Making Sheet Changing at Night Easier

Night time accidents are common for many children. It can be upsetting for a child to wake up wet and tired. Not only are they awaken out of their sleep, but now they are wet, have to get changed into dry clothes, and can't get back into bed until the sheets are changed. Add in the fact that both mom and child are exhausted and it can be downright miserable.

Here's something that can make sheet changing easier at night:

♥When you make your child's bed, put the sheets and mattress pads on in layers.
I.e. put a mattress pad on the mattress, then a sheet, then layer another mattress pad and another sheet. Make sure the mattress pad/cover is waterproof! If you have several quilts, you can also just layer quilts and mattress pads instead.

♥The layering works great for cribs too! My babies used to leak out of their diapers during the night all the time! The last thing I wanted to be doing in the middle of the night was put a new sheet on the mattress. It's hard enough during the day, let alone when you're tired and your baby is wet!
To make it easier on myself, and on Baby, I started layering, as well as trying an . When baby had a night time blow out, I'd just pull off the wet sheet and cover, and voila'! Underneath was a dry sheet waiting for baby to rest on! It made things SO much easier!

If you have a child that is potty training or having occasional bed wetting, I recommend you give the sheet layering a try!

Also, If you have a hard time with day time crib sheet changing, you might want to try the Ultimate Crib Sheet. The mattress pad and sheet are all in one. I have just one of these, but found it easier to change then regular fitted sheets (sheets can be tough to get on when you have a bumper pad and/or are short!).

SomeThoughts on Potty Training...

picture is when my youngest was 16 months old (she's 21 months now)

When it comes to yesterday's post, as well as my thoughts on potty training in general, I want to make a few things clear:

*I realize there are children with medical or developmental reasons for not using the potty at a young age.

*I'm certain there are reasons other than the diaper industry that have pushed the diaper age further out. I believe convenience is one of them.

*I think the longer a child is sitting in their own waste the more they become used to it.

*A lot of my potty training opinions are based off of my experience working in a daycare center with 2 year olds. I learned a lot from daycare that helped me in training my own children.

*2 year olds know diapers are for pottying in. Some are very uncomfortable with pottying in anything other than a diaper and will hold their bladder for hours to avoid pottying without a diaper on!

*Getting out of diapers helps clear up diaper rash.

*There are times when Pull-Ups are helpful

*Every child is different.

Next week I plan to have my youngest go diaperless during the day. I can't guarantee that she will be solely using the potty by the time the week is over, but I'm going to try. I'll update on how it goes! I will also share some of the readiness signs for when our children have been ready to potty train.

If you disagree with me on any of this, it's okay! We can disagree and still be friends, you know? This is small beans in the grand scheme of things.

10 Fun Family Activities for the Fall!

Fall is coming up very soon, and with it are endless opportunities for family fun!

Here are my Top 10 Family Activities for Fall

10. Picking Apples at an Orchard
9. Fall Festivals and Craft Fairs

8. Visiting a Pumpkin Patch
7. Roasting Marshmallows over a Campfire

6. Apple Cider

5. Jumping in to a Pile of Leaves

4. Walking on a Nature Trail and Enjoying the Beautiful Leaves3. Dressing Up in Costumes

2. Candy Corn
1. Wearing Jackets and Snuggling with Loved Ones while Breathing in Crisp, Cool Air



What family activities do you enjoy most in the fall?

Dinner's in the Freezer!

One of the best purchases my husband and I have ever made was a freezer. In the freezer portion of our old fridge, we bare had enough room to store a few frozen pizzas let alone an actual frozen meal. 2 1/2 years ago we made the decision to buy a freezer to help store food for our growing family.

Here are my Top 3 Reasons Why Having a Freezer is Helpful:

• You can Stock up on items when they go on sale (meat, cheese, butter sticks, ect.)
• You can buy and freeze berries and other summer goodies that would be expensive to buy during the cold months.
  
• Freezing extra meals is easy and there are dinners ready when I don't feel like cooking!

Right now our freezer is fairly empty. We cleared it out pretty well before we moved and have yet to get it fully stocked again. In the meantime, we are starting to freeze water in milk jugs to help the freezer run more efficiently.

You can freeze almost any meal in the freezer. You don't have to use special "freezer" recipes- most of your favorite casseroles and goodies probably freeze just fine.


The easiest way I've found to stock up the freezer with meals without spending an entire day cooking is to double recipes whenever I cook. Even just making 3 extra meals a week for 4 weeks will give you 12 extra meals in the freezer to use anytime you want!

We also freeze blueberries (freezing flat on a cookie sheet and moving to a freezer bag once frozen), Corn (husk off first), and cookie dough.

I look forward to sharing freezer meal tips in the future! In the meantime, you can find some great freezer meal tips from my friend Vannesa. She does mega cooking and fills her freezer with enough meals to last 10 weeks at a time! You can also find great healthy recipes on her site as well.

So how about you? Do you use a freezer to store extra food? What do you fill your freezer with?

And Puppy Makes 7

There's someone new around our house. She's about 13 pounds, brown, noisy, and has sharp little teeth. Yes, it's a dog. A Labrador Retriever to be exact.


Why a Lab? I've never had a Labrador before, but I've seen how well my dad's are. My dad's inside Lab will litteraly lay down and let the children climb all over her. She is incredibly patient and well behaved. That is the type of dog I want for my children.
So this past weekend we brought home a 7 week old Labrador Retriever.

We bought a North States Superyard XT Gate Play Yard and use that as a "playpen" and use a portable dog kennel for sleeping at night. Having the Superyard has been really helpful- it gives us a safe place to keep Puppy when we're not able to watch her every move. It has also helped with potty training as she wants to keep her area clean.

We're working on heal, sit, and come right now. I am using hand signals for come and plan to add in more as I learn them. My son has enjoyed 101 Dog Tricks: Step by Step Activities to Engage, Challenge, and Bond with Your Dog helpful for learning tricks he'd like to teach Puppy too. After reading Ceasar Millan's books, I've also made it a goal to get Puppy out for daily walks. As she gets bigger, (which she will happen very quickly) she will make a great jogging companion!

So now we're a family with 4 little children and 1 not-so-little puppy.

Have any Lab or raising puppies with kids tips? I'd love to hear them!

Puppy's litter mates at 1 week of age

Getting into a Routine

Pictured above is my 3 year old with my new jogging companion

After spending 7 months in utter chaos with half our things in boxes, becoming freaked out over any little mess, and leaving the house for 43 showings, I have lost my normal routine. Although we've been in our new home for a few months now, things still haven't gotten back to how they were before our house went on the market last year.

It's time to do something about it. As hard as it is to change, I'm going to try. Starting today, here are some things I plan to do differently:

1. Get up before the kids. This is hard because my boys wake up early every single morning!
2. Exercise for me and the children. It's good for the heart, body, and soul. Gotta get out there and get moving!
3. No TV for the kids before school. It's so easy to start a movie in the mornings, but I've told them that's got to stop. School first, movie later.
4. Breakfast is over by 8:30am. My kids will snack on cereal all morning if I let them.
5. Create a Schedule. It will take some trial and error, but finding a routine that works for our family.
6. Teach my daughters colors, ABC's, and #'s. They enjoy learning as much as the boys do.
7. Go on regular outings. I very rarely get out much because it's HARD work taking 4 kids out by myself. I need to get the courage and get out places more with the kids.
8. Let the kids help cook. When we had to keep our house clean 24/7, letting the kids help cook was out of the question. Now I need to loosen up about it and allow them to start helping.
9. Teach the kids how to help with chores. I've started working on teaching my girls how to empty the dishwasher and they love it. However, I have not started chores with my sons yet. It's time.
11. Read my Bible daily by myself and WITH the children. My sons had a good start with me reading to them on a regular basis. Since our house went on the market last year, I have slacked off greatly. Just as exercise helps the soul, even more so does spending time in God's Word.

The "School" Questions are Only Beginning

We've been homeschooling in many ways since my 5 year old was only a baby. It's not much different than other aspects of being a mom. As parents we teach our children to use the potty, manners, how to stay healthy. Teaching adding, writing, and reading are just an extension of what we've already been doing for years!

What makes this year so different is that my oldest is supposed to start kindergarten in public school. It's a weird feeling knowing that my son would be gone half the day had I not decided to homeschool.

The pressure is on a bit. Not that we're behind in any way, not hardly. Still, there's this weird feeling knowing that we are "officially" doing things different. At least 95% of parents I know have their kids in public school, which makes us the odd ones out at times.

In the past month, I've been asked at least 10 times "is your son starting kindergarten this year?". The big question hasn't come yet, but I know it's on the horizon- "why isn't he in school?". I can only imagine how 100's of times we'll be asked over the next 12+ years!

It's only the beginning! We are really doing it now! My son could be sitting in public school this week, but he's here at home with me.

We are now "officially" homeschoolers.

Great Homemade Gift for Kids- I Spy Bags

Recently I was looking for a fun project to make with a group of friends. I came across I Spy Bags online and thought they were pretty cool. I Spy Bags are fun for traveling, sitting in a doctor's office, or for other "I'm bored!" moments. I Spy Bags are fabric bags filled with plastic beads and little toys. Kids squish the bags with their hands looking for different items. On the back is a list of what items to look for.

You can buy I Spy Bags online through Etsy shops, or you can make one yourself.

How to make an I Spy Bag:

• Plastic Polybeads (an $8 bag makes about 5 I Spy Bags- use a Hobby Lobby or Joann's Coupon to get 40% off)
• Fleece
• White Fabric
• Fairly Thick Clear Vinyl (found in with the drapery fabrics at craft stores) Have them cut you a 4in. strip- you will be able to make over 15 bags with that much)
• Approx. 20 Small Items
• Water Resistant Pen
• Tissue Paper (or the paper that comes with the vinyl)

*******

Ideas for what items to put in your bag:
Minatures, buttons, charms, shaped erasors, small foam shapes, keys, marbles, puzzle piece, Barbie shoes, ect. Really, anything tiny works great! Clear out your junk drawer and check your dollar store for inexpensive items.

*******

Directions:

1. Cut fleece into 4 7in. squares (to make bags double layered for extra strength)

To make the front of the bag:

1. Trace a 3in. square onto one of the fleece squares. Lay another fleece square underneath the one with the square traced and cut out the 3in. square from both pieces of fleece.
2. Cut the vinyl into 4in. squares
3. Using a zig-zag stitch, sew the vinyl onto the fleece squares that have the holes in it. Keep a piece of tissue paper between the vinyl and your sewing machine to prevent sticking. Make sure the vinyl overlaps onto the fleece to prevent any holes. I found it helpful to sew with the rightside facing up (fleece side with vinyl underneath) so that I could make sure I had the stitching nice on the right side. Go around twice.

To make the back of the bag:

1. Cut a 4in. square out of the white fabric and sew (using zig-zag stitch) to the remaining 2 fleece squares (with the 2 pieces of fleece sandwiched together).
2. Once the white square is on there, write out what your child can find inside the bag.

Finishing the Bag

1. After making your list of "I Spy" items, take both the front and the back of the bag and lay them together so that the right sides are facing out.
2. Sew the fleece together using a zig-zag stitch, leaving a 3 in. spot open for stuffing the bag. Go around a second time (making sure to still leave an opening in the bag).
3. Pour your trinkets into the bag.
4. Carefully add the poly-beads. Use a funnel for easier pouring.
   To figure out how much to fill the bag, try holding the opening closed and laying the bag flat. Give it a little squish and see if it feels easy enough to move trinkets around inside.
5. Once you have it full enough (which I find to be when the poly-beads once the beads are about 1/2 in. from the top of the clear window), sew the bag closed, making sure to go across the opening twice.
   

That's it! Your gift is made and ready to be enjoyed!

Looking for somewhere to purchase a set of trinkets? Try Amazon.com!

Make Pretend Smores

As part of our Indoor Campout last week, the kids and I made pretend smores.

To make them we used:

*Light and Dark Brown Foam
*Jumbo Cotton Balls
*School Glue

After cutting the foam into 3 in. squares, I drew dotted lines on the light brown squares to make them look like graham crackers.

The kids took used the light brown squares and glued a dark brown foam square, cotton ball, and then another light brown square on top to make them look like smores. They also enjoyed adding extra "chocolate" squares to their smores and putting the marshmallow on top.

Now that our campout is over, I plan to put our Smores in with our play kitchen toys to be played with even more!

Very easy!

How to have an Indoor Campout!

Indoor camp outs are great when the weather is too cold to camp outdoors or when you have a baby and don't want to mess with camp tenting outside yet. They're also great anytime of the year for those who hate bugs, heat, and sweat.

Here are some ideas for how to have a camp out indoors:

For Making Tents:

• Use tables, and/or turn 2 sofas back to back leaving a space in the middle to set up sleeping bags. Cover the top with large blankets, and voila'!
  
• OR, if space allows, set up a real tent.

For an Outdoor Ambiance:

• Play a Nature Sounds CD and fall asleep listening to the sound of crickets, a babbling brook, birds, or a summer storm.

Decorations:

• Make your own pretend campfire (you can use tissue paper, construction paper, foam, ect). Set a lantern or flashlight behind the campfire at night so it glows.
• Make tents for the stuffed animals.
• Have some glow sticks on hand, just for fun. They are only 88 cents at Wal-Mart (you can find them in the bargain toy section year round), come in a variety of colors, and kids think they are SO cool!

Activities:

• Make Pretend Smores to play with (more to come on this later)
• Take a nature walk outside and collect twigs and leaves to glue on paper and make a collage.
• Tell stories around the pretend campfire.
• Make shadow puppets using a flashlight inside your tent.

Food:

• Hot Dogs on the grill or Pig's in a Blanket (using hot dogs, crescent roll or breadstick dough, and cheese slices)
• Canteens or Water Bottles filled with chilled water
• Smores! Cook over the grill, or use your microwave to melt them for 12 seconds.

If you've tried camping indoors with your own family- tent or no tent, I'd love to hear about it!

Looking for more fun things to do with your children? Here's a list of 100 fun ideas to get you started!
*Activities 1-25
*Activities 26-50
*Activities 51-75
*Activities 76-100