My Family Loves It » Parenting

My recent “parent hacks”

Heather — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:52:03 +0000

I have had so many little things to blog about lately that I haven’t gotten to. Just to cross some off my list, here are some of my “parent hacks” that I wanted to share:

-thick baby socks are great to put pedialyte pops in when your kids are sick – no cold hands! Also I like to cut the pops in half with a knife so they are smaller and more manageable for a sick little kid (works well for the ice pop ones too).

-thin kid socks are great for covering ice packs (we decorated some socks as puppets and have used those as ice pack covers too since they are more fun).

-flavored yogurt is often too sugary to me so I mix a big flavored one with a plain one in a pitcher and just pour it into cups for the kids. We use a lot of yogurt and this saves me time. The spout can get a little messy after repeated pouring but it still gets the yogurt neatly into cups and my kids are getting less sugar.

-oh almost forgot this one: you can fix broken Silly Bandz by placing them on a piece of wax paper and using a tiny drop of crazy glue! One of the boys asked me to fix a cat one he really liked and so I had to try and it worked!

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Only a Mother Would Know

Heather — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:50:40 +0000

My mom just sent me this email and I had to share.

Cup of Tea.

One day my mother was out and my dad was in charge of me. I was maybe 2 1/2 years old. Someone had given me a little ‘tea set’ as a gift and it was one of my favorite toys.

Daddy was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when I brought Daddy a little cup of ‘tea’, which was just water. After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my Mom came home.

My Dad made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of tea, because it was ‘just the cutest thing!’ My Mom waited, and sure enough, here I come down the hall with a cup of tea for Daddy and she watches him drink it up.

Then she says, (as only a mother would know…)

‘Did it ever occur to you that the only place she can reach to get water is the toilet?’

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Too much hype about back to school shopping!

Heather — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:40:53 +0000

Those are the boys last September on their first days of school (Ethan in K and Ben preschool). I do not want this summer to end! I am not a huge fan of 85 degrees or higher temps but I love having all 4 kids home all day and I am trying to not think about school until the last minute. I love having “little kids” and the boys are getting big too fast now that both will be in real school. Oh but this is a post about back-to-school- shopping budgets isn’t it…did I mention that yet?

I am not doing “back-to-school” shopping so that’s how I’m budgeting! I have a son going into 1st grade, one starting kindergarten and a daughter who will be going to preschool 2 days a week (yay for Jillian who is still too little for anything!). They are all young enough that they rarely want to pick out what they wear and since we get A LOT of really nice hand me down clothes I don’t think we will need that much for the kids. I’m pretty picky about what they wear and I don’t think their wardrobes are lacking at all. The grandmothers always pick out a few new things and otherwise I am just going to wait and get them things as they need them. I only anticipate buying new sneakers for all the kids, maybe some extra pants for the boys if it seems they need them and I also hope to find winter coats that I like better than the 3-in-1 Children’s Place ones I bought last year (I bought big so they will still fit again this year if I don’t see better ones). Besides school clothes there are school supplies but I always have those types of things on hand anyway. When I looked at the boys’ lists all that I still need to buy are a couple boxes of tissues. I’m not sure what all the hype is about back to school shopping, just get things for kids as the outgrow their old things! Why does it have to be a big rush to get a ton of clothes and things before the start of the year especially when they are little? I remember my mom taking me back to school shopping when I was in middle school and we got way too many clothes and she spent way too much. I felt like I needed “cool” clothes to fit in and guilty for the price tag. Luckily I think I outgrew that phase by 10th grade. I don’t know how things will be in our family when the kids are more into fashion and what “everyone else” has but I hope they aren’t too worried about that sort of thing. I imagine we’ll let each kid pick out a few things they really want or give them each a certain budget to spend and let them figure out what to spend it on. Plus when they are older they don’t outgrow things as much so clothes should last a lot longer! I won’t mind buying some trendy expensive things that they’ll want but I will not let them go overboard unless they have jobs to buy the things themselves! For those of you who have kids who could use some budgeting ideas check out Capital One’s Moneywi$e eLearning tool, which includes a section all about talking to kids about money. Plus, check out @TeachingMoney on Twitter to get bite-sized family-focused financial tips.

*I wrote this post to participate in the Parent Bloggers Network’s latest Blog Blast, something I haven’t done it what seems like FOREVER!

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The Rewards of Cleaning

Heather — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:07:22 +0000

I think if I were to find $5 bills every time I cleaned our house would be spotless. Instead when I clean under dressers I am greeted with these rewards…
[WARNING] – Content may not be suitable for those without children

I have to admit that the apple that looks like a brain is kinda cute. I even used the new iPhoto feature to name the brain and see if iPhoto thought anyone in our library had the same face. Fortunately the search came up empty.

With all the possible things my children could have left underneath furniture, I consider my dehydrated fruit discovery pretty fortunate. Heck, this is the type of thing Family Fun magazine would put on their cover as a Halloween project.

My break is over, back to battling the dust bunnies.

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Dad Tip – How to silence those noisy toys

Heather — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:16:39 +0000

A few years ago we got Ethan a Sit and Spin for Christmas. Being the organized parents that we are, all the wrapping was taking place in the wee hours of Christmas Eve. We wanted to have the Sit and Spin ready to go so we put the batteries in and gave it a test. The noise was so loud it put us into the mad “hide the toys, the kids might be coming” mode. Luckily, Ethan slept through it, but we were horrified that we were about to willingly introduce a headache inducing toy into our household. That was a job reserved to grandparents and regifting birthday guests.

Despite the hour and my desire for sleep, I ran down the stairs and returned with a screwdriver and black electrical tape. Fortunately, the Sit and Spin was easy to open and I quickly found the speaker. A few pieces of tape, a minute to reassemble and voila! The volume had been reduced from the “get your attention in the noisy toy store” volume to the “grant me sanity in my own home” level.

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The Ice Cube Alarm Clock

Heather — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:55:19 +0000

One of my biggest concerns about Ethan starting Kindergarten was our morning schedule. I wasn’t worried about getting the kids up in time, I was concerned that my habit of hitting the snooze alarm… repeatedly… for as long as an hour… would make us all late. My solution was the Ice Cube Alarm clock. I told the boys that when they wake up they can get 1 ice cube and use it to get me out of bed. If you’re looking for an effective way to get both your kids and yourself up and moving in the morning, this is it.

On a typical morning I now wake when I hear footstep hurrying down the stairs. If that doesn’t bring me out of dreamland, the sound of the ice maker dispensing a cube certainly does. I then pretend to sleep while I wait for the cube. Luckily the boys haven’t caught on to the entertainment value of putting the cube down my shirt and usually go for an arm or a foot. They’re so funny and cute when they do this that I really don’t mind at all and it sures makes them happy to get up. The only problems we’ve had is that it is now a race to see who will get me first. I think I will change the rules and tell them they EACH need to get a cube and wake me at the same time.

The only other rules we have is that they have to be quiet (which is easy since they prefer the sneak attack) and they are NOT allowed to do this to mom or their sister. Their uncle, however, is fair game whenever he sleeps over.

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Snacks are stressing me!

Heather — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:06:45 +0000

The Parent Bloggers Network and Brothers-All-Natural are teaming up to sponsor a Blog Blast about SNACKS this weekend. With the start of kindergarten and preschool this month I have been trying to think of new snack ideas to send with the kids and I have to say its harder than I anticipated (I am also just worrying about things too much lately!). I want to send them with “healthy” things but also make sure its something they will like and actually be happy about eating. Last week I tried to stock up on some things and while at the store I bought:

a big bag each of vanilla and chocolate animal crackers from the “healthy lane”
a box of mixed chips/corn chips/doodles in snack bags
Batman fruit snacks
grapes (but they didn’t have organic ones)
kiwi (Ethan took them cut up on Friday to school but “a spider landed on them so I only ate 3 pieces”
yogurt covered raisins
baby Goldfish
waffle shaped pretzels
cheese sticks
unsweetened apple sauce cups
apples (again didn’t get organic, can’t wait until they are in season)
baby carrots

I think I did pretty well but Ethan needs to pack a separate snack and then a lunch so I need to really send him with 2 “snacks” every day and after only 2 days of school I am starting to fear he is going to get sick of what I’m giving him! I just worry right now, he is my first baby starting real school and I’m 32 weeks pregnant and emotional, so yes its silly but snacks are adding some extra stress. Here is a confession to clue you into how nuts I can be: the night before his first day of school I actually hand picked only the unbroken animal crackers and placed them in the little snack cup so that the right sides were all facing up (somehow that made me feel better at that moment even though I know it was silly)! That first day I also sent him with 3 little balls of cookie dough but I had put them in a bag and they got gross and squished by his water bottle so he couldn’t eat them (luckily I had more to give him when he got home and then I froze some to send the next day in a lidded container).

I know I’ll need lots more snack ideas so I’m happy to learn about Brothers-All-Natural from this blog blast and will look for them in the store next time. I love finding new healthier options and our stores “healthy lane” is actually more like 4 lanes so I am pretty lucky. The Brothers-All-Natural Fruit Crisps and their brand-new Potato Crisps are 100 percent natural freeze-dried snacks with no added sugar or preservatives – for a fresh new way to eat your fruits and vegetables! This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as an entry for a contest sponsored by Brothers-All-Natural.

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Going out to eat just got harder but we still do it!

Heather — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:38:38 +0000

I haven’t done a Blog Blast in awhile so I decided to join the Parent Bloggers Network and Burger King for their current Blog Blast: Are you THAT Family? They are looking for people’s “dinner out with the kids” horror stories: “tell us what you do now to avoid the food on the walls, juice on the table, and sanity gone totally out the window. Do you just not go out with them anymore? Do you bring a babysitter? Or do you stash some sort of magic toy that occupies them while you scarf down your meal?”

When our first son Ethan was born I started taking him out for lunch a lot and John and I never hesitated to bring him along when we’d go out for dinner. We were lucky and he was just SUPER good going out to eat. Our lucky streak continued after Ben was born and both boys still were great in restaurants. I was very proud of myself and thought we’d always be able to take the kids wherever we felt like to eat BUT then Jamie was born. At first all was still smooth sailing but then somewhere over the last year things started to get harder. Jamie is not quite as easy as the boys were and as a new 2 year old she is sort of hit or miss when we go out. I don’t think she is so terrible out to eat actually, its more just the combo of 3 kids that makes it much more challenging (and the boys aren’t as easy as they once were either). The more kids, the more chance of somebody getting the cranks! We’re not the family that everyone stares at because the kids are so terrible (at least we haven’t been yet!) but its like we’re on high alert sometimes trying to head off any trouble. Its not quite as enjoyable as in the past to go out as a family now and I definitely think we go out less but I think its important to keep going out and if we plan right ahead of time things work out well. I think when we have 4 kids things will be about the same but who knows!

I never was one to bring a big stash of diversions but those work for some families. I find one toy per kid and small snacks help bridge the gap between ordering and eating and I see nothing wrong with a few lollipops tucked away for emergencies! To me the biggest thing is to go out when all the nappers in the family had a good nap that day and to avoid crowded restaurants so there is no extra waiting. Its also important not to stress out! I mean what is the worst thing that can happen if the kids misbehave, you leave early? One of us has taken Jamie out to the car to leave a few minutes early while everyone else finished up and payed and it easily avoided her throwing a fit (but that has only happened twice so far).

So the whole point of this blog blast was to share your eating out horror stories but I didn’t do that since we have had no totally horrible behavior problems at a restaurant so far. We have had a whopping 3 incidents of d-word diaper leaking while out to eat since we’ve had kids, one pee accident and a minor choking/throwing up event but honestly those didn’t come to mind until just now since I was more thinking of misbehaving! Those gross moments weren’t so fun but they didn’t really ruin things either somehow (or not in my memory anyway)! So after doing this blog blast I am thinking we had better go out to eat very soon, I’m kind of craving IHop or maybe Japanese!

*If your family likes Burger King, they have new promotional kids’ meal toys by Crayola – perfect for boys or girls, and definitely worth tucking into your bag before heading out to eat.

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YUM YUM… JUICE!

Heather — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:30:57 +0000

Today I’m writing about BREAKFAST and our morning routine for the Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by KRAFT BAGEL-FULS. I’m not really a morning person and so my best bet is to get as much stuff ready the night before as possible so that we can avoid being late when its a day we need to go somewhere. Breakfast and getting all of the kids dressed obviously can’t happen the night before though so those things can throw me off schedule!

Our 3 &5 yr old boys never started the day starving (once they graduated the infant stage) and there have been plenty of mornings that I’ve had to leave the house and bring them something to eat in the car because they were too busy playing to sit down and eat before we left. I used to think that was a pain because I worried that they would get hungry when there was no food handy BUT now I wish that 23 month old Jamie had followed her brothers’ lead. Jamie wakes up and yells “yum yum” until I get her something to eat (usually an oatmeal bar to stop the screaming) and then just as I hand her the food she starts demanding “juice, juice juice”. Sometimes I make her very upset and actually take my pregnant bladder into the bathroom first thing after she wakes me up but most mornings I hold off and give her something first. When the boys get around to eating its usually “Daddy’s cereal” AKA: Honey Bunches of Oats (Ethan eats it dry and Ben has rice milk in his). Its summer so we aren’t usually in a rush to get anywhere so I’ve made pancakes twice this past week. Come Sept I think I better start baking healthy muffins to feed all 3 kids in the car though! Then when I have the 4th baby in Oct I’m not so sure how we’ll function and get to school on time in the mornings? Maybe the kids will have to sleep in their clean clothes and I’ll install a fridge in the car!

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Cell Phone Flashlight

Heather — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:37:21 +0000

A few weeks ago we had a power outage in the middle of the night. I woke up when I heard Ben crying and making his way down the stairs. After stubbing my toes a few times I met him at the bottom of the stairs and carried him over to our bed. Curious as to what time it was, I made my way to the kitchen and found my cell phone in the basket where I keep my keys. When I flipped it open I was blinded by the light on the display. That was when inspiration it…my cell phone makes a good flashlight! I used it to find my way back to bed, hitting a button whenever the screen dimmed.

Next time your lights go out, instead of fishing blindly in the junk drawer for your flashlight, grab your cell phone. It will provide a nice combination of light, time, and, of course, a phone.

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