Yeah, but what's in it?

My beautiful babies are pickytarians. Aside from peanut butter sandwiches, apples, cereal bars (must be from a package), pasta with sprinkle cheese (parmesan) and carrots (these just to get dessert), and a sprinkling of choices from the dried fruit and nut categories, they turn their noses up at most things. Rice?! How can you not like plain rice?! With a pat of butter sliding across the top, just beginning to melt into the plump little granules?!

Now, as babies, many interesting textures and tastes crossed their burgeoning palates. They ate tofu, peas, oranges to the point we were buying those giant Costco bags once a week, pickles and calamari ceviche, tentacles and all.

I figured I could get a healthy, homemade cereal bar into them over the years. Nope. Too gooey, too hard, not the right shape. Ugh.

But, I may have found something in this new cookbook I'm plowing through, testing recipes for the first Clark County Cookbook Club. The Smitten Kitchen has so far pulled off a few tasty treats my kids will eat, including these almond and date breakfast bars. They like dates, they like almonds, so I gave it a whirl in my KitchenAid. I switched the almond butter in half the batch to peanut butter to please one twin. They still asked what's in it, and peered at it from all sides before taking the teensiest of bites, but they ate the whole square. Thank goodness they cut into nice little squares or they may have been rejected before the first crumb hit their mouths! Ugh! Just eat!

Winning the War in the Garden with My Homemade Arsenal

I am not known for my green thumb. In fact the hubby makes sounds like munchkins dying any time we pass a garden center. (Wait for it. There ya go.)

But I did feel obligated to keep other people's green investments alive if I somehow got to be the caretaker of a live, green backyard. In college we had a grapevine in a '40s era house some college friends and I rented. The gorgeous, sprawling vine began to wither soon after we moved in. I snipped off a few leaves and took it to the poor garden go-to guy at the local nursery who didn't run when I came walking in every few weeks with a new problem (or victim, as the hubby likes to call them).

We had bugs on the grapevine, lots of skeletal caterpillars, called such because they left just a skeleton of the leaves, killing the healthy plant.

I was really granola in college, so I found this easy organic bug spray recipe and tweaked it a bit. Sure enough, within days those little buggers had retreated.

Forward 20 years. We have some sort of invisible bug decimating our porch garden, as far as I can tell in the moments I spend going in and out of the front door with the twins in tow. So I whipped up this recipe for organic bug spray that wouldn't get on the kids as they brushed by our tomatoes, Meyer lemon tree and various vines and scented geraniums I have somehow kept alive in the six months since we've moved back to our little house.

Here you go! Use in good faith. It smells horrible, but only hurts tiny white flies and other vegetarians of the insect kind.

Kim's Knock Out Organic Insectisider

1 part chopped garlic to 4 parts mineral oil (I use tablespoons, but you can make a giant batch if you wish).

Let sit overnight in the fridge.

Strain the following morning. Fill a 16-ounce water bottle with tap water and a teaspoon of dish soap. Add the garlic mixture and shake to blend. Keep on the counter for up to one week.

Tip: Mark the bottle well. It will stink to high heaven and you will never be able to use it for anything else again.

After three days of spraying in the morning before watering (let sit for at least 30 minutes), the little vines are doing very well!

A Few of My New Favorite Things

Each month I hear about cool new products, teaching tools, expert-approved little tips that I like to remember, so I thought I’d share a few of them here around the beginning of each month and maybe have a slim chance of remembering them because I can’t keep a dern thing bouncing around my brain once I walk 5-feet in any direction from the point of input.

• I love, love, love to coupon! I've been couponing since I was in grade school and mom let me keep the rebate checks if I collected all the box tops and receipts. One of my fave new sites is www.grocerysmarts.com. Click on your state and it will run down the best coupons by store, where to print them or what flyer they arrived in at your mailbox. It's a super simple way to save cash without the tedious coupon hunting. I spent $7 on 10 items at a recent quick stop at Walgreens (didn't have the twins, so it was a luxury) and got L'Oreal shampoo and conditioner free!!! (I know, I really have to work on my photo skills.)
  
  
• I'm always looking for new ways to keep the kids occupied/obeying the dictator that is mommy. This came from a parenting magazine: Wake the kids with a riddle! You just give them one line after each a.m. accomplishment; i.e. making beds (who does that unless MIL is coming?), brushing teeth, peeing in that terrifying monster in the tiled room…Then give them the answer when they sit down to breakfast, or, after they have eaten half of breakfast, or just one bite of each offering, OK, just one bite of protein. Here's a quick few to help get you and your little ones out the door: Where do fish keep their cash? In a Riverbank! What walks all day on its head? A nail in a horseshoe!
• I've always known there was a good reason to hoard those free pizza magnets. Stick one on the car door as a reminder for that field-trip waiver or to load up the diaper bag before the 2-hour car trip to grandma's. When you go to open the car door, the placement of the tiny magnet can save loads of time in the morning running back and forth for paperwork, change of clothes, the kids. And if you’re really crafty, you can coat the magnet in chalk paint and write those really important but easily forgettable things on the tiny magnet, which I think is better. Looking at that magnet with keys in hand tempts me to swing by said pizza place. Here's a recipe for DIY chalk paint from www.inmyownstyle.com.
• I want to make this using felt! A customized clock with tiny pics of toothbrush, pants, breakfast, school house to get the kids motivated about what's happening that day. Every morning I get grilled on what the plans are for the day, and when. Put each on a velcro backing, just rip pics out of old mags, so you can switch it out as they graduate from library time to karate or ballet class, and then tiny lips with an X over it for quiet time (next to a glass of wine if it's after 8 p.m.!).

Share your tips with us! The twins and I would love to hear how you get through your day with love, laughter, lack of whining and a semblance of sanity!

Ground Control is Major Fun

I’m trying to get my son off electronics. His twin sister can play Barbies, tea party and sleepy babies in the grocery store/mad-dash-home (where ever did she ever get that from?) with nary a need for pulsing, noisy gadgets.

However, my boy goes into total melt down if Tablet is deemed unnecessary for even a minute of playtime, or to sit on the charger and take a nap its own self. I've gone so far as to tell him Tablet is in the hospital and we need to make cupcakes to make Tablet better! No. Nothing can get him off Beloved. He sits and waits for the little beep that says it's charged and claps his hands before gently, gently removing it from its charger.

So, off to the playground we go! At least there he forgets, for a few moments, his Beloved. Kites from the dollar store worked great, for about a week. Then he realized the ploy his parents had orchestrated to disconnect him from Tablet. But then, I found stomp rockets, and they…are…awesome! Not only do they launch really high, they go a good 50 yards, true to the advertising on the ‘70s-inspired packaging complete with children turning their awed faces to the sky, but it's great toddler cardio! The twins have to run after their rocket ship, bring it back and stomp on the dern thing over and over.

It’s my new favorite nap-inducing thing!