Blog Holiday - Missing Children's Day

Sunday, May 25th is National Missing Children's Day. This is hardly a holiday, but I thought it an important awareness day to focus on for this week's Blog Holiday.

As a new parent to a happy and healthy boy, I can't even fathom what it would be like to have my child suddenly disappear from my life without any knowledge of where he was or how he was doing. I couldn't fully understand such feelings 11 month ago, but now just the thought makes me want to run over to our daycare and grab Luke, hold on tight, rush him home, and bar the doors to keep out any bad people who would do him harm.

It is both heartbreaking and sobering to visit the Missing Children's Blog, today's blog of note. I chose this blog because of the work it does to publish information on missing children, in an effort to reunite them with their loved ones. Please take the time to check out this site, in the rarest of chances you might recognize one of these children or be able to help in some other way.

Finally, for more information on how to prevent your own children and families from becoming victims, please check out these other helpful resources, and don't forget to hug your kid tonight!!

A Family Survival Guide When Your Child is Missing
AMBER Alerts by State
Child Protection Publications
Code Adam
Code Adam Alerts in Government Buildings
FBI Kidnapping and Missing Persons Investigations
FBI Parental Kidnappings
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Sex Offender Registry National Search
National Child Id program

Blog Holiday

I am beginning a new weekly series focusing on a parenting related current obscure holiday (or awareness day/week). This inaugural post recognizes 'Children's Book Week' which began on May 12th and will end on Sunday the 18th.

Mrs. LIAYF and I have read to Lukas almost since he was born. Thanks to many kind friends and family, as well as numerous trips to book stores both new and used, we have started a nice collection of children's literature for our son. Luke loves story time and thumbing through picture books. He especially likes our bedtime routine where we all read 'Baby Signs' books together. Some of his favorite children's books include the classics such as Good Night Moon, Guess How Much I Love You and Jamberry. He also likes the 'tastefully' illustrated Fruit! In an early attempt to reinforce our desire to make Lukas a reader as soon as he is able, we even got him his first Library card when he was 3 1/2 months old!! Seattle is one of those wonderful cities with great libraries and a great policy for kids - no late fees for children's books!

An important part of this series will be to link to a blog which is based on or related to the holiday I am posting about. Today, the link goes out to 'The PlanetEsme Plan', a blog dedicated to getting people interested in children's literature.

Check it out, and don't forget to read a story with your kids tonight!