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. 

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.