The Musings of a Working Mom

My creative juices have been flowing lately thinking of new ideas for snacks for the kids after they come home from school.  Here is a great article I came across in my e-mail inbox. I love me some Food Network!!! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/50-after-school-snacks/index.html

I was spoiled - up until now, my twins had been in a full day preschool program that provided breakfasts, snacks and lunches.  Now that they are in Kindergarten, I have found that being creative makes all the difference in if your child eats lunch or not.  But I am always looking for creative ideas - Here is a great article I stumbled across with loads of great sandwich ideas to add to your child's lunch rotation. http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/everydaycooking/family/kids-lunch-ideas

Sleep training has always been a very sensitive and somewhat controversial topic amongst the parenting communities.  It is a very individualized technique and parents should always do what feels best and most comfortable for us and our child(ren).  Let's be honest, as parents we live very busy lives - working, caring for our children, running errands, running a household, etc.  But the one thing we all want is a good night's sleep.  But how is that possible when you have a child waking every couple of hours or not wanting to sleep at all?   Here is a very interesting article I came across in the Parenting section of Todayshow.com - The Truth About Ferberizing.  This article sheds some light on the truth behind sleep training your infant/child as advised by Dr. Richard Ferber himself.  I have had great success using his methods (modified versions to suit our needs) to sleep train all 3 of my children a...

Even though I have adventurous eaters, I do have toddlers after all and we do have our moments of "picky eating"...but I get them to try something new by reminding them of the story of "Sam I Am".  I have read and re-read the story Sam I Am by Dr. Seuss for many years now...and the moral of the story is that you should give something a try before writing it off - you never know how good it tastes until you try something.  So when my kids say that they don't want to eat something, I just say "Come on Sam I Am - you should try it, you may like it!"  Saying this reminds them of the story and they take one bite and if they don't like it, no problem - they don't have to eat it.  At least I got them to try it.  And if they like it, even better.  On a side note, if they didn't like whatever they tried - don't give up on that item just yet.  Keep on trying - toddlers are finicky eaters and one day they make like something, and the next day the...

I always do a lot of research before I buy anything, especially baby/child related.  When I was pregnant with the twins, I had heard a lot of great things about the Dr. Brown's bottles- how they reduce the amount of air swallowed by baby (a.k.a. gas), reduce spit up's, reduce colicky events, etc.  And I'm sure that it did do that for our twins but what it didn't do was save us time because we were washing 5 parts to each bottle!  Besides being in a complete daze from having to wake the twins every 2-3 hours to feed/change/put to sleep for 24 hours a day initially, we were spending our quiet time while the twins were sleeping washing all of the parts to our Dr. Brown's bottles.  My husband and I would literally have an assembly line to wash and rinse each part!  What a waste of our time and yeah we could've just put the parts in the dishwasher but since we were feeding the kids so frequently, we didn't want to buy 12+ bottles to make this work.  ...

Transitions for anyone are not easy - we all like our "comfort blankets" and we don't like to change.  Doing the same thing is soothing and can really pacify an individual, especially a baby.  And transitioning a baby from the breast to the bottle or bottle to the sippy cup can be a daunting task.  Afterall, it seems like everything for both mommy/parents and baby has to be perfect in order to make the smoothest of transitions (i.e. no sicknesses, having the right bottle/sippy cup, no major events that are occurring during the transition period, etc.).  But the one thing that I have learned with my 3 kids are that in order to have successful feeding transition - you need to make them gradual.  For example, I recently transitioned my youngest from the bottle to the sippy cup.  We started the transition when he was about 11 months old (with the goal to have him fully transitioned by his 1st birthday but that didn't happen and it was...

Having a child is the most amazing and wonderful thing in the world.  After all, you carried this child for 9 months and anxiously waited for him/her to make their grand entrance into your world and everything is all dreamy and wonderful.  Then you enter into the sleepless nights of midnight feedings, diaper changes, singing, coddling, rocking, swaying, etc. and then you wonder when will you get a full night of sleep again?  Well the answer is sooner than you think!  Just to lay it out there - I'm not a sleep expert nor do I claim to be one.  But I do have experience from sleep training our 3 children and I can happily say that my husband and I have peace and quiet from 8pm on and we sleep through the night (minus sicknesses/teething issues/nightmares/etc.) because we have successfully sleep trained our children.  So back to my point... Initially, infants don't have the internal mechanism to put themselves to sleep or even to know day from night....

Being a parent of boy/girl twins, I see firsthand the differences between the sexes with respect to growth, learning, etc.  Here is a great article in the current issue of Washington Parent that sheds light on this topic.  Enjoy... http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1201/gender.php

Confused about when to switch your baby's carseat?  Here is a great article in the Washington Parent on the when's and why's.  Hope this helps... http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1201/car-seats.php