Babysitter in a Box - Restaurant

Walk into any kosher restaurant the week before Pesach and find them brimming with tables of families trying to keep it simple by eating out in an attempt to avoid the last-minute kitchen transformation. While it may save our pre-holiday sanity, taking kids out to dine is not always the easiest of family pursuits - especially when the chosen joint is bustling with heaps of rowdy other children. Keeping the kids happy, settled, fed, and in their seats is likely quite the challenge. Here's a few things to up the fun factor on a public family outing when the menu reads BYOE.

1. Jaq Jaq Bird Chalkboard Placemat

Table tic-tac-toe gets an upgrade from pen and napkin.

2. Hint Mints

After dinner mints that slip into everything - from the slimmest of evening clutches to the most overstuffed of diaper bags.

3. Chopstick Kids

The little rubber rugrats fit over all sorts of chopsticks to tame stubby digits and keep them going for more Lo Mein.

4. Pocket Origami Prints

Reach into your jean pocket and unfold a wreath of Asian artistry - just waiting for shades of  teenybopper color!

5. mOmma Rocking Sippy Cup

When BYOB crosses BYOE.

6. Hello Hanna Get-Set Placemat Sets

With stickers to customize and icons to recognize, these placemats just might teach them a thing or two about dining etiquette... for robots!

7. Strawz

Let them get a little beverage-crazy with these DIY crazy straws.

8. Think-ets

A tiny little trinket tin filled with directions for unlimited game-playing on the go.

9. Food Face Plates

Give peas and spaghetti some serious personality - food never got this much face-time!

Bacterial Bath Toys

I'm totally one of those obnoxious women who's "Pesach cleaning" gleefully erupts into a full-on dirt, grime, and invisible-dust busting euphoria. Oh! How I love scrubbing and sanitizing my way to disinfection heaven! Well, this year, thanks to my new cleaning help(!), I somehow managed to lay low in the sterilization station, and happily put my own elbow grease into things that actually make a healthy daily difference! For one, bath toys. It's never yet happened to me, but the sheer look of horror of other mom's faces when they tell tales of dark-greenish slime spurting from squirty bath toys during a sudsy bubble bath with the babes has got me grossed out enough to pick up on some proactive prevention!

I soaked the stash of bath toys in a solution of 4 parts white vinegar - 1 part warm water, but first i filled each little squirty with straight-up bleach! Just suck it up into the toy, and let it sit in there for at least an hour while soaking with the rest of the bath toy bounty. Bleach will, no doubt, fight off any impending germ-y buildup - gnarly or not.

But most important, make sure to ALWAYS squeeze out the water from each little rubber toy after every single bath session. We made it part of the bath routine. Thankfully Freida likes being helpful. :)

P.S. People are always asking me how I have time to teach Freida so much etc. While I'm supremely lucky to be able to work from home, I just want to mention how involving a child in every-day tasks - no matter how much harder it may seem to be - will prove to be easy, gratifying, and effective. There is no good-enough reason why all the Pesach cleaning should be done when the kids are napping or out of the house for the day. It's part of the way they learn and develop as social little people. Watching Freida scrub up the toys immediately brought me back to my childhood - washing down the little tykes rocking horse with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water. I felt like it was yesterday. These little things are all part of "teach them to your children"...

A Little Bugs Life

In correlation to the insect life cycle unit, I picked up a little "bug house" for Freida to collect and observe the little buggers. She was, to say the least, ecstatic! I guess it was about me giving in to her bug-loving nature, and actually aiding in her insect-collecting activities...

She now totes the little mesh bug house like this seasons "it" bag!

To my shock (and disgust!) she veered toward collecting the slimy variety, namely: slugs, snails, and worms! Nasty lil' things!

Thankfully, she found it just as exciting to feed them (leaves, flowers etc.) as to catch them...

You can get a bug house like this one, here.

First Lesson in Life Cycles

The arrival of Spring heralded a new era in Freida's little education. I decided to start doing some actual teaching, through proper "units". This will be the first in a series of (hopefully) many, in attempt to be the first to teach my little lady about the facts of life - on a 2 year old's level, of course! :) Freida has been obsessed with butterflies since she was about 6 months old (she was watching her cousin's Wiggles DVD and upon seeing "The Butterfly Flit" her breathe grew rapid and her little toys didn't cease twirling!), and I figured Spring would be the perfect time to introduce the concept of Life Cycles - via the classic childrens illustrations of Eric Carle.

I broke out the over-sized board book that I had bought a few months earlier, and popped in the included audio CD of the author reading the story of this iconic and beloved little green critter...

Naturally, she gravitated toward "Saturday" - the day he ransacked a picnic...

She always loved that Press 'n Go caterpillar toy (I think it's actually meant to be an inchworm), and she was really interested in learning about how he was born and what he eats etc.

Once we bonded enough with the story itself, I let her play with some story-theme stick-ons (I had found for $2 in Marshalls) which ensued into a full-on foods matching game.

I think the life cycle aspect is really well brought out and easily graspable in this book...

Also, I decided to go with this book as a start to learning in "units" because aside from the life cycle concept, this book can be an awesome art reference (collage style, tissue paper art, an introduction to abstract etc.), a start to the calendar (as it goes through the days of the week), an early and easy-enough math lesson (counting the fruits),  a lesson in cause and effect (poor little guy ate so much he wound up fat and with a stomachache!), etc.

I'll post here and there about this unit as we make our way through this sort of learning exploration for the first time.

For now I'll leave you with a little video, celebrating The Very Hungry Caterpillar's 40th Birthday:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYG1tLt5GCQ]

Also, check out this totally wicked project - felted food to accompany the book!!

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

Although Freida generally loves to break out in a round of Family Guy's "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" song when the lunch bells chime, there are always those random instances where I've simply let her buzz for too long and missed her ideal nap-time window, at which point she's likely too tired to even think about settling into her seat for a meal. On such occasions I find the best solution is being creative with the grub. These peanut butter jelly rolls totally did the trick (I think she fantasized she was lunching on sushi like her Mama...).

It's just a crustless slice of whole wheat bread, spread with PB&J, rolled up, and sliced! Sometimes just changing the form of food really shakes things up for them, making easy lunch ingestion that much more fun!