Recipes

It's been brought to my attention that nobody knew the recipe box was up and running. Sorry! Apparently the link is a little hard to see and I forgot to put a post up telling you the recipes were up and running. My bad. The link is at the side, so click on it if you're wanting some quick and easy recipes, and some not so quick and easy. I'll try to put more in as I think of it.

Also I wanted to say that kids are so sneaky. Seriously. And if there's something you don't want them to do, they figure out a way to get it done in 30 seconds if you'll just leave them alone.
My 18 month old loves to color. Everything. He's discovered a box of highlighters on my computer desk and he really thinks the lively colors are so much more interesting than his boring "magic" markers that won't color on anything but the Race Car McQueen paper. Who wants to color on the desk if nothing's going to show up? I came into the front room the other day to find every last highlighter with its lid off and my kid had orange streaks all over his face. This was the first time it had happened, and there was no coloring on the desk/floor/etc so I quite naturally assumed it was the older kids that were here. (sorry to their moms. I was most mistaken.) It happened three more times that day and the desk now bears highlighter coloring of all colors since he can get every last lid off in about 20 seconds flat. Seriously. So I guess the moral of the story is this: once a monkey, always a monkey. What I mean by that is that "out of reach" does not equate to "unreachable" when you have a kid whose older brother has tutored him well in the art of climbing household furniture. Out of sight, out of mind is a much better cliche in this particular circumstance.

Sleeperoo

If you're hoping for tips on how to get your kids to sleep long hours and never want anything from you in the middle of the night, look elsewhere. This is not the post for you.

I'm not a good authority on how to get kids to sleep. My oldest was an amazing sleeper until about 6 weeks ago. For reasons still perplexing the world at large, he suddenly decided he needed someone to lay next to him until he fell asleep, which wouldn't be so bad, but he simultaneously decided to wake up five times a night and scream bloody murder if his dad wasn't sleeping next to him. We tried to let him cry it out. I think we were winning, too, until the neighbor let us know in a not-so-subtle way (he kicked our wall repeatedly) that he didn't appreciate all the noise and now we're stuck. Daddy's been sleeping on an air mattress next to his bed ever since.

Which leaves the little one in our room with me. He's not so little -- 18 months -- and sleeping in a pack and play, which can't be the epitome of comfort for him since he's tall even for his age. We cover him with a giant blanket, and, like a puppy, he takes the signal as time to go to sleep. For reasons unknown to me, he woke up wailing this morning at 2:00. Random wailing at about 20 second intervals. Impossible to sleep through. Probably for the aforementioned neighbor as well. After an hour of random spurts getting louder and more desperate, I gave him some teething tablets, a new binky, and attempted to rock him back to sleep. Also I had a migraine. You can't imagine how much that affects your patience if you don't get them. So I rocked him and cuddled him and made him comfortable for an hour and a half before I'd had enough and started to lose my patience. You'd be amazed how quickly this can make your child wail louder and harder. Finally, I thought "Forget it. This is ridiculous." I tucked him in bed next to me and he was asleep in 15 minutes.

The moral of the story: desperate parents will do anything early in the morning to get their kids back to sleep. I still don't even know if it was his teeth that woke him up in the first place, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think I'm a bad parent if once in a blue moon, my kid spends half the night in my bed just so we can both get some shut-eye, and I don't think you're a bad parent if you do that either. The Jolie-Pitts have a "sleep-over" in mommy and daddy's room once a week where they all stay up late and watch a movie and sleep in the same bed. So there's my celebrity plug, because we all know they're model parents, right?;) Seriously, though, in the grand scheme of things, when they're too little and upset to reason with, it's my totally unprofessional opinion that parents who do whatever they can to get sleep are in the great majority. Happy sleeping!;)

Kee-mup!

That's how my little boy says "clean-up". It's pretty cute. He has a whole song to go with it.

So I'm about to share a parenting pearl that may or may not be news, as I have shared it with several of my friends already. It has to do with cleaning. If you're anything like me, it's a challenge. I have two little boys and the house has a tendency to get destroyed. I used to look around and wonder where to start as I made a mental list as long as my left arm (it's longer than my right, you know) and eventually end up thinking, "Oh forget it!! I'll never get it all done, so I'm not even going to start." Seriously, that's happened to me a few times.

That being said, here's what I suggest. Decide on your 5 biggest jobs and assign each of them to one of the weekdays. Cleaning up toys and doing the dishes I'm afraid are going to have to be at least daily jobs. But everything else can be divided. Here's an example:

Monday: Bedrooms. Straighten, dust, tidy, whatever.
Tuesday: Bathrooms.
Wednesday: Vacuum (this sometimes needs to happen more than once a week.)
Thursday: Sweep/mop
Friday: Laundry

This little system isn't exactly rocket science, but I try to get my "big job" done early and then it's out of the way. You'll be amazed how much cleaner it helps your house stay in the long run. It doesn't seem so overwhelming if it's divided out thusly.

*one more small hint: on laundry day, fold each batch as it's coming out of the dryer. This avoids the huge pile-up at the end of the day and putting off the folding of the laundry for days at a time because the task is insurmountable. Try it once and you'll never go back!

Just A Reminder...

The companies who make twin strollers do not require you to have twins in order to buy them. I think a lot of people are confused on this issue. I have two little boys who, aside from being 18 months apart, are as different in appearance as two kids can be. My older child is stuck with my pasty white skin, blond hair, blue eyes, etc. My younger boy has the look of his daddy... a more olive-like complexion with dark brown eyes and brown hair (except in the summer).

That being said, my husband works at a large hospital. Once in a while, we go visit him for lunch when he has to work a Saturday. Literally every time I've taken the double stroller in, somebody has to ask me if the kids are twins. It might be an understandable mistake at this point because they're getting pretty close in size and maybe if it were dark in the hallway you couldn't tell they look nothing alike, but this has been happening since my younger child was three months old. Seriously. Picture with me, if you will, a 21 month old tucked into one side of a stroller, legs dangling, gibbering nonsense in a constant stream as you walk down the hall. On the other side of the stroller is tucked a wad of blankets with a head that you can only see if you look closely and swim through the sea of blankets his paranoid mother has tucked around him.

Enter creepy smoker lady with bulging eyes, no personal bubble, and a voice that says "I'm a 2-pack-a-dayer". As she leans in way to close to the older child, he recoils and begins to cry just as his mother hears, "My goodness, deary! They are lovely! Are they twins?" This scene, almost in it's entirety, is repeated every time I take that stroller to the hospital. So now that the baby can walk, we walk in instead.

And I haven't been asked about twins since.

For the Soft of Heart...

Every now and then, I have to put in a sentimental post. The truth of it is, although my kids do hilarious things on a daily basis and I never hurt for material, they are also the sweetest little guys and daily do something to melt my heart. Let me share one of those moments with you.

My older child has just recently decided that he can't sleep without mommy or daddy lying next to his bed. You can imagine the incovenience. (For those of you playing the "let him cry it out" card, I assure you it has been tried. After the third night of 1 hr plus of my kid screaming and kicking his bedroom door, our neighbor kicked the wall to let us know he didn't appreciate it. Our hands are a little tied here.) Well usually when I lay down next to him for nap time, I'm running over in my head how annoyed I am that I have to be here and what a little stinker he is because he won't go to sleep by himself anymore and so on. Today, however, I just relaxed, closed my eyes, and fell asleep for about 5 minutes... just long enough for my little guy to fall asleep with his face pressed up against the bars on the big boy bed.

If you've never watched your kids sleep, I encourage you to do so at some point. That's my tip for the day. Not all of you have to lay next to your little stinker until he drops off, but for those of you who don't, sneak in after you're sure they're asleep and just watch them. (This won't become creepy until they're much, much older, I promise.) My kids could pass for angels when they sleep. There is nothing more peaceful and you will never be more sure that there is a Divine Creator than when you watch the face of your own sleeping child. It's worth five minutes, I promise. Now pardon me while I reach for a tissue...;)

A Quick Tip

You know how dads are all paranoid that their little boy won't be manly enough? Seriously, this is an inborn fear for most men. Ask the man sitting next to you. This is the reason they teach them rough games and think that WWF is an appropriate game for family time. (I'm only complaining because I usually end up at the bottom of the dogpile.) My husband begins by tossing my kids in the air to ridiculous heights before they're even able to hold their heads up independently. "He's gotta toughen up sometime!" (that's a direct quote, by the way.) We then progress to wrestling about the time the kids are trying to sit up on their own, to "catch" when they're about crawling age. ("Catch" in this context, means the child crawls away and attempts to "catch" the football with his rear end while my husband throws it at him.) By the time they're walking, we're doing dogpiles, throwing them end over end onto the couch, and all kinds of things, but my absolute least favorite game is called "Bonk". You can imagine.

Rules of the game:
#1) Thou shalt bonk head to head only
#2) Thou shalt bonk unsuspecting parties only
#3) Thou shalt bonk as hard as thou canst withou inflicting brain damage on thyself
#4) Broken facial bones are Ok as long as they are not yours
#5) Thou shalt only bonk daddy

Unfortunately, rule #5 is almost never observed and a great majority of the bonking goes to mommy or little brother. So are you ready for the tip of the day? Here it is: don't teach your kids to "bonk". It is impossible for a rowdy toddler to distinguish that he can only play a certain game with daddy and that little brother just isn't going to enjoy it as much. For that matter, mommy doesn't like it either. And once it's started, the game of bonk goes on ETERNALLY whether you want it to or not.

Nutrition By Stealth

For all of you who are thinking I'm about to rip off Jessica Seinfeld's original idea (that she ripped off from someone else, by the way) of grinding up veggies and putting them in other foods, put your minds at ease. That's a stupid idea and won't work whatsoever on a picky eater as many of you probably already know. I will credit my ideas to whom they rightfully belong (or at least to whomever taught them to me). So for those of you with a picky eater, here are some hints that may or may not be extremely helpful.

*Disclaimer* if you have a picky teenager, I would here suggest that these ideas will not be beneficial. Picky teenagers are probably more about habit and control than they are about not preferring a taste. I wish you luck on that journey.

A friend of mine has a little guy who will only eat peas if they are still frozen. He loves the cold and the crunch, but will not touch them if they're cooked. I tried the same thing with my 2 year old and found that he loves frozen peas, and my younger child loves frozen corn. If your kid won't eat the veggies cooked, try them straight out of the freezer. The novelty might be something they like and there is no blender involved.;)

I also have one who won't drink milk. Refuses. It's seriously aggravating. He loves fruit and yogurt, however. I'm currently getting large quantities of milk in him by blending it with frozen fruits, yogurt and some ice. He loves smoothies, but can't stand milk. Interesting, eh? I wouldn't call it trickery, I'd call it a matter of proper presentation.

Those are just two of my favorite fruit/veggie ideas. I have more, but not time enough to write them all. It's working for us, but my kids do like fruit in general. The frozen veggies were a real find, though. I would also encourage those of you who have time and the desire (otherwise you'll resent doing it) to home-make whatever you can, as you can usually save money doing this, the taste is often preferable, and you can feel good about giving it to your kids. Two big ones I make to save money are yogurt and bread. If anybody's in need of a good recipe (the bread is excellent out of the freezer) leave me a comment and I'll get them up. In the mean time, good luck with stealthy nutrition.