Crib Note: National Family Volunteer Day

Saturday, November 21 is National Family Volunteer Day.  We encourage you to round up your family and make a difference in your community by volunteering together.

More Thanksgiving Crafts

We host Thanksgiving at our house and I have to say, after 6 years of doing so, we have a pretty good system going on. So much so, that I usually get a good run in the morning and have plenty of time to do my favorite thing – watch the Macy’s Day Parade with a few cups of coffee.


After years of growing up in a house where my mom hosted 35 people for Thanksgiving, we, my mom included, relish the relaxed atmosphere. But we really try to kick off the holidays with family in mind and we try to do something special or different every year. Last year, we made these adorable napkin rings and I am telling you, they were the hugest hit. We laughed our heads off (no pun intended). Unfortunately, they were such a hit that people wanted to take theirs home and we don’t have them anymore – kind of a bummer when we host the same people year after year.

But I feel like this is a good opportunity to share Family Fun as a kid’s craft resource. It’s been around forever in magazine form but when I found it a couple of years ago on-line, I thought I had uncovered a hidden gem. Turns out, I was just late to the party. But my guess is that there may be others who don’t know about it either - especially new moms - so if you’re one of them, this holiday season, check it out. They are such a great resource for crafts and recipes geared toward kids and you can search by type and by age, which is really great when you want to do something WITH your kids. Also, people who have actually done the projects can comment on whether it worked out or not and sometimes will say whether or not it was actually appropriate for the age recommended. I will do a post of my favorite go-to craft sites in the near future but this one saves me all the time when I’m doing something for the kids and I have never been disappointed with the results. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

--Crafty Mom

Are you grateful to just have a job?

I read this interesting article today about a study by Monster.com and the Human Capital Institute indicating that bosses are overestimating their employees’ morale. The study indicates that while employers think their employees are happy just to have any job in this economy, the employees themselves see it very differently – by a factor of 30%. The employees resent losing perks and benefits to the point that many are prepared to leave their companies as soon as the economy rebounds. And it got me thinking, if some of the things I treasure most about my job… my child care, my flexibility, the generally nice and friendly atmosphere… changed, would I be satisfied just to be in the job if the alternative was no job at all with little prospect of finding one any time soon? I have to say that despite the fact that my family depends critically on my income and that I personally prefer being a working mom than the prospect of being a stay-at-home mom, for the first time ever in my life, I know the answer is an “unequivocal no.” For me, the fulfillment, value and satisfaction I need to derive from my work have changed, not just as I’ve become a parent, but as I’ve learned more about spectrum of workplace environments. But I know that’s not true for everyone. What about you? Do you feel fortunate to have any job at all during the recession or do you need something more than a paycheck to get by?

--News Mom

Thanksgiving Crafts

My mother has put me in charge of decorating the Thanksgiving dinner table and coordinating a few projects to keep my daughter and my cousin’s daughter busy – both under 4. So, why not kill two turkeys with one stone…here’s what we’ll be doing…I hope.

• “Thankful” Turkey : My daughter will be thrilled to spend a lot of time cutting out construction paper turkey feathers so that each of our guests can write down what they are thankful for this year. And, I’m sure her younger cousin will have fun wrapping the polystyrene balls in yarn.
• Place Cards : We’ll have 14 people for dinner, so place cards will come in handy. We love fingerprint art, so this is sure to be a hit.
• I have wanted to do something with the beautiful fall leaves we have had this Fall so this leaf lantern will make a great decoration for our table
  
  I have lots of glass jars leftover from the canning I never did this summer (well, I did some, but not nearly as much as I thought I would). I can get the Mod Podge, brushes and tea lights all at the craft store.
  
  How to make a fall leaf lantern:
  
1. Cover a side of a glass jar with Mod podge.
   
2. Place a pressed leaf (pressed for at least 36 hours – we’ll collect the leaves this weekend and press them until we can do the gluing on Wednesday) on the Mod Podge.
   
3. Cover the leaf with Mod Podge. You can layer the leaves on top of each other as long as you have the Mod Podge on them.
   
4. After the leaves dry put another coat of Mod Podge over the entire jar to seal the leaves.  (If we don’t get our act together in time, Plan B is to use fall colored tissue paper rather than leaves. Knowing me, my guess is that we’ll use tissue paper…)
   

Wish me luck – I may be committing to a lot more than we can handle. Hopefully, I won’t be posting an update next week that I did all of the crafts by myself while the girls ran around the house or played with dolls, or about our plain glass jar lanterns, plain white place cards and the unused polystyrene balls that never turned into a turkey.


Gobble gobble gobble.

--Commuter Mom

Family Tree

My father, my daughter and I had lunch with my father’s uncle a few weeks ago. We got to talking about what my daughter’s relationship was with my father’s uncle. What should we call it?

I was so confused…until I found this great chart. It takes a second to get your head around, but once you figure it out it is easy to give family connections a name.

By the way, she is his second great grand niece.

- Commuter Mom

Crib Notes: iPhone Applications for Parents (and Kids) V

Here is yet another Apple iPhone application that will help to make the world of parenting easier for Moms (and Dads) everywhere!

Urban Spoon
Cost: Free!


Looking for a nice family night out? Or maybe you and your spouse would like to call the babysitter and have a night out on the town? Urban Spoon will help you find the perfect restaurant based on your needs. Simply select your area of interest, the type(s) of food you crave, and a price range. Finding the perfect spot (with directions and contact information) is just a shake of the phone away. Who said planning had to take more than five minutes?

Halloween Wrap-up and Other Halloween Ramblings

Well, I did it. I finished the costume with plenty of time. In the end, she surprised me by choosing to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I was concerned she might switch to the Wicked Witch (aka Elphaba from Wicked) but I was not expecting Dorothy. The good news was that the pattern I bought had a Dorothy dress in it as well and I had not bought the fabric for the Glinda dress.


I can’t say I was able to follow the pattern perfectly so once I had the size right, I did end up improvising a lot. But my daughter loved it and seemed genuinely happy to have a dress made especially for her. The little one was tracking to be Dorothy as well but in the middle of the week (and middle of dress construction) she received a dinosaur costume for her baby doll from my Mom and she decided she wanted to be a dinosaur, too. Lucky me, we actually had a dinosaur costume in the dress up trunk. Honestly, a Dorothy and happy dinosaur are quite apropos for my girls.

But here are my two complaints about Halloween:

1. Why does every woman whose daughter dresses up as princess feel the need to tell me that their daughter “isn’t really into princesses but for some reason she just wanted to be a princess so I let her”? Aaaaaaaaaack! Your daughter wanted to be Belle? You mean the one who can’t stop reading and falls in love with a hideous creature? The horror. I have two girls and let me tell you, unless you live in a bubble, you cannot avoid the princess thing. And while sometimes it can be overkill, when your toothpaste is princess, your pull-ups are princess and your fruit snacks are princess, isn’t fantasy what Halloween is all about? I think it is so sad that our society has gotten to a place where a child wanting to dress up as a princess when they are three is embarrassing for mothers. It’s not like they are asking to be Britney Spears. Get over it.
2. News flash!! Kids eat candy on Halloween. And I know it’s shocking but sometimes they like it. This is another one. Why does everyone keep telling me that their daughter or son doesn’t really eat candy or even better, doesn’t really like candy? Why are people so defensive about their kids eating Halloween candy? We have all gotten ourselves so crazy that people feel like they are going to be judged because their child likes candy on Halloween. People like chocolate and you don’t have to eat it every day to like it. It’s like somehow if they imply that their child actually LIKED the candy on Halloween then I must think they give their child candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So every conversation was like, “Yes, we had fun but you know we don’t really let them eat candy so they didn’t really know what to do with it.” What??? This makes me crazy. And I’m not talking about really little children and babies. I get that some of them actually have never had candy before. That said, my neighbor’s two-year-old was opening it faster than they were handing it out. And she was loving it. I never once thought, God she must eat candy every day if she likes it this much. Again, get over it. It was Halloween.

--Crafty Mom

Sesame Street Goes Green

This week, Sesame Street celebrates its 40th anniversary. For the next two years, the curriculum on Sesame Street will be environmentally based. Children will learn about birds, hibernation, and sustainable living among other things. I love this trend of characters children can identify with teaching them about the environment. For his birthday, my son was given a Curious George DVD where Curious George goes green. In each short episode, we watched George learn things like how to make compost and what and when to recycle. Speaking of which, I wonder if back on Sesame Street Oscar the Grouch will move from his garbage can to a recycle bin.

--Green Mom

Maclaren Umbrella Stroller Recall

Maclaren, the popular stroller manufacturer, has issued a recall of all of its umbrella strollers sold in the US due to possible finger amputation. Since these strollers are so popular, we wanted to make sure you knew.

T-shirt Mania

If you’re a regular visitor to CNN.com, like I am, you might have noticed this strange t-shirt offering they have. You can buy t-shirts from CNN emblazoned with real CNN.com news headlines (headlines available for t-shirt printing are marked with a special t-shirt icon). I’ve always thought it was odd, and sometimes distasteful. I mean, as interesting as the story may have been, who wants a t-shirt that says “Use toilet before boarding, airline asks?” So I did a little research to find out if anyone is buying these shirts, and this is what I found out: Of the twelve most popular headlines purchased on a t-shirt, 11 have to do with Obama being elected president. The twelfth is this: “Help, I’m turning into my mother.” Talk amongst yourselves…

--News Mom

My Prince

My daughter is a little princess-crazy. I’m doing all I can to encourage her to love other things too, and not to live in fairy tales. She didn't dress up as a princess or fairy for Halloween – she was Ladybug Girl, and she has safari and doctor clothes in her dress up box along with the wings, glitter and tulle. But, she always defaults to the long dress, fancy shoes and tiara.

We recently spent the weekend at my aunt and uncle’s house. They have a grandfather clock that chimes every half-hour (although it seemed like it was every 15 minutes!). My daughter would be coloring, playing a game, or reading a book and when the clock would chime she would drop whatever she was doing, put her hand to her face in shock and go racing off – just like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Sometimes, she would even leave her shoe.

I’m not overly thrilled about her “waiting for her prince” and assuming that love conquers all. But, yesterday, she was pretending to fix something and told me that her prince couldn’t help her, so she was doing it by herself. I’m happy she’s a self-sufficient princess who doesn’t need a man. Where was her prince? “He’s busy on his work computer.”

- Commuter Mom

The Committee...Part 2

If you read my blog entry last week, you know that I am now officially on two committees at my kids’ schools. Given that both monthly committee meetings are falling in the same week, I’m already committeed out. I’m interested in what we’re meeting about. I wanted to get more involved. I even like the other people on the committee. But last night we played an extended game of hide-and-seek after dinner. Then we tucked the kids in and watched “Mad Men.” I’m ready for a rematch tonight, and I’ve got “Brothers and Sisters” waiting on my DVR. I want to go home, put on my sweats, and hang out. I’ve been in meetings all day. Enough is enough, no? Apparently not. I know the right answer; I get how important it is to be involved in our kids’ schools and activities. But after a long day at work, playing with the kids followed by lounging on the couch seems pretty irresistible. What’s the right balance? And where can we find another 3 hours to tack on to the day?

- Modern Mom

How to Make Tie Dye Shirts…with kids

OK, I’m sure you’ve noticed that Tie Dye is back and it’s everywhere. The soccer fields are full of kids with tie dye socks. The shirts were in every beach souvenir shop this summer. So of course, we had to make them.


We actually bought two different kits and I won’t tell you what the bad one was but the good one was made by Jacquard and I totally recommend it. I had contemplated doing it old school and buying the Rit dye and doing the separate buckets of color but then I realized it was way cheaper to just buy the kit. What I didn’t know was how much easier the kit would make it. The squirt bottles were perfect for the kids. Even my two-year-old got into it with ease – a little too much at times.

Here’s what I learned:

• One or two shirts per kid is plenty. We had a stack of white shirts that had stains on them – making them perfect for tie dye - and it got to be too much. So keep it simple and try to encourage the kids to take their time on a couple of items.
• Do it outside and don’t wear anything you care about. We just laid our shirts right on the driveway. Grass would work just as well because you need to wash the clothes after anyhow. 
• Follow the directions on the box. We did and the colors came out beautifully. 
• We did the first few shirts the way you may remember doing them when you were younger, with the elastics, etc. and if you want to make one for yourself, go ahead and do that. But I found that the kids liked the instant gratification of seeing how the shirts looked while they were making them. So if you’re not looking to make a fashion statement, I recommend just skipping the elastics, laying out the shirt and letting them squirt the dye where they want – draw hearts, swirls, etc. Just remember when enough is enough because too much dye looks yucky and it gets “muddy.”  
• Definitely do some socks. They are so fun and an inconspicuous way for even the most conservative mom to get in on the action.  
• Save the gloves for when you have to put the stuff in the wash.

--Crafty Mom

Crib Note: iPhones for Preschoolers?

Curious about whether your preschooler should play with your iPhone? Check out this article (and cute video) by Neil Swidey in the Boston Globe Magazine.

Rise to the Occasion: Easiest and Best French Bread

I’ve been cooking for many years and have always enjoyed discovering new recipes and techniques. Until recently, there was one staple food I have artfully avoided testing in my kitchen – fresh bread. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made my share of breads – pumpkin bread, banana bread, and other “quick” (ahem – baking soda) breads. My experience with yeast pretty much started and ended with pizza dough. I don’t know what about the elusive yeast frightened me off. I think I revered bread-making as a craft that only true artisans and grandmothers made.

Feeling confident one morning, I pulled out my “go to” cookbook – How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. This cookbook is hands down the most useful gift I’ve ever received (thanks Jen!). This is what I love about the book -- when I page to the fresh bread recipe it reads:

Easiest and Best French Bread
Time: At least 3 hours, largely unattended

Sounds perfect for a newbie! And it was true to its description…easy, delicious, and largely hands-off.

Easiest and Best French Bread

YOU NEED
3 ½ cups bread or all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
Scant 1½ cups water

MAKE IT
Note: The cookbook gives a variety of methods, additions, and shapes for making the bread. To follow is how I made my French bread round loaf.

1. Place the flour in a food processor. Add salt and yeast and process for 5 seconds.
2. With the machine running, pour most of the water through the feed tube. Process about 30 seconds. The dough should be in a defined and shaggy ball, still sticky and not something you’d want to knead by hand.
3. Dump the dough into a large bowl. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a towel. Let it sit for 2-3 hours at room temperature.
4. Sprinkle a small amount of flour onto your workspace and shape the dough into a ball sprinkling more flour as needed. Shape the dough into a “boule” or round loaf by working around the ball, continually tucking the dough toward the center of the bottom, stretching the top slightly and creating surface tension. Pinch together the seam created at the bottom of the dough.
5. Place a clean kitchen towel in a colander or round basket. Sprinkle it with flour. Place the dough ball, seam up, in the towel and sprinkle with more flour. Fold the towel over the dough and let rise for 2-6 hours.
6. Preheat oven to 450°F. When you are ready to bake, turn the ball onto a baking sheet or pizza stone. Slash the top of the ball a few times with a razor blade. Spray the inside of the oven with water to create steam. Place the dough in the oven.
7. Spray oven 2-3 times during the first 10 minutes of baking. After 20 minutes, lower the heat to 350°F. Bake a total of 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

--Cooking Mom

To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate, That is the Question

I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted to vaccinate my 2 year old against the seasonal flu or H1N1. I’d heard rumblings in the media and blogosphere that the H1N1 vaccine was unsafe…people were suffering side effects…it’s too new. I started thinking about all the people that put their child on a delayed vaccination schedule to avoid them getting too much medicine pumped into their system at once and wondered if they were doing the right thing. I wondered if the flu vaccine was really necessary. It made me consider not having my son receive either flu vaccine.


Then I started hearing how H1N1 is hitting children particularly hard and that many of the people dying from this strain of flu have pre-existing medical conditions. My son has a heart defect among other things, so I was scared not to vaccinate him, but I was also scared to vaccinate him. I consulted with coworkers, the Internet, and a friend that works at the CDC and oddly enough Facebook helped me decide.

A Facebook friend asked if anybody was getting their children vaccinated. All of the responders said no, but one naysayer also made a good point. The flu vaccine is new every year. Every year doctors have to anticipate which strain of flu will hit and create the vaccine around that. The only reason H1N1 wasn’t included in the seasonal flu vaccine this year was because it presented too late. A work colleague pointed out that until someone could provide a story of a child suffering from horrific side effects from the vaccine that would compare to that of a child going from having the sniffles to being on life support; she was going to lean toward vaccination.

In the end, because of a well-timed e-mail from our pediatrician’s office saying they were giving out the H1N1 vaccine at their next flu clinic, we decided giving the vaccine was less dangerous for our child than not. He and my husband waited in line for one and a half hours at the end of a five-hour flu shot clinic. (They got there at the very beginning and the line was already very long. People were parking a mile away.) Two injections in the leg and a Band-Aid later, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we made the right choice.

--Green Mom

Crib Notes: Safe Halloween

A safe Halloween acrostic for you. Enjoy and have a happy and safe Halloween.

She’ll VBAC

I was floored by this article about a woman from Page, Arizona who has to move 300 miles from home in her last month of pregnancy in order to deliver at a hospital where they’ll allow her to deliver her baby vaginally. Her husband, who will have to stay home to care for their three young sons, won’t be able to be there, and she won’t be able to have her familiar comfort and support systems nearby. The reason? Her local hospital, where she delivered all three of her other children, will no longer allow VBACs (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean section). But the story gets even crazier. This woman, who had to have an emergency c-section with the birth of her second child, has already delivered successfully via VBAC at the very same hospital that now refuses to allow her to avoid surgery. I was even more flabbergasted to read that nearly half of all hospitals refuse to do VBACs because of their “higher than usual risk for complications” even though the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists says that risk is less than 1%. It seems that liability insurance is getting in the way not only of good medical practice (not to mention a good practice that actually drives DOWN the cost of care), but also the most basic, longstanding human event in history. I didn’t have a c-section with the birth of my daughter, but I wouldn’t hesitate to if my doctor recommended I needed it. And I’m not the home birthing type, though I applaud my friends who are. And, hey, when push comes to shove, who really wants to have any type of medical care at a place or with a person who doesn’t want to do it. But still and all, this just seems so wrong.

--News Mom

Ladybug Girl

My daughter’s bedtime routine consists of 3 books, a short snuggle, and a back rub for three songs. Most nights, she chooses at least one or two of the same books we read the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that…you get the idea.

So, I’m always happy when she fixates on a book I enjoy, too. Our current favorite is Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy. 

Amazon product description:
At the playground, Lulu asks her friend Sam if he wants to play with her. Sam likes Diggers, while Lulu thinks Monkeys is the best game. Sam suggests playing under the castle, but Lulu knows that the top is the most fun. They just can’t agree! And then Lulu asks, “Have you ever played Ladybug Girl?” As Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy, Lulu and Sam save the playground from hairy monsters and big mean robots, and have their very own parade on the bouncy dinosaurs. They figure out that when they work together, they can create fun games that they both like to play.

We both love the book (and the original, Ladybug Girl) so much that her ladybug Halloween costume is just like Lulu’s!

--Commuter Mom

One More Reason to Be Stressed…as If We Need Another

Illustration by Chris Gash for The Boston Globe

For the first couple of years of my son’s public school experience, I flew under the radar screen. Not only did I have my son’s bumpy transition to keep me busy, I was also mom to a newly adopted little boy and a developmentally disabled daughter. And I have a demanding career, too. So I figured I was off the hook. But then the president of the PTO moved into the house next door. And guess what? She owns her own successful international business. She has two kids and a bazillion other responsibilities, too. If she could be president, couldn’t I at least attend a meeting?


So I went to the first PTO meeting this year and signed up to be on a newly forming committee. At our first get-together, responsibilities were assigned. I was asked to help with a bunch of research that includes making calls to local agencies with whom our committee might partner. I promptly started breaking out in hives. At that point I shared with the group that I couldn’t do that…I told them I had three kids and a busy job. What they didn’t ask, but had every right to, is “then why are you here?” Apparently I’m not the only one who is stressed out over volunteering, as this article makes quite clear.

Any ideas about how to make volunteering work without upsetting an apple cart that’s already teetering?

--Modern Mom

Crib Notes: Start a Snack Revolution

Is your family always on the go? Are you constantly on the lookout for wholesome “on the go” snacks? You may want to check out Revolution Foods. Their line of organic, balanced nutrition snacks include: Jammy & Grammy Sammy, Pop Alongs, Mashups, and more. A glance at the nutritional label of the Mashups, described as squeezable fruit, reveals that it’s just that…mashed fruit in packaging that makes it easy for children to eat anywhere.


The company’s claim that their foods are “simple for parents to pack, simple for kids to eat, and a simple way to maintain a healthy diet at school or home” makes it a simple choice for me.

Crayon Crafts

We made our foliage “stained glass” and it adds so much color to our windows. We get the best light in our kitchen and we just tape the finished products right to the window. I have been making these since I was a kid and honestly it is such a fun, easy thing to do. And I love anything that gets us outside to prepare for a craft.

1. Collect your leaves.
2. Shave some crayons. We used a lemon zester this year and it was great. My six-year-old was able to do all the work.
3. Arrange leaves on a piece of wax paper.
4. Sprinkle crayon shavings around.
5. Lay another piece of wax paper over it.
6. Iron them together.

In the past I have put a towel over the wax paper but this year, I put the setting on medium and just ironed right on the wax paper. We didn’t have any issues. But definitely test it out – especially if you have a Rowenta iron, like the one I want so badly. I did put a towel on my ironing board because sometimes the crayons can bleed through and to be safe, make sure you wipe your iron off after you’re done.

And then, we had some leftover crayon shavings and a lot of little crayon pieces so we made crayons discs. We put all the little crayon pieces in a non-stick mini-muffin pan and put them in the oven on 225.

15 minutes or so later and we had these and the girls colored some pictures with their funky new crayons. If you make these, just let them cool completely and they pop right out of the tray. It’s a great way to recycle broken crayons.

--Crafty Mom