh).

Snow pants/splash pants - This is also an item you can buy a bit big, but again not so big that the pants cover their boot/shoes.  If you get them too big it means your snow pants/splash pants will be damaged by your child walking on them.  They don't keep you warmer/dry if you are walking on them and saturating them with snow/water.  They also are a safety hazard as they make it near impossible to walk or run without falling and tripping.
Now some snow paints still may fry around the hems, that has to do with the type of material they are made out of.  The "slipperier" snow pants tend to fray faster/more often then the other kinds.
I prefer the snow pants with the straps over the ones that come to the waist, but that is really just my personal opinion.  I prefer the strapped ones to strapless because when playing in the snow, especially sledding, children are less apt to get snow down their pants or up their fronts.
Splash pants... don't buy wind breaker material splash pants.  They are a waste of money.  They do nothing to keep the child dry.  The only thing wind breaker material splash pants have going for them is that they will keep your child cleaner, but I reiterate, they do not keep the child dry.
Splash pants don't have to be lined.  Lined ones just keep a child warmer in the early wet spring weather and later fall weather.
Also you get what you pay for.  Cheap does in fact mean cheap etc in this instance.


One piece snow suits.... They have their place.  BUT if you have a long bodied and long legged child you will have to buy a full size bigger then they normally are if you want them to wear the suit through the entire winter.  They are excellent for babies and toddlers.  For preschoolers and older... for every day wear (keeping in mind that they are going outside at least twice a day) one pieces are impractical.  They are harder to get on by oneself.  If the weather is milder they can't be separated.
One pieces for infant/toddlers -- if they can walk and are in child care, the one piece cannot have attached material booties.
An infant/toddler who is walking and going outside MUST be wearing hard soled boots.  This is for safety on many levels.  Safety for making sure they don't cut their feet.  Safety in ensuring they don't get frostbite because material boots are not meant to keep your feet warm if you are walking on the snow.  Neither does the material keep your feet dry.  Children who are walking in one piece suits with material feet when playing outside fall down A LOT.  If you want a suit that has booties for travel in the car etc, then purchase the ones that either roll down over the feet (Columbia makes a good one) or detach from the feet (via snaps, velcro or zippers).  It gives the best of both worlds and means the child will have a more enjoyable outside experience when wearing the proper foot wear.  And it also means they won't be stuck sitting in a stroller or sled the entire outside time because they don't have proper foot wear.

Winter Hats -- you can buy hats a little bit big, but not so big that the thing never stays on their head and isn't constantly falling into their eyes all the time.  Hats are so easy to buy because you can try the thing on them before purchasing it with ease. Things to look for are how well it covers the ears, is there a clear front and back, is it snug enough that it's not going to fall off the child's head at the first hint of wind, is it warm enough?
What do I mean about warm enough?  Thin knitted hats are pretty useless at keeping the head warm if the wind and air can blow right through them.  A nice thick knitted hat, or lined knitted hat is better.  Aim for velcro fastening or snaps over ties especially in young children.

Mitts and gloves -- Mitts only please for the 5 and under age grouping!!  Mitts keep our hands warm better.  They are easier to put on then gloves.  There are two kinds of mitts the what I call "errand" mitts and the "outside play time" mitts.  Errand mitts are not waterproof.  They can be thin or thick and fleecy.  They generally only cover the hand and wrist.  These we typically purchase from the dollar store.  They are great for walking to the store, going in the car etc.  They are not good for playing outside.  Especially if your child is in child care and will be outside two hours of the day (typically an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon).  The outside play time mitts are waterproof.  They are the ones with then nylon outer shell etc.  This is the one item that I shocked myself by actually spending $40 on two pairs of mitts this winter.  Why?  Because they last the entire winter.  They keep the child's hands warm AND dry.  One pair has a zipper down the side from fingers to the cuff so that the hand and thumb can be put into place easily.  The other has a similar feature but using velcro instead.  The zipper pair goes slightly past the wrist and the velcro pair go all the way up to the child's elbow.  The velcro pair are excellent for when we go sledding and also because my son does not like his mitts coming untucked from his coat sleeves.  We bought a cheap zipper pair from the 'W' store last year and they did not hold up.  The zipper pull broke, they did not keep his hands nearly as warm or dry.  Thankfully his pair of good mitts from the year before still fit because they had been given to him a size too big.  And the "cheap" pair from the 'W' store was only $12.  The zipper mitts were $15 and the velcro mitts were $19 plus taxes.
Mitten clips... yes please!  Save yourself money and worry of losing the child's mitts.  Unsafe you say!  Not so, children's mitten clips are designed to release automatically if enough pull is applied to the mitt.

Sun Hats - really just make sure the hat fits the child's head well enough.  Depending on style, most children's hats are adjustable.  In young children try to find ones that fasten around the chin.  Most of them don't like to wear hats and having it fastened to them means you have about 30 seconds to a couple of minutes longer of keeping it on their head then without a fastening.

Sun glasses  Look at the age and temperament of the child and then decide if you are going to invest in a pair of sunglasses for them.  If they are so young they are just going to rip them off and throw them every moment they get, don't waste your time.  That being said, tempermanet plays a big part because some infants and toddlers will gladly wear them.  I suggest buying a cheap dollar store pair and see how your child responds.  Really don't start to force the issue till they are 3+

General advice about sizing
Pay attention to sizing differences from brand to brand and store to store.
I have found that George and Joe Fresh brands are typically smaller then say The Childrens Place and Bonnie Togs.  Though Zellers and Old Navy sit some where in the middle.  The Gap depends on the style and whether it is boys or girls... sometimes they are on the bigger end and other times they are on the smaller end.
Use the shoe sizing mats at the stores that offer them!  If you are not sure of your child's shoe size, trace and their foot on paper, measure and look it up on line OR go into some place like Kiddie Kobbler and get them to measure your child's foot.  A proper fitting shoe is key!

Nobody likes change

Things to consider when putting a young child into child care for the first time (center or home care).

Please, please, please, please if you co sleep with your child do not spring on them the having to sleep by themselves for the first time when they start child care.

Please please please if you get your child to fall asleep for nap all the time by driving them around in your car/rocking them/feeding them/walks in the stroller also do not spring on them having to suddenly go to sleep without this aid.
Please please please at least try and get them comfortable sleeping in a crib or play pen even if only for 20-30 minutes.

Seriously.  I get doing things for the sake of ease.  It's why my own son ended up co-sleeping with us for the first 9 months.
And I get some children are way flakier with napping then others, my son was one of those as well. He didn't start napping regularly (more then 30 minutes at a time at roughly the same time every day) till he was over a year and about 15-16 months old for sleeping through the night for more then 6 hours.
I get the need to get them to sleep for sanity's sake and for want of sleep ourselves and doing what ever works to make that happen.

BUT why set your child up for more stress when the whole starting child care with a more or less a perfect stranger is stressful enough on it's own??
If you co-sleep start trying to get the child to sleep on their own for short periods of nap time.
If you breast/bottle feed to sleep, start putting them down while they are still awake after feeding instead of feeding till they fall asleep.
The rocking/held/driving start by rubbing their backs/tummies while they lay in their crib or play pen.  Back rubs I can replicate!!!  With 3+ kids, holding one till they fall asleep is not realistic.

After 11 years in the field and my Mom doing home day care for a good portion of my life, I recognize kids are going to cry at nap time (there is the rare one who doesn't care) for the first while from any where up to 6-8 weeks after they start.  And some will always cry for a short period before falling asleep as part of their routine.

BUT the one's who co-slept, or were breast fed to sleep, or rocked/held to sleep or driven in a car to fall asleep, they scream longer and louder then the rest.  Because no one likes change.  And they are voicing it to the world that they don't like these changes.

This isn't a point the finger of "you're a bad parent for doing this" this is more a "please be aware of what you are doing to your child when you don't think or choose to help them adapt" as well as a "please don't be upset with me when your child doesn't sleep regularly or is screaming through nap time till they adjust."

I HATE making children cry it out.  It's why at the 20 minute mark, if they are still screaming bloody murder/in distress crying, I  bring them back down stairs.  If they are doing that not quite crying whine cry then I leave them a little longer to see if they will fall asleep or revert back to screaming then bring them down. If they are babbling to themselves I leave them for as long as they are not crying or until an hour passes.
Why an hour?  Because that is the minimum length the Day Nurseries Act states a child under 5 must rest/sleep during a day in child care (center or home care). This is up to a maximum of two hours, we bend the rules a bit for the infants (0 months to15months as they can still nap several times a day).  I also don't make the 3 turning 4, 4 and 5 year olds nap.  They don't get a nap at school so I just set them up to do quiet activities for the nap period.  In a center the 4 and 5 year olds aka the Senior Preschool group, are made to lay down for a nap.

Just some food for thought.

The oddities of the way children think

So today we went to the Toronto Science Centre for friends of ours son's birthday.
We had an awesome time.
William didn't stop talking about it after we got home.

We put him to bed late because he fell asleep on the drive home (slept from 545pm-700pm).
Thirty minutes later we hear him yelling for one of us.
I go up and climb into bed with him (he's in a loft double bed).
He is clearly upset.  When I finally get him calmed down enough to understand what he is saying I realize he is agonizing over the fact he got separated from us briefly in the Science Arcade.  And clearly it scared him.  It was only a minute or two that he was away from us.  He had moved onto the next exhibit and hadn't realized Andrew and I were not following him.  He immediately turned back around and came back to where he had last been and found Andrew and I looking for him.

Apparently this scared him more then he let on at the time.
I spent the next hour walking him through what to do if he did actually get lost.

Someone, not Andrew or I, has started to teach my son that you never talk to strangers.

This pisses me off because it is seriously wrong and messed up.
How is the kid ever supposed to make friends if he can never talk to someone he has never met through me or his father?  How is he supposed to ask for help with something if he can't talk to someone I or Andrew have not introduced to him and why has it suddenly become taboo to be polite and greet people on the street/in passing etc????

I have taught William that he can talk to people he doesn't know.  He can greet people (Good morning/afternoon/night, How are you etc) and he may tell them his name.
He has also been taught he can never go with someone Andrew and I don't know and that he doesn't know regardless of whether it is a kid or a grown up.

So I helped William work through what to do if he gets lost anywhere.
I told him that if he got separated and went back to where he last saw us and we weren't there to stand still.  We can't find him if he keeps moving.  I then told him if someone asked him if he needed help or was lost he could answer yes.  I told him if they tried to get him to go somewhere he was to say no and that if the person wanted to, they could stay with him while he waited for us to find him.  I also told him it would be a good idea to tell that person our names (which he knows well).
Though I did tell him that if he got lost in a grocery store that going to the person working at the cash register was also acceptable.
We repeated this several times before he calmed down and was able to relax enough to sleep.

I feel weird

So today I closed the last three of my student loans.  The collective total was less then Andrew's tuition for this term.  So we decided to roll them over into our Line of Credit for the sake of ease.  Especially since the benefit for leaving them as Student loans for a write off is so tiny at the loans' current sizes.
It's an odd feeling.
Finally being free of that EVIL Center of DOOM.  To be fair my one of the loans was with the Royal Bank because it pre-dates January 2001.  The Royal Bank was nothing but a pleasure to deal with.
NSLSC not so much.  These were the people who twice over the past 10 years started debting my payments from me TWICE a month two months in a row and I had to fight almost four months to get that money back.
And then called me every day for a month after I got my money back to tell me I was behind on my payments.

They also reverted my last name back to my maiden name this year after everything coming to me in my married name for the past four years.  They told me I had to go through the same rigmarole as I did the first time to get it changed back. I looked at what I owed.  I looked at our line of credit and said "Screw you NSLSC!"  and promptly paid the loans out.
Then I went and looked at the Royal loan and said "Seriously?? That's all that is left on that one?" and paid it out too.  It would have cleared itself with the automatic payments by April.

It is nice having all our debt consolidated into one place.  We are now paying it off faster at a lower payment per month versus everything being split up at varying interest rates.

I received my tax receipt for Wee Watch today.

And there was a good reason we were in dire straights financially this past year.  I can now point at it and show my husband and say "See I wasn't making it up all along."
I made significantly less this past year then I have ever in my 5.5 years of being with Wee Watch.  I was also off eleven weeks plus any sick days (maybe a week's worth) and doctor appointments (4 days).  That is more time off then the year I had William.
I have also not had a full house since December 2010.   I worked some pretty crazy hours to make up for it, and nearly burnt myself out.  And my body rebelled... (Had to have the pilonidal cyst removed AND moderate sprain of my right shoulder accounting for nine of those weeks off).

Though things have only improved marginally, I will not budge from my Monday to Friday schedule.
I will not budge from my 7am-530pm hours either.  I am no good to anyone if my health goes to sh*t.  And as we learned while I was off with my shoulder, there is NOTHING out there that I will bring in as much money as I currently am without going back to school.  Especially when you consider the fact that Andrew barely makes a real wage as a Doctorate Student.  Sure we qualify for subsidy... 8 month waiting list and we would have to pay for child care out of our pocket and they only back date a month of fees.  So I would be working out of the house to pay for child care.  Seemed kind of pointless.  In the end my shoulder was fixable and I was able to go back to work.

As of next week I will have all my under 3 spots filled.  Now I have to find children 3.5 years old and older if I want to have a full house.  This means school-aged kids with before and after school care.  With subsidy still having their waiting list and everyone and their uncle now running a home day care in this neighbourhood (and many of them are pretty sketchy.  --There is a reason home day cares should be forced to be licensed!! -that's whole separate rant to itself), it's not likely I am going to find anyone soon.

Once William starts kindergarten I will have two spots for younger kids again.  I'll actually have room for another 1 year old.  So if anyone knows someone who will be going back to work from a maternity leave in September feel free to give them my number.  I have a spot.
I love having been able to be with my son while he was little, but I resent the people who imply that it didn't cost me anything in child care. William counts toward my ratio.  Therefore he costs me a spot while he is under the age of 5.  So what you all pay in fees per a month to someone/some place is what I lose in income per a month for having William home.  So in around about way I DO pay for my son to be in child care by not getting paid for the spot he fills.

With luck Andrew will be done his PHD in December.  And maybe in January he will start working some where that pays him a real wage.  And likely he won't be doing three peoples work plus his own any more either.  That online comic PHD Piled Higher and Deeper really isn't far off the mark with regards to the life of a grad student.

And for all of you who keep asking me WHEN are we going to START trying to have another BABY?
Likely we'll start trying sometime near the end of this year.
William asks me daily (every night before bed) "When are you going to make me a big brother?"
He really really really wants both a brother and a sister.  I told him "he'll get what ever comes out when Mommy does start growing a baby and there will only be one."
I would gladly get pregnant now as I would rather not wait given my age, but I'd like to know if we are going to have to move in the beginning of 2013 and I don't want a wee baby or to be pregnant if that were to occur.