My holiday shopping is right on track, but I’m seriously considering using one of the many “Drop-N-Shop” dates at various venues around town just for some time alone — I mean, they can’t make me shop while my kids are there, right?

If you haven’t heard of this new trend yet, check out the Magic House (members only, kids must be potty trained,  Dec. 7 and 14) the South County or the Chesterfield Bounce U (Nov. 24, Dec. 23 and 24 ) or  the JCC (ages 4 to 10, Nov. 29, Dec. 6, 13, and 20) or Spirits Gym (kids must be potty trained, Nov. 27, Dec. 12, Dec. 23) … there are lots of them around town, typically ranging in price from $15 to $35 for the first child in a family (with sibling discounts), four or five hours in duration, usually with snacks included.

We’re usually out of town for Thanksgiving, so I was all excited when I realized the holiday tree lighting ceremony was today. My next realization, however, was that there was no way our crazy pre-travel schedule would allow us to get downtown to see it! It would have been better to have been out of town, actually; now I’m disappointed all over again!

But the tree looks lovely (you can see a photo here) and I look forward to supporting some of the other holiday events downtown. I recently learned there’s a nonprofit, Christmas in St. Louis, that puts together holiday events like the tree lighting and the Thanksgiving Day parade (9 a.m. to noon on Nov. 26).

This year the Convention and Visitors Commission is putting on a new downtown attraction, called St. Louis Holiday Magic, at the convention center — and it sounds almost worth the price of admission ($10 adults, $6 kids ages 6 to 12, free for 5 and under) to see the 40,000 choreographed lights. Admission also includes indoor carnival rides.  If the weather ’s lousy on the weekend of Dec. 4-6, you might just find us there.

More rain, more coughing … but no fever today. And we made chicken soup, so tomorrow should be golden health-wise, if not weather-wise! If you’re indoors too, head over to Integrity’s homepage and vote for one of three charities you feel deserves a new homepage, courtesy of the company’s holiday generosity. Do good without spending a dime.

I’m home on this rainy Monday with a sick kid — it seems like a perfect time to recommend the resource Lit2Go: Audio Files for K-12 in iTunes. It’s broken out by ages, with mostly children’s poetry (from the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson) and nursery rhymes in the kindergarten section, and more scholarly stuff — lectures like spherical trigonometry or the text of Silas Marner — for older kids. Everything’s in MP3 format and is free to download.

If you have a St. Louis Public Library card, you can also download free audiobooks, songs and videos via GetItNow. First-time users are guided painlessly through the process, and the site is detailed as to what devices are compatible with each title. The lending period is typically seven days, after which time the download is no longer accessible — so no late fee, virtual or otherwise.

If you’d rather not stay home and watch the Rams get trounced by the Saints on Sunday, and if you’re avoiding raking/mowing/blowing all the leaves that have fallen this week, I have a suggestion for spending your afternoon (Nov. 15): the annual Cranksgiving food drive, er, ride. A couple hundred cyclists will set out at noon from Atomic Cowboy, 4140 Manchster Ave. in The Grove, with a map of stores at which they’ll purchase items from a shopping list for Food Outreach. Along the 10- or 25-miles routes, they’ll stock up (in the $10 to $20 price range total) then loop back around to Atomic Cowboy.

If you’d prefer to watch the Rams but want to donate ahead of the ride, there’s a list of drop-off points on the St. Louis BikeWORKS homepage.

When my husband decided to leave the active duty military in 1998, I was relieved beyond words. He was in Air Force communications, and although his job didn’t require him to deploy for long time periods, it did put him into hostile territory — at that time, it was Bosnia-Herzegovina. But we both knew that he’d joined at a lucky time, after the first Iraq war and before whatever lurked ahead, and that Bosnia would eventually seem like a walk in the park compared to future military deployments.

He continues to support the military in his present job, with a fervor that’s perhaps stronger than when he was still on active duty. When he returned to civilian life, I’m the one whose ties to the military were almost completely cut. And lately, as casualties mount in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve been feeling that my small gestures of support are more and more futile.

But a couple of weeks ago — before the shootings in Texas, ironically — I decided that I was going to make donations to military-related causes for those on my Christmas list. To get myself in the spirit of the season, I’d planned to attend the Operation Shower fundraiser at Monarch last weekend. It’s a nonprofit that throws baby showers for moms-to-be with military ties. Unfortunately, a sick babysitter quashed that plan. But that’s such small potatoes compared to what deployed servicemembers are going through that I hardly dared whine.

There are tons of other opportunities to lend financial support, sometimes where you’d least expect them.  For example, at work the other day I was looking up some literature on children’s emotional well-being and came across a plea for donations of books on marital relationships to soldiers and their spouses.  It’s from John Gottman, a very respected expert who cites startlingly sad statistics on miliary marriages.

I suppose my former status as a military spouse predisposes me to support these kinds of family-related efforts, but there are tons and tons of others — everything from doing yard work at the homes of those who’re deployed to sending care packages, either as part of a group like The Care Package Project or on your own. (If you choose that option, the deadline for the cheapest holiday shipping rate to Iraq and Afghanistan  is Nov. 13; visit the Missouri VFW homepage for details.)  Heck, if you’re flying through Atlanta or Dallas or Bangor, Maine, you could even join the troop greeters, as seen in tonight’s PBS documentary.

‘Tis the season when I start avoiding malls. Except this coming Saturday (Nov. 14), when I have to bring M. to Plaza Frontenac so he and the rest of his Music Makers from the St. Louis Children’s Choirs can serenade shoppers from 11 to 11:30 a.m. I’m curious if they’ll do their holiday songs — but probably they will, as Santa will already have made his official entrance over at St. Louis Mills Mall the day before (Nov. 13). Yes, you read that right — Santa comes on NOVEMBER 13!!!! You can hardly bash the event, a fundraiser/tree lighting for the Salvation Army, but it’s two weeks before Thanksgiving, for crying out loud.

So if you’re already in the mood for Santa (and S. is — he asked yesterday, as we were taking down the Halloween decoration, why we couldn’t put up the Christmas tree), you can see him Friday at 4:30 p.m. near the play area. There’ll be door prizes, cookies and hot chocolate, and a holiday show by The Muny Kids.

But naturally Saturday’s show will be better, because M. is in it! It’s also tied to a nonprofit — the Arts and Education Council’s St. Louis on Sale event — and the organization’s card-carrying members receive 20 percent discounts at certain shops over the course of nine days.  Membership is $50, and depending on how much shopping you plan to do (and not all the shops are in malls, incidentally) joining could be worth your while.  And it’s for a good cause: The council supports dozens and dozens of arts groups (St. Louis Children’s Choirs among them) with grants of various amounts.

Is anyone else out there avoiding kiddie attractions lately? Much as we love them, we are. I just can’t bring myself to risk the contagions. There’s only been one confirmed case of H1N1 affecting a child we know, but she got really sick … so we’re staying home more than usual. It’s a good excuse to bake Christmas cookies. And to jump in leaves.

And when we do go out, it’s to places where there aren’t a lot of interactions or shared toys. So today’s recommendation is for the Family Movie Day at the Missouri History Museum. At 2:30 p.m. on Saturday (Nov. 7), you’ll be able to see Aladin for free in Lee Auditorium. Beforehand, from noon on, there’s a craft-and-storytelling workshop (the story is at 1 p.m.), and of course you can break out the hand sanitizer and venture into the special exhibit, Treasure!, which the museum’s hosting until Jan. 3, 2010. For details about the day’s events, visit this link.

And stay healthy, everyone!

We were childless when we first moved to St. Louis, so the dismal state of the local public education system was an abstract concept for a long time. Now, eight years later, M. is in first grade and I’m no longer finding it quite so abstract! I don’t have the instinctive knee-jerk “no” reaction when someone asks why we don’t send him to a public city school — I’ve been around long enough to know there are options within the system, and to have friends who’re choosing those options. But I’m still mostly a critic.

For example, the open houses at the magnet schools on Thursday (Nov. 5) have pros and cons. I’m all for open houses in a realistic setting, but this one is during school hours, and it’s not realistic for me to take off school and drive my kid to all the schools that we might be interested in viewing. Yes, the district does host weekend open houses for its magnet schools — as I discovered belatedly when I looked into the one tomorrow. If you’re thinking of enrolling your child in a magnet school, you’ll need to be more on the ball than I am: The application deadline for some of the schools is Nov. 13, among them Kennard, which is the creme de la creme for city parents even remotely considering a public education for their kids.

I have nothing personally against the schools’ marketing department — indeed, I have worked with them in the past and no doubt will again on various freelance pieces. But I wish they had the capability to do a full-force push. For instance, when I looked back at publicity about the weekend open house in October, the one I missed, it doesn’t mention that there will be another open house this month — and it also lacks any context to help parents sort through the schools based on quality, demand, discipline issues, etc. The newspaper ran essentially the same info as the press release.

Yes, I realize that the communications department needs to support all its schools. But that democratic approach stifles them a little too, because we parents are left with the idea that all the schools are roughly equal, which they’re not, and that beige image is not enough to get us to consider enrolling our kids.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Thursday’s open houses, call 314-633-5200.

If you happen to be hitting the Justin Roberts concert at Off Broadway today at 3 p.m. — not free, but at $10 per person it’s worth it for hard-core Yellow Bus fans like my boys! — consider coming over to Cherokee Street before or afterward. From 1 to 7 p.m., the annual Dia de los Muertos festival will be taking place, centered around the Cherokee-California corner. This year the organizers have set up a cemetery so we anglos can see how a traditional commemoration of the dead might look. You can learn more on the Riverfront Times blog post here. Even if you can’t stay long, it’s worth stopping by the many bakeries on the street for the sweet and delicious pan de muertos.