What's for dinner Mom? The question that makes me cringe many days. Deciding what we should eat is SO tough for me. I HATE making decisions, plus I think my concerns about pleasing everyone causes me to panic and then it's super late and we are eating sandwiches, cereal, or eating out.
A while back ago, I sat down with my husband and together we thought about 25 meals that we could have throughout the next month. (25 because we know we will go out to eat AT LEAST 5 times in a month) :) We wrote down the main courses we wanted in a notebook. I put a P next to any new meal we found on Pinterest. This has also helped us remember to try some new meals too!
This list of meals helped us SO much. I knew anything on the list would be acceptable for me to choose for dinner, One thing I LOVE about this list is that I'm not "tied" to having Tacos on Tuesday because I wrote that down for Tuesday last week. The numbers are just there to make sure I listed enough meals. And yes, we eat pizza WAY too much, but I know I can't be alone in having pizza pretty much once a week.
This list has also helped me as I make decisions about what to buy at the grocery store. I can shop sales knowing we will use the items soon. (Our kitchen is tiny, so storage space is minimal) I shop for groceries weekly at Aldi, but now I can also just go to Walmart 1 time a month instead of each week, which has saved us a ton of money.
Any type of meal planning I've done has been helpful for us, but this has helped us out so much. Do you meal plan? Has it helped your family eat at home more?
My husband and I have been blessed with 3 fantastic boys. The Boy is 8. The Boy 2 is 4. And our newest addition, The Captain is 1 day shy of 5 months. When The Boy and The Boy 2 were little I was blessed to be a teacher and have wonderful people and daycare centers watch them while I worked. Yes, I had to work at home, but we were usually home by 4 or 4:30, we enjoyed snow days, Christmas break, and summers together. It was a great compromise between working and staying home, because staying home was not an option. Fast forward to June 2016.
I'm 6 months pregnant with The Captain when my husband has been offered his dream job. Of course 6 months pregnant is the PERFECT time to begin packing up our house and begin the process of moving 4 hours away from the town we had called home for 9 1/2 years. The dream job came with my own dream job though...staying home with our new baby! I loved teaching, but I am so enjoying spending my days with a sweet, blue eyed, chubby, bald boy.
One thing that was great about the daycare centers the older boys went to is the time the teachers spent reading, teaching, singing songs, etc. with them. It didn't take me long to figure out I could get lost in the events of the day and forget my sweet baby was missing some of those important moments with me. Don't get me wrong, we sang, read, and played together each day, just not with the intensity I wanted to make sure he received. So this week we started being more intentional with these moments.
There were 3 important components I wanted to include:
1. Needs to include a Biblical concept
2. Needs to include at least 1 book
3. Needs to include a song or rhyme (or both!)
I like order and structure so I knew I would want some sort of schedule. This isn't a necessity, but it sure helps my brain out! My plan is to take each playtime theme and repeat it each day of the week. Once I get more built up, I'm sure I'll repeat the one for the week 4 or 5 days, then do an old favorites the other days.
This week, I started with these:
Yes...The Touch and Feel Farm Book has been very, very loved!
Can you guess what this weeks idea is??
FROGGY FUN!
I used the idea God Made Animals and the book Touch and Feel Farm to start. Any book with pictures of animals would work perfectly. The farm book does not have a frog in it, but the Baby Einstein one does.
To get started I sat The Captain in an awesome baby seat from Fisher Price. Of course however you want to do this will work great. Holding little one is a great idea too, I just really wanted to engage face to face today.
(I had Bumbo seats with the other boys and I really like this seat more. It has a bit more head support for those early days and it just seems a lot more stable.)
I began by reading the animal book. Each page has a single animal on it. So, I read the name of the animal, said "God made {insert name of animal}. Then, of course I had to add the animal sound too! After reading the book I showed off the frog toy. I found a great little froggy rhyme that The Captain seemed to really enjoy:
A Little Frog
A little frog in a pond am I,
Hippity, hippity hop.
And I can jump in the air so high,
Hippity, hippity, hop.
When The Captain is older, we will definitely be pretending to be frogs hopping around with this rhyme, but for now I just had the frog toy make exaggerated jumps during the Hippity Hop part and a GIANT hop with the line 'jump in the air so high'. This is great for a baby's visual tracking skills and The Captain enjoyed following the hopping frog with his eyes.
We were still in play mode so we looked at the picture of the frog in the Baby Einstein book while The Captain chewed on the toy frog. Then I sang 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, using my fingers to act out the frogs actions. Here's a link to the song and the words below.
The video is more for your reference in case the song isn't familiar to you. I think baby will enjoy your fingerplay of the song more than in the video, but hey, I've been there. If it gains Momma 2 minutes to drink part of her coffee warm it can be worth it. :)
5 Green and Speckled Frogs
5 green and speckled frogs
Sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool,
where it was nice and cool.
Now there are 4 green speckled frogs.
Croak! Croak!
(Continue on until you are down to No Green Speckled Frogs)
Toddlers will love trying the finger play aspect of this song along with you!
These activities along with some tummy time with the froggy toy will be perfect for baby, but older babies and toddlers may want a bit of variety.
- Cutting 5 lily pads from green construction paper and walking/hopping to each one while counting
- Use smaller plastic frogs (watch size for choking hazard) and have them swim in a small container of water dyed blue with a tiny bit of food coloring. Babies and toddlers will love splashing and playing with their frogs
No matter what, I know The Captain will be excited to have some special time with me each day. Some days he may not be as into it or we may be singing on the way to pick up the big boys, but at least I have a plan! :)
Enjoy and Happy Playing!
Heather
**I'm BRAND new to blogging so Fisher Price & Baby Einstein don't have a clue who I am nor did they compensate me for this post...I just like their stuff!
