On Toddler Hairstyles

My little girl, as I've stated many times before, is a bundle full of energy. She is so active!
Another little-known fact about her is that she inherited my not-so-great genes of really fine hair, so since... well... forever, we've kept it short. Her hair has always been above her shoulders. Believe me, I would love Princess to have long hair, but its just not in the cards right now. The problem with short hair for active, energetic girls though is that it is always in her face! Ugh! It drives me bonkers! My older sister has a daughter that is the same age, but her hair always looks so perfect. I swear, my sis is like the toddler hair whisperer! All she has to do is touch her daughter's hair and its put perfectly in place and stays there all day. So since I'm not a hair genius like her, I've come up with a few staple hair-do's for Princess that are wonderful for her... And the nice thing is that all short hair styles also work for long hair... fancy that!

The Classic clip-back look

Side pony variation(she calls this her Rapunzel hair) We make this one a messy bun sometimes instead of a braid.

The 'French Twist'

Twist-under pony

Graduated Pony

That's about it! We pretty much stick to those 5 hairdo's. I can almost stick her hair in a pony or pigtails, but it comes out so easily, its just much easier to have most her hair down.

What about you? Do you have any staple hairdo's for your kiddos?

On Potty Training

After some nudging from a good friend of mine who recently potty trained her not-quite-two-year-old little boy, I've decided to write a post about how I trained my daughter. I told her she should be doing the post and not me, but that didn't work, so here goes nuthin'.:)

Now, when I was preparing to potty train Princess, I read a ton of material. Blog posts about how mom's have a 100% success rate with their method, books, articles endorsed by pediatricians, etc. I thought I would have her trained in a hour flat and never have to change another one of her diapers again! Yeah, it just didn't happen that way for us!
I was able to potty train Princess when she was just about two-and-a-half. Despite the many, many things I read about not starting and stopping potty training, that just didn't work for us. When I first tried with Princess, she contracted a very bad case of RSV shortly into our training, so I immediately stopped. Strike one. Then about six weeks later, I tried again, but realized she just wasn't ready to be potty trained. She would stay dry for the most part, but refused to do her -ahem- 'dirty business' in the toilet. I decided after the fifth or sixth 'number two' accident that we would try later on in the summer, after things calmed down in our lives a little bit. Strike two.We were gearing up for a long family road trip, and I just didn't want to deal with that on our vacation.
SOOO, finally in June I decided this was the time it was going to stick, and I buckled down. I ended up sort of combining a few tips & tricks I'd read about and made a hybrid method that seemed to work great!
Right when Princess woke up that glorious morning, I took her out of her diaper and put her in big girl underwear (she calls them 'nunders') and a t-shirt. I told her that we were going to have a really fun day together, and that if she could keep her 'nunders' dry all day, I'd give her a surprise. I had decided earlier that we were just going to spend the majority of our day in our kitchen, where there is a bathroom close and its easy to clean up any accidents. No TV or movies for the day; just her and I and lots of coloring, puzzles, and books.

We headed down to the kitchen and started our day with a big sippy full of apple juice. I set our kitchen timer for 15 minutes, and each time it went off we headed to the big girl potty. I'd set her up there on her toilet seat and wait. If she did end up going- even just a drop or two- I'd do a little jig and sing the song my mom sang to me when I was little. It goes like this...

I'm proud of you

So proud of you

And I hope that you are proud as I am 

Proud of you 

I'm proud of you....

And I hope that you are proud of you too!

She then got 2 (because she was two) M&M's each time she was successful on the potty.  She even got to choose which colors she wanted! 

After about two hours of this, I pulled out her baby doll. I told her that her baby doll is learning how to wear big girl nunders too and I let Princess play with her for a few minutes. Then I took the baby doll and in my stealth mommy-mode, slipped a syringe full of water behind her and made the baby 'have an accident' on our kitchen floor. I then gasped at the baby and said 'Baby doll! We don't go potty on the floor. We go potty in the toilet.' Then I took the baby to the toilet and she went potty in the toilet, all with Miss Princess watching. She thought it was pretty funny, but honestly, I think that's what solidified the idea in her head. 

After the incident with her baby doll, she started telling me when she needed to go to the bathroom. I think that's when I knew she got it. When she started asking me. She did have two little accidents that day, but that was it! The next day she was dry all day, and I told her that for lunch the next day I would take her to go get chicken and fries. That was her surprise because my little Princess thinks that getting 'chicken and fries' is the coolest thing to do in the whole world. Isn't that funny? We even threw in a little ice cream cone to celebrate.

After she was fully potty trained by day, I still put her to bed in a diaper. However she would always wake up with a dry diaper so I just decided to give it a try and put her to bed with underwear on. She hasn't worn a diaper since! She is day and night trained, and I couldn't be happier!

A couple of notes:

• before beginning potty training, I had let my daughter watch me go to the bathroom. I believe this can help in the process of training, but of course, isn't for everyone.
•  I didn't expect to night-train her for a while, but it ended up working out for us; I don't have any words of advice on that, sorry!

 Hope this helps those mom's out there think about potty training!

What about you? What successes have you had in potty training?

On Family Meal Planning

Our family is on a budget. Surprised? Well, you shouldn't be. Knight is a full-time student, so we have to carefully plan out our expenditures every month. I'm sure we are like a lot of you out there... right? RIGHT???
Meal planning is one way we are able to anticipate and manage our food budget. I HATE- okay, hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really dislike- deciding what we want for dinner, starting to make it, and finding out we are missing one crucial ingredient. Does this ever happen to you? Well, it gets my panties all in a wad, so I try to avoid it as much as I can. I have done this method of meal planning for about a year now, and it seems to suit our needs quite well.
Now, this is a simple method, and some may even call it 'old-school', but like I said it works for our family.

Excuse the chicken scratch... I'm the only one who usually sees this!

At the beginning of each month I sit down with my handy-dandy notebook and my calendar and make a list that looks like this. Here is a breakdown of what my monthly meal plan consists of:
1. First, I break down the month into weeks. Easy enough...
2. The next thing I do is write in the corresponding week anything we might have planned that would affect the meal plan.  See where I listed my birthday and Thanksgiving break?
3. Then I will list the meals we are having each week for our big Sunday night dinner and our Meatless Monday dinner. Those are annotated with the boxed 'S' and 'MM's.
4. I then write in parentheses next to each meal how many nights it will feed our family. Usually our Sunday meals will last two or three nights, but some are meant for just one night. I don't like cooking every night, so I like making bigger portions to have for leftover nights. We also like having breakfast for dinner about once a week- its really cheap, and my kids love breakfast foods. So those are listed as well.
5. Lastly, I'll fill in the weeks with however many more meals we'll need.

Voila! There is my monthly meal plan. 
But the plan can't stop there, right?  RIGHT!
The next page of my notebook is our grocery list. At the beginning of each month, we also do our 'big shop'. This will be the shopping trip where we'll go to Sam's Club for our big things and our local grocery store for all the stuff we don't get at Sam's. I leave room in our budget for one small weekly shopping trip that usually includes things like bananas, milk, and eggs. But this monthly shopping trip will cover all the items we need for our meal plan.

Its usually a shopping trip we do together as a family on a Saturday, but sometimes I'll go when Princess is in Joy School so I just have Studley with me. MUCH easier to shop with one kid in tow than two!

What about you? How do you do your family meal planning?

Cozy Comfy Fleece Blanket Tutorial

What a perfect day to make a nice, warm fleece blanket to snuggle my kiddos with! Its snowing and windy, and all I've wanted to do all day is drink hot chocolate and watch cartoons.

Nonetheless, I made this blanket during nap time today. Its actually for Studley for Christmas, but hey, I gotta get it done!

I got some fleece at our local Joann's on super-duper sale, so the blanket cost me about $10. Perfect price point for me for Christmas! And its no sew... even more up my alley!

I purchased a yard and a half of two matching fleece fabrics. I put them back to back, outsides out. Then, cut the fleece ends into strips, no measuring involved. Come on, that'd be too hard!

Then, double-knotted the ends together and repeated this process on all sides.

Easy, right?!?!?

Super-duper, cozy-comfy, easy-peasy fleece blanket!

Way cool trick for making ice...

My mother-in-law is such a wonderfully awesome lady. She is always amazing me with everything she does, and this trick is all thanks to her. (more on her awesomeness in a future post, I'm sure)
She was hosting a going away party for her son and was expecting upwards of 50 guests. I was helping her with her preparations when I saw her pull out some yogurt containers from her freezer. What does she have up her sleeve this time? I thought to myself. Lo and behold, she had made some gigantic ice cubes for her 5-gallon water jugs! Genius right?
Just fill these babies almost all the way full, freeze overnight, then dunk the container in some warm water so your ice will wiggle out into the water jug.
Now you have ice cold water without emptying your ice cube tray or spending money on a bag of ice.  Say whaaaat? I know, I have the coolest MIL on the planet. 'Nuf said. :)
Now you'll never throw away another yogurt- or sour cream- or cottage cheese- or cool whip container again! I apologize in advance to the hubbys out there who will start finding piles of containers in their kitchen. It's my fault.