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Nurturing moms in their walk with God

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Teaching Self-Care Skills

March 24, 2009 by Tracey 1 Comment

We have been discussing fine motor skills for the past two weeks here on Teaching Tuesday. {You can read those posts here and here.}

Today I’d like to give a list of self-care skills that we can teach our children. Each child’s ability will vary, so there is not necessarily a set age at which a skill should be mastered. However, when you think your child is ready to try something new, it’s a good idea to spend just a few minutes a day working on it. Both child and mom can get frustrated if too much time is spent focusing on mastering a skill too quickly.

    • Putting on clothes
    • Snapping
    • Putting on shoes
    • Opening/closing doors (house and car)
    • Buttoning
    • Brushing teeth
    • Zipping
    • Locking/unlocking a door (house and car)
    • Opening/closing lids
    • Brushing and combing hair
    • Buckling/unbuckling a seat belt
    • Bathing
    • Tying
  • Pouring (from one container into another)

As we’ve discussed before, the more fun you can make learning, the better it is. There are dolls you can buy that have parts to help your child learn snapping, zipping and buttoning, but your own or your child’s clothes work just as well. Your child can practice pouring by playing with cups and pitchers in the bathtub or kitchen sink.

I’ll go ahead and admit that my six-year-old is not yet tying shoes. In my defense, there’s not one pair of shoes with shoelaces in her closet. Most of her shoes have Velcro closure or are slip-ons; there is one pair of boots that zip up. I do realize that’s not an excuse and plan to tackle tying shoes with her soon. On the other hand, she has almost mastered riding her bike without training wheels!

If you have stories about teaching your children self-care skills, or other ideas to add to the list, please feel free to comment. Check back in next Tuesday as we address beginning numbers skills!

Filed Under: Parent

5 Parenting Mistakes I’ve Made

March 23, 2009 by Tracey 6 Comments

Will the perfect parent reading this please raise your hand?

While we all want to be the best moms and dads possible, most of us freely admit to making mistakes in our parenting.  For those times when we know we’ve blown it, how thankful we can be that God made young children so willing to forgive us when we come to them in love and ask for it.

A certain event at our house over the weekend caused me to consider some of the mistakes I’ve made in parenting. Here’s a list of five, though I could certainly come up with more!  I’m sharing these today in hopes that I’ll recognize them more easily in the future and hopefully limit their recurrence.

1. Attempting to parent my children in my own strength without asking God for His help. I could probably avoid most of the other mistakes if I could remedy this one each day. Situations arise for which I have no answer, but if my first response is to ask God for His help and wisdom, I can be sure I’ll head down the right path.

2. Assuming I know what happened in a particular situation before getting all the facts. This is the good ol’ case of jumping to conclusions! It’s closely related to our latest incident. I hope this has taught me to be slower to react, to give as much thought as needed to the problem, and gather as much information as possible.

3. Taking my frustrations over an unrelated difficulty out on my children. This usually means I’m being short-tempered with them and not responding properly to their needs. Because my mind is preoccupied with other things, I don’t take the time to deal with my children as lovingly and gently as I should.

4. Talking about my girls to other people in front of them. I believe this starts when they’re infants; just innocent, casual conversations with other moms about our kids. However, as they get older and actually listen in, it can become something that makes our children uncomfortable. I was surprised when our older daughter had her feelings hurt because of things I was saying about her. They weren’t negative or embarrassing, but she did not like me discussing her with other moms. I am striving to do better in this area.

5. Putting other tasks ahead of spending time with my girls. I need to take time whenever possible to be with them, even if that means putting off other chores. Key times for us are when they come home from school and at bedtime. That’s when they seem to have a lot to communicate and I don’t want to miss that. I also want to take time just to do things they want to do, even if it’s as simple as sitting on the couch and reading a book together.

So now you know some of the mistakes I’ve made (glad I don’t have to share them all!) These are definitely areas in which I’m trying to get better. I hope by God’s grace to continue to grow in this area of child-rearing.

Filed Under: Parent

Top 5 Board Books for Babies

March 20, 2009 by Tracey 4 Comments

As I’ve documented here before, our family loves books. I have been reading to the girls since they were born and some of those first books were board books.

Next week I will be attending a baby shower where it has been requested that each guest bring a favorite book for the mom-to-be to put in her baby’s library. I think that is a terrific idea! It got me thinking about what our favorite board books were when my girls were babies. It’s always hard for me to limit myself to just a few favorites when it comes to books, but here, in no particular order, are five of our favorite board books.

  1. Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill. Well before we had children, I first read this gem to the daughter of a friend of ours and saw how much she loved looking for Spot. It was a big hit with us as well.
  2. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt. Lots to touch and feel; makes for a good read and a tactile experience.
  3. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram. I got a warm, fuzzy feeling with every reading!
  4. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. If I had a dollar for every time I read this one, I’d be a wealthy woman.
  5. Moo Baa La La La by Sandra Boynton. I was reading this one to my nephew not long ago and he couldn’t get enough of it.

So there’s a selection of what I read to my girls when they were babies. Do you have others to suggest? If so, please share in the comments section.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you click on a product link and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small percentage from any sales.  This does not affect your price in any way. Thank you for supporting Girls to Grow through your purchases!

Filed Under: Parent, Read

Things Our Kids Say

March 20, 2009 by Tracey 4 Comments

Oh, to be as honest and transparent as my younger daughter when she speaks!

On the recent occasion of having on a new outfit and modeling a new hairdo: “I just love standing in front of the mirror and admiring myself for hours.”

On being told she had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose: “I don’t think they add much to my complexion, so I want to wash them off.”

On being sent back to the dining room to finish clearing her place at the table, when she was trying to chat in the living room with dad and mom: “I don’t think I was invited, but I just slipped into the conversation.”

Being able to laugh and enjoy our children is one of the finer things in life!

For more of life’s finer things, visit Amy’s Finer Things Friday.

Filed Under: Parent

Fun Art Museum Outing

March 16, 2009 by Tracey Leave a Comment

On Saturday I mentioned that we were planning a family outing to a local art museum that was hosting a community day with free admission and activities for children. While I am by no means a fine art connoisseur, I enjoy viewing paintings, sculptures and other art and hope that our daughters will grow up with an appreciation for beautiful things.

The girls had a great time at the museum. The theme for the children’s activities was healthy eating. They glued magazine pictures of foods they liked on paper plates, did stamp painting with fruits and vegetables, created their own healthy snack mix from a host of options and did a scavenger hunt around the museum with healthy foods as the subject.

In different rooms, they got to make colorful butterflies out of coffee filters and clothespins (who knew?) and decorated and cut out pinwheels. We also took the opportunity to check out all the exhibits at the museum. To top off the free admission, we even found free parking just a couple of blocks away! Just the right price for adding a little culture to our lives!

Filed Under: Live

Book Review: On Becoming Babywise

March 12, 2009 by Tracey 2 Comments

As a brand-new mom over eight years ago, the most helpful book I read was On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam, M.D. This was the book I turned to over and over again for practical advice on helping my infant sleep, eat and play well.

I’ll say upfront that I understand that not everyone is a “schedule” type person. I know Moms who have great success at just going with the flow, especially as the number of children you have increases.

However, I do happen to function at my best when I have at least a skeleton of a plan. Being a first-time parent, it gave me a sense of security to know what to plan for and expect at different times of the day. Therefore, I recommend to others to at least try a schedule, even if it’s just a basic one that includes having meals, naps and bedtime around the same time each day.

One thing I appreciate about Gary Ezzo’s books is that he begins by emphasizing the husband and wife relationship as the most important one in a family. I highly agree. So often, when a baby is added to the marriage, everything in life begins to revolve around the child and his or her needs. While a baby definitely has needs to be met and often requires a lot of attention, especially in the beginning, it is so important to continue to create time and space for the husband and wife to be together. (Speaking of which, a wonderful friend has offered to keep our girls so that John and I can go out on a date Friday night! Yay!)

On Becoming Babywise then moves on to discuss feeding philosophies, concluding the section by recommending parent-directed feeding, in which “baby’s life is guided by a flexible routine.” This leads into the following chapter on babies and sleep.

The only way I can judge the recommendations from this chapter is on how they worked for me. Both of my girls were excellent sleepers, sleeping at least six hours straight at night by the time they were between six and eight weeks old. Let me just say that I am one who needs my sleep and what a blessing it was to have them sleeping through the night very early. This chapter also mentions sleep props, one of which could be rocking your baby to sleep. I loved rocking my babies and would occasionally rock them to sleep, but most often rocked them until they were only very drowsy, then put them in their crib to actually fall asleep.

The book proceeds to talk about facts on feeding, another chapter that I found very helpful. I did nurse our girls, but was not one of those moms who love every minute of it and rave about what a wonderful experience it is! I nursed them because I was physically able to, personally felt it to be the healthiest option and, on the practical side, it was the most frugal choice. I understand that not everyone decides to do it that way and certainly respect each mom’s decision.

Chapters six and seven address what your baby’s routine might look like and includes suggested activities for baby’s waketime. If I had errands to run, I normally did those in the mornings as that seemed to be the best time for me and was also when my babies were awake the longest and seemed to be the most content.

Chapter eight talks about discerning baby’s different cries, something that it doesn’t take most moms very long to figure out. I had one daughter who, as a baby, went through a stage where she cried for a few minutes each night when I put her in her crib. It was as though she needed that time to let things out, then she went right to sleep.

After a chapter on having multiples (I was able to skip that one!), the book concludes with chapters on problem solving and “parenting potpourri.” Subjects range from baby equipment to pacifiers to teething. I found both of these chapters offered good advice. (There is a final brief chapter on introducing Babywise principles if your baby is a little older.)

I highly recommend reading this book if you are expecting a child or have a new baby. You may not use or agree with everything in the book. I find there are few, if any, books that I read and follow in total. However, I can almost always find something that is applicable to my situation and use it to help me be a better parent.

Filed Under: Parent, Read

Let’s Love Letters

March 3, 2009 by Tracey Leave a Comment

This edition of Teaching Tuesday is about letters. I would encourage you to introduce letters to your child at an early age, but NOT in a formal sense. There are many ways to incorporate the ABC’s into your day and have them become part of your play. Here are a few ideas that I used with our girls when they were very young.

  • Read books that are centered around letters. One of my older daughter’s favorite books when she was around two years old was Dr. Seuss’ ABC book. Let’s just say I had it memorized! I have seen many cute books for young children that use letters as a basis for a story. Check these out at the library and read them during your reading time with your child.
  • Play with blocks that have letters on them. For her second Christmas, my daughter received a set of very nice wooden blocks from my grandmother. They had letters in color on the sides. While these were great for building, they were also useful in playing other games such as finding letters that were the same and teaching letter names.
  • I was able to find foam letter shapes that could be used in the bathtub. Both girls played with these, getting them wet and then sticking them up on the side of the tub. Again, we could name the letters or try to find the letter that started their name.
  • One of the neatest things I found was a large rug that had the alphabet printed on it. It was actually decorative and very pretty; we bought it for our older daughter when she was about eighteen months old. In her room, she would play with her toys on it; however, she would also notice the letters and as we were playing on it, we would talk about what the names of the letters were. For some reason, she developed an affinity for the letter Z! It was one of the first letters she learned and she loved to find it in books and point it out.
  • Using sidewalk chalk, write some letters on your sidewalk or driveway and see if your child can find a certain letter and jump on it.
  • At snack time, form the shape of a letter on a plate with cheerios or another small snack food and see if they can name the letter.

These are just a few fun things we did together in an informal way to introduce the girls to letters. I’d love to hear ideas you may have used in this area with your children!

Filed Under: Parent

Mom Goals

February 26, 2009 by Tracey 1 Comment

When it comes to being a Mom, it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the daily struggles and forget to focus on the big picture. God has given us the precious gift of children and we have only a certain amount of time to prepare them for life.

I was recently reminded by a post at Life as Mom how important it is to set goals for myself as a Mom and then find practical ways to work toward reaching those goals. Here are my initial thoughts as I considered the kind of Mom I want to be.

I want to be a Godly mom who is supportive of her daughters through

  • prayer;
  • time spent together doing fun and serious activities, realizing how quickly time goes by;
  • providing every opportunity for them to reach their God-given potential; and
  • open, positive communication about what’s going on in their lives.

I started with prayer because I have come to realize (what I have known all along) that only God can work in a person’s heart and spirit and help them to become all that He would have them to be. There are so many areas in which I can pray for my girls: health, friendships, right attitudes, finding God’s will for their lives, future spouse. I also need to pray for myself that I will continually give them over to God and allow Him to work and lead in their lives.

As for time spent together, I believe that takes planning and preparation. I want to find activities that we can do together as a family. For example, I have scheduled us to attend a free kids’ cooking class next month. A few weeks ago, we attended a Charlotte’s Web play, then went out for dessert afterwards. However, not everything has to be a “big event.” It could be something as simple as a family game night or a picnic in the backyard.

Another area I am exploring now that the girls are a little bit older is finding a volunteer opportunity that we can all participate in – a way to help others by working together. I want to keep in mind that they won’t be this age for long and I want to make the most of it.

With each girl, I am trying to keep my eyes open to potential gifts and talents they may have. One of them is currently going through a writing phase – “journaling” and writing little stories. Whether it’s musical or athletic ability, drama or art, I want to allow them to explore areas of interest to them and support them in it, even if it’s not something in which I’m particularly interested. The goal is to help them develop talents that can be used to serve the Lord and others throughout their lives.

Finally, I strongly desire to keep the lines of communication open. I think a large part of this is just being available – in the car, at meals, at bedtime. I’m hoping that being able to listen now to whatever they have to say and being interested in what’s going on in their lives will bode well for those coming teenage years.

As the weeks go by, I hope to keep these thoughts in the forefront of my mind that I might seek to meet the goals I have set and accomplish the purpose God has for me as a mother.

Filed Under: Parent

More About Me

February 14, 2009 by Tracey 1 Comment

Just a little more about me………I am in my late thirties (for a little bit longer!) and am married to a wonderful, supportive husband named John. We have two daughters, ages eight and six. I grew up in a truly Christian home; my dad has been a pastor for over thirty years and I have two brothers and a sister, all of whom I love dearly. I was saved at a young age and am so thankful for the privilege of having many years of seeking to know and serve God more.

I have a college degree in early childhood education and taught in an elementary school for six years. I have also worked as an executive secretary in a hospital system and briefly as an office manager for a design firm. The last eight years of my life have been primarily spent being a stay-at-home wife and mother.

One of the greatest desires of my heart is to have our girls grow up loving and serving God. Through this blog, I hope to find others with the same goal so that we might share ideas and inspirations, trials and triumphs through the coming years. I hope you’ll join me!

Filed Under: Live

My Very First Post

February 13, 2009 by Tracey Leave a Comment

Welcome to my little piece of the World Wide Web! I’m excited to begin blogging about subjects that are near and dear to my heart. I hope you’ll join me on this journey of learning and growing as a mom of two young girls. I hope to share things I’ve learned (and am learning!) and also be exposed to new ideas from you!

Having been saved at an early age, I approach blogging from a Christian perspective, seeking to glorify God by rearing daughters who can fulfill their God-given potential. Let’s talk about lots of topics: big ones, like educating our children, sibling rivalry and putting faith into practice; and other topics that are just for fun – favorite books, toys and foods!

I’ll share stories from our family and hope to get to know more about yours. Thanks for reading this first post – and welcome!!

Filed Under: Create

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Welcome! I'm Tracey, wife and mom to two teenage girls. I seek to help Christian moms raise children who know, love, and serve God by sharing Biblical wisdom, helpful tips, and practical advice. Read More…

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