Q: Should I have a baby after 35?
A: No, 35 children is enough.
Q: I’m two months pregnant now. When will my baby move?
A: With any luck, right after he finishes college.
Q: What is the most reliable method to determine a baby’s sex?
A: Childbirth.
Q: My wife is five months pregnant and so moody that sometimes she’s borderline irrational.
A: So what’s your question?
Q: My childbirth instructor says it’s not pain I’ll feel during labor, but pressure. Is she right?
A: Yes, in the same way that a tornado might be called an air current.
Q: When is the best time to get an epidural?
A: Right after you find out you’re pregnant.
Q: Is there any reason I have to be in the delivery room while my wife is in labor?
A: Not unless the word ‘alimony’ means anything to you.
Q: Is there anything I should avoid while recovering from childbirth?
A: Yes, pregnancy.
Q: Do I have to have a baby shower?
A: Not if you change the baby’s diaper very quickly.
Q: Our baby was born last week. When will my wife begin to feel and act normal again?
A: When the kids are in college.
If you are the mother of a little girl and love to accessorize every outfit that she has, you know that purchasing bows and headbands to match every different outfit can become quite expensive. A great alternative is to invest a little bit of money into a really good “How To” book and some bow making supplies, and then make as many bows as your heart desires!
Bow making is not too difficult of a skill to learn, but it does take practice to make perfect boutique quality baby bows. But, the practice is fun too, and you can always use the ‘not quite perfect’ bows for your own children!
Making baby bows is my favorite hobby and I love that I have turned it into a successful at-home business as well. The perfect job is one that you have fun doing, and baby bow making is definitely the answer for me.
It took a while for me to learn how to make boutique hair bows. I purchased a bow making book online and practiced each of the steps until I was confident in my bow making technique. Once I had the basic skills down I could begin making as many bows as I wanted, in many different styles and looks.
My baby girl is always wearing an adorable headband that accents her sweet angel face and matches her outfits. I get so many new ideas from looking at bows online or in stores. Because I practiced the basic techniques until I had them down I am now able to duplicate complicated bows just by looking at them for awhile and then practicing until I get it exactly right.
I wanted to share some of the tips and tricks that I have learned, and also make an easy to follow and learn from bow making book. Soon this book will be available at www.angelheadbands.com for download or purchase. This book is complete with full color pictures of each step, thorough instructions on how to make bows- everything from simple and sweet bows, to big, funky bows with mirabou- and all the information that you need to get started making your own beautiful and fun baby hairbows.
Whether you are looking for a new hobby, looking to save money but still have a stylish little girl, or looking to start up a new business from home, Baby Bow Making is a fantastic craft and skill to learn!
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Lately I have been struggling with my two toddler boys misbehaving and acting wild and too rambunctious. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve been cooped up all winter or that we have a new baby in the family or maybe this is just normal behavior for two and three year old boys. Whatever the reason, I was getting very frustrated every day as it seemed that all I did was referee the kids’ playtime and break up arguments and discipline them. So, I decided to try something to help out this situation and what do you know? It helped tremendously!
Here’s what I did: I searched online for preschool activity ideas, thinking that I could enhance my boy’s education with some fun activities that would also keep them occupied. I found a couple of good websites–www.dltk-kids.com; www.teachersandfamilies.com; www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com. There are many more websites out there that have tons of fun ideas and activities that help to keep kids entertained and learning important skills at the same time.
Now every day after breakfast is over and the baby is down for her nap the boys and I sing silly songs, march around like different animals, color, cut, glue and paint and have a snack. The boys play more nicely with each other after this preschool time and are better behaved all day.
The only downside I’ve seen so far is that the breakfast dishes stay undone a little longer and the laundry sits unfolded for the morning. But, I feel so much better when there aren’t fits, arguments and tantrums constantly so when the boys take their nap in the afternoon I have the energy to do the housework that I neglected in the morning. Plus it is so much fun to have good quality playtime with the kids and watch them discover their world.
If you are having discipline troubles with your toddlers or even older children I suggest trying something like I did– activities that are both educational and fun that don’t take a lot of preparation time but can be so effective in teaching life skills and good discipline. Try it out and let me know what you find out in a comment.
Headbands for newborns, toddlers and bigger girls are a great accessory. You can purchase or make head bands with bows or flowers attached, or you can make bows on clips that can be worn either on a headband or in a girl’s hair alone.
Making your own baby bows or flower headbands can be less expensive than purchasing a whole collection of bows and head bands, and it allows you to be creative and make bows specifically to match your favorite outfits. You can also use this bow making hobby as a way to make great gifts for family and friends or to start up your own bow making business as a way to earn a few extra dollars.
Be aware that buying ribbon to make one or two bows will not save you any time or money. Spools of ribbon and tools can cost you as much as several bows would cost to have shipped to you. So, if you want to learn to make lots of bows for your kids, family and friends it can really pay off but for a couple of bows you would probably just break even with what you would have spent on a few of the finished product. Better to give a hairbow gift certificate and let the professionals handle the hard parts if you’re not going to make bow making a new hobby.
Making baby headbands can be quite challenging and also fulfilling, which is why we’ve created a hairbow instructions book, “How to Make Baby Headbands”, to help you succeed in making beautiful bows and headbands for the girls in your life.
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A friend of mine came to me and asked me how I get everything done in a day, and how with toddler children running around and a baby to take care of, how I get anything done besides the mundane every day tasks. She asked me this on the occasion of a huge Christmas service project that I was in charge of, making 200 stockings for a local homeless shelter. She said “You and I both have three kids, about the same ages. There is no way that I could have done all this work for this project and taken care of my kids. How do you do it?” My answer: “Don’t you dare come to look at my house!!!”
I have decided that some things are much more important to me than having my house sparkly and shiny clean all the time. I do love having a clean and organized house, don’t get me wrong, but rather than spend day in and day out cleaning and cleaning and folding seemingly endless loads of laundry only to start some more and getting entirely burned out and exhausted, sometimes I like to take a break and do something different.
Sometimes it comes from desperation and boredom from completing mundane chores for weeks on end, sometimes it comes from necessity in needing to complete a project, and sometimes it comes from just wanting to do something more fulfilling and fun for a change. So, when those times arise I just let the laundry pile up for a day or two, let the vacuum sit idle for five minutes, and leave the Clorox wipes tucked away in the closet.
Then I can do things like really play with my kids or take them on an outing, complete a project for church, work or home, or do a craft, scrapbook, read a book for pleasure, bust out the sewing machine, or pursue some of my other interests. After a few days the housework gets the better of me and I spend a day catching up, but I always feel more fulfilled and the kids are happier when we’ve taken some time to just enjoy life, play, and let the little daily stresses slide for a day or two.
My friend said that she gets so wound up and stressed about keeping her house clean and organized- she finds herself cleaning up after messes constantly and always working to keep it clean, so she starts losing patience and just wants to give up because it’s not even fun and she can’t enjoy her children.
I heard someone say once that “the dust and the cobwebs can wait, but children aren’t children forever.” I’ve taken that as my philosophy- I try to play and interact with my kids without constantly worrying about the state of the house, I try to be a good and fun wife to my husband so he’s not always bogged down with work and worry, and I try to keep my own interests and passions fulfilled so I feel like a whole and happy person.
Of course I always love having a clean and organized house, who doesn’t? But if a real feeling of happiness requires the breakfast dishes to wait in the sink until after the kids are in bed for the night, that’s okay with me.
Some days aren’t you just ready to quit? Yesterday, for reasons beyond my control or no reason at all, both of my toddler boys were cranky.
Typically my children wake up happy in the morning, play and romp around until lunchtime, eat and then take a nice two hour or so nap. After resting time, as we call it in our house, the boys get up and play and look forward to Daddy coming home from work. They help me make dinner and set the table, clean up the toys to make the house look nice again and then wrestle with Daddy until we eat. After dinner it’s usually more playtime with Daddy and then time for bedtime stories and a bath and by 8:15 or so they’re tucked in their beds on their way down for a good twelve hour sleep.
It sounds ideal, especially since we’re talking about a just-turned-three year old and a twenty month old boy. Of course, it doesn’t always go as planned.
Yesterday was one of those days. Oddly enough, both boys woke up in the morning crying and whining. (Why does it always have to be both on the same day?) Before we’d even been able to eat breakfast both boys had already thrown at least one fit (heaven forbid I gave them the wrong spoon to eat their yogurt!) and it just went downhill after that. By ten o’clock in the morning I was ready to put them both back in bed. It seemed that they couldn’t play for two minutes without there being a major crisis, and then they’d just throw back their heads and scream.
Finally after lunch I was able to put them down for a nap. Both boys fell asleep almost immediately and I crossed my fingers that they’d take an especially long nap so they could wake up and be my normal happy boys again. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. A mere forty five minutes into their nap my youngest yelled out and wouldn’t be comforted back to sleep. Ten minutes after that his brother also woke up crying and was done with his rest.
We tried lots of quiet activities to help calm them during the afternoon– playing with playdoh, reading books, coloring. Still the whole day was just full of whining and tantrums and a whole lot of tears. When their Daddy got home from work the boys didn’t even acknowledge him– they were too busy complaining that they didn’t want what we were having for dinner and they wanted the blue plates, not the orange ones.
I finally realized that my twenty month old was probably cranky because his second molars are starting to come in. He’s always had a hard time with teething. A low dose of Infant Tylenol did wonders to help him feel better and actually be able to sleep through the night. My three year old though had no apparent excuses, it was just an off day. Luckily both kids went to bed right at 8 and slept well and today has been a much happier day.
It’s hard as a mom to not feel like you just want to throw in the towel and curl up in your own bed when the kids are so cranky. What do you do to cope with days like I had yesterday? Let me know what I can do to keep my sanity and help my children get past these grumpy episodes by adding your comments.
One of the biggest challenges of raising babies and children is keeping them fed and happy. Almost the minute a baby is born, even before the difficulty of labor and childbirth is entirely over, a newborn should be introduced to the world of breastfeeding, if the mother chooses to breastfeed.
When I was younger I had no idea what breastfeeding entailed. I thought, since it is the natural choice for feeding a baby, that breastfeeding just came naturally to infant and mother and that it was easy and convenient to do. When I was expecting my first baby I was given information on breast feeding and discussed it with my doctor. Still, I was not prepared for the actuality of the situation when the day finally arrived.
My baby boy wouldn’t latch on properly and when he did he promptly fell asleep within a minute. Needless to say, it took us several weeks to come to an understanding– I had to be available for feeding 24/7 and he got to eat whenever he decided to. By the time he was six weeks old or so we had a pretty good feeding schedule and he was getting to be a pro at the whole idea.
However, something else that I had not been prepared for was the discomfort that I felt. Not all new mothers experience pain from breastfeeding their babies, but with my first I had such tremendous pain sometimes that I would just sit and cry while my baby was eating. I wasn’t about to quit, because I know how good it is for the baby, but it definitely was not the sweet bonding experience that I had always thought it would be. It hurt 90% of the time until we were finally done breastfeeding nine months later.
My second baby was different. He latched on well right after he was born, and aside from some minor ups and downs through the months ahead it was a much better experience. Even though I didn’t think I was doing anything different I didn’t have the same pain that I did with my first… luckily!
Another challenge that I was not prepared for when I started breastfeeding my baby was the milk supply and demand issue. Again, I’ve heard stories that some women are challenged with too much breastmilk, so they have to express some before or after nursing the baby in order to be comfortable. Others seem to have just enough and can feed “on demand”.
My problem was a lack of available milk, though I tried everything that the lactation consultant and my doctor and baby’s pediatrician recommended to solve the problem. I changed my eating habits to include more fat, I didn’t exercise because I’d heard that that can diminish milk supply soon after childbirth, I pumped regularly to induce milk let down… and still I would only have barely enough to satisfy my babies.
I really wanted to breastfeed my children until they reached one year old. I started both boys on rice cereal and introduced fruits and vegetables between 4 and 5 months, when my doctor recommended because the babies weren’t gaining enough weight on breast milk alone. Even with solids and breast milk I still had to supplement with two or three ounces of formula once a day to satiate my boys’ appetites.
By the time my first was nine months old he’d had it with the frustration of trying to eat from me so we quit cold turkey. I didn’t even get engorged after that– that’s how little milk my body was producing. With my second baby we made it to ten months and then it just made him calmer and happier to have a bottle instead of breastfeed. I’m hoping that this next baby will be a little less challenging and that I can experience the “too much” problem instead. I always hated feeling like I couldn’t feed my children what they needed to grow and develop and be comfortable. It was definitely not what I was expecting when I decided to breastfeed my babies.
Of course, now that my boys are toddlers, the challenge of feeding them has just changed, it hasn’t gone away. Now it’s a matter of getting enough healthy options on the table in front of them and actually getting it into their tummies. I don’t have particularly picky eaters, but still it’s hard to get nutritious meals and snacks into them so they keep a strong immune system and have plenty of energy for playing hard like boys do.
I know I’m not the only one who struggles with the challenge of feeding children. Let me know what solutions you’ve found by adding your stories, suggestions and comments.
Check out this hilarious video too– this cute baby says it all with his expressions.
Newborn babies are notorious for making funny faces. They scrunch up their noses and eyes, open and close their mouths, wiggle and smile. As parents they are the perfect entertainment and can be watched for hours on end. Check out this video of a baby girl caught on camera making some great baby faces.
Do you have pictures of your newborns making funny faces? Share them in a comment.
A couple of days ago we undecorated for Christmas. It’s kind of a sad day, but on the flip side it’s also nice to get the house back in order. The kids thought it was great fun to take all of the ornaments off of the Christmas tree and fit them back into their boxes. They watched as each string of lights was wound up and unplugged, and then our three year old got lifted up to take the star off the top of the tree. Growing up I always had a real tree, so after Christmas was over we would take it to a tree recycling place and watch it get chipped up for compost. Now we have an artificial tree, so the kids helped scrunch the branches and put it away in it’s box until next year.
After the tree was down we took down the empty stockings, put away the nativity, wrapped up the snow globe, unwound the garlands and put away the Christmas dishes. When we were done my husband and I looked around the living room and said “Hmm, it’s boring in here now.” Five minutes after the excitement of taking everything down was over our little boy came to us and said “We need the Christmas tree back up!” We told him that it would have to wait for next year and there are lots of fun times between now and then… but still we are kind of left with an empty after the holidays feeling.
Our cozy living room, although nicely decorated, is back to being just the same as it always is. The kitchen is no longer full to the brim with holiday treats (our waists are thanking us). And the kids are back on a normal day to day routine instead of on holiday/vacation craziness. There are plenty of new toys and books lining the shelves and scattered on the floor. Snow is still falling every couple of days- just enough to keep it cold and white outside. But, there’s something about January that can just make us stir-crazy inside the house.
So, how to beat the January doldrums? Kids get bored of being cooped up in the house 99 percent of the time, especially little ones who aren’t in school yet, with too much free time on their hands. I think that children need a lot of structured play instead of an afternoon for nothing but a pile of toys or television or computer games. I’ve made my New Year’s resolution– I’m going to devote more of my time to really play with my kids, who are all toddlers at this time, teach them new and exciting things and help them to develop interests and favorite activities and games.
Where to begin… One of my favorite magazines is Family Fun. It’s issues are usually full of fun activities and projects appropriate for many different age groups. They have a great website where you can search for and find practically anything. Check out www.familyfun.go.com for lots of ideas to keep your little ones busy for the rest of the winter.
Another great place to find ideas (and to spend an entire morning or afternoon in the process) is to visit your local library. A lot of libraries schedule story times for different age groups– start with that and then browse for activity books or fun books for you and your kids to read together.
Check out local attractions like you’re a tourist. Every city has fun things to see and do– you just have to find them. For example, I’ve lived in the same city for the last ten years and never knew until last year that there was an aquarium only 20 minutes away. It’s now one of our favorite places to go and explore. The kids love seeing all of the exotic and local fish. Other places to see might be historical sites in your own hometown, museums, art galleries, the zoo (they say the animals are more active when it’s cold outside), or a nice sledding hill after a snowstorm.
We did something crazy the other day– it had just snowed but it was only about 15 degrees outside, so much too cold to go out and play. The kids were looking out the window longingly at the drifts of snow just begging to be played in. So, we took some big plastic mixing bowls from the kitchen, filled them to the brim with snow, set them and the boys on the tile floor and gave them spoons and measuring cups and let them have at it. For the next hour, while the snow was slowly melting, they had a blast! They got their hands good and cold, made a nice wet mess on the floor (that was easy to mop up with a sponge), and laughed and had the time of their lives.
Not all winter-boredom-busting ideas have to be expensive, out of the house, or time-consuming for the parents. Let me know what you do with your children when they get bored with a comment.
Headbands for newborns, toddlers and bigger girls are a great accessory. You can purchase or make