Parenting Tips Archives | Page 18 of 19

Friday Favorite – Making it comfortable for me to give kids baths

When people ask me what my favorite baby products this one tops my list. It is the Infantino Tubsider. I seriously cannot imagine giving my kids their baths without this seat. It makes it enjoyable for me and gives them more time in the tub so Win- Win!

I had no idea this product even existed so when I was strolling through Homegoods 7 years ago I saw it and just had to buy it. Now I am on a mission to tell all moms that this thing needs to be on every baby registry. This is going to probably sound like an ad for this product but I promise they have no idea I even exist. 🙂 When I give baths without it my knees and back are killing me. How do people give baths without this thing?

Here is their lovely model…

I went upstairs to the kids bathroom to take a picture of ours and after 7 years of it being beside the tub it is looking nasty so I’ll spare you. Let’s pretend our bathroom looks sparkly clean like the one above. 🙂

I found this at our Homegoods 7 years ago and I just found out they no longer make it but you can find it on EBay.

Here is a link to the place to purchase. I need to stock up on these to give them to friends having babies.

Bow Bootcamp – How I Got My Little Girl to Wear Bows

by Carolyn 4 Comments

Let’s just say I was sort of tomboy growing up, well…maybe I was a major tomboy. 🙂 I hated dresses, bows or anything girly. But in a fit of hypocrisy, I wanted my little girl to wear bows and not pull them out as soon as I put them in her hair.

I had 2 sisters and no brothers so my parents were just fine with me being into sports, jeans and tennis shoes. Then I had 2 boys and it made me long for girly things. Bows, pink, dresses and dolls where do I sign up?!?! Four years later, I was blessed with a little girl and I got to play and dress her in anything I wanted, until the toddler years.

[Read more…]

Fennell Family Life plus Weekly Goals

by Carolyn 2 Comments

This weekend was so great for my boys. We took a day trip to go visit our yellow lab, Dixie, who is at hunting school. She has been there almost 6 weeks now and we were really missing her and wanted to make sure she knew that we are still her family. While my husband doesn’t hunt very much, my father does and wanted to her to become trained to go with him when bird hunting. I was all for it so that she would become a well trained dog. I think she has a few more weeks before she will come home and rejoin our family. We are all missing her terribly, I think my husband wanted to dog-nap her to bring her home with us.

It was a beautiful area where the training school is located. We played with Dixie at the kennel and then took her on a long walk through the fields and the horses would all come up to the fences to have us pet them. It was so fun. But we were surprised at how emotional our boys were when it was time to leave. They both were very upset which was good to see because my boys are not the most emotional kids. I like when they open their hearts.

This week will be full of prep for the Thanksgiving Holiday. We go visit my parents at their beach house for the week. I can’t wait to see lots of aunts and cousins.

This weeks goals:

Family

Go eat lunch with my boys at school
Set up a date night. We haven’t been out just the two of us in a couple months and we need it.

House/Home

Order Britton’s Birthday Cake
Order Christmas Cards

Blog

Link up with 6 Blog Hops. I would like to get some readers, it will be more fun to write if I know that someone is reading. Hi there, if anyone is reading this. 🙂
Write a Thanksgiving post that links to my 5 favorite posts to have up during the week of Thanksgiving. I will take the week of Thanksgiving off.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Friday Favorites – Water Bottles

by Carolyn 2 Comments

When you are a Mom to kids who are getting into sports you realize your water bottle needs change quickly.

First – they all go missing….ALL THE TIME!

Second – you stop worrying so much about quality

Third – you find a kind you can live with the quality/cost and stock up on a bunch of them.

I used to buy the Thermos brand. I liked that they didn’t sweat and they were well made and great for not getting things wet in their lunch boxes. My daughter has one and they work great for when I am still in control of their backpacks and getting them to and from their activities and school so I can make sure we don’t leave without it.

Here is my daughters…

Then your kids grow a little and their sports practices become so often that the parents finally say to each other “This is crazy for us to all be driving here every day…Let’s Carpool!” This is awesome in so many ways except the one negative. The kids become responsible for their own sports gear and getting it off the field and into the car of their ride home. I don’t know about your kids but my kids have no sense of responsibility. We start missing random things like a shin guard or ball or the most often is water bottles.

We have been through a bunch of water bottles and this one is my new favorite.

Here are my reasons why I love it the best (as of this week).

simple, only 2 pieces
large enough for all the water they need
doesn’t have a lid that could potentially not be closed properly and leak
cheap enough that I can buy a bunch to keep on hand and not be completely annoyed when they lose one.

Moving on to these type of water bottles makes me feel like my boys have grown up….no more characters. 🙁

If you want to purchase these you can use my affiliate links.

What type of water bottles do you use?

Fennell Family Fun – School Pictures

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

I feel like we are in picture overload here in our house. We had professional portraits taken a week ago that turned out so great, I can’t wait to upload some pictures here. Then the very next day my boys had their school pictures so I decided not to order them since I was going to have the family ones. My boys are well known for not smiling at all so I thought they would be terrible. Well, they sent home the proofs to give us a final chance to order them and they are fantastic.

Here are pictures of the pictures so poor quality.

So now I have spent the money on the professional pictures and now an extra amount on the school pictures. Britton had hers this week as well but I haven’t seen the results of those so that could cost me a pretty penny as well.

Why do they charge so much for school pictures now? Well, of course, they want to make money, but with having 3 kids it is just crazy when the smallest package starts at $35. We went from not having any professional pictures for at least a year, to having a boatload of pictures all at once. I guess I won’t be to sad one day to have lots of pictures of the kids but I will be sad to look at our bank account at the end of the month. Ha!

Friday Favorite – Preschool Scissors

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Is your preschooler still holding their scissors funny while cutting? My little girl was having the toughest time and the more I try to correct her grip the angrier she became and she wouldn’t want to cut anymore. Funny how that happens when working with 3 year olds. Ha! I found some preschool scissors that have really helped.

See that little yellow thing between the handles? They have a little spring mechanism that helps the scissors reopen after she cuts the paper. That was the toughest part for her and made her want to hold the scissors incorrectly. These scissors come in the craft box by Alex. Ready, Set, Cut. Here is the craft box I purchased.

Now the scissors will only cut the thicker paper that comes in the box. I am sure once we are finished with the cute projects in the box I can find some thicker cardstock that she can continue to use these. She is finally starting to think that cutting is fun and learning the proper technique.

Fennell Family Fun – Our Soccer Season

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Like I have said before, I am an over-scheduler when it comes to kids activities. I like them to keep active and learn as many skills as possible. Maybe this is because I dedicated myself to one sport very young and while I was very successful I wonder if I could have done other sports (especially team sports) too.

This past weekend my daughter who is 3 had a soccer game and my boys had one soccer game. Next weekend my daughter has 1 game and my boys have….3 games!! That is maybe a little more than they can physically handle.

A few weeks ago they did a soccer tournament and had 4 games in 2 days and by the last game they looked like they couldn’t move. They were basically just kicking the ball out of bounds just so they could stop running. We will see how it goes this time.

Since this is our first season of playing more than just once a week I need to make sure I have the right sideline gear and some of the fields are far from the parking lot so I am considering purchasing a collapsible wagon to keep in our trunk to carry all our chairs, blanket, toys for Britton etc. Has anyone bought one of these and have a certain brand they like? Man…I just clicked over to Amazon to start looking at the wagons and I didn’t realize how expensive they were! Some are $150! I think this one is more in our price range. 🙂

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! It was definitely our best yet. Our neighborhood had a pre-trick or treat party and then everyone started together and the boys had a blast running from house to house with all their friends. Britton had fun and was ready to go home after about 45 mins which was plenty long enough for me too. We then had a bunch of neighbors hang out in our driveway and my neighbor brought a ton of food over, it was lots of fun.

Friday Favorites – Child sized Headphones

by Carolyn 2 Comments

Did you know they make headphones in a child’s size?

I didn’t until we kept going to the library and tried to use the computers in the kids section and the headphones didn’t fit my kids heads. Someone next to us said “I don’t understand why they don’t have kids headphones at the kids computers.” All of a sudden all my times of trying to fit my earbuds into my kids ears and the frustration they had of them constantly falling out all came to a head….why didn’t it occur to me that they make child sized headphones!

Here is an affiliate link. We have the Sony brand but it won’t let me link so just click on this and search for Sony if you want the same kind as us.

Kids are happy to have their own headphones and I am happy to not have them turning the volume way up to hear over their siblings.

Halloween Prep

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Do you have your costumes all set for Halloween? I’m sure everyone else is scrambling around like me, right? We have been running to the door every time we hear a truck rumble by, hoping it is a delivery. My husband ordered a key piece of a costume weeks ago from China and it is coming down to the wire on whether it will be here in time. We know it is in the States but not sure where.

My daughter is going as Super Girl. As soon as she saw the costume she was all over it. We have had it for weeks and she has already worn it several times.

My boys will be NFL players. They have who they want to be all picked out so now we need to get all the pieces together.

We have pumpkins on our porch, both real and fake and are all ready for the candy fest! Our neighbors are all talking about dragging the fire pits to the driveways and gathering after a little trick or treating to hang out. Sounds like a great way to keep the trick or treating from lasting for hours.

Which candy do you steal out of their bags after they go to sleep?? I love MnMs…gotta be plain though. 🙂

Vicks on the feet stops sniffles

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

My Mom asked me about this tip again the other day. In our family whenever my kids have a runny nose or the start of a cough we use Vicks. This comes from my husbands side of the family and trust me, when he first did it I was questioning why he was rubbing that sticky stuff on their feet. My kids have always easily run fevers whenever they are sick, so the start of sickness has me worried about all the missed school and activities. If they show signs of colds Matt will rub Vicks on the bottom of their feet at night before bed and put socks on to cover them. When they wake up their sniffles and coughs are never worse and after a couple nights of the treatment the symptoms go away. I swear it has helped ward off so many colds in our house.

You can get some Vicks through my Amazon affiliate link here.

Let me know if Vicks on the feet works for you!