Clean Up Your Room Day has arrived. This is a day parents eagerly await……….. and kids dread! There are a sizable number of adults who are not looking forward to this May 10 holiday either.  I don’t know about you, but I’m not looking forward to being cooped up in my room on a beautiful spring day. If we must have a holiday to incent us to vacuum and dust our room, why couldn’t it be in the winter when the weather is lousy!?  

Tip: Do you remember the masks we wore during the pandemic? We recommend you put one on before stirring up all that dust.

If you’ve got kids, their rooms may be a vast wasteland, filled with all kinds of “good stuff”. “Messy” is too kind of an adjective to describe the conditions. It’s impossible to walk through the room. Heck, you might not be able to see the far side of it. Every dresser and shelf (and under the bed), is packed with everything imaginable. The dust has been piling up as long as your child has been around. Comfy, cozy, and quite livable to the child, it’s an everyday source of frustration for the “folks”.

To mom and dad’s delight, and every child’s chagrin, Clean Up Your Room Day arrives every May 10th. Get out the shovels. Bring in an industrial-sized dumpster. It’s time for everyone to clean their rooms!

Note to Kids: Clean Up Your Room Day also applies to your parents. You may want to inspect to assure that mom and dad practice what they preach!

Chocoholics, you’re in for a real treat on this food holiday. National Chocolate Chip Day is today. This May 15 holiday celebrates and enjoys sweet, tasty chocolate chips. Chocolate chips are a great invention and certainly deserve a little recognition. After all, where would chocolate chip cookies, cakes, and muffins be without the chocolate chip? And, can you imagine ice cream without chocolate chips on top!?

Chocolate chips are popular in cooking and baking, a wide variety of breads, and cookies. It’s a great topper for ice cream and puddings. There is an almost endless number of recipes. They are also used in decorating. Have you ever had chocolate chip pancakes? How about chocolate chips in trail mix? If you’ve never had these, then you’re leading a sheltered life.

Rare is the leftover chocolate chip. If you don’t use the whole bag, you and/or your kids will likely eat them as a snack before they make it to the storage container. 

Working parents entrust the safety and early development of their children to the many people who work at childcare and daycare facilities. So, it is only right that we celebrate those dedicated personnel with a holiday to give them recognition. And that day is today, Child Care Provider Day. It is also referred to as Daycare Provider Day.

Child Care provider is more inclusive, so most prefer to call it that. Either way you call it, this day gives recognition and appreciation to the millions of people involved with providing care to children of working families. Child care providers have the health and safety of our children in their hands. They spend many hours with your child, teaching them educational, social, and behavioral skills. In some cases, childcare providers spend more waking time with your child than you do!

If you are a childcare provider, we thank you for all that you do for our children.

Cartoons brighten up and lighten up our lives. So, it is only fitting that today is Cartoonist Day, a May 5 holiday.  Today we celebrate past, present, and future cartoonists. We are all indebted to them for making our lives happier and more light-hearted.

From Sponge Bob Squarepants to Bart Simpson and Mickey Mouse, cartoons make us smile. They make us feel good. Most cartoons are intended to be funny. Others are designed for an almost endless number of reasons. Some cartoons are designed to send a message of some kind. On occasion, they are serious, political, instructional, or promotional. Of the many types of cartoons, absent are sad or sorrowful ones. That would run counter to the reason cartoons exist.

 Cartoon characters can be found in practically all media. They are on television, in newspaper and magazine comic strips, or in the “Funny Papers”. Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey, Betty Boop, and so many more cartoon characters got their start in printed media. Comic books abound with cartoon characters. Cartoon characters have been on both daytime and nighttime television since the days of black and white TV. Cartoon characters grace the big screen, too. Disney’s Mickey Mouse first appeared in the movie “Steamboat Willie” on November 18, 1928. More recent examples include Shrek, Aladdin, Nemo, and Dora the Explorer. Cartoon characters are used everywhere in advertising, too. Characters like the Trix Bunny and Captain Crunch adorn many cereal boxes. A well-recognized gecko and duck, each sell insurance on television. 

The First Cartoon Character:  In 1895, Richard F. Outcault introduced the “Yellow Kid”, the first cartoon character. He appeared in publisher Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, running from 1895 to 1898. This bald kid in a yellow nightshirt later ran in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.

National Candied Orange Peel Day is dedicated to…you guessed it…. candied orange peels! This May 4 holiday celebrates a food we seldom eat. 

Now, just what the heck is a candied orange peel? And, is it edible? Yes, it’s edible. If you are a chef or a baker, then you know just what it is, and how to use it. They use it in fancy desserts. For the rest of us, we likely have enjoyed it in seasonal baked goods all of our lives, without even knowing we have eaten it. Or perhaps, it was in a cocktail we consumed.

Candied orange peels are a boiled, sliced, sugar-added treat. You can eat them by yourself. But most often, they are used in holiday cookies, snacks, and fruitcakes.

Also see National Fruitcake Day and  Fruitcake Toss Day. Fruitcakes contain a lot of candied orange peel.

Brothers and Sisters Day is a May 2 holiday. It is a day to cherish your siblings. Sure, there are times when you love your brothers and sisters. Sibling rivalries often get in the way And, there are times when you want to disown them. However, having a brother and/or a sister or two is invaluable. The older you get, the more you learn to appreciate and need them.

Celebrate Brothers and Sisters Day by touching them in some way.  A card or a phone call is appropriate for those who are separated by too many miles. A visit, or sharing a meal, is a great way to enjoy this special day.  

Boys and Girls Club Day, a May 19 holiday, celebrates the invaluable Boy’s Clubs and Girl’s Clubs around the country. There are clubs all over America providing safe recreational activities for our youth. They teach values, morals, and citizenship. Clubs teach a variety of life skills. They help to keep kids out of trouble and off of the street. And, the clubs’ leaders are the perfect role models that so many children and especially teens are lacking in their life.

Today is a day to recognize the importance of these groups for our children and to the community. With more and more parents at work, and broken families, these groups take on added importance.

Birth Mothers Day recognizes the biological mothers of adopted children. It is celebrated primarily by mothers who for whatever reason, gave up their child for adoption. This decision is often made with great pain. Usually, a birth mother gives up her child in a selfless manner to allow her child to have a better life. 

If ever there was a controversial holiday (let’s call it a special day), this is it. Birth mothers use this day to educate, to remember, and to cope. But, many mothers who gave up their children have feelings of remorse, and often guilt. Many don’t want a special day. And, of those mothers who want to be remembered, they don’t necessarily want a special day, aside from Mother’s Day. They feel they should remember, and be remembered, on Mother’s Day. 

From the child’s perspective, adopted children understandably have a high level of anxiety over this topic. A fair number of them don’t want a relationship with their birth mother, adding more controversy to this day.