Parenting Tips Archives | Page 19 of 19

Friday Favorites – Water Bottles

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!

Easiest way to teach kids to tie shoes

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

I had a huge response from friends this summer when I posted pictures on Facebook of how I had my kids learn to tie their shoes. I don’t know if your kids are like mine but sometimes they don’t want to listen or learn from me. Guess what they do love? They love to do anything with the older boys down the street and look up to them like crazy.

Well, when my neighbor mentioned her 10 year old son was into earning money, I had a brilliant idea (these are few and far between for me, ha!). I paid her son and his friend $5 per kid to teach my boys to tie their shoes. They had to prove to me that they had learned by each of my boys tying their shoe for me by themselves and they earned their $5. It took about 30 mins for my boys to learn and they were in heaven with so much one on one attention from the older boys.

My neighbor said those boys were super happy to bike to the store right after with their $5 to get a treat. Is this not the easiest way to teach kids to tie shoes ever? I’m happy, my boys are happy and neighbor’s boys are happy. Win – Win – Win!

Here is what we used to use…

Now…

–Carolyn

Honey Child

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

I must call my daughter Honey a lot. I didn’t realize this until we started playing doll house together and to her the little girl doll isn’t called the baby or kid, she is the Honey. 🙂 Britton is starting to love to play pretend and make up scenes to play out. They all involve the Mom saying “No”.

The normal scene also involves my daughter telling me exactly what to do.

Britton: “You are the Mom and the Honey and you both come to the store and the Honey wants to buy a puppy and you tell her No, that you don’t have any money, only a credit card and I am the store owner and I say sorry I don’t take credit cards.”

So we act it out so that anything the Honey wants she can’t have. All the no’s are getting old quick, do you think Britton is trying to tell me something? She is one smart cookie.

Welcome!

by Carolyn Leave a Comment

Fennell Seeds Family Photo

After almost 8 years of having a personal blog for just family and friends, I am ready to join the blogging world. A little about me, worked in the insurance industry for many years, married the love of my life, had identical twin boys and then a little girl. Wow…my life summed up in 5 seconds. Of course, there is a lot more to it and I’ll share the nitty gritty details as we go through this blogging adventure together.

One thing that I have always struggled with in my adult life is managing and keeping our home. I am not a slob or a complete disaster but it just doesn’t come naturally to me like it seems to for others. I am always the one at someone’s home saying “How did you know how to do that?” or “Did I miss the class on cleaning floors? I have no idea if I am cleaning them right?”. I am not OCD or type A, I need some accountability and a little help and motivation to get my act together. So come join me in learning tips and tricks from each other. I can’t wait!