Believing In Santa...

Do your children believe in magic of Santa? Did you believe in the magical mystery of Santa as a child yourself? Well I will start off by telling you I did not as a child. Never ever did. You could not convince me that Santa was real no matter how hard you tried. I was that child that told all the Santa believers, "Hey did you know Santa is not real?" and yes even some would start to cry. Of course I would get end of getting scolded by my mother later that day.

That brings me to this modern day. Once we had our first child I thought how neat it would be if she believed in the magic of Santa, and I could play along with it. How fun would that be. My husband on the other hand was a Santa believer as a child. Good thing we never meet as young children. Ha ha! My husband had a conversation along the lines if our girls are believers or not and what we will do. Lone be hold, all three are Santa believers. So far at least. Every year it has been fun listening to them talk about Santa, reminding themselves they need to start being good around Christmas and you get my idea.

Well this year, my four year old is starting to drill me with questions as if I am in an interrogation room. I have done 90 percent of my Christmas shopping on-line this year, which means boxes have been arriving to our house. They have been arriving at the so not perfect time of the days. I can't leave the boxes outside in the rain or snow. Plus my four year old is smart enough to realize we don't usually get these many boxes delivered. Lets just say, "helping Santa out" only is working for so long.  She has also told me that we have the same wrapping paper as Santa. Too smart for her own good. Trying to convince our four year old that Santa can still visit our home even though we have no fireplace can become difficult. I have a feeling the magic of Santa is dwindling with our lovely four year old daughter. And sooner or later she will hopefully not turn into the once non Santa believer I knew twenty something years ago. Instead a gentle non Santa believer.  

Books To Read Before Kindergarten & Why Reading Is Important

 We do a lot of reading in our house. Reading to your child is important in many ways.

• It allows you to spend quality time with your child and grow that special bond.
• It's been proven out there somewhere that reading to your child in their early years; like before preschool, can help them succeed in their education.
• Speech. It allows them to learn the correct sounds.
• Believe it or not but reading to your child will teach them how to express themselves.
• When your child is going through a certain state of emotions etc. there are stories out there you can read so they don't feel alone and understand.
• Reading can help develop a child's imagination.
• It can also teach a child learn how to use their solving skills.
• I could go on and on but lastly it also shows a child that reading is fun and most likely they will want to continue to become a great reader themselves and learn to love books.

With that being said I wanted to share a list of books to read before your child enters kindergarten that I had received.

• Abuela
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, very Bad Day
• Bee-Bim Bop
• The Berenstain Bear Series
• Biggies, Strongest, Fastes
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• The Carrot Seed
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Corduroy
• Curious Gorge 
• Diez Deditos: Ten Little Fingers
• Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Buss
• Each Peach Pear Plum
• The Everything Book
• Froggy Gets Dressed
• Frog and Toad Are Friends
• Gorge and Martha
• Go. Dog, Go
• Goodnight Moon
• Green Eggs and Ham
• Guess How Much I Love You?
• Harold and the Purple Crayon
• How DO Dinosaurs Say Goodnight
• if You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• Is Your mama a Llama 
• The Kissing Hand
• Lily's Purple Plastic Purse
• Lyle, Lyle Crocodile
• The Magic School Buss Series 
• Martha Speaks
• Millions Of Cats
• Miss Nelson is Missing!
• Mr. Popper's Penguins
• My Father's Dragon
• Nate The Great
• Night Shift Daddy
• The paper Bag Princess
• The Polar Express
• Rapunzel
• Tuesday
• Where the Wild Things Grow
• Stellaluna 
• Swimmy

Enjoy reading! What's your child's favorite book?

Halloween Treats

Ever since Halloween has been on our minds, my daughters have been asking when am I going to make the bones and witch hats. I made them last year for the first time and they were a total hit. Since it seems that I have started a tradition I thought I'd share again this year the fun Halloween treats.

They are fun to make and great to get your kids involved. Our oldest likes to bring the bones to school for a snack with her lunch. her classmates think their either so cool or creepy. Ha ha ha. You know how first graders can be!

My favorite is the witch hats. They are simple and quick to prepare. My seven and four year old can even help with these. They go a little with one of our themes this year...hint hint.

Next we have the Bones. They are made of out pretzels, marshmellows and white chocolate chips melted. Oh are these delishious and our oldest daughters favorite. 

You can't go wrong on Halloween with these trick-or-treats! 

The Positive Jar

Do you have a strong willed child? This idea just might work for you and your kids. This past week one of my crafts was our “positive jar”. I have to admit, it is working fabulous. I have researched other “jars” that parent's use. I tweaked our jar to what fits our daughters the best.

    First we came up with the name together. I gave them two options and my oldest added another. We choose to go with the name; positive jar. We couldn't decide if we wanted to fill the jar up with gems or rainbow poms. Therefore we choose to use the gems and rainbow poms. The gems are for good behavior. For example,  picking up their toys without me repeating myself and etc. The rainbow poms are used for what are called, warm fuzzes. In other words, acts of kindness. I didn't want the positive jar just to be about behaving well and having good listening ears; I wanted it to also help with them getting along. For instance, if I see them playing nicely together with no fighting, I will sneak a warm fuzzy into their jar. Or if I hear them say something kind to one another. You get my drift? From there I came up with some rules for our daughters positive jar.

The positive jar rules.

1.)Teamwork. I only made one jar on purpose. Therefore they have to fill the jar up with teamwork.

2.)The jar can only by filled by good behavior, and warm fuzzes.

3.)I do NOT take them back out for repercussion

4.)Once the positive jar is full, they get a reward. 

Please excuse my non artistic paint writing. Wrong brush, oops!

    

Bedtime Battles

Our first child was and still is an angel at bedtime. Our second daughter we thought things were going in the same direction. I remember thinking in my head, "I feel bad for them parents who suffer from bedtime battles with their children. We must be blessed, or it's just a coincidence that both our daughters take naps and go to bed without a fight." Well, that lasted till I became pregnant with our third daughter, and had to move Vivian into Evalyn's bedroom. (We have a three bedroom home, so we wanted our two older daughters to share the bigger of the two smaller bedrooms.) We Bought Vivian a new big girl bed and comforter to go with it. She was excited! My husband and I were a little jealous that she now had the most comfortable mattress in the house. He he. Here we are thinking the transition is moving perfectly. We had them all set and sharing the bedroom two months before baby Helen arrived. I wanted them to get used to the transition also.      

This is when the bedtime battles started. She never fought us to go to bed. That was not the problem at all. It was the numerous times coming out of her bedroom. We figured okay, this will last only a week or two. From watching Nanny 911, we would just keep bringing her back into bed. That didn't really work for Vivian, and when I was 8-9 months pregnant, it was just not cutting it. It was hard enough for me to keep getting up from a sitting position. As time went on we resulted into letting her play on our IPhone in her bed till she would fall asleep. Well, sometimes she wouldn't fall asleep till 10:30 pm. We knew this was bad of us to do because, the following nights she would want our phones and so on. On other nights we would put her in our bed to fall asleep watching T.V. Horrible, I know. There would even be nights when her older sister would tell us to give in because shes tired of her crying. This is on school nights when Evalyn would want to fall asleep. About a year of this went on, jaw dropper huh?!

Just a couple months ago she stopped coming out of her bedroom. To be completely honest the only thing that worked was consistency and giving "choices". We finally said that's enough. No more phones to play with at bedtime and no more falling asleep in mommy and daddy's bedroom. We may have had to listen to her scream, cry and throw a fit for a couple nights. She finally understood we meant business and weren't backing down this time. After all she is our strong willed child. We do allow a couple minutes for them both to look at a book in their beds at bedtime. They really enjoy and respond well to that. I will admit, reading the book, "Parenting With Love and Logic" has helped tremendously.

For those parents out there who are fighting the bedtime battles right now' their is a light at the end!

Bedtime Tips for Toddlers

Stay consistent

Don't give up

Give them two choices(worked for us)

A bedtime routine helps (again along with consistency)