sweetcrunchyjewy's Profile

We have a Babboe City (a bakfiets) and we love it! I ride my 3 kids (ages 4, 2, and six months) all over the place. The raincover keeps them warm and dry, and they love the ride. In some cases it's faster than taking the car, because of traffic! It is a bit heavy going up hills (with 75 pounds of kids in it) but my glutes have never looked better :)

Baby #3 is rather enjoying her infancy without a Bumbo, exersaucer, or bouncy chair (all of which we had for #2 and #3.) She spends all of her playtime on the floor, and she's already starting to scoot around at 5 months. Not to mention the fact that a pretty floor mat is much less of an eyesore than three pieces of colourful equipment!

My daughter began learning at a Montessori K-8 school almost two years ago. Since then I've been transforming our home into a Montessori home, with appropriate-sized furniture, kitchen tools and utensils sized for the kids, etc. I find that my daughter is extremely willing to help out around the house, and thanks to school she's generally very capable. Montessori principles for infants are also fascinating - our third child has no bouncy chair, bumbo, or exersaucer, and she's way ahead of her physical milestones - likely because she spends all her playtime on the floor.

As for the "elitism" issue, as others have pointed out there are and can be public Montessori schools. In Toronto, the school board will consider proposals for specialty programs - currently there's a proposal for a Montessori program downtown. The private schools shouldn't be elitist by attitude (ours isn't) but the tuition fees are definitely a barrier for most people. Unfortunately it's expensive to run a school, and the money has to come from somewhere :(

I'm passionate about this, can you tell? I've written a lot more about Montessori, and also the confluence of Montessori and Jewish education. It's over at Jewish Montessori Mom.

To all the naysayers: this is actually a fabulous activity for:

- babies who are really too young to fingerpaint but want to do what the bigger kids are doing
- distracting children at a restaurant, doctor's office, etc - no mess, infinitely reusable, and at a restaurant a big enough ziploc bag could serve as a wipeable placemat.
- kids who are sensory defensive

Also, it looks really cool when you tape it to a window and let the kids work on it there.
Long story short, my kids get plenty of opportunities to get thoroughly messy and dirty. Activities like this can have a place in our life as well.

We have three kids in a three-bedroom bungalow, and made the decision to have one room for sleep and a separate room for play. It's better for us because this way nobody's naps (they all nap at different times) get disturbed by someone looking for a toy or wanting to play in the room. Not to mention that my four-year-old is the type who would take her craft supplies off the shelf and bring them to bed with her.

@merricontrari - we have one of the couches you're describing. The best idea I can come up with is to use a seam ripper to take apart the existing cover, and then use it as a pattern for your new cover. I may try it someday soon.

Oh, and she likes to brush marinade onto chicken before I put it in the oven.

I was thinking along the same lines as JulieLeanne. When you have a kosher kitchen, which necessitates two of most things, two islands would be really really helpful in storing everything separately and keeping confusion to a minimum.

Here are some ideas:

Cream cheese sandwiches, cucumber slices, berries and yogurt for dipping.

Devilled eggs (my kids gobble them up), whole grain crackers, broccoli "trees" with dip, apple slices (cripps pink and honeycrisp apples don't seem to go brown the way others do, FYI)

Mini quiches (easy to make, pour the egg/milk mixture into mini tart shells, bake, freeze most of them for use in future lunches), tiny buns (everyone seems to make them now that sliders are cool) with butter, sliced bell peppers, melon balls.

Assemble-your-own veggie tacos: soft tortillas, beans mixed with salsa and TVP, grated cheese, guacamole, shredded lettuce. It even tastes good cold!

Plain pasta with a cheesy tomato dipping sauce on the side (the large spiral pasta are perfect for this), dried fruits, edamame.

Falafel balls (also yummy cold), hummus for dipping, mini pitas (or wedges of larger ones), tomato-and-cucumber salad, watermelon chunks.

Bourekas (if you live in an area with a sizeable Jewish population, you'll find these in the kosher freezer section. Make sure to cool them completely before putting them into a lunch!), carrot and celery sticks, orange wedges

With my daughter the trick seems to be to make the food visually appealing. I've blogged many of her lunches here: http://sweetcrunchyjewy.wordpress.com/category/have-you-bento-my-house-for-lunch/

Hope it helps!

It looks very cool, but I still love having two separate sinks so that one can be used for soaking baby poop out of clothes, etc.