Hoarding stickers for the right occasion works for me.

Have you ever noticed that your children get stickers everywhere you go? At the grocery store, the doctor’s office, at preschool, on advertisements in the mail? Some from Grandma at Halloween or Valentines Day?

Get a sticker box. Occasionally, my son wants to wear a sticker he has been given immediately. Often, though, the sticker is forgotten and left in the car or on the counter in the kitchen. I hoard all such stickers. I keep them in a little plastic see-through box. Occasionally, I buy stickers I like and add them to the box, but the majority of the stickers are from elsewhere! I keep the little box out of sight, waiting for the right moment.

When the right moment comes, I break out the scratch paper (or nicer paper if they are making a card or art that they want to give someone) and hand over the box. I used to worry that Duncan or Amelia would exhaust the collection in a single afternoon! Not so. Take courage Mommy and hand over those stickers! Three reasons:

1) The size and variety of the collection make looking half the fun

2) Short attention spans

3) Peeling and sticking takes dexterity and concentration. This is hard work!

When is the right moment?:

plane trips

sick days

when one child is doing something fun and the other gets left behind

when dexterity challenged children want to make art.

Stickers are great for the plane. I bought a cheap little photo album for $1. My toddler stayed busy selecting stickers, sticking the stickers on scratch paper, and then flipping through the album. He loved it and it kept him in his seat, happy and safe.

My daughter Amelia has very poor fine motor control. She feels frustrated when she finds that she can’t do the artsy stuff other girls her age do. Drawing will never be her forte. But she can make a nice card with stickers–she is able to express her creativity and feel good about the result.

For more works-for-me tips, visit Shannon at:

http://www.rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/

I’m a mom and a cook. This means I deal with lots of messes. I don’t like to touch some of the things I need to touch (examples to follow). This is why the plastic grocery bag works for me. Both of my hands fit inside and can work in tandem to grasp whatever it is I’d rather not touch. It is then easy to reverse the bag and to use it to throw away the item(s) without touching it.

Examples: The best use for this idea is in the tub when your two year old has an accident and the result is, ahem, not going to go down the drain. But there are lots of less extreme situations, where hand protection and a built in garbage receptacle are really nice to have. Raw chicken skins, piles of refuse you don’t trust your garbage disposal with, children’s food or paint covered messes, etc.

For more great works-for-me Wednesday ideas, be sure to visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer.

How do you get your baby to sleep so that you can sleep? Two things that have worked for us are swaddling and white noise.

Swaddling: In the hospital, babies are tightly swaddled so that they won’t startle themselves into a screaming fit (suddenly thrusting out all four limbs in an involuntary jumping jack is not often compatible with sleep). Swaddling is often left behind at the hospital doors. But babies sleep better when they’re swaddled, and this isn’t true of just newborns!

One problem is that most baby blankets are much too small to swaddle anything but a newborn with. Get a bigger blanket! Make it, buy it, or beg someone else to make it for you. Dh and Dr. Harvey Karp swear by square blankets, but I have mastered swaddling with a fat rectangle. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but you must figure out your own way of swaddling so that your baby won’t get loose (use his weight to pin the blanket underneath him) and practice, practice, practice. [If you haven't been to the hospital yet, be sure to ask one of the nurses for a demonstration while you're there. They are swaddling pros.] Be consistent and (hopefully!) your baby will soon associate being swaddled with going to sleep.

During the summer, dress the baby in something very light–just a onesie perhaps–and choose a very light blanket as well, as swaddling tightly will often involve wrapping him or her in two layers of blanket. Overheating a baby is one factor in SIDS, so you want to be vigilant about avoiding that. Cotton sheet type material works well. a) it is lightweight and b) it stays wrapped around the baby better than most alternatives. Those fuzzy microfiber fleece type blankets do NOT work well. Your baby will easily kick him or herself free.

White noise: Your baby will sleep much better with white noise. Many people swear by vacuuming, driving in the car, radio static, turning on the fan, etc. The problem with these methods is that they can’t be employed consistently at every nap and bedtime and on every trip to Grandma’s house. You can buy a “sound spa” at Bed, Bath and Beyond or any similar store for about $20. Most models have several noises to choose from: waterfall, rain, heartbeat, etc. Kate falls asleep to rain every night and every naptime. Be consistent and your baby will (hopefully!) associate your chosen white noise with going to sleep.

Note of caution: I got these ideas from Dr. Harvey Karp’s book The Happiest Baby on the Block, a book which definitely worked for me. He has another recommendation, swinging, which also initially worked great for us. Unfortunately, we let our baby sleep in her swing at night. She slept great, but started showing signs of a fairly serious (three months of physical therapy!) neck problem. In fairness, the neck problem might have arisen from how she was positioned in the womb before birth, but her PT believes the swinging aggravated her problem. So, I would avoid overusing the swing.

See Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer for other great tips on Works-For-Me-Wednesday. http://www.rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/