Tag Archives: Toddler

We LOVE Non-Crafty Valentine Cards

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Written by: Krissy Nelson

So last week for Valentine’s Day my daughter and I created some one-of-a-kind “Non-Crafty” Valentine’s Cards. This time we amped up our original “Non-Crafty Craft ” of cutting squares from different colored note cards and this time we cut HEARTS! We commissioned the aid of other basic office supplies to create some very interesting (to say the least) custom Valentine cards (that I still have yet to mail…).

Now before you start throwing out accusations that I might actually be veering into full on craftiness… don’t worry… cutting hearts is actually EASIER and dare I say it MORE non-crafty than cutting squares! No ruler required! Simply fold the paper and cut a half heart shape along the folded edge and viola – you have a heart! Or multiple hearts depending on how many folds you made… and that’s it!

If you want to duplicate my non-crafty idea here’s what you’ll need: (but note, I recommend using what you have on hand…)

  1. Colored note cards
  2. Scissors
  3. Plain white card stock
  4. Non-Toxic glue stick
  5. Markers, crayons, etc.
  6. And a license for F.U.N! (OK… that was cheesy I know!)

After cutting out the hearts, spread some glue on the back and hand them over to your little one to do all the creative placement on the card. By using a non-toxic glue stick you don’t have to worry if it gets all over their hands or if they accidentally touch their face. The goal is giving them freedom to use their own creative liberties.

So now it’s time to queue the music and insert the intricate “how to” photo spread: (ok, there’s no music… I got a tad carried away…)

We Love Non-Crafty Valentine Cards

We Love Non-Crafty Valentine Cards NAM pic 2

A prettier (yet less personalized) selection:Non Crafty Valentine Card Nam pic 3

So the moral of all of this non-crafty fun remains – you don’t have to be a crafter to make some fun non-crafty crafts with your kiddos! Just use whatever you have laying around your house (literally) and let your kids imaginations soar. They will enjoy the special bonding time with mama and are none the wiser to your crafting limitations… as long as you are having fun!

Hmmm… what Non-Crafty crafts can we come up with next…??

What are some of your favorite Non-Crafty crafts?

Blessings,

Krissy signature

To read MORE from Not aLone Mom click HERE.

Will I Survive the Toddler Years?

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I’ve always considered myself to be a very patient person; even after I had children. I remained patient as my newborn cried through the night and I was up and down trying to figure out what she needed. I remained patient through the exploratory 12-18 month age when she was just learning the concept of “no” requiring me to be up and down A LOT in order to physically pull her away from the “no no” item(s): “Not for JJ”. Having made it through these stages with minimal collateral damage; other than a few extra wrinkles and a new found tolerance for sleep deprivation; I was confident the closer and closer my daughter got to the infamously labeled “terrible twos” that I was going to soar on through with no problem. Remaining calm, patient and loving…

But as any mom who has survived the toddler years knows, when children enter the curious “terrible two’s” they have a very special (I say clinching my teeth) and unique way of testing your patience.

Will I Survive The Toddler Years NAM picThey are relentless!

“Mommy… mommy… mommy… mommy….MOOOOOOMMMY!!!!”

“I want… I want… I want… I WAAAANT!!!!”

“No… no… no… no… no… NOOOOO!!!”

They never say anything just once… it’s always repeatedly…repeatedly…repeatedly… (It’s possible my toddler is rubbing off on me…)

Whoever said “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” must have been a mother! And was referring to the infamous toddler years!!

It’s hard to gain perspective when you are living in the belly of the beast! And that is currently where I am living – right in the thick of it with toddler #1 who is about to turn three and wants to do everything “my-self!” and toddler #2 who is in the lovely 12-18 month range opening drawers and climbing on everything. Between the two I don’t know how I am able to keep any form of sanity. They feed off of each other and I swear each morning they make some sort of secret pact, “Let’s see how we can drive mommy crazy today!”

Yes, surviving the toddler years can be challenging at times (a lot of the time), but when I take a step back and force myself to look at the world through their eyes I gain some much needed perspective. Sure, the frequent, relentless reminders and requests can be exhausting and pull at my very last nerve, but I when I look at the world through their eyes I can see what a special (no teeth clinching) time they are at in their lives. A time when everything is new and exciting, “shiny and new”! A time when anything is possible! Though I am constantly intervening to prevent nose dives in the carpet and finger pinches in drawers and doors… my children just living life! Living free of limitations! Living without a care in the world! What an amazing place to be! I think any one of us do whatever we could to live in this place even for a day!

It’s up to us as parents to help them navigate through this adventurous time in life safely. Providing boundaries. Preparing them for the “real world”. Giving them the security they need to know you are there to catch them when they are falling and mend their wounds if they hit the ground.

Yes, loving a toddler means pulling your hair out and testing your patience to the limit… but more than that, loving a toddler means you are helping develop confidence in a precious little human atop a foundation of love they can fall back on for the rest of their life; and a structure of security they can always lean on knowing that even through the tantrums and the relentless demands you will always love them… always…no matter what…

Dear Jesus, thank you for my precious, curious, relentless toddlers! Thank you for the opportunity I have as their mother to help guide them through life. Everything is bigger and brighter to them now making each and every component all the more enticing to explore. Be with me Lord, as I create boundaries for them. Increase my patience threshold and flood my heart with love… your love. This way I know when life gets intense and a bit overwhelming I will have the ability to take a step back and see the world through their eyes… through precious innocence. Replace my frustrations with compassion. Empower me to rise above the situation at hand and see the bigger picture. Allow grace to flood my heart as I navigate through this time in my children’s lives. In Jesus Mighty Name, amen.

What are some of your “go to” tips to surviving the toddler years?

Blessings,

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To read MORE from Not aLone Mom click HERE.

We LOVE Crafts – OK, Not Really…We Love Non-Crafty Crafts!

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So my daughter and I started something new. We created the first, of I’m sure many more to come, “Non Crafty” craft project. It seems everywhere I look there are these fabulous mothers out there implementing fun craft projects with their families… From decoupaging shoe boxes to re-purposing spaghetti sauce jars – it’s amazing. I am literally in awe of these moms, rather “super-moms” as I would consider them to be, that they have the patience and desire to create such works of art.

But I on the other hand do not. I lack the desire and the patience… I am a “non-crafter”!

Yet to my wonder and amazement, the other day I somehow found myself in the midst of what I would consider to be a craft project with my daughter… a non-crafty project that is.

What did we do? Well… we cut out squares from different colored note cards! (insert laughs and eye rolls here)

While I’m so not a crafter, I am a bit of a perfectionist… so we made sure to cut each square to exactly 1in x 1in. She LOVED it! She picked the colors, watched me measure the squares and helped push my hands around the scissors to cut.

I felt so creative and super-mom like!

Just as shocking as the project was in and of itself was the outcome – a wonderful bonding moment with my daughter followed by the loads of fun she had with these silly 1” squares… she was entertained for the better part of an hour. To this day speaks of her “cards” with such pride; returning to them often to dump them on the table, sort the different colors, and put them in various vessels laying around the house including her brother’s trucks and her daddy’s shoes.

I suppose as with any good craft post, or non-crafty craft post in this case, I should conclude with a thoughtful step by step “How To” photo montage…(it’s OK, you can laugh…)

Non Crafty Craft Collage 1edit

Non Crafty Craft Collage

The bottom line is – we had fun! So even if you are not crafty like me you can still have fun non-crafty craft time with your children. No “thinking out side the box” required (or decoupaging the box)… just sit down with what ever you have laying around the house (literally) and begin creating your own non-crafty project, smile, laugh, and call it “art”. Your children will have a blast because they are spending time with you… and that’s all that matters anyway.

Are you a crafter or a non-crafter like me? What fun, non-crafty crafts do you like?

Blessings,

Krissy signature

To read MORE from Not aLone Mom click HERE.

God Loves Me

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Written by: Brenda L. Yoder, M.A.

“I am not to fear the future of each day, of Andrew & Kent’s sleep. God loves me.”

I found these words written in the margin of my Bible recently while studying Romans. My Bible is filled with hand-written notes from a Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) study on Romans I attended years ago. Reading these personal notes, I’m transported in time to that winter thirteen years ago. It seems like yesterday.

God Loves Me NAM pic

I had a newborn at the time. My toddler, just two years old, got sick soon after the baby was home from the hospital. He was sick for several weeks. Sleep was routinely interrupted as I fed the newborn, consoled the toddler, wiped up puke, and changed a toddler’s diapers filled with diarrhea. My husband, a dairy farmer, was gone from 1:30am-4:00am every other morning milking cows, so he couldn’t help with the nighttime chaos. Lack of sleep, two older children to get on the school bus each morning, and a long, snowy, illness-clad winter left me feeling trapped. Trapped in exhaustion, depression, fear, and what seemed like-a-never-ending-unmanageable-life.

Romans 8:15 (NIV), “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear.”

I was a slave to fear. Fear that I couldn’t handle my new life with four children. Fear of the post-partum feelings I experienced making me feel strange inside my own skin. Fear that life would never be the same again. Fear of not sleeping night after night. In the margins of my Bible beside Romans 8:15, I wrote

“I am not to fear the future of each day, of Andrew & Kent’s sleep. God loves me.”

Somewhere during the bible-teaching message of this passage, God spoke personally to me. I had become a slave to fear. A flood of hope rushed over me as I realized God saw my fears and worries, and He spoke to me about them.

He loved me.

In another side margin, beside Romans 8:25,I found also wrote, “January,2000 Post-partum”

Romans 8:25 (NIV) says, “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait patiently.” God spoke another promise to me that day. He promised that I can hope for what I did not yet have (sleep, balanced hormones, being somewhat “normal” again), and I needed to wait patiently.

I felt silly being depressed and frozen in fear about “little things.” Other moms had it worse. My children didn’t have long-term childhood illnesses and my pregnancy didn’t have complications. Outside of my post-partum life, things were going well for us. Yet, my paralyzing fear was real to me.

And God loved me.

When God spoke to me through scripture and Bible teaching, He showed me He cared about things others might have dismissed. He saw me, a silly, whiny mom stuck in a snow-bound house with a baby and toddler. He saw my cares, validated them, and gave me hope. Hope that things wouldn’t stay this way forever. Hope that I didn’t need to be a slave to fear. Hope that if I wait patiently, things would eventually change.

And they did. I developed a sense of peace when I went to bed at night. Peace that allowed me to rest in between night-time feedings, cries, and diapers rather than lying awake, hearing the clock tick–tock precious time away.

God Loves Me NAM pic 3

Peace that the newborn would not get sick instead of cringing in fear every time the toddler coughed.

Peace in going out with my tribe of four, feeling comfortable that life would not always be so overwhelming.

Peace that I was still the person I used to be.

Peace that God loved me.

As winter melted into spring, each day got easier and life evolved to a “new normal.” Looking at the scribbles in my Bible, I’m thankful for a God who saw a desperate, exhausted mom and cared enough to show me He loved me. He’s done this many times since then, and I’m amazed each time at how intimate and personable He is. The same God who saw my weariness, sees yours, Beautiful Mama. Whatever your fears or emotions are in this moment, He sees them. And His words to you are the same as they were to me.

I love you.

Daughter of God, where do you need to receive God’s love today?

Dear Father, thank you for seeing every pain we experience as mothers. Thank you for seeing us, for understanding us, and for reaching out to us. Thank you that you know our every need. Will you meet the smallest need for each mother today according to your glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:19)? Thank you for loving us.

To read MORE from Not aLone Mom click HERE.

 

Help! My Mama Fuse is Running SHORT!

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“Can everyone just leave me alone for a minute PLEASE?! I need a moment… a ‘mommy-moment!’”

Sound familiar? There are “those days” that seem to creep up on us when we least expect it. We’ve all had them… The days where the kids act like they have been raised by wolves. The days when they look at you with this confused expression as though you are speaking a different language… a language they cannot seem to understand which they so demonstrate by doing exactly what you ask them NOT to do! These are the days when they run and scream throughout the house getting into drawers, climbing on furniture, jumping on the couch, chasing their siblings around, pushing and shoving and screaming and yelling… OH MY!!!

Help! My Mama Fuse is Running SHORT picThese are the days where you as their mother, who is supposed to possess such poise and grace (HA!), get put to the ultimate test. You can literally feel your mama fuse running shorter and shorter (and shorter) until “that moment” happens, the moment where you “lose it”… Where you begin to throw your own adult temper tantrum – a “mommy-tantrum”!

So what are we to do when we begin to feel our fuse running so short? Well, we first need to acknowledge what we feel is perfectly normal… we are human after all… we are imperfect beings and can only take so much! So we turn to God in these times… we sit down, even while the kids are still scurrying about the house like wild animals, and we pray, we get in the Word and we ask God to forgive us for our adult temper tantrums, accepting He will do just that – forgive us.

We pray for His peace to flood our heart and mind; we pray for strength – a supernatural strength that can allow us to “do all things through Him” (like taming our wild little animals); we seek patience, ah patience… that miracle fruit of the spirit which allows us to approach our children with compassion even in their wildest moments. We ask Him to fill us with His love… His love that is so powerful it frees us from the guilt of our mommy tantrum allowing us to see our children through His eyes. And then we accept that He hears our cries for help and rest in knowing He is faithful to answer us and to come to our rescue.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1

Today my mama fuse ran very short! It caught me totally off guard… the morning seemed to be off to a great start and the next thing I knew everything had gone haywire! From my three year old little girl coloring all over the counter and chair with marker to my 16 month old pulling all of our DVDs out of the drawer – and all of this in the amount of time it took me to use the restroom!!! This personalized the old saying, “When the cat is away the mice will play”… indeed they did!

The rest of the morning followed suit until mama here just about lost it… OK, truth time… I DID lose it! I yelled… I cried… and I finally prayed. I sat down, got in the Word and cried out to God seeking His peace to fill my weary soul… His peace that passes ALL understanding! I prayed for His grace to wash over me and His love to saturate my heart so that I could move forward with this day a restored mama.

It wasn’t long before I could feel the weight of the morning lifting from my shoulders. I found comfort in Jesus’ words:

“‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Thank you Jesus! What a wonderful God we serve that even in our weakness we are made strong! That is precisely the reminder this weak and weary mama needed today…

“Dear Lord, I accept your gift of peace today. I accept that in my own weakness you are made stronger through me! I come against the lies of the enemy who would like nothing more than for me to feel defeated in my moments of weakness… I cling to your Word and your promise of being made strong… even in my weakest moments! Thank you for this precious gift! In Jesus Mighty Name, Amen”

Blessings,

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To read more from Not aLone Mom click here.

A Lesson I Learned From My Toddler: Tell The Devil To Shush!

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Tell the devil to Shush pic

My daughter (just under 3yrs) and I have started a new tradition. In the early morning when she gets up, and her brother is still sleeping, we sit on the couch and read her Jesus Calling Bible Storybook for children. I love this book! It takes kids through all the great stories in both the Old and New Testament making each story easy for little ones to understand without watering down the message. It’s wonderful!

On our first morning we sat down to read about the beginning and “God’s Big Plan”, we read about God creating the heavens and the earth, the animals, and Adam and Eve. We finished up by reading about “Adam and Eve’s Big Mistake” and how God said, “Don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If you eat the fruit, you will die.”

We read about God’s enemy Satan and that Satan is evil and “he always wants people to do bad things.” We read about Satan coming into the garden pretending to be a snake and that he lied to Eve saying, “You won’t die. If you eat this fruit, you will learn about good and evil, and you will be like God.” We read about Eve choosing to listen to him instead of God; and Adam did too. And how this act immediately changed everything and “made God sad”.

We turned the page to finish up with how this decision changed everything and God sent them away from the Garden, but that “God had a plan. He would come to earth as a baby and grow to be a man who would defeat Satan and rescue God’s children. Jesus would be His name.”

You can see how powerful this Bible storybook is! It speaks truth to kids on their level.

When we were finished with this portion, I was ready to talk with my little girl to see how much she was able to understand. I don’t expect a full book report from a child who isn’t even three, but I don’t want to underestimate her level of understanding either. Children have a way of surprising us that way. So I simply asked her what she thought.

What happened next both shocked me and touched my heart on a deep level.

A serious look formed on her face and she got up from the couch like she was on a mission. She sat the book on our foot rest/ottoman, and turned back to the page with the scenario in the Garden. She then looked at me with a fiery passion and sense of urgency saying, “I have to jump in the book!”

Tell The Devil to Shush pic 2“What?” I asked.

“I have to jump in the book and get the apple. I have to put it back on the tree!!” she proclaimed loudly. (She watches a lot of Super Why, a show where superhero kids jump in books to change the outcome if the character is being naughty, e.g. when Pinocchio lies, they jump in to teach him to tell the truth!)

WOW… I had a feeling I knew where this was going so I prompted her more, “Why do you need to put the apple back in the tree, honey?”

“Because God said ‘No, No’!” she replied.

“That’s right sweetie, God said ‘no’ but Adam and Eve didn’t listen to God, did they?” I asked.

With an irritated look forming on her face she answered, “No… naughty snake!”

Feeling more and more proud I continued, “That’s right! That naughty snake Satan lied to them and told them to eat the apple even though God said ‘No’! – What should they have said to that naughty Satan?”

Her response to this question is a powerful statement we should all take to heart!

She stood up tall, looked me right in the eyes and said boldly, “Shush! Be quiet!”

Wow… a statement so simple yet an proclamation that speaks volumes! An approach we could all benefit from!

The devil is out to bring us down, “he prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour” 1 Peter 5:8. He is happy when he pulls us backward from what God has planned for us… he is also happy when he uses our own thoughts, insecurities, fears, etc. to keep us from moving forward!!

Something we can all take away from this precious account of a “child like faith” is this… there is no reason to debate with the enemy. When he starts speaking lies into our lives all we simply need to do is say to him, “Shush! Be quiet!” In other words – you’re a liar Satan! And I know the truth! “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety.” Psalm 18:2. His name is JESUS! And you, Satan, have already been defeated! So just – shush!

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me…for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14

 

To read more from Not aLone Mom click here.

Great Gift Idea: Snapper Rock UV50+ Children’s Swimwear

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Hey moms! There’s still time to find that “perfect gift” before Christmas. Snapper Rock is a company with UV50+ sun protection in all of their products (swimwear, hats and more). I recently received a swim suit for my daughter and … Continue reading →

Am I A Good Mother?

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I think sometimes we get so programmed that it is easy to overlook the simple things that make us good mothers.

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Every so often there are these quiet, unexpected moments in the day that cause me to reflect on the kind of mother I am and strive to be.  After a long day of going a million miles an hour I … Continue reading →