Recommendation Wednesdays

The talk among many of my mom friends has recently been about kids and meals. Currently the hot topic is, how do you entertain your toddler or kids while you are trying to prep the adult meal for the evening?

This is a great question. It is really easy to "cook" dinner for the kids since it only takes about 5-10 minutes to make most of their food and pretty much everything can go into the microwave for a quick zapping.

How do you entertain little ones while you are trying to slice and dice up some adult food without tripping over them and making yourself crazy-well here are my suggestions:

1. If your kids have a designated nap time or are at school or daycare at a certain time each day, carve out a half hour or so to do as much dinner prep work as possible. Marinate meat or chop veggies and store them in Ziploc bags until dinner. You can even wash Romaine lettuce leaves and loosely wrap them in paper towels and store them in the lower veggie drawer of your refrigerator for 3-4 hours without them wilting or getting nasty.

2. Obviously option 1 is the way to go, but life is not always that neat, so if your kids are home and underfoot while you are prepping dinner try designating that half an hour that you need to prep as a special time for your kids. For example, tell them it is story time and let them sit on the couch at look at books of their choosing. Another suggestion is to tell them it is art time or craft time and let them color (make a welcome home card for Daddy or create a book of pictures and put 20 sheets in one book and let them fill up one page each night) or use play dough at the table while you work on dinner. If this is a nightly ritual that they get to look forward to, kids will learn to view that half hour of art or story time as a special time all their own.

3. Get a large basket or bin and fill it with special toys. Only allow your children to take that bin out for half an hour each night while you are making dinner. Again, this will give the kids something to look forward to and it will make that half hour seem really special for them instead of a time when "mommy is busy."

4. Get the kids involved. If they are old enough to help, put them to work. You will be teaching them valuable skills that are useful in the future as well as building their confidence about their capabilities. If they are too young to peel or chop for you, you can still get them involved by playing store or restaurant-bring in a play cash register or shopping cart for them to use as props and cultivate their imaginations.

Hope that these help ladies. Good luck and pass these along to friends and family.