So, about the title of this post:  An Extreme Life Makeover. Sounds sort of drastic and official, doesn’t it? Well, that’s how it feels, a little bit.  

Many things have happened in the past few months that have prompted us to have to get a little drastic and official.  Thankfully the end result is that I - and we - feel like we’re finally finding our feet again, feeling more confident, happy, excited.  And it feels really, really good.  

I’ll start off by getting you up to speed on what’s been going on lately… 

As you might recall from my last few posts (from August and July, to my utter mortification), my wonderful husband was downsized out of his job back at the end of June.  I’m not going to lie: It was at times enormously stressful to have the primary bread winner NOT, well, “winning bread.” Nonetheless, I think he - and we - have handled it with as much calm and optimism as we possibly could in the circumstances with two children to support, a mortgage payment and all the other usual bills to pay.  

There have been several things working in our favor, not the least of which is that my husband is a one-of-a-kind, wonderful, calm “glass is half-full” kind of guy. There’s also the fact that my husband has a fantastic network of personal and professional contacts.  We were stunned by how many people contacted Dan after his job loss, whether just to voice their support or to provide him with contacts or job leads.  If any of those people are reading what I’m writing here, please accept our heartfelt THANKS, because you kept us both hopeful and positive.  

I think my husband’s strong work ethic and workhorse personality were also factors in our surviving the past few months.  The man refused to treat any of his time unemployed as “vacation” or “down time,” and he spent every day making phone calls, sending out resumes, finishing antiques “projects” he’d acquired over the years so he could sell them on Craiglist, helping friends complete home improvement projects that they lacked the ability or knowledge (or tools!) to do themselves.  He kept his mind and his body engaged the whole time, and I admire that about him. 

So where am I going with this?  Well, let’s just say that Dan’s job search is over.  And we’re pleased as punch!

Don’t get me wrong: I loved having all of that one-on-one time with my husband and am grateful that fate threw us that curve ball when it did.  Dan had been stressed out and anxious leading up to the downsizing; once it was over and the dust had settled, he was back to being himself, the guy I know and love: calm, happy-go-lucky, driven, optimistic.  With his perspective back, it was nice having him around more, and the new routines we developed bouncing around the house together all day every day have been sorely missed now that he’s back to work again.  But Dan was ready and excited to begin his new professional journey, and so far, so good!

There are two other things that came up recently that have also forced us to examine our lives a bit more closely, especially when paired with Dan’s job situation.  

First, I’ve had a pesky health matter that I thought had been resolved in the spring - but apparently had not, as it reared its ugly head again in July and required me to go through some rather uncomfortable medical tests in August.  My OB/GYN was doing those tests to rule out cancer of the cervix or uterus/endometrium, because I’ve been having this problem for a solid year now.  Facing a possible cancer diagnosis at any age is frightening; facing it at 34 with a young child is downright horrifying.  Fortunately, the tests did not show signs of cervical or uterine/endometrial cancer. Unfortunately, my doctor still doesn’t know why I’m having repeat abnormal AGCUS Pap smears.  Until I have an answer to that question, the “C” word won’t completely vacate my conscious or subconscious minds.  

I think this whole issue is particularly troubling for me because I’m having so much difficulty conceiving another baby.  It would be one thing if I decided to abandon that dream for other reasons, but I can’t imagine being in a position of having to give up on that dream simply to save my own life.  My doctor doesn’t think the abnormal Pap problem is related to my secondary fertility problems, but since she doesn’t know what is causing the AGCUS Paps, she can’t say for sure.  

Fortunately, with Dan’s wonderful new job at a wonderful new company came wonderful new insurance.  So wonderful that it covers the testing for and treatment of infertility.  :)  Which means that this girl will be continuing the process of fertility testing after the first of the year, so we can at least KNOW what we’re dealing with and make an informed decision as to whether or not to pursue treatment. 

With the big question of whether we’ll have another baby still unanswered, we at least made the decision to finally get rid of the majority of our son’s baby/toddler stuff.  We (well, I) saved everything religiously all these years, imagining another baby using it before long. But all of it sat, unused, for over five years collecting dust.  Rather than continue to let the bins of clothes and boxes of toys, games, puzzles and baby gear collect dust and take up space “just in case”, we decided to let it go.  If we don’t end up having another baby, then we’ve saved ourselves the trouble of having to go through and get rid of all the stuff later on.  If we do end up having another, then it’s an opportunity to get all the latest and greatest NEW baby stuff (which, knowing me, I’d probably have wanted to do anyway!).  

Of course, all of our friends and family have told us that since we’ve purged the majority of Ange’s old stuff, I’ll find out I’m pregnant again anytime now.  And you know what?  I pray that they’re right.  :) 

The purging of the baby/toddler stuff wasn’t the end of the road either: We decided that if we were going to go through all of those things, we might as well go through our ENTIRE house and purge the rest of the stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day in years and likely never will.  

We started in the basement and worked our way up.  We ended up with so much stuff just from the basement and first floor of our house that we realized we had to split our mother-of-all rummage sales into TWO sales: One for the household decor & furniture items, adult clothing, books, etc. and one for all kid stuff.  

Say it with me: Holy crap, that’s a lot of stuff! 

It was a lot of work, going through every room and every box, cupboard, cabinet and closet in this house, but it was ENORMOUSLY liberating.  We have a nice-sized old Victorian farmhouse with fairly large rooms for a home built in 1895, but I swear it was starting to feel claustrophobic in here.  Our friends and family have always said that we have really cool stuff.  The problem is that we had WAY too much of it! Anyway, after how many weeks of sorting through everything, our house looks much more open, organized and simple than it has in ages.  And I LOVE it.  

The area I love the most now that it’s been emptied of all the unnecessary stuff is my workspace, my home office, if you will.  Before, it was dominated by three large furniture pieces (two of which have been or will soon be sold) crammed into the breakfast nook of our kitchen, and on top of those large furniture pieces were piles of craft & scrapbooking paper, all my various tools/stamps/ink stamps, etc., my “to do” lists and projects and such, and my desk was full of a bunch of stuff that didn’t really matter or make me inspired, and actually just made me feel overwhelmed.

Now, my workspace is made up of three totally different furniture pieces that fit that area much better.  One is a super fun antique black tool bench that I bought back in May at a garage sale for $25 and had been sitting in my husband’s side of the garage since.  The other - my new desk - is an old oak table and bench seat from Packard that had belonged to my husband’s grandmother.  And the third is a lovely antique oak record cabinet that Dan found at a rummage a few years ago that had been a plant stand in our dining room until now.  The three new pieces allowed me to better organize all of my supplies and tools, and I’ve only put things on my desk now that motivate and inspire me.  It’s like a breath of fresh air to go sit at my desk these days.  I like it.

The second thing that happened is that my son started full-day school this fall.  I was - and am - so excited for him to finally be a full-fledged student like “the big kids” he so idolizes in the higher grades.  At the same time, it was really difficult to go from spending all our time together this summer to having him gone all day Monday through Friday.  I had a hard time letting him go - at first.  It made me feel a little obsolete, what with me being a stay-at-home mom and my charge suddenly being gone all day!  

And then I realized that this is an opportunity for me to figure out what I want to be “when I grow up.”  An opportunity for me to critically analyze my skills and determine which I find most valuable and useful, to really think about what I’ve most loved doing over my long and winding career, and to seek out contacts in those areas.  And, since I only want to work part-time when I eventually do get back to work, I should be able to maintain enough flexibility to help out in Angelo’s classroom, run errands and maybe even have some time for myself during the day here and there.  But I didn’t jump start this myself - I have my friend and mentor Linda, with whom I used to work, to thank for that. 

See, Linda talked to Dan and helped him brainstorm ideas, companies and contacts after he became unemployed.  One day when Linda called to talk to Dan, I ended up on the phone with her for about 20 minutes and out of nowhere she asked what I planned on doing once Angelo was in school full days.  We got to talking and, before I knew it, we were making plans to have coffee so she could brainstorm ideas with me about my next career move. 

I met with Linda about a month ago now.  She was just the wind that my dusty, unused sails needed. I can always count on Linda to make me feel like a million bucks - she never, ever lets me down when it comes to that. She sings my praises, points out all my strengths, identifies new avenues I’d never think of left to my own devices, and she has a large and incredible network from which to draw contacts.  I left our meeting armed with new ideas, renewed confidence, and a burning desire to find the path I’m meant to be on at this point.

And there it is: My extreme life makeover. My husband has now gotten started on a better path in his career and has left our little nest a rested and renewed man.  I accepted that I had to cut the emotional ties I had to “things” in my life, even though those things were tied in with the sweetest memories of my baby’s early days.  I’ve learned that I have to accept whatever is meant for me in terms of another baby, and am enormously grateful that Dan’s job change will now allow us to know why we haven’t conceived and hopefully fix the problem.  My life is so incredibly rich already and while another baby would bring tremendous joy to my life, if my body simply cannot do it ever again, I’m so grateful simply to be alive and - I hope - healthy.  And I’m feeling ready to tackle the next step in my professional life, which is simply figuring out what I want to do, and then finding the right place to do it.  

It’s funny, how much we struggle sometimes to see the forest for the trees, isn’t it?

Until next time…  :) 

Amy Giampetroni is a happily married woman, a full-time stay-at-home mom to a 5-year-old boy and a part-time stepmom to a 12-year-old girl, living in Wisconsin. You can read more about Amy here and at her blog, Average Everyday Super Woman. Click here to check out Amy’s other posts on This Mommy Gig.

I like to think of myself as a reasonable adult, in a creative and fulfilling career, raising my daughters with the love of my life and best friend, lucky and sane on lots of counts. But the ferocity with which I threw myself into electing Barack Obama was shocking.

These last months I should have done so many other things — laundry mainly — but any slice of time I could deem free, I was in front of the computer checking up on my reliable websites like Huffington Post, Politico, CNN among others to see what was up in the election that day.

More smears? A new outrageous claim by the Republicans that Barack might actually be Osama Bin Laden? The latest take from Sarah Palin about what constitutes a real American? Some of what I could find was ridiculous, some of it thought-provoking… but baby, all of it highly addictive.

I could not get enough of this election! I read every paper, listened to NPR religiously, even watched Fox News to see what they thought–I’m nothing if not fair and balanced! Long after people in line at the Market Basket were sighing exhaustedly and saying they couldn’t wait for it all to be over with, I had to admit silently to myself that I couldn’t wait to get home and see if the red and blue map on my Yahoo election dashboard had changed in any way.

My “safe” friends were the ones to whom I could say Obama’s exactly what we need now. My tennis team was another matter altogether, so I just didn’t go there. But all of these spirited exchanges led me to volunteer for the Obama Campaign, an experience I’ll never forget. I called from my home, armed with a list of “undecideds” in North Carolina (friendly, well-mannered), Pennsylvania (slightly grumpy, enthusiastic when you called the like-minded), Ohio (hardly ever home) and Colorado (wary, yet standoffishly polite.)

My 10-year old got in on the action after she informed me she’s great with old people. It became a family affair and very inspiring to see my girl get so excited and into the issues. By the end of it all she could hold her own in debates with her McCain-leaning friends. It made me think back to my own girlhood election years. I tried to talk to my parents about what I was hearing–(”What’s a watergate, Mom?”) but was told by my parents not to worry about it, it’s just politics. Go outside.

So here I am now, a newly discovered person who has loved this feeling of being directly involved with a movement so historical, so enriching and larger than life.

But now what do I do? Go back to work? Really? Grow my business? I worry about my assimilation back into modern society. How will I get that same awesome feeling when I had called an Undecided and felt the kinship with that stranger, sharing our excitement about Barack’s sure and hopeful victory?

I haven’t been this inspired since meeting my husband all those years ago, having my girls and making a great life here in Massachusetts. I almost want to thank Bush and the Republicans for screwing this country up so horribly: it makes this victory, and the hope that it isn’t too late, so sweet.

I think back to that awful country song that baseball stadiums around the 4th of July seem to love so much. Before this experience it was fun to sing along in an affected country twang, watching early fireworks go off. But now I will sing it with a different feeling in my heart and I’ll sing it without any hint of mocking irony:

“There ain’t no doubt I love this plaaace! God Bless the USA!”

——————————————————–

Jen DelMonaco, mother of two, owns The Bride Beautiful.

The vet said she had Feline Hepatic Lipidosis, or Fatty Liver Disease.  Strange for a cat this young.  Medical science really doesn’t know what causes it, but all the frantic research I did on the Web made it clear that survival odds were dismal.

This isn’t about the heaps of time, effort and money we spent trying to nurse Pepper back to health.  None of it helped.  Somehow she hung in there, week after week, even during the stress of Hurricane Ike and the following 13 days we endured without power.  (That’s another blog post entirely!)  I don’t know how this 11-pound kitty could wither away to 6.5 pounds and still be alive.  Stubbornness, I suppose.

Kinsey and Pepper, 2004

Pepper was my little silky black purring birthday gift to my daughter Kinsey four years ago.  We rescued her from a shelter as a kitten.  Kinsey likes to say Pepper was her first best friend.

This past Monday I knew the time was quickly approaching when we’d have to face the euthanasia decision, and we talked about it calmly and tearfully.  I didn’t have to do much convincing — Kinsey knew it was the right thing to do.  She said she wanted to be with Pepper when it happened.

Although I was feeling sad, guilty and helpless about not being able to get Pepper to recover, as a mom I was more heartbroken knowing how difficult the loss of Pepper would be for Kinsey, only ten years old.  I suddenly began to grasp how important it would be to have some ceremony, some ritual, some well thought out gesture to help her say goodbye.  It had to be more significant than digging a hole and planting a rose bush above a pitiful corpse.   (Been there, done that with hamsters as a kid myself.)

An hour before Wednesday’s final vet appointment, I asked Kinsey which of the many blankets piled in her bedroom was Pepper’s favorite place for stealing a nap.  The fuzzy green one, she immediately responded.  We got my good sewing scissors and cut a long 3-inch wide strip from the edge of the blanket, leaving plenty of blanket for Kinsey to keep in Pepper’s honor.

We thought of some of Pepper’s other favorite things.  Her gourmet catnip.  Her mini monster teddy bear.  And the stiff brush she loved to rub her chin against endlessly.  Then we located a cardboard box that was the right size for the burial.

Having anticipated Pepper’s demise, the all-knowing Grammy Gayle had already planned on the right spot in her garden for the upcoming funeral.  She called my brother Brett to prepare the grave while Kinsey and I made the agonizing trip to the vet’s.  It was over quickly, peacefully, with a simple heart-stopping injection.  We cried all the way back to Grammy’s place.

We took our box and curled Pepper up inside, resting on her share of the green fuzzy blanket, teddy tucked in, stiff brush within chin distance, catnip sprinkled liberally.  Before we closed the box and sealed it, we each wrote a personal love note to Pepper on the inside of the four box flaps.   We put it in the ground at sunset, said a prayer, and cried some more.

I know this may sound a little cold.  I don’t want to hear, “Pepper is in a better place, out of pain, chasing mice,” and all the sentimental drivel that people say to ease your grief over losing a pet, a child, a parent, a friend.  I do miss our sweet cat, and I do hope there’s a pet-friendly heaven where we will all have a joyous reunion.  But for this mom, mostly I’m relieved that I found a way to help my daughter say a heartfelt farewell.

Goodbye, sweet Pepper.  We’ll remember you, always.

Shelley Ryan lives and works in Houston, Texas.

I see the change at the grassroots level, in my own family. Both of my two kids are too young to vote, but both are far more aware of the candidates and the issues than I ever remember them being – or than I ever remember myself being, for that matter.

My middle school daughter is an Obama supporter, and she’s been wearing her Obama button on her backpack since September. My teenage son – a little less committed, a little more alternative – nonetheless has been reading political bloggers and consuming tons of political videos on YouTube. They watched the debates, they watched Obama’s infomercial, they talk to their friends about who they are supporting and why, and I overhear their conversations from the driver’s seat. Both of them voted in mock elections at their schools yesterday, and discussed the results at dinner last night. (Obama took both.)

Some of this is clearly trickling down from their parents. But at the same time, it seems a reflection of a broader trend: Kids are becoming more civic-minded.

In politics, in the environment, in social issues, it seems my kids – and yours – are seeing the world with a broader view. They are interested. They see the world positively, at least in that they want to get involved, and they have decided they can make a difference.

At least, that’s what I’m observing, at my house. What about you? Do you see the same kind of interest and involvement from your own kids?

* * *

Ann Handley heads up content at MarketingProfs and also writes her acclaimed personal blog, A n n a r c h y: Subscribe to A n n a r c h y here. It’s really fun to follow her on Twitter.

In the end, I pushed aside my own deep desire to raise a prima ballerina and asked her what she wanted to do. That turned out to be gymnastics.

Then, her daddy jumped into the fray pushing piano lessons. I’d initially decided to go with the recommendation to limit it to just one after-school activity at her age, but I really have hoped she would inherit her father’s musical talent and he found someone right in the neighborhood who taught out of her home. Thirty minutes a week didn’t seem like that much more, so I went with it.

My question this time is, how long is long enough to tell you child they must try an activity before quitting?

After the first gymnastics lesson where she appeared to be enjoying herself, my girl had a complete melt down in the car on the way home. Gymnastics was too hard! She didn’t want to go again! Well, my pragmatic side immediately said she had to at least finish out the month because we’d already paid for it. But, another side of me wanted her to learn that not everything will come to her as easy as her academics seem to be doing, and that she would have to work at some things in life. So, I held the line and two lessons later she was loving gymnastics.

Six weeks into piano lessons the same turnaround has not happened. Her complaints are very similar – it’s too hard, but also “boring.” Her teacher says she is doing very well and is even ahead of another student the same age who started at the same time. But getting her to practice is like pulling teeth! Actually, it’s harder because her first tooth fell out last weekend with ease, but it was painful for both of us to simply complete two pages in her theory workbook last night. She’s asking to quit. Dad’s not ready for it. I suggested maybe trying just through the end of the year, but neither of them seemed to like that idea.

Do a Google blog search on “quit AND piano” and there is certainly no shortage of discussions on this topic. There are the students who are contemplating it, the teachers who are agonizing over it and reminiscers who are regretting it years later. I myself fall into the latter category – sorta. I do wish I could play, but don’t really have fond memories of the three years I took without ever really learning to read music (I was really good at just memorizing what the teacher showed me and faking my way through).

So are some people just naturals at music and others not? Is six weeks long enough to find out? What are your experiences around this topic?

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

Augmentation or immersion? It’s a popular debate among the virtual world crowd. Do people enjoy virtual worlds for the escapism they can allow when you fully immerse yourself into another character? Or, do virtual worlds simply augment your current life by allowing new ways to interact with information and other people? Studies of teens have shown that they tend to fall into the augmentation crowd - socially playing online games with others that they already know. The subject of our latest virtual world exploration has really landed on how to capitalize on that with an even younger set.

Pixie Hollow

In beta for quite some time, Disney’s Pixie Hollow officially opened October 23 - two days before the fairies debuted at the Magic Kingdom and five days before the Tinker Bell movie comes out on DVD. And if all that cross-promotion wasn’t enough, the real jewels in the crown in my opinion are the toys. Sure there have been Disney Fairies toys for a while, but the dolls my girl had already collected are nothing like these new Fairies toys. I’d heard Steve Parkis mention them at his Virtual Worlds Expo keynote and was most amazed at the scenario he painted where two girls could meet on the playground, touch their bracelets together and then go home to find their virtual Fairies already connected in-world. Oh, and for the kids who already have cell phones, there’s a mobile option through which users can use their phones to create butterflies as pets for their fairies!

Pixie Hollow is free to play, although there is an option to do more for a monthly fee of $5.95. During our weekend excursion in-world, however, we found plenty to do without going in for the membership option. You can create up to three fairies. You can design clothes for them that are either yours exclusively or available to the entire community. You can play games with fireflies, fish, spiderwebs and probably more we didn’t find. Your fairie has a home and a few bits of furniture with which to furnish it. You can chat with other fairies, although we found very few that would talk back to us. Through the parental controls (pictured below with the more matronly fairie) you have the option to allow free chat or restrict chat to a preset list of options.

The Good
I can’t say enough about the fantastic graphics of this world. To quote my girl “what a pretty place!” The images are pure Disney animation style and create a natural fantasy land that really invites you to explore. If you have sound turned on, you get soothing background noise that coordinates perfectly, as well. When flying close to the water you hear the babble of a brook, but fly higher in the same spot and the water sounds fade out to be replaced by chirping birds or soft breezes.
It’s easy to learn how to maneuver your fairy by moving your mouse across the screen which creates a nice flowing feel to fairy flight. When moving from one “meadow” to a “vale” or into a particular game, the flight is much more reminiscent of a Second Life teleport. Even then, however, my girl said “I like when my fairy flys. She looks so cute!”

The Bad
I really can’t find much bad to say about this world unless you’re one to worry about “the conflation between consumption and consumerism and citizenship” due to all the cross-marketing between the virtual and the real world toys and merchandise. Me, I’m not one to fight the Disney machine because as much as I may lament the amount of my money they get, this time of year, I’m still much happier to spend it on a princess costume than some Bratz costume.

The Lessons Learned
My girl’s first instinct when furnishing her room was to try to drag and drop items, but she quickly adapted to the click and download format of this world. Flying by moving her mouse was also different from using the arrow keys as she has done for most of the worlds we previously visited. But, again she easily adapted and picked up on the new user interface.
Flying around picking up “ingredients” such as berries, dandylion fluff, sunflower seeds and other in-world currency can be addictive. It’s just so easy and so much fun - like an online Easter egg hunt that can go on for hours before you realize it. It can also take a lot of time to customize your fairy due to the large number of options available. However, considering that the number one thing my girl always asks to do when she sees me in Second Life is to change my clothes and hair, that’s something right up the alley of their target audience.
Overall, it’s a definite thumbs up from us and I predict many returns.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers. (the apple didn’t fall far) She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.

And I have stayed true to my word… that is, until a few weeks ago. I had signed Braden (almost four years old) up for swim lessons – five Saturday lessons at the local college. After watching him have a ball in my dad’s pool just weeks before and having me, who swam on my high school team, as his mother, I figured he had the love for swimming in his blood and couldn’t wait to watch him in the water.

The first lesson came and went, and he had gone in for a total of 10 minutes (40-minute lesson), and this was after 30 minutes of crying and saying he wanted to go home. That’s okay. I chalked it up to the fact that it was a new experience and the water was cold. But then the second lesson came, and it was worse than the first. He didn’t want to go anywhere near the water – just balled up next to me and cried. I tried talking to him, but he wouldn’t tell me what was upsetting him so much. So I told him if he wasn’t enjoying the lessons, I would just bring his brother, Devin, the next time instead. This made him even more upset, to which I responded, “Show me you’re having fun, and I’ll keep bringing you. But you have to go in the water. If you don’t go in the water, I’m bringing Devin next time.”

He ended up not going in the water, and I was faced with a decision that was incredibly difficult for me. As I said, I’ve always been one to follow through with what I say, but he had been acting so out of character all-around during that time period, that I didn’t want to deprive him if this was just some short phase he was going through. Yes, perhaps the threat was a little harsh (as one friend said to me); I guess you had to be there to understand what a miserable situation it was for both of us during that entire swim lesson.

I toiled with this decision the entire week following that lesson – not wanting to go back on my word but wanting to believe him when he said he wanted to go and that he would go in the water. “I promise, Mommy.” In the end, his overall attitude did a complete 180 that week and Devin ended up getting sick. Not wanting to take a sick child to the pool, I decided to give Braden one more shot. And I made it clear to him that the only reason he was getting another shot was because Devin was sick.

But I took a different approach this time. Rather than trying throughout the entire lesson to get Braden to go into the pool, before the lesson started, I simply said to him, “Braden, I’m only going to say this once. I love you. Whether you go in the pool or not is completely up to you, and I love you either way. But please understand that if you aren’t enjoying this, then I am going to give Devin a try next time. I signed you up for lessons because I really thought you would have fun.” Well, something sunk in, and he went in for 10 minutes that day and had the biggest smile I had seen on his face yet. The following week, he was in for 20 minutes, and for the last class, he went in for the entire 40 minutes.

Yes, it turned out well, and knowing what I know now, I’m glad I gave Braden one more chance. However, had Devin not been sick, would I have taken him instead of Braden? To be honest, I really don’t know. What would you have done?

Kristen Keller lives in New Jersey with her two young boys, husband and two dogs. In an effort to obtain the perfect work-life balance, Kristen works part-time out of her home office as an independent public relations consultant and spends the rest of her time striving to give her children the same wonderful childhood experience she had. Click here to check out Kristen’s other posts on This Mommy Gig.

Right after Mark died, I was a little manic about memory. I was so afraid I was going to forget everything. Everything about Mark, about our lives together, about his childhood stories, about the few months that he got to have with Nicholas. These thoughts calmed down after a while, but they were really intense in the first several months after Mark’s death.

To answer her question, I told her that I’m scrapbooking about Mark for Nicholas; but mostly, I’m telling him stories about his Daddy Mark.

I don’t want these talks with Nicholas about Mark to be artificial. I want them to be natural and meaningful, I don’t want to sit down to dinner every night and have “story time” about Mark. Instead, I tell him stories about Mark when one of Mark’s favorite songs come on the radio. When Mark’s favorite television show comes on. My favorite stories are when Nicholas makes a face or a gesture that looks like his Daddy Mark. I jump on those moments to tell Nicholas about his Daddy Mark.

I know too, that Nicholas is getting a lot of stories about Mark through his grandpa and his aunt and uncle.

So, how do you keep memories alive? How do you tell your kids or your spouses about friends, family, loved ones who have passed on (or even just have passed out of your life)? What do you do to try to help them know those people?

The latest stop on our kid-focused virtual worlds safari took us to a world of cute dinosaurs. Dinokids was a major sponsor of the recent Virtual Worlds Conference & Expo, so I not only got their promotional cards in my conference bag, but also got to watch commercials for them prior to every panel and keynote. Not sure if my little review will give them enough return on the money spent for that placement, but here goes. <wink>

Dinokids

One of the first things that struck me about Dinokids is how game-like it seemed. Not that it’s any different in regards to the games it offers in-world – it’s very similar to most of the other kid worlds we’ve visited in regards to the activities offered. No, when I say game-like, I’m talking about the way your dinosaur actually moves around inside the environment. Not having played many video games in quite some time, I still immediately thought of Mario Brothers when I saw ladders and ropes to climb to different levels. This video illustrates it better than I can explain:

In fact, one of the times my girl seemed to be having the most fun in Dinokids was during a game of chase with one of the few other dinos she met in-world, much like what you see in the video.

Speaking of videos, my girl discovered a movie theatre in-world while I had stepped away. She mentioned finding it, but said it just had some “teenager videos” in it – which I immediately made her go back and show me. Turns out they’re running YouTube videos inside Dinokids that appear to be primarily G-rated movie trailers for kid/tween-targeted moves. Whew!

The Good

Dinokids has a definite focus on parental involvement. When we first explored the world, I noticed two types of accounts – authorized and unauthorized. Having seen the subscription model as the main method other kid-focused worlds use to create cash-flow, I just assumed that unauthorized accounts were free and authorized ones cost. Turns out that both are free, but authorized means that a parental account has been created and associated with the child’s account.

This allows the parent to set several parameters for how your child will interact in Dinokids, including not only the choice between pre-programmed responses or free chat, but also setting time limits for how long your child can be logged in during a day. I really like that one as I’ve often thought about setting a timer when my girl gets on the computer to keep myself from losing track of just how long she’s been sitting there.

Also good is the educational element in some of the games such as the math one in the school building. And, dinos can learn about good citizenship and environmental stewardship by picking up trash around their world and placing it into a trash bin to earn eggs (the Dinokids currency).

One other thing I think I would rate “good” that I think is a unique feature in Dinokids is the camera for snapping pics of you and your friends in-world. I can see this as a nice bonus feature. It’s something you have to pay extra for, but gives your little dino a nice scrapbook of snapshots that they wouldn’t be able to grab via your basic screen capture.

The Bad

I’ve had to rewrite much of this section of my post after making the discovery that authorized accounts didn’t cost. Many features that I thought should have been at least partially available to free accounts are available, they just require that you as a parent authorize the account. So, “the bad” section of the post got a lot shorter.

Free or not, one thing I still didn’t really like was the controls for the athletic games such as track. Making your dino run requires hitting the space bar on your keyboard – over-and-over, faster-and-faster. In older users hands like mine, that can be done pretty easily, but in a six-year-old’s hands that repetitive fast motion turns into parent-cringing pounding on the keyboard. And don’t even ask them to try to do that and hit a letter key at the same time to jump over hurdles.

The Lessons Learned

Dinokids just launched as a public beta in September, so you won’t find the traffic numbers of a Club Penguin or Webkinz when your kid is looking for someone to talk to or play with in-world. And, many areas of the world are still under construction. Also, you may encounter bugs with such a new application. My first attempts to authorize my girl’s account didn’t work, and after a nice e-mail exchange with the team in Korea who is building Dinokids, it was determined that a bug in the system didn’t like the underscore character in my e-mail address. They quickly fixed it, and I can feel good about the fact that I’ve helped make it a better process for those who come after me. But, not everyone wants to be an early adopter and deal with the issues that can sometimes bring. Overall, we both liked what we were able to see and my girl has returned several times on her own, so if you’ve got a kiddo who’s crazy about dinosaurs this world is probably a good one for them.

Laura P. Thomas is the wife of a former rocker and mother of one 6-year-old girl that’s already waaay too interested in The Jonas Brothers (the apple didn’t fall far). She works in the Global Online team at Dell, evangelizes virtual worlds, and twitters too much as LPT.