Storytelling

It used to be with my kids that bedtime meant reading them a few stories and then "cuddle" time, which is just another word for fooling around before going to sleep. As I mentioned in my "Bedtime" post the kids now ask for a made up story every night, in addition to the other sleep traditions described earlier. To help anyone trapped in this situation, or if you just want to add another element to your bedtime routine I thought I would share what types of stories the kids seem to like and the ones they don't like.

Magic - Any story with magic seems to be a hit. I've told stories about magic trees, cars, dogs, potato's, beds, pillows, chipmunks and even magic magician's. All the stories are really the same. Two children walking to school, in a forest or playground when they come across the magic object, or in some cases a magician or wizard gives them the magic item. The item can do all kinds of silly magic like turning furniture or toys into play dough or making the family car fly. You can pretty much go anywhere with magic.

Crazy - Anyone or anything that's crazy the kids love. Crazy parents, crazy friends, crazy animals. Whatever, as long as they are crazy. I guess they relate to this pretty well since we as parents are the craziest role models around. If you're really ambitious add magic to crazy and the kids will be bouncing off the walls. Perfect for bedtime as I found out last week....

Prince/Princess - Boring, but always popular.

Animals - Especially if they can talk and do some kind of magic. Though wouldn't you think some kind of magic was already involved if a squirrel could talk.

Food/School/Cleaning up - These are not good stories to tell even if you're trying to get a point across or teach a lesson. You'll waste your time telling it and end up having to tell another story or spend extra time trying to convince them to go to bed.

One other thing that we've recently started to do at bedtime which I think is a pretty good idea is playing a little game with letters. We start with "A" and ask the children to come up with words that start with "A" based on clues. For example: What's red or green, grows in a tree and also is a juice? Apple. I know you don't need the answer, but I felt compelled to answer anyway. We do this for as many "A" words as we and the kids can think of. The next day is "B" and so on. It is a nice way to challenge the children and settle them down before sleep.

Hope these help.

Dinner Time

There is definitely a circus like atmosphere around dinner time at my house. I'm sure some, or even most of you have issues getting your children to eat certain foods, but at my house we are literally down to four types of foods....chicken shapes of some kind (dinosaurs and teddy bear shapes are popular right now), pasta (most often just plain), yogurts and pizza (this could be a slice or pizza bagel, though only my daughter is eating the bagel version right now. That's it!!! You would think with those few choices it would be a breeze to feed my 3 kids, but every single dinner time is a train wreck. First, as you can imagine the three of them don't ever feel like eating the same thing. Either two of them want something, while the third wants something different. I don't mention the kids names as the culprits are different each night. It could be two of them eating yogurts, while the other is eating pasta or it could be all 3 eating something different. Even after the meals are figured out, there are issues with who is sitting next to each other, what bottle of water belongs to whom and my personal favorite, which fork or spoon is who's as we have boy and girl cutlery.

Another issue is that the kids must talk to each other during dinner. I don't even listen anymore as I just want them to eat and go to bed. Who knows what a 6, 4 and 20 month old could possibly be talking about, but this united nations of children, all speaking some form or English, just yaps incessantly throughout dinner. I'm sure as a spectator it's incredibly cute, but as the dad it just sucks away a part of your life that you're never getting back.