Parenting Toddlers

1. Fisher Price Amazing Animals Sing & Go Choo-Choo Train

2. Playskool Mr. Potato Head Spud Buds

3. GeoTrax Working Town Train Railway Playset (more…)

If your toddler is anything like mine, they are suspect of anything that looks like a fruit or a vegetable. It usually takes forever to get him to even taste anything, if he will at all. However, I came across a great tip today that I’m definitely going to try and might help some of your little ones as well.
It was to go to the source of the food:

Take your toddler on an outing to an orchard, berry farm, or dairy so he can see where the food that he eats and the milk he drinks comes from. At this age he won’t truly understand the concept, but the experience might inspire him to try something in which he would not otherwise be interested.

She tried this technique with her little one at an apple orchard and it got him to eat several apples which he had hand-picked. Amazing!

Take a jar of peanut butter, a package of chocolate bark, a jar or marshmallow fluff, and a box of Ritz crackers. Spread peanut butter on one cracker, marshmallow cream on another, then put them together. Melt the chocolate bark in a small saucepan, then dip the crackers into it. Place on wax paper to harden.

Check out Mama Bee for more Recipe Tuesday offerings and be sure to visit the melt-in-your-mouth peppermint meringue recipe posted on our other blog.

Featured in the Carnival of the Recipes…

recipe, peanut+butter, cookie, holiday

recipe, peanut+butter, cookie, holiday

Shake & Go Racers - Mater the Tow Truck and Lightning McQueen. My little guy LOVES Mater, he begs us to talk like Mater and cackles at him. Since he also loves to drive his little cars all over the place, this is a great size for him to both push around and shake up. The shake & go’s have always been nice and sturdy, in my opinion, as well, which is a big thing around here with the crash and bash test to which he submits all his beloved objects.
(more…)

cars

Baby Pancakes

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup baby barley cereal (or other baby cereal)
1 cup formula (or another liquid such as milk)
1/2 cup mashed banana (or fruit of your choice) (more…)

Baby

With the busyness of the holidays and the focus on others, it’s easy to forget to treat yourself now and then. Here’s a list of things that moms do to treat themselves to give you ideas:

- Buy yourself fresh cut flowers.

- Go to the hairdresser, get a fresh cut, even a color or some highlights if you have time.
(more…)

holiday, mom

It’s been a busy holiday around our house! I just posted a story and photos about the little one’s Thanksgiving on our other blog. It’s a busy time of year and I’m hoping to get the tree decorated and all the other Christmas decorations out tomorrow. As for catching up on posts, that will happen very, very soon. Ah yes.

So what was your child’s favorite Thanksgiving food?? My little guy LOVED the mashed potatoes so much that he had four helpings! He also liked the crescent rolls and the pumpkin pie, of course. He wouldn’t touch the turkey…..

holiday, Thanksgiving

Michelle has this great turkey flash game up on her website - click all the way to the end!!

On our other blog, we just posted a list of tips for use when choosing a babysitter. Thankfully we have family in the area and haven’t needed to go through this process yet, but hopefully they will be of use to some of you.

Question of the day:

“When we go out, people often go out of their way to tell us how cute our child is. What can I do when other people with babies compliment us?? I feel like if I just say, “thank you”, they may feel slighted, like I should be complimenting them as well. If I compliment their child in return, does it just feel like I’m doing it in response??”

Usually just “thank you” is fine. Some people make a mental note to compliment them back at a later time, so it doesn’t appear to be in return. Asking a few questions about their child, then adding a compliment, can help to break things up as well.

child, babies, compliment

Read part one of this series if you haven’t already….

Another method for helping toddlers with their fears is allowing them to watch from a safe distance (with their lovey and Mama) while others participate in the “scary” activity. This can help with things like haircuts, even with fears of the dark - my little guy watches Daddy go into a dark room without fear with HUGE eyes.

Now, it doesn’t mean they will automatically dispense with their fear - my little guy still hates haircuts, even after watching Mommy and Daddy have their hair cut without drama, pain, or other issues. However, it can help to plant that little idea in their mind that it is ok, others do it ok, and it gives a starting place for them to work through that fear.

toddlers, fear

The new favorite thing is to chase the cars around on the car rug. Well, this photo is the nice, mommy version of how these cars were meant to play. However, according to the little guy, they are meant to chase each other, fly around in the air, jump up and down, then CRASH into each other with a spectacular noise, yelling, a trip to the “hospital”, then hopping right back into the cars for more. Oh dear.

cars, photo, mommy

Lil’ Duck has recently learned the phrase “Scared, mama, scared _______ (dark, tractor, truck, etc. )”. It’s a hard thing to manage, the balance between wanting to protecting him and wanting him to learn to deal with his fear (and sometimes just wishing to tell him that there is nothing of which to be scared, which really isn’t going to help anything of course). I’ve found a few things that do help with this, which I’ll cover in a few different parts over this week.

Ducky! Using a lovey, if your child has one, or introducing one, can help them feel more comfortable in strange situations. Ducky has helped my little guy to greet relative strangers at church and in other public places, as he has something to offer up to them and hang onto (as well as my leg, of course). The same duck has helped him to work on his new-found fear of the dark (along with a cool color-changing nightlight with a shock protector and a toggle button) - if he has Ducky, sippy, Clifford, yellow train, ambulance, fire truck and blue train, he just might settle down to sleep in a semi-dark room with me.
It is a reassuring and constant object which he can hold tightly, which helps soothe his fears at least.

child, fear

With all the mercury warnings and such, I get asked fairly often if it’s ok for toddlers to eat tuna at all. The FDA says that young children should:

* not eat any shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish
* eat only two average servings (6 ounces per serving for adults, but more like 2-3 for toddlers) a week of fish that are lower in mercury, including shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish. (more…)

children

Keeping it fun, including it in your daily life and teaching them ways to express themselves through and with music is the basic theme when working with a toddler. Read the whole series here if you missed any of these posts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

music, toddler