Parenting Children

My son was fascinated with letter and new the alphabet with little hlep from us by the time he was 21 months old. My daughter was not so interested, so we wanted to help her learn along with making sure L remembered all his letters.
Here are some ideas for teaching your child the alphabet:

Make pancakes in the shapes of letters. Use an old ketchup bottle to squeeze out some edible letters for your child. You can also make alphabet cookies with cookie cutters. Yummy and educational.

Play outside. Use chalk to practice writing letters. Write the letters of the cars that pass by, B for a blue car, T for a truck and so on.

When we go out to eat the restaurants usually have a activity booklet or placemat for the kids. They can’t do the word find yet but I will ask them to find all the “L”s or “R”s to pass the time before the food comes.

Hang some art. A naturalist photographer realized he could find all the letters in teh alphabet in the wnings of butterflies and photographed them without harming the insects. It is a gorgeous print and you can even send E cards or buy prints of your child’s name.

Lastly, just reading to your child and pointing out the letters and their sounds is a fabulous tool.

teaching the alphabet, ABCs, parenting, toddlers, preschoolers, SAHM

The first few weeks of being a parent, the same question would always pop into my head. “What is going to happen if I get sick, how can I take care of my babies?”
I took care of myself, took my vitamins, anything not to get sick, because what was I going to do?

Of course I have had operations over the past four years and a little cold here and there, but my husband would pick up the slack or come home early if I needed him.
Now I am sick and he is away for the week on business.
L has a little cough and I am worried he may get sick. R is fine though and continues to ask me roughly one billion questions a day!

The worst thing about being a parent is ther eis no time for you to be sick, you still have to take care of little people. You can’t crawl into bed and just sleep for the whole day like I wanted to!

Now, I am off to teach my children about “quiet time” for Mommy.

When you are pregnant it is so much fun to wonder what sex the baby inside of you is, what whill he/she look like, whose eyes will she have.

It is one of those wonderful things that every new mother does. I have a found a couple of cute web sites that are fun to play around with. The first one is for pregnant women who don’t know the sex of their baby. It asks questions about your body and your cravings and lets you kow what you are having according to all those old wives tales.

Wanna know the chance your baby will have blue eyes? Check out this site which calculates your eye color along with your immediate family members and gives you what percentage your baby has at each color eye.

Lastly this page computes your height and your husbands along with your child who is over two years old and predicts what their height will be.

These may not all be accurate but they are fun!

height predictors, eye color predictors, babies, infants, pregnancy, new moms, moms

I had already discussed the mandated HPV vaccine in Texas, but now there is some new information.

An analysis of reports of serious medical problems following vaccination against cervical cancer with Merck’s Gardasil found that two-thirds of patients required additional medical care, a vaccine safety group said Tuesday.

The National Vaccine Information Center looked at a report from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System on problems following vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) during the last six months of 2006.

Of 385 adverse events reported, two-thirds required further attention and one-third occurred in children 16 and under. In almost 25 percent of those cases, patients also received one or more of 18 vaccines that Merck did not study, in combination with Gardasil, NVIC said in a prepared statement.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are nopw saying that Gardasil should not be given at the same time as any other vaccines and that patients should be monitored for at least 24 hours after the vaccination for complications.

If this is not reason enough not to require young girls get a vaccine that is fresh to the market, I don’t know what is.

HPV, HPV vaccine, Merck, HPV vaccine complications, vaccine reactions, teenagers, vaccines

We live in the greatest country in the world right? We are all about excess and our children reap the benefits. They have plenty of toys and clothes, for their 16th birthday they get a new car and we spend hundred of thousands of dollars on parties for them.

We must have very happy and well rounded kids.
Not according to a new report from UNICEF. The U.S. and Great Britain were ranked second to last and last, respectively that looked at the well-being of children in 21 industrialized countries.

The rankings were based on six things: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors, and children’s own subjective sense of well-being.

Countries at the top of the list were European nations with strong social welfare systems — the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

I guess money really doesn’t buy happiness.

children’s well being, happy kids, parenting, children, kids

One of my best friends had a baby on Sunday and now I am all hopped up with baby fever. Little tiny, brand new babies that sleep all the time and smell so good.
As I was holding him he opened his eyes and was so alert, it made me wonder what babies or infants remember if anything at all.

My first memory was from when I was three years old. Doctors had always thought that infant’s brains were unable to record memories but not true says a new report, it is just that they only hold onto the memories for a much shorter time then adults.

“The ability to form memories depends on a network of structures in the brain and these develop at different times, Bauer said. As the networks come together between 6 months and 18 months of life, researchers see increased efficiency in the ability to form short- and long-term memory, she said.

From age six months to two years, memory increases from about 24 hours to a year, she said.”

Babies are even smarter then we thought!

babies, infants, babies memory, memory in children,

source

The thing about being a mother or a parent at all for that matter is that it is hard, so very hard. That they do not tell you in the pregnancy books or the motherhood web sites.
It is not all flowers and picnics on the front lawn. It is poop and crying in the bathroom because you can’t have a moment alone.

The simple truth is, that caring for another human being is hard, exhausting and boring.

Then you get a night when your child crawls into bed with you and places his small hand on your chin, the same hand that held your finger moments after he emerged from your body, and says “You are the best Mom, I just love you”. That, is when your hear melts and you don’t forget the bad times, they just finally seem worth it. Like seeing a rainbow for the first time and appreciating its beauty.

That is something that they also never tell you in books, that you will have hard times, but with one smile it all gets wiped away.

moms, dads, parenting, love, kids, children

Next time your child complains that there is “nothing to eat” remind them that 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition.
The number is staggering.

Now remind yourself that the next time you are wandering around the grocery store complaining that you don’t know what to buy.
I know I will.

My husband was transferred to south Jersey when I was pregnant. So, the day I came home from the hospital with my two babies was the day I moved to south Jersey an hour+ from all of our family and friends.

Sure it is hard and although we visit often my kids still miss out on growing up and seeing their family when ever they want.

When the kids were smaller E & I came up with a solution to have them remember the faces of their family members when they can’t be with them. We put pictures in a small soft album, one for each of them and because our families are so big, each one had different family members.

Then once they were a little older and knew who Grandma is or their cousins, we cut out faces or images from different pictures or magazines. Then we laminated them and we had instant placemats.
Now while they were waiting for me to finish cooking or when they had enough of sitting at the table it kept their attention for a little bit longer.
It was fun to do, cute and a good memory exercise.

Now, if I can only get them to stop talking about their cousins so much!

family, parenting, kids, babies, toddlers, photo albums

We have entered a new phase in our household, the “he/she did it” phase.

When I ask who left all the puzzle pieces on the floor, the answer is R did it.
If I inquire why there is marker on my table R will yell out “L did it”.
My very favorite though is when they are both together and I wonder who left the refrigerator door open and they both yell out “Lincoln”.
Not Abe, our cat. Although saying Abraham Lincoln did it would win them mucho creative points.

What do I do though in this blaming stage?

First I try to ignore it. Then if it continues I let them know that I know they are not telling me the truth.
Finally, I make them both clean up the mess or whatever they did. If one person isn’t going to confess they both can do it together, which is fine by me.

Otherwise I will be yelling at the cat all day and he is just a terrible cleaner.

Here in NJ it is cold and snowy. We are going to be looking for fun Valentine’s things to do inside today. Here are some ideas for you too:

Make some Valentines cards.

Print some coloring pages, bookmarks or puzzles

Make a Pin

Or play a game online with your child

Eat only red foods today, like tomatoes, red peppers, beets, red plums, strawberries, and jelly. Make cookies but cut them out in heart shapes or sprinkles sugar on them using a heart stencil. Everyone wear something red!

What ever you do, know that just being with yoru child and interacting with him is what is special about today.

Happy Valentines Day!

Valentines day, Valentines crafts, valentines printables, fun

There is so much out there beyond the Goodnight Moon book for parents and kids. I know that I get bored with reading the same story over and over, although my kids never seem to mind!
I try to incorporate variety in our books and I rotate them from the bookshelf in the playroom, to their rooms often.

My son loves nature books, books about sea life, or dinosaurs. They are encyclopedias for kids. They are fascinated with those. We love
There is a monster at the end of this book and we always laugh at the silly poetry of Shel Silverstein.

I have my childhood favorites as well, that I cannot wait to introduce to my kids that I remember reading in kindergarten and first grade.

If you are looking for some new books to replenish your child’s collection check out the Tiny Treasury site which has great ideas and recommendations.

What are your or your child’s favorite books?

children’s books, books for kids, storytime, kids, toddlers, reading to kids, book recommendations

It is a hot button topic amongst new mothers these days. To cut or not to cut? There is just so much information there, how do you decide?

Routine infant circumcision continues to be the most commonly performed surgery on children in the US, with about 1.2 million newborn boys circumcised each year, although that is starting to decline.

Is it a choice informed parents make or uneducated western torture?
Some people do it for religious reason, some do it for cultural reasons and yet others just do it.

When I found out one of the tiny babies in my womb was a male the question of whether to snip was right there.

My husband wanted him circumcised, his friends said I should circumcise, but then again, all of them were circumcised.
I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t.

I do think it is an unnecessary surgery.
I left that decision to my husband, after all I didn’t have a penis and he did. He knew I felt uncomfortable with it and he had a different view.
He felt it wasn’t as clean and that our son would be ridiculed by other kids and girls and that growing up was hard enough without that added to it.

I wonder as more people are deciding against it, if my son will be in the minority one day. I do think I made the right educated decison I could make as, well, a woman.

I would love to hear how you came to the decision you did with circumcision, especially the Dads.

circumcision, infants, pregnant moms, pregnancy, babies

We are in the car on the way to the greatest place on Earth (Target) and this was our conversation:

R: Mommy what do you say when there are a lot of gooses?

Me: You mean when there are more then one goose?

R: Yes

Me: If there is more then one you say geese, if there is only one you say “goose”.

R: Yes!

Me: If there is one mouse you say “mouse” if there are more then one you say “mice”

R: yes Mommy!

R: If there is one alligator, we say alligator, if there is more then one you say “crocodile!”

How cute is that? I am starting to love year four more then I thought I would.

cute things kids say, kids, preschoolers, moms, kids are funny, life with kids

My daughter has has a lot of tiaras in her four years. she loves them but is not so gentle with them either. I got sick of buying overpriced crons in the store so I decided to make one with my daughter. It gave us something to do and it was cheaper then buy a store made one.

Here is what you need:

· One thin, plastic hairband
· An assortment of wired paper butterflies, leaves or flowers, or large jewels
· Thin satin ribbon
· Fabric glue

Instructions:
1. Wrap the plastic hairband in your satin ribbon, winding from one end to the other and using a little fabric glue to keep the ribbon in place.

2. then, simply secure the various wired bits and pieces you have chosen starting with the center and working your way down.

Let it dry and you have your own handmade crown!

crafts for kids, tiara, kids, rainy day activities Moms