Holiday Craft Idea

This craft is something that began with an idea that my grandmother in New Hampshire used to put out each year at Thanksgiving. She would always make up little cups filled with candies and nuts and each person would have their own to pick on either while waiting for dinner to be served, or later in the day. My aunt continued the tradition when she took over hosting Thanksgiving, and I always thought it was a nice idea.

This year, I decided to take that idea and make it into a little craft that would help keep my girl busy while I was doing last minute prep work for our company! We took plastic cups (left over from a birthday party) and we drew "feathers" on colored construction paper and cut those out. Now, the paper is colored, but my girl wanted to add her own flair, so she also colored her own feathers. We gathered a few of the colored feathers together and taped them on the outside of the cups on one side, so that they looked like turkey feathers. Then we took one red "feather" and folded that in half, and taped it to the outside of the opposite side of the cup from the tail. I drew on little eyes to look like a turkey face. Then my girl wrote out each one of our names on a cup and we filled them with goodies that everyone likes -- M&M's (regular and peanut butter), Hershey's Kisses, candy corn, pecans, raisins, etc. We also did "special orders" -- for example, my brother-in-law is not a big nut fan, but he does like peanuts, so we replaced his pecans with peanuts. And since the 2 littlest girls were too little for us to give nuts and candy to, my sweet girl suggested that we make their cups with Goldfish crackers, Cheerios, and Gerber Puffs.

We had a good time making these and everyone enjoyed them. This is a very versatile craft - you can either make paper feathers, or use real craft feathers if you have them, or another cute idea is to trace your child's hands on construction paper and put 2 of their hands together to make the turkey's tail feather. Another fun thing would be to use googly eyes instead of drawing the eyes on -- always popular with kids!

This can also be adapted for other holidays or occasions. Try tracing your child's hands on brown paper (construction, paper grocery bag, lunch bags...) and tape 2, slightly separated, on one side of the cup, and then cut out a brown diamond shape, fold that in half and tape it to the front of the cup (similar to the picture above with the red turkey face). Put eyes on that and glue a red paper circle or even a red pom-pom on the tip (below the eyes) and voila, you have a Rudolph cup! I'll have to try this one at Christmas and I'll post a picture to show you how it turned out.

You could even take this idea and use it as an alternative to goodie bags at your child's birthday party or a craft that the kids make at a party -- everyone makes their own cup and then they fill it with their favorite goodies.

Use your imagination (and your child's) and you can come up with all sorts of ideas for this fun and inexpensive craft -- enjoy!

Thanksgiving Recap

I realize that we are rapidly approaching Christmas, but before we get to that, I just wanted to tell you about the wonderful Thanksgiving we spent at home this year, with my husband's brother and his family. As I mentioned before the holiday, we had a big change in plans and did not spend Thanksgiving in our traditional manner, but we were excited to share it with some of my husband's family for the first time in over 14 years! Just as I had done as a child growing up, my girls had a fantastic time playing all weekend long with their cousins -- there were projects and songs and dances and dress up and even some imaginary monster hunting! This picture shows my two sweet girls on Thanksgiving, and my adorable nephew and niece to their right. My oldest daughter is turning 7 in January, and her cousin will be 4 the week before her birthday. They get along amazingly well for the age difference and the fact that one is a boy and one is a girl. When they are together, they (with not much interference from their parents) manage to find the toys and games that they both enjoy and play those together, not to mention that they both have great imaginations and make up adventures to share.

And the two little ones are only 1 month apart as far as birthdays, however their due dates were 1 day apart originally! My sister-in-law had her daughter early, and as apparently is the case for my children, my daughter came late. It is so much fun to watch these two grow and learn and interact with each other. They are getting to the point where they are more than just curious about the other one, and they are starting to play a little bit together. They are so cute when they try to give hugs or kisses!

We took the kids to the Strong Museum and to The Sandbox Indoor Playground which were both big hits with the kids and the adults. My husband and his brother also took the two older kids to a hockey game (hockey is huge in our family) and my sister-in-law Jess and I stayed home, put the two little ones to bed, and enjoyed a girls evening of appetizers, wine and girl talk! It was a fun night for all! Oh, and we celebrated Thanksgiving, too! We had a leisurely day of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (big tradition in my family, and Jess' father and brother have worked on the parade for years -- both work in television), munching on this and that, cooking a great meal -- which shockingly for me, all came out at the same time! -- and of course, eating. For the meal itself, we incorporated a few of my family's traditional dishes, Jess made a yummy sweet potato dish, and we tried to have a little something for everyone.

We enjoyed our holiday and as always, enjoyed having the chance to spend time with family - whether we were out visiting museums or home playing "Go Fish" with the kids, it makes the day special when you can spend it with people you love!

Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one of mine!

When God was handing out patience, I must have been too busy to wait in line... This is an area that I fall extremely short in, and I am afraid that my 6 year old is going to follow suit if I don't intervene soon!

It is a never-ending cycle in our house -- our oldest daughter wants something NOW and she is bring impatient, and that makes my husband and I lose OUR patience, and it just gets us nowhere.

Last week, there was something that she urgently needed (like dessert, or something life-threateningly important like that...) and of course, I was in the middle of something and could not attend to her need immediately. And in response to her impatience, I said in a bit of a tone, "Mommy needs just 2 minutes of patience!" And as I said it, I thought, "Hmm, let me try something!" So I set the kitchen timer for 2 minutes. And at the end of the 2 minutes, I had finished what I needed to do, and I was ready to help with her emergency (getting a bowl of ice cream).

Shockingly, that seemed to work for both of us! So, the next day a similar situation came up and I handled it with the same approach -- I gauged how much time I needed to get what I was doing done, and then I said, "Ok, Mommy needs 5 minutes of patience, please." (In a much nicer tone this time!) And to my surprise, before I could even set the timer, my girl said, "Ok, set the buzzer, please!" Unbelievable!

We have been doing this for a week now, and I have found that a) I have maintained my patience amazingly well, and b) we have gotten through some of our least favorite tasks with less crabbiness. I have also been using it for unpleasant things that we have to do -- like brush my daughter's hair! She hates it, and screams and yells no matter how gently I do it. I've tried threats ("We're going to go and get your hair cut shorter than Daddy's!") and psychology ("Hmm, if your head is really that sensitive, maybe we should go see the doctor to see what the problem is?") and nothing works very well. But, this morning I tried the 2 minutes of patience, and she pouted, but asked me to do the timer, and we got through it. I even made a little game out of it to keep her mind off of the hair brushing, and I would say, "One minute left! 30 seconds left!" And then we did a countdown from 10 seconds until the timer went off.

This can also work when you are out in public, away from the timer -- I used it at the store the other day, and she said, "There's no buzzer!" and I said that I would be the buzzer and I went along for about 2 minutes and then said, "Bzzz! Time's up!"

The important thing is to stick with the time limit -- set an amount of time that you can get what you need done, and then when the timer goes off (or, before it goes off, if you are ready early) make sure you take care of what your child wants you to do, or in the case of the hair brushing, if you say 2 minutes, you'd better be finished in 2 minutes!

Traditions

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I love getting together with family in a relaxed, cozy atmosphere where we can just enjoy each other's company and of course, a great meal. My mother's family has always spent Thanksgiving together. Long before I was born, Mom's family (in New Hampshire) would gather the entire family together to celebrate Thanksgiving -- there were so many relatives that they would hold the celebration at the church, which was large enough to accommodate everyone. I believe the last one of those Thanksgivings was either the year before, or the year after, I was born.

But, growing up I remember traveling by plane or by car to spend every Thanksgiving in New Hampshire (except the year my cousin Matt was born! We went to my aunt's in Connecticut) at my grandparents' house. I loved those Thanksgivings -- my Nana's wonderful cooking, all of the relatives crammed into the dining room and kitchen, hearing stories from "the good ol' days", and playing with my cousins. I was always SO excited to go to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving, and most of the family came out and stayed at my grandparents' house, so no one was on a schedule -- we just had Weds. night to Sun. morning to spend time with each other. That is still one of my favorite things -- having the whole family together in one place for a long weekend, whether it's my mother's family or my husband's family -- the more the merrier!

We've carried on that tradition for Thanksgiving, losing some of our guests -- my grandparents both passed away, my cousin Todd moved to Florida -- and we've moved from NH to Connecticut, back to NH when my aunt and uncle built at place up there. Life gets busy and it's hard to keep those traditions going, but we do our best! My husband's job makes it difficult to get away at Thanksgiving, so last year Mom's family came out to our house, which was great! My cousin even came up from Florida and brought a new addition -- his fiancee (now wife)! This year we had to stay home again, but we are celebrating with my brother-in-law and his family from Long Island -- this will be the first Thanksgiving that we have spent with my husband's family in at least 14 years! We are very excited to have them come out for the long weekend, and my daughter is already beside herself with excitement about having her cousins here to play all weekend!

Times change, but there is something so warm and comforting about familiar traditions -- even if you have to adapt them a little along the way. We are unable to spend Thanksgiving with our New England relatives, but we're happy to share some of our traditions with our Long Island relatives this year!

Night Terrors

As I've mentioned before, my older daughter has a few sleep issues -- some probably were caused by overprotective, nervous, first time parents. But a large sleep issue that she had (hopefully in the past tense now!) was something called Night Terrors. The name alone is frightening enough, and when you have a child that suffers from this, the whole experience is extremely unnerving, to say the least.

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, night terrors are most common in children between the ages of 4 and 12 and affect 1 to 4% of all children. For our daughter, they seemed to start right at the age of 3 and ended (for the most part, we hope!) at the age of 5. From what we have read, and what our doctor told us, a night terror is a frightening dream that usually happens during deep sleep and is accompanied by crying, yelling, screaming, etc. When the child / adult (it does occur rarely in adults -- we know of two people that have them as adults) wakes up after the night terror, they have no memory of the dream or of what they were doing during the "episode."

In our daughter's case, they would not only involve her crying hysterically and yelling at the top of her lungs, but often she would be kicking or hitting (us quite frequently, in the beginning) and in many instances, she would be hopping around on her bed, seemingly wide awake - eyes open - almost as though she were having a temper tantrum. And eventually, she would "go back to sleep" (although in actuality she was asleep the entire time) and in the morning she would have no recollection of what had occurred during the night. In some severe cases, she would actually sleep walk, which was very frightening to us. We put a gate at the top of our staircase, for fear that she would fall down the stairs in the middle of the night.

When the night terrors first began, we had no idea what was going on, and we would take turns going into her room to try to get her back to sleep. Both of us would be losing patience, thinking that she was awake and refusing to go back to bed. She would talk (yell) and some of the things she said sounded like they made sense -- she wasn't speaking gibberish -- and that supported our idea that she was awake. As this went on, we did some research on the internet and we spoke with our doctor, and we all came to the conclusion that these were night terrors. There is really not a lot that can be done, the most important thing is to keep the child safe. My husband and I would get around her (especially when she was hopping around her bed) and we would put our arms out, like a big circle, enclosing her but not touching her. In our experience it is extremely difficult to wake someone up during a night terror. We did on several occasions try an "old wives tale" that we read about on the internet, and that was to put her feet in cool water. Someone on an NT support website mentioned dunking their child's feet in the toilet out of desperation one night -- we just ran some cool water over her feet in the sink. It seemed to calm her down a little bit.

We also started to pay more attention to what we determined to be "triggers." We made sure that she was on a strict schedule -- we had been pretty lax about this early on -- some kids get cranky if they don't get to sleep on time. Ours would often have a night terror -- that will get you to stick with a schedule! Another thing seemed to be if she had a really active, overstimulating day. I vividly remember her having night terrors when we were out of town, staying at my brother-in-law's house -- we were in the living room, trying to watch "Desperate Housewives" and our daughter started screaming. My husband and I went in and did our "safety circle" around her, as she hopped around on the guest bed. My brother-in-law had NO idea what was going on, but my sister-in-law and I had discussed it before, so she was explaining it to him. It's hard for people that have never experienced this to understand -- he couldn't understand why she didn't just go to sleep. We realized that even though we had gotten her to bed at her usual time that night, she had been playing all day with her cousins, was super excited to be visiting the family, and it was just a little too much for her.

It has been such a relief to get through nearly 2 years without a night terror. We still keep her on a strict bedtime schedule, for the most part, and we have been very good with her sister's schedule. They say that night terrors run in families -- we are certainly hoping that is not the case in ours!

For anyone who would like more information on night terrors, there are a multitude of sites on the internet, one that I found informative is http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/nightmares-night-terrors.html. And certainly, contact your physician or pediatrician. Night terrors are extremely stressful to deal with, but you can get through them!