AA Gifts & Baskets Idea Blog

Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Sometimes the word offering is used as anything offered as a gift. It is normally used to mean something offered in worship or devotion, as to a deity; an oblation or sacrifice. An offering is a collection of donations during worship. An offering can mean a religious sacrifice of plant or food that one does not partake of. You give up enjoying the plant, food or money in order to gain favor with the clergy or the gods. The one item to think about is that this is really just a form of mysticism.

Mysticism - meaning the beliefs, ideas, or mode of thought comes from the Greeks as a means to “initiate or initiation” such beliefs. The gift of the mystic or mysticism is that it leads us to believe that reality and the unknown is really one thing. This is essentially a double edged gift, because it lets people feel that they have a control over both what they can see and what they can not see.

Recently, I heard an explanation for why many people get nervous about writing exams or taking tests. The reason many people get nervous about this, as it was explained, is that people have a problem about making choices and predicting outcomes. Human beings are not very good at predicting outcomes. If they were good at predicting outcomes, Casinos would cease to exist. It is difficult to predict the outcome of a test or exam unless you know the questions and their answers beforehand. As this is seldom the case, people get nervous about writing tests.

When human beings have to make a choice, and there are only 3 things to choose from they are normally pretty good at deciding which of the three items will have the best outcome. By that I mean which of the three items will give the best benefit or satisfaction to the person making the decision. If there are more than 3 items to choose from it gets a little harder to be certain which one will give the best satisfaction. It can be over-whelming to the point that the person making the decision cannot make up their mind and will defer the decision until some future time. Think of this when you are at a specialty coffee shop where they have 15-20 different kinds of coffee, espressos and lattes.

You could also feel the same way when looking for a gift or offering a special gift for that special person. The optimum outcome is to achieve an increase in esteem in the recipient’s eyes. This will have the added effect of increasing your own feelings of esteem or self worth. Your subconscious mind may see an aspect or quality of something, which will make it an appealing gift for the recipient. Your conscious mind may not be able to see this quality and you will only get a subconscious get a feeling that this would be an appropriate gift.

So you may want to listen to those feelings when considering the purchase of a gift for that special someone.

As you recognize your life to adjust to having a baby, do not forget your own requirement to have some time for yourself, however difficult it may be to schedule. You need private time to be a person in your own right and not only a parent, a homemaker, a spouse, and perhaps an employee.

You need the time to build and maintain the self-esteem that makes you effective in all those roles and effective at being yourself. You need time to exercise, to groom yourself, to read, or to work on a hobby… or to look at sky or water and let your mind wander. Finding this time will probably never be easy for you again, but it will continue to be very important that you do find it. Always look on it not as a luxury or a reward, but as an obligation to yourself.

You won’t always be able to have the hour or more that would do you the most good and be the most enjoyable, but you’ll find that even a few minutes snatched from a busy day will refresh you. If you are a early riser, at your best in the morning, you may enjoy a few minutes of peace and privacy over a cup of coffee or tea before the rest of the family is awake. Your baby’s daytime naps may give you some precious time. Even later, when you may not feel the need to sleep every time your baby does, nap time should be for you, not for housework.

Evening is a wonderful time for a leisurely bath, even for a good read in a warm tub. And evening is probably also the best time for a quiet hour or two for spouses. As important as it is for each to have some solitary time, it is equally necessary for a married couple to spend at least some time together alone.

Infants and young children do not tolerate restraint for extended lengths of time, and since a cranky child can distract the driver, it’s wise to stop frequently, get out and stretch. Encourage toddlers to run around in a safe area, to play ball or tag. Place the infant on a flat surface or across your lap so he can kick for a few minutes. On commercial carriers, walk your toddler in the aisle, holding his hand to protect him in case of sudden lurches.

It is also wise to purchase the best commercial travel accommodations you can afford when young children are involved; the increased space provides greater freedom of movement and the service is usually better.

Keeping children content while confined in close-quarters is often a real challenge. Having an adult ride in the backseat of a car alongside a restrained child is a good idea. The child with adult companionship will be happier and less likely to demand a place on the front seat.

Take along your child’s favorite stuffed animal or blanket, a bag of small, soft plastic toys, or cloth books. Crayons and a coloring book, or a pad of paper will help keep an older child occupied. Avoid hard or pointed objects that could become dangerous in a moving vehicle.

Playing games helps to pass the time, for example, look for cows and trucks in magazines or along the side of the road. An occasional snack provides distraction and may alleviate motion sickness. Cookies and crackers may be a little messy, but they are preferable to lollipops, ice-pops, and hard candy gifts, which could prove dangerous.

If your trip is by car, limit your daily mileage to what your child can tolerate. It is always a good idea to end your driving by late afternoon. This prevents undue fatigue, ensures a night’s lodging for a tired and possibly cranky child, and provides the time for him to adjust to new surroundings before bedtime.

Your young child’s safety, comfort, and contentment helps to make any family trip an enriching experience. By using common sense to organize and plan ahead, what might have been a formidable task could be a pleasant interval in your daily routine.

By making a last will and testament, you are getting the final word on who gets what part of your estate, and, more importantly, who will care for your child when you are gone. Though a will is a valuable document, people often procrastinate about putting one together. It’s easy to put off making a will because it isn’t a pleasant pursuit for most people. But for parents, a will is, at the least, peace of mind insurance.

A common misconception about wills is that they’re only for wealthy people. Because jointly owned real estate, bank accounts, life insurance benefits, and pension proceeds are typically not covered under a will; many people believe that a will is not necessary if they don’t have extensive personal property. But from a parent’s point of view, the most important aspect of a will is the designation of a guardian in the event both parents die at the same time. Maybe you don’t really care how your personal property is divided up, but you do care about how your child is reared.

Therefore, discussions about the person or persons best suited to raise your child, is important. Do you want someone who knows your child well, who has similar values and religious beliefs? Take into consideration the age of the potential guardians and their interest in taking on responsibility of a child. This is important; if they feel they wouldn’t be good parent substitutes, consider someone else. It is imperative to discuss everything with the guardians you have in mind.

Another question is guardian of the person versus guardian of the property. The person who will watch over your child does not necessarily have to be the one who will take care of your financial needs. Of course, one person can do both, but if you have a relative who you feel would be a wonderful substitute for you and your spouse, but not equipped to manage the child’s property, you can name both a guardian for the person and one for the property.

You will also have to name an executor [male] or executrix [female] of your will. That person is responsible for gathering together your assets, pay any outstanding bills, paying the death taxes, and then distributing whatever assets remain, according to the specifications of the will. Your executor can be a relative, friend, attorney, or an institution such as a bank or a trust company. Some people choose an individual and an institution, in order to have the personal approach of a trusted friend and the knowledge of an organization. Either way, trustworthiness, reliability, and organization are attributes your executor should possess.

Although state laws vary, some common principles apply regardless of where you live. Though there’s no law that says you must have a lawyer draw up your will, if you want to make sure you have a valid will, hire a competent attorney who is familiar with state law and, to some degree with applicable federal and state estate tax laws.

The written document prepared by your lawyer must be signed by you in the presence of two [or sometimes three] witnesses, although many states allow you to verbally state to the witnesses that you have previously signed the will. The witnesses should not be persons who are beneficiaries under the will.

Two of the most important requirements in making your will valid are that you tell the witnesses the document they are signing is in fact your will [not just some random legal document] and that each witness sign the will at your specific request. This may sound quirky, but the failure to observe these requirements has led to the invalidation of many wills.

The original will should be kept in a safe place, but not in a safe-deposit box, since these are often sealed upon notice of death.Your planning will go a long way toward creating a happy and successful future for your children. But don’t fall so in love with your plans that you never review or change them. Remember to be flexible; if your financial outlook has changed, perhaps some of your plans should change as well.

He stared at her, and then suddenly bent double. This was a much worse pain than any so far.

She was helpless. Nothing in the world could do to relieve it, except to get him into that hospital. She clutched him to her, hardly noticing what she was doing, and smoothed his hair. Edward, Edward, help me, her heart cried. Edward where are you? And like her son, in that moment, she felt despair settle so heavily on her and she was sure that her husband was no longer there to help her.

Suddenly the boy straightened up. “All right, it’s gone. It wasn’t too bad,” he lied, and even managed a faint watery grin. “Pack my bags then, and let’s go.”

She felt dizzy with relief. Whether she had capitulated before the force of her arguments, or whether it was the chastising warning of that last pain, she couldn’t say. She didn’t stop to think.

He watched her lug a case out from one of the cupboards and starts to put his things in, not so quickly or neatly as he had seen her pack for summer holidays, but she didn’t make bad speed.

“Shall I put some books in for you to read, Peter? Which would you like to take?” and she ran her eye over the brilliant backs of the covers. Adventure in the desert, the jungle, the town, and the country; adventures on the sea, below the sea, up mountains, in planes. War books and animal adventures. His world, from the escape from the safety and security of the room.

He surprised her again; cold, sharp, surprise settled on her.” I don’t want any. I don’t want them anymore. Throw them out. No, burn them-don’t give them away. I don’t want other boys to-“

He broke off and turned his head away.

“But, Peter, you’ve always liked adventure books.”

“They’re not true. There silly. The only people who get killed in them are the “bads”-“goods” in those books all get through their adventure and come home and tell their families all about it. My father wasn’t a “bad”. But he didn’t come home.”

She finished the packing in silence and went done to phone the hospital and to tell her daily woman what was going on. Mrs. Walters pointedly removed the cigarette from her mouth and dropped ash on the floor and just listened.

“In hospitable? Poor little soul.”

“Don’t talk like that Mrs., Walters, he might hear you. I’ve had such a trouble to persuade him, but he’s agreed to go quietly, and get it over with, and I think it’s the best thing. He had a very bad pain this morning.”

Mrs. Walters clucked sympathetically and put the cigarette back in her mouth. “Well. What I say is, I do admire you, and the you’re taking it, Mrs. Farley. If it were my boy, I’d be off with my head with worry, not knowing if I’d ever see him again...”

“Of course, I’ll see him again,” Claire said crossly, but it wasn’t any use arguing with Mrs. Walters. She did keep the place clean, but she firmly believed that her ideas were right and everyone else was staggeringly wrong. Claire left her and want upstairs to ready.

The Milkman came. Peter went to the window and looked down. He hadn’t gotten his horse anymore which Peter thought was a pity. The milk float was a mistake. It whirled miserably, and it was so slow that the other traffic on the road made all the usual noises of frustration until it could be overtaken. No one likes the milk floats.

But it reminded Peter of the holidays when the milkman had brought his boy round to collect the empties. The boy had been a year older than Peter, and had boasted about his visit to the hospital to have his verracus burnt off. More pain than torture in the Middle Ages, the milkman’s boy had said firmly. Peter decided that it might be a good idea to dust go down and have a word with the boy’s father just to check [without disbelieving his mother’s story, of course but she was the sort of pretty, distracted-looking young woman who often get things wrong.] If that hospital was a Christmas hospital and whether it was likely that they’d have fun there, which he personally which he could never bring to believe.

He crept downstairs. The pain had eased up a lot. He didn’t waste time worrying about why it should do that, but began to plan his verbal opening. The Milkman liked to joke and tease. He would start off by getting in quickly. “Hello, hello, hello, here’s a young gentleman with a posh speech on his tongue to make, I can tell at a glance!” the milkman was fond of saying when Peter was about, and it was irritating. Peter knew he must start talking first. Should he ask bluntly: “Is the Joseph and Mary really a Christmas Hospital?” but come to think of it sounded silly. The Joseph and Mary began to carry weight on its own; the sound about it that is at once suggestive. It might perhaps be better to find out if it was really called that, or if someone else told his mother the wrong thing.

The milkman was being quiet for once, Peter discovered. Mrs. Walters was doing all the talking “Stood out against going into the hospital all this time he has, poor little devil, but his mother’s got him to agree at last.”

“Yes, well-“the milkman said, hoping to bring in the story about his boy and the verracus.

Mrs. Walter’s wasn’t going to have that. “What I say is, shall we ever see him again? Not a bad kid, that one. I said as much to his mother. If it was me, I said I’d be asking my self if he’d ever come out again. Well I mean to say-hospitals are all alike. Once they get you in, you never come out. Look at my Perce-“

Pierce Walters was a tall thin, weedy man who came to do the odd jobs. He had been by way of being a hero to Peter, because he had the bare minimum of tools which he treasured, and he kept them in a shabby old bag he carried as if it contained gold. Out of the most unlikely bits of wood and rubbish, that no one else wanted, Mrs.’s Walter’s late Husband, had fashioned things, slowly with a care that had been born of waning energy, but the little boy hadn’t known this. He hadn’t known that Percy Walters’ days had been numbered then. He only knew that he had liked him and that he had been persuaded to go into the hospital and had never came out.

He didn’t stop to hear of the other similar cases.

Mrs. Walters had known and was loudly citing for the milkman’s benefit, nor that would he have realized that they had been hopeless cases from the state. He only knew that Mrs. Walters was saying roundly that he would never come back to this dear house again, never see his father when he came home…if his father ever came home. And Mrs. Walters was speaking in that loud, confident, ringing tone of one who was sure of her facts.

He turned to go upstairs again, but the pain came on again and this time he went grey with it. His Mother came down and at the same time heard the taxi pull up at the door.

“Are you ready, darling? Do you think that you could help let you get ready? We really ought to be getting going.”

He looked at her, his faced pinched and grey and somehow much older. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” He asked of her, and to her fevered imagination, it was the voice of Edward, lighter weight, of course, but the same tone, the same choice of words.

“Why do you say that darling? I thought we agreed that it was for the best,” his Mother cried. Her distress communicated itself to him and he believed he was lost, and that she knew he was lost, but there was nothing else she could do.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said and he let her help him. Wrapped in a grim frozen silence borne of grief and despair, a quiet, nagging fear that was worse than the noisy terror of a normal frightened child. Peter Farely allowed himself be conveyed to the Christmas Hospital.

“No darling, there are masses of people in hospital at Christmas time. The wards are full as at other times.”

“They are?” He couldn’t believe it. She smiled at him and pushed the slight advantage she had gained.

“Well, it stands to reason doesn’t it? Pain just doesn’t wait until after Christmas to come on, now do they? Pains don’t’ know what season of the year it is, and you’ll always find if there’s fun or a party, or an outing or something nice, you’ll have pains and can’t enjoy the thing. Pains never sensibly appear when there’s nothing jolly to do.”

He agreed with that too, but looked around curiously shattered/ didn’t understand why. She decided not to ask, but to push her position she had gained.

Well, for all the people who had been unfortunate enough to be caught in hospital over Christmas and for the sake of the nurses and doctors who had to stay there over Christmas to look after the sick people. They had a lot of fun and decorations, Christmas gift baskets and nice food, just the same as if you are at home.

“I don’t believe it!” he exploded

“It’s true. Its stands to reason-they want their fun too-and it’s nicer, I should think to have Christmas with dozens of other people with you to enjoy it!”

“How can they enjoy it if they’re ill?” he pointed out after some thought “Not ill, exactly, but on the way to being better only not quite fit enough to go home, if you see what I mean. And some hospitals have television people come and film them so people at home can see the fun their having.”

Peter really couldn’t accept that “Now I know you’re making it up.”

“But I’m not, darling, truly I’m not. We had it on last year, now didn’t we, only you didn’t watch the screen, you were too engrossed in you  new train set.”

That was a mistake, referring to the year before. His father had come home on a flying visit. and had been lying flat on his stomach on the floor with Peter, playing with the train set too. Peter’s lips trembled, but he sternly bit on them and said, “Oh, that! I saw it, but I thought it was a sort of play got up in the studio, not real at all.”

“Oh, Peter,” she said helplessly. Other mothers didn’t seem to have this trouble. The Jones children down the road had all been in hospital to have tonsils removed, and the young Marhams, one of whom was Peter’s age, had made no fuss at all when one had been run over and had a broken leg, and the other two had fallen out of a tree and had concussion and cracked ribs. Their mothers had just phoned ambulances or called the doctor, and briskly gathered things together in cases in off they were bundled, and no questions asked. But Peter had always seemed different. A dreamer, not a boy to climb trees or get run over. A boy who thought and planned, rather than blundered in and out of trouble. A boy who preferred to read adventure books and dream of the time when he would go to the Middle East like his father and work with the oil wells.

“I won’t go.” Peter said suddenly, in a rather frightingly final tone. “Well, anyway, I won’t go for one week, until we give father a chance to come home. Then we’ll see.”

She gasped. “No Peter we can’t wait that long-“It was blurted out before she realized it. All she could see was the grave face of the doctor at the Mary and Doctor Threadingham Memorial Hospital. A big hospital, with a fine staff, but quite clearly they hadn’t liked this case and they wanted the boy in at once, before matters got any worse.

Peter misconstrued. He stood up, still bent a little, and not removing one arm from his tummy. “It’s like I thought. You really don’t expect my father to come home, do you? Not ever. I expect they know he’s dead already,” and his face puckered...

He turned sharply away. She felt he had cut at her with a knife. She took the blow, steadying herself, and then returned to the attack, because she must do this. She was all alone now, and Edward would expect her to do it; reasonably, not clumsily and easily. He would expect her to put it to the boy so that he would go willingly and cheerfully, not just throw his things into a case and bundle him into a taxi ignoring the frozen grief and fear that would render him incapable of protesting even if he wanted to. Edward had had a lot to say about the way some parents take their children to the new strange world of hospital.

She tried again. “Darling, don’t say such things. Listen, I love him you too, you know. He belongs to me as well you. He’s so dear to me-“

“Then why did you let him go out to that old desert to get lost and shot at when you knew all the time that there was fighting going on near? I didn’t know there was fighting. Nobody told me, or else or I’ve asked him not to go. We’re not so hard up, are we, that father has to go to that place to earn his living?”

It was the worst reproach of all. Hadn’t she begged Edward to apply to stay in London at the main office until the trouble died down? And hadn’t Edward just looked at her, and before saying quietly, “You know I can’t do that, Claire! His look had reproached her for putting to him the coward’s way out.

“People have to go to places like that dear, It wouldn’t do if everyone to stay home just there was a bit a trouble-we can’t run and hide until the nasty things stop, now can we?” He went to the bunks and sat done on the edge of the bottom one, thinking. She flayed herself into saying some more.” Darling, I promise you it will be all right. I’ll come and visit you every day-the mother’s do you know. And the minute I hear from Daddy or about him, I’ll let you know. If I can’t come at that moment to tell you, I’ll telephone the ward and the sister will come and give you the news,”

“She will?” He couldn’t believe that. “Why?”

“Because she’s kind, they’re all kind up on the wards. Its fun, you’ll love it.”

“I didn’t see anyone kind when I went to the hospital to be poked and prodded by those men in white coats. No fun, either.”

“That was only outpatients, darling. They’re very busy and they have to get through their work in time to close the clinic for the day, but on the wards where people lie in beds and eat nice food and have fun, there’s plenty of time. She swallowed. “At this very minute, they’re all very hard at working making decorations to put up. Did you know that? And the night nurses put presents on everyone’s bed at Christmas time, and they have shows and lovely food-“

“They do?” He was still suspicious.

“Darling, actually it’s a proper Christmas hospital,” she said, making her last effort and deciding that if she must diverge from the truth it had better be a fine and splendid divergence, and completely convincing. “Well look at the name of the place-that should prove it. Do you know what they call it?

The Joseph and Mary Hospital. There, now!”