I’ll never forget traveling from Rome to Toronto in executive class with a one year-old who didn’t sleep a wink. (I’m quite certain the airline had to appease many of our fellow travelers!) Every parent has a ‘bag of tricks’ and we’d love for you to add your own ideas to our 15 ways to entertain kids on an airplane. Having their full attention for so long is a great way to bond and can reveal amazing teaching moments. Even looking at the maps in the airline magazine is an opportunity!
How do you keep date night from becoming stale? Dinner and a show just aren’t cutting it anymore, and you’re wondering how to change the fizzle back to sizzle? Here are a few ideas to reignite your relationship and reinvent date night:
One of my favourite cities in the world is NOLA, the beignet capital of the world. While you can get different flavours and spice mixes in just about every restaurant, jambalaya universally contains okra. We planted okra in our garden last summer, and very quickly, New Orleans jambalaya became a mealtime favourite.
Cabin Girl and Mr. Monkey have birthdays 4 days apart. Awesome planning on my end. We decided that this year, to make things simpler (HA!), we would do a combined birthday party for them. But, how to combine a birthday for a 7 year old girly-girl and a 2 year old rough and tumble toddler boy?
The answer, my friends, is in Never Neverland.
The birds are chirping and the sun is warming your face. Green grass is peeking through. The smell of spring is in the air. You step back into your lovely home and suddenly notice all the winter dust and disorder peeking from multiple rooms around the house. As you walk from room to room there are house cleaning needs to be addressed in each room. You can no longer ignore what the winter clouds hid from your view.
As mothers, as we have more children, the likelihood of needing emergency medical care increases. Despite all of our work to keep them safe, toddlers fall, they get sick, and they eat things they’re not supposed to. Getting to the hospital can be a trial on its own – but when you’re there, you want to be sure that you have everything you need to make it easier. Even though medical care has advanced, you need to be prepared for a long wait in a harsh, sterile environment. Considering how difficult it is to take a toddler to the corner store, some advance preparation will be required.
You’ve always wanted to try but have shied away. You see the pictures of your friends and family holding race bibs and posting about their latest training run. Why does it seem so hard to just start running? Trust me, I’ve had this conversation in my head many times. Do I want it? Do I want to be a runner?
Caring for a newborn takes gargantuan effort, patience and sheer physical strength. Before I had my daughter, I had no idea how much of myself I would have to give, and give, and give. There was no room left for anything, no me time, no us time, no time, period.
April Fools’ Day is quickly approaching and my family is plotting. Alliances are being formed (and broken), plans made, and supplies collected. In this family, we definitely like to pull April Fools’ Days pranks on one another. We fully support the children joking around as long as pranks are done in kindness, not at someone’s expense, and don’t leave complete destruction in the wake of the prank. And as always, I find the family friendly benefit to joking with each other.
To cope with toddler behavior it helps to remember the basic principle of developmental discipline: the drive that babies have to develop is the same one that creates discipline challenges. That’s why sometimes toddlers are hard to discipline.
