Tuesday Tips for Mum - making clean up fun

By the end of the day, the last thing I feel like doing is cleaning up the toys... again. But, our play area is right inside the front door (hmmm.... talk about poor planning!), and I do like to give Sweet Hubby a clear run through from the front door to the living area, when he gets home from work!

So my tip on getting little kids to help with cleaning / tidying up is to make it fun (sorry, that is so obvious it sounds silly, doesn't it?). Some of the best ways I have found to do this are:

* Have spare cleaning equipment for them. Naomi is thrilled at the thought of sweeping. So she happily picks up her toys, if she can then get to swish a broom around, while I am actually sweeping the floor. I also keep a spray bottle filled with water, and clean cloth, for her to "wipe" with, while I am doing bench tops, wiping down cupboards, dusting etc. She loves to spray!

* Make it a race. Against Mummy, against a timer, before Daddy gets home, or just to see who can hold the most toys in their arms at once. Whatever you can think of!

* Incorporate something they love. Naomi adores having her picture taken. So I like to take a 'before' photo, and then tell her we can take another one after, when the room is tidy and the floor swept. I did this today, and it worked a charm --

Before:

After:

and not a single complaint - she actively picked up toys, tidied up books, and helped me shake out the floor mat.

For more great parenting tips and idea, go over to see Kimberly at Raising Olives.

Tuesday Tip for Mum - clean toys

Toys get dirty. We all know that. They get chewed on, dragged around, buried in the sandpit, fed at tea parties....

The quickest, easiest and best way I know of keeping toys clean, in bulk, comes in 2 parts.

First, I run all the hard plastic toys through my dishwasher, every couple of weeks. I do this more often with little baby toys that are in the mouth all the time. Set onto the hottest setting your machine will do, use a little bit of powder (or not, if you don't want to with the baby toys), and come back later to take them out. The heat and steam does a good job of killing off any stray germs.

Secondly, I put soft toys that are washable through a slightly more rigorous process.

Put a few of them in a pillowcase, fold it over and place in your freezer. Yes, in the freezer. Leave them there overnight. This is what the low-allergy toy manufacturers recommend that you do to kill off any dust mites that might be inside the toys.

The next day, leave them in the pillow case and throw the whole lot into the washing machine. Again, run on a hot gentle cycle, with perhaps just a little bit of powder.

The important thing is to get them dry fairly quickly. If they are all fabric, then a quick tumble dry is good. If they have plastic parts, then spread out to dry on a towel in the blazing hot sun is the best place for them. Remember to baste and turn regularly. Er, I mean, just turn them over to dry both sides thoroughly.

For more parenting survival techniques, head over to Kimberly at Raising Olives.

Tuesday Tips for Mum - avoiding tantrums

I had a couple of practical tips that I was going to write about today, and link up to Kimberly at Raising Olives. But as I was hanging out cloth nappies this afternoon, one particular thought kept running through my head, and it was about poor behaviour in young children - and mine, in particular!

It occurred to me that I have been seeing Naomi in one particular position recently - flat on her back, making whingey noises, crying. **Lightbulb moment** These are classic tantrums!

One of the best pieces of advice that I can give to mums of young children is to remember that MOST bad behaviour stems from a few basic issues. The child is usually one (or more) of:

• Tired;


• Hungry;


• Out of their usual routine; or


• Out of their comfort zone.

I find it helps me to keep my patience with the whining, crying, disobedience etc, if I remind myself to look for the cause, instead of just getting frustrated with the result.

If Naomi misses her nap, or has an early sleep, you can bet that by 3pm she would try the patience of a saint (and, as you know, patience is not a virtue that I possess in great quantities).

If she is hungry, there is the constant nagging and nagging and nagging (...) for something that she knows is a treat, or that I have already said 'no' to.... a million times.

I also found that, when we had daycare children coming into our home, Naomi needed to have regular intervals during the day when she could play by herself for 10 minutes. If she was constantly crowded, or having toys taken away, games interrupted by other children, etc, that was when she started biting (gulp. Yep, she was a biter. Thankfully, no longer an issue).

So my real tip here is to figure out the things that CAUSE the difficult behaviour in your kids, and try to avoid those situations. Do your best to encourage sufficient sleep, at the right time of day. Schedule regular meals and snacks, and try to get them to eat enough at meal times to avoid the hunger pains in between times (at least until they are old enough to open the cupboard door and get their snacks themselves!!).

With the coming of our sweet Ryan, (now 12 weeks old!), our home routine has been thrown out the window. The consequence has been a serious back-slide in Naomi's behaviour. But tomorrow is a new day - heck, the next hour is a new hour! If I try to get back to basics and have regular meals and naptime, hopefully we can pull things back together around here, too.

Tuesday Tips for Mum - Playdough recipe

Which child (or adult, for that matter), doesn't love the squishy feel of playdough between their fingers ... or toes? Of course, we all know it is a great activity for development of fine motor skills, creativity, colour / shape recognition etc etc etc. And it keeps sweet darlings entertained for hours!

My favourite playdough recipe is simple, and uses only ingredients that you will have in the pantry, so you can whip it up at a moment's notice.

Ingredients:
4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup water (approx)
1 tbsp oil (approx)
Food colouring of your choice

Method:
Mix flour and salt together. Mix food colouring into the water and stir well. Divide the water into several cups and mix up a few different colours, if you want.

Add the oil to the flour and mix. Divide flour mix into several bowls if you are making different colours. Then add water to flour mix, stirring well. Add more water, or flour, to make a good squishy (but reasonably dry) dough.

Play!

Keeps well in the fridge in an air-tight container, for about a week.

To make playdough a bit more educational, and add another dimension, have a look at this website: Sparklebox . They are playdough mats that you download, print off and cover with plastic. Then you can play the various games, which are mostly focussed on basic counting skills. Of course, you could make your own, with addition, subtraction etc for older children.

This is a Tuesday Tips for Mum post. For more great idea, check out Raising Olives.


http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/md/counting/mats.html

Tuesday Tips for Mum - Baby sleep tip

Kimberly at Raising Olives is hosting a new blog carnival, called Tuesday Tips for Mum. It is all about passing on those hard-learned gems of inspiration, ideas or tried and true tips that may help all (or even one!) of us mums make it through the day (or night) that little bit more easily.

My tip is about helping a sweet little baby sleep better. Ryan is treating me wonderfully, and usually sleeps through until around 1am, when he wakes for a quick feed. I then want him to go back to sleep quickly too. But after having been warmly snuggled in my arms and nursing on warm milk, I was then putting him back on sheets and blankets that had gone cold in the chilly night air -- and expecting him to sleep!

I know that I hate getting into cold sheets - so why expect the baby to be any different?? My solution is to keep a hot water bottle wrapped in a blanket, beside the bassinet / crib. When I pick him up to feed, I slip the hot water bottle in where he was, and tuck the blanket back down over it. Just like they have seat-filler people at the Oscars, Ryan has a stand-in (or would that be lie-in?) baby, as it were!

When I put him back in, I take the hot water bottle out and he is snug and warm in his cocoon again.

Head on over to Raising Olives for more great parenting tips.