Kids

Oh, the New Year is here! I LOVE the fresh-start feeling, regardless of how cliche it may be, and one of the many things I’m aiming for is upping my teach-my-small-child important stuff game. I was gifted a fabulous resource for teaching kids days and months (and a lot of other awesome things!) and I am so happy to share it with you all.

The Fun, Happy Calendar is a perpetual calendar which brings me to my first “lesson.” Because it is perpetual, you can pencil in the days of the week with your lucky pupil which will help practice letter formation, the correct order of the days and the idea that each line has seven days, hence the seven day week. OR you can not pencil in the days of the week and reuse the calendar over and over, as in perpetually 🙂 It is a win for moms either way.

This calendar is also a coloring book. A coloring book + calendar is right! The illustrations for each month are ready to be filled in by parent and child alike (we love coloring in colored pencils in my home, occupied by children who are ages 36, 4, and 2). The illustrations are of the birth flower, stone, tree (the author’s brilliant invention), and other relevant characters.  

[Read more…] about Teaching Months and Days to Kids

I could parent this little girl as if she were going to live in a world where appearance doesn’t matter, where her inner worth is the only thing that counts and that no one will judge her for anything other than her character. I wish that the world existed but it simply isn’t so. I feel certain that she will be a teenager at a time where the self will be projected on to the big screen of social media (into whatever form it morphs into in the next decade) and her appearance will something of which she will be acutely aware.

Don’t get me wrong; I talk about lots beyond appearance. I encourage her to solve problems and praise her when she is helpful, tenacious, kind, thoughtful, and witty. I firmly admonish when she is contrary, defiant, or ill-tempered. I simply have made a conscious choice to verbalize self-confidence in everything from my cooking to decision making and back to what I am wearing. I feel strongly that if she doesn’t hear positive self-talk modeled early, often, and consistently, she won’t have an inner voice telling her that she indeed looks (and thus should feel) great when her peers, media, or regular ol’ teenage self-doubt have her feeling otherwise.

I have read countless pieces about how young women should quit focusing on how they look and focus more on matters of the heart, mind, and soul. I absolutely agree but feel that many miss the mark by failing to accept the reality that appearance will absolutely be the focus for much of adolescence, at the very minimum. If positive self-dialogue isn’t modeled, from where will young ladies learn it?

I teach junior high and I can tell you without a doubt, the 12-year-old girls who tell me they skipped lunch because they are getting fat and they can’t figure their homework out because they are too stupid learned those ideas, words, and phrases somewhere. They are very likely parroting the sentiment of other women in their life who say they themselves look like shit or are too fat or dumb. It is one thing to say that young women should be confident but entirely another to model it. Many young women today are encouraged to behave and think in a way that entirely different than their mothers which is nice, but a bit unrealistic. It is our job to do our best to model a better way of treating ourselves.

The thought of my daughter repeating some bullshit thing I said to myself like “I’m so stupid” when I misplace the keys makes me sick. The times I might want to comment on the frown lines appearing between my brows or when I have neglected to see my hairstylist and feel less than gorgeous as a result are when I keep those comments to myself. I’m faking it in those situations, because I do have moments of self-doubt, but hopefully because I’m modeling self-love and acceptance her moments of self-criticism will be far fewer.

My daughter has a noticeable birthmark by her nose. I have never made mention of it but wasn’t surprised when she asked me after brushing her teeth one day what it was. I told her it was a mark, just like my freckles, and that it will probably fade by the time she goes to school. I didn’t expect to feel a lump grow in my throat, but it did because I was worried she wouldn’t like her reflection now that she noticed this red spot. She studied the mirror for a moment and said, “I like it! I look great!” and the lump in my throat disappeared. I know, I know, these things are a piece of cake with small children. But, I think that hearing me say that I’m happy with my appearance, my choice in a recipe for supper, or my drawing on our shared paper will influence her to feel similarly. If she doesn’t hear me say that I feel beautiful, smart, and ready for the world, how could I expect her to feel that way?

I am beautiful, and you are too Wildflowers.

Cloth diapering my daughter was a piece of cake. She never un-velcroed the diapers, she rarely leaked and was a relative breeze to potty train before she was 20 months. My son has proved to be a bit more challenging for several reasons, many of which are due to his little firehose that is already causing me grief. Here are my solutions for when cloth diapering is a little leaky.

This post may contain affiliate links. All opinions are my own. ​

My son is off-the-charts big which means he potties more at once than a featherweight baby. This means that one cloth insert is not gonna cut it at naptime and frankly during the daytime now that he is getting closer to 2 years old. There are a few things you can do if you are in a similar position.

• Use one or more disposable inserts. These are sold by diapers and are one of the many reasons I LOVE this brand. They are made from totally compostable, biodegradable stuff (I like to say tree pulp and fairy dust but really I don’t know exactly what it is) and are a bit more absorbent than the regular cloth inserts. If you are reading this, it may be because you are currently soaking through and thus washing untold numbers of cloth inserts daily and you might appreciate the information that you can use the inserts. Go ahead; it is okay! I figure that because you are already saving tons of money by using the cloth, a “splurge” of the disposable insert at nap and night is acceptable. If you use two, and/or have a boy, consider folding one in half (they come folded so this is pretty intuitive) and layering the second on top flat.

• Use a combination of cloth and disposable. You can layer a folded or flat cloth insert under a flat disposable insert with great effect. The only hang up is that you have to put one in the garbage or compost and the other in the diaper pail. Just don’t toss your cloth into the garbage can.

A wood pulp and fairy dust compostable diaper insert, a folded cloth insert and the trusty grant.

• Use up to 3 cloth inserts at once. No, three isn’t too much. I have a heavy boy wearing size XL diapers and 3 fits. I am almost certain 3 fits in a size large also. I put one flat cloth in, hemp side up (because the hemp is what holds the moisture, I figured it would be best to keep it away from the exterior of the diaper…this is an art, not a science so feel free to experiment), a folded cloth insert, hemp side out on top, and then a flat cloth insert on top of the first 2, with the hemp down. This makes a nice hemp core that in my approximation keeps the leaking to a very low minimum. If you do 3 at once, you may need to fold the whole thing hot dog style a bit to get the elastic edges up into the crease of Baby’s legs.

A hemp sandwich

• You can try just folding one cloth insert hemp side out and layering one cloth insert on top. I use 3 at bedtime and 2 at naptime and any extended day play time.
• If you are using more than one cloth, and are thus soiling way more cloth than previously, dig into the stash of small or medium cloth inserts you have nicely stored away in a labeled box 😉 I brought out the smaller sized inserts in a moment of laundry desperation and I now use the smaller ones folded in half beneath the large inserts in the day time and it works perfectly. It really buys you a lot more laundry time.
• When diapering, make sure the elastic of the grants comes up to, if not over, the belly button. This is clutch for giving the little boy body plenty of coverage.

• For bigger or older babies who have more predictable bowel movements, I think the liners are a wise investment because they save a lot of time shaking/jiggling/soaking #2 out and off of the cloth inserts. They are kind of like a stiff paper towel that sits atop the cloth insert, next to the skin and you can just lift it out of the diaper when it is soiled. It’s very handy indeed.

If your BM intuition gets really good, you can just use them when you are expecting to need them.

As for the velcro that busy hands like to undo: I put pants on my son and he forgets about it and when I occasionally forget, it takes quite a while for him to remember what fun it is to pull at the tab. Just go for pants for a while, Mama.

If you want to read more about why in the world you would choose cloth diapers, check out this post.

Here’s my post about shopping for cloth diapers.

And here’s my post about the dirty details of cloth diapering. 

Some of the above photos are indeed affiliated links but the opinions are my own, as always, and I would never share a product with my dear readers that I don’t own and love or would love to own myself. 

What solutions can you share, Wildflowers? Share your comments in the section below! Happy diapering!

– See more at https://www.adomesticwildflower.com/blog/cloth-diapering-solutions-tips-for-cloth-diapering-with-boys-bigger-babies-and-bedtime#sthash.i25wExKt.dpuf

How to Support the Student in Your Life

You know the enthused feeling you have on January 1st (or 2nd or 3rd, depending on the degree of festivity you experienced on December 31st) when you are committed to losing weight, cleaning house, getting your life organized, quitting that bad habit, and generally being a lot more awesome? It is a terrific feeling with a lot of power. That feeling can drive you to lace up your tenny runners when temperatures are frigid and make grand plans of self-improvement and productivity with a vigor unseen in any other month. It’s a feeling of possibility, enthusiasm, and resolve.

As a teacher, my year revolves around the start of school. For the non-school going population, it is easy to forget how the start of the school year is the most important part of the year in many ways for students. For students, the new school year is like the new calendar year for the rest of the world. Some new clothes, fresh binder, unrumpled papers, recent haircut, and they are ready to rock the new school year. This is the year to nail that math class, talk to that girl, figure out what the heck to do with all the rumpled paper, and get one of those sparkly stars stuck to the top of a writing assignment. There’s a sense of bravery in the air as students consider trying out for that team, trying their hand at that instrument, and seeing what that club is all about. The new school year vibe is amplified by the buildup of summer vacation preceding it. There are lots of summer nights to imagine all the possibility ahead.

This feeling is not exclusive to the preppy or middle class. I teach lots of lower income kids from a wide variety of backgrounds and I think the air of positive possibility extends to nearly all students, even those who are disadvantaged and not sporting a closet full of new of the latest fashions or prescribing to mainstream culture.

This is all pretty powerful stuff. And yet, just like the rest of the enthusiastic New Year’s Resolvers, the enthusiasm wanes for many by about mid-March if you made a Resolution. In school time (which is not quite like dog time, but close) that is a by about October 1st. The backpack doesn’t organize itself, homework is hard, and parents are really good at putting the stop to an awful lot of fun. Classes are long, the seats are hard, and lunch break is never long enough. Just like those skipping workouts who were so committed to getting in shape in January, pupils are abbreviating their goals, and some are even preparing to throw up the white flag and beg for the mercy of Christmas Break.

This post is not for students and it is not for teachers. It is for the rest of you Wildflowers who know anyone going to school. 

Tell them that they can do it. They can get along with their peers, they can learn that hard subject, and they can give up texting and TV for a hour or so in the name of studying. They can succeed. You don’t need to comment on their height (save that for everyone else), you don’t need to regale students with how school was for you (because that was a 100 years ago), you just should reassure students that they have everything it takes to be successful.

Kids have heard a thousand times that they should do all the things they should. They know that part. The spring in their new shoes has lessened and their handouts are all mixed up and it takes a really long time for the bell to ring and they need to hear that they possess the fortitude to stay the course. 

You can also point out the positive. Ask about the classes, teachers, peers, and subjects they do like, the fun activities they might like to try and celebrate the relative successes. No big deal that they didn’t do well in the last unit, they can ask for help and do better this time around. Just as you might encourage your workout buddy that tomorrow is a new day, remind the student you care about that they can start fresh in the morning.

Relevant for nearly every kid is the need to be assured they look their best, they are bright and capable, and have clear strengths that all add up to a successful school year. Tell them they can do it, and remark on their height around the holidays instead.

How else can a Wildflower support student? Share in the comment section below!