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Coming up with a good name for a baby is surprisingly difficult. Deciding on a name that not only both you and your partner agree on, but that also doesn’t make your child the laughing stock of the school yard is a lot harder than you would think. This struggle to find just the right name results in a group of kids that all have the same name in every class. In my generation there were a lot of Jennifers and Michaels in my class.
Babycenter is out with their list of the top names of 2006. Here are the top ten names for girls and boys.
Girls:
- Emma
- Madison
- Ava
- Emily
- Isabella
- Kaitlyn
- Sophia
- Olivia
- Abigail
- Hailey
Boys:
- Aiden
- Jacob
- Ethan
- Ryan
- Matthew
- Jack
- Noah
- Nicholas
- Joshua
- Logan
Babycenter uses information gathered from their more than 370,000 members to develop their list. It is always interesting to see what names remain popular and what names fall by the way side. I wonder what names will be on top next year?
Having a sick child is never fun. When your child is sick enough to stay home, usually meaning you have to stay home with them, the day can seem pretty long. What can you do to make the day a little more fun and bearable for both you and your child?
- Give the right medicine: be aware of what medicines your child tolerates and what seems to work for what symptoms. Talk to your pediatrician for suggestions of what medicines to keep on hand for the cold and flu season, what medicines are long lasting, and what ones seems to have the best flavor.
- Bend the rules: when your child is at home, sick in bed, it wouldn’t hurt to bend the rules a little. It can mean things like letting them lay on the couch and watch a little television, or give them a little ginger ale, or a comfort snack.
- Make the bed more welcoming: try adding some extra blankets and pillows to make their bed more cozy and comfy. Kids love to have their stuff toys piled all around them, you can tell them the animals will watch over them.
When your kid is feeling a little better, but is still not ready to return to school the days can seem pretty long for them, and you. Here are a few suggestions for low-key fun.
- Create some solo games: give them a flashlight and a dark room and encourage them to create a shadow puppet show, ask them to put the show on for you in a little while. Give them the junk mail to go through, we may hate it but it can be fun for a kid.
- Have fun with them: spend time reading together, making crafts, or playing board games. Your kid will love spending the quality time with you, and it will help make the day more special for both of you.
- Fresh Air: when they are feeling up to it encourage them to go outside for a little bit. Take them to the park to play on the swings, go for a walk, or just sit outside and read. Fresh air is always a good way to make you feel better.
Luckily sick days are usually few and far between. Whatever you can do to make you little one feel better and make the day a little better for them will certainly help make things easier for you.
What do you find works well for you when your child is home sick? Have you learned any tricks that seem to make them feel better and make the day a little more fun for them?
I recently participated in a couple of great blog carnivals, as well a group writing project.
The group writing project was hosted by Problogger. The challenge was to write an article that was either a review or a preview. I submitted my article The Year of the Baby. There were almost 300 submissions. You can see the full list of submissions here.
I also participated in an education carnival and a health carnival this week. There are some very informative and interesting articles included in these carnivals. I encourage you to check them out.
In this fast pace world in which we live sitting down to a nice family dinner every night seems to be a thing of the past for a lot of people. With long hours at work, meetings and practices after school, shopping to do, and all the other endless tasks we face every day it is hard to find the time. There are many benefits to sitting down together every night as a family to eat dinner though, and each family should try to find the time to do it at least a few nights a week.
Here are just a few of the benefits of eating together as a family:
- It allows time for everyone to communicate. With everyone having their own busy schedule, especially as your children get older, you don’t always have a lot of time to sit and talk. By having a scheduled time every evening to sit down together and eat, this allows you time to talk about your day, and what is going on in your lives.
- Family meal time is an excellent time to monitor and mold your children’s table manners. You can lead by example and use dinner time to teach them new manners.
- Meal time is also an excellent time to encourage your children to try new things. Add something new to the meal that they haven’t tried before and encourage them to try it at least it.
- A benefit for everyone in the family is that meals prepared at home are much healthier than meals on the run. You have more control over what your children, not to mention you and your spouse, are eating if you prepare the dinner meal everyday. Plus it saves money (you can’t beat that!!)
- You can involve your children in the preparation of the meal and the clean up. This will teach them to become self-sufficient. By involving your child in the preparation and clean up you also have additional time to communicate with them.
- Children who eat 5 or more meals at home with the family each week are less likely to become involved in destructive behavior as a teenager, are more likely to have better grades, and communicate more with their parents.
So next time you sit down to eat together as a family just think of all the wonderful ways you are helping your children grow and develop, it will make the preparation of the meal and the clean up afterwards all worth it.
The holidays are a wonderful time of year, my favorite time of year actually. The holidays are meant to be shared with family, and there in lies the challenge. How to fairly juggle sharing the holidays with both sides of the family and not loose your sanity in the process?
My husband and I don’t have kids (yet!), and it is still a challenge for us, I am a little afraid of how bad it will get when we add kids to the mix. The challenge is made a little more difficult by the fact that we live about 800 miles away from our families and only get to see them a couple of times a year. We seem to have worked out a pretty good program by which we spend the first few days with my family and then the last few days with his family. Our arrangement seems to work out pretty well.
The challenge of juggling time fairly between the families becomes all the more challenging when the two sides of the family live far apart from each other. When you don’t have much time off from work over the holidays and the families live far apart what can you do. It isn’t feasible, especially if you have little ones in tow, to jet set to one place only to turn around and hop on a plane to hit the other, all in just a few days.
A lot families face this challenge every year, each family has their own unique approach that works just right for them. Some will split the holidays up, say Thanksgiving with one side of the family and Christmas with the other. Others will just simply say “we are not traveling anywhere, the families have to come to us.” Still others will try to alternate years, this year with one side of the family, next year with the other. Whatever works out best for all involved.
Throw kids into the mix and what seemed like a challenge when you were just a young married couple suddenly becomes even more challenging. Hopefully the way my husband and currently split up our time continues to work when we have children!! Although I am kind of liking the idea of making them come to us 
How do you approach this holiday challenge? What do you find works, and what doesn’t?