Nap time and toddlers

After the last couple weeks I've been researching naps in toddlers, I mean my daughter has always been a great napper but lately she just wont have it. She doesn't fuss, cry, or even get mad that I lay her down, as a matter of fact it is the opposite she asks to and says she is tired but just sits in her bed and plays. This had me torn, was she ready to stop napping or should I keep encouraging them despite the not sleeping.

Since this has been on my plate of the "everyday mother" tasks lately I thought I'd share my thoughts and research in hopes to help some of you with your non-napper.

While doing some research I found this Web MD guide to napping for toddlers and it has many great points. Some I found even more so encouraging was the "You can't force anyone to take a nap, but you can create the environment for sleep," especially with my daughter seemingly easing out of a nap lately this was nice to see. 

As I mentioned before, she lately just wont seem to sleep. BUT, a major point I want to bring out is probably what is most important in this post. See I noticed her not sleeping but if I don't lay her down she is cranky by the evening. She is 29mo old and having a 1 year old son who is on a 2-3 hour nap each afternoon from 2:30-5 or 5:30 I REALLY enjoy their naps which has been for several months now same time, around the same length give or take a little. It gives me cleaning time, dinner prep time or my favorite... my own personal chill time. YAY! Now, you may laugh or think it's silly but if you are a stay at home mommy as well you know that this time can be crucial to your own well being and sanity. Without a doubt being a mom is the most amazing, rewarding, blessed job I have ever had and ever wish to have. You just can't get any better than this. So all of that brings me back to the major part o this blog, if your toddler all of the sudden stops taking a nap, staying in the routine since they are used to the laying down portion is good. Giving them the regular routine and letting them maybe have a few toys that you feel safe leaving in the bed with them (i.e. stuffed animals without the marble eyes, soft books etc.) and let them lay and play quietly.  

This next article is also one I found helpful. This quote ""If your child is refusing to nap because she says she's not sleepy, make sure she still gets some quiet time," says Claire Lerner, L.C.S.W., a child-development specialist at Zero To Three, a Washington, D.C., organization that promotes the health and welfare of young children." is something that helped me make the decision to continue the "quiet time" with my Annabelle. Also, to my surprise when I leave her in there despite her being awake and playing (all quietly) she will eventually fall asleep and get a short nap. With this quiet time I have noticed some great improvements, she gets her rest even though she isn't sleeping the entire time, if any, and I still get some down time as well. Allowing her to have that time she is happy and her normal bubbly self in the evenings even though she isn't napping like she used to. 

All children are different, and many toddlers are so incredibly adamant on NOT napping or sleeping, I have been quite blessed to never have a huge problem with this. Aside from the original getting over the letting her cry it out sleeping in her own room that I had a harder time with than her, she has been great at night and naps. My son does wonderful as well. That being said, I am not naive enough to think that going on 3 years old the naps aren't soon going to become a thing of the past for her, but in my opinion the rest she gets from having down time and quiet time in her room with a few baby dolls and soft books is the perfect transition from her every day naps to the big girl she is becoming.  

Never think your tot isn't a normal child if they are ready to not nap sooner than others, just make sure they are ready and not just resistant. Our schedule is our schedule, it works great both because of our daily routine and my sons sleep habits as well but that doesn't mean that it will be your schedule. When you decide what is right for you and your little one I hope these articles and this post that helped me in some decision making will also help you either as the knowledge they provide or reassurance to what you already considered. Just remember, if your toddler is starting to not sleep as much as they had for naps, the quiet time is a great transition and help into easing them into going the whole day without sleep and you may be surprised at their drifting off to sleep anyhow.

Enjoy your little one, the little things they do even when they drive you crazy, the time and days go so fast. These are the moments to hold onto in your hearts forever!

My little angel pretend napping while we were playing in her room.

Cooking with love...

Today I wanted to share something for those wondering why they "can't" cook. See, I've always been taught cooking skills from my mom to my Grammy and my grandma and now I am still learning from my mother-in-law and her mom as well. Skills in the kitchen are not just being able to follow recipes it is learning what goes with what, what the people you are cooking for enjoy and yes, I believe you can "cook with love". Going back to the first thing I can remember learning how to cook without a recipe or anything was my grandmas biscuits, I still don't have a recipe and I will always think grandmas are better but I remember being so young sitting on the counter getting so excited to learn and to cook with her. Thinking about it, as a matter of fact makes me tear up a little. She and my papa are recently in a home for Alzheimer's due to my papa's memory not being where it should and one of the biggest things that broke both her heart, and his was that she couldn't cook anymore. They don't have a kitchen just a little kitchenette area and for the past 60plus years my grandma has prepared 95% of their meals, also serving my dad and his 5 brothers and she hates not being able to do so anymore. Growing up, and still she continues to be an inspiration to me in cooking and crochet and overall being an amazing wife, mother and christian lady. In my life I've been blessed with many godly women, my Grammy and my mom have always been such great examples as well. You see we traveled allot and my mom and I were always great friends and her personality and creativity have ever so much worn off on me and I couldn't be prouder. She showed me so many everyday skills and traits that have helped and continue to do so each day. The keeping up with toddlers, housework and everyday activities is something learned and my mom was an amazing example of how to do it all. And Grammy and my mom both showed me how to do cakes, one of my most enjoyable things to do is experiment and create awesome cakes/cupcakes and so on, and I learned what I know from them. 

You see, cooking is not and never will be just about the ingredients, it is about the enjoyment that goes into it. Some nights my husband cooks, he enjoys it and I enjoy the break from time to time but cooking is and always will be a favorite activity to me. My daughter already loves it too, I mean who doesn't. If you take time to learn and create you will be able to come up with amazing dishes too. What makes cooking enjoyable is seeing and tasting the finished product and being satisfied (and sometimes tasting along the way) and I'll always believe that cooking can be taught and creating things in the kitchen you can learn thru love and enjoyment of cooking. Yes, cook with love, with your heart :) and never, NEVER give up or think you are hopeless, I'm sure even the best cooks have meals that just don't come out right sometimes, I know I do and it stinks but I know how fun it is when things come out right so I keep on trying.

Keep cooking everyone and check out some of my recipes I've shared along the blog. :)

What's for dinner? Spinach lasagna

Spinach lasagna is one of my husbands absolute favorite meals, AND one of the few meals he really enjoys without meat involved. One thing he has always liked is creamed spinach and we all love pasta so one day out of pure boredom in the "usual" dinners we have I wanted to try something different and this is what came out. This was probably 2 years ago and he still asks for it rather often. Also took this to a church fellowship at our great little country church and despite my being hesitant to take it (not like spinach is a universal favorite food) my husband told me I should cause it was really good and it was ALL gone. Had many people comment on how much they liked it which made me feel awesome cause I get such enjoyment out of cooking for people and it is the icing on the cake when they really like it. And, this week my husband had a birthday so I was asked to make it again for him and I finally wrote it all down to get a recipe for it. Also, this is a favorite of my kids too, they love anything with cheese, noodles and mushrooms!

Here I'm going to give you a list of all the ingredients then I'll separate it out to the sauce, filler to make it easier when you are making it. It may seem like allot of ingredients but it is really easy to make, trust me, with two little ones I love me some easy meals.

This is for a 9x13 pan

Combined list of ingredients:

About 8-12 lasagna noodles broken to pan size

1 lg onion, largely diced

12 oz (approx 4c) mushrooms roughly chopped

1.5 tbsp + 1tsp garlic salt

2.5 tsp nutmeg

1.5 tsp chili powder

5-6tbsp olive oil

2tbsp minced garlic

2 10oz blocks frozen spinach (or about 5c fresh)

 2.5tbsp butter

2.5tbsp flour

3.5c milk

4tbsp Parmesan + extra for topping

1/2tbsp salt

6 1/4c mozzarella

Here are the ingredients separated out and the directions:

Boil Noodles to al-dente, set aside.

 

Sauce:

2.5 tbsp butter

2.5 tbsp flour

3.5c milk

4 tbsp Parmesan

1/2 tbsp salt

1 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp nutmeg

Melt butter in sauce pan until bubbly then add the flour whisking quickly keeping it on the heat. Once it starts to thicken (which will happen quickly) and turns a light brown color add the milk and quickly whisk so there are no lumps. Stir in salt, garlic salt, chili powder, nutmeg and cheese and continue to cook over medium high heat. Stir frequently. The sauce will act similar to gravy and will thicken while cooking until removed from heat so once it reaches a smooth consistency and the thickness of an Alfredo type sauce remove from heat.

 

 

Filler:

1 large onion, largely diced

12oz mushrooms (about 4c)

1.5tbsp garlic salt

1.5tsp nutmeg

1tsp chili powder

5tbsp olive oil

2tbsp minced garlic

2 10oz blocks frozen spinach thawed or about 5c fresh

In a large saucepan saute the onions and mushrooms with the olive oil until onions are translucent and mushrooms start shrinking and are tender. Add spinach, garlic salt, chili powder, nutmeg, minced garlic and cook together about 5-10 minutes. Stirring frequently. 

 

Now for the fun part, putting it together. :) 

This is the order of layering:

-2/3c sauce to cover bottom of 9x13 glass pan

-Noodles

-2/3c sauce

-1/2 of the filling

-2c mozzarella

-Noodles

-2/3c sauce 

-Second 1/2 of filling

-2c mozzarella

-Noodles

-Remainder sauce

-2c mozzarella

-Sprinkle Parmesan on top.

 

 Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until lightly browned.

(If coming from the fridge like I suggest below, increase cook time about 15 minutes)

Now if you are anything like me, you like things that are easy to make ahead of time and throw in the oven when it is time for dinner. I've been blessed with 2 great nappers, both of my kiddos take about a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, and at the same time too, how awesome is that? It gives me great "chill" time for cleaning, cooking and prepping supper, reading, crochet, crafts, or whatever I decide I want to do. This is one of the meals I love because I can prep it and have it in the fridge ready to go in the oven when my husband gets off AND have the kitchen cleaned and dishes from cooking done for easy cleanup later.

 

 

Ta-DA! A clean kitchen with lasagna prepped!

You could make this a day or two ahead of time and have in the fridge, if you do I'd suggest increasing the cook time about 15 minutes to make sure it heats thoroughly.

  

ENJOY!

Learning & Teaching Colors. Toddler style!

Hi everyone, it's that time with my little girl. Time to introduce the actual learning stage, you know the lets sit and have "school time" stage. Toddlers have short attention spans, so, this list is a great hands-on list of activities to introduce colors. For the first 2 years you can show and explain and teach allot of things to toddlers, and even some "school time" type of activities but once they get a little older you can drive it in a little more. You can actually get them to keep attention on something for an amount of time, you can bring out the real fun! Learning colors is something easily made fun, and over the last couple weeks we have been doing allot of activities to show our little Annabelle colors and what an exciting couple weeks it has been! Remember to keep inserting the color names and explaining things to them. These are fun activities for parent and child, you can have fun watching them learn, and it's fine if the match up wrong colors every now and then too, you just work with them and show them differences and so on. Here is a list of some things that we used, keeping in mind that all activities listed require supervision, yes some less than others but these are meant to be things you do with them anyhow!

C-O-L-O-R-S!

12 GREAT Color learning/teaching activities for toddler: To teach and to simply introduce the colors to the little ones!

1: Baking, baking is ALWAYS a hit with toddlers. 

------Bake some simple sugar cookies from a mix or from a recipe and using some sprinkles (I used wilton crystal sprinkles). Do different color sprinkles on different cookies and talk about and introduce which colors are which. Also, when eating, they can pick out and tell you which color cookie they want to eat. 

Another great idea would be using a little food coloring to mix into the cookie dough to make colored cookie would be fun!

  

  

2: Colors by fruit

-----Using either colored cups or what I did is used colored tape on clear plastic cups seperate the fruit into matching cups. Just cut up the fruit and leave them with it! Helping them sort and get it right! Ideas...Grapes, Blueberries, Strawberries, oranges, banana, lime, lemon, clementine. Annabelle LOVES fruit so this is an awesome thing for her, and when it's done it makes an awesome and healthy snack time!

3: Colored rice
-----Color rice using a little vinegar and food coloring. About 1tbsp vinegar to each cup of rice. Mix the vinegar and food coloring keeping in mind that it will be a lighter than what the liquid is in the bowl or bag you mix it in. Once you mix the color and vinegar and then add in rice and coat well, lay out on foil lined baking sheet and let air dry. Time to dry varies by how wet it was and how thin you spread it on the sheet.  The rice can be used for pouring, playing in or making like a sand art project in bottles. This is a great addition to any hands on activity your little toddler likes to learn from.

 

4: Crayola color bath tablets!

 

 5: Sorting Blocks/balls
-----The kiddos love to play outside so we used chalk to draw big circles in different colors and brought out the baskets of the blocks and balls and let her go at it. Of course there is coaching going on but this is something you can let them do and they can learn from trial and error and you work with them. She had a blast with this and brother thought he was helping too.
 

 

6: Basic Crayons

-----Crayons are fun, the kids feel in control, creative and proud to create their own artwork. You can also use this to help with shapes, draw some shapes and color an edge on it and let them match the color crayons with the color and fill it in. 

 

7: Markers

 

 8: Felt color matching
-----At walmart or any craft store you can buy a little jewelry findings storage box that you can use, and it also serves as a storage container for the felt pieces when you are thru. Alright this is simple, you need some felt in different colors, scissors, the box, glue gun! Cut a small piece of felt for the bottom of each little square and glue to the bottom. Using the rest of the felt cut out small shapes, triangle, square, rectangle etc. Lay out all shapes and let them match the colored shapes to each square. Also, I threw some little colored pompoms in the mix too. Another favorite for my Annabelle.



9: Fruit Loops and baking cups for sorting! AND of course, snacking!

 10: Color wheel and clothes pins matching game
-----What you need: Craft paint (8-9 colors), clothes pins (3 for each of the colors), large cardboard circle cut out (I just used an old diaper box we had I think). Using a marker or something to keep straight lines create the sections for each color and then paint each section with different color. Paint 3 clothes pins to each color. This is a great matching game, you can add in rewards or what we did, just did it for fun, getting it right and the excitement was reward enough for her. This is her absolute favorite color game and it doesn't take up too much space to store or take somewhere with you, would be fun for a car ride too!
 

11: Colored water

-----Kids love to shake, play in and do whatever with water most times. All you need is a bottle of water, we used mini ones and either food coloring or paint (I'd suggest keeping the bottle closed and for shaking activity only if you use paint). And I realize now I didn't get a picture of these finished when we did this so sorry but you can picture, it's fun for them to see the water change when the shake the bottle.

12: Colored tape

-----Like I used in a previous activity you can use it to distinguish the clear cups to each color or you could use in place of chalk in a sorting activity like in #5. This is a universal tool to play and craft with. Also, cream masking tape is great for a substitute to what colored tape you cannot find in store, just color with a marker.

  

Hands on learning is one of the best things for kids in my opinion, it makes it fun, exciting and interesting! This was such a fun blog to write, and to look back on this fun we have been having and continue to have. Truly, I believe that colors are one of the funnest activities to do with kids. This list is my compilation of activities, there are so many fun things to do but I hope this blog brings some fun, hands on learning for your kids! ENJOY! 

What's for dinner? Spinach and parmesan stuffed chicken

What's for dinner? Spinach and Parmesan stuffed chicken breast.

My hubby LOVES spinach so we use it often, fresh, frozen, he'll eat it!

Ingredients:

3 large chicken breast butterflied and pounded

1/4c olive oil

1tbsp garlic salt

1/2c chopped fresh parsley

2tbsp minced garlic

1tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp lemon zest

1 1/2tbsp chili powder

1tsp nutmeg

1box frozen spinach (10oz) thawed and drained or about 2 cups fresh

1 5oz bag Parmesan cheese shredded

approx. 2 tbsp salt

Below is a picture of the marinade. Mix the Olive oil, garlic salt, parsley, minced garlic, lemon juice, zest, chili powder, nutmeg together. Marinade for a couple hours if you can if not just rub into chicken well in the beginning of the cooking process.

 

Below is chicken butterflied and to the side is where I was starting the marinade. 

  After you cover the chicken in the marinade, lay the chicken with the cut side up and spread a thin layer of the cheese then place the spinach on top. Evenly sprinkle the salt on top of the spinach then top with the rest of the cheese and fold over pushing as much in between the two sides of chicken as you can. This wont be perfect, and it doesn't have to be. Bake at 375 for 45minutes.

 

ENJOY! 

Healthy Cheese-it Crackers... with carrots!

 Healthy Cheese-it Crackers... with carrots!

Toddlers L-O-V-E cheese crackers. At least any I've ever known do. And lately, I've been trying to find healthy alternatives to the little snacks of the kids. No preservatives, who doesn't love that? Adding vegi's where they wont even know they are eating them, even better!

Ingredients:

1/2c shredded carrots

3/4c shredded sharp cheddar (you can substitute mild if you want)

1c All Purpose flour plus extra for kneading and flouring surface (substitute wheat or gluten free if you prefer)

4tbsp butter softened

3-4tbsp water

3/4tsp salt  (plus extra to salt dough before baking)

Mix shredded carrots, cheese, flour, salt and butter in a food processor or ninja. Pulse until little balls form. Add water 1tbsp at a time while pulsing until dough starts to form a ball. On a floured surface sprinkle dough with flour to keep it from being sticky and knead a few times. Place ball in the fridge for 20 minutes wrapped in plastic. Roll dough out to 1/4 inch thick, salt top of dough lightly using a pizza cutter cut crackers into squares or use a mini cookie cutter if you have one. Place on a foil lined baking sheet and bake at 375 for 8-16 minutes. The large span in baking time is because I baked mine around 8 minutes so they wouldn't be real crispy or crunchy because my son is a little younger and I feel more comfortable with them being softer. If you want them to be softer then stick with about 8-9 minutes, but if you want crispy crackers bake them about 12-16 minutes. Keep an eye on them though and the longer you bake them the darker the color will get. Mine puffed up a little too but they were GREAT and the kids absolutely love them.

All ours were different shapes and sizes cause miss Annabelle was having a blast helping!