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Archive for the ‘Carnival of Natural Parenting’ Category

September Carnival of Natural Parenting: Call for Submissions

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

After a brief summer break for August, the Carnival of Natural Parenting is back. We hope you’ll join us for the next carnival in September! (Check out January, February, March, April, and May, June, and July if you missed them.)

Your co-hosts are Lauren at Hobo Mama and Dionna at Code Name: Mama.

Here are the submission details for September 2010:

Turning wood into crayonsTheme: We’re all home schoolers: Children, of whatever age, are learning all the time. Describe some of the ways your children learn at home as a natural part of their day. No matter if your children attend (or plan to attend) traditional schools or not, please talk to us about how you incorporate home-schooling or unschooling ideals and practices into your children’s education.

Deadline: Tuesday, September 7. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: mail {at} HoboMama.com and CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com

Carnival date: Tuesday, September 14. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on September 14 and email us the link if you haven’t done so already. Once everyone’s posts are published on September 14 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants’ links, to generate lots of link love for your site! We’ll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Please submit your details into our web form: This will help us as we compile the links list. Please enter your information on the form embedded at the end of this post, or click here to enter it on a separate page: September Carnival of Natural Parenting participant form

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. As always, our carnival themes aren’t meant to be exclusionary. If your experience doesn’t perfectly mesh with the carnival theme, please lend your own perspective. Please also feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival structure. If you’re feeling so inspired, you could write a poem, a photo essay, a scholarly article, or a book review instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival’s intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don’t: Please don’t use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don’t submit irrelevant or argumentative pieces contrary to the principles of natural parenting. You don’t have to agree with all our ideals — and certainly you don’t have to live up to them all perfectly! — but your submission does have to fit the theme and values of the carnival.

Editors’ rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don’t be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don’t have a blog: Contact us (mail {at} HoboMama.com and CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write — why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit’s free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: mail {at} HoboMama.com and CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com

Links to tutorials: Lauren and Dionna have written several tutorials for our participants about how to schedule posts in advance, how to determine post URLs in advance, how to edit HTML — all for both Wordpress and Blogger users. For these tutorials and more, please see this handy summary post at LaurenWayne.com.

Stay in touch:

Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaShow off: If you are a (former or current) participant or supporter and want our delightful button to put in your sidebar, grab this code and proclaim to the blogosphere that you are a natural parent!

Photo courtesy vicki watkins on flickr (cc)

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Posted in Carnival of Natural Parenting | No Comments »

5 Tips to Help Kids Develop Healthy Eating Habits: July Carnival of Natural Parenting

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Welcome to the July Carnival of Natural Parenting: Let’s Talk About Food

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about their struggles and successes with healthy eating. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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2009-07-18 04

Kieran eating his first corn on the cob last year.

Tom and I did not grow up with the healthiest of eating habits. Whole, non-processed (much less organic) foods were just not on the radar as much as they are now. Now that we have Kieran, we are taking positive steps to eat healthier and help Kieran make good food choices. Here are a few tips (from one reformed junk food addict to another) on how to help your child get a better start than you had:

1) Babies Need Breastmilk, Then Supplement with Real Food: Almost every medical association in the world says that all infants should receive breastmilk exclusively for at least the first six months.1  That is the minimum standard, it is not the “ideal” or the “best.”

Once your baby is ready to supplement breastmilk with solids, skip the cereals. Cereals are nothing more than sugar and are full of empty calories. Babies don’t even have the enzymes necessary to digest cereal until they are eight or nine months old. It is a myth that adding cereal to your baby’s diet can help them sleep longer at night. They can even constipate your baby, doing more harm than good.2 Instead of cereal, give babies who are ready for solids food that is healthy for their bodies: mashed up bananas, avocados, sweet potatoes, etc. And there’s no need to feed your baby from a jar – just give her the real stuff!

2) Offer Healthy Snacks: Toddlers don’t often need big meals, their body chemistry works better when they can graze throughout the day, eating small portions to keep their blood sugar stable. Help them fuel their bodies with the right foods by offering an assortment of healthy snacks: fruit, veggies, healthy dips (hummus or yogurt based dips are popular), nuts and dried berries (when they are able to chew them), etc. Don’t get into a habit of making snack time synonymous with crackers and other carbs.

To encourage grazing, keep your toddler’s snacks within reaching distance. Many parents like to offer the snacks in a muffin tin or ice cube tray – the little ones like the novelty and it can turn into a fun sorting game.

3) Cook Balanced Meals: Forget the boxed stuff. It is just as easy to throw some chicken breasts in the oven, a veggie on the stove, and grab some rice from the freezer (that you made previously). Plus, you’re not putting the chemicals and preservatives into your little one’s body that are found in boxed stuff. If your little one eats all of his green beans and leaves the rice, don’t sweat it. Our little ones are generally more in tune with their bodies’ needs than we are. Trust them and relax. Research has shown that forcing children to finish food interferes with a child’s ability to tell when they are full and their development of self-control.

One of the most helpful things that I do is to cook extra portions and freeze them. Our deep freeze is full to overflowing with containers of soups, pre-made veggie burgers, and more that I can thaw if I don’t have time to cook.

4) Have Easy Pick-Me-Ups for Pre-Meal Snacking: One of the hardest times of the day is when I am fixing dinner, and Kieran wants to eat all of the meal prep items (or has a meltdown because something is in the oven and he has to wait). I recently read that one great way to offer more veggies is to serve them as a “first course,” or before the regular meal. This study showed that kids will eat more veggies that way, but it won’t necessarily interfere with their appetite for dinner.

5) If You Don’t Want Them to Eat It, Don’t Buy It: It always floors me when I hear a mother griping that her child eats too many sweets (or juice or whatever). Here’s the thing: your child doesn’t do the grocery shopping alone. She probably doesn’t spend any money on groceries either. Yes, I agree that it’s educational and helpful to let children help menu plan and shop, but it is up to parents to help them make healthy choices. Does your child have a sweet tooth? Steer him toward fruit. Does your preschooler like salty chips? Try a healthier option: pita chips and hummus or trail mix.

Use menu planning and shopping as a chance to talk about how our food choices fuel our bodies. Eat healthy foods and they will help you feel awake, active, and good. Eat junk foods and the opposite will happen.

Need more of a motivator? If you don’t introduce craptastic foods into your child’s food repertoire, you won’t have meltdowns about them when you pass them in the store. I can’t tell you how many little kids I have seen crying and whining over the candy bars in the checkout aisles.3 Kieran has asked me about them, but we’ve not had a meltdown yet because he’s never had a candy bar. He has no idea what is in those brightly colored wrappers. And I plan to keep it that way for awhile longer.

If you need more ideas to avoid mealtime battles, this article on “gentle parenting ideas for toddlers and meals” might help.

What easy tips do you have for giving your little one healthy eating habits?

http://www.mothering.com/breastfeeding/case-closed-breast-best

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Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

  • Why I Love The Real Food Community — Much like many people who follow AP/NP values, Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! takes the parts of the “real food” philosophy that work for her family and leaves the rest. (@bfmom)
  • Feeding a Family of Six — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children gives helpful tips for feeding a family of six.
  • Starting Solids at 6 Months — Did your doctor recommend that you give your baby cereal? Sheryl at Little Snowflakes discusses how whole foods are so much healthier (and more delicious) than traditional cereal. (@sheryljesin)
  • Am I What I Eat? — Andrea!!! at Ella-Bean & Co. has figured out a way to avoid grocery stores nearly altogether.
  • Are We Setting Our Kids Up To Fail? — Megan at Purple Dancing Dahlias found that cutting out the junk also transformed her sons’ behavior problems.
  • Changing your family’s way of eating — Lauren at Hobo Mama has techniques you can try to move your family gradually toward a healthier diet. (@Hobo_Mama)
  • Real Food — What kinds of fake foods do you eat? And why?! Lisa C. at My World Edenwild talks about why she chooses real food.
  • A Snackaholic’s Food Battle — Julie at Simple Life wants to stop snacking and get into the old ways of cooking from scratch and raising her own food. (@homemakerjulie)
  • Food, Not Fight — Summer at Finding Summer doesn’t want her kids to grow up like her husband: hating everything green. (@summerm)
  • How Do You Eat When You Are out of Town? — Cassie at There’s a Pickle In My Life wants some tips on how to eat healthy when you are out of town.
  • Carnival of Natural Parenting: Food! — Sybil at Musings of a Milk Maker hopes that by serving her children healthy, balanced meals, they will become accustomed to making good food choices. (@sybilryan)
  • There’s No Food Like Home’s — NavelgazingBajan at Navelgazing revels in the Bajan food of her upbringing. (@BlkWmnDoBF)
  • This Mom’s Food Journey — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment made a journey from not paying attention to food to growing her own.
  • Who Knew Eating Was So Hard? — The challenges involved in changing to healthier eating habits take on a whole new dimension when you have a child who has difficulties eating. kadiera at Our Little Acorn shares her own experiences. (@kadiera)
  • Loving Food — Starr at Earth Mama truly believes food is her family’s medicine and is willing to spend days preparing it the traditional way.
  • Food Mindfulness — Danielle at born.in.japan details how her family spends money on each category of food. (@borninjp)
  • Food for Little People — Zoey at Good Goog wants to bless her daughter with happy traditions built around good food. (@zoeyspeak)
  • Eat Like a Baby — Have you been told that you should not equate food with love? Kate Wicker at Momopoly shows us why that’s not necessarily true. (@Momopoly)
  • Food — Deb at Science@Home tries to teach her children three rules to help them eat a healthy diet. (@ScienceMum)
  • Healthy Eating Lactose-Free — MamanADroit gives us tips on how to eat healthy if you are lactose intolerant (or just don’t want cow milk). (@MamanADroit)

  1. Peggy O’Mara, Case Closed: Breast is Best
  2. Dr. Paul M. Fleiss, Busting Breastfeeding Myths; Cynthia Lair, In the Kitchen with Baby; Dr. Jack Newman, Breastfeeding and Other Foods
  3. I *hate* the way stores place junk food where kids have easy access to it!

Posted in Carnival of Natural Parenting, Food & Nutrition, Healthy Eating | 38 Comments »

July Carnival of Natural Parenting: Call for Submissions

Monday, June 28th, 2010

We continue to be delighted with the advice and stories our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you’ll join us for the next carnival in July! (Check out January, February, March, April, May, and June if you missed them.) Your co-hosts are Dionna at Code Name: Mama and Lauren at Hobo Mama.

July Carnival

Here are the submission details for July 2010:

Theme: Let’s Talk About Food: Do you try to eat locally? Organically? Do you have a whole foods diet? What are your struggles and successes?

Deadline: Tuesday, July 6. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com

Carnival date: Tuesday, July 13. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on July 13 and email us the link if you haven’t done so already. Once everyone’s posts are published on July 13 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants’ links, to generate lots of link love for your site! We’ll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Please submit your details into our web form: This will help us as we compile the links list. Please enter your information on the form embedded at the end of this post, or click here to enter it on a separate page: July Carnival of Natural Parenting participant form

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. As always, our carnival themes aren’t meant to be exclusionary. If your experience doesn’t perfectly mesh with the carnival theme, please lend your own perspective. Please also feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival structure. If you’re feeling so inspired, you could write a poem, a photo essay, a scholarly article, or a book review instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival’s intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don’t: Please don’t use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don’t submit irrelevant or argumentative pieces contrary to the principles of natural parenting. You don’t have to agree with all our ideals — and certainly you don’t have to live up to them all perfectly! — but your submission does have to fit the theme and values of the carnival.

Editors’ rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don’t be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don’t have a blog: Contact us (CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write — why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit’s free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and mail {at} HoboMama.com

Links to tutorials: Dionna (and her hubby!) and Lauren have written several tutorials for our participants about how to schedule posts in advance, how to determine post URLs in advance, how to edit HTML — all for both Wordpress and Blogger users. For these tutorials and more, please see this handy summary post at LaurenWayne.com.

Stay in touch:

Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama

Show off: If you are a (former or current) participant or supporter and want our delightful button to put in your sidebar, grab this code and proclaim to the blogosphere that you are a natural parent!

Photo credit: TerenceOB

Posted in Carnival of Natural Parenting | No Comments »

Carnival Giveaways and Other Food for Thought

Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Art by Erika Hastings at http://mudspice.wordpress.com/

Only days remain before submissions are due for the Carnival of Nursing in Public – are you going to show your support for breastfeeding mamas? We’re looking for all kinds of things – original posts (don’t post them yet! they’ll go up during carnival week), breastfeeding pictures, Tweets that give NIP encouragement/tips, and more. You can read all the details in our “Call for Submissions” post.

Need a little nudge to get you started writing? How about some fabulous giveaways?! We’ve got nursing pads from The Sustainable Stitchery (I own some, they’re awesome!), a beautiful onesie to show off your little one’s breastfeeding pride from Etsy shop innerwolfbatik, Sore Nipple Salve from Etsy shop Wild Root Botanicals, and an Ergo (which I also own, love, and have nursed in many times)!

For more information on how to win one of our fabulous giveaways, please visit Paige’s post at Baby Dust Diaries. She has also created several new badges that you can grab for your blog/website that tell the world you support breastfeeding mamas.

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I have a new post up at API Speaks. Here’s an excerpt:

[T]here is an age range in which it is “appropriate” to spank. According to the “experts” (and the spanking parents who discuss these things online), you should not spank babies younger than about 15-18 months, and you should not spank children past the age of 7 years.

If you know that the “solution” of spanking is only a short-term “fix,” why do it at all? If spanking is one of your parenting tools, you will eventually have to toss it out of your toolbox. What will you do after it is no longer appropriate to threaten your child physically?

What are your thoughts about starting a parenting practice that you can only use for a few years? Please visit API Speaks to comment, and feel free to share it with your friends – you never know what might spark a parent to give gentle discipline a try.

Posted in Carnival of Natural Parenting, Discipline | No Comments »

How To Create a Pirate Treasure Hunt & Other Easy Outdoor Pirate Activities (June Carnival of Natural Parenting)

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Welcome to the June Carnival of Natural Parenting: Outdoor fun

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared their stories and tips for playing outside with kids. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Avast, ye scurvy dogs! If your little ones love pirates, this is the special outdoor activity for you. It takes some preparation and work, but the payoff is well worth it.

Kieran has been into pirates. We’ve read all of the pirate books we can get our hands on at the library, he is the proud owner of a pirate jack-in-the-box, he likes to run around the house yelling “argh! matey,” and our raised garden square out back has been dubbed “the pirate ship.”

One of the recurring story lines in any pirate book is buried treasure, so I decided to make a little adventure for Kieran.

The first thing I did I had Tom do was draw a map. He used landmarks from our backyard and drew an easy path for Kieran to follow to the “X” that marked the spot of the treasure.

2010-05-31 03

Next, I came up with a letter from a pirate captain. I used this site to find some good pirate phrases. Tom “aged” all of the paper we used by dabbing it with a used coffee filter and crinkling it up.

2010-05-31 04

I buried some treasure in his sand table. I buried a few shiny rocks (they have shiny gold flecks – like real treasure!), old costume jewelry, and small toys. We got the (cheapo) pirate hat and spyglass from a party supply store, I had the pirate stickers and tattoos in a box saved for a rainy day. 1

2010-05-31 05

When the sandbox was in place with the treasure buried, I told Kieran that he had mail. He opened up the envelope and we read the letter together, then it was time to go find the treasure. I guided him through yard according to the map’s directions, and then he “opened” the sandbox with the key from the envelope. He dug up all of the treasure, and then he asked to do it again.

2010-05-31 01

Other Outdoor Pirate Activities

1. Turn a play structure into a pirate ship using only your imagination.

2. Swab the deck by mopping a patio with water.

3. Walk the plank by sliding down a slide. 2

4. Decorate and fly Jolly Roger flags.

5. Make and decorate spyglasses using cardboard tubes, construction paper, and tape. (Simply tape construction paper around the tube.)

6. Play a modified game of “Red Light Green Light”: Kids run around like crazy pirates when you say “Ahoy, Mateys!” Kids freeze when you say “Thar she blows!” (or pick your own pirate phrases to use)

And when you’re done with that, check out this fun Eric Herman song about pirates – fun for kids and adults!

Do your kids like pirate play? Please share some of the ways you like to play pirates at your house.

We Play
“Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up

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Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

  1. There is no reason to spend money on new toys for this activity. We’ve done it since then using only his old sandbox toys as the “treasure,” and he has just as much fun. Probably more fun, because there isn’t the added pressure of “oh’s and ah’s” for the new toys.
  2. Use your judgment on whether this is too morbid for your kids.

Posted in Activities for Toddlers, Carnival of Natural Parenting, Creative/Dramatic Play, Fun & Games | 25 Comments »