I love selecting and buying presents for Christmas. It is a ton of fun! One thing that I thought about on December 1st this year was: where to hide the presents? In our old house we had a handy tiny closet in the eave of the roof in our bedroom. It had a lock on it to keep the kids out and all the presents fit safe and sound in there. I was struck with brilliance last week as I thought about where to stash them this year in our new house. SUITCASES. I wanted to hide the gifts in our large walk in master closet, but the kids think it’s fun to play in there sometimes. In looking around the closet my husband’s large suitcase presented itself (see what I did there) as a great spot to hide the gifts! I filled another suitcase as well and it is no longer a worry that they’ll discover them! My sister is an overachiever and wraps gifts as she buys them, so there isn’t even a need to hide them. Another suggestion I have is an empty Rubbermaid storage container or garbage bag that can be placed on a high shelf. Good luck to everyone trying to keep little hands away from their Christmas treasures!
Episode 24: The Mom-terview
Marty is absent this episode due to work commitments, but she prepared almost all of these great questions for our mom! We wanted to ask about some of the differences between being a young mother in the world of social media and being a young mother in the world of VCRs, Nintendo Gameboys, and butterfly hairclips.
5 Quick Dinners
Since we talked about cooking with kids on the podcast I’ve been thinking about doing a post with some of my favorite quick dinners! I am always looking for new meals for our family that are fast, healthy-ish, and kid-friendly. I definitely rotate some of the same dishes, and that’s okay, but sometimes you just need a new and different meal!
- Mexican quinoa: Okay this sounds weird, right? But I promise it is delicious, healthy, and my kids eat it! The original recipe is vegetarian and can be vegan without cheese and sour cream (which is how I serve it to my dairy-allergic 5 yr old.)
- Broccoli Rice Casserole: I love this dish. It isn’t actually a casserole because you make it on the stovetop, but it tastes like one! The cheese goes on at the very end, so it is easy to serve dairy free as well.
- Chicken fajitas: When I was a kid, my mom made chicken fajitas with a spice mix from the grocery store and we liked them well enough. These are so much better! (Sorry, mom.) This recipe tastes like it took forever but it’s pretty quick. I’ve definitely marinated the chicken for less time than it states and it is still wonderful!
- Teriyaki Chicken Rice Bowls: This has been my favorite since making it this past summer. My husband loves it as lettuce wraps. I scoop out some of the plain chicken and veggies before adding the sauce and the kids eat that!
- Mini Mexican pizzas: This is a fun recipe! I use black beans instead of refried beans.
I only included meals that are made easily while managing the kids. Not too many elements, and pretty hard to screw up. The fajitas are particularly great because you can make a bunch and have leftovers over the next days: fajita wraps, salads, or over rice. I hope one of these becomes your new favorite go-to for feeding your family! I would love to see one of your quick dinner recipes in the comments!
Episode 23: Cooking with Kids
Marty and Priscilla chat about cooking with kids: how stressful it is to get a meal on the table while caring for your little ones and how fun it CAN be to cook with your children. They might (okay, they WILL) make a mess, but the memory is worth it!
Episode 22: The Thanksgiving Episode
According to Marty, the best day of the year is upon us: Thanksgiving! Priscilla and Marty give a few tips on making your day run smoothly. Watch the parade, give the kids some activities and strategize so that there is a good ratio of turkey eating to toddler meltdowns. Happy Thanksgiving!
The Thankful Toddler
“Kids today don’t appreciate anything.” “This generation is so entitled.” “These days parents spoil their kids.”
I know I’ve heard these phrases more than once! I feel the pressure to make sure my children are grateful little gremlins, er cherubs. This is NOT easy. Young children are ego-centric and it takes some practice! Here are a few strategies we use to encourage an attitude of gratitude in our home.
The best thing any parent can do to inspire certain behaviors in their children is to exhibit those behaviors themselves. We say please and thank you. I try to speak thoughts of appreciation aloud for my kids to hear, even if it has nothing to do with them. “Thanks for taking the trash out,” to my husband or “Thank you for lunch, grandma!”
We don’t always make the time to do thank-you notes, but I love it when we do! My oldest son’s birthday was in September and we just sent out the last thank-you note last week. It’s November, you guys. November. But, they were adorable! He wrote thank you and his name and drew a picture of the gifts he received. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be sincere!
In our family we say prayers at bedtime. Usually the kids just pick people to pray for, but sometimes they tell me they are too tired. I always take this opportunity to say what things I am thankful for. Now they throw in what they are thankful for even when they aren’t tired! (Thank you for the playtime with grandma. Thank you for the nice sunshine today. ETC)
Because I stay at home with the kids, I generally do more chores around the house. I often include the kids, because I don’t want them to think it’s magic that they have clean clothing and the floors are (sometimes) vacuumed. I say things like “Let’s get the laundry out of the dryer.” “Help me put the dishes out, please.” “Let’s clean up the toys together.” “I need to do these jobs for our family.” “If you won’t let me have time to fold your clothing, it won’t be there when you need to get dressed the next day.”
The last thing we do is limited gift giving throughout the year. We don’t pick out a toy at Target. We don’t get whatever treats are requested at the grocery store. We LOVE to give them presents at birthdays and Christmas, but that’s generally it, aside from a few things for a specific purpose, like a new puzzle for rainy days on our beach vacations, or a new book about a value we are trying to help them with.
These are the strategies that work for our family. It makes me happy when I don’t have to remind them to say “Thank you!” On that note, thank YOU for reading my blog post today!
Episode 21: Privacy in the Family
We discuss the different ways families handle privacy in their homes. Parental nudity? Bathroom doors closed or open? Every family has different perspectives and the best indicator of whether or not you are doing the right thing is the comfort level of the people in your home! (Basically, they won’t be scarred for life from one glance at your saggy boobies.)
Favorite Kid’s Books
(Children’s Literature if you want to be fancy)
A few weeks ago we posted our podcast about our favorite kid’s books. I wanted to share them on the blog today! I figured if you heard about any books you wanted to check out for your own family during the podcast it would be annoying to stop and jot it down. So if you listened to that episode and can’t remember due to mom brain what that one book was here they are!
- Baby books
- Love me some Sandra Boynton: But Not the Hippopotamus, Doggies, The Going to Bed Book, O My, O My, O Dinosaurs
- Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh (Mouse Count also good)
- Eric Carle (The very hungry caterpillar, the grouchy ladybug, the very quiet cricket, Brown Bear Brown Bear what do you see
- My kids always preferred Brown Bear to Caterpillar, which is so funny to me
- Alphabet Peas
- Basically any ABC book Dr. Seuss, Sandra Boynton, we literally have 7 different ABC board books
- Little kid books
- Little Blue Truck
- Harold & the Purple Crayon
- Beatrix Potter
- Frog and Toad Arnold Lobel
- Pete the Cat Series
- Laura Numeroff :If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
- Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter series
- Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
- Transitioning to chapter books
- Jack & Annie (The Magic Treehouse)
- The Faraway Tree series Enid Blyton
- The Littles by John Peterson (Similar to the Borrowers, but at a great level for 4 and 5 year olds)
- Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren
- Mrs Piggle-Wiggle by Betty McDonald
- Mr Popper’s Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater
- My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
- AND MY FAVORITE HOW COULD I FORGET ROALD DAHL
- Favorite authors
- Sandra Boynton
- Dr. Suess
- David Shannon (David series: No, David, David Goes to School, etc , A Bad Case of the Stripes, Too Many Toys)
- Julia Donaldson: The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom!!!
- Maurice Sendak: Where the Wild things are, Little Bear, Chicken Soup with Rice
- Tomie DePaola: Strega Nona, Bill and Pete, Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, The Night of Las Posadas
- Our “unfavorites” and why
- Goodnight Moon – I just find the imagery creepy and the words make no sense. Why would anyone say goodnight to a bowl full of mush?
- Books that are based on tv shows or movies and are just plain poorly written
- Funny voices? A do or a don’t
- Just discovered this Monster Book with Sesame Street characters and Ian loves the silly voices I do.
- Um I have PERFECTED my Percy James and Gordon from Thomas and Friends. Also different voices for the crayons in The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt
- Educational books (Non-fiction)
- Love national geographic little kids magazine
- National Geographic books Animals and dinosaurs they love any of it
- Aliki: Digging up Dinosaurs,Fossils tell of long ago, Im Growing, Mummies made in egypt, feelings,
- We read Highlights as kids, the reading/educational magazine.
- Books can be life savers when it comes to trying to teach your kids values
- Helen Lester: Tacky the Penguin series, Manners series: Me First, Listen Buddy, The Wizard, the Fairy, and the Magic Chicken, Hooway for Wodney Wat
- Audrey Penn: The Kissing Hand, Chester Raccoon and the Acorn Full of Memories
- The Berenstain Bears series by Stan and Jan Berenstain
- Helen has a book called Ballet Day and it’s just a simply book about inclusion.
- Little Golden Books – The Saggy Baggy Elephant, The Tawny Scrawny Lion
Full disclosure this is copied and pasted from our show notes from the episode so that’s why this list is organized a bit wonky!
Episode 20: Favorite Children’s Books
Little Blue Truck. O My, O My, O Dinosaurs. Pippi Longstocking. The Gruffalo. Strega Nona. The Kissing Hand. The Day the Crayons Quit. The Tawny Scrawny Lion. Digging Up Dinosaurs. Marty and Priscilla discuss these books and SO MANY MORE! We love reading and it is important to read to our young ones! They gain so much and it takes such little time and effort to make an impact!
How to Move with Young Children and Live to Tell the Tale
- Firstly: relax your standards about everything. There will be more TV time. There will be more chicken nuggets/pizza. There will be difficulties! Accept it from the get-go and you’ll be fine!
- Split responsibility. If you are a two parent household: one person handles logistics and planning and another handles actual packing of all the things. Obviously, you work together on these, but it worked for our family to have the details worked out by my husband and the packing taken care of by me.
- ASK FOR HELP. You can’t do it alone unless you are some kind of mega awesome superhuman, in which case you wouldn’t be reading this anyway! We had our parents watch the kids for the actual moving days. They took them the first weekend our old house was on the market for the showings. I even had a friend play playdough and read to my kids all afternoon while I packed.
- Start packing ASAP. Pack away what isn’t being used as soon as you know you are moving.
- Schedule a Purple Heart Pickup! Gather up all the things taking up space in your home which you don’t need and have them picked up at your door to be donated without having to load them into your car where you will forget them and chauffeur them around for a few weeks.
- Plan ahead as much as you can with meals. Easy things you can throw together with a couple of sheet pans or skillets are best! You don’t have time to be Ina Garten right now! Honestly not even Rachael Ray was happening in our house for a while there. Mostly we rocked the Cookie Monster and Chef Gonger from Sesame Street style. Oh and we ate many sandwiches. Blah.
- Coloring books. Paper. Crayons. Playdough. Get out all that stuff and keep it an easy access spot. Kids love these and they are easy to supervise while packing/discussing moving details/making dinner.
- I have improved my penchant for procrastination over the years, but still I’m here to say that if I can do it, you totally can, too! I am NOT renowned for my planning abilities! Now go pack up a box of DVDs. It’s a great place to begin because they are easy to pack and it will feel like you got something accomplished. Yay, you did it! Only 137 more boxes!
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