For more great Works-For-Me-Wednesday questions (and their accompanying tips!) visit Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer. This week is especially good because it is the backwards edition. Rather than posting tips, we all ask for tips. This makes for the best advice of all, because it showcases the collective mommy wisdom of the internet.

My other Works-For-Me-Wednesday posts:

Labeling and Containerizing
Vacationing with Young Children
Great Pasta
Fine Hair Hair Care
Teaching Independence
Cook’s Illustrated
Rx Info
Sleep Baby Sleep
Grocery Sack–Alternative Use
Stickers

1) What have you done to become a person (especially a mom) who yells less? Practical suggestions?

2) What are good incentives for little ones?
I don’t want to use candy, it teaches that eating is a reward which leads in a bad direction. I don’t want to use television, because there is too much of that and it makes TV seem super cool. For my daughter 10 minutes of reading works great! But what do I do for a three year old?

3) Everyone seems to say that the key to laundry success is to do one or two loads daily. Can you describe in detail how you do this? Do you sort everything every day? Do you only sort very generally (just lights vs. darks)? How are your children and spouse involved (or not)? How old are your children? Where is your laundryroom? Where are the bedrooms? Do you use baskets, hampers? What

4) Everyone seems to love Mr. Clean magic eraser. I have never figured out what all the hype is about. Could you explain? What is it good for? What might I be doing wrong?

5) Our current disciplinary system seems punishment based rather than consequence based. How can I move to a natural consequences system?

6) How can I get my 8 month old baby to eat more solid food? She is nursing so much it drives me crazy!

Fortunately, I found a labeling solution:

1. Go to the office supply store. a) Purchase clear sleeves for business cards, the ones that have adhesive on one side. b) Purchase blank business cards . I like to use ones that I can put in my printer, but you could write your labels out by hand, if you prefer.
2. a) Mount the adhesive side of the business card holder to your plastic box. b) Make a label out of a business card and slide it into the sleeve.

Voila! Now you can have nice, neat, beautiful labels, and you can switch them out whenever needed. Most word processing programs have a template for making business cards, so that makes it east to see what font will fit, etc. For more Works-For-Me-Wednesday posts please visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer.

My other Works-For-Me-Wednesday posts:

Vacationing with Young Children

Great Pasta

Fine Hair Hair Care

Teaching Independence

Cook’s Illustrated

Rx Info

Sleep Baby Sleep

Grocery Sack–Alternative Use

Stickers

One thing that has worked for us: When a child states a need he is capable of meeting himself, we respond with: What should you do? For example, Duncan: “I’m thirsty.” Pmom: “What should you do?” Duncan: “Get a glass?” Pmom: “Good! Go ahead, honey!”

It’s simple, but it has really helped.

For more Works-For-Me Wednesday Wisdom, visit Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer

1. Use plenty of water and a large pot. The noodles need to boil freely to cook properly and not turn out sticky.

2. Salt the water. Use at least 1 tablespoon of table salt. You want your noodles seasoned on the inside, not just the outside.

3. Do not use oil. If you use plenty of water, you won’t need it, and oil will interfere with the ability of the sauce to stick to the pasta.

4. Try using the smallest number of minutes on the package. I used to always test my noodles. Now I simply time them. It is much simpler.

5. Reserve 1/3 cup of the hot cooking water. This will allow you to adjust the consistency of your sauce if necessary later. I find that many homemade sauces benefit from a bit of the cooking water. You won’t forget to reserve the water if you set your glass or metal measuring cup in the colander. The measuring cup will serve as a visual cue when you are just about to pour off the water.

As with almost everything I know about cooking, I got these ideas from Cook’s Illustrated.com Their website and other publications are content worth paying for.

My other WFMW posts include:
Vacationing with young children;
Hair care for fine hair;
Reading Rx info;
Cook’s Illustrated;
stickers and kids
grocery sack as giant disposable glove
white noise & swaddling

Visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer for other Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips.

Works for Me Wednesday is backwards-themed this week. For more advice-giving opportunities [show what you've learned!], visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer

Neutrogena’s line of triple moisture products works for our baby-fine, fly-away, easily tangled hair. I’ve used it for over a year. The shampoo and conditioner clean well, leave no residue, and don’t weigh the hair down. They leave it less tangly than others. The leave-in conditioner is a true breakthrough. The tangles just comb right through after we put that on. It does not make your hair stiff as many of the leave-in conditioner sprays do. Barrettes still fall right out–but at least the hair can be combed.

Do you have fine hair? Or do you have children who do? How do you manage it? My 8 year old princess wants to have very long hair, but she has the same poor hair genes I do. How can I keep her looking nice when nothing will stay in?

See more Works-for-Me-Wednesday tips at Rocks In My Dryer

Seven months ago, I was about to give birth. Today I have a charming nursling. Two different doctors have prescribed medicine dangerous for my condition (pregnant or breastfeeding) in these past seven months. When it happened last week, I was given every assurance that the Rx was safe to take while breastfeeding. The pharmacy info assured me that it wasn’t. After the fact, my doctor offered her apologies. I accept them (we all make mistakes), but I don’t know that I will trust her again.

Remember: you are the best guardian of your own and your sweet baby’s health. Rx mistakes are much more likely in case of pregnancy or breastfeeding. Beware!

P.S. Did you know that some medicines that would be fine to take in your second or third trimester should not be taken right before you expect to give birth? I didn’t–until I learned it from the Rx literature I’d been prescribed immediately before my due date.

See more Works-For-Me-Wednesday ideas at Rocks in my dryer.

Cook’s Illustrated has changed my life. It definitely works for me. I have always thought of myself as a cook and as a person who liked to cook. Unfortunately, the truth is that after leaving home for college I didn’t have much opportunity to cook. So, when my dissertation was finally finished, and I finally had a husband and children to cook for, and a kitchen to cook in, I didn’t know that much about cooking. Enthusiasm, yes. Knowledge, no. That’s where Cook’s Illustrated comes in. These are the people who do America’s Test Kitchen on PBS (I haven’t seen much of that because we don’t have TV). They publish cookbooks (often available at Costco for a good price), and two magazines, Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country, and also have websites for each of these magazines.

If you are a cook into experimenting and tasting and intuition-style cooking, the “art” of cooking, then this is probably not for you. (I admire you! But I don’t recommend these products.) However, if you want someone to go into great detail and tell you exactly what to do, this is for you. They thoroughly test their recipes (the problem with getting free recipes from the internet (and from cookbooks, for that mattter) is that often they are not thoroughly tested. The problem with getting recipes from friends and family, is that they are often not specific enough to allow you to duplicate their results.

Cook’s Illustrated recipes work. If you are a novice cook, you can make these recipes. They will tell you what to do, how to do it, and why their way is the best way. Their recipes are fabulous. You can make food that is far better than what you order at the restaurant. I have been amazed at what I am capable of when I follow their directions. Two things I particularly like are their taste tests: the best olive oil, the best peanut butter, etc., and their equipment ratings: the best food processor, the best waffle iron.

My favorite Cook’s Illustrated product is The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. If you are only going to get one item, get that one. It has all the basic recipes you will need, and little sidebars with tasting and equipment advice. My second favorite would be my membership to Cook’s Illustrated.com. Although membership to the website costs money, for me it is totally worth it. I love being able to input my ingredients and get suggestions for recipes (and remember these recipes all work and have that fabulous level of detail in the instructions). The website is also nice becuase it includes all of their tastings and equpment reviews, and will automatically print out a shopping list for whichever recipe you’d like to try.

Have you ever noticed that your children get stickers everywhere you go? At the grocery store, the doctor’s office, at preschool, on advertisements in the mail? Some from Grandma at Halloween or Valentines Day?

Get a sticker box. Occasionally, my son wants to wear a sticker he has been given immediately. Often, though, the sticker is forgotten and left in the car or on the counter in the kitchen. I hoard all such stickers. I keep them in a little plastic see-through box. Occasionally, I buy stickers I like and add them to the box, but the majority of the stickers are from elsewhere! I keep the little box out of sight, waiting for the right moment.

When the right moment comes, I break out the scratch paper (or nicer paper if they are making a card or art that they want to give someone) and hand over the box. I used to worry that Duncan or Amelia would exhaust the collection in a single afternoon! Not so. Take courage Mommy and hand over those stickers! Three reasons:

1) The size and variety of the collection make looking half the fun

2) Short attention spans

3) Peeling and sticking takes dexterity and concentration. This is hard work!

When is the right moment?:

plane trips

sick days

when one child is doing something fun and the other gets left behind

when dexterity challenged children want to make art.

Stickers are great for the plane. I bought a cheap little photo album for $1. My toddler stayed busy selecting stickers, sticking the stickers on scratch paper, and then flipping through the album. He loved it and it kept him in his seat, happy and safe.

My daughter Amelia has very poor fine motor control. She feels frustrated when she finds that she can’t do the artsy stuff other girls her age do. Drawing will never be her forte. But she can make a nice card with stickers–she is able to express her creativity and feel good about the result.

For more works-for-me tips, visit Shannon at:

http://www.rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/