If you build it, would they really come to use it?

Katie Stokes

Recently, I posed this question to NNY Life Facebook page fans: “In a perfect world, where we all had unlimited financial resources, what would you build to improve the Watertown area and why?”

That simple question drew nearly 1,000 views and more than 40 responses within three hours during the middle of the day in the last half of a work week. In short, people are interested in the topic. [Read more...]

Peeling back the curtain takes a very gentle hand

Katie Stokes

My daughter and I went with friends recently to see a “Disney on Ice” performance in Syracuse. It was wonderful, as you can expect from pretty much anything Disney. But, as with many things these days that have to do with delighting my children, being surrounded by happy kids made me inexplicably sad, too. [Read more...]

While bittersweet, moms grow up with kids, too

Katie Stokes

It’s such a cliché, but where has the time gone? My babies are no longer really babies and, because we’re planning on sticking with the “two-kid plan,” I find that we are aging out of things that were once daily, integral parts of our lives.

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Create your own north country family traditions

It was somewhere between jotting “tablecloth” and “koozies” on this year’s Old Forge Enchanted Forest trip packing list that I knew we had perfected that particular annual family outing.

Each year since we started taking the kids on an annual trip to Enchanted Forest, I’ve culled new tidbits from other water park-goers that I shaped into this year’s ultimate — or over the top, depending on whether you ask my husband or me — Enchanted Forest packing list. After three years and three attempts, I got it right: we got there early on a Friday morning and had our pick of my pre-screened shaded spots. We ate a picnic lunch under shade trees on a blue-and-white cotton table cloth. I remembered the right number of plates, napkins and utensils. I even packed a couple of ice-cold beers for mommy and daddy to enjoy right before leaving the park for the day to head over to our hotel across the street. Perfect day. All around.

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Like high-plains weather, parenting delivers surprises

Having grown up in Oklahoma, I’ve been through my fair share of nature-related close calls: thunder loud enough to make my ears pop; lightning bright enough to make me believe the world was being sucked up into heaven; hail that left pock-marks deep enough to stop a billiard ball from rolling down the hood of my car. I even saw a tornado up close once. The panic it induced was so wretched and thick, I glanced at the dancing tendril only long enough to get the impression that it was really, truly there before I peeled off in the other direction in my hail-ruined Toyota. Never could I have guessed that a life spent with the imminent threat of tornadoes would prepare me in any way for parenting. But, in certain situations, parenting and life in “Tornado Alley” have at least two things in common: terror and luck.

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The winter that wasn’t and the year that could be

Katie Stokes

This year’s historically mild weather was a bizarre wake-up call. There was little snow or ice to contend with and for my little family that made it, crazy enough, a harder winter.

Why? No snow in the depths of winter means fewer opportunities to enjoy outdoor recreation.
Our cabin fever tipping point came in February during what I like to call “Worthless Winter Break.” This series of days off from school in the second-coldest month of the year seems like an inexplicably mean trick. There we were, like most middle-class American citizens, limping along, catching up from holiday frivolity and travel. We were finally getting back into our family routine. Then BAM! The crutch was kicked out from under us.

As an aside: Wouldn’t a break in mid-October make more sense? Hayrides! Leaf peeping! Pumpkin carving! Heck, at least then it’s a bit of a relief to spend time inside after a summer of running from barbecue to barbecue.

This wasn’t my first time around the winter break block. Diva went to a private pre-school two years before she started kindergarten. We’re not ones to lollygag around the house on weekdays, so, two weeks ahead of time, I tried to enroll Diva in a YMCA gymnastics class that turned out to be for older, more advanced gymnasts, then an art class, which never materialized. I bought a crazy plastic block-shaped contrivance from Amazon.com that makes snow bricks. I was determined to make an igloo sometime early in the week. Then we’d be able to play outside despite wind and frigid temps (it made sense at the time.) Santa even thought to bring us a little indoor trampoline for those especially crazy afternoons when the open area between our kitchen and living room becomes the runway in a game called “Couch Crash Landing!?”

I hoped for snow and sledding trips. I stocked up on hot cocoa, craft supplies and DVDs and hoped for the best.

As you probably know if you, too, have small children, the sun stayed tucked neatly behind miles of gray and brown clouds that week. It was warmer than normal but it was windy and rainy. Not ideal playground weather. And zero igloo-making opportunities.

I fantasized about what we could have done if I hadn’t spent all that money on now-forgotten holiday toys, which I shook repeatedly at the children – Look! Remember? Santa brought this and you love it! I even managed to excite them about the trampoline for approximately five minutes by nearly breaking my ankle with a wayward bounce while showing off my trampoline skills, apparently another youthful asset that has dissipated over the course of years.

If we could have afforded another trip so soon after Christmas in Oklahoma, would we have gone to the beach? To a show in New York City? Disney World? I was scouring Google and interrogating my friends over Facebook, trying to find an indoor space that was open when we needed it to be open (Hunk still naps) and that was clean enough that it didn’t cause my children’s palms to break out in weird pustules a week later.

It was around that time I learned the city of Watertown was looking for someone to lead their Parks and Recreation Department. The timing made me realize how strange it was that there wasn’t more for my kids to do in the winter – whether it was an event geared toward the thousands of kids at home that week, a community organization day camp − whatever. There were a few things here and there, but it took some calling around on my part, hence the fancy new NNY Family Calendar feature I have now on my blog.

I’m not the only one around with small children; in fact I should keep my mouth shut about how much winter stunk because at least we have reliable heat and some extra spending money for craft supplies. This realization got the old hamster wheel turning in my head:

  • We live in a place where it can snow  between five and eight months out of the entire year.
  • There are thousands and thousands of kids in the Greater Watertown-Fort Drum area.
  • There are thousands of military moms out there whose husbands are gone on long deployments, so they’re dealing with those desperate feelings of entrapment all alone – and for much longer than a week.
  • There is a large group of kids who live below the poverty line and can’t afford “wants” like DVDs, or even “needs” like heat or warm clothing.

I’m not getting into the more specific statistical information that would surely get members of grant funding committees to raise their eyebrows – like rates of depression and mental health issues in certain local populations (mothers dealing with post-partum depression, adults with seasonal affective disorder, soldiers with post-traumatic stress), child abuse and domestic violence, teen drinking and drug use. To me, just the basics add up to something bigger than summer recreation programs and what the YMCA, the library, the zoo and other private businesses or publicly-funded organizations have been able to organize in this area.

Am I pinning all my hopes on Erin Gardner, the new Parks and Recreation Department director? Well, not all, but I do have high hopes that Ms. Gardner will be open to discussing the necessity of a more organized and comprehensive approach by the city, perhaps in collaboration with other organizations, to recreation in the darker months of winter.
I have lots of ideas – too many to go into here. I went so far as to take a grant writing course to see if there is funding out there for a few of them. There is. Lots.

But before I jump into choosing what programs I’d be interested in helping this community work toward, I want to see what gaps will naturally be filled when Ms. Gardner gets through the crazy summer season and can turn her focus on the year ahead that will, inevitably, kick this winter’s butt.

Katie Stokes is an Oklahoma native who has called Northern New York home for more than a decade. She is a freelance writer and blogger and the mother of two children. Click on the “Welcome” tab on her blog,  NNYLife.com, to read more about why she lives in NNY.

Cherishing Army friends despite the sad goodbyes

Katie Stokes

It was a fresh and green summer morning in June the last time I said goodbye to a dear friend I’ll likely never see again. I say the last time, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. It will. Again. And again. Something I’ve learned: You can’t live in the north country – military or civilian – without living your days braced against some impending separation.

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An opportunity to use your big girl brain

Katie Stokes

Because it is socially unacceptable to take our toddlers to even the cleanest and most reputable of bars to unwind after a long month of SAHM’ing (that’s the acronym for “Stay at Home Mom” for those of you not in the know), my mom friends and I have invented Book Club.

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Find your unique north country niche

Katie Stokes

Whatever brought you to Northern New York — maybe you’ve lived here your entire life, maybe you were dragged here, kicking and screaming, by the Army, or maybe you chose to live here because you truly love it, or  you truly love someone who does. I’m glad you’re here.

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