I wanted to share a fun easy trick to keep car loving boys happy at restaurants. My husband came up the this little activity when our boys were little. My boys were obsessed with cars. I always kept a zip top baggie of cars in my purse or diaper bag so I had them at all times. Whenever we were at a restaurant my husband would turn over the kids menu and use the crayons to draw a little town for them. They would get out their cars and zoom them all over the paper.

Handicapped parking was always so interesting to them. If we were in a parking lot they would always yell if they saw a handicapped parking space and want to stand on the handicap stick figure painted on the spot. So we made sure to always draw in a handicapped parking spot on the paper. It’s the little things that make 2 and 3 year old boys excited. 🙂

This would also work for kids that are into trains. You could draw a railroad track and water station and passenger depot. We also would take all the sheets of paper and have the roads line up so it could be a larger town. They would spend a lot of the time waiting for their meal just scooting their cars all around their paper towns.

Can you tell which picture I drew and which one my husband drew? 🙂 I definitely did not get any artistic genes.

I would call myself a social introvert. I love small group social outings, hate big cocktail parties. I really need a lot of social interaction but in small close groups. When I became a stay at home mom, I needed to make sure I saw other adults and have conversations during the day. Plus my husband would like to not be the main person I tell about how exciting the latest sale was at Gymboree. Ha! Enter, the most important thing I did for myself when I became a mom.

The Moms Club. It is the perfect thing for new moms. You can find one in your specific area so you never have to drive far. The group meets during the weekday and have both large group gatherings and also small playgroups that meet weekly. The playgroups are  split up by age groups. 0 – 12 months, 12 months – 24 months, usually up to 4 yrs old. So it is always a small group.

These small playgroups are where I have met some of my closest friends. You can’t help but become super close. Everyone has a huge thing in common, your kids. 🙂 If you become a regular attendee of playgroups usually you all start to meet up other places. For example someone will say, my Thursdays are boring anyone want to do library story time with us? And next thing you know everyone is getting together another day too.

Kids are welcome to everything and even siblings to any of the other playgroups if you have multiple children. So no worries if you have more than one child.

One of the benefits that comes later is that everyone is in your area so as your kids get older and they enter school they will already know several kids.

Part of the by-laws of the small groups being a part of the parent Moms Club organization states that most events need to be free so no worries that this would be expensive. There is a yearly $25 fee to join and that is it. Most playgroups are held in homes or if you don’t want to host in your home you can pick to meet at a library or park instead when it is your turn to host.

I can’t stress how important these women became in my life and how much it made me enjoy being a mom. Any question I had would be talked about as a group. If my child was going through a weird stage I would get tips from the other moms on how to navigate through it.

Please take a look and see if there is one in your town. Click here for the main page. I get nothing for recommending them, I just can’t imagine what being a stay at home mom would have been like without this group. They made it fun and not lonely. I love my Moms Club peeps. 🙂

This post will be shared at my favorite linky parties.

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

I am so grateful to a friend that told me to keep my waterproof crib sheet. Who knew there are other uses for waterproof crib sheets? I would have never thought I would need it after the crib stage. Now when my kids are sick and I can protect my furniture from potential accidents.

Here is my little girl today.

She had to have a small procedure and the doctor gave her a muscle relaxer to help her through it. He warned me that she would want to lay around the next few hours and to make sure she was on her side if she fell asleep because the medicine could cause her stomach to be upset. Cue Mommy panic about what could happen to the furniture. Luckily, I keep these sheets in the closet so I can pull them out and protect my furniture.

These are the sheets that we used when the kids were babies.

They were great because you made up the bed with your regular crib sheet and then snapped this over top of the regular sheet. Then when your little one’s diaper leaked in the middle of the night you could just unsnap this sheet and not have to remake the bed at 3:00 am.

I don’t know about you but my boys had middle of the night diaper leaks almost every night. I guess it is a boy thing because my daughter had no problem.

When I bought these I had no clue that they would still be used 8 years later, I would say they have been a good purchase.

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.

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).

1. simple, only 2 pieces
2. large enough for all the water they need
3. doesn’t have a lid that could potentially not be closed properly and leak
4. 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?

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.

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!