Archive for April, 2011

by  Ilze van der Merwe-Alberts , Educational Psychologist and CEO of Bella Vida Group

Bedtime can be a very difficult time for many parents when the kids refuse to go to bed or stay in their beds. Many parents throw their hands up in the air and say “we just give in to their demands as long as we can have peace and quiet and get to have a restful evening as well, once the kids fall asleep”

Some useful information about children and sleep:

Tips for getting kids to bed and  sleeping in their beds until the next morning

By Nicolas Callegari , on the one hand – writer, gamer, full-time sci-fi geek, and future rock star.  On the other – first time dad, stumbling his way through parenthood one lesson at a time.  Visit his blog

I’ll never forget that first night when we brought our bundle of joy home from the hospital.  It was, without a doubt, the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had.  And it’s something that all first-time parents will go through, guaranteed.

It’s not bad enough you’re up every two-to-three hours to feed, change and burp your baby, there will also be the inevitable interruptions when you’re trying to sneak in an hour or so of shut-eye between your attempts to set up the routine.

Here’s the reality: you’re going to sleep with one eye open, watching the movement on the LED lights on your bedside baby monitor, hoping to goodness that the apnoea monitor doesn’t go off.

You’ll check the volume about ten times before you go to bed, and while you’re lying there dozing off, every single little peep and sigh that your baby makes will have you out of the bed, down the hallway and at the crib side checking to see if the baby’s alright.

90% of the time, the baby is fine and all you’re reacting to are the natural sounds that the baby makes when it’s sleeping (they’re noisier sleepers than you think).

Trust me, if something’s wrong, the baby will scream – especially in those first two or three weeks when your baby only really has two settings: Awake-and-feeding, or asleep.

Funny story – because my son was born 7 weeks prem, he was pretty small and sometimes his weight and movement wasn’t enough to keep registering “life” on the apnoea monitor, so the alarm went off more than once (even though he was perfectly fine) and that was just game-over for my wife and I for the first few weeks before he actually started to bulk up a bit.

I can guarantee that even after reading this article, as a first-time parent you WILL feel hung-over the next morning, your eyes will look like a map of the Witwatersrand and all you’ll be capable of for the rest of the day will be as an extra in Season 2 of Walking Dead.

But rest assured, it’ll get better with time.  It took me and my wife a good few weeks to get over the fears that come with new parenthood.  As you learn the sounds that your baby makes in his or her sleep, you’ll calm down a little, but those two-to-three hour feeds will be the killer until your baby’s sleeping through.

One thing to resign yourself to: from the moment you bring your baby home, sleep will become a mythical creature.

Bottom line: You’ll get over the nervous parent phase.  For some it takes a bit longer, but if I can say one thing, you’re not alone.  Every parent will go through it and the sooner you learn to identify when your baby needs you vs. when your baby is just being a baby…the better.

by Erin Ismay, art lover and creative enthusiast, venturing into the world of business running art and craft parties for kids,  loves travel, photography and spending time with her hubby! She’s also the owner of  pop art parties

In the spirit of Easter and ‘easter eggs’ this is a great activity to do using recycled egg shells to create a lovely mosaic. Mosaics are so popular right now but can be an expensive activity. This is a less expensive take on doing a mosaic type picture.

You will need

Clean broken eggshells
Food Colouring
Vinegar
Paper towel
Craft Glue
Plastic containers
Paintbrush
Paper for picture (can be any colour)

Step 1:

Mix your different colours using a drop of food colouring, fill with warm water and a dash of vinegar to set colour,

Step 2:

Put some broken eggshells into the food colouring and let soak for about 10 minutes.
Then take out and dry on paper towel.

Step 3:

Once you have your colourful eggshells all dry you are ready to start your artwork. Decide what picture you want to make. Then dip your paintbrush into some glue and do the outline of the picture in glue and then you can start sticking the eggshells onto the glue.

At the end you will have a beautiful artwork!

by Minette Tonoli, mom to 2 gorgeous girls  (4 + 9mnths), passionate homeschooler and herb lover. Owner of  herbs on line

I’m inherently an earth mother, a lover of all things natural and unprocessed and this is quite evident in everything I do – from not wearing any make-up to growing veggies and herbs in my back yard. It also shines through in how I raise my children. This doesn’t mean that I’m a barefoot, hemp-wearing, vegetarian hippie– nor that I don’t celebrate the advances made in medicine plus  the immense benefits that modern healthcare brings. It  just means that I don’t buy into all medicines, all the time. I do think over-diagnosing and over-prescribing is a far too regular occurrence nowadays. I prefer a more naturopathic way to keep and stay healthy and I try to follow my gut-instincts, but it’s not always easy.

When my otherwise very healthy 4-year old recently had an inexplicable high fever without any other symptoms to indicate an illness, a battle started to rage within me – do I keep her temperature down by giving her pain and fever medication, or do I let her fever ride out a bit, thinking that surely there must be a good reason why your body elevates its own temperature? Do I rush off to the doctor on day one of a raised temperature or do I wait to see where it is going?

As my daughter’s temperature rose, so did my inclination to give her some Calpol to bring it back down to a more stable level and calm my own worry. Yet every time after the medicine had “worked out”, her temperature would start to spike immediately. On day two of this we went to see the paediatrician who  described it as “a viral infection of unknown manifestation”

Later that day, with no drop in temperature in sight I started giving her the prescribed Lotem, but like the Calpol, it only gave little respite. So I set out to explore a more natural way to deal with the fever. The more I learnt about fever management for children, and in particular, the naturopathic way to support fevers, the less inclined I felt to continue with the paracetamol-ibuprofen mix.

I decided to follow my instincts and let her fever run its course while I monitored her closely. I made her a herbal tea to hydrate her, induce sweating and help maintain the fever without letting it rise too high. Although her fever reached 40.5°C at one point, it mostly hovered around 38°C and 39°C and I simply pampered my daughter as much as I could to make her comfortable. Only a day and a bit of this and her temperature started dropping until it was back to normal and she was her happy, healthy self again.

I learnt many things while investigating fevers – what they are, how we measure them and why we tend to get them. Most importantly, I learnt that fevers are not an illness in themselves, in fact they are a good indicator that our children’s immune systems are hard and actively at work trying to best an unwelcome germ; and that by always treating a fever and lowering a temperature we could in fact be counter-productive, weakening immune response and prolonging the illness.

Click here for more detailed information on the naturopathic way to handle children’s fevers and for a list of herbs useful  to use during fevers.

by Erin Ismay, art lover and creative enthusiast, venturing into the world of business running art and craft parties for kids,  loves travel, photography and spending time with her hubby! She’s also the owner of  pop art parties

It’s already April, the month of holidays and Easter time. Whather you celebrate Easter or not, you can still join in the fun of decorating Easter eggs as they are a beautiful activity anytime of the year.  This is a really simple and cheap activity to do at home with the kids. You can even teach them how to mix different colours with the food colouring.

You will need:

Cooking oil
Vinegar
Water
Food colouring
Paper towel/serviettes
Some containers like cups or small dishes
Some spoons
Eggs (if you can find white shelled eggs they will show colour up best!)

Step 1

You can either use the eggs raw, otherwise it would be best to hard boil them first before you start.
Mix 1 Tbsp cooking oil with 1 Tbsp vinegar into your dish, then add a few drops of food colouring and top up with water.

Step 2

Dip your egg into the mixture and swirl around, you will see the colour start to stick to the egg in different places creating a marbled effect.

Step 3

Take the egg out and pat dry with paper towel. Then you can dip the same egg into another colour and see how the colours marble together. You can do this with as many colours as you like on the same egg.

Make a few eggs each as you experiment with the different colours and see what effect you get!