I’ve been thinking about ways to celebrate my soon-to-be-2-year-old’s birthday with all the traditional fun, but minus the usual mound of presents.  Is this possible to pull off without offending friends and family or upsetting the birthday boy?  I think so.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a ban on all birthday gifts!  But there are ways to strike a balance and make birthday parties more socially, environmentally and financially friendly.  Besides, who in NYC has the room for all those presents anyway?  Here are a few ideas to limit the toy intake and use the occasion to share all that birthday love and generosity with others.

I am not usually a slacker mom, but last Halloween it happened:  two days before my son’s annual school Halloween parade he had no costume to wear!  I had known what he wanted to be since August but just couldn’t find it.  As Halloween drew closer I enlisted the help of my friends, their spouses and even some of their parents, but no one could find a whale costume any where in the city or even online.  And, making a whale, well, it was beyond my limited crafting capabilities.  I took him to the Halloween stores to pick something else out but it for him it was whale or bust.  The night before the parade in a moment of exhaustion and desperation, I suggested the ultimate slacker mom Halloween costume, “how about dressing as a ghost?”  

Halloween is just a few days away.  Do you have your costume ready?  Read on for fun and spooky last minute DIY costumes, including the infamous ghost costume (it isn’t as easy as you would think.)

New York City is the place to be this weekend.  There are hundreds of cool ways to get into the Halloween spirit: lots of free events, costume parades, haunted houses and Boo at the Zoo, and they are all listed in The Mommy Poppins Halloween Guide.  Plus, the awesome Ghouls and Gourd party at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Harvest Festival at Brooklyn Bridge Park and the huge Halloween Benefit for families at the Queens Museum of Art are all happening this weekend. Read on to find out more about these and other events.  And be sure to visit our Events Calendar, it is packed with lots more school fairs, workshops, concerts and all the other exciting goings on that we didn’t have room for here!

Have a great weekend. 

Just one more week until Halloween and the ghosts and goblins are already on the loose!  This weekend you can head to Sesame Place in PA for the Count's Halloween Spooktacular event, ride a haunted train at the Camden Children's Garden Goblins in the Garden Festival, see Halloween themed shows at the Raritan Valley Planetarium, enjoy some pumpkin festivals like the one at Liberty Hall Museum, or go on a not too scary night hike through Stony Brook Watershed Tenafly Nature Preserve.  The brave can even take a boat ride through a haunted swamp!

There are lots of mystery books for children, and many of them do a good job of holding their attention, helping to develop critical thinking, deductive reasoning, etc. However, some are better than others. Here are a few guaranteed page-turners to share with your child.

Last week we updated our Fall Fun Guide with all the culture highlights, festivals and fun stuff to do this season, and our Pick Your Own Guide for places to go apple and pumpkin picking. This week we've added our updated Halloween Fun Guide with all our tips for having the bestest Halloween with kids in New York City and the region. We've also created a new Museums Guide (an update of our old Culture Guide) which has write-ups of all the local museums we've reviewed as well as tips for how to get more out of them with kids.

Fraunces Tavern, a very old inn, is one of our city's better known historical sites and is cited on nearly every touristy list of stuff to do downtown. But the funny thing is that nobody I knew had ever been there, or had a clue what to really expect on a visit. Was it good only for junior history buffs? Was it a ho hum bore? With my kids in tow I set out to find out what the real deal was about this famous but little-visited site, and we all were pleasantly surprised, even my toddler. Read on for the straight scoop on this homey hangout for our founding fathers.

Wow! Is all I can say about the production of ZooZoo my family and I recently saw at the New Victory Theater.  ZooZoo is a unique play without sets, dialogue, or real props.  Unless you consider fantastic, realistic looking animal “costumes” a prop.  Mood setting music, lighting and maybe even a little magic bring a family of polar bears, three frogs, a cat trapped inside a paper bag and musical chairs playing penguins to life.  Every minute of the one hour performance was engaging and hysterical -- my son (as well as all the other kids and most of the adults in the theater) were laughing out loud through the whole show! It's here till October 24, 2010 and tickets are still available.  Don’t miss it.