“Mom, I’m bored!”

“Dad, play with me!!”

Sound familiar?

If you’re a parent, these plaintive cries from your children can become daily shouts. As busy moms and dads, we’re continuously torn by the demands on our time. Here are some simple ways to spend time with your kids while getting the jobs done that need to be done (including the toughest job of all, parenting). These Sneaky Fun ideas are also great ways to teach our children exactly how to successfully accomplish many routine tasks.

• Make a silly dinner together.
  Think ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ or try a picnic on the living room floor. Bring your child along for the meal planning, shopping, prep time and clean-up. Involve them each step of the way.
• Turn on the music and clean, clean, clean.
  Forget TELLING your kids to go clean; side-by-side, with some of their favorite music playing, move through the house dancing and cleaning. They’ll love it (and so will you).
• Exercise together.
  You know you need to do it. Your child is your perfect exercise partner. Make it a ‘talk and play’ time and you’ll both get fit together.
• Share a hobby.
  Love to fish, garden, sew, paint, sing? Share that love with your youngster. Try an interest that fascinates them. Learn a shared passion – together.
• Start a girls or boys night out.
  You will make an incredible impression with this one. Take your daughter out for regular manicures and lunch. Stay close to your son with a favorite concert or sporting event. Teach your children about wholesome entertainment and the joy of healthy relationships. You can even team up with another parent and child for regular fun; just make sure that honest conversation is the true priority.
• Improve their skills.
  Do you have a student struggling with homework? Quit nagging and ask them to teach YOU what they’ve learned. Be a patient listener. The fastest way to learn is often to teach.
• Wash the cars.
  Need I say more? Water, the chance to soak mom or dad, and a sense of accomplishment when it’s all done. Follow up with an ice cream cone for a job well done.
• Growing things.
  Countless gardeners have discovered deep satisfaction in sharing their love of growing things with children and grandchildren. Gardening is a useful de-stressing tool and the most frustrated child tends to loosen up and share their heart while getting their hands dirty alongside a trusted adult.
• Plan, plan, plan.
  If your household is anything like mine, it benefits greatly when I take the time to map out regular activities. Menu-planning, budgeting and vacationing come to mind, for starters. Show your child (of the appropriate age) how to use their time and money wisely by including them in the planning of everyday family activities. As they mature, they can easily be put in charge of some of these planning sessions, teaching them to younger siblings. Your trust and belief in your kids can ease the stress on them as they grow, too.
• Organize.
  Almost all families struggle with organization in some area. Truth be told, we’re simply busy people and have often outgrown the simplistic organizing methods that once worked just fine. Give your kids the opportunity to be the creative organizer in your family. Whether its making sense of the family photos or tackling the hall closet, do it with them to get the job done and make a memory that’s shared.
• Schedule the fun.
  Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Try scheduling a set time of fun in exchange for a set time of work. For example, Monday can be family board game night while Saturday morning sees the family hard at work in the yard. Sometimes it’s easier for kids to see the point when it’s a straight trade off of time and energy.

  The idea here is simple and clear. Use everyday activities to build relationships and teach responsibility. After all, everybody wins when ‘fun’ becomes a part of daily life!

About the Author
Colleen Langenfeld offers helpful resources to working moms. Make your life feel easier, healthier, smarter by reading our One Good Idea ezine. Start by visiting PaintedGold.com and clicking on the happy kids’ picture now!

When your child shows signs of potty training readiness, it’s time to purchase some essential potty training items. There are many new products which can help to make potty training quick and easy for both you and your child. We have researched all of the latest and most effective potty training products. Here, you’ll find a number of new potty training aids, such as the Tinkle Toonz musical potty or the anatomically correct drink & wet dolls that can be used with Dr. Phil’s potty training method. Be sure and browse through our selection of 2004 potty training books and DVDs, which provide a great introduction for both parents and children.

The important thing is to begin potty training with the right training products and information, to ensure your child has a positive experience from beginning to end. Don’t wait until you and your child are frustrated to buy a fun musical potty chair or read a bedtime potty training book.

After you have purchased the potty training products, begin introducing the idea of potty training by reading a book or watching a DVD. Place you child’s new potty chair in the bathroom and let him observe you going potty. Children learn by imitating other family members. This is a good time to teach him good hygiene by washing your hands after using the potty.

Be sure your child knows that he can come to you if he feels uncomfortable or afraid. He needs to know that you will always love him, even if he has accidents. For tips on handling accidents, read our article, Handling Accidents with Composure.

Copyright © 2004 ZIP Baby. All Rights Reserved.

Danna Henderson
ZIP Baby
101 Convention Center Drive, Ste 700
Las Vegas, NV 89109
www.zipbaby.com

About The Author
Danna Henderson started ZIP Baby in order to provide parents with comprehensive potty training information as well as a large variety of potty training products. For more information about potty training, visit the Potty Training.

Nappies have been around in cloth form since the Elizabethan era in England. Although they were only squares of linen back then, they have been used ever since. If you are over the age of forty then the likelihood is that you wore cloth nappies when you were a child, but from the 1970s onwards more and more children wore disposable nappies. They were actually introduced in the 1940s but were not affordable for the average family until thirty years later. Now, they are more common than ever and brand after brand adorns the supermarket shelves, but why should we regress and use cloth nappies in the 21st Century?

There are a number of reasons why you should use eco friendly cloth nappies over disposables on your children. Whilst many of them relate to the environment, some also relate to the well-being of your child:

• Disposable nappies take, on average, 500 years to decompose. This is hotly debated because many experts have predicted that they will take much longer than that, but when you consider that disposable nappies actually account for one full black bin bag’s worth of trash every week per child then you get an idea of just how big a problems this is. 90% of nappies will end up in landfill sites so we are degrading the earth.
• Washing a disposable nappy 400 times is comparable to the manufacturing of one nappy in terms of the amount of energy that is used in both processes. This makes the cloth nappy far more energy efficient and in keeping with a greener lifestyle.
• The average baby will use over a thousand disposable nappies in one year, but would only need between twenty and thirty cloth nappies for the same period of time. Of course, some families would purchase more to accommodate physical growth, but the number is still nowhere near as large. In terms of the financial and environmental burden that the former brings, cloth nappies seem infinitely preferable.
• You can purchase environmentally friendly cloth nappies that are made of hemp, wool and organic cotton now so even the material that they are made with will not damage the environment! Not to mention the fact that they would be extremely kind on your little one’s skin.
• Finally, baby faeces that are left as rubbish for two weeks contains around 100 viruses on average. If you think about the fact that the faeces is not going through a proper sewerage treatment plant but is instead filtering through the groundwater system. It could actually make its way into your own water supply at a later date. You may want to seriously consider using cloth nappies. They are better all around for you, your family, and the environment in general so they are by far the better choice!

If you’re a new parent, you’ve probably heard your grandparents telling you how lucky you are and singing the praises of disposable diapers. Way back then, the only option was cloth diapers, which require a ton of laundry work. See, less than thirty years ago, disposable diapers were considered a luxury. Nowadays, everyone uses cloth diapers and people that use cloth diapers for their babies are considered to be odd. There are several reasons that modern parents might want to use cloth diapers instead of disposables, and, believe it or not, cloth diapers are starting to make a bit of a comeback.

The main reason that a parent may choose to start using cloth diapers instead of the name brand disposables is the cost. Cloth diapers are much cheaper than disposables, even if the parents are paying a diaper service to haul away the used diapers and bring clean ones each week. Disposable diapers can easily cost well over one hundred dollars per month or more, and you’ll be paying this expense every month for around two years. Many parents are starting to forgo the convenience of disposables to save this extra money.

There are also environmental issues to consider. Disposable diapers are made out of plastic and a pad of absorbent cotton. Plastic does not biodegrade well at all, which means that our landfills are filled with diapers that aren’t going away anytime soon. Most people believe that the convenience offered by disposable diapers outweighs this fact. They might not consciously make this choice, but their actions speak for themselves. Environmentalists believe that those who use cloth diapers are taking one small step which goes a long way to protect and preserve the Earth for future generations.

Those whiny parents and grandparents might still have a few bones to pick with today’s parents who decide on using cloth diapers, because the today’s cloth diapers are much different from those that they were using on their own kids and grandkids several decades ago. They are used to awkward folding and having to use safety pins to fasten the diaper to the baby. Modern cloth diapers are pre-cut and shaped to cover the baby’s backside quickly and easily. They also have Velcro fasteners or snaps to make it easier to secure. One other added feature is that many cloth diapers now come with a flushable, biodegradable paper lining hold in solid waste so you can easily flush it down the toilet. So no more stinky diapers sitting around waiting for trash pickup day.

Cloth diapers are currently used by only a very small percentage of parents, but they are still out there and available. Any parent concerned with the cost or environmental impact of disposable diapers should seriously consider going with cloth.

About the Author
Nancy Dean is a freelance author and mother of three. She contributes to several websites and specializes in articles about children and decorating.

Congratulations if you are a new parent! Aren’t you eager to dress your newborn in those adorable cute outfits but you must know that your baby will quickly outgrow them. So buying baby clothes can be quite a challenge and it will largely depend upon your baby’s growth and your budget. While you set out to shop for those cute outfits keep a few basic buying tips in mind.

1. Always buy a larger size. You will be wasting money if you buy clothes that fit your baby perfectly. Babies grow very fast in the first few years and buying a larger size will ensure a longer life for the clothes.Â
    
2. Take weather into consideration. For example if your baby is due in winter you’ll have to store your baby’s wardrobe with winter clothes. Baby clothes are labeled according to the age groups and when you are tempted to buy an outfit make a weather prediction first -What will be the weather like when my baby is of that age? In this way you will invest in clothes that will fit your newborn and also be seasonally appropriate.Â
    
3. Functionality of clothes is most important. The clothes should be easy to put on. One-piece jumpsuits, clothes with front buckles or snaps or zippers will be more comfortable for the baby. You must be able to change the baby’s clothes and diapers easily and for this purpose snap crotches and stretchy necklines will be of great help. Try and avoid buying clothes with buttons, beads or clasps. Do not buy scratchy materials and even if you buy clothes with frills and lace or embroidery make sure that they are easy to pull off and comfortable for the baby.
4. Store up for emergencies. Babies spill food all the time and if they become sick they may throw up on their outfit itself. You will have to change the baby into a clean set of clothes a number of times in a day. Especially when you are traveling with the baby and you neither have time nor the necessary arrangement for washing, you will need a lot of extra clothing for the baby.Â
    
5. Do not refuse Hand me downs. Your relatives or friends might offer you their children’s clothes. These may be new clothes that a child may never have worn for babies outgrow their clothes very fast, or these may be second hand clothes. You can add to your baby’s wardrobe in this manner.Â
    
6. Covering the feet is equally important. Those tiny feet need care and one-piece outfits with footies attached are ideal. Socks would be another alternative but most infants pull them off and if your baby is already walking or is able to stand up then you could go for those adorable little shoes with squeakers.Â
    
7. Wash the clothes first. Wash the clothes before you dress your baby. Clothes that you buy might have had a long shelf life, you never know! New clothes may cause skin irruptions and irritation. Washing will not only clean them but also make the clothes softer. A baby’s skin is extremely sensitive and you have to take extra care to keep his clothes dirt free. Before you go shopping for your bundle of joy keep these tips in mind. Baby clothes can be quite expensive so you need to know beforehand exactly what kind of clothes you are looking for, taking into consideration weather factors, the infant’s growth and your finances. You will never run out of options and shopping for your baby can be real fun!

Baby Footprints
Everyone loves sweet baby feet, and baby footprints are a classic symbol of a newborn. The first year of a child’s life is a time of remarkable growth and development.

Now you can preserve a piece of your baby’s first year forever with easy-to-use kit, which captures a perfect impression of your child’s tiny foot.

Anyone can make cute cards with a cherished reminder of baby’s adorable feet and hands.

Parents and grandparents will think this is the best baby shower gift.

For thank you notes or baby announcements after baby has arrived, use his/her real footprint or handprint.

About the Author:
Lena Hilltorp is a freelance publisher based in Sweden. She publishes articles and reports and provides Baby footprints resources on http://www.baby-footprint.net.