I haven't used duct tape. Yet.

I haven't used duct tape. Yet.

This is one of those things that will solve itself by the time your kid is about 7 or 8 (’cause all their friends will finally think it’s gross).  But if you can’t wait that long (*shudder* and who can?), how do you get a kid to quit picking their nose?

This was not my original idea.  I first saw it when I was a teen and I recall making a mental note to remember it if I ever had kids.  It’s that good.

Kids generally start sticking their finger up their nose as a toddler when they first discover that their finger fits perfectly.  But it’s not until about preschool age that they find out that sometimes, the digging is rewarded.  And their off…

Enter the brilliant parent who showed me this trick.  His 4 year-old daughter had a finger wrapped in tape.  When I asked about the owie, he calmly stated that she had a little bit of a problem with keeping her finger out of her nose.  With tape on it, her finger wouldn’t fit up her nose.  Bril.liant.  Problem solved.

I am using this trick on my 3rd child, and I have found that it does not matter what kind of tape you use (I’ve used clear tape, masking tape and medical tape.  Also, a bandaid in a pinch.).  Nor does it matter which direction you wrap the finger (over the top or around it).  Either way works just as well.  Keep it on for as long as you want–even 10 minutes seems to get the point across to Lady Bug.

And yes, you do probably need to tape all their digging fingers of choice at the same time.

(Did you miss my first post on boogies? You’d think I have some sort of problem with them.  Oh, well, yeah…)

© 2010, melissa caddell. All rights reserved. If you steal my stuff, I will also be really, really mad.

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Red bell pepper-better bought organic

We started adding organic food to our diet about a year ago.  It was pretty painful at first, to be honest.  But I felt that there were so many sources of bad things in our environment (you DO NOT want to know-ugh) I had no control over, I could at least control some of the bad things we were injesting.

The reason it was so painful to switch over to organic food was mostly because of cost.  It seems that organic food is grown with naturally occuring sticker shock.  Since the research has yet to provide a concrete cause and effect relationship with pesticides and human disease, it was hard to justify the additional expense.  (I remind myself that DDT was declared safe until the day it was banned.)  It just seems logical to me that eating substances that are meant to KILL living things (bugs, weeds, etc) are not healthy, especially for little growing bodies.  And I try very hard to remember that when I stand  in the store deciding between the 99 cent bell pepper and the $4 bell pepper.  And the $4 one don’t look as pretty as the 99 cent one, either.

So, I started small.  I used the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list as a basis.  They list the foods that are the dirtiest (most pesticide residue) and the cleanest (least pesticide residue).  By just purchasing the ‘Dirty Dozen’ organically, it reduces a person’s pesticide exposure by a lot.  I made a bit of a leap and decided that processed foods should correspond–since apples were one of the most pesticide ridden foods, I decided that apple juice and things like apple sauce should be organic.  But tomatoes (which fall in the middle) and their products didn’t have to be.  (Research indicates that once peels have been removed, there is a lot less pesticide residue, so this is just my personal preference, not necessarily based on research).

One thing we hadn’t expected was that organic produce tastes so much better then non-organic.  I don’t know why.  There has been research done that shows that organic produce can have higher levels of certain nutrients in it (like lycopene), so that may be part of the reason the taste is different.  I just know that my children REQUEST organic brussle sprouts.  What kid does that?  Wierdos.

If you want to start somewhere with switching to organic produce, the EWG’s list is a managable place to do it.

© 2010, melissa caddell. All rights reserved. If you steal my stuff, I will also be really, really mad.

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Is it too late to post about resolutions?

January 22, 2010

I know it’s a little late to be thinking of New Year’s resolutions—most people have pondered this and set their goals much closer to the beginning of January then the end.
But, I need a little more time to process what I am actually willing to do and I find that if I wait a few [...]

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Launch of our new website–Bookalachi!

January 12, 2010

When we couldn’t find a good website that did a content review of kid’s books, we decided to start our own!  Okay, it didn’t go quite that smoothly….it was 3 years ago when we started.  Casey learned how to program in at least two other languages and this is actually the third rendition of the [...]

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Happily ever after…

January 1, 2010

Fifteen years is (and isn’t) a long time.  When you’re 22, I guess it’s a pretty long time.  It’s long enough to shape a few dreams, let go of a few, pursue new dreams.
It’s enough time to grow a marriage, a family, and start a life.
Fifteen years ago today, I looked up into Casey’s eyes and gave him [...]

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Winner of the Steve Spangler Giveaway!

December 14, 2009

Don’t you love giveaways? It was fun to run this–thanks to the folks at Spangler Science!
I put all the entries from both here and my blog and drew them out of a hat. :)
The WINNER of the $75 in science stuff is: Jennifer! I drew her name from her comment on the Jelly Marble article [...]

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Gifts for bright kids #2: solar science meets kid building fun

December 10, 2009

 Leave a comment to be entered into a drawing for a FREE box of stuff from Steve Spangler Science ($75 value-woot!)!  Drawing to be held on Dec. 11thth.  Enter on both posts on Gifts for Bright Kids!
I took a look at the box when we got this and thought, ‘Yikes—that looks complicated’  Cool, mind you, [...]

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Who put me in charge of all this? (or: who knew being a mom was a full-time job?)

December 9, 2009

I know this isn’t going to come as a shock to most of you, but it has taken me years to figure this out. I am a reasonably bright girl, but I kept thinking that someone else was in charge of the daily running of our household. I don’t know who I thought was going [...]

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A $10 gift for bright kids

December 1, 2009

Leave a comment to be entered into a drawing for a FREE box of stuff from Steve Spangler Science ($75 value-woot!)!  Drawing to be held on Dec. 11thth.  Enter on both posts on Gifts for Bright Kids!

I am a big fan of toys for kids that make them figure stuff out.  Or have a wow [...]

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Really, really close to Starbucks Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

November 24, 2009

Thanks to musings of a mommy for her original version of this recipe. After fiddling with it for a few years, here’s my rendition. It’s a pretty easy recipe to put together, so don’t freak out over the seemingly long list of ingredients and steps.
(Note: make the cream cheese filling first and let it freeze [...]

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