After several tests and theme changes offline I finally had the courage to change the theme. Over the next days I’m going to “tune” the appearance, sidebars, etc. so if you arrive here and see no sidebars or an error, please come back later. I’ll be playing with html and css code in the next few days and…I know Zero about coding. My biggest problem right now is to find a away to show paragraphs in the main page without using the
tags all the time (individual posts are just fine).

Be patience please.

It’s time for another kid’s friendly recipe.

This time I bring here a recipe with an ingredient that not everyone likes, spinach. But I’m sure that your kids are going to love this meal and they will forget that it has spinach in it. It takes around 15 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes to bake.

Three Cheese Baked Ziti with Spinach

Ingredients:

• 1 package (16 ounces) uncooked medium tube-shaped pasta (ziti)
• 1 bag (6 ounces) baby spinach, washed (about 4 cups)
• 1 jar (1 pound 9 ounces) Prego® Marinara Italian Sauce
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup)
• 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions:

* Prepare the pasta according to the package directions. Add the spinach during the last minute of the cooking time. Drain the pasta and spinach well in a colander. Return them to the saucepot.
* Stir the sauce, ricotta, 1/2 cup of the mozzarella cheese, 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese, garlic powder and black pepper into the pasta mixture. Spoon the pasta mixture into a 13 x 9 x 2-inch shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.
* Bake at 350°F. for 30 minutes or it’s until hot and bubbling.

Enjoy!

Source: Campbell’s kitchen

Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

Now that our lice invasion is over we are being attacked by another invasion: debt. Due to my medical leave my boss refused to pay me the December salary and also the extra month salary we have in December. My online income saved me last month but the credit card is getting to the limit and our payday loan is in the same situation.

My kids where used to have everything, too much in fact, to choose to eat at home and this in January they noticed that some things were missing in the groceries closet.

We don’t waste food, we just buy what we really need to eat and we are learning a lesson: we sometimes waste money in things that we don’t really need. If we don’t have them we still eat and don’t starve, it’s just a matter of organizing the grocery list and stick to the basic.

Once I am on a medical leave I can’t get out at some hours of the day so although at home I can’t pick up my daughter at school. I reduced a full time daycare to only school home transportation meaning a smaller bill to pay to daycare.

Right now I don’t have nothing else to reduce. Well I have cable TV and Internet in the same package…but I need the Internet. I’m going to phone them and see if they can reduce to a lower package.

Yesterday we realized that my husbands salary bonus from last year was removed so less income, I would like to try to work from home but work just don’t fall from the sky so right now I’m just waiting to see how my job situation is going to end and then let’s start a new life.

I was talking to a mom the other day who sighed dispiritedly and asked, “Why is it my three year old has to protest every direction I give her?” It’s a good question and the answer has to do partly with development and partly with temperament.

First, developmentally, young children are faced with lots of tasks and transitions without being in control of very much. For example, when they get up in the morning, they might cuddle with a parent a little, visit the bathroom, play with a toy, perhaps watch a morning cartoon, somewhere in there is breakfast and getting dressed. These daily events can feel rather arbitrary when they are dictated by the adult in charge. If you are a preschooler absorbed in playing with your dinosaurs and a grownup suddenly expects you to drop everything and run to the table for breakfast, you will probably object.

Second, you have to consider the child’s temperament. If your child is slow-to-adapt (resists and adjusts very slowly to changes), then sudden changes will feel scary or uncomfortable and your child will protest. If your child is intense, then his response to such changes (things as small as being asked to use a red cup instead of his regular blue cup at lunch) will be strong.

Tool—A very useful way to avoid the emotional upset these children experience (and then inflict on others) is to rely on routines. When a child knows the sequence of a daily routine, he or she will cope better with the regular transitions and occasional changes.

“A very regular routine is the friend of a slow-adapting child,” says pediatric nurse Helen Neville, author of Temperament Tools: Working With Your Child’s Inborn Traits. A predictable daily routine will go a long ways toward helping a child feel safe and grounded. If a child knows what to expect, doing a task at a certain time will feel familiar and more like a habit than a request from a parent. A habit is much less likely to be challenged than a request.

Very active, intense temperaments, such as the Active-Alert personality type described in psychologist Linda Budd’s book Living With the Active Alert Child: Groundbreaking Strategies for Parents, also benefit greatly from absolutely clear and consistent routines. “Build them around daily habits such as bedtime, tooth brushing, dressing, and mealtimes,” advises Budd. “Try not to skip a routine, because every time you do, your active alert child will notice it and challenge you when you seek to reinstate it. When you change the order of your child’s life, he will try to negotiate it the next time around. Your child will say, in effect, ‘Brush my teeth? I didn’t have to do it yesterday after breakfast, why do I have to do it today?’”

Without established routines, your child may believe she is doing a task or a favor for you. When that happens, there is a strong likelihood she will question the need to do it at all. But if brushing her teeth is a consistent part of her daily routine, she can begin to understand that it is for preventing cavities, not just to please you. Sticking to the routine of daily brushing communicates to your child that she is doing the task for herself. This message will help prevent power struggles.

You’ll find more practical tips you can use right now in Temperament Tools: Working With Your Child’s Inborn Traits by Helen F. Neville, B.S., R.N. and Diane Clark Johnson, CFLE, and Living With the Active Alert Child: Groundbreaking Strategies for Parents by Linda Budd, Ph.D.

Source: Parenting Press

photo credit: Blip

Lately I have been dealing with some ugly, disgusting and inconvenient bugs. I remember that when I was a small child my mother talked about them and even checked if I had them on me. What I am talking about are Lice.

My son never had them although I knew that from time to time some classroom mates had them, no for the second time in one month we are have an invasion of Lice brought by my daughter from school.

It has been awful. Itching is the worse part of it for the kids. For me just the idea of having Lice crawling, sucking my blood from my scalp gives me the creeps.

Lice are described as:

• human disease agents
• Most lice are scavengers, feeding on skin and other debris found on the host’s body, but some species feed on sebaceous secretions and blood.
• if feeding on blood, they may become considerably darker
• Many lice attach their eggs to their host’s hair with specialized saliva

Yeck!!! this is disgusting.

Well, as soon as one child appeared with lice in the classroom the school sent us a message to check on our kids heads. The problem is that we are often together (daughter, son, myself) hugging, playing so we also got those awful creatures.

Every time they show up we have to kill them with a special shampoo, change bedding everyday, change pyjamas every day (underwear we already change everyday ok!!), wash the combs with boiling water, etc. The washing machine works no-stop so you can imagine the electricity bill.

This week we started using a special Lice Spray that should keep the Lice away from our hair, let’s see if it works.

I know some people don’t talk about this problem because they think they will be discriminated because although it’s not true most people think that Lice appear due to lake of personal hygiene. Lice prefer cleaner and softer hair to put their eggs and grow up. Yeck!!.

I’m about to lose my full time job and I really don’t now what I want to do next. After almost 16 years working in the same office I feel I’m stuck in my carrier. The company never offered improvement courses, never did brainstorming reunions, I feel like I’m stuck in time. Probably it’s my fault because I let that happen and never got out of there to search for a better job.

I am full time at home now and everyday my head struggles with the next step I will take. I would love to work from home but I don’t know if that will be possible.

Having Portuguese tongue language and fluency in English I already sign up for two sites that offer translation assignments. I keep looking for job databases, checked the Entertainment workers job search to see some jobs related to writing and I’ll keep looking in the next weeks.

Do you have a successful blog that you want to translated into Portuguese to have more readership? I know google translator does that but it’s not 100% accurate there are always corrections to make. If you need or know someone needing translations from/to Portuguese/English/Portuguese feel free to contact me.

Who doesn’t love Peanut Butter? Well I got a recipe from this video. It’s so easy to make and your kids will love it. Check it out:

My father in law came home last Friday from a 3 week stay in a local Hospital.  He is one of those that think that doctors will kill him, surgeons will open his belly and cut what it’s not to cut (Gregory House M.D. style), well he is a difficult men.

The fear of doctors made him arrive at the hospital in serious conditions:

• severe Pneumonia
• high level of diabetes
• two stomach ulcers
• anemia
• cardiac arrhythmias
• high cholesterol values
• kidney infection

the doctors told him that he could have died if he didn’t arrive at the hospital that day.

He is now at home following a specific diet for his case, he is getting shots of insulin, he is doing a cholesterol treatment, antibiotics and he has to return next month to remove one stomach ulcer (the other was removed during the time he was in hospital).

He gave up smoking the moment he entered the hospital, he is forbidden of smoking or his lungs can fail, and he has to eat exactly what doctors tell him otherwise he can get worse again.

A annual check up wouldn’t do him any harm…but…he thinks he knows everything.

My daughter will be six in March and still sucks her thumb. Sucking her thumb really calms her down and it’s really a comfort for her to be able to do so. She was a baby that never wanted a pacifier and she only started thumb sucking at the age of 2,5 years. I remember quite well that it was summer and she started being interested in the babies that were in the day care nursery. Some of them slept sucking their thumb and out of nowhere she started doing it also.

I know that I shouldn’t concern myself unless it continues after the age their permanent teeth begin to appear, around six years old. Experts say that the act of sucking implies some strength that can cause deformation of the teeth and in the future braces might be needed. My daughter sometimes just puts her thumb passively in her month and doesn’t do it aggressively, but I’m still concerned with the implication that might have in the future. For those who doesn’t know how your kid do it just closely monitor your kid and analyze her/his technique. If the child seems to be sucking vigorously, you may start thinking about curbing the habit earlier.

Punishing or nagging our child to stop won’t help, believe me, I’ve tried that several times. I thought about putting some stop nail bite on her thumb, I even tried that once, but is was too painful for her and me. She felt I was punishing her and I felt awful, especially since she indulges in the habit for comfort and security.

I’m going to follow some advice I found on the web and from some expert people I know. I’m going to try to find some alternatives to comfort her as a soft blanket or a teddy bear she loves. The key is to offer an alternative.

I’ve already spoken with a dentist and for now everything looks just fine with her teeth so he told me not to worry too much and that with time she will give up the habit.

What about you? Do you have any advice for me?

This past few days I wrote a bunch of posts about diet pills, weight loss, diet supplement reviews, and similar subjects. Although this is a diary, a parenting blog, mom blog, I also believe that some of my readers can take advantage of those links because a lot of mom blogger are trying to lose weight.

This won’t be a regular subject on my blog, but it doesn’t mean that from time to time, if I get a link to a good and informative site regarding weight loss that I won’t post it here. We have to keep an open mind and getting off topic sometimes it’s good for the new readers that drop by.

Next week I expect this blog to have a new look, regular subjects and much more. Keep stopping by.