Category — Parenting

I had a freakin’ amazing day yesterday that I felt was worthy of a blog post to immortalize it.  What was so special?  Glad you asked.

It started in the morning. It was my first day back to work after "super-sizing" the holiday weekend. My cell phone rang and it was a 212 area code. My first though was, "Funny, who in New York would be calling me?"

It was an editor at Photoshelter.

She was calling to have me add some keywords to one of the images I have for sale:

(click on the image for a larger version) 

I guess they had a buyer who was looking for a boy blowing a dandelion and the way I had it keyworded it was not showing up in searches. If it took the researchers a while to find the image, I was probably missing out on a lot of sales of the image.

Before I could voice my next thought of, "Why are they are calling little old me me about keywords?" she went on to tell me, "We just sold it for [a lot of money]. You just made [70% of said huge chunk of change]!" It turns they’d been working on this deal for "several months" and just closed it yesterday.  Evidentially the image is destined for a very specific use (I do know for what and who), but they bought an unlimited 1yr non-exclusive license.

All I can say is, "Hell yeah!"

I then rounded out the day in the evening by taking my son to the Brewers baseball game.  Those of you who know me personally know how obsessed my son is with baseball.  This was his first game he got to go to this year and he was amped to say the least.  It was C C Sabathia’s Brewers debut and a sellout crowd.  I’d been thinking about getting tickets to a game this week and taking him.  When I heard Monday morning the Brewers signed Sabathia and he was starting Tuesday night, I decided to go to that game.  The game went from a low attendance weeknight game to a sellout in a mater of hours Monday afternoon.

The energy in the stadium when we got there was palpable.  When they announced C C in the starting line-up, they crowd erupted. When his first pitch was a strike, it did again.  He went on to struggle a bit in the new few innings. The energy didn’t leave the building, it just took a different form as folks squirmed in their seats a bit, hoping the Brewers didn’t blow the lead.

The Brewers ultimately went on to win, but I honestly had more fun watching my son watch the game.  In the 7th inning, Eric Gagne came on to pitch and gave up a lead-off hit.  The crowd sort of moaned, and waited nervously for the next batter.  My son, the optimist says to me, "It would be nice to see a double play." and lo and behold the Rockies hit into a 4-6-3 double play.  My son jumped to his feet and cheered with the rest of the crowd.

Walking to the car after the game in the warm summer night with the 42,000 other fans, my son said to me, "Dad.  Thanks for taking me to the game."  A simple moment packed in a walkway amongst thousands that was the perfect ending to the day.  I looked down at him told him "You’re welcome. I had a great time taking you." I then took a mental snapshot, knowing it was one of those times you don’t get many of as a parent.

Mom is visiting family down in Chicago, so it’s me and the boys tonight.  May not be the healthiest, but it scores points with the kids!

I missed this video from about a month ago, but since I still seem to rank pretty high in searches related to the Thomas Recall I thought I’d pass it on.  ABC News followed RC2 CEO Kurt Stoelting to their plant in Chinato show what they are doing to ensure the lead paint fiasco of this past summer.  It includes things like better paint testing of paint when it comes in the factory and clearer labeling so factory workers know what paint has been approved for use.  Learning Curve (the RC2 subsidiary who puts out the Thomas trains) has their full system outlined on their website.

I for one can guarantee that Santa will probably be bringing some new friends from the Island of Sodor to our house. I’m really not worried about more paint from RC2, mainly because they got hurt so hard the first time, they can’t afford to screw up again. 

I dropped my son off at school today. Normally I leave for work too early to do so, but I had time this morning.  On the way I was flipping through channels on XM in the car and he yelled "lets listen to this!" when I turned on XMU (the indie/college rock station).  I’ve taken pride in exposing him to music outside of the "children’s" genre and the fact that one of his favorite songs is by The New Pornographers ("Testament to Youth in Verse") is somewhat a point of pride. I think there was a Shins song on, then a break where they mentioned that channel 59 was now all Led Zeppelin.  No! Way! Asked him if he wanted to get the Led out and got no complaint.  I love my XM radio*.

I hate to admit it, but Led Zeppelin is definitely a guilty pleasure.  I’m not the type who’d be rocking out to it from the comfort of my Monte Carlo (or Camero) , nor do I have velvet blacklight posters at home, but Led Zeppelin serious kicks ass. My guess is the station is tied to an overall rise in Zep marketing - they’re doing a big reunion concert in London and re-releasing all of their recordings as a huge box set.

[* First one to leave a comment telling me how much better Sirus is since they have Howard Stern gets a boot to the head.  Why people want to listened to some dude tell a joke, then laugh at himself, or worse, have five others laugh with him for 30min before the next joke baffles me.]

As far back as I can remember, my oldest son has always wanted to take pictures, I’ve usually let him. One of the deals I use to get him to sit still and behave during a portrait is the promise that he can take my picture at the end. Few if any of these have turned out, but seeing him finally get how to hold a camera the other day (one hand cradling the lens, the other on the shutter) makes me happy.

One day I got the idea to set up our old digital P&S for him to use.  He is loving it. One of the first things we did was go out at sunrise to a local park a few Sundays ago to take some nature shots during the morning golden hour. I don’t think I got many shot that were keepers, but we had a fun walking through the park. I finally pulled the images off his card, and this was one of them:

We were walking down the path to a meadow I’d ran by the prior morning and though would be a cool shot. He kept dropping back and snapping shots and this was one of them he got of me. Not technically perfect, but give the guy a break, he’s five. It probably is one of my favorite photos of the year, mainly for the memories it brings back.

I’ve see an abnormally high spike in hits from search engines on various incantations of “Thomas Recall.”  Curious for the new inbound traffic (welcome new readers!) I looked at Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) web site and sure enough, RC2 recalled more items yesterday from the Wooden Thomas and Friends series due to lead paint concerns.

They also recalled some other Knights of the Sword toys for lead paint.  This can’t be good financially for RC2 (they’ve previously stated how bad the first Thomas recall hit them in the pocketbook), though the scope of the Thomas toys is fairly limited.

Thankfully, we don’t have any of the affected toys in our house, but it has raised a sad state of affairs.  My youngest just turned one a few weeks back and most of the people made comments along the lines of, “I checked to see if it was made in China or not.”  We had one scare where a metal spinning top he received looked familiar to a toy I posted about earlier. A quick check on the site showed it was only tops with wooden handles, his has a plastic one.

Take a moment and scan through the recall list on the CPSC website and note how many lead paint recalls there are.  While there has been this huge outcry over manufacturing standards in China, something tells me this isn’t so much a manufacturing problem as it is a supplier problem.  Given how wide spread it is, something tells me some supplier unloaded a bunch of bad paint to various toy factories. Granted, the manufacturers still have a responsibility to test their products, but I think some of the blame may also lie on the regulations on suppliers. 

Before this mess did US toy manufacturers making toys here test all the paint they used?  I highly doubt it since no one in their right mind would attempt to sell lead paint in this country. The same atmosphere needs to happen in China.  Hopefully the Chinese equivalent of the the CPSC is looking into this.

If you’re a parent and your concerned, make a habit of checking the CPSC site.  They even have an RSS feed for toy recalls you can throw into your news reader. I’ve said it before - we haven’t seen the last of these recalls.

Wow, another toy recalled due to lead paint.  This time it’s a wooded coloring case sold by Toys “R” Us.  Scary thing this time is not only does paint on the packaging contain lead, but so does the black watercolor paint inside.

Unfortunately, I’m guessing this in not the last lead paint recall we’ll see.  Looks like the kids are going to be getting books and clothes for their birthdays this year (they have enough toys as it is, but that’s best saved for another post).

Being the true blogger that I am, I watch the stats on the site to see what is getting hits here.  Surprisingly, the bulk of my traffic is for the goofy Mike Rowe QVC videos.  Not as surprisingly, Thomas Recall is a close second.  A few folks have left comments wondering about the status of the metal “Take Along Thomas” toys. 

First off, I should say I’m nothing more than a concerned parent.  Around the time of the initial recall for the wooden trains, there was a lot of rumors swirling about the metal ones as well. A lot of this was fueled by reports in the Chicago Tribune that the Illinois State Attorney’s office was investigating these trains. There is also a pending class action suit. Beyond that, I’ve seen no other news on these toys.

One thing I did find interesting was RC2’s second quarter filing, specifically regarding the financial impact of the recall:

…due to the high levels of recovery and related toy replacement costs, the Company has recorded a charge of approximately $4 million, net of tax, in the second quarter. This charge is based on the latest estimates of retailer inventory returns and consumer product replacement costs…  In addition, the Company currently anticipates incremental professional service fees, air freight, returns and replacement processing, marketing and promotional costs related to the recall totaling between $3 million and $4 million, net of tax, in the second half of 2007. These charges include estimated defense costs relating to the class action lawsuits that have been filed against the Company.

Eight million dollars.  According to the report, they only had $2.4 million in the second quarter, down from $8 million for the prior year’s same period.  Revenue was also down 14% year-over-year. I’m glad I’m not a stock holder.

RC2 seems to have fallen out of the spotlight after Mattel’s lead paint recall (thankfully we had none of the affected toys.) The big difference I’ve noted is I’ve heard Mattel’s CEO on the radio at least twice making a statement and trying to calm fears, where I had to utilize some serious search engine kung-fu to see anything offical from RC2 or HIT Entertainment.

So to answer the question I’ve gotten several time, no, I know nothing more about the safety of the metal Take Along Thomas trains.  My suggestion would be to follow both the CPSC site and possibly news on RC2.  (Note: There have been more wooden trains and Thomas merchandise recalled this month due to lead paint. Neither are from RC2.)

Rumor is that Mattel is going to announce another toy recall due to… wait for it… lead paint from China. This time from a different factory. With this being the third major recall of toys painted with lead paint from as many factories, when is someone going to do something? I heard an argument somewhere over the weekend that China is going through its own industrial revolution and like the US and others did at the turn of the last century, will have some “growing pains.” I’m not buying it. Are we partly to blame for demanding cheap products? Maybe, but I don’t think anyone ever said that we’ll trade safety for that.

When we moved to our new place a few years back, we inheirted the existing fridge.  It’s old, the ice maker doesn’t work, but the front of it is acrylic (or plastic or something).  The best part - magnets don’t stick to it. Not that I’m against showing off the kids latest creations,  it just is one less source of visual clutter in the kitchen.

I’m still catching up on my newsfeeds from vacation time (Google Reader still says I have 100+ left), but came across a post on Unclutterer that extols the same notion: Unclutterer: Try giving your refrigerator a facelift. I like their suggestion on finding a new place for the kids artwork. We’re contemplating a minor face lift to the kitchen (some paint and probably new cabinet hardware) and might work in the frame idea in.