FYI-Halloween Candy

I have received multiple emails from people saying that there is a recall on Sherwood Brand Pirate's Gold Milk Chocolate coins, sold at Costco and other bulk stores as well as at dollar stores, due to the fact that they contain Melamine, an ingredient in milk products that has caused deaths in China.

I verified this information on snopes.com so I encourage you to spread the word, check your children's Halloween treats out before they dive in and check your own household supply of Halloween treats so that you do not accidentally give out these toxic coins. Let's keep our kids safe and healthy this Halloween.

TGIF

It's been a long week here at the Butas household, thanks to a long string of pre-school illnesses that have plagued my son since he started school in mid-September.

For this Friday's tip I wanted to tell you about how easy it is to go and do an absentee vote prior to election day. Virginia is expecting a record number of voters this year and it is predicted that there may be too many voters to handle, meaning that voters could spend hours waiting in line to cast their ballot.

Voters can go and cast their ballot early this year to help cut down on the amount of traffic predicted for election day. Check out Virginia's local government website to see what locations are closest to you.

For example, I live in Falls Church and there is a location on Columbia Pike that is two miles from my home. They are open until 8pm during the week and I breezed in there the other day and voted in no time.

Check it out and tell your friends so that you are not stuck in line on Tuesday.

TGIF

Here is a great website to check out www.babyplays.com. It's kinda like Netflix for toys. You can try out different toys each month and send them back when you are finished with them.

Not only does this save you money and keep your kids interested in the toys you have at home, but it is a real space saver. For example, if you live in a small apartment or condo and do not have a lot of storage space, this is great way to keep things interesting for your kids while keeping the parents sane. Of course a mommy thought of this website.

I encourage you all to check it out.

Recommendation Wednesdays

My mother recently forwarded me an article about how pediatricians are now recommending that the Vitamin D requirements for infants be doubled in an effort to ward off rickets and to ensure life-long health benefits in children.

With the cold weather setting in and the hours of daylight dwindling, I recommend that all parents of infants and toddlers read up on this topic the and talk to your own pediatrician about this issue.

Let's all give our babies the healthiest start possible.

Nesting, Resting and Stressing

With only 7 weeks left until my second baby arrives on December 4th, I have finally begun to hit that wall at the end of my pregnancy. You all know that wall-the one where you are trying to finish up the nesting portion of your pregnancy, but you are often sidetracked by the resting that your body now requires.

I have also added a third dimension to this phase-Stressing-which is partly from being overtired and partly from just worrying that everything will not get done in time.

My wonderful husband keeps on reminding me that its okay if everything does NOT get done prior to the baby's arrival and that it is more important for me to rest than it is for me to stress.

I know that he is right, but it's still hard because I am frustrated that my bursts of energy are dwindling and that everyday I feel like I accomplish fewer and fewer tasks on my to do list.

I guess I will just have to take my husband's advice and make shorter to do lists because "banking" my sleep until the baby's arrival really is the most important thing at this point.

TGIF

My son recently had to go on a medication that acts as a diuretic and makes him go to the bathroom more. For the past few nights he was leaking through his PJ's in the front because his diaper couldn't hold all the liquid.

I examined my options to remedy this situation and this is what I came up with:

1. Put two diapers on him so that he could sleep through the night without a diaper change.

2. Use a diaper liner.

3. Switch to the overnight diapers and hope that they hold.

4. Put some of those plastic reusable training pants on him over his diaper.

5. Wake him up half way through the night and change his diaper to prevent leaks.

Putting two diapers on him just did not seem comfortable at all, so I nixed that option. Switching to the overnight diapers meant spending money on something that may or may not work and the plastic training pants option just sounded horribly uncomfortable, especially for sleeping, plus my son's skin is so sensitive I was worried that those would just lock the moisture in tighter and closer to his skin-yuck. Waking him half way through the night for a diaper change just didn't seem nice at all and then I worried about him falling back to sleep.

So that left me with the liner option. While it is easy enough to go to Babies "R" Us and buy these, again I didn't feel like spending money (even if it is only $10) on something that may not work, so at my sister's suggestion, I used a maxi pad as a liner. Lucky for me I had a bunch of the super absorbent ones with wings leftover from when I had my son so I thought why not give it a try?

My husband was less than thrilled that I was lining our son's diaper with a maxi pad, but it worked. The extra lining prevented leaks and kept his PJ's and bed linens dry.

If you are ever in a bind in the future and need to increase the absorbency of your child's diapers for whatever reason, consider using a maxi pad or diaper liner.

Recommendation Wednesdays

When my son began preschool this September one of things that I neglected to think about was the fact that I would have to pack him a lunch to eat at school on the days he was there. This shouldn't be too hard, I thought, but then I was informed that there was no microwave available for heating up lunches and there were some other restrictions on what you could send in-i.e., no nut products of any kind, only finger foods that my son could feed himself etc.

While these are all reasonable restrictions placed on lunches by the school, it was still a bit of a challenge initially because my son is not a fan of lunch meat and some other cold foods, not to mention the fact that he is used to eating a hot lunch at home with mommy.

Here are a few guidelines that I use every time I pack Bruno's lunch:

1. I try to include a starch, a fruit or a veggie, and a protein.

2. I talk to other moms frequently to see what they send in and that has been helpful-it gives me ideas and I help other moms by giving them ideas. For example, my sister suggested sending in cut up cold hot dogs, which sounds gross and never really occurred to me for that exact reason, but she tried it and her son loves it. I told another mom about Kashi Mighty Bites which have a lot of protein in them and now her daughter eats them regularly.

3. I try to keep it interesting or he gets bored. I look at what they are serving for snack each day and try to vary what I serve him for lunch. For example, if they are having crackers and cream cheese for snack, I send in Pirates Booty for his starch and yogurt melts for his protein on that day so he isn't eating the same thing for snack and lunch.

4. Repetition. I keep at it. Bruno hated chicken nuggets for the longest time, but I kept trying and eventually he ate them and now he loves them. You can try to introduce a food 50 times and your kid may never eat it, but the 51st time he may gobble it up.

5. Talk to the teachers. Teachers are a wonderful resource for suggestions about what to feed kids, especially little ones. They can also shed some light on how much variety there needs to be in your child's lunches and they can tell you what appropriate portion sizes are.

Lastly, keep an eye on what your kids eat at breakfast and dinner. If you get one good solid meal in your toddler a day, that's a real accomplishment. We have to remember that kids get distracted by all the stimulation at school so eating may not be a priority during lunch and kids are pretty good about eating when they are hungry.

TGIF

For this Friday's Tips and Good Information (TGIF) feature, I want to share a little time saving trick of mine.

If you have kids in school, you know that everything has to be labeled-I even have to label Bruno's diapers for pre-school. Anyways, I am good about labeling things that I send to school, like an extra change of clothes and back up diapers, but I often forget to label things he is already wearing when he leaves the house, like jackets or shoes.

To solve this problem I have started keeping a mini Sharpie marker in my car and next to his lunch bag so that if we get to school and I realize that his raincoat is not labeled, I can quickly label it and send him off for the day and not have to worry about if the jacket will return or not.

This is a really obvious trick, but one that took me two weeks of pre-school to pick up on. Hope that you find it helpful too.

Recommendation Wednesdays

I recently got to host my friend's baby shower. Since I provided the location-my home- and all the food, the other hostess was in charge of the cake, games, decorations and favors.

For the favors she choose to have individually wrapped baby theme cookies as the take home favors. These were some impressive cookies. Pink and blue babies swaddled in blankets hanging from a stork's mouth were what was created for us by Jill Rodeffer of Cookie Cutter Creations. I want to highly recommend using Jill for your next birthday party, special occasion, or baby shower. She can do theme cookies of all varieties and she wraps each cookie in plastic and ties cute little bows around the top to keep the cookies fresh and to complete the presentation.

Jill's son has severe allergies, so she is very careful to list every single ingredient that goes into the cookies, the icing and the sprinkles, so you know exactly what you are getting.

She also does custom cookie bouquets for special occasions as well. Check it out, it is money well spent, plus the cookies are so yummy.

Cookie Cutter Creations

Custom Cookies & Cookie Bouquets

Jill Rodeffer

703-327-1268

cookiesbyjill@aol.com