New addition to our family.

Hello friends...with love we announce the arrival of our daughter Anika. We are overjoyed though a little overwhelmed with this highly anticipated event. My older son, E who is 3 years old now is having a hard time curbing his excitement!!
I wanted to know from all you mommies, tips on how to balance my two babies better, so that E doesn't feel left out. Since it has only been 10 days, things are going well, so far. But I want to make sure I am prepared with a plan, going forward.
Thank you all in advance and i hope to come back to my fav blog, soon.

Theme for February

A Quick Introduction
by Priya of priyainsuburbia

Hi All,
I'm a WAH mom to an adorable 26 month old daughter (I refer to her as E in blogosphere). E and I live in NJ with my husband and my dog in a gigantic money pit called a home. I also make time to write random thoughts and events in my life at priyainsuburbia.wordpress.com

But enough about me.

Since a theme for February has not been chosen yet, I volunteer one: how about Home Made / Hand Made Valentines for our Kids ? If another theme has been chosen already, my apologies and by all means do feel free to correct me.

Hoping to read more from all our members,
Priya.

The Anti Jinx

By DotMom of Karma Calling
(cross posted on Karma Calling)

I am feeling a little silly today. Not to mention uninspired to write anything of substance. By which it is implied that what I write usually has some substance in it and there will be many of you, no all of you, who will jump at this opportunity and say A-ha. Gotcha. You don’t. So, well. Scratch that.

We often write about our kids, our homes, our lives. And wise, rational, educated folks that we are, we often say a little prayer to ward off the evil eye before hitting that little publish button. Or if you are like me, you spell a few words backwards or boldly declare the jinxters to go away. So, I thought it would be good fun to be a little creative while doing it. So I created these lil graphics for ya’ll to put on your sites, posts, images to ward off all those evil eyes. Call them cheesy, campy, kitschy, but you can’t deny they are not funny! So enjoy.

P.S. I have added two more icons thanks to Gypsy and CeeKay

Also these are more like thumbnails. The images are hosted on photobucket. Please click to get a larger/better image!

Ice-breaking !

-- Posted by Pallavi


Hello Momz !

As you may have noticed by now, my name is Pallavi. I have a 2 yr old son Rishi. He is full of energy, loves to play and talk and keeps me on my toes these days with his clever little pranks.. I am sure most of you know exactly what I mean. I also work fulltime.. My husband and I are both in the Technology field.

On most days, I find myself juggling between all the things that life puts in my way..(I guess thats a "mom-attribute";) ) On other days, I try to blog (All Things Yummy) which I have started doing recently, read, research and try to learn about things and topics interesting to me...and these days its all about stuff for my son... and that is how I landed here. I am still trying to catch up on the old posts.. and am excited about the prospect of finding many more interesting things.

Thanks for letting me in and I hope to be make good friends here ! and great job you guys in making this valuable for all moms ! :)

Cheers !
Pallavi

Calling for "Theme of the Month"

(This post by Sandeepa)

Let me first apologise for disappearing from the scene for so long. Unfortunately the "disappearing" act may continue due to some health reasons.



However I did feel the need to make a post to have the "Theme of the Month" at DMC go on. First let me thank Indo for having come up with a lovely theme for January. I have not been able to contribute for the December dare (which I really wanted to) or for this month either, but I did read the posts and thoroughly enjoyed them. I just lurked ;-)



Now I would like to have some volunteers for the next few months theme. Please leave a comment with the month you wish to take up.



Theme for Februray -- Initially I think Poppins Mom had volunteered. I will check with her.



Please volunteer for the next months. As ususal you can have any theme you fancy for a month.

Also I have been lagging in adding all those who have requested new membership. I will add you all as soon as possible.

Book Review: 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for 2-12 year olds

[This post is written by mummyjaan]

Hi, all, Desi Mommies.

January is nearly over, but Slowpoke Mummyjaan has finally had a chance to contribute to this months' theme. This handy little manual is one I like very much, and had wanted to write my review on it for some time. Many of you may be familiar with it - those who aren't might find it very useful. Here it is:

This is a highly successful book on parenting written by a clinical psychologist. It's a short and sweet book, under 200 pages and very easy to read. I was able to go through most of it in the course of a day, in between my various household chores.

The success of the 'program', (as the author calls it) is obvious from the book's cover: "875,000 copies sold", it screams. It also carries the testimonials of parents, teachers, counsellors, psychologists. All are unanimous in their praise of the effectiveness of the techniques that the book talks about.

I first came across this book about 2 years ago. I was working with a consultant who routinely saw children with behavioural problems and he would lend this book - and other similar books - to the parents. One of his assistants did a presentation about this book and the principles it advocates. It was attended by more than just the Paediatric Department - many nurses and office staff were curious to listen to it because they are all parents once they finish work and go home.

So I had read the book before Apya was even 2. She was too young then for me to apply any of this 'wisdom' - the key to dealing with younger children is being in tune with their wants and needs and being experts at distraction. However, as she grew up and became more vocal, more manipulative, more ... uh... more 'everything' and altogether too much to handle, I went back to this book to see what it could do for me. I haven't been disappointed.

With 4-year-old Apya, who has an extremely short attention span, but who can be singularly focussed on something she wants, I find the 1-2-3 counting-followed-by-time-out system highly effective. Apya has never had typical 'tantrums' - save an occasional one now and then. However, she is a whiner par excellence. She can repeat her request dozens of times until I stop what I am doing to give her what she wants. It is with this type of behaviour that the 1-2-3 tactic has been most helpful for me. I explain that she can't have what she's asking for because (insert fair and justified reason) and then I start 'counting' her. It has averted 70 percent of the headaches for me. (The other 30 % I'm working on....)

How does 1-2-3 Magic Work?

The book is divided into 3 sections:

Section 1 deals with techniques to stop 'obnoxious behaviour';
Section 2 offers tips to help youngsters develop healthy habits,
and Section 3 talks about building a loving, trusting relationship with your offspring.

In the introductory chapters, Dr. Phelan sets out explaining a few theories on which the rest of the book is based. The first thing he does is debunk the 'Little Adult' assumption. He argues that:

1. Children are not as reasonable as we expect them to be. Certainly not when we most want them to be.

2. They have short attention spans.

3. Which is why, arguments and explanations don't work. In fact, arguing with a child is a sure-fire way to lose!

And the most important concept:

4. The 'No-talking, no-emotion' rule.

No. 4. is, the author claims, the real secret behind the success of 1-2-3 Magic. Children apparently love the feeling of power that they get from seeing you riled up, and when they see that their bad behaviour is not in fact driving you up the wall and you are still in control, they check their bad behaviour quickly.

In a way, 1-2-3 Magic is a technique for the parent to keep his or her cool when faced with a child's disobedience or challenging behaviour. The author devotes a whole chapter to describing the half a dozen ways in which children try to get what they want (something the cruel parents are denying) and this is indeed a valuable read. The author calls these 'testing and manipulation tactics'.

I have not needed to apply the advice in Section 2 yet, but I think I will use the kitchen-timer idea (another favourite of parents) for some 'Start' behaviours of Apya's that are getting a bit difficult (preparing for bedtime, especially, always a big challenge in our house).

The book is simply written, and does not bore you with lots of theoretical stuff. Instead, the author uses common everyday scenarios to demonstrate the 1-2-3 'technique'. There are simple diagrams and summary boxes throughout, emphasizing the core points. All written in a pleasant, humorous way.

Overall, if you are a parent of a child over 3, you will find this book highly valuable, even if your child is easy to manage. There is nothing really 'magical' about it - time-outs are an age-old technique of successful, in-control, sensible parents. The only 'magic' about it is that as one parent claims, "Guess what, folks? It works!"

Books for kids

I'm not sure if the theme is books about mom-dom or books for kids. If it's the latter, i just blogged about it at my book blog, here: http://thehungry-bookworm.blogspot.com/2008/01/childrens-books.html . If the former, I read Allison Pearce's book some time back and while I enjoyed it, it also made me a little upset. Why did it have to be the mother that gave up her job? Why was there so much stress in the family when the father was not working and the mother was out full time? What bothered me was that it wasn't only about the woman's feelings about working full time and losing out on time with the kids, but that her decision to quit work was also impacted by how her husband was unhappy that she worked fulltime and he was a stay-at-home dad. I don't remember it all that clearly now, but it did seem like it was giving in to the stereotyped image of what a 'happy family' should look like - mother stay-at-home and dad in the office.

In fact, many books in this genre make me unhappy for the same reason - the mother who tries to juggle everything or to achieve some dream of her own eventually realises how shallow that is and how her dream is really to be around for her kids everyday and be playing Happy Cook when her husband comes hoem from the office. Why doesn't anyone write a book about a family which decides it's ok for the mother to go off and pursue her dream once in a while? Why doen't the wife and husband both decide to work shorter hours so they can both have a career and still be home for their kids? If the wife is doing better economically, why doesn't the husband decide he's going to be the stay at home dad?

Sorry to rant but it has always got my goat and not merely because I'm a working woman. I find the stereotypes about stay-at-home moms equally annoying - any book that focuses on them has to have the angle of hypercompetitive moms trying to outdo each other at the my kid is best sweepstakes. What makes it infuriating for me is that so many of these books are written by women for women.