Tag Archives: child

A Scrapbook of Your Child’s First Year

A nice addition to your child’s Baby Book is a scrapbook of their first year. This enables you to add more than what their Baby Book asks for. You can add your own creativity and save some of the keepsakes that you wouldn’t otherwise keep. A good way to create this type of scrapbook is to do it month-by-month. You can pre-design all of your pages and just add photos, notes and keepsakes as the year progresses. Perhaps design two scrapbook pages per month. The first introduces the month and has a list of new accomplishments for your baby. The … Continue reading →

Toddler Pizza Party

My preschooler loves pizza, but as a toddler she wasn’t that into chowing down on crunchy dough topped with whatever veggies I could sneak under melted cheese. Still, she loved the idea of eating with her hands (it was the taste of the pizza she despised) and happily created her own fake Italian pies in her play kitchen. Whether your toddler devours pizza by the slice or she refuses to touch it with a ten-foot pole, she’ll have a ball partaking in the following simple, age appropriate pizza-related activities: PIZZA ART An unused pizza pan can act as a great … Continue reading →

Is Your Toddler Destined to be a Troublemaker?

He is if his name is: Alec Ernest Garland Ivan Kareem Luke Malcolm Preston Tyrell Walter Ah, so, now we finally know what’s in a name… trouble, trouble, and trouble. At least that’s what the experts maintain. And by experts I mean a professor from Shippensburg University named David Kalist. Writing in Social Science Quarterly, Kalist insists that giving your boy any of the aforementioned names could land him in jail later in life. Why? Kalist believes that giving newborn males odd, girly or strange first names it “increases the tendency toward juvenile delinquency.” Kalist based his conclusions on a … Continue reading →

Two Tricks to Organizing Your Toddler’s Room

Do you remember the time when you first set up your child’s nursery? I bet the crib bedding was just right, the matching rug was centered, the cute toys waited on shelves, and the room emitted a sense of peace. Well fast forward a couple of years later, and you now find the room in complete chaos, with toys scattered all over the floor, a jumble of stuffed animals and books on the bed, and learning toys that force you to “learn” how to find all of the missing pieces. At least, that is how it went down in my … Continue reading →

Adventures in Potty Training: Day 1: Evening

How do you manage potty training when someone else has to take over? This is a bit of the dilemma we faced going into the evening on Day 1. I am happy to report that our little one made it through his nap completely dry. I put training underwear on him for his nap (thick cotton underwear, not pull up diapers). Because I didn’t want to risk the couch where he normally naps, I set up a tent in the living room and placed a thick blanket inside the tent. Fortunately the blanket wasn’t needed. Things went well for the … Continue reading →

Adventures in Potty Training: Day 1, Morning

Well, the day has finally arrived. It is time to potty train our youngest child. Here are my experiences and adventures, practically as they happen. I have been waiting for the weather to warm up past the 50 degree mark for a stretch of at least three days before I started potty training. This is because I have found that one of the quickest methods for training involves letting the child run around with a long shirt on and a bare bottom, something that just doesn’t work when it is cold. It so happens that we are in the middle … Continue reading →

How to Get Your Preschooler to Listen

When it comes to getting a preschooler to do what you want or need him to do, there is a simple little trick that can stop the “no!” in its tracks. If I may brag a little bit for a moment, our children are usually complemented on their behavior when they are out in public or over at a friends house. Of course, there are a lot of factors involved here, such as making sure that they have had enough rest, that they are well fed, and the fact that the people complimenting our kids don’t actually live with us … Continue reading →

Your Child’s Art Stories

I admit that I am not a scrap booker. I take a lot of photos but then don’t do anything official with them, other than sharing a few on our family website or Facebook. Although I got several baby books with my first child, I managed to make just one single entry, the day that my son rolled over for the first time. Still, I do like to collect my children’s artwork for posterity. I keep the very best pieces of art and donate the rest to the in-laws, because how could I possibly toss anything out that a child … Continue reading →

More Ways to Get a Toddler to Eat

We have all heard about hiding good foods into standard fare, such as extra vegetables in pasta sauce (one of my least favorite ways of getting a child to eat, since it involves trickery rather than changing habits), but what are some other ways of getting that picky toddler to love new and healthy food? Here are some of the methods that have worked for my family and/or the families of some of my close mom friends. The Clean Your Plate Club, Updated When I was a child, I was told that if I finished everything on my plate that … Continue reading →

Are Your Children Safe with Their Grandparents?

This past summer, my husband and I had to make the hard decision between ourselves that we would not leave our children alone in the care of their grandparents. I won’t go into details, but it became obvious to us that our children’s safety might be compromised, were they in the sole care of their grandparents. This wasn’t an easy decision to make, of course. Feeling would be hurt, and the matter had to be handled delicately. But, we feel that it was the best decision for our family and for the safety of our children. Depending on your situation, … Continue reading →