Over the last few years, Chad’s parents have developed a small hobby farm.  They have sheep and quite a few chickens and the kids insist on going to see the animals every time we visit.

Last week, we happened to be visiting on the day they were having the sheep sheared!  Ava was more interested in playing with her cousins than watching the sheep have a haircut, but Kelvin watched for quite awhile.

After the sheep were all sheared, they moved on to the chickens.  By the time they were done, those cute little light-colored short Kelvin is wearing had mud/chicken poop all over the backside.  Eek!

After a morning on the “farm”, you wouldn’t think they’d need a sleep aid to get them down for their naps!  But that happened to be the day Kelvin learned to climb out of the pack n play, so we had very overtired kids by bedtime!

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Getting kids to eat enough vegetables is a problem that plagues almost all mothers at one time or another.  Many moms have at least one picky eater in the family.  In our family, it’s Ava.  She was willing to eat all kinds of veggies when she was a baby, but then the terrible two’s hit and vegetables fell out of favor.  Kelvin, on the other hand, is still willing to eat any vegetable I cook.  That’s him in this picture with a giant asparagus we got at the farmer’s market!

Even though our kids view veggies as the enemy, we moms know how important they are for growth and development, health, and even for avoiding the need for future acne treatment gel.

Here are some tips that I’ve found helpful:

1. Try serving vegetables in different ways.  If your child boycotts one recipe, find a different one featuring the same vegetable to try the next night.
2. Sneak vegetables in.  I’ve been using The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals for the last few weeks and I absolutely love it!  It’s so easy to make kid-friendly meals into super-healthy meals without them even realizing it!  Of course, I still serve vegetables in their natural form (i.e. not pureed and mixed into other food), but at meals where they skip over the steamed broccoli, I know that they still got lots of nutrition from their other food.
3. Try, try, try again.  Experts say that children often need to be served a food several times before they are willing to accept it.
4. Get them involved.  The kids and I planted beans and tomatoes this year and I know Ava’s already excited to eat them, even though she typically doesn’t like fresh green beans (only canned).  Simply getting them involved in cooking them works well, too.
5. When all else fails….ranch!  I can get Ava to eat almost anything by giving her ranch to dip it in!

What are your tricks for getting your kids to eat their veggies?

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I used to be an early bird…..way back before I had kids.  I was most productive in the morning and couldn’t wait to get out of bed and get going.  In fact, when Chad was working for his dad and would leave for work at 4 am, I would often get up then and clean the house or do homework for school.

I would love to continue being an early riser now…I think it would be awesome to be able to exercise (no apidexin for me!) and get my day going without the company of small people first thing in the morning.  But as soon as they hear me up, both of them wake up so I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

So instead I’m stuck staying up until midnight or later trying to get work done.  I’m definitely not at my best, but it’s the only time I don’t have constant interruptions.  At least the kids sleep in until 8 so I can still get some sleep…..

….until lately.

Lately, they’ve been getting up before 7, which is oh so rude when I stayed up past midnight.  Something is going to have to give.  If they’re going to keep getting up so early, I’m going to have to come up with another solution to get stuff done and not stay up so late.  I have no earthly idea what that would be, but I can’t keep drinking my weight in coffee everyday!

Any suggestions….either for rearranging my schedule or for getting the kids to sleep later?

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For the last few months, nap time has been a struggle in our house.  Ava loathes naps and does a considerable amount of fussing, which keeps Kelvin awake.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s all even worth it, since I don’t get much of a break in between laying them down again every few minutes (and the tiny break I do get I use for paying credit cards bills and stuff).  I wonder that until I let them skip naps for a day and by dinnertime, I have two psychotic midgets!

But I have had a breakthrough!  Yesterday, I was tired (when am I not tired?) and didn’t feel like fighting with her, so I told her she didn’t have to nap, she just had to rest.  I put Kelvin down and for once, there was complete silence!  I tiptoed in to check on Ava and she was fast asleep!  They both slept for three whole hours and it was amazing!

I’m definitely keeping that little trick handy!

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I am eyeball-deep in spring cleaning right now.  Every year, we celebrate the Days of Unleavened Bread where we clean all of the leavening out of our homes, from loaves of bread down to the tiny crumbs in the silverware drawer.  For the last few years, I’ve had pretty good reasons to simply stick to deleavening and not do any extra spring cleaning (first having a newborn, then being on bedrest with Kelvin, then having two children under the age of two).  But this year, I don’t really have any good reasons, so I’ve been busy!  (I should probably use that same logic to get myself on that refurbished fitness equipment, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.  Wouldn’t want you to pass out!)

Anyway…

Anytime I clean I have lots of “help”!  Normally, if I told you I had help, you’d think it would help me get the job done quicker, but not in this case!  In this case, it means I have a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old emptying every box I fill, climbing on chairs to reach the stuff I purposely put out of their reach, and fighting over all the stuff I unearth from under the couch!

Here are five tips to make cleaning with children more enjoyable, without plopping them in front of the TV.  Not saying there’s anything wrong with letting them watch TV in moderation so you can get a few things done, but obviously you don’t want to be doing that every time! 

1. Give them a job.  If you don’t give them one, they’ll find their own and it will probably be one you don’t want them to have!  As I’ve been cleaning out cupboards the last few days, I hand them things as I take them out and let them put them on the floor so I can sort through them.  I also let them load up boxes with things that we’re packing away (and then I re-organize the box later when they’re not looking).
2. Give them “special” cleaning supplies.  My kids would love nothing more than to get their hands on all the cleaning bottles under the sink, but I don’t want them getting chemicals on their hands (for obvious reasons).  Instead, I fill clean squirt bottles with plain water, give them a rag or paper towel and they never know the difference!  You can even get brightly colored bottles, which they love even more!  I also have a child-size broom and dustpan that they use while I sweep.
3. Make it fun!  Turn on upbeat music, challenge them to a race, ask them to hand you all the red items (then blue, then yellow, etc.).
4. Have alternative activities on hand.  Even the most helpful child will probably run out of steam before the job is done, so have puzzles or books nearby to keep them busy while you finish the job.
5. Plan an easy follow-up meal.  I don’t know about your kids, but mine would not appreciate spending time helping me clean only to have me turn around and start cooking dinner.  On days when I have quite a bit of cleaning to do, I have a casserole thawing from the freezer so I can just pop it in the oven when it gets close to dinner time.  You could also plan something simple like soup and sandwiches.

What are your best tips for cleaning with your children?

For more great tips and tricks, visit Works For Me Wednesday temporarily hosted at Rocks in My Dryer.

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I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t quite lost all of the baby weight from Kelvin yet. Honestly, I blame nursing. I know nursing helps you lose weight, but seriously…all that milk must weigh at least the 5 or so pounds my body is bound and determined to hang onto!

So I have been trying to do the 30-Day Shred every day this month…I won’t be able to blame nursing forever! I also take diet supplements in the form of prenatal vitamins, and I’d like to think that helps, too. But it’s very hard to get any benefit from exercise when you have temptation literally shoved in your face!

The first time this happened, Ava had taken a really short nap and I still hadn’t done the Shred, so I decided to get her to do it with me. She did like one jumping jack, sighed and said, “This is too hard. I’m going to get food.” I almost died laughing.

So she went and got her Cheez-its and sat on the couch and watched me work out. But that wasn’t enough! In between every exercise, she would shove her bowl in my face and say, “Want a Cheez-it?”

And she has continued to do variations on that story nearly everyday since then! Seriously, people, how am I supposed to get anything out of exercising when I have to deal with this?!

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Do you know how long it’s been since I did a Works For Me Wednesday?  I don’t either, but I know it’s been a looooooong time!  I miss blogging.  I cut back drastically on blogging to write articles for Demand Studios, but I’m just not feeling it.  Don’t get me wrong, I make way more writing there than I do here, but I miss the community.  I miss connecting with other bloggers.  I miss the happiness when I see new comments I’ve received.  And I miss the thrill of finding out that I helped someone!  I’m not going to completely stop writing at Demand, but I am going to get a lot more involved in the blogging community again.

But I digress…

Today Kristen has started a backwards theme for Works For Me Wednesday.  That means that instead of thinking of some clever tip to share with you, I get to ask you for your advice on a problem I’m having.

And my biggest problem right now is that my two-year-old, Ava, has decided that she doesn’t need to nap anymore.  But let me assure you, Mommy still needs naptime in order to preserve her sanity!

I’m OK with her not napping, especially because she goes to bed so much easier at night when she doesn’t nap.  But, I need her to have a quiet time while Kelvin naps so that I can exercise, start dinner, and get some work done during the day.  So my question is…What kind of activities would be good to have available for her to do during her quiet time?

She already has a bookshelf full of books and a toy box in her room (most of the toys make noise, though).  I’m looking for things that would keep her busy, without making much noise.  And obviously, I don’t want to put anything involving an lcd monitor (i.e. a TV) in her room.I can’t wait to hear your ideas!

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Readers of my other blog know that being cooped up indoors with the kids is starting to drive me a little crazy.  Which is sad because this is only our first snowstorm.  Something tells me we have a long winter ahead of us!

Part of what makes it so hard is keeping the kids busy.  I definitely don’t want them sitting in front of the TV all winter long, but I don’t want them swinging from the light fixtures either.  Here are some ideas for keeping kids active in the winter that I’m planning on using:

1. Get a children’s fitness DVD.  I have to admit, I haven’t tried this yet, but I plan on getting one.  Ava loves doing my workout DVD’s with me, so I think she’ll be thrilled to have one of her own!
2. If you have a nice basement (doesn’t have to be finished, just not really yucky), move your outdoor toys down there.  This week, we went to a friend’s house and she had tricycles, ride-in cars, a toddler basketball hoop, and a toddler jungle gym in her basement!  This time of year, you might even be able to snag a low price online.
3. Turn on upbeat music and get everyone dancing!
4. Take them to an indoor play area.  We have one at the mall, but several fast food places also have them (McDonald’s, Sonic, etc.).
5. If the temperatures aren’t too extreme, take them outside, even if it’s just for a few minutes.  The fresh air will do them good!

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I really should have known better.  After nearly three years of parenthood, I should know that nothing is ever as easy as it seems to be.  And if it is easy, it’s just getting started But I still bragged about Ava’s awesome potty-training success, so of course, it only makes sense that she would regress…in a huge way.  Luckily, I  didn’t include my naive bragging into any directory submission yet…because this potty-training story is about to get embarrassing.

Like I said, it was practically a fairy-tale in the beginning.  She was almost completely potty-trained in two days and was well on her way to being in panties 24/7.  And then it stopped.  And then it backed up…a lot.

Now she pees in her pull-up every single night (I’ve had to start putting her in a diaper again).  She refuses to ever poop on the potty.  And she pees in her panties at least once a day.

WHY????  There have been no huge changes in her life…no moves, no trips, no changes in our family structure.  While doing a little reading online, I found out that sometimes toddlers regress in potty-training after they master the skill because they aren’t focused on it anymore.  They aren’t fiercely determined to learn to use the potty, so they forget about it until it’s too late and they have an accident.

That could be part of it for Ava, but I definitely don’t think that’s the only factor.  At least not where the pooping is concerned.  She intentionally does not poop on the potty.  And everything I’ve read says not to make it into a negative thing or it might be harder to get them back on track, but that’s been really hard for me.  I know she knows how to use the potty and she just won’t.  Very frustrating.

If you have any tips or can just commiserate with me, I’d love for you to leave me a comment!  I’m getting desperate here!!

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Isn’t this the cutest, sweetest picture ever?  This is Ava and her Aunt Ruthie reading books together when my family visited us a few weeks ago.  Since their visit, Ruthie has mailed Ava a letter that included a ring in the envelope with it, and Ava has written (more like dictated) a letter back, but she’s still decorating it, so we haven’t mailed it yet.

I think it’s so awesome to see the relationships developing between my kids and their aunts and uncles, since they’re closer in age than typical aunts/uncles/nieces/nephews.  I’m really looking forward to seeing how they relate to each other as they get older, too…instead of rings, Ruthie will probably be trying to stick wrought iron candle sconces in envelopes to Ava! LOL

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