February 2011 Archives

My mother-in-law jokes that husbands have selective hearing, but I think my child flat out ignores me at times. It's a common source of frustration and I wonder what I can do so Kellan doesn't make a habit of tuning me out.

I am trying to make more eye contact when I talk to Kellan. It sounds like a given, but I realize that I don't make eye contact when it matters. For example, when I am putting away the breakfast dishes and I ask Kellan to grab his jacket and shoes so we can leave for school, he often doesn't respond. I should make eye contact so my request makes an impact.

My husband and I also try not to talk exclusively about adult matters when we have dinner together. It's easy for parents to do since dinner is a convenient time for adults to catch up, but it can leave little ones out. Not that a preschooler is always great at carrying on a conversation, still it's important to always include them and for parents to practice their listening skills.

Another thing I've been doing is asking Kellan to repeat what I just said. I notice it helps to reduce tantrums. If we are having fun somewhere and it's almost time to go, I give him a five-minute warning, then I ask him to repeat what I just said.

There are activities you can do with your child to improve her listening skills. What are some of the things you do to encourage your child to listen?

It may seem like winter won't loosen its grip where you live, but no matter what the weather is like, we are getting closer to spring. Hooray! We've started planning our vegetable garden early this year by planting seeds indoors. In fact, Erik bought a heating mat for our seed trays to help them germinate.

Not all gardeners are sold on heating mats but Erik is always game for a new experiment. I just want to have success with the seeds so I can learn something new. Planting seeds is a great way to get kids interested in gardening. Hopefully, we'll have carrot and pea seedlings ready to plant in the ground in about six weeks.

You can start growing seeds indoors easily without a heating mat. Just do your homework on the best vegetables and flowers to grow in your region.

Please share any gardening tips in the comments!

I'm happy to say that after nearly two months of revolving colds and many sleepless nights, our family is back on track again. For a while, Kellan would get up several times a night and refuse to go back to bed unless Erik or I would lie down with him. He was congested and coughing so some nights he'd wake up three or four times, calling for one of us to get into bed with him.

It's hard to resist a sick child, but after a couple of weeks of this, we were both exhausted and sick ourselves. Even after Kellan felt better, he kept calling us in the middle of the night to help him fall back asleep. So we took desperate measures - we bribed him.

We bought Kellan a red wagon for Christmas but never gave it to him because he ended up with too many gifts. We were going to give it to him on his birthday but we told him that if he managed to sleep three nights in a row without calling for us when he woke up, he'd get a surprise. It took three weeks, but now he's able to fall back asleep if he wakes up at night.

Erik and I were excited about giving Kellan his shiny new wagon but we should not have gotten too excited because Kellan had way more fun playing with the box the wagon came in. Seriously. He wore that box out! For his birthday he just may get another box!

If you take a closer look at the dairy section of your grocery store, you'll probably find there's much more than milk lining the shelves. Cow's milk may be the norm, but almond, soy, and rice drinks are just as ubiquitous.

These plant based "milks" are growing in popularity, and not just because people with food allergies or lactose intolerance are buying these products. Kellan loves almond milk. I started buying it as a lower calorie replacement for half and half in my coffee and now I buy it for Kellan.

Since no one in our family has issues with dairy, almond milk is not a replacement for cow's milk. We still drink plenty of that too. Even though milk alternatives are fortified with calcium and vitamin D, the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend cutting out all dairy completely if a child has lactose intolerance. The AAP suggests trying other forms of dairy like cheese and yogurt along with lactose-free milk to get the recommended amounts of bone-building calcium and vitamin D every day.

How do you feel about milk alternatives?

One night I heard lots of giggling as Erik was putting Kellan to bed. I figured Erik was playing another game of "tickle torture" and it would be a bit of a fight putting the little guy to sleep when they're having that much fun.

Later I asked Erik what they were up to.  He said he made planet Earth out of play dough (I have an easy-to-make recipe) and showed Kellan how it's night in one part of the world and day in another using the play dough ball and his nightlight as the sun. Kellan fell asleep clutching the ball.He is asking so many questions about how things work and why. It's not always easy answering these questions in a way that's satisfactory for a preschooler. If you don't give a good answer, they will call you out for your laziness - trust me on this one. And if the answer is too complicated, it doesn't really help encourage more questions.

I'm so glad I live with someone who can think of fun ways to explain something. I'm not always that creative or quick thinking, but it's always a fun challenge to think of ways to make even the most complicated concepts understandable for my kid.

Just recently I started giving Kellan multivitamins. They are just like gummy candy and he loves them - probably a little too much. I bought the vitamins because his picky eating habits made me wonder if he gets the nutrition he needs. Turns out, it's very likely he does despite his um, discerning palate.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, most children don't need vitamin supplements. Children store nutrients so even if they've spent the day barely touching a vegetable, kids can still benefit from your efforts to feed them a balanced diet throughout the week. Also, many foods are fortified, so even if your child will only eat Cheerios and milk one day, he will likely get all the vitamins and calcium he needs. One vitamin that doctors find children are seriously lacking is vitamin D, but the problem is easily remedied by drinking plenty of fortified milk.

Giving your child a multivitamin certainly doesn't hurt. Just make sure it's formulated for your child's age and that you keep it out of their reach. I've been especially careful about that since the vitamins I bought look just like candy. In fact, after paying close attention to what he does eat, I realized over the course of a week, he does eat more foods than I initially thought. Maybe I was worrying over nothing.

I've always wondered how it became customary to give out cards on a day meant to commemorate a saint named Valentine. Turns out the mass production of greetings cards had something to do with it.Go figure.Speaking of cards and mass production, I want to make cards for Kellan's classmates instead of buying them. Not that I have tons of time to spare, but it doesn't have to be anything complicated. I think it would be fun to make origami hearts. Kellan wouldn't necessarily be able to make them with me, but he can still decorate each heart.  Besides, he would love seeing the hearts take shape. Boy, I hope I'm not signing myself up for a late night fold-a-thon the day before his class party!

There are tons of easy-to-make Valentine's Day craft ideas. May of them use recycled or repurposed materials if you want to make your Valentine's Day more green. Share your favorite projects in the comments.

At a recent visit to my brother's house, he decided to teach Kellan how to putt golf balls on the front lawn. Kellan was mildly interested but he was more interested in gathering the golf balls and rolling them one by one down the porch steps. Maybe golf isn't his sport.

Then again, should a preschooler have a sport? We've played soccer and basketball but never very seriously. It's always been more about getting exercise and exposing him to different activities. I do know kids who started playing team sports at an early age and wonder if I should get Kellan signed up for something. He hasn't asked to play any sport in particular so I don't necessarily want to sign him up for something that he may not want to do right now, but playing a team sport sounds like a great way to learn and make new friends.

He still has to master Simon Says so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here. What do you think about team sports for preschoolers?

I was shopping recently when I overheard a conversation between two girls who appeared to be in middle school. One was complaining to her friend that every time she drank coffee, she felt sweaty and her heart raced. She said this while holding a jumbo-sized cup with a small mountain of whipped cream on top. Yikes!

It's not the first time I've seen kids with coffee drinks. Sure, you could compare coffee drinks to cola, and kids drink plenty of that too. But if you compare them per serving, coffee drinks have significantly more caffeine than most popular soft drinks.

What's worse, a recent study found 75% of children surveyed between the ages of 5 and 12 consumed caffeine every day. It's no surprise researchers concluded that the more caffeine kids consumed, the less they slept.

This study makes me nervous as a parent. We don't drink soft drinks at our house, but I rarely skip my morning coffee. It's part of my daily ritual. Now Kellan has definitely become interested in coffee. He asks to push the button on our coffee grinder every morning and he even likes to smell the contents of my mug. I tell him coffee is for grown-ups and he would definitely think it was "yucky" if he tried it.

Still, I wonder if this is an example of do as I say, not as I do. I don't think he's going to be downing a cup of coffee every morning by the time he's in grade school, but I do worry about him by the time he gets to the age of those girls I overheard.  

Am I worrying over nothing or is the appeal of coffee reaching kids at a younger age?