Some of my kids (okay, just Elizabeth) like to wear outfits that coordinate with holidays. But it turns out that a shirt that says “Happy Valentine’s Day!” only works one day a year. So my favorite way to handle things is to buy clothing that can be used for the holiday—but doesn’t necessarily look holidayish after the day has passed. There are plenty of little-girl clothing items with hearts on them, so if I get heart tights and a shirt with a heart on it and a pink or red skirt, she’s dressed for the Valentine’s Day party but can still use those pieces on other days with other clothes.

Same with 4th of July: I like flag shirts TOO, but a “July 4th 2012!” flag shirt is not quite as fully wonderful on July 5th. Red shirt + blue skirt + anything with a star or stripe on it = sensible things that can go into regular rotation afterward.

For example, the Boden red/white/blue floral shirt (photo from BodenUSA.com). On July 4th or Memorial Day with other red/white/blue clothes, this is going to look patriotic as heck. On July 5th with jeans, it’s just a cute summer shirt.
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Can we talk a little about what we did for Father’s Day THIS year, so that we can refer to it NEXT year? I’d wanted to do a post on Father’s Day gift ideas last week, but I felt too discouraged, and also Paul reads here sometimes and I didn’t want to give away his gift idea. And of course all the store gift ideas are like “Barbecue! Golf! Beer! Sports! Tools! Here’s the perfect idea but it’s $250!”

I was lucky this year, because I thought of an idea for something I wanted to get ANYWAY for Paul, and Father’s Day was only a month or so away so I bought it and put it aside.

Wireless Remote Locator (photo from Amazon.com). Paul is continually getting frustrated at not being able to find the remote, and I am continually getting frustrated about the frustrated searching, so this is really a gift for BOTH of us. There is a risk, of course, of losing the remote finder—but I plan to NAIL IT TO HIS HAND THE WALL.
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One of my favorite gift ideas for a new baby is a stack of board books I liked reading to my own kids: it’s a sentimental gift but also a practical one. I was looking at candidates for that very sort of gift, and I kept running into…unusual board books. Many of them seemed like they’d make great amusing gift ideas for the right recipients—but I’d need to go see them in a book store so I could make sure they were as good as their covers.

Baby Mix Me a Drink (photo from Amazon.com). I hadn’t realized until I went in search of a photo/link that the author Lisa Brown is married to Lemony Snicket. We bought a couple of these books a few years ago so I SHOULD know what I think of them, but all I remember is that we thought the titles and the whole concept were funnier than the actual books, but that the actual books were also funny and appealing. They make nice shower gifts, or a book to mix in with some that are more for the baby.

Star Trek Book of Opposites (photo from Amazon.com). This seems like it would be a good Father’s Day gift for a new dad. (Or of course for a mother who’s a Star Trek fan, but Mother’s Day has passed.)
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My friend Heather is moving across the entire country with children aged almost-3 and almost-5. If I were her I would say that as “ages 2 and 4,” to maximize the Pity Factor.

She is looking for ideas to keep the children entertained on the trip. If your first suggestion is “OMG don’t do it at all! Fly instead!! With the children in animal crates!!” you can save your breath because I already tried it. They will be in the car at least six days, and that is final.

I suggest we see if we can make this easier for her in any way. Donations of prescription medications would be excellent too, but I was thinking more along the lines of travel tips and toy ideas.

My tip, based on taking two much-shorter trips (1.5-days in the car each trip) with a 2-year-old and a newborn, is to plan to stop at places that have a play area or a grassy run-around area, and include in estimated trip time the amount of time it would take for the kids to run/play/climb for 15 minutes or so at each stop. Plus assume triple the number of stops needed with adults. This makes the entire trip take much, much longer.

My second tip is to save some stuff aside and not bring out everything on the first day of travel, or else the children will play frantically with all the toys on the first day and be bored for the rest of the trip. (This is a pointless tip, because if it were me, I’d be desperate enough on the first day to bring out anything, ANYTHING I had.)

Now for things to buy:

1. Fresh TV/movies. Heather tells me that they already have a DVD player for the car, so I suggest buying several new DVDs. …This doesn’t seem like it’s brilliant enough to suggest, but that didn’t stop me from suggesting the kids could run around at rest stops. Blue’s Clues (photo from Amazon.com) is one of the ones I got for the just-turned-2-year-old on my own trip, so it may be too young for the 2- and 4-year-olds—but anything, ANYTHING they would like that wouldn’t be intolerable for the adults.

2. Water-drawing thingie. The H-2 Whoa is the one we had. It’s two-sided, so by the time you finish drawing on the second side, the first side is mostly dry and ready to use again. But if I were buying now, I’d buy the travel-sized Aqua Doodle (photo from Amazon.com). (In fact, I DID buy it, and we still keep it in our car. I like it less because it has pre-printed rainbows/grass on it, which can kind of ruin an outer space drawing. But it IS more sensibly compact.)
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