Coast 2 Coast Mom

Cooking with My Kiddo

This post is inspired by the Silicon Valley Moms Blog monthly book club choice for March, Top 100 Finger Foods and Top 100 Baby Purees by Annabel Karmel. I received a copy of both books as a part of the book club.

I remember when the idea of cooking with Li'l Boo first came to me. I read in several parenting books when he was a baby that kids are more apt to try foods when they help prepare them. I made a mental note for when I deemed him old enough to assist me, and moved on. Then while living in Naperville, I saw a neighboring family of four kids from about ages 2-8 prepare dinner and a lightbulb went off.

There they were, standing around the counter in the kitchen on various step stools and chairs, each working on different stages of dinner prep. The oldest was chopping a carrot, two were ripping lettuce, another stirring something in a bowl near her mom at the sink. Aha! So THAT'S how she does it! That's how she doesn't lose her mind everyday during the late afternoon/early evening witching hour.  She's not breaking up wrestling matches and blowing up over crayon drawings on the walls upstairs or ushering wailing children indoors to check out a boo boo. She gives' em jobs and keeps 'em busy. These kids were focused and taking pride in what they're doing. . . and relatively happy and quiet. I vowed to copy her from that day forward.

GIVEAWAY: H&R Block At Home Deluxe Software

In case you're postponing doing your taxes, you may be interested in checking out tax software solutions that may take the hassle out of organizing and submitting them. I recently reviewed TurboTax and H&R Block At Home (formerly called TaxCut) for a Techlicious piece on how new tax software can help you to get your maximum refund  "Get Your Slice of the Stimulus Pie With Software from H&R Block and TurboTax."

Don't feel badly about how long it usually takes you to complete your taxes - according to H&R Block, people doing their own taxes at home spend an average of one to three hours on it, and according to TurboTax, people tend to break that time up into two or more sessions.

Recovering from the Storm

Last Saturday night began innocently enough, putting Li'l Boo to bed and popping in a Netflix DVD as my hubby and I discussed the howling winds outside and I enlisted him to help me grab some hooded sweatshirts and candles together in case our power went out. I was concerned, watching the gigantic 150 year-old trees that line our street sway violently in the wind, and as they are nearly twice the height of the houses on our street, it was highly probable that if windy enough, they'd fall on a house. He begrudgingly obliged me and took the two minutes for us to pull a few emergency things together.

Literally Learning To Read in Celebration of Dr. Seuss's Birthday

This post is inspired by the Yahoo! Mother Board's monthly community topic, discussing how we celebrate reading in our families.

Two years ago we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday at Marche in Chicago for their annual "Seussville" celebration. It was a family-friendly (yet gourmet) meal and we were amused by the menu items all inspired by his books, or taken from the Dr. Seuss cookbook. The Cat in the Hat was there, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 visited tables and worked the room too while the kids each received goodie bags of Dr. Seuss trinkets and coloring and activity pages. We ate it up, and it's one of my last memories of us living in Chicago. I'm not sure if Marche is still hosting this annual dinner, but we had a wonderful experience celebrating reading and eating as a family at a nice French restaurant.

I've searched for restaurants in NYC that celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday, but haven't come across any. (Fingers crossed that a local NYC restaurant sees this and makes plans to celebrate it next year - Marche was packed and you needed reservations to get in when we attended.)

This 'Workweek Widow' Understands the Possibility of Everything

This post is inspired by the SVMoms book club choice for this month, The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman. The book details one mom's parenting, marriage and faith as she seeks a cure to her daughter's disruptive imaginary friend, culminating in a wonderous trip to Belize to see a shaman.

From the very beginning of this book I connected with the author, and not only as a mother who would do anything for her child, but as what another friend of mine refers to as a "workweek widow." Moms who parent alone during the week while their husbands travel for work or work long enough hours that they're out of the house before the kids awake and return after the kids are in bed. My hubby and I joke that he should start a weekend dad blog for other dads in the same boat, but that it'd probably sound like he was divorced. Pages 81-83 of The Possibility of Everything were nearly word-for-word stripped from the stressful times in my life. In particular, two excerpted lines shot an arrow directly to my heart because I've had the same conversation and the exact same thoughts:

on page 81-

"'Can you come?'

There's a slight pause at the other end of the line, just long enough for me to regret having asked.

'I'll try,' he says."

and then on page 82

"In a few hours, after I calm down, I'll have the good sense to wonder why it is that when Uzi says, "I'll try," he means he'll try but I hear him saying, "I won't."

Super Science Saturday & Lizards and Snakes Galore

Saturday brings two great science activity choices for us: what to do. . .what to do...

Tomorrow, Ridgewood High School in North Jersey celebrates the 22nd year of celebrating scientific endeavors with Super Science Saturday. We attended last year and enjoyed our morning checking out the experiments, environmental discoveries and cool examples of scientific technology. The kiddo liked seeing the device the fire department uses to see heat sources in the dark, and looking through a telescope to see planets and corona of the sun. He also liked watching the flour, cornstarch and water mixtures "dancing" on the big speakers as music played (you may also have seen this experiement on The Big Bang Theory). Most of the crowd stuck around to see the model rockets launch on the football field afterward, and the kids all run around the field to catch (or fetch) the model rockets when they come back down to earth. It was FREE to attend, although I vaguely remember some booths accepting donations or having info available if you wanted to send in donations to their programs.

Feed Your Spring Fever With 2 Baseball Video Games

We've come down with fevers this week. Spring fever. Baseball fever.

With the sun shining these past two days and gimpses of blue sky, we're finding reasons to get outside - walking to school or the train yesterday. Egging our fevers on is the b-roll shown during the sports segments of the local news featuring the Yankee and Mets spring training camps down south. Sunshine? Baseball? We're wishing spring would get here already!

Which brings me to today's launch of Major League Baseball 2K10 (and a giveaway: scroll below).

Learning Values That Define A Lifetime From the Olympics

Watching the 2010 Winter Olympic closing ceremonies last night amid all of the pomp and circumstance, it seemed to me that the crowd and the athletes were walking a little lighter and smiling a bit wider. It was as though the entire stadium took a collective deep breath and began to relax, celebrate being there, and truly soak up the history, spirit and honor that is the Olympic games.

As we watched in awe of the young men and women athletes making their marks on the world stages of their sports, I couldn't help but notice how many teachable moments occured while watching the Olympics and I wondered what the future holds for Li'l Boo. Where will his athletic interests and strengths lie? Will he take to hockey? Or skiing?