peelosophy

Friends are always amazed when George talks because he doesn’t talk a lot in public.  At home however, he talks a TON.  There are two things he says a lot now which I love.

The first is when I am feeding Emma, he will hand me my breast pad and say, “Here’s your cap mommy, put your cap back on.”  I never thought of them as caps…maybe someone should contact the marketing department of Johnson and Johnson.

The second is when he wants to be held, he says, “Mommy, I want to hold you, I want to hold you.” This is way more refreshing than the demanding “Mommy hold me, hold me”  And I like it when he “does the holding” cause what mom doesn’t want to be held?

Transitions for the kids always make me nervous and then it turns out to be no big deal.  Transitions meaning from bottle to sippy cup, from two naps to one nap, potty-training, etc.

Right now, we are going cold turkey with George’s pacifier.  He only takes one for nap and bedtime but JJ and Henry never used one,  so I don’t really know how to master this transition. George only started to use one when he turned one-year-old, a little weird, but all his teeth came in at once and it seemed to help him in his state of misery.

So here we are 6 weeks before Emma is to be born and I am thinking the time is now for the pacifier to go.  Although, it may not be enough time before she is born to enter this transition with him, I’m calling it now. We are trying it for a week and if it’s a fluke, then we’ll try again in February.

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Conversation between me and Kim…

Kim was talking about how she was going to homeschool Tyler for preschool.

Me: “Oh, I could never homeschool, I’d go crazy , I’m not organized enough, etc”

Kim: “Jill, you DO home school your boys.”

Me: “Oh, I guess I do.”

I never think of it as homeschooling.

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We go to our little library in the strip mall about once a week.  Don’t knock it, it has some of the sweetest librarians around.  Every once in awhile, we’ll get a couple of books from the library that I don’t want to take back.  We have a little library, so usually when we get books I pick up ones that I requested online from recommendations.  The boys also pick from the selection there too, which usually means dumping out shelf after shelf to find the one they want to take home.

I’m not going to do a book report on each of them, that’s what Amazon is for, so here’s our list from our “checked out” this week.  These are all great, you know the the kind of book that you actually don’t mind to read again, the books that the words just bounce off your tongue (love Dr.Suess) and then especially the ones that get a giggle out of me and the boys.

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The boys LOVE apples.  They probably eat 2 a day each.  They aren’t apple snobs like me either, any type will do.  They love to eat them whole and usually they accomplish eating the whole thing and sometimes they leave it half eaten.  The half eaten are the ones that pain me.  You know they won’t eat it later b/c “It’s yucky” aka brown. I encourage them to finish eating the whole thing, but sometimes they don’t.

To solve the problem, I took the advice of Amy Dacyczyn, author of The Tightwad Gazette.  When the boys are “done” with their apple I cut up the uneaten remainder into lil’ pieces, stick them in some Tupperware and stir some brown sugar and cinnamon in with them.  Then we have a a special treat for later, save some apples and the boys love them.  They call it, “Mommy’s Special Apples”.

You know the toy bins I’m talking about.  We bought ours at Target thinking this is a practical way for the kids to organize their toys.  After a couple months,  I realized that JJ (2yo then) does not have the ability to remember that the Turtles go in the small red bucket and the blocks go in the large yellow bucket, etc.  So inevitably, the bins would have random stuff in every bin, no matter how much I showed him the “right” way to organize them.  Well, duh right? He was 2 years old. Read more…

Greta tore out an article for me at the OT’s office titled, “How to Let Kids be Kids“.  I knew it was up my alley when I saw the title picture of kids running through a big mud puddle.  It basically talks about the benefits of not over-scheduling your kids, how society hypes up over-scheduling and how to get your kids to discover simply playing.

I think the majority of the time,  our lives reflect the ideas this article. So this is one of the few articles that makes me feel like a good parent. (:   Most of the time it’s just my laziness, not my intention, that he plays with a cardboard box for an hour…and this article says he may learn more from the box play then a planned activity.  Yea! Read more…

Here are 2 sure-fired ways to buy sometimes up to 15 minutes(!) with your toddler.  And really even preschooler b/c JJ still requests these activities too.  What’s great about them is they really require nothing special you don’t already have and the set up is super easy.

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I love finding great gifts for the little people in our life. Eventually I want to get a list together of my favorite gifts for different ages, but for now I’ll just post them here and there.

First of all, my definition for a “favorite gift” for a little person usually includes these parameters:

• Around $10: Unless its a niece, I try to stick to a $10-$15 budget.  You can find lots of great gifts for this amount and it keeps me from going overboard.
• Preferably something consumable.  Kids usually have a lot of toy “clutter” to begin with and I don’t want to add to the clutter.
• Some ideas of consumable gifts: Crayons, Passes to The Magic House, Movie Tickets, Craft Kits, etc.

My friend Greta gives a ColorWonder Coloring Book with markers – I love this idea b/c it’s consumable, it’s not something I would buy for ourselves and its usually unisex so you can stock up if there is a sale.

So back to the purpose of this post, my fave gift to give lil’ girls right now is a crayon apron.  It’s great for girls from 2-5 (although the safety says 3yo), it’s easy to take on and off, you can get it monogrammed across the band if you want.  Amazon has them for $16.99; so yes it totally negates my gift parameters – BUT I’ve tested it and its totally worth it and they will get several years of mileage from it.

You can check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/5bt3n3