A Little...SUMMER FUN!

I am going crazy waiting for some warm temps.  We are all having major smell of sunscreen withdrawals around my house!  To make sure we make the most of our summer I always make a Summer To-Do List for our family. 

I like to organize mine by month and include fun local activities at the library, community center, church, movie theatres, etc.  I also included family specific activities like sports, weddings, reunions and visitors.

Ladybug Release Party at our community garden last summer

I make a final category of random things like go camping, look at the stars, go to the lake, or have a lemonade stand, you know, the things that really make summer THE BEST.


Swimming and Popsicles


I hang the list up in our kitchen, next to our calendar so I can easily keep track of what’s going on and so we don’t miss out on cool things to do!

Here are some examples from other moms:

eighteen25

whatever

Family Matters


What are your plans for summer?  And traditions you or your kids look forward to?

A Little Snack Time…Play With Your Food!

My 5 Year Old:  Mom, I’m HUNGRY!

Me:  Eat an apple.

My 5 Year Old:  I HATE APPLES.

Sound familiar?  For the record, he doesn’t hate apples, he gets bored with the same old snack routine.  He just doesn’t know how to tell me that yet!  So, here are a few ways that I like to revamp snack time so that it is totally awesome (and mostly healthy) and no longer LAME!

1.  Relax.  I never stress out about my kids eating habits.  One day they will be so hungry that I feel like I’m in the kitchen non-stop.  The next day they barely eat enough to keep a bird alive.  It’s fine.  They eat when they are hungry and with kids, sometimes they don’t really need much to maintain.  When you stress about food they will too and that can create a larger problem for them down the road in the form of an eating disorder, overeating, emotional eating, etc.  If you are ever really concerned with their appetite or lack of one, talk to your doctor to make sure everything is okay.

2.  Art/Fun.  My kids love when I put a spoonful of peanut butter in the center of a plate with apple slices all around it like a flower.  If I stick a carrot on my kids’ plates they will maybe eat it.  But if I give them tiny carrot circles with a toothpick for stabbing they get really excited!  It takes some extra work with cutting but my kids totally eat it up.  Pun intended!

Source: meetthedubiens.blogspot.com via Briton on Pinterest

3.  Lax Rules.  Let them blow bubbles in their milk.  Let them build a tower of crackers and cheese.  It’s just snack time.  Sometimes I’ll put my kids’ snack in a dog dish (specifically purchased for snacks, no dogs have used them) and let them eat like puppies.  Who needs manners?  We save them, and the silverware, for dinner time!

4.  Choices.  Raisins or Craisins?  Apples or Oranges?  Carrots or Celery?  Yogurt or String Cheese?  Chocolate Chip Cookie or Toast with Nutella?  If they choose it, they will be more apt to eat it!

I don’t do the artsy and fun stuff all the time, just every once in a while, to keep them guessing! 

What are some of your kids’ favorite snacks and/or how do you get them to eat up?

A Little Parenting - Teaching Kids to Cook

"Oh I never let my kids in the kitchen. I'm too afraid they would get hurt."

This response came to me during a cooking class I was teaching at my church. This woman's daughter (who was a senior in high school) had babysat my children the night before. The teen called me during my date to ask me how to fix the dinner I had left on the kitchen counter: a box of macaroni and cheese and a plate of fruit.

I was shocked. Was this mother serious. She also had other children at or about to enter the teen years. None of them knew how to cook? I took a quick pool of the other women in the group. Out of all of their children, no one really knew their way around the kitchen. How were those kids going to survive the first time on their own? The first mom replied that she learned to cook after she got married.

I was asked about my own children and when they started learning how to cook. My answer? "As soon as they can stand." Kids love to participate in the kitchen. Cooking and nutrition are important skills to master. It is also a great way to spend time with your kids. Here is my timetable of when kids should learn certain skills:

The Love Magnet, age 4, helping to make oatmeal cookies in 2007.

Ages 2-7: Kids love to dump, pour, stir, drop, and make messes. I keep kid-size aprons around because I know that when I pull out the cookie pans, my youngest will be pulling up a chair so she will be tall enough to help me.

Age 8: this is the magic age in my kitchen when my kids get their first real cooking lesson. I always start with spaghetti....without a recipe and without commercially prepared sauce. Sauce-from-a-jar tastes too sweet to me. So I teach the kids how to create their own tomato sauce with plain canned tomato sauce and adding fresh garlic, anchovy paste, and spices. My kids really get into it and love to come up with their own blend of secret spices. Some are amazing.......others not so much. (The year Firstborn used cinnamon and nutmeg in his tomato sauce will go down in family legend). Wednesday night is always spaghetti night at my house and one of the kids does the cooking. When spaghetti is mastered, then cookies and brownies from scratch follow (dessert for Spaghetti night!) followed by grilled cheese sandwiches and scrambling eggs. After that, I let the kids browse my cookbook collection or watch cooking shows to come up with the next recipe they want to try. They usually want to try their favorite foods.

Ages 8-12: Knife skills! When I cook, I turn my kids into sous chefs and let them take care of the veggies and fruits. I can monitor them for safety and demonstrate when they need it. The kids need to pass of knife skills as part of their Scouts program so it does double duty.

Age 12: By this time my kids they can follow most recipes. For breads, I always start with biscuits, muffins, and quick breads, followed by yeast breads. This is also the time to learn cakes from scratch. That way, when the child comes to me at 10:00 at night and tells me he needs cake/cookies/baked treat for school the next day, I can reply "Great! You know where they ingredients are. Be sure to clean up the kitchen before you go to bed." WOOT!

Secondborn making his famous baconated deviled eggs at Grandma's, Thanksgiving 2010.

My kids are making me proud in the kitchen. Firstborn (age 18) makes an incredible grilled pork loin with a mustard/vinegar sauce that tastes restaurant quality. Secondborn (14) loves making deviled eggs in all their variations. Thirdborn (10) once chose to make pink lemonade cupcakes for a book report (In the book The Seven Silly Eaters, the family made a pink lemonade birthday cake). Even The Love Magnet (8) loves to help in the kitchen. She is still at the dump/pour stage, but I plan on letting her learn knife skills when she has better manual dexterity. Having Down syndrome, we take things slower with her, but we still treat her the same as her brothers. She wants to learn how to cook, too.

Bring your kids into the kitchen and make some memories!

A Little Challenge... Bath Tub Toys

Dear Readers,
I have a challenge for you!  I am challenging you to post a comment about your favorite bathtub toys.  Here is the reason it is a challenge:  traditional bathtub toys available at every baby store tend to have a little hole in it to squirt out water.  Fun right?  Yes... until the first time you don't empty the water out completely after the bath (and who can ever really do this, and who has time to do it when you are getting your kids into bed?) and the next time your kid squirts the toy, out comes black mold!  It is just plain gross.

 (Don't even get me started on the BIG "holder" bathtoys like the large "mama" duck in the picture above - you can NEVER get the water out of those, and they are veritable mold petri dishes!)


So tell me your favorite NON MOLD PRODCUING bathtime toys.

I have tried some hard plastic toys, but they tend to have paint come off in the bath, or they too have TINY holes that let in water and cause the same problem.  My sister got the coolest set of sting rays from Sea World or someplace similar.  Her kids play with them at the pool.  They are soft and bendable, don't lose their paint, and have no openings for mold to grow.  Every time I go to a museum or aquarium, I peruse their cool toys (like sting rays, sharks, fish, whales, etc.) hoping to find a set of toys that would be bathtub friendly without the holes/mold!  I am continually unsuccessful!  Curses!

Here is what I have found so far...
1. These "Boon" Bath Toys

My kids love cathing the buggy looking toys the their nets in the bath.  No holes or openings for mold.  Hooray!

2.  Foam Letters

These don't get moldy, and they stick to the side of the bathtub when wet, so they are also a good learning tool.

3.  Bathtub Crayons

These are good, non-moldy bathtime fun... but can break rather easily if you have overexuberant children like I do, and they create more clean up time later, if you don't want your bathtub looking like a graffiti station.

OK so help me.  What are your favorite non-moldy bathtime toys?
I am waiting!!!! Thanks.

A Little Parenting... School Days

Seeing as the first day of school is just around the corner, we have a little back-to-school routine at our house that we started this week. It starts with a clean room. (Which at our house can be like pulling teeth. Lots of drama and possibly tears.)

Once they have cleaned it up and everything is in its place, we go through the drawers and closet and take out the things they have outgrown. Since it will still be warm when school starts, this isn't the time to pack up summer clothes, just outgrown or worn out clothes and shoes.
Now we add in the new school clothes. This way we know what is needed or lacking.

Once the school clothes are purchased we have a little fun with it. I help my girls plan a fashion show combining their back to school clothes and the things already own. We pick out some music, lay out the outfits, along with accessories, and make dad watch and take pictures. My little guy likes to get in on the action too.My hope is that we can avoid some of the, "I don't know what to wear" drama of early mornings and they can get excited about going back to school and seeing friends and teachers again. Of course they're still young and they're girls, so it isn't too difficult. What back to school traditions do you have?

A Little Cuisine... My Favorite Mac and Cheese

I know you all have your favorite mac and cheese recipe, but this one is on regular rotation at my house.  No joke we have it about once a week or more.  My kids devour it and then ask for more.  It is creamy and really so so good.  It takes 20 minutes.  And the best part?  They are getting SWEET POTATOES, BUTTERNUT SQUASH, CAULIFLOWER, AND BROCCOLI with this mac & cheese (or at least one of those).  How you ask?  Well, allow me to tell you!

photo:  blackcatkitchen

The recipe is Jessica Seinfeld's Recipe from her "Deceptively Delicious" Cookbook.  The premise of this cookbook is to put pureed vegetables in kid-friendly dishes (that is the "deceptive" part).  Because I am often short on time, I usually have a few cans of pureed sweet potatoes or butternut squash on hand, so that is a quick and easy addition.  Her recipe calls for butternut squash, but I use either or both as they are both delicious and both great for you.  There are usually about 3-4 servings of puree in each can, so I just put the unused servings in snack sized ziplocks in the freezer for the next time I make this dish (which is likely to be soon with our family).  If you prefer to puree the veggies yourself, the recipe below also contains links with pureeing instructions should you want them.  After I have added the sweet potatoes and/or butternut squash, if I have time/energy/cauliflower on hand, I will also steam and puree cauliflower for this dish.  You can put as many of these purees in the dish as you want, it always tastes great and the overall taste is unaffected.

In addition to the "deceptive" pureed veggies, I like my kids to also eat a VISIBLE vegetable, so they know this is what we do in our family, so I will also put steamed broccoli on the side.  This doesn't work for my pickier eater so I finely chop it up (quickly using the kitchen shears) so that the broccoli is all mixed in the delicious cheesy sauce.  He is always chomping at the bit to eat the mac and cheese, so I tell him he can either eat it with the broccoli in it, or not eat it at all. So far we are 100% for broccoli consumption! Yum!

Seriously, even though it is just macaroni and cheese, knowing my kids are eating up to FOUR GREAT VEGGIES makes me feel so virtuous!  We love this recipe.  I hope you do too.  Enjoy!

I have pasted it below with a couple of my additions in all caps.

Jessica Seinfeld's Creamy Macaroni & Cheese (with butternut squash AND/OR SWEET POTATO and cauliflower)
Servings: Serves 4

Ingredients:

Macaroni and Cheese 1 (with Butternut Squash AND/OR SWEET POTATO AND Cauliflower)

• 1 1/2 cups elbow macaroni (I LIKE 2 CUPS MACARONI BETTER)
• Nonstick cooking spray
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup nonfat skim milk
• 1/2 cup butternut or SWEET POTATO OR cauliflower puree
• 1 1/2 cups shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese (about 8 ounces) (USE MILD OR MEDIUM CHEDDAR, NOT SHARP)
• 4 ounces (almost 1/4 cup) reduced-fat or nonfat cream cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the macaroni and cook according to package directions until al dente. Drain in a colander.

While the macaroni is cooking, coat a large saucepan with cooking spray and heat over medium heat. Add the oil, then the flour, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture resembles a thick paste but has not browned, 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the milk and cook, stirring every now and then, until the mixture begins to thicken, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the vegetable puree, Cheddar, cream cheese and seasonings and stir until the cheese is melted and the sauce is smooth. Stir in the macaroni and serve warm WITH BROCCOLI!!!

A Little Crafty... Lunchtime Love Notes

Who doesn't enjoy getting a love note? Whether in a back pack, briefcase, lunch bag, or coat pocket, a love note brightens your day.  When I was in school my mom would leave notes on my napkin or lunch bag, and while I might try to hide it, I still loved it.  In elementary school she would put a sticker on my sandwich bag with the premise that if I ate it first, I could wear the sticker.  

 photo:  marthastewart.com

Now, I know my kids skip to the chips or fruit snacks, but they are more likely to eat a sandwich with a sticker promise.  Maybe your little one likes jokes or trivia, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has kids jokes and trivia suitable for any age on its website. You could even save time in the morning frenzy by writing a few little messages on note cards ahead of time. I found bite size versions of  Lunchbox Love at Michael's and discovered their website, sayplease.com has versions for teens and adults.  

A friend of mine draws cartoon illustrations on his kids napkins, but imagine the surprise of drawing on the food itself. I love this idea  [http://seilifestyle.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-delivered-with-lunch.html] of writing on fruit that would be peeled.  My girls would get a kick out of that banana.  

 photo:  seilifestyle.blogspot.com

I found these crust cutters at a local grocery store and my kids love them, and I love that only the crust is removed.  http://www.evriholder.com/Crust-Cutter.asp

photo:  evriholder.com

I also found these cute little snack bag clips, a great way to put a little spring in lunch.  Martha has these fun labels to download for a lunchtime treat. But really, any way you say it, a little love note at lunch time is always a happy discovery.