Category: Kids


Feb
2019

How To Get Rid of Head Lice The Natural Way

categories: Blog, Kids

Several years ago, our family was struck with head lice. Myself and two of my daughters got it. There was a breakout at school and church so it was essentially unavoidable especially when you have multiple girls with long hair.

I did the thing the school and the pediatrician told me to do – I had my husband go to the Wal-Mart and buy some Nix. Well, they didn’t tell me to have my husband go, but I certainly wasn’t going to go – not in the state I was in. 😉  He didn’t get the lice so he didn’t have to be embarrassed about buying the Nix, right?  I’m sure he felt the same.  

I used the Nix on all of us and the lice just came back so I used it again.  I started to itch ALL OVER. I freaked out and thought my head lice had managed to spread all over my body and had morphed into body lice.

I immediately booked an appointment with my doctor and sat in the waiting room looking like a heroin addict. I was wild-eyed and twitchy – sporadically scratching at myself. I seriously felt like I had tiny bugs crawling all over my skin or under my skin.

They called me in and I explained to the doctor the situation. He found it highly amusing and proceeded to tell me that I definitely didn’t have body lice. And I was like – how do you know? There’s tiny bugs crawling on my skin as we speak.

He proceeds to examine my arms and legs and says – there’s no evidence of body lice. He says – this is how confident I am that you don’t have body lice and he proceeds to hug me. Awww! What a good doctor. I guess he must’ve realized that was all I needed. 🙂

He then told me that Nix is a neuro toxin and the side effects include but aren’t limited to itching. I made him give me a prescription for body lice just in case the itching didn’t go away (which I didn’t end up using because it went away after a day or so).

My daughter got sick to her stomach after the second Nix treatment so after that I started looking into other options. I found out there’s this place in St. Louis called Lice Busters where they will do all the treatment for you. I almost booked us an appointment there but then I just decided I’d buy the product they use and try to do it myself because we were on a budget.

Buy Product

They use a product called Happy Heads. I used the following products from Happy Heads:

This is the shampoo that kills the lice:

http://www.happyheadsproducts.com/NontoxicTreatmentShampoo.php

I then used this conditioner and combing solution which makes the hair very soft and not tangled so it allows you to be able to comb out the nits.

http://www.happyheadsproducts.com/Conditioner.php

I also highly recommend buying this comb because if you have long hair like we do – you need a sturdy comb – we broke a few – this one won’t break – it’s called the Terminator for a reason:

http://www.happyheadsproducts.com/terminator.php

I like this comb also because one of my daughter’s has dermatitis of the scalp which kind of looks like lice – this delayed her lice diagnosis for some time b/c I thought that it was just the dermatitis when she actually got lice until she finally got sent home by the school nurse is when I realized it was not the dermatitis.  But after I treated her for lice with this product and comb I realized that her dermatitis essentially went away as well.  Maybe it was the tea tree and peppermint oil in the product that helped and the combing of the scalp.  So, now I still use some of these products to try to keep the dermatitis at bay but not nearly as frequently – just sporadically throughout the year if I think her scalp is getting especially bad.

Comb out the hair thoroughly

Be sure to watch the combing video on their website. The most important thing is combing the hair out everyday the way they do in their video. I found that I wasn’t using the comb right at first. I was like gingerly picking at everyone’s hair trying not to hurt anyone – I kind of felt like an orangutan mom with my baby orangutans.

Once I got the hang of it with that video – the lice didn’t stand a chance. I could comb out everyone’s hair in 5 minutes flat – including my own.
I did douse the hair in that combing solution first though to make it painless. I did this every day for about a month – it started to become a painless part of my routine.  Take a shower in the morning, comb out my hair for 5 minutes, then blow dry.

Blow dry the hair

One other key ingredient is to blow dry the hair with hot air thoroughly after combing out focusing on the scalp area.  This hot air kills over 90% of nits so if there’s any left they should die as well.

Clean sheets and vacuum

As far as cleaning the house out, I would recommend just vacuuming daily and changing the sheets and pillow cases often. If they can’t live on the head, then they can’t live anywhere else either. I actually went crazy and cleaned the entire house and managed to break our washing machine in the process because I was trying to shove all the comforters in there. So, we were in a bad state with my husband taking things to the laundry mat and me freaking out. But in the end, I realized that all I needed to do was the sheets and vacuuming.

Don’t stress – this too will pass

I know it’s stressful. I’ve been through it and I have a bug phobia so to have them on me was some kind of nightmare. But don’t worry – they will go away with consistency of combing and natural treatments. Just try to avoid the pesticides they sell in the stores because they can be harmful with continued use and I don’t see how you could not continuously use them if that’s all you use – they will keep coming back. Hope this helps someone else and you can avoid an embarrassing doctor’s trip like mine. 😉


Feb
2019

DIY Charm Bracelet

categories: Kids

I am soooo excited! We finally discovered Shrinky Dinks. Apparently these existed even when I was little but back then we just drank out of the hose and played with sticks and rocks so I’m just discovering them now. Today, we made our own charm bracelets!

At first, the idea for making charm bracelets came as I was searching the web for simple (these always turn into more complex the more and more I overthink about them :-p) ideas on a craft to do with the girls at the Girl Scout meeting that I was supposed to lead. Since I’m the cookie mom for one of my girl’s, I led a meeting in which we made cookie charm bracelets which I’ll have some pictures of here.

The original posting that I found was to use yarn as the bracelet, but we found these endless chains at Wal-mart for cheap and since my husband is handy, I enlisted his help to make the bracelet chains. 🙂 He’s the best! :-p Somehow, whenever we do a craft, he ends up being the craft adviser and then eventually a full-time helper b/c I need it and so I don’t end up giving up and spending all our money on Etsy for pre-made stuff. :-p  In that sense, I guess there’s something in it for him too.  

Here’s a picture of the bracelet we made at the girl scout meeting:

That was before we discovered Shrinky Dinks.  Heres one of the shrinky dink bracelets.

Here’s a step by step on how we made our own charm bracelet after discovering Shrinky Dinks.  It also applies to how we made the Girl Scout cookie bracelet as well.

Step 1: Make several trips to Wal-mart over a period of several months.  In fact, just camp out there.  Kidding.  I’m hoping to save you some trips there if I can.  But sometimes I feel like my entire life is a series of Wal-mart trips so if anyone can relate – I feel you.

Here’s what you’ll need:

-Chain (You can find this in the jewelry section at Wal-mart)

-Lobster claws

-Small rings to attach the charms to the lobster claws

-For the girl scout bracelet, I bought those key chain labels that you see above and I printed out pictures of girl scout cookies that I found on the internet.  I pasted the pictures in Word and shrunk them down to the size I needed to fit on the key chain label.  I actually printed them on full-size sticker sheets that I found on Amazon (or you could just glue them on).  I had the girls write the names of the cookies on the back and attach them to the bracelet.  

-For Shrinky Dinks, I bought Shrinky Dinks plastic on Amazon – it’s the Frosted Ruff N’ Ready Creative pack.   

-I also bought a variety pack of different colored fine point permanent markers from Amazon.  

-Standard sized hole punch to punch a hole in the charms

-I also used the tools that you’ll see in the following pictures from my husband’s toolbox.  I don’t know what they are called though so I’ll just leave it at that.  

Step 2: Measure your child’s wrist and make the bracelet bigger than that.  You can’t make it too big b/c you will be able to adjust it later if you need to.  Use the tools below in order to pry open the link in the chain and remove the portion of the chain that you want to use for the bracelet.  

Step 3: Put the lobster claw on the end of the bracelet (the link that you pried open)

Step 4: Close the link back together by pinching it with the following tool

 

Woolah!  Your bracelet is now ready and all you need to do is make the charms to put on it!  Or if you are already kaput by this time, they have a nice shiny silver bracelet and you can call it a day. :-p  Just kidding – now comes the fun part – don’t give up before the fun part!

Step 5: Time to make the charms – this is where the kids get to have some fun!  I printed some pictures off the internet for them to trace to begin with.  We put them under the plastic sheets and they traced and colored in with the permanent markers.  Then once they started to get the hang of it, they began to draw pictures from scratch.  They all turned out sooo cute! 

Remember to have the kids draw pictures three times the size they want the charm – they will shrink down to 1/3 the original size.  Then pop them in the oven.  We used a toaster oven at 325 for 1 to 3 minutes.  As soon as they laid mostly flat, we took them out.  If they were still slightly curled, we flattened them with a spatula but they were mostly flat.

Step 6: Make sure to put a hole in each picture using a standard size hole punch – these will shrink to the perfect size for a charm bracelet charm.

This is the alarming part – they start to curl up and the kids start to freak out and think they are getting destroyed but just wait for the magic to happen..

Step 7: Use these little silver rings to put on the charms.  You can pry them open with a screw driver instead of using your thumb nail like I did – that isn’t fun.

Now for more pictures:

Three Peas in a Pod


May
2018

Being a Parent is 90% about being roasted

categories: Blog, Kids

That was a tweet on Twitter.  I wish I could remember who so I could give them credit.  I totally agree with this tweet.  And since I have a few budding comediennes in the family, I get roasted quite a bit.  But it’s OK, I actually find it pretty hilarious – most of the time.  There are also those times though that are just plain embarrassing.  These are a few of my roasts:

Dinner with family visiting

My sister came in town for a visit with her family for a weekend and she had never seen our house before.  They were going to stay the weekend at our house.  Now, you know if you have kids that it’s scary to have people stay over night b/c you don’t really know what all is lurking in your kid’s rooms.  I knew we had to do a thorough deep clean.  I cleaned all the bathrooms – even the showers!  We finally cleaned the kid’s rooms and this wasn’t me just telling them to clean and them shoving everything under the bed and in the closet.  I knew that wasn’t going to fly with adults staying in their rooms.  I actually put on my hazmat suit and went into each of their closets – the horror.

It took days maybe weeks to get the house into decent shape for company.  I even cut the glitter glue out of my daughter’s bedroom carpet.  She managed to spill half a bottle of glitter glue on her carpet.  Don’t ask me how because they aren’t allowed to have any glue in their rooms.  But this glue had dried into a hazardous shape.  I mean it basically dried into a knife and like it would tear your foot off if you stepped on it.  Luckily, it was in a corner of a room and I had placed a book on top of it so it wouldn’t tear my daughter’s foot off.  However, company was coming and what if they picked up the book unknowingly and ended up losing a toe.  I couldn’t have that.  So, I got the good scissors and hacked away at the carpet.

My daughters were watching me do all this and apparently taking notes.  My sister and her family arrived and we pretended that our house is always this clean even though inside we were feeling like visitors in our own home – lol.  The only thing amiss was that there were gnats circling our heads occasionally.  We must’ve thrown so much junk in the trash cans that gnats flocked to our house from around the globe.  We probably had Costa Rican gnats here.

Anyway, all was well until the last night we had dinner at a nice restaurant and I made the mistake of mentioning cleaning.  My daughter’s eyes lit up and she was like now that you mention cleaning my Mom went crazy cleaning the house before you came!  She spent weeks!  She was running around like a chicken with her head cut off.  I really wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth at this point but that would’ve been rude.  She continued.  She even cut stuff out of our carpet and tossed everything out of our closets!   She kept telling us why do we have to be such big pigs..  Yada Yada Yada..  Ya, I definitely got roasted like a pig that night.  But I was laughing pretty hard in an insane put me in a straight jacket sort of way.  :-p

Craft time

The one time I made the signs for the Girl Scout cookie booth but they turned out awful and I told everyone my daughters worked really hard on them.  My daughter was in the background with a shocked look on her face like she didn’t know what I was talking about.  lol.  Ya, totally called me out.

Mother’s day

All the moms got invited up to the school for Mother’s day tea at my daughter’s preschool and the kids had prepared an All About My Mom worksheet for all their moms.  So sweet, right?  The teacher read them out loud that day for fun.

Just to give you some background: I was very pregnant with my third daughter at the time.  And my mom had been in town visiting for a couple of weeks to help out.  So, the question on the sheet of paper was – what is your Mom’s favorite thing to do?  So many cute answers – my mom loves quilting, my mom loves cooking, my mom loves reading to me, my mom loves … well, me.  All the moms are oohing and aahing – oh, how sweet.  Isn’t that precious!  Then, we get to me and my daughter had written – my mom’s favorite thing to do is…  Watch TV.

Really?  You couldn’t have put laundry, or dishes, or all the other things I do – maybe b/c I complain too much about those? – lol.  I admit I was watching alot of TV at the time because I was trying to entertain my mom without talking since I was a hormonal very pregnant person.  As soon as my mom started talking about how I should take Livatox (liver cleanser – you’d have to know my mom), I would discreetly turn up the volume.  But usually I don’t have a whole lot of time to watch TV.  Needless to say, everyone in the room was laughing – some a little too hard. :-p  Ya, definitely roasted that day.  :-p  Or as my daughter likes to put it: Roasted, Toasted, ….   And Grilled.

Homework

Then, there’s the time my daughter’s teacher roasted me.  Whenever I would help my daughter with her homework in Kindergarten or First Grade – can’t remember which.  I stopped helping with homework early on!  My daughter’s papers would come home with, “Read the Directions..” or “Needs work!”.  Whenever my husband would help her with homework, the papers would come home with, “Great Job!!!” and a sticker.  Or, “Your daughter’s really progressing!” and a sticker.

It was kind of demoralizing and a running joke in our house.  I still occasionally put in my two cents with homework though but I’m not really sure if I’m helping or hindering.  :-p  Common core is not my forte.  Like, why should we have to explain in words why 2+2=4?  I loved my daughter’s answer for one of these math questions.  It was an addition word problem question and she answered it: 3+2=5.  Then, the follow up question was: How do you know this answer?  And she wrote: Because I read the words or (becs I red the wrds in her first grade spelling).  I was like Yes, Exactly!!!  Self explanatory!

What do you want to be when you grow up?

My one daughter roasted herself at her preschool graduation, then me.  Her preschool put on a big celebration where all the kids were supposed to think about what they wanted to be when they grow up.  The teacher took pictures of them with their chosen dream occupation and they played a slide show at the graduation.  The kids all were holding signs like, “Engineer”, “Doctor”, “Astronaut”, “Scientist”, and there’s my daughter with her sign that says, “Checkout Lady”.  And she even had this exhausted, miserable expression on her face as if she’s been dealing with difficult people all day – lol.

The room erupted in laughter and I could tell she felt bad but she played it off.  Later, she asked me why everyone was laughing at her and I told her, “well there’s nothing wrong with being a checkout lady but it’s just that people don’t usually think of that as their dream profession, it’s more like a necessary profession.”  She said, Mom aren’t you going to have to be a check out lady?  B/c at this point, I had been staying at home with the kids for 10 years.  I was like well I don’t know  – I felt bad but I played it off as well.  :-p

I know there are a million other times I’ve been roasted.  Those are just the ones that I can think of in the moment.  Marshmallows do taste better roasted though don’t they?  I think so.  Though I do kind of fantasize about the day when my kids are older and they have kids of their own and I get my chance to roast them.  I imagine being kind of a Betty White (as opposed to Betty Crocker) grandmother.  Though I’ll use some of Betty Crocker’s products to make the grandkids some yummy treats.  But I do tell the kids to please invite me to their family dinners on occasion so I can do an impression of each one of them when they were little at the dinner table.  It would just make my life to be able to come full circle with that.  :-p  Although, I may not get invited back.  Whatever – It’d be worth it.  :-p

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Feb
2018

Pet Cemetery

categories: Blog, Kids

Having animals is a great way to teach your kids about death.  So begins our foray into having pets with kids.  When the kids were little, I would think there is no way I’m adding to my workload by having pets and small kids.  Having small kids is so. much. work.  Besides our own house looked like a hamster habitat with tunnels and slides everywhere, shredded toilet paper all over the floor, etc.  Don’t ask how the toilet paper got shredded all over the floor but small kids like to shred stuff – like whatever they can get their hands on.  Styrofoam is definitely a favorite.  Kids: “Mommy we are having so much fun!  We made snow in the living room!”.  Me: “Oh for the love of …  “.  That stuff is so hard to vacuum up – you feel like you are in a snow globe with all those pieces flying around – an angry mom snow globe.  But now that they are getting older and able to take care of things a little more (in theory), I figure let’s try it.

It has definitely increased my workload or my wordload because I’m constantly having to tell the girls to feed them and water them and clean up after them but the little furry animals are so worth it.  It’s hard to have a bad day when you see a little furry animal nibbling on a piece of apple – too cute.  And I get to hold a little furry animal while watching a movie – instant stress reliever.

One of my daughters is pretty allergic to cats and dogs so we needed to get something non-allergy inducing.  Therefore, our first foray into having pets was fish.  We thought my daughter definitely can’t be allergic to fish and we were right.  So, we got 5 of them and in about a month we were down to only one.  I remember my daughter coming downstairs one day laughing hysterically and saying that Flashy, her favorite fish, was swimming upside down and waving Hi to the rest of her fishy friends.  She was having so much fun!  I was like uh oh.  She was devastated when I informed her that Flashy was in fact dead.  I mean, it was a full on telenovela.  With three girls, there’s alot of emotions in this house.

I don’t remember being that sad when my pets died when I was little but maybe that was because we had so many.  Everytime one died, it was like – eh – I have 20 others (we lived in the country).  Maybe we developed that toughness over time though because, it seemed like every morning one of the cats got killed when we turned the car on because they crawled up inside the car to keep warm.  It was pretty traumatic.  Also, we did things differently back then.  If they got sick, then my dad put them out of their misery.  He was the executioner.  :-/  My poor dad.

Fish were so much work though and they weren’t cute and cuddly so I thought we have to get something furry next. We decided to go with hamsters.  We went to the pet store and I had my daughter take a big whiff of the hamsters to see if she was allergic.  I had her inhaler and benadryl ready.  All went well.  No hives and no asthma.

But we did have a Saturday night live skit going on at the pet store.  The sales lady really did not like hamsters and said everything she could to dissuade us.  We learned from her that:

1.) Hamsters stink – like, really stink. It’s not just the cage- the rodent itself really stinks.

2.) We were worried about allergies- lo and behold, everyone in the store she used to work at was allergic to them..

3.) Hamsters bite- she wouldn’t let the kids touch them unless they are wearing heavy duty gloves.  Their teeth are big.

4.) She says-how about a big rat? Those are better and more friendly too.  Or a hedgehog.  Or a sugar glider- we don’t sell them but they are supposedly really fun.  Or a ferret.  Or a guinea pig.  Or anything but a hamster.

5.) I asked if they sell alot of hamsters because I was concerned it would be gone by Christmas.  My daughter had a specific one she liked and it wasn’t possible to put it on layaway (😛).  She said yes they sell alot but people usually bring them back after a couple of weeks.😬

So, needless to say, we bought the hamster anyway with lots of trepidation.  It never bit us. It was the sweetest hamster ever.  I was expecting it to turn into Godzilla any day but it never did.  We named her Flynn.  It did however end up dying a week later.

We kept it in the basement just in case my daughter ended up being allergic to it.  And one of us left the cage open.  It got out and one of my girls discovered it was missing in the morning.  They were searching all over the basement for it.  I was getting ready and told them I’d be down in a second.  I  just said in passing that it might have gone in the pipes down there or something.  My daughter was like hmmm pipes and then it looked like a light bulb went off in her head.

She runs back downstairs and then after a couple of minutes I hear alot of screaming.  Oh great, why’d I have to say pipes.  Well, they followed all the pipes in the basement and decided that it might be in the sump pump then they decided it probably wasn’t.  My other daughter looked in there and said I think it is.  They ran and got their Flashlight Friends (little stuffed animals with flashlights on their bellies) and shined them into the sump pump.  There was Flynn floating on the top of the water – dead.  Ugh.

We gave her a proper burial the next day.  I was not going to fish it out of the sump pump at the time.  Though they wanted me to take her out and give her mouth to mouth – I had to assure them that she was definitely dead.

After a couple of weeks, we thought we’d get another hamster because we felt bad about the first one.  We picked a hamster that looked exactly like Flynn because that’s what our daughter wanted.  But he was nothing like Flynn.  We called him Bryon jr because Bryon never got a namesake – we have all girls.

He absolutely never stopped going, going, going.  He was not at all afraid of heights.  Everytime he encountered a drop off, he just did what we would call, “easy does it”, and slowly lower himself until he dropped about 4 feet and bounced like rubber.  The first time he saw a ceiling fan, he had a little hamster explosion.  If you can imagine this, it’s hard to imagine, but a hamster starring in a horror movie and about to get slaughtered.  That’s what he looked like.  He let out a hamster scream/gurgle and raised his hands up in the air and everything.  We thought he was having a seizure.  He was hilarious.  He ended up dying after about a year.

We also got a mouse who is super sweet and docile.  She doesn’t move much – she likes to just hang out.  Her cage does require more maintenance though.  But she is very timid and scared of heights which is funny because she has the ability to climb more so than Bryon jr did.  She is still alive and happy and sweet as ever.  I highly recommend a mouse except you will have to clean the cage out more frequently.  When we went to buy our mouse, that same lady at the pet store got down to my daughter’s level and looked her right in the face and said, “Are you prepared to clean that cage out twice a day?”.  Lol.  She apparently doesn’t like mice either.  :-p  You really don’t have to clean the cage out that often – maybe twice a week, but sometimes we do just once and it’s fine.

Now, we have ventured into being guinea pig owners.  They are so sweet!  We have 2 girl baby guinea pigs and we love them.  They are pretty docile.  You can just sit and hold them while you watch a movie.  They aren’t as on the go as hamsters (I guess depends on the personality), but the ones we have aren’t.  They get to be about the size of a half loaf of bread is what we are told so you have to have enough space for them.  I imagine they will be sitting at our breakfast counter eating cereal when they get older.  :-p

UPDATE: We’ve already lost a guinea pig – it died.  One tip: don’t get the calm ones at the store – apparently, it means they are half dead.  At least, that’s our experience.  Or maybe the one we have is a a serial killer.  I don’t know – but she’s better off in a cage alone regardless of what the lady at the store said.  She did not like having a roommate.  She kind of bullied the other one.  So, use your judgement on whether to get one or two.

The reason I titled this blog post Pet Cemetery is because animals have a short life so there will be alot of death involved and everytime my kids will be like, “I would give anything to have Flynn [insert every animal name here] back.  ANYTHING.  I would give up EVERYTHING in this house.”  And all I can envision is our poor little hamster coming back from the dead like the movie and dragging itself up the driveway and knocking on the door.  I’m baaaack!  Of course, we wouldn’t even hear it knocking because it’s so small.  It would be waiting out there a loooong time.  Then, one of us would probably just exit the front door one day and smush it so it’s not that scary but whatever.  I guess that’s why they have a scary cat not a hamster in that movie.  I need to watch that movie again or maybe I don’t.  Creepy.  And girls please don’t say you’ll give up EVERYTHING – it freaks me out!  :-p


Dec
2017

Potty Humor

categories: Blog, Kids

All of us parents spend so much time in the restroom when we have little kids right?  It’s like 30% of our lives are spent in there when they are little – especially public restrooms b/c they always have to visit the restroom in every store it seems.  Personally, I always wait until I get home b/c I don’t like public restrooms but they can’t.

Well I bet we all have some stories to tell from that.  This one is one rather elaborate bathroom story from when my kids were little.  It’s the type of experience that gets ingrained in the psyche.

We went on a trip to Chicago for a few days when the kids were little.  On the first night, we had reservations at the the American Girl Doll store for dinner and shopping.  My husband, of course, wanted nothing to do with it. He found something to eat elsewhere. Every time he does something without us, I imagine he’s getting his hair blow dried some place and a massage. That’s just the vision that pops into my mind. Maybe because that’s secretly what I want to be doing. Lol.

We sit down to eat and I realize they offer unlimited refills of sweet tea. I thought this is not good. I end up spending the entire evening alternating going to the restroom with each girl.  Not sure I even ate.  I should’ve just told them to lay off the drinks but I don’t think I realized what was happening. Sometimes you’re just on auto pilot as a parent, right?  They must’ve been flagging down the waitress over and over again for refills while I was in the restroom.

Every time I took one girl to the restroom, the other girls were chugging sweet tea, so by the time I came back to the table the next girl was dancing around. Of course, they don’t tell you they have to go because they don’t want to miss out on anything – they just start dancing around. So you have to be able to read body language. My kids literally turn into ducks – they squat and stick their butts out and walk in short quick steps. It’s the darnedest thing to see.

Apparently, I scheduled the dinner too late in the evening because the American Girl store was going to close about 20 minutes after we finished dinner. The girls really wanted to shop but there wasn’t much time left. I asked everyone if they had to go to the restroom one last time and of course they said no (definitely not!) because they wanted to shop before the store closed. The second we get out of the American Girl store and they lock the doors on us, one of the girls says they have to go to the restroom really bad and they are doing the duck walk so I know it’s bad. I’m like Ugh! The closest place was a fancy steak and seafood restaurant!  We were on Michigan Ave.

Well, I knew this was an emergency so we went in and I begged the restaurant host (Maitre d’?) if we could use the restroom.  It was an emergency and he saw that I had a girl duck on my hands so he reluctantly said it’s around the corner. There was a long line of women dressed nicely but when they saw my duck they said we should go on ahead. We go on ahead and right when we get in the doorway of the restroom my daughter stops walking and says, “Uh Oh!” and I look down to see a big puddle (or more like a lake) forming at her feet – in the doorway of the restroom that has a long line into the hallway.

She tries to help me clean it up but we couldn’t manage to get any paper towels to come out of the really convenient automatic paper towel dispenser (I hate those things). My daughter gets an idea to tear off the tiny triangle of paper towel that’s already sticking out of the dispenser and soaks it in the huge puddle of pee then flings it with a frisbee-like motion into the trash can.  Poor thing – she actually thought she was helping.  Pee flies everywhere.

There’s a lady standing at the mirror touching up her makeup – must’ve been on a date night.  She didn’t realize she was in the splash zone of my kid’s pee accident.   I still can see in my mind the lady cringing and flinching when the pee flies off that soaked paper towel and splashes her.  I apologize to the lady and tell my daughter to please not help me.

Meanwhile, back at the pee puddle, I see my other daughter hovering over the puddle of pee as if she’s trying to see her reflection in it and she starts gagging and dry heaving and I tell her to leave the restroom before she adds to the mess.  I know I wasn’t saying all this in the most pleasing voice either.  I might have used the words, “Get Out!” to both of them.

Now, I’m looking like mother of the year in front of an audience and I can’t get any paper towels to come out of the super convenient, automated paper towel dispenser. I dance around in front of the paper towel dispenser frantically waving my hands and arms and finally get one paper towel to come out. I throw it on the floor over the pee and take off out of there because I’m absolutely mortified and not convinced I’ll be able to get any more paper towels to come out anyway. And, at this point, I was just looking like a circus side show act that everyone was literally just watching with their mouths hanging open.  At least they weren’t making a video of it.

On our way out of the restaurant, my husband is on his way in and tells me that the third daughter now has to go to the restroom to which I reply – You. Take. Her. – in my exorcist voice.  He walks by looking confused like – Okay I will.  And I’m looking at him like – Okay do that.  So then I have to wait outside in front of the full length windows with my kids visibly upset and one of them soaked from the waist down in severe wind chill while people eat their expensive steak and shrimp and wait for my husband to come back out.

That wasn’t painful at all.  Just another day in the life with kids.  :-p  I know all of you Moms can relate.  We all have our stories that our husbands only hear about but don’t always have to live through, right? 😉  And our husbands may have their own stories that we never hear about b/c they don’t think that much into it, eh?  Life is too funny.


Jul
2017

Yarn Wreaths

categories: Home Decor, Kids

 As I was looking up how to make a pine cone wreath, I saw this cute idea for a yarn wreath. I like to do crafts with my girls. Well, scratch that. I like to do crafts and my girls like to do crafts so I try to find stuff we can do together. There’s usually some drama but more fun than drama. But so it goes with any family together time. :-p It’s fun with a tinge of drama – as long as none of us takes the cake with the drama then we are good.

What you will need:
Styrofoam wreath (we bought ours at Joann’s) – Or you can duct tape 2 pool noodles together..
Felt to coordinate with the yarn colors (for the rosettes – we bought ours at Joann’s)
Yarn (assorted colors – we chose a max of 2 colors per wreath because it can get tangly – one would be even easier)
Pins (for the rosettes)
Spray glue
Good scissors
Stapler

To make the wreath:

1.) To start, we stapled the yarn to the wreath with three staples, then used the spray glue and sprayed the wreath in that beginning spot (just a little section) and wrapped around a few times – this made it extra secure.

2.) Every time you wrap around, you have to put the balls of yarn through the wreath which ended up being hard with my little one’s wreath because she picked such a small wreath but she insisted the smallest kid has to have the smallest wreath – lol.

3.) Then just keep wrapping the yarn around and spraying the spray glue every once in a while to make it extra secure.

4.) I wrapped the yarn around the wreath twice to make sure all the white was covered.  One of my daughters wrapped once and the other wrapped haphazardly so who knows how many times she went around. They all turned out fine. Once you get to the end tie a knot in the yarn and you are done with the wrapping of the wreath.

Time to make the rosettes or whatever you want to call them.  I tried to find pre-made felt creations at the store that I could just glue on, but I didn’t find anything that I liked and the girls kept wanting to buy poop emoji  and other ridiculous (sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) stuff which I thought would ruin their wreath so I abandoned that idea and told them we were just going to make our own things to glue on.  Luckily, I found this site that taught me how to make rosettes and also luckily the girls didn’t have any ideas to make poop emojis out of felt – dodged a bullet there.  I like to roll the R when I say rosettes – try it it’s fun.  I nicknamed my little one Rosa for the day because she was a rosette making beast.

To make the rosettes:

1.) Trace a circle onto the felt using whatever you can find.  I used a peanut butter jar that had about a 4 inch diameter, a coaster with a 3 inch diameter and also a circle from our Twister game which was the largest – about 6 inch diameter.  We traced all of these on the different colored felt then cut them out.

2.) Next, cut a spiral out of the circle (make a snake).  That’s not confusing at all, right?  Here’s a picture (as you can tell, you don’t even have to be great at cutting):

3.) Then, roll up the snake into a rosette starting with the tail of the snake.  Here’s a picture (I always wanted to be a hand model):

4.) Last, put a pin through the rosette to hold it together, then hot glue it to the wreath wherever you want it.

One thing to be careful of when making the wreath is to make sure that you don’t have too much line of yarn because it will get tangled very easily. I did have to get out quite a few tangles, but it wasn’t so bad because we were doing all of this while watching TV so we were sufficiently entertained/distracted. I prefer to be distracted when doing crafts because it calms me – music or TV. I also like to have something called Sleepytime Tea which also calms the nerves or at least that’s what the package says – that’s enough to convince me. The stocker at Wal-mart got a real good laugh when I asked him what aisle the sleepytime tea was in (he asked me what kind of tea I was looking for – should’ve made something else up)..

My 9 and 8 year old did theirs all by themselves. They used different strategies to get them done but both look great. My 5 year old couldn’t do the wreath but she did make all her rosettes by herself which completely blew my mind b/c cutting the felt is rather tedious. My 8 year old agreed to make my 5 year old’s wreath for her as long as I promised to let her use the glue gun. I was really nervous that she was going to burn half her face off but it worked out fine. You just have to keep your expectations low like I do. :-p My 8 year old actually glued most of the rosettes on all the wreaths except mine (because I didn’t want to freak out if she messed mine up). And she did better than I probably would’ve done.

We all did ours our own way. My oldest wrapped the yarn haphazardly. She wasn’t able to cover all the white of the styrofoam wreath this way, but it still looks great I think and she got done way quicker than the rest of us. My 8 year old meticulously did hers to cover all the white on the first wrap around because she did NOT want to have to wrap it around again. I wrapped mine around twice in order to cover all the white and I didn’t worry too much about having mine twisted I didn’t mind it being a bit messy or mummy-like.

Cara (my 8 year old) made up this saying we used whenever anyone critiqued any of our wreaths while we were working: “I tried and I tried and all you want to do is blame me.” But you have to say it in kind of a drawn out Minnie Mouse accent type of voice and really drag every syllable out. Here’s a link to Cara’s voice: Voice_170713_1[1]  This had us cracking up the whole time. Once, I got annoyed with Cara because she really tangled up her yarn (and I was of course the designated detangler) and she said this and had us cracking up so the rest of us used it too. This came in handy to break up the intensity of crafting.  So, I say to Sydney after an hour of her making her wreath that I’m not so sure about her strategy because the white will still be showing, etc.  She says, “I tried and I tried…”  LOL.

I used this website as my guide for the wreath: http://millionmoments.net/2013/01/how-to-make-yarn-wreath.html

And this website as my guide for the rosettes: http://millionmoments.net/2013/09/make-felt-flowers-rosettes.html

Here’s a pic of the kids all hard at work:


Mar
2017

Mommy Independence Day

categories: Blog, Kids

I think every Mom should celebrate Mommy Independence Day.  This should be a day on the calendar every year in which the Mom gets to celebrate all the things she no longer has to do for her kids.  I mean they do have National Peanut Butter Lover’s day and National Cheese Doodle day so why not?  The end of wiping bottoms would top this list of celebrations.  I know every time my kids have reached a milestone, I celebrated with a great big Hallelujah!  Here’s some of the milestones we can celebrate with glee:

1.) When the kids can put on their own shoes.  Especially when they can tie them themselves.  Of course, it won’t be perfect (laces will frequently be untied), but we no longer have to do it – we can bark at them to do it – woohoo!

2.) When the kids can put on their own clothes.  Especially when they can pick them out themselves and not look like street walkers (but I guess this might adjust again when they become teenagers where it seems the goal is to look like a street walker at times).  Not my kids, I’ll have to start picking out their clothes again if it comes to that.  My husband doesn’t even like them to wear the leggings that are so popular these days.  My daughter was horrified the time she tried to wear leggings with a “not long enough” sweater and my husband told her to put on some “real pants”.  :-p

3.) When the kids can go on the potty.  The downside to this is that you will spend way more time than you want to in public restrooms which is disgusting.  Every time you run an errand, you hear the dreaded, “Mommy, I have to use the potty!”.  Or, “Mommy, I need a drink of water!” which you refuse because you know it will lead to having to go to the potty.  In fact, I just stopped drinking water altogether when I became a Mom because I didn’t want to have to take the kids to the public restroom – Moms don’t have time to use the restroom.  :-/  And I am still traumatized by the time I took my kids to the restroom only to have my 2 year old dig in the little maxi pad trash can.  “Look mommy!”  I’ll never forget that – I’m sure we all have our own horror stories about public restrooms, right?  :-p

4.) When the kids can feed themselves.  And then, comes the even better milestone of them actually liking food!  Hallelujah!  My oldest started liking food at about age 8.  My middle child is starting also to like food and she’s 8 so maybe 8 is the magic number?  There’s hope everyone!  Of course, they still have their quirks with food but overall they are so hungry they will eat most things – woohoo!

5.) When the kids are able to make their own sandwich.  And then, comes the even better milestone of them being able to make their own sandwich without creating a beach (sandy beach made of bread crumbs) in the kitchen.

6.) When the kids learn to read.  And then comes the enjoying reading milestone.  This one is amazing!  Now, they can entertain themselves!  But, if you have multiple kids, they always seem to act at the lowest common denominator so I assume that you won’t get the full benefits of this until the youngest one really gets into reading.  Our youngest wants her siblings to play all the time with her and they can’t catch a break, so they only get to read at bedtime and when the youngest is occupied.  :-/

7.) When the kids are able to reach the sink to wash their hands.  This was a big one for me because I have had back problems and nothing seems to aggravate the back more than picking up wiggly kids who can’t seem to wash the soap off just right, etc.  “Mommy, my hands are still sticky from soap – I need to rinse them more!”.  I used to improvise and get down on one knee and let them use my other knee as a step stool.  Also not good for the knees though. :-p

Of course, we will always be mothers and we love being moms, but it’s ok to celebrate when our role changes, right?  I can’t help but celebrate.  Our role is constantly changing, but we can always take comfort in the fact that we are still Mom and our kids will always need us in one way or another.  I prefer they need us conversationally as opposed to, “Mommy, you need to wipe my butt!”.  😀


Dec
2016

9 Things That Will Turn Your Child from a Gizmo Into a Gremlin

categories: Blog, Kids

Whoever created the movie, Gremlins, must’ve been a parent. It’s the perfect analogy for children. Ever look at your child one minute and they are sweet and cute (Gizmo), then the next they are foaming at the mouth and having the biggest tantrum ever (Gremlin)?  I call this the Gizmo to Gremlin transition.  It happens in the blink of an eye.  I’m compiling a list of the things that cause it so I and others can be more aware..

9 Things that will turn your gizmo into a gremlin:

1.) Go on a playdate without a snack/drink or go anywhere without a snack/drink. They will claim to be dying of thirst the second they realize you have nothing for them to drink. You will end up buying a $3 water somewhere.  If you are on a playdate at a friend’s house, they will eat everything in your friend’s kitchen or complain the entire time about being hungry.  You may end up clamping a hand down over their mouth and making a bad impression with said friend.  :-p

2.) Let them stay up past midnight.  In the Gremlins movie, you aren’t supposed to feed them after midnight, but in real life – it’s don’t let the kids stay up past midnight – you’ll regret it.  We frequently let our girls sleep together on the weekend and next thing you know, they are each breaking down in turns and your whole weekend is consumed by tears.

3.) Wake them up from a nap. The phrase never wake a sleeping baby applies to everyone: never wake a sleeping baby, never wake a sleeping toddler, never wake a sleeping preschooler, never wake a sleeping husband.

4.) The witching hour: anytime between 4pm and 6pm.

5.) Serve them anything homemade.  I no longer answer my kids when they ask me what’s for dinner.  I tell them that’s a loaded question!  Or I’ll tell them it’s something frozen that I warmed up b/c they trust that stuff more than they trust my cooking skills..

6.) Tell them you are going to Home Depot.  They hate Home Depot, mostly because they will usually end up getting barked at by some old, grouchy person that thinks kids shouldn’t exist in this world.  But some are nice and give them lollipops so it just depends.

7.) Tell them it’s time to clean.  Although, now that they are older, I find that I tell them all to clean just to get them to play quietly together.  Somehow telling them to clean, causes them to play nicely.  Not exactly the desired response, but close.  Sometimes, as a parent, you have to improvise and be flexible to get what you want.  :-p

8.) Tell them no at the store.  I like to say, we’ll add that to the Christmas list.  If they push further, I pretend to add it to a list on my phone.. This applies more when they are little – now, for my older children I say no incessantly at the store – it’s like I’m making up for all the times I couldn’t say it when they were little.

9.) Tell them to share.  This evicts the worst response.  It’s like you are asking them to set their toy on fire or something.  Telling them to take turns isn’t much better – they will watch the clock like a hawk and nag you incessantly to see if it’s time yet.

Anyone else have any other things?  My kids are 4,  7, & 9 so the list might’ve been different when they were younger.. No, wait, it was definitely different and more exhaustive when they were younger. I used to say – it’s so hard being little – all the time because it seemed like EVERYTHING upset them.  Seriously, you could say, “We are going to the park!” and they’d get upset.

And gremlin kid after they’ve eaten all the snacks out of your friend’s pantry:

And now I’m going to flip the script down here and write about times when Mom turns from Gizmo to Gremlin:

Here’s Mom “happily” at the computer paying bills:

These are the things that turn Mom into a gremlin:

1.) Talking to me after bedtime.

2.) Scream mommy from another room over and over again and expecting me to come running like I’m some kind of butler.

3.) Leaving the house without shoes on or with only dress up shoes on and not finding out until we are at the destination.

4.) Incessant fighting.

5.) The sound of the bead bucket hitting the floor.

6.) Bouncing around so much upstairs that it sounds like a Jumanji style stampede is going to come through your ceiling.

7.) Having to repeat myself for the 5th or 6th time.

And gremlin Mom (angrily stuffing face with cookies while offering the kids none):

 

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Dec
2016

Slime with kids

categories: Kids

Who doesn’t like slime?  All parents relish the idea of their kids playing with slime, right?!?!  Probably not.  My youngest child became obsessed with playing with slime.  She was actually saying, “swime bideos” into the speaker search of You Tube kids and watching people make slime all day long.  So, eventually I gave in after a lot of excuses and we made slime.  So far, we’ve made 3 different types of slime

Oobleck

Now, we had made oobleck before and I kept telling her that’s slime so we’ve already done it.  But nope that didn’t work.  She wanted “real” slime.  Oobleck is really cool though – we accidentally made it when trying to make some sidewalk chalk paint and they like it even better than side walk chalk paint.  It’s definitely an outside activity though and so is slime in my opinion.

Oobleck is just corn starch and water mixed together and we add a packet of kool-aid to it for the color. Don’t worry – it won’t permanently stain your patio – at least it didn’t stain ours. You’ve just got to keep adding corn starch to the water until you get the right consistency.

Galaxy Slime

For the slime, we decided to make Galaxy slime. Here’s a link to the video:

You need these ingredients:
Saline Solution
Glitter
Transparent Glue (got this at Wal-Mart)
Baking Soda
Paint

Put the transparent glue into a bowl and then about a teaspoon of baking soda and mix. Add some drops of paint (as desired) and mix. Add Glitter and mix. Add saline solution and mix.

We found that we had to keep adding the saline solution to make it less gooey and sticky. Just keep adding this until it gets to the consistency you want. One tip: Do not let the kids jump rope with the slime! This happened to us – it does wash out of the hair though so that’s a good thing. :-p

Another note – sometimes you have to scrap it and start over. Once I left the kids to start the slime without me and when I came outside they all looked like swamp things dripping slime. Never let them get started without you no matter how much they beg. And, to make matters worse, the water spicket outside was broken. I was starting to wonder if the fire department made courtesy calls to hose down kids when slime doesn’t go well. :-p

Here’s some pictures (of the times it went well) :-p:

slime_cara1

slime_colette

slime_colette2

slime_sydney2

slime_packaged

Liquid Starch Based Slime

For this one, we used regular Elmer’s glue, Liquid Starch, & Water in equal parts. It’s more of a slimier slime – more gooey. We like it though. We left it white and just added glitter to it. We ran out of transparent glue so that’s why we decided to make this one. I happened to have the other ingredients on hand.


Aug
2016

8 things I might’ve said to my kids this summer

categories: Blog, Kids

8 Things I Might’ve Said to My Kids This Summer:

1.) If you don’t want to eat what I make, then you can go outside and forage for crickets – maybe make yourself a cricket taco or something. Or you can take your sling shot and kill yourself a rabbit for dinner.. Lots of rabbits in the backyard..

2.) Singing, “Do you want to be evil like me? Do you want to be cruel?”.

3.) We are leaving in 5 minutes, naked or not!

4.) The house was just clean 2 days ago! What happened?!?!

5.) Stop doing that! You are going to end up on that show, “Top 10 dumbest ways to die”!

6.) Why does the car smell like a dead animal? Forget it – I don’t want to know. Only to find that my kids were shoving actual food in the cubbies! And I had gnats circling my head while driving for weeks before I gave in and investigated.

7.) Shut the door – on repeat – until my voice got hoarse. Only to find out to my astonishment that they actually know how to shut doors – in Minecraft! I guess it’s easier to remember to shut the door when a monster is chasing you. Note to self: buy a monster mask. :-p

8.) This one is more of a thought: waking up in the middle of the night thinking oh dear Lord please tell me they shut off the water!

Ya, I do have some redeeming qualities, I hope. Luckily, my kids have a good sense of humor.. Anyone else have a favorite thing they said?