Finding the Right Babysitter

The time has come that we have started to look for a babysitter for the girls. It will be nice to have a night out every once a month or so but also with our work schedules getting only crazier it is good to have someone that we can count on. Sure we have lots of friends here that watch the girls for us but I don't want to strain any friendships over it as it has happened to me (the one being strained) in the past.

So with this babysitter thing officially decided I need help! What questions do you ask your potential babysitter? I know obvious ones...Are you CPR/First Aid certified?  Do you have any references? etc. But what are some good ones you have used or can think of?

We are also looking to go through Care.com to find one but has anyone else found one a different way? I am not looking for a teenager in high school because if for some rare situation I need them during the week and I'm at work til midnight I know they wouldn't be available.

I am excited to have a more permanent sitter that the girls will get used to and have fun with but let me tell you this overprotective momma sure is nervous! Makes me wanna put some nanny cams all over my house when I leave!

So please pass along any advice you may have! 

Empowering Your Kids

So let me start off saying that my oldest daughter Taylor is the sweetest most kindest child ever. BUT she is a chatty cathy and can't pay attention for the life of her. She has been diagnosed with mild ADHD and counseling has been helping but I have been trying different ways to help her remember on her own her daily chores she needs to do. Because at 545 in the morning as I am getting Olivia ready and myself ready the last thing I need to try to remember is to remind her of which chores she has to do. It can be frustrating at time but I think I have found my perfect solution!

When I was at a counseling session with her recently her counselor was talking to her about rewarding for remembering things and how that could help her. While I tend to disagree because these daily chores are something that she does outside of her allowance. Meaning that if she wants to dust she can earn some allowance money and these other chores are her responsibility regardless. So it made me think...

Being in the military as a supervisor one of the things you can do to boost morale and make someone feel important and needed is to empower them! So I made Taylor an "I Can" chart because that tells her that she can do these things and she can mark it off everyday that she does it. With kids being able to use stickers or mark it off makes them feel so important! I didn't want to call it a chore chart or anything like that so I thought that the title of "I Can" makes her also fee important!

Repetition of doing it over and over on her own will eventually allow her to remember to do it without the chart but for now we use the chart!

So it was really simple and I took it to work and laminated it!

So far so good let's hope this continues to work!!

Baby Sign Language

So I have been thinking about teaching Olivia sign language for the past few weeks as Olivia has become more verbal and has started to wave bye bye and clap.So I went onto Baby Sign Language and started to look into what all I needed to know about teaching Olivia to sign. They have flash cards, language charts, and a dictionary of all sorts of sign language stuff! So much information...I love it!

At first I was cautious because I naturally thought that if I taught her to sign that it would delay her talking but actually that is the opposite. Not only do they typically talk first but also even later on in their child years their IQ is higher too!

So my question to you all is did you try baby sign language? If so what is some advice you might have for me? I know I am probably in for some frustration at the beginning but the big point I am going to make is to keep it fun and not let it get to me! 

Where Has My Little Baby Gone?

On Thursday Miss Olivia turned 9 months old...9 months!!! As I was holding her this morning when she fell asleep in my arms I sat there wondering how much longer moments like this would be before she doesn't want me to hold her while she sleeps. I feels like just the other day we were packing for the hospital and picking up Granna to come watch Taylor so we could go have Olivia and now she is just a few months shy of turning 1! 

She is such a sweet baby with so much personality that I can already tell she is going to give me a run for my money! She loves to babble and say Da Da, Ga Ga and Ba Ba. She rolls around like crazy and does this funny little low crawl. She has 3 teeth and is already cutting 3 more! So needless to say that necklace is working perfectly because she isn't fussy! Her hair is growing so much and is finally not sticking up anymore. 

Thankfully one of the few good things about all this new technology is how easy it is to take a picture with my phone. I hardly ever get out of the camera because my phone takes just as good of pictures as my camera does. So needless to say I have easily taken over 2000 pictures since she was born. I know I know she probably thinks celebrities have no room to complain about the paparazzi with a camera toting mom like me!

 At 9 months my sweet baby weighs 19 lbs and is 27 1/2 inches...short and chubby! Love it!

My stepmom had told me about this nail polish that is safe for babies called Piggy Paint. I searched through some stores and finally ended up ordering it online through Walmart.

Love the little nail file!

Baby Livy's sweet little toes all cute and pink!

Where Have All The Kid's Show's Gone?

Today I was watching one of my 8 year old's favorite shows on Disney and part of the story line was about one of the girl's boyfriends was cheating on her...?!?!?!? Seriously Disney this is what you have lined up for my 8 year old now? Why should that even be apart of the plot? That sure doesn't help me in stopping my daughter into already acting like a preteen! 

Sure they have good shows for toddlers but this is what they give me for elementary age kids. Not cool Disney not cool. And you know what even Disney isn't the only one who does this. Nickelodeon is guilty of it too. Between iCarly, Victorious on Nickelodeon and Wizards of Waverly Place and Good Luck Charlie on Disney it is becoming glaringly obvious that PBS will be my channel of choice for the girls!

PBS offers learning in a nice innocent way that children need nowadays. Never when I was a kid did Rainbow Brite worry about a boy cheating on her or did My Little Pony. In fact I think I might do a little searching on the internet for classic Mickey Mouse episodes. I do like when they will show small clips of that in between shows and Taylor likes it too. 

So please pay attention to what your kids watch because while you may not be ready to explain something to them just yet if you aren't careful you may not have a choice!

A Salute to Single Moms

I want to start this post of first by saying- Ladies I don't know how you do it! You are my heroes!!

So yesterday may have been about the nation's freedom and saluting our troops who fight for our freedom but today I am saluting the single moms!

For the past 2 months I have once again been playing single mom while the hubby is off on deployment. This isn't the first time nor will it be the last but man it sure is tough! Olivia is now 8 months old and he has been gone off and on for 5 months of her life. While I love my girls both unconditionally it sure is taxing. There are days where Olivia is fussy because of her teeth or she just wants to be held and that usually coincides with the same days that Taylor has secretly snuck the "pagent crack" aka pixie sticks and is bouncing off the walls and talking non stop. I do work full time so I get a little kid free relief at work but needless to say when I come home I'm exhausted and still have to take care of kiddos. 

Last week I had one of those days where baby was spitting her baby food at me and rubbing it in her hair at the same time. Taylor's room was a mess and for the life of me she was hardly cleaning it like she is supposed to do. Oh and I had about 7 loads of laundry on my bed that still needed to be folded so needless to say I had been sleeping on the couch for the past week. I look at my girlfriend who is a single mom and she makes it look effortless! 

So if there was a medal or some sort of award you ladies would win it hands down. I can only look to my chalkboard picture frame that counts down when Justin will be home and say to myself. "Only 80ish days left April..."

Happy Belated 4th from my favorite messy baby!

Are You Even Paying Attention??...

I swear I feel like a broken record sometimes..."Taylor please put your three pair of shoes away where they go." Twenty minutes later..."Taylor your shoes are still out here what did I ask you to do with them?" That is pretty much how my lift seems these days. She is 8 and for the most part is an awesome kid but I swear if she could just pay attention for longer than 5 seconds I wouldn't have to repeat myself 100 times a day.

So...this is where you all come in. What tips and tricks do you ladies have so you don't have to tell your kiddos a million times a day to do something? I am running out of ideas and I know this is one the best places to get new ideas from! There are even times where I will tell her something and she says ok and then five minutes later she hasn't done it and I ask her what I just said and I get the deer in the headlights look from her. 

Please help!!