The "Potentially" Sane Mother's Guide to Raising Children

About two or three years ago, my husband and I ordered a bunch of books from the Deseret Book Shop, to give as gifts to family and friends. While doing this, I ordered a couple of books for myself that looked like they might be good reads for me. One of them was a book called The Potentially Sane Mother's Guide to Raising Children. I think I read the preface, and then it go put into storage with the rest of our belongings for a while, shifted around and stored again before finally ending up in our shed, before we finally got a bookshelf. Out came all the books we thought we needed, and it sat on the bookshelf for another year before I rediscovered it a couple of weeks ago. 

This time, I began to read it properly. It is wonderful! It's written very clearly and normally, without any professional jargon, and she uses great experiences from her own life to illustrate the concepts in the book. It has some really good activities in it that you can use as family home evening lessons that help to emphasize the concepts. And it's taught me a lot about myself as a mother. While it's geared towards LDS families and younger children, the ideas are definitely adaptable to families of all faiths or non-faith, and can be adjusted to suit older children as well. 

While it would be impossible for me to implement every change in the book straight away, I've picked out a couple of things that I want to work on. I love things that motivate me to try harder and be more aware as a mother, even if I don't succeed at first. I also love that all the concepts in the book are ideas that I can easily see being implemented in our family. I have read a lot of books about raising children and families that have made me wonder where on earth they are getting their information from? This book is realistic, and breaks the changes down into small pieces that make it seem simple. I'm excited to begin trying out more of the ideas in this book in time.

Singing Autumn Leaves

I was recently called back into primary as the pianist, and I think it is my dream calling. I absolutely love playing the piano for primary. I work with some wonderful music leaders. They do a great job. Much better, I think, than when my husband and I were music leaders! During the summer, they had a big cardboard sun on the board, and after each song, a child that had been trying really hard during that song was chosen to come and choose one of the "rays" from around the sun. Each ray had a song number written on it, and that was the song we sung.


At the beginning of autumn, our music leaders came with a basket full of real, dry autumn leaves. On each leaf was the song number. The kids have so much fun gently shaking the basket and then carefully picking out a leaf and reading the song number. Sometimes they have to guess the song. And sometimes the leaves get crushed :) But it's all part of the fun, and the leaves get replaced.I love this idea so much that I decided to incorporate it into our family home evenings. I figure that this way, if I use the same song numbers, it will give my children a few extra chances to practice the songs at home. 


I didn't use real leaves (although I do love the textural element of those dry leaves) because I wanted to be able to keep mine as long as possible, and because it's actually raining here in Perth, for the first time in a long while, so all the autumn leaves are soggy and squished. So I bought some red, orange and brown card and spent a couple of nights tracing leaf shapes onto my coloured card and cutting them out. I couldn't be bothered laminating and cutting out all those laminated leaves though. 

To make them re-useable, I put a piece of tape on the back of each leaf. Then I cut some plain white self-adhesive labels into small pieces and put a piece on top of the tape, then wrote the song numbers on the label. When I want to change the song numbers, I'll be able to just peel the label off the tape, and put another label on. 

 I'm thinking about making a cardboard branch for the leaves to be displayed on, or maybe once the rain stops and everything dries out again I'll get a real branch, put it in a vase and blu-tack the leaves to that. The kids think it's a great idea. They love picking out a song from the basket, and it helps them to learn the songs they're working on in primary too, because I use those songs on the leaves.

For winter, I think I'll make a cloud with raindrops and write the song numbers on each raindrop. I thought about doing snowflakes, but we don't get snow. We don't really get much rain either but at least the kids know what rain is :)

Luncbox Treats

I've become a little tired of buying expensive junk food that pretends to be healthy for my children's lunchbox snacks. So over the mid-term break, I spent a little of my time off from uni Googling some easy lunch box treats that I could make for my children. 


I started by making a triple batch of muffins. I used the basic muffin mix recipe from Best Recipes and made apple and cinnamon variations. One batch of plain apple and cinnamon, one batch of apple and ginger, and one batch with the added goodness of wheatgerm and flaxseeds hidden in there. I didn't get any pictures, but next time I make a batch, I'll be sure to take some and upload them here.


These muffins are super, super simple to make. When they were cool, I wrapped each muffin individually in cling film, labeled them and put them in a container in the freezer. Each night I just grab a couple from the freezer to defrost for the next day. They may not be supremely healthy, but at least I know they are free from the additives and other nasties that hide in kids' snack foods. Plus, they're much cheaper (under $3 for a dozen, compared to $5 for a 6 pack of muesli bars - the ones that are halfway decent, anyway). And making them makes me feel like I'm a good mum :)


Next on my list are:


Afghan biscuits  - they were a favourite treat when I was growing up.

Anzac slice  - an easy variation on the Anzac biscuit

Peanut brownie biscuits - another favourite treat. These remind me of "camping" at the beach on our Uncle's farm during holidays when I was a child in NZ.

Peanut butter and oat slice  - it looks easy and yummy.

Here's to baking up a storm for the kiddies :) This weekend we're making afghan bikkies!

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

Our family has been very lucky to be able to send our children to a wonderful public Primary School. The school has a great community atmosphere, and the teachers are wonderful. At the end of last year, I wanted to do something different to the usual Christmas chocolates and card. My little girl was also in Family Day Care one day a week and I wanted to do something for her day care carer, who is absolutely awesome. I found this "Thank You For Helping Me Grow" idea here at Giggles Galore...

   
...and fell in love with it. I changed mine up a little though, to make it more Christmassy and more cost effective, since I had a total of ten to do (in each class there are one or two teachers and two or three teacher's assistants and I wanted to give one to the crossing attendant - she's there every single day, in the freezing rain in winter and the unbearable heat of our hot West Aussie summer making sure our kids are safe).  


So I went to my local Bunnings Warehouse and wandered through the plant section until I came across little pots of herbs in their nursery section for $1.99 each. I had originally been looking at colourful flowers, but herbs are useful. It can become a gift that keeps on giving. I decided leafy green herbs would look lovely, so I chose sweet basil, mint and coriander. I figured the teachers could swap them if they preferred. Then I went to Spotlight and bought a few fat quarters in some pretty red Christmas fabric (on clearance since it was so close to Christmas) some green ribbon and 2 sheets of coordinating scrapbook paper.

 I made up these little cards out of the scrapbook paper and taped a couple of bamboo skewers (since I had them on hand already) to the backs of each one.

I cut each fat quarter into four equal strips, wrapped them around the pots and held them in place with a rubber band, then tied the ribbon around it and pushed the cards into place.

My husband was impressed, I think. At least, he encouraged me to take photos of the process! And they were a big hit with the teachers :)

Kids Say The Darndest Things...

I love the funny little things my kids say and do. So here's a few of the things that have made me laugh recently...

I was making the kids ham and cheese toasties the other night, and Cumoram was helping me by buttering the bread. Then, he started licking all the butter off the knife! I told him off and said, "Don't do that! That will make you fat and sick!"

"But mum," he said, "You got that by having a baby."

Brook had taken the kids to his basketball game one night to give me a bit of a break. While he was playing the game, Kembry wandered over to the canteen and said to the lady behind the counter, "Hello. Can I please have some chippies, and lollies, a power drink, and a chocolate."

The lady said to her, "I'm sorry sweet heart, you'll have to go back to mummy and daddy and get some money first."

So Kembry ran all the way back to where Brook had stashed his gear, rummaged around til she found his wallet, went back to the lady and presented Brook's credit card, hoping to complete her purchase!

 When my tummy started to get big, we sat the kids down to talk about the baby coming and we explained to them that my tummy was getting big because the baby was growing in there.
Cumoram said, "Oh! And Aunty Candice is having a baby too, and so is Aunty Paige!" (Yes, they really are having babies.)
Then Kembry pipes up, "So when is Uncle Paul having his bubba then?"

When Brook came to pick me up from work the other night, he had his 2 year old niece and Kembry in the car. As soon as she saw me, his niece yelled at the top of her lungs, "Hahaha! Look at Aunty Mesha, got big big fat tummy!"

Kembry turned around and said indignantly, "No, my mummy has a baby in her tummy!"

Kembry spread a blanket on the lounge room floor, arranged her play food on it then asked all her friends (every teddy and doll in the house) if they would like to come to her picnic. She came out with an armful of toys and announced that some of them had said no, so they were staying in the room. Then she put each toy on the blanket, handed each one a plate and a fork (colour coordinated), and gave each toy some play food to eat, then stood up and said, "Hello friends! Welcome to my picnic!" 
I heard her say, "No, you can't have any cake because you haven't eaten your salad!"

Cumoram: "Why do only mummies have babies and not daddies?"

I was reading The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base to Kembry one night and asked her if she could count from one to eleven.


"Yes I can," She said. "One... to eleven."

I walked into the lounge room one night after checking my emails and facebook, to find that Cumoram had fallen asleep on the couch and Kembry had drawn all over his face in green felt-tipped pen. She looked up at me and said, "Paper now, please." As if she'd just used his face for a practice run! (Picture to come)

Brook and I woke up to this one Saturday morning. The kids had woken up early, decided they wanted breakfast and helped themselves to a whole jar of nutella!

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Cumoram playing footy.

Kembry

 

 Cumoram (left) and his cousin, trying on Kembry's glasses.

 Looking for something to feed the birdies...

 "I am strongest man!".... "Me too!".... "And me!"

 Through the window...

 Ready, set, jump!

 Here, you have it.

 Class trip to the museum and the art gallery... here are the future Picasso's creating their masterpieces.

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