I’m super excited to share this printable with you! I’ve created a customizable chore chart to help your toddler or preschooler gain independence in getting herself ready at the start and end of each day. She simply looks at the picture, follows the activity, then flips up the magnetic flap to to mark off each accomplishment. It has been working wonderfully for us, and I think it would be a great way to start getting your child ready to get ready on his own!
A few weeks ago, my little girl graduated out of her crib and into a big girl bed. With this move came the freedom to get up and go potty whenever she needed, to fiddle with the light switches in the middle of the night, and to come and go from her room as she pleased. But she’s not the only one who was about to get some lifestyle upgrades: so were we! As sad as I was to see her finally lose all traces of babyhood, I was also ready to charge forward into big girl life. That is, a life where Ben and I could sleep in!!!
You see, with great freedom comes great responsibility… for her! And a little bit less for us. Little did she know that as much as I would miss the crib, I had also been anticipating this day. As soon as she gave us the green light and the crib was gone, I put my grand plan into action. Ideas had been brewing in my mind for months, and now the day had come. We were ready to commence Operation Sleep In.
Someone in my favorite mommy Facebook group had once posted a picture of a cool magnetic chore chart, but I couldn’t find a good template online. I quickly slapped together my own chore chart, drawing simple pictures of five activities I wanted her to learn to do on her own, then gluing strips of magnets down for each flap:
When she was a baby, all I had to do was poke a cool toy in front of her face and she was distracted from her crying.
As she hit the early toddler years, I found that offering a little snack was my easy out when I was desperate:
Crying child: “WAHHHHH!!!”
Mother: “Here, have a Cheerio.”
Child: *nom nom nom*
But as she neared three, I found it increasingly difficult to calm my toddler when she was in the crying-so-hard-she’s-gasping-for-air stage. HAVE A CHEERIO. HERE’S AN APPLESAUCE POUCH. LOOK IT’S DANIEL TIGER! LET’S PLAY CATCH! WANNA GO FOR A WALK? LET’S FACETIME AUNTIE JAMIE! …SQUIRREL!
Nothing was working, and she’d cry for what felt like hours. In reality, it was probably under half an hour, but it was torturous. I’d hold her little brother on one side and I’d hold her on the other and she’d just go at it and I would just sit there tracking Ben on my phone like a creepy stalker: Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Leave. Work. Now. Leave. Work. Now.
Guys, I know I get all sentimental and nostalgic on my blog a lot, but there are definitely rough days. I guess I haven’t found a constructive and encouraging way to talk about them without complaining or entering an unhelpful negative zone, so I don’t usually go into much detail there. Also, I don’t want my kids to hate me in ten years for exposing their less angelic moments here…
But the crying. It’s real. The inconsolable tantrums. They happen. And I have a new favorite trick to calm the crying child down, and I wanted to share it with you just in case it works for you, too. Because when it’s one of those days, it’s these tricks that get you through the day.
Little did I know when I picked her up and out of her crib this morning, it would be the last. The last time I would walk into her room to see her standing there, patiently waiting for me. The last time she’d be cozy in her blue sleepsack, fluffy and as squeezable as a teddy bear. The last time she’d need me to help her start her day.
I carried her up to our room, “Let’s have some morning snuggles!” I said, hoping I could relax in bed for a few more minutes before her baby brother woke up, too.
We snuggled in bed, warm under the covers when her face suddenly popped in front of mine. She looked at me with wide, serious eyes, and whispered, “Mama, today I want to nap in a grown up bed. So I can get up and go potty all by myself and wash my hands and get back into bed.”
I looked back at her, my mind processing this sudden request to grow up.
She nodded seriously as she saw me considering, “Yeah, Mama, I think that’s what I want to do. Can I nap in a grown-up bed?”
Ben and I had been talking about switching her out of her crib. Eventually. But it never feels like the right day to change up routines that are working beautifully for the family, so it took this confident, determined request to finally bring about the change.
“Okay,” I smiled, simply. I knew the time had come. She was ready.
I’ve been reluctant to write about this because screen time gets such a bad rap. And for good reason. There’s a lot of stuff out there I would never let my kids watch on a screen or do on a tablet. I kept my eldest away from screens for a long time and only really started allowing her to watch shows after she turned two. It was out of desperation since I’d just had a newborn and was having trouble juggling the two at first. But that stage of crazy parenthood is over and I’m still allowing about 25 minutes of screen time a day now, and I don’t even feel guilty about it anymore thanks to one show: Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.
I have a problem. A photo problem. A way-too-many-photos-of-my-kids problem.
It’s seriously overwhelming. First world problem, yes. But still something I have to figure out. Because what am I supposed to DO with all these pictures? Family photo book? Yes. I do that already. I usually make one around the end of each year, but this year, I fell way behind. I’ve always been a crammer, but even I wasn’t able to find the hours to sort through the 10,500 photos from 2015 and turn them into a book.
YES 10,500.
CRAZY RIGHT?
I’ve totally considered paying someone else to do this for me, but really, it’s a job only I can do. No one else can look through my pictures and say, “Oh yes, this moment was a special one. I mean, it may look like she’s just sleeping but actually it was her FIRST NIGHT in her new room! TEARS. SUCH A BIG TRANSITION. It definitely deserves a spot in the yearbook!”
I also considered letting Shutterfly take my selected photos and make the book for me, but… the way they spread their pages, I’m pretty sure it would come out to about 1,000 pages and cost at least as much. Plus, it’s filtering through and selecting photos that takes the longest time. It’s trying to figure out which pictures make the cut and which ones will likely be forgotten forever, because let’s be honest: there is no way I’m going to go through every folder and image from every year… ever. Even when I’m old. I’ll be glad if anyone even takes the time to look at the dozens of photo books we’ll have lying around by that time.
But I want the pictures to be looked at and the memories to be remembered, because one thing motherhood has done very effectively is show me just how human I am and how awful my memory can be. When I look back at photos from just one year ago, I already have moments of, “Huh- I totally don’t remember this!” and “OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO CUTE DID IT REALLY HAPPEN??” and “THANK YOU, JoEllen of yore, for not deleting these photos. Because you were right- those 10 pictures (all taken in the same second) ARE each unique and precious and save-worthy! I LOVE IT.”
I know. I have a problem.
But I jussst might have found a solution.
It’s been a full weekend. It started out with roaring laughter late into the night (morning?) with some of my favorite people, and continued with a family brunch and then a baby shower with some old friends. I’m exhausted and my eyes are burning, but baby shower season (is there such a thing??) is upon us and I really wanted to share this simple but fun baby shower activity that I came up with! Make a game of Memory!
Traditionally, baby showers mean games of baby bingo, smelling “poopy” diapers (actually baby food), or decorating onesies. All cute and fun, but sometimes it’s also nice to just sit around and catch up with friends while coloring some flowers in a collaborative ABC book for baby. I love the idea of making something that the family or baby will actually use and enjoy in the years to come, and I recently came up with a new baby shower activity that I think you’ll love!
The guests of the party get to craft and make a matching pair of tiles for the family to play the game of Memory with! You know, the game where you get to flip over two tiles, see if they match, and keep them if they do.
Magnatiles are magnetic tiles. They are one of the hottest STEM toys out there!
Last week, I sat my daughter down with her box of Magnatiles. Then I went to go clean up in the kitchen. A few minutes later, she called out, “See, Mama, see! Don’t destroy it!”
I came to see. It. Was. Spectacular.
I mean, she’s not even 2.5 yet. I’m over 30, and I’m not sure I could make something that cool. Half serious.
To be fair, I don’t think she sat down and thought, Hm, I think I’m going to create an awesome mansion castle building thing. Let me create a solid foundation using a combination of squares and right triangles. Now I will build a spire with these isosceles triangles, and mini decorative towers here with four equilateral triangles… ah. Yes. My vision is complete. Mother, come hither.
I’m pretty sure her thought process was more like, I’m going to build a crib. And when she ran out of squares to build up the sides of the crib, she made some out of right triangles. And when she ran out of those, she started sticking other triangles here and there and then she ran out of tiles and lo and behold… her creation looked cool, and her mouth said, “See, Mama, see! Don’t destroy it!”
If you asked me five months ago if I thought she’d be able to make that, the answer would be a clear, flat, no. Because five months ago, she had just opened this box and could only figure out how to play with it in 2D. I was a little disappointed, because this thing is not cheap and I had been hanging onto it for months in anticipation of the time when she’d be ready for it, and it seemed like she still wasn’t old enough to really make something of it.
But then the teacher in me kicked in, and I decided to give her the tools to do more with it. Of course these are open-ended toys and part of the beauty of it is to not make it too structured and instead allow for open-ended play. There’s a lot to be said for letting her just explore and learn things on her own, too. But I felt like if I didn’t intervene and start giving her some “building blocks” for new ways to use these, she’d lose interest and we’d miss an optimal window of learning and she’d put them aside and forget about them.
Teaching philosophies aside, I figure some of you might have some Magnatiles at home and be thinking, “Okay, my kid’s kind of played out with these. Now what?” So I thought I’d share the steps we took in teaching her ways to play with Magnatiles that led, five months later, to her building this all on her own!
Morning sickness is a unique kind of nausea that goes on well past the morning, and is supposed to go away after the first trimester of pregnancy. Unless you’re like me, and you have it for all nine months of pregnancy. Through my last three pregnancies, I have spent about two cumulative years of my life in miserable, gut-wrenching nausea. That’s ~700 days of throwing up and feeling awful all the time.
Morning sickness sucks. I could go into endless detail on just how sucky it is, but if you’re still reading this, I’m guessing you’re here because you already know how awful it is and you just want to know how to make. it. stop. I’ve been there. I’ve read all the websites and tried all the tips, and now I’m here to offer some of my own! Because even though I had a stash of bland crackers at my bedside and tried ginger everything, the nausea prevailed. So here are some tried and true tips (and my weird guesses at why it worked) for you to try!
- Get a ton of sleep. For me, that meant 8-10 hours at night, and a 1-1.5 hour nap in the afternoon. I only learned of this during my third pregnancy, when I was a SAHM and could actually nap in the afternoons when my toddler napped. Tiredness = nauseated.
- Don’t get hungry. All the websites say to snack frequently, but I needed to give myself a concrete number so I wouldn’t get lost in an activity and forget to snack. That meant no more than 2 hours without food.
- Don’t eat too much at one time. Eating up to 60% fullness was just about right for me. More and I’d lose it all.
- Proteins as part of breakfast! It will keep you fuller longer.
- After eating food, don’t follow with liquids (including water). I think it got all sloshy in there and made me throw up.
- If you must have liquids (to take pills, for example), then remember to do it before eating. This goes along with point #5.
- Wait 45-60 minutes after your last bite of food before driving anywhere. This is probably why I threw up as soon as I parked the car at work every morning when I was still teaching. I’d eat breakfast, hit the road, and get super queasy all the way to work and then lose it as soon as I parked. I also couldn’t not eat breakfast before driving (see point #2), so the best solution was to get up exxxxtra early, eat first, and then do the rest of my morning routine and make sure it was at least 45 minutes post-breakfast before getting on the road.
- Limit smartphone screen time. Looking at my smartphone for too long made me queasy.
- Don’t get out of breath. It made me gag and then vomit. Sadly, that meant no walks after meals. #outofshape
- Have fizzy drinks (ginger ale, coke) to help you burp (instead of vomit).
- The common wisdom about eating bland stuff was not true for me. I liked to eat crunchy and salty things. Think potato chips and a panini with a nice crispy crust. And cheesy bread (like pizza) also worked well for me.
Other things that likely helped:
- Taking 25mg vitamin B6 3x/day (talk to your doctor about this).
- Taking prenatal vitamins that didn’t have iron in them (talk to your doctor about this).
- Avoiding sugar (milk tea, cookies, etc.(SADFACE)).
Of course, talk to your doctor about any big changes you might try. Hopefully you will never need to do the things on this list… but if you do, I hope it brings you comfort to know that it does end, eventually. The day that baby comes out, you don’t have to worry about this discomfort anymore! Yes, you will be sleep-deprived and tired and feel beat up, but man, I’d take that exhaustion over the nausea any day.
Let me know if you have more tips for beating the nausea in the comments below (or if any of my weird tips helped you!).
The other night, a few of us got together to celebrate A’s birthday. You could tell we were all moms, because as we all gathered at the dessert spot at 9:20pm (after every last child had been put to bed), all we could do was remark at how busy this place was at such an incredibly late hour. I mean 9:20PM. Geez. Party animals.
As we chattered away, someone mentioned that according to my blog, it appears that Ben loves EVVVVVVERYTHING I make. EVERYTHING.
Well of course he does. I’m a perfect wife. Aren’t you?
Yeah, that’s a lie. I mean, I don’t think I would keep many readers if I just kept blogging about all the things I did wrong every day. Maybe that’s fun to read about here and there… but probably not the best long-term strategy. However, in my attempt to share good things with you, I’m afraid I may have given the false impression that everything I do is a win. Hah.
So let’s change it up! Today I thought I’d share some things lately that have been a big fat FAIL.
I introduced playdough to my girl a few months ago, but it wasn’t until she turned two that she really, really got into it.
Playdough is fantastic for imaginative play, fine motor skills and well, keeping your kid occupied while you cook dinner. Look, she might even make you a wrap with arugula and cheese while you’re at it!
Looks tasty, right? 🙂
One annoying thing about playdough is its tendency to dry out quickly. We have a lot of little tubs of Play-doh, and even if we remember to put it back into the tub each time, it still starts getting dry in a matter of days, and that’s not as fun to play with. Of course, half the time we forget and leave it out and come back to an icky, crusty chunk of dough that is not pliable at all. No fun. Also, the tubs of Play-doh are so unsatisfyingly small. You can barely shape a strawberry out of one before you run out!
I’m so over that. Now I can use a few simple pantry ingredients to make a HUGE ball of playdough that she can make a grand feast with! Now she has huge hunks of “bread” that she can really cut through with a plastic knife, and lots of pasta “dough” to extrude noodles with. It is so satisfying to have a huge hunk of dough :). I also like that we can make it whatever color we want (although our purple one pictured above came out kind of muddy looking).
She helped me make it last time, and she learned so many fun things through the process! Some examples:
- scooping and leveling flour
- stirring
- pouring water carefully
- red and blue mix together to make… PURPLE!!! PUR-PO MAMA, PUR-PO!!!
- heat causes chemical reactions (okay she might not totally grasp this concept yet, but it was a great introduction to it!)
- how to knead dough
It was a great morning activity and we still have a moist blob of playdough to show for it. I also feel like mom of the year, so that counts for something, too. If it’s your first time, I’d suggest starting the the quarter recipe and making more in the future if you like. Enjoy!!
Meet JoEllen
Subscribe via Email
Top Posts & Pages
Categories
