Category Archives: Life

Food, Going Healthy, Life, Parenting

Healthy Cooking With Daddy

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Finally, the time has come to teach our little girl the ways of healthy cooking! In our house, pants are optional….

healthy cooking with daddy, toddler, kids, teaching, food

I’ve thought of this before she was even born, and it warms my heart now that it’s becoming a reality. Oh, wait, that’s my shirt on fire!!

Okay, all better. So she’s not exactly ready to start slicing and dicing ingredients, but with a little help, she can add spices pretty well.

healthy cooking with daddy, toddler, kids, teaching, food

This was us making a lunch for Mommy to bring to work. Now if she calls sweating from a little too much cayenne, I can blame Avery. She knows that we add fresh ground black pepper to all of our meals and made sure she had a “hand” in that part too.

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I had to hold the dish lower since her new non-slip Froggie Step Stool is not quite high enough for her to reach the counter. It’s called the Mommy’s Helper Step Up Froggie Stool, but looks like we just changed that to Daddy’s Helper, huh? Time for a product name change!

Product naming conventions aside, our growing toddler is using her stool for potty training and cooking training. Yes, we use a butter knife to stir in this house, but don’t worry, I was supervising.

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I usually tackle several meal preps at a time, so I took the time to get her dinner plate ready as she posed for the camera. Or maybe she was watching the cat walk by….

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Either way, she gets so excited if I ask her to help me, and even though she has a way’s to go before I can really trust her to do a few simple things, this is how it starts. For anyone who has cooked with kids, I’m sure you know they are more likely to eat the healthy food if they have a roll in helping prepare/cook it. This includes quality control of whatever we make.

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And the verdict?

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It’s an underwear-iffic win for dinner tonight!

Avery continues to put a smile on our face every day, and she seems to learn/grow more faster than we can keep up with. Soon, she’ll be stating things to us that we never knew. To those with older kids, when should we expect this?

When time allows, get your kids in the kitchen and explore a new food/recipe together. It will pay dividends well into the future in the form of bonding, healthy eating, and cooking skills.

Life, Parenting

How The S Word Helps With Potty Training

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We’ve been in the midst of potty training for about two weeks now and have been seeing slow but steady progress. Hopefully we’re through the initial phase which I assume is the hardest part. Thanks in part to the S word, and of course a few healthy treat incentives like No Sugar-Added Lily’s Dark Chocolate Chips sweetened with stevia.

I’ll admit, Daddy got a treat every time she went potty too. They’re just too good not to sneak a few bites!

There are many potty training methods, and while we haven’t followed any of them to the T, the method we practiced most was the Two-Day Method a neighbor friend shared with us. Yes, the fact that I stay home with our daughter was a big factor here, but it can be done over the weekend too. As our friend recommends, aim to try when you have an extended weekend from a holiday or just take an extra day off.

Since I’m not here to lay out a full potty training program, I’ll spare you the minute details. Just know that within the week, after having our daughter in the house with diapers off, asking “Do you need to go potty?” more times than there are days in a year (Every. Day), and listening to a very unhappy kid who wanted to poop in her diaper, we actually made progress.

We felt hopeless at first, but many puddles and plops, a few successes with chocolate chip rewards, and use of the S word later, our little girl is going to the potty all by herself.

No, I’m not talking about the multitude of books on Socialism, Secrets, Suicide, Submission, and S**t with the title The S Word. I’m talking about snakes!

zoo, family, snake, reptile, kids, learning

Kids are fascinated with all kinds of creatures, and since she has a reptile-loving daddy, she started using “snake” to describe what she made in the potty. After her first BIG success in the potty, she stood up, turned around, and proclaimed “Ooooo, it’s a big snake! Hissssss!”

This was a proud dad moment on many levels. I mean, she freakin made a successful poop in her potty! After cleaning several plops on the floor and couch, I was beyond happy to see this milestone. As for the smell, not so much. Since that first snake, she’s made an entire family snakes almost every day.

Mommy snake, daddy snake, and several baby snakes have all been spotted in the potty. If she’s reluctant to sit on the potty but my wife and I see that she’s overly squirmy, we just ask her to try and make a snake. 8 times out of 10, she will at least give it a shot squeeze. And 9 times out of 10, a snake, big or small, makes an appearance.

She now knows to pull her underwear down and sit on her potty by herself. If we are outside or not at home, she sometimes says she needs to go potty, but this is still a work in progress. For that we are using The Honest Company Training Pants at night time and while out and about. Gone are the days of our cloth diapers, it’s Elmo undies and training pants here on out. Eventually going to just undies of course. I’m not sure what turned her on to liking Elmo so much though….

potty training, sesame street, elmo, the s word

Ohhhh yeah, nothing like watching Sesame Street on the pot. #ToddlerLife

We are proud of our little semi-potty trained girl. There’s nothing like being in the kitchen and all of the sudden hearing her going “Hisss-hissss-hissssssss!” after making a “snake” in the potty. True story, I heard her hissing and thought she was just making animal sounds so I chimed in and hissed too. Then I turned around to an odd smell and her undies down. Go Avery!

If you’re in the process or getting ready to start potty training, either get your kids excited about snakes or some other poop-shaped creature and learn the sound they make to use it as a form of victory call after pooping in the potty. Oh, but don’t forget the chocolate chip rewards. I know, it’s an ironic treat to have for poop, so feel free to use your own reward system.

After a week or two, they’ll be so proud of using the potty, they may not care about the rewards anymore. But they’re never proud enough to want pictures taken, so don’t do this….

potty training, toddler, poop, funny, humor, parenting

Life, Parenting, Promo

Going Super Fast On The WOOM 1 Balance Bike

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Having never used training wheels, our little girl has quickly progressed her bike riding skills on the WOOM 1 Balance Bike. It’s been two months since Avery started riding on her new balance bike called the WOOM 1. Riding might be a little far-fetched, she mostly sat on and scooted with it at first. But she had a cool hat and Soft Star Shoes!

balance bike, kids, bike riding, learning, no training wheels

But only a month later,  she built up her confidence to rockstar riding status.

WOOM 1 Balance Bike, kids, bikes, riding

She had gone from a slow scoot, feet always on the ground, and many falls to acquiring balance and rolling down our driveway with feet in the air. There were still plenty of falls, but not from just standing there, it was from working on her newfound speeds.

WOOM 1 Balance Bike, kids, bikes, riding
Feet up and hair in the air!

She’s been riding for just over two months now, and Going Mom and I can’t believe how far she’s come. We made it a point to get her outside almost every day to ride “Rocket” around a small loop in our neighborhood or up and down the driveway. Since she was pretty slow at first, we never put a helmet on her, but as the speeds increased, the need for head protection was obvious.

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Ha ha, just kidding, but isn’t that a cute pic? Thanks to Mathias from WOOM Bikes, we were sent an awesome helmet from Melon Helmets. We were worried she may not like having a large helmet to wear, but on the contrary…..

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Yeah, she loves wearing her helmet and knows to ask for it before riding on her WOOM 1 Balance Bike.

She’s proud of her “Rocket” and it shows by how overprotective she is when anyone else (kid or adult) so much as looks at it. Riding on two wheels is one thing, but sharing is a completely different lesson. Right now the focus is on riding and potty training (more on that later), so we just have to pick our battles.

Now that Avery has learned to ride so well, the next step is learning to use the hand brake to slow herself down. Her new shoes are already getting a nice sized hole from acting as her only brakes, so hopefully she learns soon. As you can see, she can go “super fast”, just like Rocket on Little Einsteins.

One of the features I loved most about the WOOM 1 is the fact that it has a brake while many other balance bikes lack this important feature. I’ve seen how fast kids can go on this bike, and stopping with just shoes is not the best option. Just like we’ve been doing, we’ll continue getting her outdoors and working with her on the brake. I have no doubt she will be squeezing the handle to slow down from her super speeds in less than another month!

My wife and I are extremely grateful to WOOM Bikes for providing their WOOM 1 Balance Bike to us at no charge in exchange for an honest review. We can’t get over how well she does when riding, and never using training wheels will make the transition to a bike with pedals much easier to manage. When the time comes, I have no doubt we’ll choose a WOOM 2 Bike, the next step, as the looks and quality are all A-Class in my book.

woom 2 balance bike

Disclaimer: I was provided a WOOM 1 Balance Bike free of charge in exchange for my honest, unbiased review and was not compensated any other way. All thoughts are 100% my own. Seriously, love this bike!