Deirdre, Author at JDaniel4s Mom

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

Muffin Tin Monday- Brunch on a Stick

July 25, 2011 By Deirdre

I am been asking other bloggers to share their recipes with me this summer. I promised to feature them in one of JDaniel’s muffin tin meals. I had three bloggers share their recipes. Two of the recipes have been featured already. The other will be featured next week. Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas shared an idea rather than a recipe with me. Her idea was to spell Jdaniel’s name in French toast. I only have large letters in cookie cutters. The amount of French toast is would take to spell his name would be more than he would probably eat.

I decided to take her idea of French toast and search Pinterest to see what recipes came up. French toast on a stick stood out to me among the rest of the ideas I found. I had previously found a pasta salad on a stick recipe on Pinterest and pinned it to one of my boards on the site.

That gave me two meal ideas on a stick. Both ideas could be served at a brunch or a lunch. Voila! Brunch on a stick became the theme for this week’s tin.

JDaniel has fruit with French toast served on a coffee stirrer rather than a real stick. The pasta salad on a stick is made of cold cheese ravoli, pepperoni, and grape tomatoes.

There is a cup of syrup and a cup of Vidalia onion salad dressing and a cookie in the second row.

You may be asking what is Pinterest? It is a booking site that allows you to bookmark links you love and displays them on small boards. The boards are like bulletin boards. You can set up board for specific areas of interest. I have a board for Muffin Tin Monday Ideas and one for Read.Explore.Learn. Ideas.

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If you are interested in joining Pinterest, please let me know. It is by invitation only right now, but I can give you an invite.

I would still love to try some of your recipes! If you have one you want me to try, please include the link to it below.

This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.

Eating the Eifel Tower

July 23, 2011 By Deirdre

Last Saturday JDaniel and I headed to the French Celebration in Fountain Inn ,South Carolina. The celebration was in honor of Bastille Day which was earlier in the week.

JDaniel noticed the giant Eifel Tower in front of the festival right away. He loved that he could walk right under its arches.

We then moved to the food area inside the building. They were serving coffee and but, what really caught Jdaniel’s attention was the Skittles Eifel Tower project set out for kids to work on. At first he didn’t realize that Skittles were candy and he just placed them on the outline. Then some other children came over and one of them announced that Skittles were their favorite candy. JDaniel’s ears heard the word candy and suddenly he became less interested in the building on to the design.

There was also a display of children’s book on a table with an accordion. JDaniel loved playing the accordion. I am not sure the other people that came in for coffee and a pastry were really into his musical presentation.

A lovely lady with samples of various vinegars and oils was also in the food area. We really enjoyed trying out some of them. She mentioned that she gives tours in her shop and would love for us to come by. I think we will be going. It will be fun to see her shop and try more of her products. She said that they serve ice cream with some her products at the end of the tour.

Our final stop at the festival was the French Dog Parade. We watched stuffed dogs, little dogs and big dogs cross the stage with their owners. JDaniel loved sitting in the front row and clapping for the participants as they marched by.

Read.Explore.Learn.-Dressing Up with Books

July 22, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to week three of the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge- July Edition! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Remember each post you link up counts as an entry in the the July edition of the Summer Reading Challenge. One post linked up to Read.Explore.Learn during the month of July will selected to win a $10 Barnes and Noble gift card.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

It has been really hot here in South Carolina. We have spent a lot of time in the house playing and reading this week.

The books I selected to share this week are about pretend play. Jdaniel has been pretend playing for awhile. He has a shelf in the pantry for his grocery store. The couch cushions have been used to make forts, an ambulance, a consignment sale area, library shelves and more.

When I came across No More Cookies by Paeony Lewis and Lola Loves Stories by Anna McQuinn, the main characters reminded me of my little pretender.

No More Cookies is about a little girl and her stuffer monkey who inhale a tin of cookies. Mom tell Florence and Arnold that there will be no more cookies for the week. Florence is shocked. She loves cookies. All she will really need is one more.

Florence and Arnold devise plans to get cookies from Mom.

First they dress up as tooth fairies that need a cookie before they fly home after a night of teeth collecting. Mom gives them apples instead. Which isn’t fair!

Then they dress up as witches and threaten to turn Mom into a frog. Mom loves the idea. Frogs don’t have to do laundry.

Arnold is dressed as a patient who has been in an accident and Florence dresses as a nurse. Mom gives Arnold a bandage.

Finally Florence and Arnold dress up as chefs. Mom still says, “No cookies.” She does suggest making chocolate covered bananas with sprinkles.

Florence decides that they are better than cookies.

Lola Loves Stories is a wonderful tale of a little girl who totally gets into the books she gets at the library to read with her dad.

They read a book about princesses and the next day she dresses as a princess.

Then she and her mom read a book about a journey and the next day Lola pretends to fly her stuffed animals to a foreign land.

She reads a story about friends and the next day she has her friend Ben over for tea.

The story continues with Lola pretending to be a farmer, a tiger, a builder, the owner of magic shoes and Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

I love the imaginations that both Lola and Florence have. They find ways to pretend to be such a wide array of things.

What did we do?

Kids’ Meal Toy Animal Game

JDaniel got this toy in a kids’s meal over the weekend. When you push the button the name of an animal will appear in the window. JDaniel can’t read, but he can tell us the first letter on the animal when it is his turn to select an animal for us to act out.

We played this game in the car on the way back from my mother in laws in Georgia. It was such fun to make noises and flap our arms around as we pretended to be the animals.

Decorating a Robot with Junk for the Craft Drawers

JDaniel loves to go through the craft junk drawers and search for treasures. We used some of the treasures to dress up a robot.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Play .

Needle Nosed Pliers Were the Right Tool!

July 20, 2011 By Deirdre

When you are doing yard work, you need to right set of tools. It is only through the vast experience you have working on your Cozy Coupe and watching your father do work on the house that you learn about the right tools to use. You will still need to bring your tools out of the garage and sort through them to make the right choice.

Once you have selected the needle nose pliers as the right tool, you have to get down low and get to work. The pliers will need to be aligned with the bottom of the weeds instead of the top. If you try to pull them from the top the pliers will slip of and the weed will remain.

You may even have to stand up slowly from your low squat to give yourself some leverage. Your arms and legs working together can help you yank the weed out by its roots.

There are other times when you have to wretch the pliers into the dirt to loosen the weed from it. It requires that the pliers are dragged in a circle to create a moat around the weed.

When a really tough weed is loosen and deposited in the pail your father has given you, you may choose to celebrate by taking a clump of dirt over to your worms in their compost box. They will probably want to celebrate youy achievement with you.

Pause Life for a Moment- My Thoughts on Fear and Swimming

July 19, 2011 By Deirdre

I sat against the wall in the pool area watching JDaniel participate in his first big kid swimming class last week. We had take the Mommy and Me class when he was about one. Now he declared he didn’t need me. He was one of the big kids.

He maybe one of the big kids in the age 2-4 swimming class, but he also one of the most fearful of the water. I am not sure why he is afraid of it. I have a fear of water, but I have tried really hard not to pass it on to me.

I don’t fear water totally. I just fear having it in my eyes and ears. It first filled me when I was sent tumbling in waves at the beach when I was little. It interfered with my learning to swim well in Girl Scout Camp as a 3^rd, 4^th , and 5^th grader. I would try to learn to swim identifiable strokes. By the end of camp as a 5^th grader could identify my elementary backstroke but the other strokes continued to allude me.

I ended up having to take a swimming class in college . The teacher’s college I attended required you pass a swimming test to graduate. You had to dive in and perform four identifiable strokes . I passed the test given at the end of the class, but only because they counted the froglike cannonball I performed as a dive. After a semester of practicing I had finally learned those four strokes.

Now I sat watching my little guy fussing at the instructor when she pried his hands away from the wall to practice making ice cream scoop hands while she held him like a football at her side. He was supposed to be trying to kick that the same time, but it was hard to scoop, kick and fuss at the same time.

When he was returned to the wall he was supposed to practice kicking while facing the wall. Every now and then one little foot would lift high enough to create a small splash in the water. The other children had tsunamis flowing from the wakes of their kicks. JDaniel never seemed to notice them.

I wanted to jump up and encourage him. I wanted to praise the tiny kicks and challenge him to create big splashes , but I remained by the wall. It wasn’t time for me to teach him. He needed to learn from his swim teachers and the other children around him.

As class wore on they shifted from stroking and kicking on their bellies to lying of their backs when it was their turn with the instructor.

JDaniel struggled to trust that the teacher would hold on to him. He would pull his head up and try to twist onto his belly. The patient teacher would turn him back over and carefully pull his head back. While I am sure she wanted him to kick, she slowly glided his still tense body around the pool encouraging him to relax.

When he once again return to the wall, he would look towards me and I would give him virtual high fives and thumbs up. I wanted to him to know I acknowledge the small victory he had achieved by laying in the teacher’s arms and relaxing if only for a few minutes.

During JDaniel’s time in the pool I had a chance to pause and think about this fear of water that I have and the other fears that I have carried at various times in my life. They are just like JDaniel learning to float on his back. He tries to hand over the fear to the teacher and trust that she will keep him safe, but he can’t completely. He ends up with one arm wrapped around the teacher’s neck. He ends up trusting himself and the his ability to hold on tight to her.

I hope for his sake and for mine that we can both let go of this fear and the others that come up in life. I hope we will trust that we will make it through them and be able to let them float away.

I am linking this post to Pour Your Heart Out on Things I Can’t Say!

Muffin Tin Monday on Sunday- National Ice Cream Day

July 17, 2011 By Deirdre

Today is National Ice Cream Day! Today’s muffin tin is filled with frozen treats! There is an ice cream cone toasted cheese sandwich, scoops of grape tomatoes, frozen banana pureed with a blueberry (see recipe below), breaded chicken, a cupcake with created with cake mix and melted raspberry sherbet (see recipe below), and frozen grapes.

National Ice Cream Day Muffin Tin Lunch

JDaniel ate everything! The cupcake did disappear first! The frozen banana went second. The chicken went last.

He thought the ice cream cheese sandwich was really cute! I just love it when he digs into lunch! I don’t know if it loved that it was National Ice Cream Day or the fun foods he liked best.

We love ice cream at our house. We couldn’t let the holiday slip by uncelebrated.

Frozen Banana Puree

Ingredient

3 bananas

Directions:

1. Freeze bananas for about 3 hours.

2. Take the peel off the bananas.

3. Slice them into chunks one to two-inch chunks

4. Puree the bananas in a blender.

5. Pour banana puree into a freezer container.

6. Return to freezer for 2 hours.

7. Eat with a spoon from a muffin tin lunch or as a cool treat.

Ice Cream Cupcakes

Ingredients

1 Orange Supreme cake mix or mix of your choice
3 eggs
1 1/3 cups of melted raspberry sherbet or ice cream of you choice

Directions:

1. Mix the ingredients together.

2. Pour the batter into cupcake cups.

3. Bake according to the directions on the cake mix package.

4. Eat along with a muffin tin lunch or on its own.

If you like this food creation, here are some more muffin tin meals and bento lunches you will love serving to your kids.

Apple Chicken Salad Bento Lunch

Lunch Ideas with LEGO

Pirate Bento

Minion Lunch with Blueberry Overalls

Star Wars Food Creations for Kids

Flower Themed Bento

Bento Lunch with Cracker Sandwiches

Summer Sunshine Bento Lunch

What is your favorite kind of ice cream?

Read.Explore.Learn.- Counting Chickens, Ducks and Marbles

July 15, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to week two of the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge- July Edition! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

JDaniel can count to ten on his fingers and loves to count objects. I thought we would look for a book on counting to feature this week.

The book I found at the library is called the The Missing Chick by Valieri Gorbachev. It is a fun story about a wayward chick and the lengths his mom will go to when she thinks he is lost.

At first Mother Hen didn’t know the little chick was lost. She was busy hanging laundry and watching her other six chicks to notice.

When Mrs. Duck stops by to chat, she points out that there are only six chicks.

Mother Hen searches in her house without finding him.

She get neighbors, the police, the firefighters, a helicopter, and no one can find the chick.

Finally Mrs. Duck notices something moving in the laundry basket. Can you guess who it was? Yes it was the little chick. He had fallen asleep.

Mother Hen is so happy to have her little one back.

The little chick promises he won’t get lost again, but before the story can end he is sleep on the clothes line and his mother is heading back into the house with his siblings.

While the one little chick stays hidden until the end of the book, JDaniel and I had fun counting the six little chicks that appeared on most of the pages for and over again.

What did we do?

Counting Marbles

During the speed dating session at the Type A Parent Conference, I met the wonderful people from Marble Jar. They have created an application for iPads and iPhones that allows you to designate a jar for a certain area of growth or goal and decide how many marbles can be added to the jar when a behavior is exhibited that a part of that goal or area of growth.

I have heard to real jars with real marbles for goal setting. The beauty of this program is that it makes the jar mobile. You don’t have to wait to get home to add a marble to the jar.

JDaniel and I set up a jar for successful potty training events and have been adding marbles to the jar when he has done them.

He really enjoys just adding marbles to the jar and counting them. So, we do. We created a few jars just to add marbles to and count.

Counting Ducks

We don’t have any chicken to count, but we do have ducks. I took out the Valentine’s Day ducks to count on the measuring tape. We put one duck on each number starting with one and then counted how many ducks we had.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Play .

The Big Mouth Frog Joke

July 14, 2011 By Deirdre

On Saturday night after the dinner dishes had been cleared we sat around the table discussing our day. We talked about all the yard work we had done and the great books that we had checked out of the library.

It is such fun to have three year old that can join into discussions and share. JDaniel remembered specific details about the edging project he had helped his dad do and the weeds he had helped pull.

When we had finished chatting, my husband decided to try a joke out of JDaniel. With a three year old you can never be sure if they will understand the humor in a joke. Sometimes you have to explain the joke to them and even then you can end up with them rolling their eyes or looking confused.

JDaniel really enjoyed the joke and I thought I would share it with you.

The Big Mouth Frog Joke

One day a big mouth frog was out exploring the swamp not to far from his home. He had a wonderful time seeing new things and meeting new animals.

Just before heading home the big mouthed frog came upon an alligator gliding along the top the water in the swamp.

The big mouth frog noticed the alligator had started gliding towards him and remembered a question he had wanted to ask an alligator if he ever met one. The big mouth frog waited for the alligator to get close enough to him enough to him to ask his question.

The alligator thought is was odd that the frog was waiting for him, but decide to see that he wanted and glided even closer to him.

“Good day!” said the alligator with a grin on his face and twinkle in his eye.

“Good day!” replied the big mouth frog with a smile on his face.

“Can I help you with something?” the alligator asked slyly in a deep voice.

“I have always wondered what an alligator’s favorite food was!” the big mouth frog exclaimed.

“Really?” grinned the alligator.

“Yes, really!” said the big mouth frog.

“Well, I don’t know about all alligators, but I love big mouthed frog!” said the alligator still grinning.

“Oh!” answered the now wide eyed big mouth frog pursing his lips into as tight a pucker as he could and slowly backing away.

You probably needed to see my husband sly grin and final pucker to get the full effect of this joke. Since I didn’t video tape it, you can get the full effect by smiling as wide as you can for both the alligator and big mouth frog parts until the every end. At the end remember to pucker your lips when you read the final words of the big mouthed frog .

This post is linked to Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop!

Managing the Hedge Trimmer

July 13, 2011 By Deirdre

If you went over with the teenager that lives next store exactly how you wanted the bushes trimmed and shaped in the backyard, you would probably trust him to do the job exactly has you had described it.

Your three year old might think that the teenager needed a supervisor. He might feel the need to supervise the work while standing on a stepstool on the deck a few feet away from the bushes.

As the supervising manager he might feel as if he was needed to watch the teenager work on each step of the task. Each stroke of the trimmer would need to be analyzed and commented on. Critiques of how well trimming is going would need to be shared.

Despite the warm temperature and the need to constantly wipe his forehead, the bush trimming manager might stay on the deck until the task is complete. He would just wipe his brow with his baseball cap from time to time.

Thankfully the teenager has two little brothers close to the manager’s age. Thankfully he is patient and good with kids! Thankfully he played along with the manager and asked him from time to time how he was doing.

The manager was a tough task master, but displayed expert management skills by issuing words of praise to the bush trimmer from time to time.

You have to love a manager that isn’t afraid to sweat it out with you in the heat of a Carolina summer day!

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

Pause Life for a Moment- Good Day, Regular People

July 12, 2011 By Deirdre

Today’s Pause Life for a moment blogger is the Empress. She reigns over Good Day, Regular People with a kind heart, a generous spirit, and a sense of fun. I love to stop by to read her posts. Her blog shares her insights as well as her son Baby E’s. Life can get you down at times. The Empress’ posts can brighten your day and can make you laugh, think or cry.

First, JDaniel’s mom, I want to thank you for the special gift of being invited to guest for “Pause Life For a Moment.”

This series you’ve created, just in writing on the topic, allows any guest poster and reader of these words, to pause in their day, and refocus on what is going to matter to us, our families, and our children.

I thank you, for the space you’ve given me here, to “re-focus.”

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Women are busier now then they have ever been.

The opportunities, along with the lure of social media, exercise clubs, personal hobbies, working outside of the home or inside the home, is deliciously tempting, and rewarding.

We are no longer lonely women at home, we have friends at the push of a key. Contact with others can be a short 20 minute drive away.

How easy it is to answer the call of instant access to others. Especially when you’ve found yourself feeling isolated, while home with your children.

The pull to go online, or build your social circle, email friends, go on twitter, text, join a cycling club, interact with others, is a very strong one.

It is for me.

How do we, as women, find the time that is necessary to do what matters in life? The important things. To devote ourselves entirely to our families is a saintly goal. One that I tried for, but found that pursuit leaving me resentful, lonely, unhappy, and with a clinical case of depression that did not make for a happy home life for anyone.

I enjoy my interaction with others outside of my family. Conversations and quick exchanges between friends can buoy my mood upward for days.

But, again, the question: how do you FIND the time for special moments for your family? Aside from the necessary of keeping house, preparing meals, grocery shopping, working?

And it isn’t only women who are online that are short on time. There are women who exercise faithfully an hour and a half at a time, daily. There are women who delight in being immersed in a good book for at least an hour of their day. There are women who find joy in their work outside of their home, or who work at home.

Where do we find the time to Pause. And really be in our lives.

I had a light bulb moment a few years ago, and it occurred by accident.

Our mornings here, in my quest for efficiency, ironically in hopes of creating a pocket of “worthwhile” time later, were spent in quick, drill like processes.

Breakfast, washed up, dressed, prayer, boom – start the day.

While my children ate, I’d clean up. So streamlined, in and out in 45 minutes.

One particular day, I noticed my oldest son just kept talking to me, coming over to stand next to me at the kitchen sink, and talking. Thank God I felt the tug in my heart to stop the activity I was involved in, and decided I needed to go sit and listen to him.

When he went back to the kitchen table, I followed him. I pulled up the chair next to him, poured myself some orange juice, and sat to look at him while he spoke. I cleared my mind of my mental to do list.

I listened to my boy.

He had plans, ideas of what he thought he might want to do as an adult. I listened, with my eyes on his face instead of the usual downcast look while I did the dishes, in the hopes of getting a jump on my day.

I watched my beautiful son’s face grow more animated, as he drank in my mental presence. I saw his smile burst big and bright, the longer I sat with him.

I felt my heart grow warm with gratitude. I felt nothing and thought of nothing, but this moment with him.

I was Pausing Life for the Moment.

I was living in it, and I was there with him.

This was a connection, this was joy: on an ordinary morning with no special pre-arranged “time for each other.”

Yes, there should still be an intention of creating moments and time for our children. But, simply put, pauses don’t have to be planned in order to happen.

We just have to recognize them.

And that has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of time in a day.

Please stop by Good Day, Regular People and let the Empress know about a time you pause your day and connected with your kids.