When I was a little girl, one of the things my brother and I looked forward to the most at Christmas was the Advent Calendar. Each of us got our own paper calender, with the little  tab windows we pried open every morning on the countdown to Christmas.  As we got older, we had the special ones with chocolates behind each window – a big treat for us, raised to think raisins were candy until we were old enough to know better.

So this year, with our two oldest boys now almost 5 and almost 3, we started an Advent calendar. My mom, aka Nana, bought it for us and the boys take turns each alternating day, opening a window. My oldest searches to find the right date (great for number recognition and counting), and they open the little window to see the illustrations (wreathes, candles, Christmas trees etc.) No chocolates for my kids either (funny how we end up like our mothers), but this year we are trying a new addition and I’m hoping it will become an annual tradition for us.

Every day, as we open the calendar, we do a Christmas activity to help us get in the spirit. One day we sang Rudolph, the next we made paper snowflakes, one morning we chose two of my kids’ toys to give to charity. Today we wrote letters to Santa and one morning we made hot chocolate, a big treat in our home. I’ve made a list of activities (ranging from as simple as singing a carol to as involved as putting up the tree).  The kids are having a blast and are so excited each morning. I feel proud that we are doing something creative and Christmassy and hope that one day my kids will look back and remember these special times together.

And I must confess, this was not my brilliant idea. Oh how I love the Interent and Twitter and blogs – I find great parenting inspiration from other mothers online. I  saw a blog post on Canadian blogger bitofmomsense’s site. Turns out she found it at missfish in Ottawa. Then coolchillmom saw my tweet about it and so on. We are all attempting different versions of the same lovely idea. A quick Google search  on 25 Days of Christmas will reveal all kinds of sites and tips for creating your own reusable Advent calendars and coming up with wonderful activities for your family to count down the days.

As a bit of a busy slacker mom (got a baby, two preschoolers, a household and an online store to run), I’m taking a pretty simple approach with a storebought calendar and some simple, yet fun activities. But you can sew or create your own calendar, and lots of moms are journalling about each day’s event, or taking photos etc. There is even a Flicker page called Family Activity Advent Calendar.

Whatever you do, the important thing is spending some time with your kids and doing something special to gear up for the holidays. For us, it is really the first holiday tradition our young nuclear family can call our very own (not from my husband’s childhood and not from mine). I’m hoping our kids will one day carry it on.

Lately, my two older boys have been getting up earlier and earlier, despite the fact dawn breaks later and later these days. And my husband has a new job that takes him out of the house really early to commute to a nearby city. So I’m on my own from an early hour with two preschoolers (boys!) and a baby.

One morning last week, the baby was still sleeping, breakfast was long since over, I was still in my pjs, teeth unbrushed, eyes barely open, blearily wondering how to entertain my boys after the night I’d had with our teething little one.

We hit the couch, I stretched out and pulled our cozy throw over the three of us. It was time for their fave game, and mine: Baby Bird Hatches in the Nest. Basically, they burrow under the blanket and pretend they are an egg started to shake and crack and hatch. The babies emerge tweeting feebly and Mama Bird, aka me, the happily-still-horiztonal slacker mommy pretends to feed them worms and bugs, beak to beak.

Fortunately, you can play this over and over again, as my guys seem to have an almost endless appetite for it. Plus there are many variations: Baby Dinosaur, Baby Reptile (anything with an egg) or even Baby Bear (in the den) etc.

That morning, we lounged, warm under the blankets on our cushy old couch, for almost an hour!  We were all laughing and snuggling, the kids were stretching their imaginations with scenarios the baby birds got up to, and I was spending quality time with them – albeit from a horizontal postion, half asleep!

I highly recommend it!

What is your favourite slacker mom activity to do with the kids?  I’d love to hear it.

I get all kinds of newsletters from various parenting and eco sites and blogs to try to stay up to date on new products, and to keep learning while I’m home with my kids. Some days I feel like they are just cluttering up my inbox, but other times I come across something that really hits home with me and makes me glad I didn’t just hit Delete.

Today was one of those days. I get an e-letter from a newish Canadian site called Everythingmom.com. It’s a gorgeously-designed, fun, useful social networking site for moms and bloggers featuring advice, reviews, product directories, community, blogs, printable meal planners etc. I haven’t spend enough time on there yet since giving birth has kept my focus away from my computer for the summer, but I keep meaning to add myself and Kai Kids to their directory of mom-owned businesses.

As I quickly scanned it my eyes tripped across their Mothercraft Tip of the Week, and it really hit home with me so I thought I’d share it:

 Moms are often praised for their multi-tasking abilities. But for all our “doing” throughout the day, many among us go to sleep feeling like we’ve accomplished nothing at all. More and more research shows that multi-tasking only gives the illusion of productivity and efficiency. Replace your multi-tasking with the discipline to return your wandering attention to what’s happening right now. Sometimes it’s not about what you’re getting done, but rather what you’re missing when you’re on the phone, folding the laundry, watching Oprah and checking email all at the same time. (HINT: Your present moment!)

As a mom of now three boys under 4.5 years old, like many mothers, I’m a whiz at multi-tasking!  Nurse the baby and read to my two-year-old while coaching my eldest to clean up his spilt milk . . . you’ve got the picture. Throw in housekeeping, trying to be a supportive/fun wife and run a successful online business, and it’s juggle, juggle, all the time.

But I realize I can get too caught up in trying to accomplish multiple tasks and crossing items off my endless list of daily to -do`s. I’m a do-er, and sometimes I try to do too much, and I think I miss out on a lot along the way. Having another baby has added to my load, but it’s also made me realize my limits. There is only so much I can do, if I want to do things well.

Plus, having a soft-cheeked, twinkly-eyed two-month-old who is fascinated by the wind rifling the leaves in the trees has made me stop and enjoy more moments, more often. It has slowed me down, and instead of letting that frustrate me, I`ve decided to try and embrace it! This is most-likely my last baby, and these special moments go by oh so quickly!

Kids love painting, drawing and colouring, and even if your little ones spend a lot of time creating at home, they probably are also bringing home several masterpieces a week from school or daycare. We have a magnet board in our kitchen where I post the latest works of art from our two boys, but they do tend to pile up.

I used to sneak old paintings and those that weren’t my favourites into our recycling bin when my sons weren’t looking. But then I realized that their colourful, abstract (they are ages 2 and 4) paintings would make excellent wrapping paper for gifts!

This reuses their paintings (and gives them a thrill to see their masterpiece adorning a present for a friend’s birthday party etc.), reduces the amount of wrapping paper we consume (I haven’t bought any in two years!) and saves us money. And friends and family love the personal touch and think it’s quite fun to receive a present wrapped in children’s artwork.

Plus, I no longer have to feel guilty about not keeping every “unique: canvas they bring home!

Do you have any good ideas for reusing items around the home and encouraging your kids to reduce, reuse and recycle? I’d love to hear them.

Sometimes its the little things, our unconscious daily habits, that can really add up and make a difference to our environmental footprint. We can’t all afford to install solar panels on our roof, switch to tankless water heaters or drive a hybrid, but the cumulative effect of many small steps can have an impact.

Take banking. Most of us don’t consider that how we bank could have an effect on the environment, but it does. Traditionally personal banking meant lots of paper used and thrown out: personal cheques, bank statements, atm slips, deposit receipts. But today, online banking has made it a lot easier to cut out some of the paper waste.

Here are some tips to green your banking habits:

• Bank online: electronic transactions mean less paper, period. Plus, it saves you time.
• Cancel your printed statements: you can always get an up to date statement online and print it yourself if need-be. Otherwise, what do you do with all of those monthly statements? And why keep them and add to the clutter in your home, if all the information is available at a click of the mouse?
• Request automatic deposits for your pay-cheques: saves even more paper
• Set up automatic bill payments: saves you an envelope and stamp, plus, you never forget a bill payment or have to pay a late charge
• Read investment prospectuses online and ask the company not to send you the printed version. Until I did this ours always ended up in the recycling bin unopened. Who has time to read these anyway?
• Set up a direct deposit with Revenue Canada or other government agencies for any tax refunds, credits or monthly payments. It’s also more secure, as it means no cashable printed cheques can be stolen
• Do not take a paper receipt from the ATM.  Usually these end up on the ground somewhere, and most of time time they are just unnecessary litter

Modern families have become reliant on liquid shower gels and plastic-pump dispense liquid hand soaps. But really, is all that plastic packaging necessary? And think of how often the average family goes through these products, only to have to buy yet another container. Much of that plastic gets thrown out and ends up in a landfill, depending on your municipality’s recycling program.

A better option for the environment, and cheaper for your wallet, is a return to good old-fashioned bar soap. It is usually wrapped in paper or recycled paper, or you can cut the packaging altogether by  buying it  loose in natural food stores.

It’s a little messier, and can be slippery for little fingers, but it’s much better for the planet. And bodywash and liquid handsoaps usually cost about four times as much as bar soap!

I don’t have the stats for Canada, but if every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of shower gel with a bar of soap, roughly 2.5  million pounds of plastic bottles would be diverted from the waste stream! That is staggering.

In our household, we went back to the bar a few years ago with no regrets. We still use liquid handsoap at our bathroom sink for quick cleanups, but we refill our plastic container with a natural handsoap we purchase in bulk from our neighbourhood natural food store.  We just take our container in, have it weighed, and refill when necessary.

Our online eco store, Kai Kids, also carries some excellent bar soaps:

• Organic Baby Soap, by Bare Organics, which we use for the whole family
• Avocado Cleansing Bar, by Dimpleskins (very gentle and great for babies)
• French-Milled Vegetable Soap, by South of France (lasts for months, and comes in two lovely scents: Honey and Lemon Verbena)

Happy washing!

If any of you parents out there still haven’t made the switch to natural, chemical-free shampoo, soaps, bodywashes and lotions for your families, a new study should help convince you.

A report by the  Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, released yesterday, found major brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Baby Magic, Huggies and Mustela to be contaminated with cancer-causing carcinogens formaldehyge and 1.4 dioxin. Formaldehyde can also trigger skin rashes in some children.

Babies and children are far more vulnerable to the harmful effects of toxins and carcinogens ingested and absorbed through the skin due to their small size.  Their organs are still developing, and their bodies are less able to detoxify and excrete chemicals.

These substances are contaminents that get into the products during the manufacturing process and as such, are not listed on ingredient labels. 1.4 dioxin is a byproduct of a chemical processing technique that makes products bubbly and formaldehyde is released in the bottles and containers over time from preservatives used to prolong shelf-life.

In Canada, both formaldehyde and 1.4 dioxin are on Health Canada’s cosmetics hotlist, which means they cannot be used as ingredients in personal-care products, but are allowed in trace amounts in levels higher than those detected in yesterday’s study. There are a few exceptions for formaldehyde, which is permitted as in ingredient at low concentrations to provide antimicrobial preservation.

For the study, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics commissioned an independent laboratory to test 48 common children’s products for 1,4-dioxane; 28 of those products were also tested for formaldehyde. The lab found that:

• 17 out of 28 products tested – 61 percent – contained both formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane
• 23 out of 28 products – 82 percent – contained formaldehyde at levels ranging from 54 to 610 parts per million (ppm).
• 32 out of 48 products – 67 percent – contained 1,4-dioxane at levels ranging from 0.27 to 35 ppm.

More than 60 percent of products tested contained both toxins, including Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, L’Oreal Kids Extra Gentle 2-in-1 Fast Dry Shampoo, Huggies Naturally Refreshing Cucumber & Green Tea Baby Wash, Gerber’s Grins & Giggles Milk & Honey Baby Wash. Bubble bath products branded with popular children’s characters also tested positive for both chemicals, including Barbie, Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street, Hot Wheels and Tinker Bell.

Here are some tips to ensure what you buy for your family is non-toxic and safe:

• Use natural and organic products. (Kai Kids carries some excellent chemical-free lines: Dimpleskins, TruKid, Bare Organics, Little Twig,  and Earth-Friendly Baby)
• Look for ingredients you recognize: jojoba oil, coconut oil, olive oil, beeswax,  glycerin, rosemary extract (a natural preservative), grapefruit oil, calendula, cocoa butter, Vitamin E oil, etc.
• Read labels carefully and avoid products you can’t pronounce and those containing: parabens, sodium laureth sulfates,  polyethylene glycol, phthalates, petrolatum/mineral oil/paraffin, glycols, MEA/DEA/TEA, PVP/ acrylates, DMDM hydantoin/ diazolidinyl urea/ methylisothiazolinone

Obviously, the price for all-natural, chemical-free and organic shampoos and lotions is higher, as the ingredients and manufacturing processes are more costly. But what I’ve found as a parent who switched to natural skincare products back when I was pregnant with our oldest son, now 4, is that natural skincare products seem to be more concentrated and last a lot longer. That means you definitely get your money’s worth. One small tin of Bum Bum Balm lasted me almost nine months of mulitple diaper changes a day, and one bottle of Organic Chamomile Shampoo & Body Wash got me through six months of bathtime for my two children!

I think it’s because the ingredients are quality and pure and there are no fillers, but I’m starting to suspect that aside from being full of toxic chemicals, conventional drugstore products are made so that you go through them quickly and will buy more!

We have an old house, and the water in our main kitchen faucet seems to take forever to run hot. But I hate the thought of all of that lovely clean water just going down the drain when I’m waiting for hot water to wet a washcloth to clean up my two-year-old after mealtimes.

So, I simply fill a large juice jug and/or the kettle while I’m waiting for the water to heat up. Then I go water my plants around the house,  make myself a cup of tea, or put some of the cold water aside for  cleaning or rinsing of fruits and vegetables at a later point.

Got any good tips for conserving water around the house? Please comment and share them with us!

Last week Peter and I were working our Kai Kids booth at the Children’s Trunk Show. We always enjoy meeting our customers and talking to other parents about products, kids, and things we go through as parents!  I was chatting with a customer about using reusable wipes for diaper changes at home, and how we soak and launder them ( I blogged about this back in the summer). She was asking what we soak them with in the diaper pail, and i was telling her about non-toxic bleach, or hydrogen peroxide. I told her that we also use it to clean and disinfect toys, and she said: you should blog about that too!

Hydrogen peroxide is also known as oxygenated bleach, and it is one of the most environmentally safe chemicals on the market. It works by releasing oxygen to perform the bleaching process, and then converting to simply H2O (water and oxygen) once the process is complete. It is biodegradable.  

Now, you don’t want to go disinfecting crazy, as germs are good for kids and babies to help build up their immune systems. But there are some things, that you just want to feel are squeaky clean.  So,  if you haven’t already tried it, hydrogen peroxide is great around the home – use it on grungy compost bins, mold on the shower curtain, sanitizing cutting boards after chopping up raw chicken, cleaning the toilet bowl,and, it’s gentle enough that you can also use it on your baby’s toys – especially after she’s had a bad cold or virus and you don’t want a repeat!

Simply buy a bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide from the drug store, grocery store or natural food store. You can also find natural baby disinfectant in some baby stores that sell cloth diapers, but it is usally triple the price. We found a much cheaper alternative: in our house we use the All Natural Liquid Bleach by Nature Clean – it just contains water and 5% hydrogen peroxide. When you are disinfecting toys, just pour a1/4 cup or so  in a bucket and fill the bucket with warm water and clean away!  Or mix some with water in an empty spray bottle.

If you want more specifics on strengths and how much to dilute for various cleaning tasks, there is an excellent web siteI found all about Using Hydrogen Peroxide.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how i tried a new recipe that my kids really liked, especially my Big Boy. It was pretty easy to make, and helped me use up the pumpkin that came in our organic food box that week. A reader named Char emailed to ask for the recipe. Sorry Char, it’s been a hectic time, and i’m only getting to it today – a few days before Halloween. I hope you still have some pumpkin around!

It is from the October issue of Chatelaine magazine. One caveat: the kids really loved it, but my husband and i found it a little bland. I think you could safely add a lot more salt and maybe some coconut cream or a little more coconut milk and perhaps some fish sauce too. I was going to type the recipe in here, but then I realized it was in the mag’s online recipe database! I hope your kids like this recipe as much as mine did (one note, i halvedthe amount of jalapeno it called for).