Hey, mommies and daddies, are the holidays stressing you out? I, for one, admit it – yes, they do. And I can understand why “mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.”

But did it ever occur to you that the holiday season can also be stressful to kids? According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the holidays can also bring stress and confusion to  kids. And situations like recent changes in the family structure, e.g. divorce, separation, remarriage, and illness or death of a close family member are just some of the reasons for this. “The holidays often remind children of what’s changed and what’s now different“, according to an APA child and adolescent psychiatrist.

To help both parents and children alike to cope with the stress that the holiday will possibly bring, the APA gives some practical tips. The key points, according to the APA, are preparation, patience and honesty/openness.

Even without the dramatic transitions and major conflicts mentioned above, the change in routine and too much excitement may become too much for kids. For this reason, here’s what we did/are doing to reduce the stress on my kids:

• We make sure the kids get enough sleep. We are a bit flexible about bedtime during the holidays but we don’t overdo it either. We also encourage naps – a nice break for kids and adults!
• We try to keep to our normal daily routine. True, we tend to have breakfast later than usual, but the 3-meals-a-day is a must during our normal eating times, give or take an hour. No skipping meals. And no overeating either.
• We keep the kids moving. We go for walks, be it around the block or a day trip to the mountains. Weather permitting, the kids spend at least an hour playing outside each day.
• We never give in to the convenience of TV. It’s a great distraction for the kids; it gives us parents some breathing space. But it’s also dangerous to get use to it. So our TV rules during the holidays remain the same – 30 minutes a day max.

We try to keep to our normal routine whether we are at home, visiting at grandma’s or at a holiday place – with a bit of flexibility, of course. After all, the holidays are about having fun.

At the end of the holidays, we observe it’s easier for the kids to get back to their normal schedule. Besides, when kids are not stressed, it’s less stressful for us parents, too.

So how about you? How do you keep your sanity during the holiday season?

As a Mom of a 3 1/2 year old girl and a newborn boy, it is an understatement to say that I do a lot of laundry. On average, there is one load done per day in our house.

I have become a laundry expert as far as I am concerned.

Do you constantly have laundry piled up in your house?  Do you have a hard time staying on top of your laundry?  Do you forget about stains and wash the items without pre-treating them?

Here are some tips in order to make laundry easier:

Here are some Earth-friendly ways to do laundry as well.

I hope that these tips help you keep your laundry situation organized and more under control!
I’d love to hear some more tips in your comments.

We decorated our Christmas tree last night.  As I write this, I’m sitting next to the tree admiring the ornaments.

All of them are on the top of the tree so my son can’t grab them and hurt himself or the ornaments.  The tree is wired to the wall so that he, the cats, or the dog can’t topple it over.  At the top of the tree sits a fake chicken.  Yes, a chicken because the children saw the decoration in the store and begged us to put it on top of the tree instead of the angel.  This is the fourth year that we’ve had a chicken instead of an angel on the tree top.   I suppose we’ve started a tradition.

The ornaments themselves are mostly resin.  They can’t be broken and they don’t show chew marks if the puppy should happen to get a hold of them either.

I thought that we’d done a pretty good job of child proofing the tree, but I was wrong.  My toddler figured out that if he stood on top of the puppy who was asleep next to the tree, that he could climb up the branches to get to the ornaments.  Isn’t he clever?

This evening, after supper, we decided to put the tree in the playpen as an additional safety feature.  That way, the tree has a safety perimeter and even if my son stands on the puppy, he can’t grab the ornaments off the tree.

I was talking to a friend of mine just a few minutes ago and I sheepishly admitted to her that we needed to take extraordinary measures to keep my son and the tree safe.  She laughed and admitted to me that she’d done the same thing almost 20 years ago when her son was small.

Her admission comforted me slightly.  Apparently I am not the first person to have a kid friendly Christmas tree.  I’m sure I won’t be the last either.

I am not a shopper. I don’t know why I don’t like to shop, I just don’t. Every year around this time, I’m reminded of my shopping phobia as I fight the crowds to get gifts for my 5 children. Sometimes, when my husband is traveling with work, I have to take the children with me while I shop.

Once, I lost my blind child in the store. I thought she was holding onto the cart, but when I looked around a few minutes later and discovered that I’d lost her. We did find her a short while later sobbing in the next aisle. That experience prompted me to make some changes in our shopping routine.

During busy shopping seasons, I don’t take the kids with me. If my husband is traveling on business, I pay a neighbor to watch the children for me. If I have no choice but to shop with kids in tow, I go early in the morning or in the evening when the stores aren’t so crowded. I avoid the mid-day shopping rush and also the rush at the stores at 5pm when people are getting home from work.

I’ve found that it’s best to go shopping with a game plan. I make sure I know what I want and where I’m going to get it. This means that I research before hand to find out where the best sales are. If an item I want is not in stock during a sale, I ask for a “rain check” at customer service. This means that I can get the sale price on the item when the store gets the item in stock.

In recent years, I’ve found that I can find great deals online. This has cut back my shopping time and saved me a lot of stress! Many online stores offer free shipping deals during this time of year and that makes it worth my while to shop there. However, it may still pay you to shop at an online store even if you have to pay shipping. For example, how much gas and time will you spend driving to that brick and mortar store? How much will it cost you in “aggravation dollars” to have to deal with the kids and the other stressed shoppers? When you look at it that way, shipping and handling costs are a deal!

This year, will you do most of your shopping online, or at a brick and mortar store?

Every year since 1973, WATCH (World Against Toys Causing Harm) has created a list of the top 10 worst toys for that year.? Although I don’t agree with all of their selections, I thought I’d pass along some of the toys on the list for 2008.

• Walk’N Sounds Digger the Dog – The toy is intended for young children, but the long walking string is a choking hazard.? The group points out that according to federal law, all strings on pull toys are supposed to be no longer than 12 inches.? This string is 26.? I truly had no clue that the government even regulated this.
• Meadow Mystery Sounds Book with Cuddly Pooh – According to the packaging, the toy was tested for children from 18 months up.? The group says that the mask included in the book could pose a choking hazard.
• Inflatable Giga Ball – This toy is a blow up ball that is so huge that a child can crawl into the ball.? The toy is not recommended for children under 4.? The group feels that the ball poses a huge safety threat even though parental supervision is suggested.? This toy looks like fun, but I don’t know if I’d let my kid play inside a big plastic ball in our unfenced yard.
• Spiderman Adjustable Skates – This one made me laugh because it’s a set up Spiderman skates with “safety gear”.? However, there is only 1 knee pad and 1 elbow pad.? The packaging does say that you should make sure to wear knee pads, elbow pads and a helmet when skating.? If you decide to purchase this toy for your child, you will need to purchase safety gear separately.

What do you think?? Were you planning on purchasing some of these toys for your children?? Does the fact that these toys made the “worst toys” list cause you to reconsider? Stay up-to-date with current baby related recalls and unsafe toys right here at the Babies Online blog

A new eco-friendly book series for children was launched in September. The goal of the creators of the Little Green Books series is to educate kids and their parents about the environment and how they can protect it.

Each book in the series focuses on improving the environment and preserving habitats. The books themselves are eco-friendly and are made from recycled materials. They are also printed with soy ink.

Currently, four titles are available in the series:

• Can Save the Earth: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. This story is about a monster named Max, and how he changes from a wasteful monster to an environmentally responsible monster.
• The Polar Bears? Home: A Story about Global Warming. A parent and child learn about polar bears and how they can reduce the effects of global warming.
• Little Panda & Little Monkey. These two books in the series were created for young children and their caregivers to read together. They tell the story of Panda, his best friend Monkey, and their adventures. The books are super soft and perfect for cuddling! Both books are machine washable and are made from cotton and recycled fleece. I love baby products that are machine washable!

If your family enjoys living an eco-friendly life, or if you just want to teach your children about the environment, you may want to check out this new series. More books will be added in January 2009.

Sometimes when it comes to kids, food is all about presentation. If something looks ‘yucky’ they probably won’t touch it. Most kids I know, including my own, usually do not like their foods mixed together, even if we as adults know they taste better that way.

When I served tacos to my kids when they were much younger, I would fill the shell with meat and cheese, knowing that anything resembling a vegetable would not be tolerated, at least not in the taco.

If your kids are willing to eat veggies or salad on their own, serve the shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes as a little salad on the side. My boys would always eat this taco/salad combination.

I’m sure there are many kids who won’t touch chili, since it looks like a bowl of mysterious ingredients. I usually serve chili over rice. For the kids, I pick out any bits of onion, tomato and pepper and give them a serving of ground beef and beans. Sometimes, they’ll pick the beans out and sometimes we’ll get lucky and they’ll clean their plates. I serve their rice on the side instead of beneath the chili.

Presentation can also mean making the food look fun. I saw an idea somewhere for making a ’sailboat lunch’: Serve a sandwich cut into two small triangles as the sail, connect it to an apple slice boat with a carrot stick.

Many healthy snacks can be cut up with cookie cutters. Cut sliced cheese into fun shapes, such as stars, or make heart-shaped PB & J’s.

Fruit can be cut up and served on a skewer as a fruit-kebob. Make a colorful combination of banana, grapes, orange slice and melon.

There are many fun plates, cups, straws, etc. made with kids in mind. I recently picked up some brightly colored plastic plates with little compartments for different foods. My little guy won’t be using these anytime soon but at 75% off (end of summer clearance) I figured I’d buy them and put them away until he’s a bit older.

What have you done to make food more appealing for your kids?

Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 15. (Who am I kidding? It’s men who forget days like this, right? All mothers already know that it’s Sunday, and probably already have a handmade card and craft all prepared.) Therefore, like most mass-marketed so-called “greeting card” holidays, we are, as consumers, literally inundated with “best gifts for dad” lists and advertisements. These lists have prompted several dad bloggers that I read on a regular basis to write posts in response.

Some of the dads are stay-at-home dads (SAHD) and others are (like me) dads who work outside the home. However, the majority of them say they want the same thing for Father’s Day: time away from their kids and their wife, a couple of hours to themselves. (Most also mention some sort of private activity with their wives once the kids are asleep. Since this is a G-rated site, I will leave it to the reader to determine what exactly that is.)

I find myself in strong disagreement with this position (the time alone, not the private/wife time). While perhaps a SAHD wants a “break” from his normal day, and the dads with jobs outside the home want some at-home time without the kids, Father’s Day is not the day to do this. As strange as it may sound, Father’s Day is not about fathers; it’s about children (and perhaps mothers) celebrating their fathers.

Kids love parties. They love any day that they can “make special”. So, telling them that a particular day is set aside for them to make their daddy feel special, and then telling them that they can’t spend that day with their daddy makes no sense to them. They want to show their daddy how much they love him, how much they appreciate him, how special he is to them. They can’t do that if daddy is downtown at the used record store or in the garage with a beer and the baseball game on the radio.

If I need time to myself to decompress, or just recharge my proverbial batteries, I do it another night. Doing it on Father’s Day isn’t fair to your kids, who want to celebrate their father.

For the dads: do you feel the best gift you can receive on Father’s Day is alone time? If so, why? If not, what is the best gift? For the moms: what are your thoughts on this? Did you want alone time for Mother’s Day?

Kids and puppies go together like peanut butter and jelly in my mind, probably because my family and most of my relatives had a dog while raising children. My beloved yellow Labrador, Zodiac, arrived 6 months after the birth of my first child, and died 6 months after the arrival of my 5^th child.

After mourning his death, we?ve decided to begin looking for another dog. I have to be honest in that I have my heart set upon another Labrador as I just love the breed, but I wondered, is a certain breed better if you have children? How do you pick a dog for your family?

If you are looking for a family pet, here are some things to consider:

1. Do you want a purebred dog or a mixed breed dog? There are pros and cons to each choice of course, but it depends upon your personal preferences
2. How much money are you willing and able to spend on a pet? Mixed breed dogs are more inexpensive than purebred dogs.
3. Do you wish to ?save a life? and adopt a dog from a local shelter or rescue league? Do you prefer to buy your dog from a breeder?
4. Do you want a puppy, which will require a significant amount of time and training, or do you wish to get an older dog?
5. What kind of lifestyle do you have and which breeds fit in well with that lifestyle? For example, Labradors tend to be even tempered and have lots of energy. Since we have a bunch of kids with a lot of energy and a large fenced in yard, a Labrador would fit our lifestyle.
6. Realize that a pet will require a significant investment of time and also money.

Before adopting or purchasing a pet, it?s wise to research the different breed types and understand the differences between them. For example, certain breeds are more prone to aggression, while other breeds tend to be more active. Certain kinds of dogs like to bark?which you may not appreciate once you finally get your light sleeper settled for the night. Some dog breeds shed, or need regular grooming.

Finding the right pet for your family is a lot of work, but it is worth it. While it may cost you some time and money, the joy a family pet can bring to your life will be well worth the effort.

We have a 3 and a half-year-old black Lab/Border Collie mix named Cosmo. He has been a part of our family since a few months after my husband and I got married. We used to joke that he was our first “baby” and, at times, it’s like I really do have three kids instead of two when you throw him into the mix.

We decided to get a Lab because of their reputation of being so good with kids. We ended up getting a Lab mix rather than a purebred because we found Cosmo through a Lab rescue shelter and he needed a home.

When we brought my son home about 7 months later there was never a jealousy problem. Cosmo accepted him and was very protective and watchful of his new brother. My son loved him of course – licks, wet noses, fur, and all.

Now the two little ones both love Cosmo and he loves them just the same. He has behaved just as Labs are said to behave around kids. And, most importantly, he is patient – despite his fur and ears being grabbed by little hands, despite being pulled-up on by beginning walkers, and despite being woken up by curious, poking fingers.

I have seen such joy in my children’s faces from our dog that I can’t imagine our life without him. There is something unspoken between dogs and kids – they just get each other. My kids light up when they see Cosmo. He thinks he is their protector and “big brother” and, really, he is. We definitely couldn’t have asked for a better tempered dog.

I really hope my kids will remember the joys of dogs when the time comes for them to decide whether they want a puppy as an adult. My husband and I always had dogs while growing up and we wanted the same for our children. We realize that there are great lessons to be learned from our furry, four-legged friends. We learn about loyalty, unconditional love, and that there’s nothing more fun in life than going to the park.

Last week my kids both came down with bad colds. Having both kids sick at once was a first for us and it was, unfortunately, also my 7-month-old daughter’s first cold. Needless to say, it was a rough week at our house!

One night I was up ALL night (literally). My two-year-old son would wake up coughing and I’d go to his room and get him calmed down and back to sleep. No sooner had I gotten back into bed than my daughter would wake up, so I would go and get her settled down and back to sleep. This continued all night long. I don’t think I need to elaborate on the fact that I was a zombie for the entire day after this. (I didn’t think there were worse nights than those first ones back from the hospital – boy was I wrong!)

My kids are finally starting to get better now, thank goodness. Having two kids sick at their ages at the same time was a whole new experience for me and I hope I never experience my kids and me sick all at once (although, I’m sure at some point I will). This time was definitely enough of a challenge!

The thing I realized during their colds was that Moms may not be Olympic athletes or world leaders, but we are strong in our own right. Moms wipe runny noses, are up in the middle of the night consoling sick babies, and we dispense medicine to unwilling children (this is no easy task, as I’m sure you well know!). It takes a tough and selfless person to take care of a sick child and the more children you have, the harder it gets. So, to all of you Moms out there who are fighting a sickness with your child or children – I salute you. We’ve all been there and we know that battle is a tough one – may you come out better for worse or wear.