As parents, we all make mistakes. Even from infancy a seemingly innocent practice can lead to a really hard habit to break in a very short time. Fortunately, if we start early we can avoid a few common mistakes that parents make which can easily create bad habits in our children. Now, these are not behavioral problems that would warrant discipline. I’m simply talking about kids doing things that aren’t so cute after a while. Here are a few things that I have tried to avoid in my own journey as a Mother, things that reinforce bad habits in children. Some I have had to learn the hard way!

1. Letting your child sleep in the bed with you.

Now, before I get a bunch of comments from all of you who co-sleep, let me explain myself. I don’t see anything wrong with responsibly sleeping with baby. I did it with both of mine for the first three months, and it was wonderful. It becomes a problem, however, when you allow baby to sleep with you for much longer than this. The longer baby sleeps with you, the harder it is for him/her to learn to sleep independently. I’ve seen it lots of times. And, sorry to say it, most of the time the co-sleeping continues because for Mom it’s easier, or it just feels good. This is selfish. You are developing insecurity in your child. And believe me, the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to stop the habit.

I had a single-mom friend who had her little girl in the bed with her from the time she was born. By the time her child was 3 years old, Mom was ready to have her bed back. But by then, the habit had been long nurtured, and wasn’t going to go away so easily. For many nights she tried laying her daughter down in her own bed, but by the middle of the night, the little girl had wandered back into Mommy’s bed where she stayed until morning. If Mom tried to put the girl back in her own bed, she cried and screamed and fought until her exhausted mother gave in. The frustrated Mom didn’t know what to do, and the poor little girl didn’t understand why all of a sudden she wasn’t allowed to sleep in the comforts of Mommy’s bed as she always had. Sleeping in a whole different room, in a cold and lonely bed (in her mind), was too intimidating for the toddler.

It is so unfair for you to do this to your child. So, start off right by forming good sleeping habits early. Co-sleeping for breastfeeding or whatever early on is great. But by 3 months a baby can sleep 8 hours through the night. Don’t make it harder for your child then it has to be. Teach them to be able to comfortably go to sleep on their own, in their own bed. Believe me, you’ll all get a better night’s sleep!

2. Using “White Noise” to help your child go to sleep.

When you put your baby to sleep, don’t debilitate him/her by creating a sleep crutch. Insisting that you turn on a fan, white noise machine, music, or some other sound in order to help your child go to sleep faster is only creating a bad habit. I’m not saying that you should NEVER do it. There are times, like when you have noisy guests over, or are at somebody else’s house, when using a pleasant sound is good for helping to drown out the background noise that would otherwise keep baby awake. But you should put your child to bed without a noise for the majority of the time, so that he learns to put himself to sleep in the silence of his own room.

My husband is a prime example of this. He simply cannot go to sleep without a fan or something creating a low humming sound. If we sleep somewhere away from home, where there is nothing to make a white noise, he tosses and turns and goes crazy in the silence.

My dad also told me of a man on his softball team who has this same problem. Every time they have a game out of town, this man brings a small fan with him, just so he can go to sleep. There is no reason to create this stumbling block in your own child’s life.

3. Using a baby wipes warmer.

Sure it sounds like a pleasant thing to wipe your new little baby’s soft tushy with a soft, warm baby wipe. And I’m sure that baby loves the feeling of it. But what happens when you are out to eat and you have to change baby in the bathroom using a little pack of room temperature travel wipes. I’ll tell you what happens. Baby is suddenly shocked at the cold thing wiping her bottom, and cries in protest wishing for the cozy warm wipes that she’s so used to.

I’ve never had a baby cry about being wiped with baby wipes right out of the box when that was all they had ever known. There is no need to create this habit of needing to have warmed up wipes. In my mind, it’s simply overindulgence, and when reality hits baby is confused and upset.

4. Allowing your child to carry around a special blanket or stuffed animal everywhere you go.

Limit it to bedtime only. If you allow your child to carry his special thing around with him everywhere you go, you create several problems: If you forget to bring it in the car with you, you will have to deal with your child being upset about not having it. If you accidentally leave it out wherever you were, your child will be devastated to have lost it. And, your child will become dependent on this thing to bring him comfort throughout the day. You want to teach your child to depend on the Lord, not on material things.

** Let me say it again; some of you seem to be misunderstanding, or just not completely reading what I’ve written. I’m not against a child having a comfort item. My own little one has a special blanket that he would carry everywhere if I let him. My suggestion is merely not to allow them to form the habit of carrying it around with him every single place he goes.

5. Feeing your child off your plate.

Seems innocent enough, right? But I promise you, if you begin feeding your child off of your own plate every now and then, you will soon create a little beggar. You will not be able to sit down for one little snack without your little one toddling over, climbing up in your lap, and begging for a bite of whatever you have. You will never be able to eat in peace again if you start this habit! If you think your child is hungry, sit him down at the table with his own plate of food to eat from.

6. Never making your child drink plain water.

For whatever reason, when we would run out of juice I would always find myself apologizing to my daughter as I handed her a cup of water saying, “I’m sorry baby. We don’t have any juice. We only have water.” When one day it dawned on me… what a terrible message I was sending her! I should never be apologizing for giving her such a wonderful drink as the one that the Lord intended to quench our thirst. After that revelation, I decided I was not going to buy juice any more. I started giving my children cups of ice water instead, and now they love it, and even ask for it! Drinking water is a wonderful habit to instill in your child, so don’t feel bad about it!

7. Cutting the crust off the bread; always peeling apple slices.

Just because you didn’t like eating the crust when you were a kid doesn’t mean that you should start this habit in your own kids! You are only creating picky eaters. If they don’t like it, they can eat around it. You have too much to do in a day, you don’t need to waste your time slicing the crust off a sandwich! The same goes for peeling apples. Unless it’s for your baby who can’t chew up the peeling yet, let them eat around it it they don’t like it.

These are just a few innocent mistakes that we all easily make with our children. I’m sure there are a billion more that I haven’t mentioned. But just keep in mind that it’s easier to create bad habits then to break them. The point of this post is to encourage you to avoid these problems, and fix them if they have already begun, before they get out of hand and become a nuisance.

If you want to share any tips or stories that you may have about creating bad habits in our children, I’d love to hear from you! I’m sure there is a lot that I can learn from you as well!

It’s that time again! Time for another week of minimizing our homes… clearing out the clutter in order to free our homes from the burden of too much stuff!

I feel like I should take today’s post to explain the point of Minimizing Mondays for the newbies. This isn’t meant to simply be motivation to organize your things. What this is about is living with less! Not simply clearing out a junk drawer, but actually getting rid of things that are taking up space in your home but serving no real purpose, yes, even possibly things that you like but don’t necessarily need. I am here to inspire you to let go of the material things in your home that are cluttering up your life and taking valuable time away from your family.

Let me explain that. Having tons of clothes leads to piles and piles of dirty laundry to wash. Cabinets overloaded with cups, dishes, and tupperware containers cause you to waste time digging through them looking for one particular item. Shelves lined with doo-dads and whatchamacallit’s take plenty of time dusting and cleaning around. An excess of kid’s toys all over the floor… how many times do you clean them up every day? All of these things, when in overabundance, cause waste of time in our lives. I am urging you to rethink what you actually NEED in your home, not just what you like to be able to say you HAVE.

So, when I give a challenge, it is not merely to organize what you have (though it is wonderful to have your things nice and tidy and in their place), I am provoking you to rethink what you actually keep in your home and allow to take up space in your life. So don’t just rearrange the shirts in your closet… get rid of half of them! Don’t simply find a creative way to store the ridiculous amount of toys in your home… donate the majority of them, your kids won’t die, I promise!! Getting the gist of it? Less, less, less!

LIVING WITH LESS!! Free yourselves of the material burdens in your life! Give your time back to your family and kids and off of these things that distract you in little ways every day. Now, go for it!! I want to hear what you think and how you’re putting these thoughts into action in your own home! Let’s continue inspiring each other to have less and live more!!

Although I’ve been teaching Jada really since she was an infant, now that she is technically “school age” I really want to make sure that I’m giving her a well-rounded education. I’ve been searching for a good First Grade Curriculum, as Jada is already pretty much through Kindergarten level academics. I’m just not even sure where to begin! There are so many different curriculums and publishers, I just can’t tell which one would be good for her. I’ve searched Homeschool forums for advice, but I haven’t found any help.

So, I thought I’d throw the question out there for you, my faithful friends. If any of you have homeschooled, or are homeschooling K-1st grade, do you have any advice for me? I’ve been just printing stuff off the internet, using worksheets from activity books, and pretty much just making up her lesson time as I go. I’d like to have a consistent curriculum for her, one that I know will be thorough.

She is already reading, writing her letters and short words, counting to 100 and doing simple addition. I’m just not sure where to go from here.

Can anyone tell me what I need to be teaching her for K-1st grade?

Do any of you have any suggestions on which books are the best for each subject? I’ve heard that some publishers are better in one subject than another.

Any good websites for printable worksheets??

Hopefully some of you might be able to help guide me along!! Thanks so much for any advice you can offer!

Sorry guys, I’m gonna have to skip Minimizing Monday today. I’ve had entirely too much to do lately! I’ve been painting my new house until midnight for the past 5 nights in a row, trying to pick up the painter’s slack so the carpets can be installed tomorrow. I’m DYING to be able to move into our home! Anyways, it’s after 1am, and I’m exhausted, so I won’t be writing anything new for today. But, if you need some inspiration you can always catch up on past Minimizing Monday’s. Perhaps there is one that you missed! And if you did any minimizing today, I’d still love to hear all about it in my comments section! Thanks for your understanding

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You may remember my post My Toy Box Overfloweth! a while back, well, I thought I would post it again in honor of Minimizing Monday, for all of you who still need some encouragement to tackle your own toy box.

Go ahead and say it, I know you’re thinking it. It’s what I thought too, Oh my goodness! That’s ridiculous! How in the world did my kids get SO MANY TOYS? And believe me, I’m a purger. This isn’t because I’ve been hoarding everything. These are the things that have just accumulated in toy boxes and baskets. It’s time to DE-CLUTTER! I’m tired of the kids pulling EVERYTHING out, and then them being overwhelmed when it’s time to clean up the mess. I’m taking this thing by the horns.

So, I went through the house and found every toy that I could find. I know it’s not all of them, some are in my mother-in-law’s basement for storage, but unbelievably all of these toys were hiding in the corners of my humble home. So, I spread everything out (while the kids slept of course), and began the daunting task of separating into boxes: TO KEEP, NOT TO KEEP. As I went along, I found it to be harder than I thought. Emotionally I mean. As I sorted I found myself wanting to keep more than I had intended. The problem is that my daughter really does play with most of the things I wanted to oust. What do I do? Do I get rid of them just because there are too many? She honestly has a good time playing with them. And then there were the toys that she used to play with a lot when she was younger, but now has grown out of. Baby boy might like to play with them when he gets a little bigger, so I decided to keep them too. Oh, decisions, decisions!

So, I ended up keeping some, boxing some up to sell, and boxing some up to store. I guess this is a good compromise. Initially I thought, I will let my daughter keep 10 toys, and get rid of the rest. Well, it didn’t quite work out so nicely. I have a love for educational toys, so most of what I kept are “lesson time” teaching toys. That’s okay, right? I did let my daughter go through her My Little Pony collection, and choose only 3 to keep of the tons that she had. Surprisingly, she happily chose her three, very decidedly I must say, and had no problem with me getting rid of the rest. Good for her.

So, here’s what I boxed up. These boxes were actually quite big, though they don’t look it in the picture. Stuffed animals…see ya! Small toys, almost all are gone. All of the Fisher Price Little People things were sold on Craigslist. And a select few toys remain.

Need some more tips to clear out the toys? Free your home from it if:

• it is broken, or missing pieces (puzzles especially!).
• it hasn’t been played with in a while.
• you have more than one.
• there is something in your home that could double as a toy like it (ie: cookie cutters for play dough accessories).
• you can take it to grandma’s house for junior to play with there.
• your child can honestly live without it (they truly don’t need so many toys, so even if your child still plays with it, consider keeping only a few select favorites.)

Now it’s your turn, and I would LOVE to hear how you did! Just write a post on your blog, and then link back here to share with the rest of us, or you can tell us all about your job well done in the comments section. And as always, you are welcomed to share with us any other way that you have minimized your home as well. Encouraging each other to simplify our homes, one section at a time! Thanks for joining in!

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You may remember, my first attempt at weaning Titus was total failure. Well, it’s been a whole month since I’ve nursed him, and I’m happy in saying that he is finally weaned at almost 18 months. This was long enough for me, it was time to let go. Plus, I’ve had some health issues that I need to take care of that had to wait till he was weaned.

For those of you who are thinking about weaning your baby, or who are wondering how it’s done, I am by no means an expert, but I’ll tell you how I did it. This is the same method that I used with my daughter, who I nursed for 14 months, so I can say that it has worked well for me!

By the time Titus was a year old I had him down to 3 nursings per day. Once when he first woke up, once in the after noon, and once before bed. He was eating table food by then, so I decided it was time to start slowly cutting down on his breastfeedings. Since he had been drinking water/juice from a sippy cup for quite some time, I decided to introduce him to cow’s milk in the cup. That didn’t go over so well. After trying it numerous times (warm, cold, and even with a little sugar in it to sweeten it), I decided to try Soy milk. After a few times tasting the Vanilla Soy milk, Titus decided he’d sip on it a little. I just left his cup sitting around and occasionally he would toddle over and take a sip. Before too long, he was used to the flavor, and was drinking a full cup.

When he started drinking a cup of Soy milk I decided to let that take the place of a nursing. Since he wasn’t really asking to nurse at night I decided to drop that feeding first. I’d feed him dinner, then give him a cup of Soy milk. I didn’t offer to nurse him, and he never asked. That was easy! I went with this plan for a couple of months. I wanted to be slow about it, and gradually stop the nursing sessions, since I wasn’t really in any kind of a rush.

Next I replaced his lunch time nursing with a bigger “real food” meal, and water/juice or milk in a cup. I made sure that he was getting plenty to eat and wasn’t still hungry. Sometimes he would ask to nurse, but I would distract him and he would forget all about it. If he was persistent with wanting to nurse I would give in and breastfeed. After a few months of mid-day nursing only when he asked for it he soon lost interest in the whole process. He would nurse for like 2 minutes, then be done. When that started happening I knew he was only nursing out of habit and I dropped that feeding completely. So, I was down to one.

The morning nursing was the hardest to stop. Every morning when I’d go to get baby Titus out of the bed the first thing he would say was, “milk! milk!” and his little hand would be signing milk as fast as it could. Due to some medical issues I’ve been having, I decided that it was time to stop this final feeding. My first attempt was failure. I gave in. But, I didn’t stop there. I tried again. In the mornings instead of sitting down on the couch first thing to nurse him, instead I would take him straight to the high chair and chop up a banana for his breakfast. Bananas are his absolute FAVORITE thing to eat, so that made him totally happy, and he quickly forgot the routine of immediately having milk.

Four days went by, and with that same distraction of bananas for breakfast, Titus was doing wonderfully with the weaning process. When he did ask me for milk, I would hand him his cup, and soon he learned to drink happily from it instead, which made it much easier for me. I, on the other hand, was quite uncomfortable with the whole engorgement deal! And since he had only been nursing on one side for the last two months, my upper half was pretty lopsided to top it off! I’m talking noticeably lopsided… like a big ‘ol “C” on one side, just about to burst, and a poor “A(-)” on the other side, pitifully dragging along! I did my best to hide my embarrassing chest problems.

Then on day five, I caved. I don’t even remember why I gave in. I think Titus might have been feeling badly, or something, but he asked to nurse, and he kept asking to nurse. At first I told him “no”, that the milk was all gone. But he was crying, and I knew that he would feel better if I just nursed him, so… I did. Ah well, what are you gonna do? BUT, what a relief to me! Phew, finally no more engorgement. Titus was soon happy again, and I was a whole lot more comfortable. And do you want to know the best part? The milk never came back! Titus never asked to nurse again, and the milk didn’t come back in. No more engorgement to deal with at all! So, it actually worked out perfectly.

I wondered to myself if the milk that he was drinking (that had been sitting there for going on 5 days), could be soured, and make him sick. Honestly, I wondered that. But, I guess it can’t go bad while it’s still at your body’s temperature. So, it worked out well, and now I’m happy to say that he is drinking milk from a cup no problem, and has completely forgotten about nursing. 18 months was long enough for the both of us.

That’s my story, now what about yours? Do you have a weaning success or failure to share? I’d love to hear your stories, tips and advice! Or if you have any questions or concerns about weaning baby, I’d love to hear from you as well.

Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin Cereal has a TRY FREE rebate along with it right now. So keep your eye out for one of these specially marked boxes!

I found a couple great deals today, and thought I’d share them with all of you who have a Food Lion nearby. You still have a couple of days to get in on them!

Ore-Ida Potatoes- On sale 4/$10, or $2.50 each

*Use this $2 off coupon (will print off one page of FL coupons)

*Special thanks to Denise for the coupon link! Thank you!!

Makes these $.50 after coupon.

Food Lion Baby Wipes (40 ct.) – $1.50

*Use this $1.50 off coupon (may need to open with Internet Explorer)

Makes these FREE after coupon.

Old El Paso Refried Beans- On sale for $1.00

Old El Paso Taco Shells- on sale for $1.50

*The taco shell boxes have *stickies* on them for FREE seasoning with purchase of two Old El Paso products.

*Use $1/2 coupon from 8/10 GM insert OR print one HERE

Makes these $1.50 for the shells, beans, and seasoning!

Gerber Baby Accessory – I found nail clippers for $1.47

*Use this $2 off coupon

Makes this FREE, plus enough overage to cover the cost of the potatoes!

*Don’t forget to keep your eye out for the FREE after Rebate box of Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin Cereal!

Anybody find any other deals for this week? If so, please share them with us!! I plan on going back again tomorrow!