Singing in the Rain

Pages 11 and 12 of The First Adventures of Incredible You is all about rain showers and the fun that young children can have splashing in puddles and running around getting soaked in a warm spring rain. The playing in the rain experience seems to be universally memorable. I distinctly remember one such spring shower from my early elemenary school years. I recall opening my umbrella and jumping off a rock, hoping that I would perhaps take flight. In retrospect, this explains so much about my later difficulites with physics. I also have a favorite picture of my daughter at about 3 or 4 years old dancing around in a rain shower with a look of pure joy on her face. She, too, opened up her umbrella to pretend she could fly. Sadly, I can only assume that she is also destined for physics heartache. Or.....perhaps the magic of a warm spring rain makes all children think that the laws of aerodynamics do not apply. I hope so. But I'm still going to warn her about physics- just in case.

The Zoo - Perfect For All Creatures Great and Small

When our kids were very young, we got every penny's worth and more out of our yearly "zoo pass". In fact, I vaguely remember pushing a stroller through melting snow during one trip to the zoo, so desperate was I to get out of the house. We would get there right as they opened the gates (because by then we had been up for 4 or 5 hours) and walk around hoping the kids would not ask to enter the Pachyderm House AGAIN. But, alas, how can you visit the zoo without seeing a hippopotamus? Anyway, besides trying to avoid the Pachyderms (and of course the Dippin' Dots and Funnel Cake kiosks), there is little more satisfying than a trip to the zoo for parents of young children. Education AND entertainment -- how can you beat it?!!

We decided to include trips to the zoo in The First Adventures of Incredible You because zoo trips are such an essential, memorable part of childhood. We hope adding your favorite zoo to your personalized book will be a special reminder of teaching your children about animals (and why eating both Dippin' Dots and Funnel Cakes in the same day is not such a hot idea).

The First Adventures of Incredible You - Early Show Appearance

We are so excited about our book being on the Early Show this morning. Thought we'd share the video with everyone! A big thanks to Liz Gumbinner from Cool Mom Picks for representing our book in such a "cool" way!

Here is a link to the segment! http://custommadeforkids.com/earlyshow.html

Great News! We just found out that our book, "The First Adventures of Incredible You" will be featured on The Early Show tomorrow morning (CBS 7-9am). They are doing a segment on "Custom Gifts" and asked if they could feature the book. Tune in if you get a chance!

Trips to the Park

A favorite activity amongst the preschool set is a visit to the local park. As parents we also seem to find park time enjoyable for any number of reasons, but mainly:

1) It wears the children out
2) It provides an opportunity to run into another parent who is just as frazzled as you are
3) You might be able to justify swing pushing as your exercise for the day
5) It wears the children out (this one deserves mention twice)

We have fond memories of trips to the park, which is why we decided to include the park trip as a page in The First Adventures of Incredible You. Some of our best moments as parents have come during outings to the park. OK - there was that one freak accident on the monkey bars resulting in a broken leg.....THAT wasn't a best parent moment, but it was memorable.

Anyway.....it's pretty much fun times all the time at the park.... friends, slides, swings, bugs, dirt..It's definitely something your children will remember from their childhoods (along with that broken limb/stitches incident or two). It is our wish that in personalizing The First Adventures of Incredible You with your child's park name and park friends you will provide them with entertainment for the present and a record of this special time for the future.

The Early Wakeup Call

In writing The First Adventures of Incredible You, one of our goals was to personalize many of the universal, meaningful experiences that all parents have with their children. The first of those experiences (unfortunately happening between the hours of 5 and 6:30 AM) is one we have dubbed, "the early wake up call". Clearly, if you are a parent of young children you are familiar with the concept. At the time that your ribs are being poked by small elbows and knees at some ungodly hour, "the early wake up call" may not seem like a particularly meaningful experience, but someday you will look back upon this time with wistful longing (or at least we are assured as much by our parents).

Though it has taken years of military-like training, we are now happy to report that our kids are cured of "the early wake up call" and have got the weekend morning routine down. There is usually a pop quiz on the elements of the routine on Friday night:

Us: "What do you do the first time you wake up?"
Kids: "Go back to sleep"
Us: "And the second time you wake up?"
Kids: "Read a book"
Us: "The third time....?"
Kids: "Get a yogurt!!"
Us: "Correct! And then and only then, what may you do?"
Kids: "Come wake you up!"
Us: "You are truly fabulous children."

Although we are not yet to the stage where we yearn for the return of "the early wake up call" (quite happy with the current routine, thank you very much), we do recognize that there is a remote possibility that we will miss the feel of a toddler size 5 foot being jammed in our faces at 6 in the morning (why can they never sleep vertically??). We hope The First Adventures of Incredible You will help you remember "the early wake up call"fondly. After all, looking back it wasn't so bad after all......

Don't you just love personalized gifts? Nothing says, "I actually got my act together this time and didn't just run down to the local store at the last minute in a panic to find something, ANYTHING to buy...." Seriously, one of the reasons we started Custom Made For Kids was because we both recognized that our favorite gifts to give and recieve were almost always personalized. We wanted The First Adventures of Incredible You to be easy to order, but also highly personalized. The goal? To make you look like some sort of gift-giving guru without too much effort on your part.

The Inaugural Annual Personalized Gifts Survey is now live at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=8gTvN_2bbxEnGDEN0VqLUKTg_3d_3d
Please take a moment to fill it out. We would love to find out more about what our customers want from gifts that happen to be personalized so that we can continue to help you look like the best gift-giver on the planet (if we do say so ourselves...).