Pre-K Energy Busters

During this (cold, rainy, dark) time of year, I find that my kids get a little... koo-koo, if you know what I'm saying! I have really been testing my creativity to find activities to keep the little ones busy. Here are some ideas if you are looking for energy busters:

• Buy an inexpensive kids' rake, and go outside and rake leaves
• Buy a small broom (my kids love the push brooms) and sweep the leaves from the sidewalk
• Jump in the leaves
• Build pillow mountain: gather cushions, pillows, blankets from all over the house. Let the kids make a "mountain" in the middle of a clear space, and try to climb over it, crawl around with in it, etc. You'll be suprised at how many "games" they come up with here. A little tip: let the kids drag the pillows into the room- that uses quite a bit of energy by itself, and it gives them a sense of accomplishment.
• When it snows, take an empty kid's soap/shampoo bottle and fill it with water and food coloring. Let them "paint" the snow with their squirt bottles.
• Bring a few large bowls of snow into the empty bathtub, and let the kids sit outside of the tub and make mini snowmen.
• Decorate the house for the holidays. Cut strips of green and red (or whatever colors match your decorating scheme) paper and help the children assemble them into long chains to hang up around the house or on the tree. Use stamp pads and thumbprints/hand and or foot prints to make a variey of art. (handprint santa's beard, reindeer antlers, thumbprint falling snow, with antlers drawn on for tiny reindeer faces, etc.)
• Bake some Pillsbury sugar cookies during nap and let them decorated them with frosting, frosting tubes, sprinkles, colored sugar, etc.
• Stretch a blanket across 2 pieces of furniture and build a "bridge"
• make a blankie "tent"
• My boys love making a "truck" by stretching a blankie taut between our play pen and upholstered chair. The blankie is the hood of the truck; they use cushions on either side of the blankie as the truck doors. They use a set of baby keys to start the truck, and a ring from a ring stacker as a steering wheel.
• Play cooking. We have a pretend refrigerator/stove and lots of toy pots, pans, appliances. They have more than paid for themselves in use!! If you do not have the toy parts, you can still play this with your children (remember, they have great imaginations!). Use a low table, ottoman, piece of furniture as the countertop, get out some plastic spoons, cups, bowls, various "safe" kitchen items, and play cook with them.
• If they like to swim, and you are able to drop everything and sit and supervise them, play "swimming party". Get on swimsuits, fill up the bathtub, get out the bubbles (if they like them, and are not bothered by them) and treat it like the kiddie pool.
• Fashion a house out of large sofa cushions and a blankie.
• Create a scavenger hunt. You and the kids think of items around the house that fit a theme (pirates, dancers, motor vehicles). Then make a list and "search" all around the house (upstairs, downstairs, wherever the children are allowed to roam freely safely) and mark items off of the list when found. When gathered, act out a schenario based on the gathered objects. My boys love gathering construction items (cars, trucks, wrecking ball, crane, books about construction) and pretending to build a playground.
• Switch toys around... Bring some toys from the bedrooms into the living room, gameroom, where ever. With my kids, just seeing the toys out in a new space seems to bring new interest in the toys!
• Make music with good old fashioned spoons, bowls and pots and pans. Make drums with hands and feet on the floor, furniture, walls or cushions. Find lyrics to silly or seasonal songs on line, or make some songs up about your family members. My kids love when we sing "Where is Thumbkin" using family members.
• Color on old boxes, paper, anything out of the ordinary.
• Save old plastic bottles (we saved our Isomil Advance plastic containers, cleaned and dryed thouroughly) for bowling pins. Almost any ball will work for this.
• Use any mid sized box or bin as a "basket" and play "basketball" with a small soft ball.
• Clean up small bikes and bring them inside for the winter. Kids love zipping around the house on them.
• Put on some music or a music DVD (we all love Dan Zanes) and have a "dance party"
• Have a "parade" around the house or yard. We march around singing "Frosty the Snowman" for our parades, just like in the movie...

Well, these should keep you all busy for about 3 days:) Remember, children have great imaginations. Just supply the ideas, start out each activity, and sit back and smile at the things that they manage to come up with!

Getting Baptized

This weekend we celebrated our baby's baptism. We had been putting it off for an embarrassingly long time (almost till her 1st birthday) and wanted to bring her into our spiritual family (officially).

We are Greek Orthodox, and our baptismal ceremonies are both profoundly spiritual and meaningful (and lengthy- especially for not-so-interested preschool siblings). Our priest is an amazing man, just the type of person who you would want to introduce your children to your religious beliefs. In fact, we sometimes find ourselves wondering how kind, patient, forgiving Father John would react with levity in some of our more precarious household situations!

To digress, before the ceremony, we had a list of items to gather. I, the one who MUST seek out "the best" at the "best price" (i.e. quality for as little money possible) was on a mission. Some of the items needed for an orthodox baptism were:

• a cross with a chain
• a white baptismal gown (with undergarment, hat, socks, shoes and undershirt)
• a special outfit to wear for the beginning of the ceremony (as well as to the reception after)
• a large white bath towel along with 2 white hand towels
• Olive oil
• A bar of white soap
• 2 large white church candles

Since this was our 3rd such occasion, I had some ideas where to begin... When the boys were baptized, I searched everywhere for unique, "little boy" type crosses. It seemed like I could find the more average, nice but nothing that would catch the eye, type crosses easily. Could I be happy with this- nope, 'course not! Eventually my husband and I found a wonderful on-line jeweler, Gallery Byzantium. As soon as we saw these crosses, we knew that they were perfect for our little guys- not too big, not too small (but just right...). And, they were unique, but traditional- gold trefoil with a striking blue enamel inlay. They did not come with chains, but we easily found reasonably priced chains at Macy's ( we found them on clearance, and were able to use one of their 20% off coupons). The chains were gold-plated, but since the boys are so rough and tumble right now, we decided to start inexpensively for now, and upgrade the chains as they mature.

We had hoped that finding the cross for our baby girl would just be a click away... However, I knew that I wanted something pretty specific for her, something extra special and dainty. I wanted diamonds, but not a diamond price tag. We searched and searched, and did find some pretty ones, but nothing in our budget (under $200.00) that wowed me to submission. And then, weirdly enough, my husband was watching a CNBC special about Warren Buffet.... Now, I won't go into detail here about Mr. Buffet, and my husband's love for him and his business genius, but let's just say that if a company is owned by Warren Buffet, that company has integrity. He spoke of his acquired company, Borsheim's, and the value and quality of the jewelery that they offered. I was (like always) a bit skeptical... but, as I reluctantly looked at their website with my husband, I had to admit that I liked the cross that we found. It, like the boys', was a trefoil cross, roughly the same size as theirs; however, this one was white gold, and inlaid with sparkly diamonds. And, it came with a chain, and, it was under budget (around $175.00 shipped!) It came in just 2 days, and (I love it when this happens) it was more beautiful in "real life" than pictured on the website. It is beautiful, absolutely perfect.

The dresses were really easy finds for me, because they came from 2 of my favorite places. The baptismal dress (and accessories) came from Talbot Kids. Although they weren't inexpensive, they were absolutely gorgeous, and sewn of beautiful silk doupioni . For something so special, I had to have them. And, just because something isn't on sale, don't think that you have to pay full-price... I was able to use a 15% off coupon that I got in the mail. Incidentally, Talbot's also carries a linen baptismal suit (for a boy) and an less expensive, gender neutral gown made of linen. We had gotten those for the boys, and guests were as impressed with those as the fancier one. I always find that, if you can get your hands on a coupon, or go to their end-of-season clearance, Talbot's gives you great quality at a reasonable price.

As for the regular dress, it was a no-brainer. I am in love with Gymboree. In the future I will get into all of my money saving strategies for this merchant, but for now I will just say that if you receive e-mails from them, or just check their website frequently, you can find massive markdowns (since they have such a high turnover rate on their clothing lines). I was easily able to find a coordinated (down to the tiny rosebuds on the tights) outfit at a deep discount.

As for the other items, I perused TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning stores and was able to find, again, nice quality items at a discount.

Well, shopping aside, the ceremony went beautifully, without a hitch. The baby loved her "church bath", and our boys loved seeing her get dunked in church! We had a reception afterward at our local Max and Erma's- we like it there, they have a special "party room" in the back, and it is a relaxing, comfortable environment for all ages. Something that we found out this time was that some restaurants will offer you a buffet type meal (off of their menu) and the you can better control your cost that way. Also, we bought a cake from an elegant French bakery, and were able to take it to the restaurant, saving expenses on lesser quality desserts. By the way, this French bakery used organic and all natural ingredients with low sugar for our cake (as well as their other pastries). I don't know if this is customary for French bakeries everywhere, but it's something to look into in your area.

Well, that was our weekend (along with a few meals, tantrums, and sleepless teething baby nights thrown in).... We're starting the work week tired, but content.

The journey towards the mini-van

So, we used to be those people who were "never getting a mini-van". Then we had our first child... Roughly 3 months later, we were setting up our extended warranty at the Chrysler dealer.

Basically the cool factor was out when we had our first anyway. I mean, who feels "cool" on no sleep, no shower, and clothes full of spit up (and a charming assortment of other bodily fluids). Also, you quickly realize how difficult it is to jam any respectable car seat into the back-seat of a sedan. We started out "just looking". We had all kinds of criterion about what we would even look at. At least the color could be nice, it should be fully loaded, and we would have to get one that doesn't look too much like it could be used to take a first grade class on their field trip.

Well, we soon realized why all of suburban parenthood breaks down and gets one of these suckers - it becomes your second family room. You're gonna spend a lot of time in your vehicle over the next several years. You need that DVD player, you need those power sliding doors.. but most of all you need to be able to walk back there picking up Cheddar Bunnies from the floor and saying, eye to eye, "quit hitting your brother!".

All kidding aside, I don't know how we'd live without our mini-van. I mean, we fit three HUGE car seats in that puppy, and still have a little extra space. Ours will probably stick around until it becomes a "cool factor" problem for the kids.

Our gang...

To start, we are a pretty typical American family. We are a mommy and a daddy (roughly in our mid 30's) with three knee high commandants (is that a good description of the pre-k population???? Who knows - up until about a minute ago, we were lovingly referring to them as our "mooks"...guess that's not as affectionate as we thought after we googl'd it to see what the word actually meant). We live in Suburbia and try to juggle our daily routines without letting too many balls drop at once. We clean our own house (sometimes), cook our own meals (most of the time), try to incorporate a healthy lifestyle, manage our money by getting the most bang for the buck, and most importantly...find quality time to spend together as a family.



...and like the herds of parents before us, we too drive a mini-van.