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Being Confident Of This

Grace for the work-in-progress woman

15 Ways to Use Baby Wipes

June 17, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 19 Comments

As an avid couponer, I am often able to purchase baby wipes for free or very cheap.  In our household, we make every effort to live a frugal lifestyle because we live on one income (my husband’s) and he is a full-time minister.

Because baby wipes are much cheaper than paper towel and other harsher cleaning products, I’ve learned to use them for many purposes that have little to do with babies.

Although my two youngest children are now toilet trained, I continue to buy baby wipes for everyday use!

Even if you prefer a more all-natural lifestyle, you can still use these ideas with homemade baby wipes. They are easy to make and still gentle enough for little hands!

Want to learn how to make homemade baby wipes?  It’s really simple.  Check out this pinterest board for tutorials.

If you think baby wipes are just for babies, you're wrong! We use wipes for all sorts of cleaning in our home because they are cheap, safe, and convenient.

  1. Keep some on hand for guests in your home who might have babies or toddlers.  Nothing is worse than running out of wipes when you are away from home!
  2. Remove make-up before bedtime.  Baby wipes are convenient and gentle on the skin, but do a great job of removing mascara and the like!
  3. Clean messy hands of all ages, even adults. Something about seeing a grown man reach for a baby wipe makes me smile. 🙂
  4. Wipe off the kitchen table after meal or snack time. Since I’m usually already using a wipe to clean off messy preschooler hands, I use the other side of the wipe to quickly go over the area of the table they were sitting at.
  5. Use them on the kitchen counter for quick clean ups!
  6. Help small hands do chores such as wiping off the bathroom sink.  I don’t want my young children to use cleaning fluids that could harm them.  Wipes are gentle enough for them to handle and they are thick enough to withstand some scrubbing.
  7. Help small hands learn to dust. Again, no need to spray harsh chemicals!
  8. Keep a package of wipes in the car for messy hands, faces, etc. while you’re on the go.
  9. Clean electronic surfaces.  They are not too wet, so they won’t leave water behind.
  10. Remove spilled food or drink from clothing before it leaves a stain!  I love taking care of stains right away in order to avoid more work later.
  11. Remove paint or washable marker from unwanted surfaces. Unfortunately, most permanent marker is another story….
  12. Clean off dirty patio furniture. Want to have an impromptu outdoor meal?  Send your oldest child outside with a wipe or two to make sure your patio table is clean!
  13. Spot clean living room furniture.  Again, if you can get to a mess right away, it’s less likely to create a stain that will be difficult to remove later on!
  14. Remove stickiness from children’s hair when a bath isn’t an option.
  15. Clean off pet paws when coming in from a muddy yard.

Although these are the main uses we have for baby wipes, I’m sure there are many more!

Have an idea?

Please share with us in the comments!

Jen 🙂

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: baby wipe, cleaning, couponing, Frugal, Moms, Motherhood, other ways to use wipes, parenting, Wet wipe, wipes

6 Principles for Picky Eaters

June 10, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 47 Comments

We’ve all experienced it: the transformation of that babbling baby who happily ate all of the baby food groups into the terrible toddler who only wants to eat crackers.

 Every parent deals with picky eaters because every child goes through a picky eating phase.

Of course, some children take picky eating to more of an extreme level than others! Our firstborn was easy, our second was challenging, and our third and fourth (twins) offered another perspective altogether.

Nevertheless, how we react to this picky eater phase (much like any other phase) helps determine whether our children remain stuck in that phase or whether they grow through it.

Thus, I offer you these picky eater tips based on my thirteen-plus years of parenting so far.

 

6 Principles for Picky Eaters

1. Decide ahead of time where you’ll draw the line and stick to it! 

If you first set out with the goal of having your child eat all of her veggies and later decided that’s too difficult, your child may see this as a sign of weakness.  Any sign of weakness will lead to a doubled effort on the child’s part to break you – seriously.  At the first glimpse of weakness, your tiny tyrant will “seize the day” and your picky eaters will suddenly become that much more difficult.

2. Use the “Try at least one bite” rule

This rule came directly from my mother, and I find it very suitable still.  At our house, the kids are not allowed to turn down an entire plate of food, especially something new, without even tasting it.  Even now that they are older, every food group must be at least tasted before they are allowed to reject it.

When he was a toddler, our middle child became so adept at turning down food, that I feared he would be adversely affected.  However, when I mentioned my mommy fears to our seasoned pediatrician, he just smiled knowingly and kindly pointed out that my toddler was perfectly chubby and wasn’t going to “starve” any time soon. It was our doctor’s obvious revelation that gave me permission to wait our strong-willed toddler out.  Here’s the doctor-approved technique we used:

Image

  • Offer the plate several times, giving the child a few minutes to try in between. Be on your toes during this phase. If it lasts too long, you’re likely to experience the ceremonial dumping of the plate. 😉
  • If the food is repeatedly refused, take it away and end mealtime altogether. (This step will prevent much frustration for everyone – including older children – and can even prevent irritations such as plate dumping, fit throwing, cup tossing, etc.)
  • Remove child from highchair or table with the reminder that the food will be waiting when he or she is hungry.
  • Cover the plate with plastic wrap and refrigerate if necessary.
  • Re-heat whenever the child asks for food and offer plate again. If your child is very strong-willed and you don’t want to reheat the food often, show the child the plate.  Tell the child if he or she is hungry, this is what he or she can have.  If  he or she immediately refuses, don’t even bother re-heating.
  • If the food  is again refused, put it back in the fridge.
  • Repeat cycle until the child eats (how much is up to you) or until bedtime.  Most children will break down and eat it when they get hungry enough.  However, I once re-heated a plate FIVE times within the space of two hours for our middle child.  So, don’t be surprised if your child continues to test until the process is well-established!
  • Important Note: absolutely NO snacks or milk should be given in the meantime (only water). This was per our pediatrician’s advice, and it makes sense.  A glass of milk is more than enough to satisfy hunger pains for an hour or two, especially for small children.  By caving in with a little bit of milk or even a single cracker, you will undo all of your hard work thus far. (Obviously if your child has a medical condition that does not allow for depriving them, follow your own doctor’s advice.)
  • Above all, be consistent!  I cannot emphasize that enough.  Once we started using this technique, we rarely had to employ it after the first few victories.  Toddlers and Preschoolers alike are quick to learn when we are consistent in our parenting.

*Disclaimer: this technique doesn’t work as well when that stubborn toddler becomes a sly four-year-old.  One day, we set out the plate at lunch time and had to put it back in the fridge.  We got it out at snack time and put it back. We got it back out at supper time and put it back.  We got it out once more at bedtime, at which point my son grinned wickedly and said, “But I won’t have to eat it for breakfast.”  Well-played, son, well-played. I decided to let him have his small victory, but he still went to bed hungry. It hasn’t happened since then. 🙂

*Disclaimer #2: This technique should only be used for healthy children!  Please see the note of caution at the end of the article

3. Create a test

Especially for your picky eaters, create a test to see if your child is truly full, or if they just don’t want to eat what’s in front of them.  If our children are asking for more of something they liked (or for dessert), but they haven’t eaten the other items on their plates, I ask them to finish the majority of the other items first.

For example, our daughter loooooves bread.  When presented with a plate of half of a sandwich, fruit, and fresh veggies, she will often eat the bread and the fruit, leaving the meat and the veggies.  Then, she’s likely to ask for more bread or more fruit.  We make her eat the majority of what she left behind (the meat and veggies) before giving her more of what she desires.

Tip: I use a similar method when my children ask for seconds of an unhealthy treat or snack.  “If you’re really still hungry, have some carrots.”  If they eat the carrots, they were really hungry and they ate a healthy snack.  If not, then they weren’t hungry and just wanted more cake, cookies, etc. Children are often smarter and more devious than we realize!)

4. Use the “take ______more bites” rule.

If one of our children wants to be excused from the table, but I can see they haven’t eaten very much of their meal, or very much of their veggies, I usually insist on at least a few more bites.  I only do this if they’ve eaten less than half of the portion.  Most times, they are able to stomach at least a few bites of whatever food group they’ve chosen to reject.

Start with a lower number of bites and then increase the amount as they grow older.    An alternate method would be to divide the portion in half and ask them to eat only one half.  This method works well with older children.

*Disclaimer: if your child is visibly gagging on the food, think long and hard about whether or not you want to clean up a pile of puke before you choose to enforce this rule.   I’ve learned through experience that sometimes, they just CAN’T eat the foods we’d like them to – it’s not a matter of disobedience or control, but rather an uncontrollable physical response to a particular taste or texture. Again, see the note of caution at the end of the article.

Do you have a picky eater? There's still hope for raising a healthy child! #parentingtips #momlife #pickyeater #kids Being Confident of This | work-in-progress parenting | raising healthy kids | healthy eating for kids | parenting hack | mealtime hack | teaching kids to eat well

5. Make it fun!

Remember when your stubborn child was a smiling baby and you would makes spoonfuls of baby food into airplanes, or choo-choo trains, etc.?  Remember that baby smushing food on the high chair tray and running a finger through piles of goo?  But to the stubborn toddler we say, “quit playing with your food” or “sit still and take a bite.”

Now, I’m all for table manners, but somewhere along the line, we parents often quit making food fun!  If you make food fun, or even the eating experience itself fun, your child is likely to stay at the table longer and eat more of that healthy food you worked so hard to prepare (or at least arrange on a plate).  How do I make food fun, you ask?  Tune in tomorrow for a short post on Making Food Fun! 🙂

6. Be patient

OR…. Win the war, not the battle. Naturally, patience is the last thing on your mind when your picky child dumps his or her plate for the second, third.. seventy-fifth…time of the day. Many of my most desperate prayers for patience were inspired by mealtime battles with our middle child. However, take a moment to remind yourself that this is only a phase.  You may lose battles here and there, but the goal is to win the war!

In retrospect, I think the mantra for all mamas of small children should be, “This too shall pass” because it is true.  The parenting problems that so often seem unbearable today will be gone tomorrow, replaced by a new phase with its own set of problems.

If we can keep the years of picky eating in perspective, we realize that there is no need to stress about our children’s eating habits.  All we can do is our best to encourage them to make healthy eating choices, and then we have to trust God with the rest.

If you’re looking for tips specifically on how to include veggies in the diet without a fuss, read our 9 Ways to Sneak In Veggies!

I hope you find these picky eater tips helpful.  If you have a tip to share with the rest of us, leave a comment!

Jen 🙂

*Reader Kimberly makes an excellent point – if your child is extremely picky, please consult your physician! There may be underlying physical issues, such as food allergies or intolerances, that are causing the trouble.  Thanks, Kimberly! 🙂

Enjoyed this article? Check out this post on how to keep those picky eaters happy during meal-prep.

Sharing this post with: How Do You Do It? and #TheLoft

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: child nutrition tips, children, Christian Parenting, Christian Women, Eating, Food, mealtime, Moms, Motherhood, Nutrition, parenting, phase, picky eater, Picky eating, preschoolers, Toddler

How to Overcome a Bad Day

June 4, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 5 Comments

Some days just getting started in the morning is the most difficult challenge we’ll face all day long.  It’s hard to overcome, especially when a day starts out bad from the beginning!

You know, the days when:

  • the kids wake up way too early
  • you feel overwhelmed by your to-do list
  • you didn’t get enough sleep
  • you’re so grumpy you feel out of control
  • it’s rainy and dreary outside
  • all you want to do is get back in your comfy bed and hide

Overcoming a bad day is hard to do once it has already started!

What do you do when you wake up with zero motivation?

How do you get past a grumpy mood so early on in the day?

Today I’m honored to guest post over at my cousin Angie’s blog.  I’ll be sharing ten tips for getting your inner motor going first thing in the morning. Just click the picture below to read the full post at her site:

Some days just start out tough from the very beginning. Here's practical advice on how to overcome a bad start to the day!

Be sure to leave some comments for us and give us your best advice for dealing with a not-so-great morning!

Jen 🙂

Filed Under: Christianity, Parenting Tagged With: Bad Day, Bad morning, Christianity, Devotional Thought, Dreary, Grumpy, metabolism, Moms, Mood, mornings, Motherhood, parenting, Wake up, Women, Women of Faith

Sanity Saving Chore Charts

May 23, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 24 Comments

Last summer we sold our home and moved to the community that we are currently ministering to.   We were very blessed to be able to move into a larger home, and I just knew it would be perfect for the kids and perfect for entertaining people.  What I didn’t count on was the time it would take to adjust to cleaning and maintaining a larger home!

I quickly found myself overwhelmed by the cleaning projects that come with maintaining an older, farm-style home.
Sanity Saving Chore Charts

I struggled for months with the housework and felt like I was always “behind.”  Because I felt frustrated and overwhelmed, every little mess the kids made irritated me – every spilled cup, every toy left out, every article of dirty clothing on the floor – and I often found myself grumping at them even as I was telling myself to have patience.

I felt like I was losing my mind!  It was as if I was stuck in Romans 7, knowing what I wanted to do, but feeling utterly incapable of doing it.

How a move to a new home changed my view on chores.  Read for great ideas on chore charts for various ages!  Sanity Saving Chore Charts

So, after many tears of frustration and quite a bit of prayer, my husband and I  decided it was high time to expect a little more of our four children.

You see, our children have always had chores, but in the craziness of moving and settling in, we’d become lax in our supervision of them.

We decided that the best way to save my sanity was to create new chore charts!

I set about researching some age appropriate chores since we have such a wide age-span in our family and quickly realized that we had failed to see how much our children had grown.  Obviously they had grown physically, but we failed to notice they were now also more mature and more capable of handling more difficult tasks.

For our younger two children, we chose this flip-up system with pictures of each daily chore.  When all chores are finished and flipped, they can see their names spelled out.

Need a little help getting started? You can check out my parenting board on pinterest for DIY tutorials that I used as a base for building my own.  (Also, my amazing sister has taken these flip charts a step further with some great ideas at her blog Love Notes.  In addition to the flip chore charts, she utilizes a morning and evening checklist and a chore jar, where children get to choose an extra chore to complete and receive a nice prize.)

Preschool chores focus mainly on taking care of the body, and beginning to take responsibility for their own messes.  We chose to incorporate things that should become daily habits such as: brushing teeth, making bed, getting dressed, clearing dishes from the table, picking up laundry, and picking up toys.

How a move to a new home changed my view on chores.  Read for great ideas on chore charts for various ages!  Sanity Saving Chore Charts

They both remain very enthusiastic about flipping up the chores they have done each day, even after several months have passed!

In fact, our daughter often wants to do her bedtime chores (laundry) in the morning because she wants her name to be complete. 🙂

Our older boys have more complex chore charts that are laminated so they can be re-used.  We use dry-erase markers to check things off.  One of the things I like most about the chore charts for the older boys is that they are divided into categories that emphasize different areas of their personal responsibilities.

You can see the various categories highlighted on the left in the picture below.

The weekly responsibilities have options to allow for personal choice, and the tasks in that area of the chart are more difficult for our oldest son, who is 13.

How a move to a new home changed my view on chores.  Read for great ideas on chore charts for various ages!  Sanity Saving Chore Charts

(One important note: the “Taking care of my relationship with God” area is included only as a reminder to our older boys.  We don’t want time with God to be assigned a “task” status.)

In our home, chores are part of being a family and working together toward a common goal, which is to be good stewards of the material things God has given us.

Doing chores helps our children to learn personal responsibility as well as team-work.

For that reason, we do not pay our children an allowance in relation to their chores.  Instead, we reserve allowance for teaching financial stewardship and how money works in general, but that is just our family preference.

However, our older boys were understandably less excited about the new chore charts, and our fairly intense 7-year-old was so overwhelmed by the change that he was practically in tears.  (What he didn’t realize at first is that most of the things on his list were things he already does on a daily basis, like brushing his teeth and making his bed.)

In an attempt to lighten the mood and help them adjust to additional responsibilities, we added a bonus for good attitudes and for helpfulness without prompting – an additional 50 cents on their allowance.

For our new chore system to function well, we realized that we would need a consequence for those times when our older boys failed to complete their chores.  We wanted the consequence to be more of a learning opportunity (“the punishment fits the crime” approach).

Eventually we settled on this method:  if there is a pattern of a chore going undone, then the consequence would be to complete the undone chore, as well as an additional one.

I love this solution!  It simultaneously helps me and provides an unpleasant experience that they don’t wish to repeat. I’m happy to report that we rarely have to enforce consequences with the chores because the boys really, really dislike doing extra chores.

Although we’ve had a few bumps along the way, our house has been much tidier in general, considering we have four children living here.  I no longer feel overwhelmed on a daily basis.  Additionally, I’m less uptight about the messes the little ones make because I know they’ll be picking them up before bed.

My sanity has been restored!  

Perhaps most importantly, I know that developing these good habits now will benefit them greatly as they grow into adulthood.

Although initially the chore charts mean a little more work for us parents in supervising and making sure tasks are completed (or even teaching a new skill), the goal is to eventually make parenting a little easier in this area of keeping a tidy home.

So, if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by your housework, feeling taken for granted as the one who cleans up after everyone, or feeling like you just might lose your mind, consider the following questions.

Image

4 Questions to ask about chores:

  1. Who does the chores?  Are you expecting enough help from your children, or do they think it is just Mom’s job to clean up after everyone all of the time?  Or do you often take on the majority of the work because it’s easier to just “do it yourself?”  I admit to being guilty as charged on both accounts previously.  However, especially if you have sons, try to consider how their future wives might feel about this unhealthy portrait of what a wife and mother is “supposed” to do.  At the same time, think of the message you are sending your young daughters.  Yes, we are called to be homemakers, managers of the household, but that does not mean we have to do everything on our own! 🙂
  2. Are the chores age-appropriate?  If like me, you failed to realize how “big” your babies are getting, you might want to rethink your expectations of them. If you are unsure of what chores are appropriate for your children, a quick google search or pinterest search will return a wealth of information!
  3. Are the chores focused on teaching your children personal responsibility? One of our goals with the new chore charts was to emphasize the stewardship aspect of chores. We want our children to learn to take care of their things and the things we share commonly, such as our home and vehicles.
  4. Are the chores fairly distributed?  Yes, older children are capable of handling more responsibilities than younger children.  However, avoid burdening one child with the majority of responsibility.  For example, when in a hurry to tidy up previously, I would ask our oldest son to pick up the toys. He is generally helpful and I knew he would do a good job.  However, when my husband and I looked at teaching personal responsibility, I realized I was making a mistake. With the new chore system, we really worked at making sure he wasn’t bearing a disproportionate load just because he is older and is more compliant.  Additionally, make sure you don’t put off the majority of the housework onto your children. Mom should have her own set of chores to do (Dad too)!  Lead by example. 🙂

For now I am very happy (and sane!) with our current chore charts, but I’m sure after a time we’ll need to look at it again and make changes. I wouldn’t mind trying out a few different methods to give the children a variety, to keep it fresh and exciting.

If you don’t currently have a chore system in place, why not give one a try? It just might save your sanity!

Jen 🙂

What methods do you use for teaching responsibility and team-work in the home?  Give us your best advice in the comments!

For more great ideas on how to maximize the flip charts for younger children, check out this blog:

http://sarahjofairchild.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/bogo-mommyhood-chore-charts/

 

Also linking up at:

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: Chore Chart, Chores, Christian Parenting, Christian Women, family, God, Home, Housekeeping, Moms, Motherhood, parenting, purposeful parenting, Responsibility, Sanity

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Hi, I'm Jen: a work in progress. I'm imperfect - a mom of four, pastor's wife, discipler, and sinner saved only by grace. I like to sing, read, write, teach, and smile. I have a heart for encouraging women everywhere to understand God's limitless love for them and what His grace means for everyday living. Welcome! :) Read More…

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