”honey, it’s time for you to sleep now.” “but mom!!!!!!!! I’m not yet sleepy and besides I’m not even tired yet” 

This is a normal conversation between a mom and her little one who prefers playing than sleeping. During this moment, your patience will be tested and yes, It won’t be easy. It is important that your child understands why she needs to sleep.  That heavy and groggy feeling shows that your child is not at her best condition. She needs to know that her body is like a celphone battery that needs to be recharged.  So here  are the following things that you can do to help your child love sleeping.

• Sleep with your little one. It helps your child get into a routine.
• Try bedtime routines like, reading, or taking a warm bath. It helps your child to  be calm and relax.
• No sodas, ice tea or any food contains caffeine before bedtime.
• Avoid having TV inside your child’s room. Study shows that kids who have TV’s in their rooms sleep less.
• Remember that children has wild imaginations. Avoid watching scary movies or TV shows close to bedtime because it makes it hard for them to fall asleep. Just incase this situation happens, pray with your child before they go to sleep.
• Use your child’s bed only for sleeping. In that way,you’ll train your child’s body to associate her bed with sleep.
• Have a “bedtime chit-chat”. This is the time to ask your child how her day was. This will  help your child relax and It will be easy for her to sleep.

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Everybody was so excited when my sister-in-law had her first baby. I saw how they took care of the precious little girl. I was 7 years old then and I didn’t know that babies are really fragile. They need “super extra” care from all the people around them. One time, I saw my sister-in-law and she was feeding my niece (she was 6 months old). She told me that a child’s nutritional and eating habits will change drastically as they grow from a baby into a toddler.

Nutritious food are important when it comes to your child’s health, but how will you know if it’s the right kind of food? Below are few examples of food that you may give your babies.

• Infant rice cereal – It provides extra iron that your baby needs at this age. It is glutten-free and the least allergenic of all grains.
• Pureed or strained veggies and fruit – I suggest that you let them eat veggies first. Naturally babies like sweets and may not be willing to accept peas once they they’ve tasted pears.
• Oat, barley and baby cereals – Once you’ve fed them rice, make sure you give other grains one at a time, so you can watch for allergies.

It is common for babies to spit out their first bite. Infants are like taste testers, they need ten tries to see if they like the new flavor and texture. To make it more inviting for your babies to eat why not try the squirt baby food dispensing food?

This spoon holds up to 3 ounces of food. You just have to squeeze it and it will give the right small amount of food that your baby can eat. The squirt has a special cover to seal the food and keep the spoon clean in between feedings. This product will make your feeding time fun minus all the messy food on the table.

Where to buy: Tottini Seattle

Price: $8.00

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Danish children’s furniture maker, minui, will unveil a new high chair product in September at the All Baby and Child Show in Las Vegas. The product extends the versatility of their already eco-friendly, modern, safe and great looking children’s seating system.

The new product, called the minui HandySitt Chair, works in tandem with the portable high chair acting as a ‘base’ for the home. Together, the multi-functional minui HandySitt seating system can be configured and used as a freestanding high chair, a compact and portable high chair for traveling or taking to restaurants, a seat for an older child (less than 5 yrs old) and a step ladder for adults to get to upper cabinets and for kids to help mom with meal prep

(Source) Press

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Image courtesy of PianoLessons.com

Ah, piano lessons…the curse of youth. As parents, we read the reports and studies tying music education to success in learning everything from math to science, and dutifully enroll our kids in piano lessons. The first years aren’t bad – the novelty of playing an instrument and the sponge-like minds of children generally make the beginning of their musical career relatively pain-free. But eventually fun becomes work, and work leads to whining.

“I hate piano, Mom! How much longer do I have to do this?”

Just getting my daughter to sit at the keyboard and practice became a chore, and even my husband questioned how much she was getting out of the whole drama piano had become. Stubborn mom that I am, I wasn’t about to let her quit after investing all that time! She was just getting good! But something had to be done to make lessons more palatable before we killed each other. Here’s what worked for us:

• Tell the piano teacher! Maybe I’m just a less-than-caring mom, but after lessons became routine, I’d just drop my daughter off, head to Starbucks, then pick her up. I didn’t see her teacher much, and assumed that the wall we’d hit on lessons was something between my daughter and me. Once we talked to the teacher, she had some great ideas about how to vary the lessons, including letting my daughter pick some of what she wanted to play. Knowing she had some control over the lesson helped immensely

• Include other activities, like song writing. We’re fortunate in that our piano teacher includes a lot of music theory along with the actual piano playing. When presented with the opportunity to write her own music, my daughter immediately started using up music paper like it was Kleenex. Learning that all those scales and chords could be put to use to accompany her own melodies opened a whole new world for her.

• Get some popular music to play. So many piano ‘standards’ are filled with songs that kids have never heard (and will never hear again), that they can’t relate to what they’re playing. A few newer primers include standards from the Disney movies or Star Wars, but investing in a copy of the Spongebob sheet music or even some of the music from my kids’ video games has made sitting at the piano a fun thing, rather than torture.

Having crossed the line from tween to teen, my house now sounds like a top-40 radio station as my daughter willingly sits down to play songs by The Fray or Linkin Park. I occasionally sneak in one or two songs that I like, and she even plays those too!

Not every kid is cut out to play piano for so long, but by varying lesson content, working with the teacher, and adding some fun extras, kids can actually stick with piano long enough to realized what a gift they have – and move on to complaining about other things.

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Image courtesy of Life123.com

The parenting column in the New York Times today discusses the problem of kids and stealing.  Is it a normal phase kids go through, o r does it presage issues of character or behavior that parents need to worry about?  I remember being about 5 years old and seeing a candy bar that had fallen underneath the display case in the grocery store.  I somehow got it into my head that those fallen candy bars were free, so I took it.  Of course, a few minutes later, when my mom found out, I was marched back into the store, and made to tell the manager what I had done and to give the candy bar back.  The thing was, I didn’t think I was stealing, I just thought those were free candy bars.

Apparently that sort of thing is pretty normal, according to pediatrician Perri Klass’s article.  Different things are going on with kids at different ages, though.  For a toddler, boundaries have to come from the outside, because they aren’t able to set them on the inside.  A toddler’s entire thought process is “I see it, I want it, I take it, it’s mine.”  Toddlers have to be taught–patiently and consistently–that not everything they see or want is theirs.

Klass then goes on to talk about kids who are a little older–old enough to know that what they’re doing is wrong and to try to cover it up by lying or hiding.  These kids are testing, she says.  They want to be caught.  They need to be caught.  She quotes Dr. Barbara  Howard of Johns Hopkins, who says, “Kids are trying to find out what happens if you get caught, and one of the biggest problems is if you don’t catch them. They’re trying to find out what the rules are, and if nobody catches them and says, ‘That’s wrong, you have to give that back or pay for it,’ they don’t get a sense of being properly supervised.”

So if stealing is a fairly normal developmental phase, are there times when parents should be concerned about stealing?  Yes.  When a child is stealing as a means of acting out, he may need help dealing with the underlying issue.  Stealing something of a sibling’s or classmate’s could indicate self-esteem problems or underlying resentments that must be addressed.  In those cases, stealing is only a symptom.

For the most part, stealing needs to be dealt with gently but firmly, with boundaries set and reiterated and consequences immediate and consistent.  But pay close attention; if your child needs extra help dealing with some kind of emotional problem, it’s your job to notice that, too.

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My mother had an expression: “You are as slow as molasses in January!”

Descriptive, isn’ t it?  That was about the speed my sister moved, and now that I’m a mom, I find it’s the speed at which at least 2 of my children move. 

Part of this has to do with getting ready in the mornings, when time is at a premium and the pokey child wanders from room to room or takes 20 minutes on the potty.  But part of it is just the speed at which they move from one place to another. 

What can you do to minimize family frustrations  when a pokey child is holding things up?

• Be patient!  Remember, kids don’t think or move at the same speed as adults, and their priorities aren’t the same.  Stopping to pick that dandelion is every bit as important to your child as getting your errands done before rush hour is to you.   And remember, no matter what it feels like at the time, they aren’t doing it on purpose because they know it bugs you!

• Allow for more time.  Yes, they do have to learn to do things in a timely way, and I’ll get to that, but the key word there is learn.  They don’t have it down yet.  It’s up to you to remember that they won’t be walking out the door without a pillowcase full of every DVD and stuffed animal they own.  Allow time for them to gather their things or to prepare themselves mentally for the next activity.  If things are too rushed in the morning, consider getting the children up 15 or 20 minutes earlier.  In our family, my husband gets them up at 6:30, they eat breakfast, then they climb into bed with me for 15 minutes of snuggling and quiet talking to start the day.  They could get up at 7:00, but that would create a rushed, stressful morning, and I would miss those close, cuddly moments. 

• Avoid distractions.  No television in the morning–or any other time you want to be focused!  Few kids can skillfully get themselves dressed as they are singing along with Cyberchase or Dora.  And it doesn’t do much good to say, “We’re leaving in five minutes so get your things together,” if they are lost in TV world.  Turn the TV off, then tell them to prepare to leave.

• Prepare ahead of time.  Pick out clothes and pack up backpacks the night before. Put them in clear view so there’s no running around yelling, “Where’s my backback?  Where are my shoes?”  You can prepare a child to leave the house ahead of time, too, simply by first packing up the things they’ll need, and then sitting them down with a video or activity until it’s time to leave.

• Take time when you have it.  If you’re just walking down the street, and you have no deadline, it won’t kill you to stop and look at the new clover that’s taking over your yard.  Your child thinks it’s pretty.  You may be goal-oriented (you’re walking TO the post office), but your child probably isn’t.  She’s just walking. 

• Make it clear that moving quickly is important before you start.  Simply let your child know that there is no time to dawdle today.  Ask for his help.  “I love to look at the worms on the sidewalk with you, but we have to get to the post office before it closes.  Will you help me walk fast?” 

• Gently but firmly remind your child that you must be obeyed.   You do get in a hurry, and you don’t always have time to explain.  And sometimes it’s a matter of safety; my middle daughter gets lost in daydreams and drifts off in the middle of parking lots, falling behind the rest of us and wandering in front of cars.  When I say, “Sabra, hurry UP!” I need her to hurry up.  I do not need her to keep drifting and ask, “Why?”  Sometimes there’s just no time.  If they fall down on that–which they will–it’s important to remind them once the crisis is over that sometimes you can’t explain right way.  Sometimes they just have to obey.

• Make manners a priority in your home.  Just as you emphasize please, thank you, and chewing with their mouths closed, remind your kids that it’s rude to keep people waiting.  A gentle but consistent emphasis on good manners over the course of their childhood will ultimately pay off.

We do have a lot to do, no doubt about it, and it seems there’s never enough time to do it in.  But just as you hurry your kids up, don’t forget to let them slow you down, too.

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Nicky, Get Up! a new book by West Palm Beach resident Barbara Witherspoon, has been published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. of Pittsburgh. Many young readers will recognize themselves in Nicky, Get Up! and their parents are likely to as well.

On Monday morning, the battle to get Nicky out of bed and ready for school begins, and the same conversation repeats on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as his mother tries determinedly to get him dressed and out the door. On Friday, however, Mom is in for a pleasant surprise. What is so different about this day?

Ms. Witherspoon is a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and currently resides in Florida, where she works as a nursing assistant providing hospice care. She is the mother of two boys, Nicolas and George, and in addition to writing, she enjoys spending time cooking, reading the Bible and other books, and watching movies.

Nicky, Get Up! is a paperback book with a retail price of $9.00. The ISBN is 978-1-4349-0024-1. It was published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc. For more information please visit our virtual press room at www.dorrancepressroom.com or our online bookstore at www.dorrancebookstore.com.

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Child’s Play Communications, specialists in publicity and marketing communications for products and services targeted to moms, is excited to announce the launch of Music Moms.

Recognized for its successful outreach to top media for the past two decades, and more recently for its extensive social media and direct-to-mom capabilities, Child’s Play Communications is introducing a unique opportunity for marketers to increase visibility of their music projects through influential online moms.

“We have been working with moms for more than 20 years and are in tune with the interests, trends and needs of bloggers across the country,” said Child’s Play Communications president, Stephanie Azzarone. “Music Moms is a great way to create buzz surrounding music artists. Members of Music Moms will be the first on their (virtual) block to know about new music, and to share that information with their online friends–thus positioning themselves as the go-to moms in their online communities.”

Music Moms reviews music across all genres, as well as children’s music.

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When nursing in public, many moms have to use cumbersome blankets that cover their babies. But nursing is a time of bonding, a great opportunity for eye contact and communication. A New York mom of four developed a patented nursing product called BabyBond that covers mom, but not baby.

In 2007, Missy Reder launched Slurp & Burp, which is adding a third line of BabyBond products this month. The newest product can be worn like a sash or belly band, and is different than others on the market because it is adjustable and can accommodate the mom’s changing body after giving birth.

The key features of the BabyBond products include:

• Mom is always covered and baby is never covered
• They securely fit around mom for complete coverage without the risk of falling off
• They don’t need to be tucked or clipped
• You no longer need to bother with uncomfortable blankets
• Moms don’t need to wear unflattering nursing tops
• They are very compact and easily fit into purses or diaper bags

BabyBond product are receiving national attention by the media and parenting blogs.

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Phot Courtesy of Paul Turke

So, you’re going to be a dad. Your wife or girlfriend is pregnant, and it was your little guys that crossed the finish line. Take a deep breath and believe what I’m about to tell you: This is good news. Sure, maybe you’re a little terrified. Understandable. This is a life-long deal, and that’s always scary. And things will change—you bet they will. But babies somehow have a way of making that okay. Not perfect, not uncomplicated, but worth the cost.

This post is not about how to be a great dad (you’re not quite there yet). You still have to get through a pregnancy. There are few things in life that will affect you more than this, and few things you have such little control over. You are support staff, but your job is vital. Women can and do go through this alone, but it’s always better when someone is at your side.

Here are a few tips on how to handle your lady’s pregnancy.  First, we’ll talk about what to do for her, and next time we’ll focus more on you, the daddy.

What to do for her:

• Be happy. Maybe you planned this pregnancy, maybe you didn’t, but she is desperately worried that you’re going to be unhappy about it. Reassure her. Now, in all truth, you may have very mixed feelings about this, and there will be a time to talk about those. But just now, when she first tells you, be happy.
• Participate. If she wants you to read an article about fetal development, read it. Maybe you could even track down some articles yourself. Go with her to doctor appointments—maybe not all of them, but a few. Especially go with her to the ultrasound and share that first view of your baby. Learn all you can about baby care; it’s not just the mom’s job!
• Pamper and protect. Go out of your way to take some extra care of her, but don’t treat her like an invalid. Pregnancy is not a sickness. Don’t get exasperated if she needs something strange or inconvenient, or if she’s in a crabby mood from time to time. You don’t have to let her walk all over you, but she has huge amounts of hormones rushing through her bloodstream—cut her some slack.
• Talk it out. You can share your worries and fears… in fact, she might be waiting for you to do that before she shares hers. Anxiety is normal—will you be able to afford this? Will you be any good at it? Will she still have time for you once the baby is born? Will you still have an important role in the family once it’s mommy-and-baby? Let her know you’re thinking these things.

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