This is my son Angel dressed up as Luigi from Super Mario Brothers. He won 3rd place for his costume at the children’s parade in Centralia. Notice the mushroom in his hand?

I am beginning to think I can only find the cute, quirky, and funny stuff at Walmart around the Centralia, Illinois area. Of course, taken with my crappy cheap-charlie phone camera. I promise to get a better camera or phone, whichever comes first.

In the case of the Halloween costumes, I just thought how cute. And you might laugh, but at a side glance I said to my boyfriend, “Hey, baby costumes – how cute.”

Yeah, I got made fun of after that one.

Well, my son came from his father’s home with a Webkinz. For those who do not know what a Webkinz is, it is a plush-type animal that you can buy at the store and it comes with a code that you can sign up for a virtual version of that Webkinz. You can go to Webkinz.com and put that code in to register your toy and play games with it.

However, what Webkinz does not tell you until you sign up, is that it is only for a year your kid can play and then you would have to pay a renewal fee to use it once the year is up. To me, it kind of sounds like I am buying the toy twice over, right?

Of course, I could just buy another Webkinz and my son could enjoy another year, plus have another toy. I understand the upkeep it takes for servers, but is it necessary for Webkinz to charge a renewal fee? It is great that the site is safe for kids to use, but I would just rather buy him a challenging computer game for his age that does not require a yearly renewal fee.

What do you think?

Now, I love to listen to music. However, I am finding it difficult to listen to music with my son present. For example, Lady Gaga’s “Love Game” ( http://blip.fm/~7u6se from Blip.fm. It is free to listen to. Lyrics found at MTV.) song is upbeat and catchy, but if you truly listen to the music, you will find some things that you might not want your children to hear.

Excerpt from Love Game:

Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick
Don’t think too much just bust that thick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick

The term ‘disco stick’… well, that is self-explanatory. In fact, when my boyfriend first heard the above verse, the kids were with it. He turned the station immediately. When my son recited Flo-rida’s “Low” (lyrics from MTV found here), it did not seem so bad, but the innuendo is there.

I admit listening to this without children is fine, but this music is now quickly spreading to radio and television and easy for little eyes to see. I almost feel like I have to use parent control all the time. It sounds dramatic, but is this the type of message we want to convey to children? Yes, I could shut it off and I would, but what about the other children? There are countless songs today. How much is considered too much? Is just turning it off enough or do you need to explain why before you do?