Works For Me Wednesday: Gift Wrap

Today is the last day in my son’s life that he will only be one year old. To divert myself from being ridiculously sentimental about it, I’m going to devote a few minutes of my time today to a Works for Me Wednesday post.

Anyone with a small child knows that any gift-receiving special occasion involves an excited child tearing the wrapping paper off of an incredibly awesome toy that they intend to play with immediately.

The joy fades when the child realizes that the awesome toy is impossible to remove from its packaging without adult assistance. The unlucky adult then realizes that the tools necessary to remove the packaging includes a pair of scissors to cut the tape off the box, dexterous fingers to remove the tiny metal twist ties, and inevitably, a tiny screwdriver to remove the tiny screws preventing the toy’s escape from the box. It’s also inevitable that no one will have a tiny screwdriver in their pocket at this moment and the child will be reduced to tears. If you are incredibly unlucky, the toy will also require batteries and fate always ensures that you don’t have the correct size batteries lying around in a drawer when you need them to be.

Last night I was wrapping birthday gifts for David and had a brilliant idea. Actually, it’s a suggestion that I got from another parent a long time ago and it happened to pop into my brain at an opportune moment.

If you are wrapping a gift for a young child, remove the packaging FIRST. Yes, the box is pretty and confirms that the toy inside is brand new. Yes, the gift wrap will look hideous without a box inside. Yes, the wrapped gift will look like it fell out of Santa’s sleigh and got run over by a school bus.

BUT

The child will unwrap the gift, shriek with joy, and then play with that awesome toy right away. No tantrums and no tiny screwdrivers necessary.

Hurray!

I think I’m almost ready for David’s 2nd birthday. Now, all I need is a Prozac…

That’s what Works for Me!

Works for Me Wednesday: Potty Training

It’s been ages since I participated in a Works for Me Wednesday, but I received some awesome potty training advice the other day, tried it for myself, and I am just aching to share this brilliant idea with you.

Little King David recently began attending a new daycare center. The center’s policy is that any child over the age of 2 years old wears Pull-Ups at school rather than diapers because they begin potty training after each child’s second birthday. David is 23 months at the moment, so his potty training adventure will begin very soon.

He seems to be very interested in all things related to the potty. He “helps” Mommy and Daddy go potty and Elmo’s Potty Time is his favorite movie at the moment. He asks for a diaper change immediately upon soiling it and he is always happy to tell me when he is going to poop.

The other day, a friend advised that every time he has a bowel movement, I should dump his poop into the potty and tell him that is where poop belongs. That sounds so disgusting that I knew he would love it.

Last night, he told me he was pooping, so we changed his diaper and I told him the big news. Poop goes in the potty. He looked stunned! I let him look at it in the diaper first. Although he said, “Ewww! Gross!” He really looked more curious and impressed with himself, but I pretended that he was grossed out.

We dumped the poop into the potty and David flushed, while waving “Bye Bye, poop!” Then, we washed his hands in the sink, just like we will do after he uses the toilet.

He loved it!

It was one of the grossest mom things I’ve had the pleasure of doing in the past two years, (or at least in recent memory), but I think David is looking forward to his next bowel movement!

I’ll keep you posted on the potty training progress. In the meantime, this is working for me!

To read more interesting and useful tips like this, visit Works For Me Wednesday.

Why Jesus Loves Sheep

Having a Baby is like Christmas morning all year long. You will be showered with gifts before the birth, to celebrate the birth, to celebrate Baby’s first New Years, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day…you get the idea. And don’t forget the first birthday. Some of the gifts you receive will be things that you could never live without. Other gifts will be things that make you wonder what folks were thinking when they went shopping.

We received one of those “this is cute, but not so practical” gifts when Baby was born and dutifully put it away. Now that Baby is older and getting about, I realize that this gift wasn’t impractical after all!

A very kind, thoughtful, and insightful friend gave us a Feel Better Cold Pack Lamb by Gund.

It is a plush lamb with a plastic ice cube in her belly that is used as an icepack. Now that Baby is crawling, climbing, and falling, falling, falling, we need to use an icepack a couple of times a day. Baby is terrified by a traditional icepack and a bag of frozen peas is too interesting to use on a bruise. When Baby takes a tumble that results in a red-faced, open-mouth-scream-without-sound kind of ouchie, we just go to the freezer and get “Lambie.” As soon as Baby gives Lambie a hug, he forgets all about his ouchie.

That’s What Works for Me!

Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer is in Africa this week, so you can find more WFMW tips at Don’t Try This At Home.

One Step Ahead

For this week's edition of Works for Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks In My Dryer, we're sharing our favorite online stores.

You may recall that Baby learned how to climb the stairs recently. Keeping him off the stairs has been a bit of a challenge because the bottom of our stairs just wasn’t designed to accommodate a baby gate. One side of the stairway is a drywall wall and the other side is a beautiful, wrought iron railing. For now, we are using a pressure gate, but the railing isn’t strong enough to stand up to the constant force of the gate. It’s also challenging for Bonus Daughters to climb over the gate every time they decide to leave their bedrooms, as infrequent an event as that is, and they don’t have the coordination or the gumption to put the gate back into place.

Desperate, I phoned a friend that has an equally challenging home. Her family owns a split-level house that has a wrought iron railing all the way around the living room, which overlooks the foyer and the stairs to the family room in their finished basement. She not only had a need for a railing at the top of the foyer stairs, but the rails were also spaced far enough apart for a child’s head to fit through. I knew she would have some advice for me and I was right. She referred me to the One Step Ahead store, which sells specialty safety items and other unique baby items that are difficult to find in ordinary department stores.

That’s what worked for me!

Hello, God. It’s Baby.

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share some advice on teaching your baby to pray.

We’re a family that prays before every meal, so we never thought twice about including Baby. We all hold hands and say a common table prayer before we eat, and we thought it would be great fun to hold Baby’s hands, too. It was fun, at least it was until Baby learned to shake his head NO, NO, NO.

Imagine the following mealtime scene:

Mommy and Daddy hold hands with Baby and with each other.

Mommy & Daddy: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest…”

Baby: shakes head NO, NO, NO

Mommy & Daddy: “…and let these gifts to us be blessed.”

Baby: shakes head NO, NO, NO

Mommy & Daddy: “Amen.”

We were starting to wonder if our heathen Baby needed to be baptized again. Thankfully, our Pastor’s wife (a.k.a. Baby’s Sunday School teacher) offered us some great advice that has worked for us.

When we pray, we hold hands and we all clap when we say Amen.

It took Baby about a week to figure out that we would be clapping at the end of our prayer. He loves it!

Note: we use this with Baby’s bedtime prayer, too, but the clapping makes him angry because he knows the next step in his bedtime routine is laying down in his crib. That Baby is a smart little devil!

This is a great way to teach young babies to praise God.

It’s What Works For Me!

How To Speak Boy

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share some important terminology that should be known by all Mothers of boys.

As a new mother of a boy, and never having been a boy myself, I found myself lacking in this department. Luckily for me, my Dear Hubby has been educating me so I should be able to communicate with our son by the time he can speak.

Here are just a few important terms you should know:

Grenades

Armored Personnel Carrier

Bomb Bunker

Ghost Turds

Cooties Breakfast Hero

I’m sure I have a lot more to learn, but for now, That’s What Works For Me!

Rocks, Paper, Scissors: A Better Way To Vote

It is officially 2008, so we will be bombarded with Presidential Campaign News for the next eleven months.

If you’re like me, I prefer to remain oblivious to the campaign updates and scandals until October, when I feel an obligation to pick a team and start cheering. For this edition of Works for Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks In My Dryer, I’d like to share a better way to vote.

Ordinarily, my strategy is to pick the least scandalous candidate and vote for that person based on the campaign commercials that appeal to me. Although this may appear to be a very scientific and logical process, I’m sure you can easily see that it is flawed.

Instead of choosing a candidate, this year I prioritized the issues that are important to me and identified the candidate that shares my values using this website. I simply answered a few questions and this website told me which candidate thinks the same way I do.

Check it out for yourself.

Be warned: If you are matched to Mike Huckabee, you might as well vote for someone else. He was my closest match, but every presidential candidate I’ve ever voted for has lost the election. Sorry, Mike.

After you find your perfect match for the 2008 presidential election, stop by Rocks in My Dryer for more solutions to life’s little problems.

Sleeping Beauty

Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer must have been reading my exhausted mind when she designated this as a Backwards Works for Me Wednesday, because I am in dire need of child-rearing advice.

Baby is 10 months old and does not sleep through the night. He has been breastfeeding since birth and is a little boobie-addict. He has been in full-time daycare since he was two months old and he hates bottles. Mommy pumps religiously, but he has never consumed more than 9 ounces of breastmilk in an entire day. Now that he has expanded his diet to include baby food and finger foods, he routinely drinks only 4-6 ounces of breastmilk a day at daycare. He will only drink 2 ounces of milk at a time and he fights those 2 ounces with all his might. He takes 2 or 3 sucks and smacks the bottle away. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes for this kid to drink 2 ounces of milk. Thank God his caregivers love him and have the patience to feed him.

Since he loathes the bottle and refuses to drink breastmilk from a sippy cup, he tries to make up for lost time in the evenings. He nurses with Mommy every two hours until bedtime, twice in the middle of the night, and once in the morning before daycare.

Mommy is exhausted!

Over the holidays, we tried to wean Baby off the middle-of-the-night Milk Fest because we were on vacation from work and had ample opportunity to nap during the day. Our plan was for Daddy to wake up with Baby and offer a bottle of water only. If Baby insisted that he was hungry, Daddy would offer a bottle of formula. Under no circumstances would Mommy make an appearance.

We tried this strategy for several nights and found that our Baby has the endurance of an Olympic athlete. He did not cry or fuss. He did not drink the water bottle. He did not drink the formula bottle. He simply laid in Daddy’s arms in the rocking chair, wide awake, waiting for Mommy to finish whatever it was that she was doing that was keeping her away from him. He waited patiently for HOURS.

Needless to say, Baby outlasted us and we are back to our old night-time routine.

PLEASE share any suggestions you have for helping baby sleep through the night.

P.S. don’t even suggest the Cry It Out Method. We’ve been there, done that, and decided it didn’t fit our parenting style.

Ghost of Christmas Past

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share a holiday tradition that I swiped from a former co-worker. I know that WFMW has been swamped with holiday tradition ideas, but I’m too sentimental not to share this one with you.

Growing up, I remember decorating our tree with familiar ornaments every year. Each one held special memories of Christmas seasons of the past. There were the delicate, lace snowflakes that my Aunt made by hand and the old gold garland that I wrapped around my head to pretend that I had long, flowing Rapunzel hair.

After I got married, the Christmas decorations in our new home didn’t hold any sentimental memories for me. It took a couple years to accumulate items that held special meaning, like the “Our First Christmas 1999” ornament that we received as a very thoughtful wedding gift, or our tacky Niagara Falls candy cane ornaments that we bought for Bonus Daughters while we were on our honeymoon, or the Grinch ornaments that Bonus Daughters got in their McDonald’s Happy Meals and demanded to hang on the tree.

Since I’m such a sentimental creature, I started a new tradition for Baby last year while I was pregnant so he will never have that first Christmas without the old familiar memories. We have started an ornament collection just for him. Each Christmas season, we will give him one ornament that has special meaning. The ornament will include the year in which it was received. At the beginning of each Christmas season, we will get out his ornament collection and reminisce about the year he received each one.

When Baby gets married, we will give him his ornament collection to decorate his first Christmas tree with his new family. As he decorates his tree, he will share memories of his childhood with his new wife. Then, he will go on to create new memories filled with love and joy.

Someone hand me a tissue to wipe my eyes, please…

That’s What Works For Me!

WFMW: Bargain Shopping for Baby Online

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share my obsession with bargain hunting. Like many women I know, I have a gene that prohibits me from paying full price for anything. I spend more than a reasonable amount of time surfing the internet in search of the best deals.

It’s no secret that many folks find online shopping more convenient than shopping at brick-and-mortar stores. That certainly isn’t my WFMW tip of the week.

What I do need to share is a website that I stumbled upon this week that is every bargain hunter’s dream. Many online retailers offer a price protection guarantee that allows you to get a refund if any item that you buy drops in price within 30 days of your purchase. The only problem is that you don’t automatically get a refund when the price drops. You are responsible for monitoring the price and you must contact the retailer to request a refund.

That doesn’t seem like it would be worth the hassle, but the Price Protectr website does the hard work for you. When you purchase an item online, you simply register your purchase at this website. For the next 30 days, Price Protector monitors the item you purchased and notifies you via email if the retailer drops the price within 30 days of your purchase. You then have an opportunity to contact the online retailer and request a refund.

I was skeptical at first, but I am now a believer. I am convinced that my 9 month old son NEEDS the Hasbro Tonka Scoot-N-Scoop 3-in-1 Ride On Toy for Christmas. I looked everywhere for this item and most retailers are selling it for $39.99. The best prices I found online were $34.99 at Walmart with free site to store shipping or $34.99 at Amazon with free shipping. I waited for weeks to order this item because saving $5 online didn’t feel good enough to me. I was convinced that this item would go on sale before Christmas, but I started to get nervous when the price didn’t drop. I needed to order in time for delivery before Christmas Day, so I decided to bite the bullet and order at Amazon. I decided the free shipping was a bonus because I didn’t have to drive to the store and I was still saving $5 compared to other prices I had found.

Just for amusement, I registered my purchase at Price Protector. One week later, I got an email that the price had dropped to $20.99. I sent an email to Amazon and they refunded $14 to my credit card within one hour. Hurray!

The next day, I got another email from Price Protector. The price dropped again to $17.50. I sent another email to Amazon and got an additional refund of $3.49.

So, I was able to get a total refund of $17.49 and I saved $11 on shipping because the original purchase price was high enough to qualify for Amazon’s free shipping offer. I saved a total of $28.49 on this toy.

Now, that’s the kind of shopping that makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

That’s What Works For Me!

WFMW:WDIFE Part II

While I was hanging out at Rocks In My Dryer reading all the Works For Me Wednesday posts, I remembered a super-fast recipe that my family loves that I forgot to share. I stole this idea from a recipe card that I received in the mail with one of the zillion free baby stuff packages that we got in those blurry days right after Baby's birth.

Ingredients:

2 cups Chicken, cooked and diced

1 jar Salsa

2 cups Rice

1. Heat chicken and salsa in skillet.

2. Serve over rice.

3. Top with grated cheddar cheese and sour cream (optional)

This dish is so easy, fast, and yummy. How did I let this one slip my mind?

Enjoy!

WFMW:WDIFE

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share my last-minute cooking tips. Be warned, I’m not sharing because I am a culinary master, I’m simply sharing because this is Works-For-Me Wednesday: The What-Do-I-Fix? Edition.

It's 5:15 pm, the kids are hungry, I have a headache, hubby is almost home, and the pantry has three things in it. What do I make?

Honestly, my first choice is to pick up take-out from Kuhar’s Restaurant down the street. Their specialty is homestyle European cooking, including favorites such as Hungarian Ghoulash, Viener Schnitzel, Chicken Paprikash, and Stuffed Cabbage, just to name a few. Since all their dinners average $7 per person and include a veggie, side dish, salad and bread, I’m wondering why we cook at all.

If that’s not an option, Hubby has a recipe that he throws together when we’re short on time and starving. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Germany and Austria during World War II, so he ate European style foods growing up. As a child, he remembers visiting his Oma in Austria and eating this dish.

Chris’ Famous Knockwurst
Ingredients:

4 Knockwurst

½ Medium White Onion, finely chopped

4 Tbsp Olive Oil

4 Tbsp White Vinegar

1. Remove the skin from the Knockwurst and slice as thinly as humanly possible
2. Layer slices of Knockwurst on a platter
3. Top with finely chopped onion
4. Drizzle with equal parts olive oil and white vinegar
5. Serve

We eat this with European style seedless rye bread. Dip the bread into the olive oil and vinegar, and scoop knockwurst onto the bread. Repeat until the button pops off your pants.

I also like this dish with any type of mustard. We typically serve this with a side of mac-n-cheese and green beans.

It took me a while to grow fond of this new dish, but now That’s What Works For Me!

Reason for the Season

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks in My Dryer, I’d like to share a brilliant idea that I had for a new family Christmas tradition that could be used to teach young children about the meaning of the holiday. I suppose the term “brilliant” might be an exaggeration, but considering the fact that I’m suffering from Mommy Brain, I’m fairly impressed with my creativity on this one.

For years, we’ve been deprived of the Christmas cookie tradition because Bonus Daughters bake cookies every year with their mother and bestow upon us a 10 pound tray of unnecessary calories every holiday. It just doesn’t make sense to bake more cookies, so I’ve never had the pleasure of baking during the holiday season during my married life. I can’t say that I’ve mourned the loss of this tradition since I’d rather cook than bake, but I don’t want Baby to be deprived of this happy Christmas memory.

Since Bonus Daughters have taken care of the cookie baking for me, I decided to start a new tradition with Baby this year. We are going to bake Birthday cupcakes. On Christmas morning, we will put a birthday candle in each cupcake and sing the Happy Birthday song for Jesus.

Birthday cake and cupcakes are a tradition that a young child can easily relate to and understand. Eating cupcakes for breakfast is definitely a treat and something a young child would look forward to in anticipation. It’s also more fun than choking down stale cornflakes before you are allowed to open any gifts, but that’s a disturbing memory from my childhood that I’m working through in therapy.

I’m hoping this new family tradition will help Baby understand the Reason for the Season and remind us all that we are celebrating the birth of our Savior.

That’s What Works for Me!

Leave a comment and share some of your favorite holiday traditions.

I’d love to hear your suggestions for making our family holidays memorable!

Gift Idea for Dads

For this week’s edition of Works For Me Wednesday, hosted by Rocks In My Dryer, I’d like to share the most brilliant idea for a birthday gift that I have ever had and possibly the best idea I could ever hope to have in my lifetime.

Do you crumble under the pressure of trying to think of the most spectacular and unforgettable birthday gift ever? I do and that’s why I was shocked that I thought of the following project for the kids to gift to my dear Hubby on his 40th birthday (out of respect for him, I won’t tell you how long ago we did this).

Our family purchased our first camcorder shortly before his birthday, so the kids decided to make a movie for him. They based it on a news broadcast and wrote a script for news anchors, reporters, and witnesses. We set up a news desk in the basement and the kids made posters to announce each news segment. The news segments included The Life of Dad, All About Dad, My Memories of Dad, and Life Lessons from Dad. The kids took turns interviewing each other and the results were hilarious.

Some of the most memorable excerpts from the news broadcast include:

When youngest daughter was asked to name Dad’s favorite movie, she said, “Dad loves XXX.” She meant the action movie staring Vin Diesel, not porn.

When asked the most important thing Dad ever told her about life, youngest daughter stated, “Man that goes to bed with itchy butt wakes up with smelly finger.”

The kids had just gotten a new kitten, so you can hear the cat meowing loudly in the background because she was locked out of the room during filming. As the camera fades out from scene to scene, you can hear oldest daughter screaming, “Someone make that stupid cat shut up already!” She evidently didn’t know that we were still recording.

The news broadcast included commercials for products that Dads might like, such as air freshener for farts and miracle couch cushions that bounce back into shape automatically after teenagers lounge all over them.

Unexpected breaking news interrupted the broadcast when youngest daughter accidentally poked oldest daughter in the eye. We later interrupted the scheduled programming to report that oldest daughter would not require medical attention and that the sisters had called a truce for Dad’s sake.

We gave the DVD to my husband for his 40th birthday and it is still a great source of amusement for him and a tremendous source of embarrassment for our girls.

That’s What Worked For Me!

P.S. Feel free to leave a comment with ideas for Christmas gifts for dads! After 8 years of marriage, my mind is blank. What should I get for hubby this year?

More Time for Romance

I’ve been a huge fan of Works for Me Wednesday, sponsored by Rocks In My Dryer, and I finally have some advice to share and a blog to share it in. Hurray!

Since our baby is only seven months old, our typical evening looks a little something like this:

Mommy picks up Baby from daycare.

Mommy and Daddy get home from work.

Daddy opens the mail, washes the daycare bottles, washes the milk storage bottles, washes the breastpump parts, and packs Baby’s lunch box for the next day.

Mommy nurses the Baby, changes his diaper, and prays that he will take a 30 minute nap so she can change her clothes and go potty.

Mommy and Daddy cook dinner.

Baby sleeps or entertains himself with the egg beater and potato masher while Mommy and Daddy do chores.

Mommy and Daddy eat dinner while Baby drops toys off the side of his highchair tray, enthusiastically exclaiming “UH, OH!” everytime one of them hits the floor. The louder the better.

Mommy washes dinner dishes while Daddy feeds the Baby as much fruit as he can and as little vegetables as he can without getting a lecture on nutrition from Mommy.

Mommy and Daddy play with the Baby.

Baby goes to bed.

Mommy and Daddy go to bed.

Repeat everyday until Baby goes to college.

If you’re still reading this, you might be wondering if I have a point. My point is, our lives are incredibly tedious and mundane and we often get frustrated that we don’t have enough time to pursue other interests, like exercise and laundry. Since we spend so much time on chores after work, I wanted to find a way to get our chores done quickly so we could actually enjoy some time with each other before we collapse into bed at the end of the day.

This was my brilliant idea:

We make a monthly dinner menu so we only have to go grocery shopping every two weeks and we only buy what we NEED, not everything we have used since the last trip to the store. (my husband’s mother lived through the great depression and WWII in Nazi Germany, so he acquired her tendency to stock up, stock up, stock up)

This month, instead of planning 30 days of meals, I have planned to cook one BIG meal and have leftovers the next day. So, instead of cooking 30 times a month, we will only have to cook dinner 15 times a month. If you also consider that we are celebrating Thanksgiving in November and my mother-in-law always cooks dinner and always makes us take leftovers home with us, we will only have to cook 14 times!

Just imagine all the things we could do with our newly-discovered spare time! I might have to shave my legs this month…

That’s What Works For Me!!