Sometimes you just need a mental break. If it has been a long week or I am stressed out with a long to do list I just need to sit down for few minutes and regroup. This is when I find I am turning on House Hunters over and over. Why is this?

I find myself even using it as motivation to get a dreaded chore completed. Such as, if I clean the kitchen as quickly as possible I will allow myself 1 House Hunters. When I really thought about this the other day it struck me as odd. I have watched so many that I can barely find any that I haven’t already seen. I even like lots of other shows much better so why is it this particular show that helps me regroup? This is when I started to look at it and see why it is so mentally relaxing.

1. It has the same format each show. Every time you watch, you know that they are going to be introduced, you look at 3 homes and then they decide which home is their favorite and then there is a short segment where they show the family after they move in.
2. There is always a happy ending. They may have been saving for a new and bigger house or just moving to a different area but everyone always ends up with a house.
3. It is short. I DVR these shows so I never watch commercials. This means it is only 20 mins to watch it. This is a perfect amount of time to regroup and be mentally ready for my next task.

This show has been on for 13 seasons. This must mean that I am not the only one who watches it. I even remember when they had the other female host and the doorbell would ring whenever the next house would be shown. 🙂 Anyone else remember that? They certainly have improved and perfected the show and even my kids are now willing to watch it. This makes me super happy when I am tired of cartoons.

Anyone else watch these to decompress or find them very relaxing like I do?

Do you have a child that just can’t handle preschool drop-off? I have 3 children and my youngest is what is known as “Mommy’s Girl” which is otherwise known to me as “She Won’t Go to Anyone Else if Mommy is Around”. It can be tiring and draining especially when school drop-offs become so difficult that you consider just not even taking her. Or leaving her with a trusted babysitter is so difficult that you find yourself not scheduling as many date nights.

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This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Getting through the potty training stage can seem like an insurmountable challenge. You read a ton of books and information about how best to introduce your child to the potty. While all my kids had different methods of learning to go on the potty, this method of positive reinforcement worked on all of them.

I came up with this way of rewarding my kids because I had twins but it works for any kid especially if they have siblings. Everyone always talks about using MnM’s as a training tool. When your child pees or poops you give them one or a couple and they are happy and hopefully (keep your fingers crosses) they want to keep earning more candy and do it again and again. Sometimes it works and sometimes it backfires.

This was going to be a problem for me when I had twins training at the same time. I didn’t like having one kid eating MnMs and the other one not getting any treat and being upset. I also wanted to avoid any competitiveness in who could earn more. One of my sons I could tell would be discouraged if he saw his brother get more than him or having success faster and probably wouldn’t want to try anymore. I think the problem is the same with any sibling watching this situation. They get jealous and upset that one kids is earning candy and they aren’t. Enter my solution…

The Lollipop Party!

When the child that is training goes pee or poop, everyone in the house gets a treat and we all make it a really big deal. That child earns everyone in the house a Lollipop Party, even Mom and Dad. We all dance around and thank the child that earned them and everyone in the house is thrilled. This makes the child that is training so proud of themselves. Immediately the other siblings jump in the potty training game become very involved in the training process. You should see the siblings the next time it is time to “try to go potty”, they all gather around cheering.

At first I thought having lollipops was a bit excessive but it worked for us. My youngest didn’t go more than 4 times a day and usually the other kids were only home for 1 or 2 of them. Plus this “party every time” only happened the first 2 – 3 days of training. It was so worth it to see how proud they were for earning everyone a lollipop. I would have that child pass out the lollipops. For some reason it was especially a big deal to give Daddy a lollipop and watch him eat it. My husband is not a lollipop lover but I made him pretend to enjoy it. It was his role in supporting potty training in our house to actually eat the lollipop that was offered…so difficult Honey, glad you could help us… Ha!

Obviously this could work with any treat you come up with besides lollipops. I used the small Dum Dum lollipops so it was like having a very small piece of candy. This can also work with a child that doesn’t have siblings. It is amazing how giving children are and how it makes it such a bigger deal to them to earn candy for you and for them rather than just for themselves. Instead of saying, please just go potty for me to make my life easier, you can say “OMG, Mommy is dying for some candy, can you earn some for me? Please!”. 🙂

If you are about to potty train a child, think of having them earn the treat not just for themselves but for everyone in the house. Make it a party!

In case you are interested, we used the Bjorn Potty Seat. This worked great for little boys especially due to the front lip on the seat.

And my daughter was obsessed with this book and it is still nightly reading 2 years later…potty humor never gets old I guess!

This post may contain affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Normally I am against the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality but sometimes I just can’t handle the crying involved in board games with siblings. Anyone else with me? 🙂 Someone is always crying at the end because they aren’t the winner. It is just so tiring that sometimes I avoid playing at all. Until…I found Mommy’s Favorite Board Game where everyone wins and nobody is crying at the end. A Miracle!

Now, we don’t play this every time we play board games because I do believe in teaching the lesson that not everyone can win. But, sometimes there are nights that I am just too tired to be teaching life lessons and I want us to all have a good experience together.

Enter, Richard Scarry’s Busytown Game.

There is a little bit of individual movement but the only way to win is to all work together and all win together. Let’s say the educational aspect of this game is team work but the real deal is that everyone is happy.

It is actually a fun game and I am extremely picky when it comes to games. My kids like it to and they are 8 year old twin boys and a 4 year old girl. So if you are tired of the tears from someone not being the winner, then I would highly suggest this one. Do you know of any others? Please share.

So it happened! The big mommy fail yesterday. One of my children woke up at 6:05 am on a weekend morning and after having him poke me in the back a hundred times I just handed over my iPad and told him to go entertain himself in the family room while the rest of us all slept. Over an hour later, I come out and just heard cartoon type voices so think nothing of it until…Bam…all sorts of inappropriate jokes. I find out he is watching American Dad. An adult cartoon. This one is about women who work the pole (I don’t even want to type the name here due to internet searches) and there are lots of jokes about crabs and other totally inappropriate things.

OMG!!!

I completely freak out but try to hold myself under some control because it is my fault. I never set up the parental controls on his Netflix profile and I have been meaning to do it. A few months ago he was watching a teen movie that I didn’t really like but it wasn’t as completely inappropriate like the show yesterday. It had made me think I needed to set up the controls but of course I never got around to it.

So this morning I started my research on how to get the controls set. Turns out you must be on a computer, not a mobile device to do it. Probably reason number 1 why this wasn’t done before now because we only watch Netflix on our mobile devices.

It was very simple once I figured out my password. I can never remember them so I had to have them email me to reset it.

How to set Parental Controls on Netflix

1. Be on a computer, not a mobile device.
2. Sign in and go to My Account
3. Click My Profile – Manage Profiles
4. Click on the Profile you want to change the controls. Everyone in my family has their own profile. So I clicked on my 2 boys and made their choice for Older Kids and Below. My daughters I selected Little Kids Only.
5. Then hit Complete

I feel so much better!!

Here are the 4 choices you have as control options

Movies:

TV:

Go take the time to do it for your kids and save yourself the awkward conversation I had to have with my almost 8 year old about what he saw.

By the way, want to know the show my kids are obsessed with lately? The Little Couple! I am thrilled they want to watch a show that I also like to watch. I am so tired of Curious George and Doc McStuffins.

As you are starting to learn, I am all about short-cuts. 🙂 When my boys were 3 years old I was running out of ideas of how to keep them busy during the winter months. I am not a crafty person so I used to read homeschooling blogs to get some ideas of easy crafts and fun educational things to do with the kids. Some of the crafts I had a hard time doing because I just don’t keep a lot of craft supplies on hand.

One day I was reading a blog that is no longer in existence and she was not a home school mom but had purchased a month of home school curriculum from a company called The Learning Box. From her pictures I figured out that it was just what I needed. It has a book that walks you through each days activities like you are a preschool teacher and best of all…..it has all the crafts and craft supplies ready in individual packets! No need to pre-cut or gather a ton of supplies. On Day 1 is all of Day 1 activities in individual bags, even the craft. Go to the site and look at the sample pages. It is amazing.

I bought 1 month and it lasted me about 3 months because I didn’t do it every day and honestly I would skip around a bit and do the activities that I wanted to do and skipped some others. It was great for a person like me who needs things spelled out for them and needs the craft supplies pre-cut and all ready in one packet.

This company really does everything for you and the kids have so much fun with the activities. It may seem a bit pricey but not having to buy tons of craft supplies that would just sit in my closet helped justify the price. This Learning Box is a full curriculum such as the whole month is based on one theme. I think this January is a Polar Bear theme so the box will come with a book about Polar Bears and the songs, activities and crafts every day will all be based around the theme.

If you just want crafts I also recommend the Alex Busy Box of Crafts. I love that box too for having everything right there ready for you. I talk a little more about it in this post of gifts my 3 year old received and my thoughts.

Please share any ideas that you have with me too? I am always looking for easy crafts to do with the kids.

This post is not sponsored by the Learning Box. I just really loved the product and wanted to share.