Why I love Chapters. And it's not for the books.

by Zach I've always liked Chapters bookstores. They have books, places to sit, and the staff leaves me alone when I read stuff and then put it back on the shelves.   Since I've had kids, I've come to appreciate Chapters even more. Big, reasonably clean, air-conditioned, and no sharp tools for the kids to injure themselves (or anyone else) with.   However, the Chapters Rideau (47 Rideau Street, right downtown at Sussex & Rideau) has a particularly fond place in my heart, for one reason: Thomas the Tank Engine. They have what is, by my standards, a huge Thomas playset in the kids area, on the 2nd floor. I'm not familiar with the whole collection of Thomas toys, but it seems to me they must have all the trains, plus a ton of tracks, bridges, a roundhouse, and so on. There's plenty of pieces to play with, and lots of space around the play table for more than one kid at a time to get in there and start moving things around.   The tracks are all glued together, and onto the table. This may discourage creativity in designing new railway tracks, but I imagine helps keep things from wandering out of the store, or from falling over and thereby requiring parental hands to put everything back together.   Sometime in the relatively recent past they re-designed the kids area slightly, opening the space by, I think, removing some shelving. There's now a few extra kid-sized, colourful tables and chairs next to the train set, and, to my delight, some grownup sized chairs. If you're lucky, you can read something while the kids move Thomas and his friends and frenemies around. There are also bathrooms relatively nearby. I strongly recommend scrubbing everyone's hands after going anywhere within six feet of the Thomas playset.   But wait, that's not all! When I used to take my daughter, when she was around a year and a half or so, she greatly enjoyed the escalators in the middle of the store. We would go up, and then down, over and over. They're got wide steps, and she could navigate them pretty well, including doing the walking-up-the-down-escalator routine. If possible, I suggest going early in the morning before you really have to start dodging people who are actually trying to use the escalators to get to the books.   A little while ago, they added boxes and boxes of scooters and wagons to the kids area. A few are unpacked and available for use. I feel a bit anxious about kids speeding around in a relatively small area, on the 2nd floor, close to the escalators, but, if it buys a few more minutes of relative calm ...   Needless to say, there's books, too. We tend to use the library more than we buy new books (all our bookcases at home are overflowing, anyhow), but it's a great place to pick up a birthday or baby shower present. Who doesn't like books? At least, if you have the space for them...

Zach is a dad to a four-year old girl and a two-year old boy. He doesn't blog but he is married to Capital Mom who does.

Their own library card

by Brie The library has a special place in my heart. My mom worked for a long time for the Winnipeg Public Library and so I spent many, many hours over the years sitting in a corner of which ever library she was working at with a big pile of books.

Even after my mom no longer worked in the Children's section she would still bring home her favorite kids books for us to read. Part of the excitement I had when I first started going to the library with my now 4-year-old girl, I first took her to story time at 5 weeks even though she had no idea what was going on, was being able to find the kids books I used to love to share with her.

Now we have hit another exciting milestone. The girl and her two-year old brother got their very own library cards! I even took pictures. For those of you that know me, you know this is a big deal because I never carry my camera with me.

This is the girl with her library card. She was very excited to finally get it in her hands. She even tried to write her name on the back. Unfortunately the space is pretty small and so she had some trouble fitting her larger letters on. So I helped. I also helped the boy by signing his card. He didn't appreciate that very much and insisted on signing it himself.

I had kind of assumed that my kids were too young for a library card, then I heard about Every Kid a Card. This campaign is encouraging kids to sign up for library cards. Until September 24th any kids 12 and under that sign up for a library card also get a City of Ottawa pool pass, a Every Kid a Card zipper pull, an invitation to the Big Wheels wrap-up event, a Ottawa Senators hockey card and a ballot to win fabulous prizes including a laptop, two Ottawa Senators tickets or a Sparty's Kids Club membership. My kids had to rip the envelope open as soon as they got it and deposit the ballet right away. I tucked the rest of the goodies in my diaper bag for later. And by later I mean a time where I can look at them quietly by myself.

Getting the kids their library cards was quick and easy. The hard part came when we went to leave. There was a serious of unfortunate events evolving too many books, my forgetting to bring a bag, the girl's determination to carry her books herself, the elevator being out of service and a steep flight of stairs. Finally the three of us and our books managed to leave the building but not before I cursed the architect for designing a library with such excellent acoustics.

Do your kids have a library card? How old were they when they got their first card? And most importantly, do you make them pay their own fines? :-)

Brie is the mom of a 4 year old daughter “the girl” and 2 old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.

The Sunnyside Library

by Brie We live not too far from the Sunnyside Library and yet I had never been with the kids. When I heard they had reopened after a period of renovation it seemed like a perfect time to throw the kids in the stroller and go.

Was I ever glad I did! The new space is fabulous.

The kids section is in the basement. As my friend pointed out "It's great because the kids can't get in or out!". The door to the stairs is too heavy for my young kids to open and as long as they don't sneak into the elevator, they have free range of the floor. Which means I can slack off for a bit. Or as much as you can slack off in a room full of books with two kids that want to be read to.

The space is well laid out with a little nook with board books and picture books for the younger kids. The nook area also had a table and chairs, some colourful cubes to sit on and a magnetic story wall. Bliss!

It looks like they are still settling into the space, but with the addition of some more seating it will be perfect. I was happy to see an automatic book check out right there in the kids area so I don't have to lug everything upstairs and then try to check out the books while also stopping my kids from running off and exploring a new part of the library.

We were there on a Monday morning and it was packed. And understandably so. We will be back!

Brie is the mom of a 4 year old daughter “the girl” and 2 old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.

Goin' On A Treasure Hunt

by Erin Ever heard of geocaching?? Yah, me neither until about a week ago. I came across it while surfing blog land. It sounded interesting so I had to learn more.

From Wikipedia:

Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammo boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek,"...

Interesting, I thought, but surely there would not be any geocaches near me, and certainly not any in areas that I could go exploring with my 2 1/2 year old.

WRONG!

I signed up for a free account at http://www.geocaching.com/, and was excited to learn there were several geocaches within 10 minutes walking distance from my house. Now this was getting exciting!!

In order to find caches near me I had to plug in my postal code. This provided me with a list of caches near me sorted by distance. The caches are also rated for difficulty and terrain. Because I had no idea what to expect, we chose a very basic one. There is also a place to log your visit to the cache on the website. It was helpful to read through the posts because it gave me some hints on what to look for as well as some insight into the difficulty.

Since Miss K has a serious obsession with a certain cartoon "explorer", I thought this would be right up her alley. She drew her own map and everything!

In addition to our GPS we brought some stickers and a magnet (for trading), a pen (to sign the log book) and a camera (to document the find). Since we weren't venturing far from home I didn't bother to bring drinks or snacks, but I will in future if we decide to go farther. Also, I highly recommend wearing closed footwear. Miss K wore Crocs and I wore flip flips - not the best choices when searching a wooded area.

I plugged in the coordinates provided by the website and away we went. It didn't take long for me to realize that something just wasn't right with the GPS. After some fiddling with the settings I realized that the unit should have been set to "pedestrian" and "off road". Once I had everything fixed up we were back on track.

Miss K and I followed the "pink path" until we reached the general area of our treasure. On the website it describes what the cache will look like. We were looking for a medium size food storage container covered in black duct tape.

It took a little playing with the GPS unit to figure out how to find such a specific point, but finally the unit told us we were within 0.8 meters of the coordinate we had entered. A quick peek behind a tree revealed our prize:

We were very excited to say the least. I fished the container out of the tree and we opened it up. Inside there was a log book and pen sealed inside a zipper storage bag along with a variety of other items. I let Miss K trade swap some stickers and I signed the log book. We sealed the container up again and placed it back in its spot.

This was a really fun activity. Miss K is motivated because there was "treasure" and she got some new stickers. We are planning on going again soon - Daddy wants to come next time because he thinks that he will be able to find a more difficult cache with his superb orienteering skills (we will see). I think we will also create a cache of our own to hide on one of our favorite dog walking paths.

Erin is mom to 2 (almost 3) year old “Miss K” and 6 month old “Mister J”. You can read her blog at My Suburban Adventure

Alcatel – Lucent Sunday Bikedays

by Jay I love living in Ottawa. I love that this city provides so many opportunities for us to get out and enjoy our city and the great outdoors.

I know there’s only 1 more Sunday left of the family bike days but if you can make it I highly recommend it.

What are Sunday Bike Days? Every Sunday from the end of May until the Sunday before Labour Day the City of Ottawa shuts down our parkways to motor vehicles. People can go on the roads without worrying about cars and trucks.

Today we took out our bikes. We have Trail-A-Bikes for the kids that easily attach to our normal bikes. It allows the kids to ride safely behind us yet we all still get the benefits of pedaling at a decent speed.

We’ve also taken our inline skates while the kids have ridden their own bikes.  You don’t need a bike or inline skates to enjoy Sunday bike days though. There are tons of people out walking, running, pushing a stroller, even on scooters (feet powered scooters).

Today we went on Colonel By Drive and biked all the way from Hogs Back to Downtown and back again. In all it was likely about an hour, biking at a decent pace. You can turn around whenever you want and the adventure can be what you make of it. We parked our car at Hogs Back Falls and were easily able to access Colonel By Drive from there crossing 1 road at the lights.

Volunteers are at many of the blocked off streets if you have questions. Today we biked by 2 entrepreneur spirits selling Lemonade, but I highly recommend bringing a lot of water and a snack to have ½ way. There are loads of places to stop along the way and rest in the shade if you start at Hogs Back.  Shaded resting spots Do become few and far between once you’ve passed Bronson all the way to just before the University of Ottawa Campus.

If you do decide to park at Hogs Back Falls, once you have your bikes packed away there are some great trees for the kids to climb in the shade before climbing in the car again.

It’s not just Colonel By Drive but also the Ottawa River Parkway, Rockliffe Parkway  (all closed to traffic between 9am – 1pm) and Gatineau Park Pathways (closed to traffic between 6am – 1pm).

If you can’t make it out next Sunday, be sure to mark your calendars for Sundays next year. Or take advantage of all the wonderful bike paths in the city and go on a family bike ride anyways. My kids each gave this adventure 2 thumbs up and so did the parents!

Jay is the Mom to 6.5yr old Sydney and 4.5yr old Carter and has a blog for her business, Loopy 4 Ewe.