Dear Carrie: It’s been reported lately, most notably in the Wall Street Journal, that Mattel has had some trouble lately because of slumping sales in its flagship line, Barbie. In order to get the company back on track, Mattel wants to give Barbie a makeover due to lost sales to The Bratz. How would you makeover Barbie?

Oh, Barbie. Bless your heart. It’s hard to compete with The Bratz when you’re 46.
I think this is what they call a mid-life crisis. You spent so many years dating a man who may or may not have loved you back (we all know he didn’t love Skipper, just her boyfriend). You’ve had over 80 careers. You worked tirelessly as a doctor, an astronaut, a businesswoman, a police officer, a UNICEF volunteer, and an athlete (a World Cup soccer player, no less). You were a firefighter, the Princess of Ireland, and even a Presidential candidate. You did all this and more all while maintaining a 39-23-33 figure. No wonder no one likes you anymore.

Barbie, what you need is a transformation that rivals Sandy’s from Grease. Remember sweet, demure Sandy? By the end of the school year, she had discovered skin-tight leather, big hair, and really, really high heels.

Maybe that¹s all you need, but just in case that doesn’t work out for you, here are a few tips to ensure you’ll soon be popular once more.

• First off, ditch the Corvette for an Escalade. Make sure it has some 24″ wheels, too. Tivo a few episodes of “Pimp My Ride” on MTV for ideas on getting yourself hooked up with some quality transportation every little girl would envy.
• You are straight-up loaded. Buy yourself a first-class ticket to Italy and make a date to get some new threads made just for you. I can’t think of a single store that accommodates your measurements anyway. Forget ready-to-wear ­ you need to be all about haute couture. You were into it once, remember? Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Vera Wang ­ you wore it all. Remember how nice you looked then?
• Find yourself a new man, one who is ready to commit. 43 years of dating Ken and you never did make it to the altar. Granted, marriage isn’t for everyone, but we all know it’s what you wanted.
• Let’s be honest here. The beginning of the end for you was your pal, the MC Hammer doll. Maybe now you could share some new friends with the world ­ 50 Cent, Orlando Bloom, a couple of Backstreet Boys� You get where I’m going with this, don’t you? And by the way, I know you and Jude Law are tight as ticks, but let’s not showcase that until this whole drama with the nanny dies down. You have enough image problems as it is.

If it doesn’t work out, sugar, don’t let it get you down. You’ve done it all anyway. Take some classes at the local community college. Get back to gardening. Rediscover the joy of riding in your camper (if it still runs). Aging isn’t easy, Barbie, but just think ­only 9 short years till you get your AARP card (and a great discount at the cafeteria). Who needs popularity when you get that kind of recognition?

Do you have a burning question for Carrie? Send her a message at carrie@cleverparents.com.

Dear Carrie: We hear your son is a big fan of The Wiggles. We have to ask… who is your favorite Wiggle?

Sometimes I think I know the Wiggles as intimately as I do my own family. Not only can I recite every single one of their songs (should I be embarrassed to admit that?), I also know just what makes Greg, Jeff, Murray, and Anthony tick. I’m very familiar with their nearest and dearest –including but not limited to Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Captain Feathersword, and Henry the Octopus – and I often worry about Jeff’s apparent narcolepsy, which no one else seems to take seriously. If one of your friends fell asleep throughout the day, wouldn’t you think something was up?

Truth be told, I have yet to figure out their appeal, but I know that my 2-year-old’s first full sentence was, “I wanna watch the Wiggles,” and he is totally and completely mesmerized by them. I firmly believe that if Murray showed up at our door (with his guitar, of course) and asked Reid to join the group, he’d jump in that big red car and never look back.

Reid’s favorite Wiggle changes weekly. For a while, it was Jeff – also known around here as “Biggle Beff.” I don’t get it. All Jeff does is sleep, though sometimes he does wake up to play his keyboard. Other than that, he’s relatively boring, and old Reid is not into anything boring.

Sometimes it’s Murray, and that one’s a little easier to understand. Reid has a mighty strong attachment to his Wiggles guitar, which looks almost just like the one Murray himself plays. Other kids have blankets or lovies; mine has a guitar – one that sleeps with him, rides in the car with him, sometimes even goes to school with him. Dig around in my closet enough and you’ll find our back-up guitar, which sits at the ready. How I hope we never need it.

Greg isn’t as popular with Reid, though he does like his “lellow” shirt since yellow’s his favorite color. He’s just not all that into Greg’s magic tricks, I guess. I think the one thing Greg has going for him is his permanent spot in the driver’s seat of the big red car. I haven’t really figured out why no one else gets to (or wants to) drive, but since those Wiggles never bicker, they must know something our family doesn’t.

Least popular in Reid’s book is Anthony, and that one I can’t figure out. I mean, I’ve learned to tolerate these four men that spend a fair amount of time with my younger child, but I don’t by any means want to go on vacation with them or anything. However, if I absolutely had to choose a Wiggle to spend my day with, it would be Anthony. He seems the most “normal” (and I use that term loosely) of the group. Of course, maybe that’s why Reid DOESN’T like him so much!

The Wiggles definitely have a solid fan base – they were the highest-grossing Australian celebrities last year. I suppose I can rest easy knowing that my son is not the only toddler who thinks the sun rises and sets on Greg, Murray, Anthony, and Jeff. Besides, he’s picked up some really suave dance moves that have to come in handy at some point!

As a pet person, I always think it’s a good idea to get a puppy. In fact, I just recently gave up (at least temporarily) trying to talk my husband into getting another dog. However, there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before you make a big purchase like a pet. Here are what I think are the most important:

Frank (pictured left) is a Wheaten Terrier,
Ruby (right) is a Chocolate Lab

Make sure you have enough time to train a puppy. Lilly and Reid are four and two, and I don’t know how I’d teach a dog what I’d want it to know. I just don’t think I’d have the time.

Does everyone in your family want this pet? A friend of mine bought a puppy last summer even though her husband wasn’t into the idea. The puppy has now spent the last couple of months on the back porch because no one really had time to train her and she can’t be trusted in the house. She will soon be sent to relatives. It’s hard to train a pet when not everyone is into it.

Do your research. Do you want a dog that doesn’t shed? Does constant barking drive you absolutely mad? Certainly as a young family you want a dog that does well with small children. We got our dogs, Frank and Ruby, before we had kids. Ruby just turned seven, and Frank will be six in a month. We’ve never had any problems with them, but we did a lot of research before we got them to make sure we got dogs that are known to get along with kids. A web site like www.dogbreedinfo.com can give you a lot of information on breed personalities.

If you or anyone in your family has allergies, it’s best to select a dog that doesn’t shed excessively. I do fine with our lab and our terrier both, but put me in a room with a golden retriever and it’s all over. Dogbreedinfo.com lets you search breeds by categories like low/high exercise demand; reliability with children; hairless breeds; allergies; and even lap dogs.

If you do decide to go ahead and get a dog, watch your children carefully. Don’t let them pull tails, grab ears, or climb all over your dog unless you know the dog doesn’t mind it. My children sit on Ruby’s back, dress her up in all sorts of crazy ensembles, and crawl all over her, and she is completely fine with it. Our terrier, however, wants nothing to do with any of that, and they respect that in their own little ways. Lilly and Reid understand that it’s not nice to pull their tails (though Reid still likes to try it when he thinks I’m not looking), and they don’t tease either dog. You can’t expect a dog to take the high road when he just got hit over the head with a Tonka truck.

This dog will be a member of your family for the next 10-15 years (the average life span of most breeds) so choose wisely and enjoy!

It’s nearly impossible to have friends with small children and not talk about sleep – how much your kids got the night before (and maybe more importantly, how much you got); what time they went to bed; what time they woke up; if they woke up during the night, and if so, the reason(s) why.� I usually hear things like this:

“Well, I put him down at 8, but he didn’t fall asleep until almost 8:30.� Then he got up around 8 this morning.”

Or, “The girls are usually asleep by 7:30 because I have to wake them up at 7 to get ready for school.”

Or even, “You know, he was so exhausted he fell asleep in his high chair at 6:30.� We put him in his crib and he didn’t wake up until 7 the next morning.”

WHAT?� Are my children being held hostage by some sort of invisible sleep monster?� � � I realize all children are different, but I can count on one hand the number of times my children have let me sleep past 7.� � I don’t have nearly enough digits to count the mornings I was up with the sun, pouring milk at 5:30 and thinking of nothing but getting back into bed and sleeping until 9.

That said, having a couple of early risers isn’t all that bad.� Our main problem, you see, is bedtime.� � No one wants to go to sleep at a decent hour around here.� As I write this, it’s almost 9:00 and neither Lilly nor Reid is asleep yet.� (I put them in bed at 7:30.)

I’ve read all sorts of articles on this over the past few years.� They all pretty much say the same thing – establish a nightly routine (dinner, bath, books, brushing teeth, bed – or something along those lines) and stick to it.� Children like schedules, apparently, and will learn to go to sleep if the routine is followed consistenly.

Right.

Tonight, they ate dinner.� They took baths.� We all read books, and then they brushed their teeth.� A nice round of hugs, kisses, “I love you”s, and the like followed.� � (We do this just about every night, by the way. It’s not a recent development.)

Now, at 8:45, Reid is doing everything but flips and cartwheels in his crib.� Ten minutes ago, I stuck my head in there because he was yelling for me, and he popped up and said, “HI MAMA!� HI!”� � A couple of minutes later I heard Lilly.� This time, she wanted to ask me if there are any sharks under her bed. (Some kids worry about monsters; mine worries about sharks and dinosaurs.)� � � As I reassured her that I’d checked under her bed and she was shark-free, I heard Reid yell, “MAMA!� MAMA!� I WANT MILK!”� Well, of course he did.� He’d been doing crib aerobics for a good hour.

We follow other advice, too.� We limit TV before bed.� We don’t eat a bunch of candy or other sugary foods when it’s getting close to bedtime (or any other time, though I think Reid would live on lollipops – “pop-pops” – if I let him).� We also don’t put Jolt cola in Reid’s sippy cup, though I’m starting to think someone is spiking our 2% milk with something similar.� Some days we even walk to the park (over half a mile), play for a good long while, and then walk home – uphill.� � Every time we do this, I think to myself on the way home, “Okay, they HAVE to be exhausted.� They’ll pass out after they take baths.”� � � And just about every time, I am dead wrong.

My niece, who will be 5 months old next week, sleeps better (ie, longer) than her 2- and 4-year-old cousins.� � I tell my sister all the time that I’m sending my two over to stay with her a few days, and when they start sleeping like Mae, she can send them on back home.

I’d keep going, but it’s after 10 and I just heard my name again.

Dear Carrie: What advice do you have for flying with small children?

Airplane travel. I vaguely remember the days of throwing a couple of magazines into whatever I was using for a carry-on and maybe a snack (or not, since in those days you were relatively well-fed on a plane). Those days are long gone in our family!

Looking back on it, I remember that flying with Lilly, our now almost-four-year-old, was a breeze. We had a couple of minor incidents, like when my husband realized an hour into our first (five-hour) flight that her diaper had leaked all over her clothes. She ended up flying out in a turtleneck and a diaper (very classy, I know) while the remainder of her attire dried on the floor below us. Thank heavens it was just wet. I got to learn my lesson gently that time. See, that was our first flight with a baby. I didn’t think about taking extra clothes, though I had enough entertainment to keep everyone on the plane busy for at least a couple of hours. Of course, everyone was already entertained because our child was standing in her seat half-naked – singing, dancing, waving. My husband quickly grew worried about the extrovert that appeared when the clothes disappeared, but that’s a whole different story.

LESSON #1: Even if you’ve flown with children numerous times with no clothing mishaps, take a change of clothes for each little person with you. Leave your People magazine at home (let’s be honest – when do you really think you’ll get to read it?), and use the space for some little pants and a shirt. Here’s a saying that’s really overused but entirely appropriate: “better safe than sorry.”
On that same flight, I learned that not all airplanes have changing tables. I never thought about that. Who designed those airplanes, anyway? My husband nearly died – and subsequently pretended not to know us – when I announced there was no room in that [darn] bathroom and I was changing her right there on the seat. On another occasion, the flight attendant kindly gave me blanket to drape over the toilet, but I was still grossed out and I banged Lil’s head. She wasn’t happy. Quite frankly, neither was I, though I did discover a new talent for changing diapers in really small spaces.

LESSON #2: If your plane has no changing table and you haven’t purchased all the seats in your little row (or your side of it), it might get a little rough. Ask the flight attendant for a blanket and do the best you can in that tiny lavatory.

The next year we made our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage out to Phoenix. I thought we’d left in plenty of time, and it would have been plenty of time had we found a parking space anywhere near the airport. We ended up in a park & ride that may as well have been in another city. Long story short, we missed the flight by five minutes and ended up taking another one that night that got us into Phoenix at 1 am, which was 3 am our time. We then had a 45-minute drive to my in-laws’ house. Did I mention they had to drive to the airport at 1 am to pick us up? Whoops.

LESSON #3: Allow yourself plenty of time. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather sit in the airport another half hour (or longer) than turn into a completely frazzled mess because the security line is out the door. If you’re flying out of a big airport, prepare for long lines around holiday time. We were in line in Phoenix last year for over half an hour – just to go through security. It just doesn’t seem quite as bad when you don’t have a flight that leaves in 20 minutes.
My husband and I realized last Thanksgiving on our first trip with two kids that airport security is one of the most painful parts of flying. Imagine two adults, two children, four carry-on bags (three of which were stuffed), a stroller, a car seat, and who knows what else. Now imagine removing younger child (who cannot walk or stand on his own) from the stroller; collapsing it to go through security; taking the computer out from one of the carry-ons; taking shoes off; digging boarding passes and IDs out again; convincing older child it’s okay to walk through the security gate alone; etc. Then, after everyone passes inspection, you get to do most of the above again in reverse.
LESSON #4: Seriously, try not to pack more than what you really need. My husband would find me saying this very amusing since I still pack like I might not be able to get off the plane for a few days. Another thing to note – booster seats are not allowed for take-off and landing so don’t even bother taking one. We ended up checking ours on the way home this Thanksgiving so we wouldn’t have to carry it through the airports.

Trey and I have a joke every time we travel on Southwest, which doesn’t assign seats, that we’re going to board last so our children will have to sit with other people in the back of the plane while we kick it up front with adult beverages. Alone. Of course, we haven’t done it yet, so in the meantime we take full advantage of the “boarding with children under 5″ rule. If there’s only one perk to flying with little people, it’s getting on the plane first. This isn’t really that big of a deal when you have assigned seats, but if you don’t, this gives you some prime real estate on the plane. I staked out a spot in the “privileged” line behind the wheelchairs. Lilly and Reid sat on the floor coloring while we waited to board. My husband, mind you, was sitting with the common folk and reading the paper. He didn’t say it, but he thought my parking it in line that early was a little unnecessary. However, when we got on that plane, we had our choice of seats. We’re talking third row, both sides. Now that I’m writing this, I’m a little embarrassed that I get that excited about my seats on the plane. Next. (No real lesson there – just don’t be afraid to board early.)

All that said, we have not yet had a (child-related) experience that made us never want to fly again, at least not permanently. I’m sure we have it coming to us, but since we’re expecting it every time we go on a trip, maybe it won’t seem so bad.

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Nostalgic for the 1980 spoof movie favorite, Airplane? Read more about it here…

Carrie is so clever she doesn’t even know she’s clever….
I don’t feel very clever today. I’m really struggling over here. I keep sitting down to add on to what I’ve written and it’s just not happening. Come to think of it, I could probably tell you why I’m NOT clever. All from the past two days, too.

• Reid figured out how to turn the key in the lock, let himself out, and got on his big wheel in the driveway before I realized where he was (this took at most 30 seconds).
• Prior to this, Reid figured out that he could untangle himself from the safety belt in his high chair and stand up in the chair, thereby giving him great access to a countertop in the kitchen (above which lives our crystal goblets and 2 fish, among other things). All this was accomplished as I was unloading the dishwasher five feet away. Talk about quiet.
• Lilly pretended like she was Swiper the Fox and hid my shoes and my earrings. Found the earrings, have no clue where my shoes are.
• I neatly folded all of Reid’s pants and put them in a drawer in his dresser. He not-so-neatly opened up the drawer and threw them all over his room.
• Lilly very politely asked me for some fruit snacks, which she then took to her room and used to decorate.
• Lilly’s friend Davis brought a box of crayons over. Somehow said crayons ended up in my living room, and Reid got his paws on one and colored my coffee table. Did I mention these crayons are not the washable kind?
• I took Lilly and Reid for a walk this afternoon with my friend Alison and her baby, Sam. Sam and Lilly were angels. Reid threw a screaming fit for three-quarters of the walk. Bonus: we didn’t surprise anyone in front of us. They could all hear us from half a mile away.
• Reid figured out how to unscrew the cap on a bottle in our recycling bin. Outside. Then he tried to drink the few drops of Fresca that remained in the bottle. Not very sanitary, but better than the dog bowl. I think.
• Our neighbor rang the doorbell right before bathtime to bring us some muffins she’d made. I had stripped Reid down to a diaper when I heard the doorbell and ran to see who was there. He chased after me, but only after he had ditched his diaper. He streaked by my neighbor and her six-year-old, then hopped on his big wheel and tried to ride down the driveway. Thank the lord it was dark and my next-door neighbors weren’t home.

I’m starting to understand why my brain doesn’t work very well. I’m also starting to see that I sound like a deadbeat mother who doesn’t pay attention to her ankle biters.
- Carrie, loving mom to Lilly, 3.5 and Reid, 20 months