{Sew Easy Personalized Throw Pillows for Babies and Kids: A Tutorial for Complete Beginners}

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I need to preface this post by saying that I am truly a complete beginner when it comes to sewing! Prior to this, I had sewn part of a quilt cover (under supervision of an instructor) that I never finished, and two peacock costumes for Halloween last year (actually I only sewed the feather parts). I'm not sure how I got it into my head that I should attempt to make pillow covers like these, without even a pattern to go by, but I did and I just love how they turned out! So seriously, if I can do it, anyone can! Plus, I already did all the hard parts for you by figuring it all out ;-p ....

{Baby Signs Giveaway!}

                                                                                                                                     

            










As promised, a fabulous giveaway to celebrate passing the '150 fans' mark on the MPP facebook page!


If you've been following along for a little while now, you may already know how much I LOVE baby signing with my little peas!




Sweet Pea signing 'more'



My girls are both extremely verbal for their ages, and I credit this to baby signing.

Research shows that using baby signs reduces crying and frustration because babies can tell you exactly what they need; scaffolds language development and results in wider vocabularies; and increases IQ in the  long term. (Check out the Baby Signs website to read about more benefits of baby signing!) And I can personally attest to the first two of those claims, at least!




Sweet Pea signing 'give me'



In addition, we found that it acted as a helpful bridge for Princess Pea between her first and second languages. For the first year of her life, Princess Pea only heard English spoken to her. Just after her first birthday, we moved to Hungary, and I went back to work. We hired a nanny for her who spoke only Hungarian.

Princess Pea signing 'bird'

At that time, she already had quite a number of spoken words under her belt (about 20), in addition to many signs (over 30). She was used to being able to communicate with us about a variety of things - from expressing her basic needs to 'discussing' things she saw in her environment. We weren't sure how she would adjust to suddenly being thrown into a Hungarian-only environment when she had never heard it before.



Princess Pea signing 'milk'



So we taught the nanny a few of her signs to look out for - milk, eat, drink, diaper change, etc. - the essentials for communicating basic needs. We found that these signs were a great way to connect the two languages for Princess Pea. The nanny was able to understand Princess Pea's requests, and when the nanny said a word in Hungarian and signed it, Princess Pea recognised the sign and was able to connect it to the English word she already knew. In just a few weeks Princess Pea began speaking Hungarian words as well as English (and the nanny was avidly learning more and more signs!).

By the time she was 2 years old, she was unquestionably bilingual - she knew both languages equally well, and was very advanced for her age in both languages! (Sorry, a bit of parental bragging there!
;-p While I'm at it, have I also mentioned that Sweet Pea has a spoken vocabulary of about 55-60 words at the age of 15 1/2 months? I'm telling you, baby signing really works!)

I am a huge fan of baby signing and highly recommend it to every new parent I meet.

Princess Pea signing 'eat'

Sounds great? It is! And, here is some more great news!

Linda Acredolo, one of the original baby signs researchers, co-author of the book, Baby Signs: How To Talk To Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk, and co-founder of Baby Signs and the Baby Signs Institute, has generously offered a Baby Signs Complete Starter Kit (pictured at the top of this post) to one lucky Mama Pea Pod reader!


Here's how to enter:

1) If you haven't already done so, become a follower of Mama Pea Pod on Google Friends Connect, Facebook, Twitter, and/or Networked Blogs (each counts as an individual entry, so you can enter up to four times!)

2) After doing part 1 above, leave a comment below for each entry with your email address to contact you if you win -  while you're at it, feel free to share what games or activities you do with your baby to stimulate language development!

Entry is open to residents of the Continental US only (i.e., not Hawaii), and closes on July 20th. The winner will be chosen through Random.org.


Good luck in the draw, and happy signing!





Disclaimer: While this post is a sponsored giveaway, these are my true experiences and all opinions expressed are my true opinions.

{Drawing Nursery Rhymes}

This week, Sweet Pea and I were playing with her AquaDoodle mat (have you seen these? It's a mat that you draw on with water-filled pens, and the water makes marks on the mat that fade as it dries. Brilliant, no-clean-up way for little artists to try out early mark-making and drawing skills while Mummy or Daddy makes dinner, without ending up with a crayon mural on your living room wall! - and no, this isn't a sponsored post!)

As we were painting, I was singing her some rhymes (did you read Anna's recent post about the importance of nursery rhymes?). I started doing some signing and finger-actions to go with them, but then I decided to try drawing the rhymes as I sang them. I had to draw quickly, partly to keep up with the song, and partly because the picture disappears within a couple of minutes, but it was the perfect way to a) draw her attention to the rhymes while still allowing her to continue with her water/painting explorations, and b) aid her understanding of the vocabulary of the rhymes with some visuals. Plus, she just enjoys watching the pictures disappear before her eyes!

I wonder, can you guess what rhymes these were??

Linking to:

Nurturestore's Carnival of Water Play

{Building with Blocks - for Girls!}

Building blocks are an excellent way to learn through play. Building with blocks helps children to develop motor skills, spatial skills, problem-solving skills, and creativity.

Unfortunately, Princess Pea has never really been that interested. We bought her some lovely wooden HABA blocks when she turned one, but she never really took to them. At preschool it's a "boys' activity" ("boys' activities" and "girls' activities" seem to be very clearly delineated at this age). Princess Pea is about the farthest thing possible from a tomboy type, and spends nearly all her time at preschool in the house corner, taking care of the dolls, cooking, and putting on play make-up. So that was that as far as blocks were concerned.

But then for Easter, we got some new wooden blocks for Sweet Pea, as several of the ones from Princess Pea's old set were missing or broken (not from plentiful use - more like from being at the bottom of the toybox!). They are colourful, pretty, and have various shapes, designs, bells, beads, mirrors and such on them. Princess Pea has taken a renewed interest in them (I think because they're 'fancy', which is very important to her these days).

So this week we had a tower-building contest. And I had a brain-wave! We took turns building not the tallest towers (as we usually do), but the 'most interesting' and 'fanciest' towers. It's amazing what a little change in vocabulary can do!

She started by making her first tower tall. Then I did one with some curved pieces balancing precariously on other pieces and she started to get the idea of 'most interesting'. She loved this game! It wasn't really a contest per se, as there was no competition involved. It was simply taking turns to build the most creative tower we could. After each tower was built, I let her take pictures of them on my iPhone. That sealed the deal - a new favourite game in the Pea household!

PS - A new weekly 'Outdoor Play' linky party will be starting here on Friday! It is co-hosted by me, Kate at An Amazing Child, and Abbie at Greening Sam and Avery. Come by and link up your outdoor play posts! See you then!

This post is linked up at:

Childhood 101's We Play
Best Toys For Toddlers' High Paw
Sun Scholars' For The Kids Friday
and at

{Imaginary Play: Let's Eat!}

Today Sweet Pea got her hands on Princess Pea's lunchbox and after several failed attempts with the latch, brought it to me to open. I thought she wanted to use it for a packing-unpacking activity with her Little People figures or blocks.

It turns out she knew exactly what it was and what to do with it! Instead of loading it up with farm animals, she reached in to the opened, empty lunchbox and began to pick up imaginary food, take bites, and do some imaginary chewing (that imaginary chewing might be the cutest thing I've ever seen, by the way!). I'm always amazed by her ability to engage in imaginary play already. And she's been doing it for a few months now! She loves to 'play eat', to feed her toy people and animals, and even to make them kiss each other! It's all just too cute! I guess having an older sister (especially one with such an active imagination!) probably helps.

From there, we moved to the play kitchen area. She began to unpack the box where we keep all the kitchen paraphernalia and do some more play eating with the fake foods. So I got out the little tablecloth, some dishes, and some fake foods, and packed up a little picnic for her in the lunchbox. She loved it! We sat on our little picnic blanket and ate felt sandwiches and plastic apples and pears, drank some imaginary juice from our little cups, and finished off with felt cake and cookies, and felt ice-cream cones. (All the while doing some cute imaginary chewing!)

Our play kitchen and related items are by far the most popular toy in our house! Our little peas both play with it daily, and I don't think there has ever been a child who has come over to our house and not immediately gravitated towards the play kitchen area. It really provides so much fun and imaginary play for them, not to mention useful skills such as opening and closing containers, cutting with a knife (not a real one, obviously!), table manners, turn-taking, kitchen safety, planning, .... the list goes on. So I thought I'd share with you what we have in our play kitchen area. It's not beautiful, it's not organised, but the kiddos LOVE it!

  

Now, this is not one of those lovely, inviting, wooden play kitchens that look like a miniature version of an old stove in a turn of the century farmhouse that make even me want to start cooking on it (and I hate cooking!). Nope, this is a hideous, pink and purple, plastic, Tesco kitchen planted in the middle of our living room! (Why on earth did we buy such a monstrosity? Well, we had just moved here and it was supposed to be a cheap, flimsy one that would last a few months until we had time to find a nice one. And wouldn't you know it, nearly 3 years later it's still going strong, even with daily use!)

The kitchen may be ugly, but it does make some fun cooking sounds that vary depending on which pot you put on the stove - boiling sounds for the pot, steam whistling for the kettle, and frying sounds for the frying pan. There's an 'off' switch for when they get annoying. And it even has a hook-up so you can attach a bucket of water and have real water pump out of the faucet (a feature we've never used since it's always been inside, but maybe one day).

Next to the kitchen we have a large box containing all of the kitchen-related 'stuff': There are various play food items made of plastic, wood, and felt. There are pots and pans, dishes, salt and pepper shakers, and oven mitts. There are kitchen utensils, both play and real versions (after constantly having to track down my wooden spoons, I finally bought a set of IKEA ones for them to play with). There is a slightly used disposable party tablecloth, perfect for use as a play picnic blanket. There are cutting boards and knives, both wooden and felt, and a set of wooden vegetables that can be cut apart and stuck back together again with velcro. I've also added some empty containers from real foods - a spice jar, an empty sprinkles container, an empty box of stock cubes, an egg carton, etc. These real kitchen items are especially popular.

I love to watch the kids playing with the kitchen stuff and to see all the skills they are learning as they do. Princess Pea has a favourite DVD she gets to watch on occasion - a Strawberry Shortcake cooking show. She loves to get out my cookbooks and pretend to follow the recipes to create all sorts of sweet concoctions. While Princess Pea does the play cooking, Sweet Pea loves to 'play eat'. They make a good team!





Linking to: Tot Tuesdays, We Play, Show and Tell, It's Playtime, High Paw, The Play Academy

{Baby-Proofing Your Home}

Last week our neighbour left his car running in the parking garage downstairs and went away on vacation. Yes, vacation!! (I'm still stunned!) But it did get us thinking about how much attention we pay to safety in our home. As we opened all the windows and googled whether or not CO rises (we're one floor above the garage), we realised that we really haven't made our home as safe as it probably should be for small children. Ummm....not so good parenting.

For one thing, we don't have a CO detector or a smoke alarm in our apartment. There is a CO detector in the garage itself, though I highly doubt that it works (now that I think about it, the fact that the running engine of the neighbour's car didn't set it off is a pretty good indicator that it doesn't work). In Canada, and I think most of the US, it's illegal to rent out an apartment that doesn't have smoke detectors already installed. In Europe, that's not the case. We have never rented a place in Europe that had smoke detectors, let alone CO detectors.

Now, when Princess Pea was a baby we did get all safety-conscious (for a while). We put baby-safe covers on all the electrical outlets, locks on all the drawers and cupboards, removed the glass top from the coffee table, put soft thingys on the corners of furniture, packed away everything breakable, put spongy underlay under all the rugs, looked up the potential poisonousness of our houseplants, tied up all cords, bolted taller furniture to the walls, and went out and bought our own smoke detectors and installed them ourselves. Then we moved, took them with us and reinstalled them in our new place. We had stairs then, so we also added a few baby gates to the mix, and my father-in-law built extra spindles on the stair railings to make the gaps smaller. Then we moved again, and.... well, they've been sitting, useless, in the cupboard for nearly 2 years now. By the time we moved into our current home, Princess Pea seemed old enough and trustworthy enough (erm, at age 2) not to need the rest of the safety gadgets. She's pretty sensible about safety and is generally terrified of doing anything potentially unsafe. When Sweet Pea came along, we covered all the electrical outlets, and have recently put locks on 2 low kitchen drawers and two kitchen cupboards. We keep the bathroom doors closed. We have a few strategically-placed soft corners. We have the wardrobes and really tall furniture bolted. But that's about it. We still haven't unpacked the smoke detectors.

That said, I did once meet a mom (a princess, no less...but that's another story!) who told me that it was all over-the-top and that the only thing she did with her 3 babies was put the caps on the electrical outlets. But, being a new mum, there was no such thing as over-the-top, so I did everything the books told me to. The second time round, of course, we've definitely slackened our safety-consciousness. For better or for worse? I suspect worse.

After this garage incident, Mr Pea went out to buy some CO detectors. And I suppose this weekend he'll probably install them. And maybe even the smoke detectors too.

I'm interested to know what you've done in your home to make it safe(r) for your kiddos. And how much is too much? Is there such a thing?

{Baby Movers}

If you're like me, you probably have about a million and one ways to transport your baby, and a million and  one different contraptions for doing so (much to my husband's dismay!).

When Princess Pea was a baby, we didn't have a car, but of course we still needed a carseat for taxis, rentals, and just getting home from the hospital. So we bought a MaxiCosi infant carseat. We mostly used it as a portable chair.

We also had a Baby Bjorn carrier, which was great when she was tiny. But around the time she reached the 7 month mark, she was just too heavy for me to carry on the front anymore.

And our main form of transportation was her Teutonia stroller. (I spent hours and hours pushing that stroller every single day as it was the only place she'd nap!) The stroller is one of those seriously heavy-duty German ones, which was perfect for the cobbled streets where we were living at that time. It cost a small fortune, but we used it so much it was well worth every penny.

Then we once took the Teutonia stroller on an airplace - big mistake! First, the airline lost it for 3 days! Very stressful, and by the time they'd found it there had been a huge snowstorm so we couldn't take it out anyway! Then on the return flight, some nitwit had packed a jar of pickles or something in their suitcase, that broke and our stroller REEKED of vinegar. After that trip we learned our lesson and bought a little Chicco fold-up travel stroller for future trips.

And, of course, there was also the hiking backpack for bigger hikes. (Though she met with an unfortunate accident in this one, resulting in her first trip to the emergency room.)

Then Sweet Pea came along. By this time we had a car, and we still had the MaxiCosi carseat. We also still have the Bjorn carrier, but Sweet Pea is a lot bigger and heavier than Princess Pea was, so she quickly got too heavy for that. I'd heard that slings were somehow better, so I decided to buy a sling too, but Sweet Pea never liked it. I think she found it too restrictive on her body.

We also still had the Teutonia stoller, and we got a step board attachment for the back so that Princess Pea could ride on it too. But we found the Teutonia is not ideal for where we live now, as we live up a steep hill and the stroller is a bit heavy to push up, especially with a three year old riding on it too (ok, so I really just need to get a bit fitter, but in the meantime, it's a pain in the bazooka pushing that thing up the hill!).

We also went on a trip when she was 4 months and needed a travel stroller for her. By this time the Chicco stroller had broken, and we had a temporary borrowed umbrella stroller from a friend, but of course those strollers are only for babies 6 months and up, so we ended up buying a Quinny Zapp that has adapters to fit her carseat on the top. We love our Zapp, it's really light and folds up super small - it even has a carry bag so we can fold it up and sling it over our shoulders as carry-on luggage when we fly! It's great for shopping centres and easy to toss (yes, toss) in the back of the car. But it's got small wheels so is not good for 'off-roading', which around here is also 'on-roading' as the roads and sidewalks are very broken.

Still determined to 'babywear', I took one of those wrap carrier classes and learned how to tie it so that Sweet Pea could ride on my back. So I went out to buy a wrap carrier. The first one I got was in a packet and when I got home I realised that the fabric was really rough, which I didn't like. Since returning things is not really very acceptable here, and since I had travelled half-way across town to get it, I never did end up returning it. Then I found a much nicer, softer one (which also cost a rather ridiculous amount). But by this time I'd pretty much forgotten how to tie it, and Sweet Pea had reached an age where she was very wriggly and I just couldn't get her to stay still long enough to put it on. So it's also unused (this is a rather sore point with my husband!).

In the meantime, a friend lent me her Ergo carrier, which can be worn on the front or back. I used it on the front quite a lot at first, as it was more comfortable than the Bjorn, but just for quick trips - from the car to Princess Pea's classroom and back again, for example. It is very comfortable on the back and when someone is around to help I use it that way for hikes. I've used it a couple of times if we walk to pick up Princess Pea from school, but I still have a bit of a hard time getting her on my back by myself and she's not all that cooperative about it, probably because by the time we get all our winter gear on we're already sweating to death in the house, and then it takes me another 10 minutes to get her on, by which time we're both dripping in sweat and she is screaming!

Anyway, baby moving is a constant struggle for me, I still don't feel like I have the perfect solution at my fingertips, even with all this paraphernalia! For example, when we drive Princess Pea to preschool and Sweet Pea falls asleep in the car, how best should I take her in? She's too heavy now for me to carry her in the carseat, so if she's awake I just carry her on my hip and then let her crawl around on the floor when we get inside. But if she's asleep....well, I'm still trying to figure that out. Any suggestions welcome!