Teach your kid how to properly interact with animals

Spending quality time with animals can do wonders for kid's development. I've seen the impact it made on my daughter and I will continue to seek opportunities for these interactions.
However, children are still learning right from wrong, and I've seen so many situations when adults don't provide any guidelines when it comes to playing with pets. This can jeopardise the integrity of the animal and the child.
Here I've compiled a few things you should keep in mind when you allow your kid to interact with animals.

Let me start by clarifying exactly where my experience comes from. We have two dogs at home, so we had to teach our daughter from very early on how to have a safe and healthy relationship with them. My mom grows chickens in her house in Russia, so Sofia had the opportunity to observe and care for them when we visited my family about a year ago. She has also interacted with cats, goats, horses, pigs and camels either on our camping trips or in Mexican/American zoos. All of my advice comes from observing my daughter and mistakes she sometimes makes and trying to correct them so that both my daughter and the animal are safe and comfortable.

So, there you go. I'm no expert, I'm just a mom. You've been warned. If you feel like I'm doing something wrong, please feel free to point that out in the comments. I appreciate any feedback.

5 eye-catching, but simple braided hairstyles

I think my love for braids is pretty evident. They look amazing and also secure your (or your little one's) hair for a long time. And the best part is - you can get super creative and make them as complex as you want.
Today I wanted to give you some ideas of little twists on hairstyles that are very simple but have this little extra to catch the eye.
Of course, knowing how to do a simple braid is essential. Knowing the Dutch one is highly encouraged as it would give you more options. Also, being able to 'guide' the braid in a curved manner will be needed for some of those, but getting a hang of it is a 5-minute thing. Other than that you'll only need your creativity and enthusiasm.

Snack ideas for a quick munch or a mess-free lunch for all the moms out there

I'm sure a lot of parents will relate to this situation: you are in a hurry, 5 minutes late in fact, but it's lunchtime and your kid is hungry. It's your job to provide them with food and comfort. And ideally, it would be your only job. But we live in a fast-pace heck-tik world and sometimes multitasking is the only way to go.
To ease things up a bit I want to bring up the subject of quick and lazy no-brainers that could be a nice munch to your kid before you get to some real food or even become simple mess-free lunches that you can have on the go.
These snacks are not ground-breaking in any way, but there is something pleasant in compiling them together and could serve as a good base for inspiration in the time of need.

Potty training on the go

I think we can all agree that potty training is a stressful time in any family's life. It's time and energy consuming, not to mention all the pee and poop and laundry that comes with it. Therefore, it may seem daunting to travel or even go out at this delicate but crucial time.
Today I intend to convince you that you most definitely can road trip and fly and explore while potty training. Even though accidents will happen, they won't be nearly as dreadful as we expect them to be.

Different braided hairstyles for kids

Two weeks ago we talked about surviving the "hair-always-in-their-face" stage and I promised to make a post about hairstyles that are more complex and work for older kids with longer hair. Today we are going to dive into that.
Personally, I find braiding hair relaxing, so I take any chance to do it and play around with different ideas. Fixing your kid's hair should be fun for both you and your child. I recommend having a short cartoon on or a book that can keep them still for the process, but if your kid is not cooperating and starts getting frustrated instead, please skip the braids and just make a fast ponytail or secure their fringe with a clip. Don't turn it into a negative experience.
Obviously, for any of these hairstyles, you'll need to be comfortable and confident with braiding. And that can only be achieved through practice.

This is a normal french braid, which is a classic, but I would highly recommend for you to also learn how to do the dutch braid. This way you'll be able to change things up more often. Also, I find some hairstyles much easier to make with the dutch braid instead of the french one.

If you thought taking one flight with a kid wasn't hard enough | LAX - Cherepovets (crazy traveling edition)

Slowly moving on with our diary-like adventurous posts and the subject for today is our long journey to Russia. This wasn't the longest time it took us to get from point A to point B, but the longest we've ever travelled with a child and somewhat the most stressful.
We started off with an amazing attitude. I was ready to see my family, Sofi was so excited, no amount of words could do it justice and my husband was eager to change the routine of our days. We had such high expectations, so the drive to LA wasn't bad at all.

However, as soon as we got to the airport things just started happening.

What to do with 1-year-old's hair

Anyone who has a child with long hair knows how fun it is to play with it, get creative and come up with all sorts of hairstyles. But let's be honest, growing it out is a messy struggle. You could cut their fringe and forget about hair in the face, but for those who don't want to do it, the transition between short and long hair could be quite frustrating.
As always, I would like to push some ideas around and show you how we got through that stage with my daughter, whose hair has never been cut even once.

What we eat on a camping trip

I've wanted to talk about this for a while now because my husband and I love camping. When we just met, we used to go for long walks or hike to Fushan (浮山 - literally 'Fu mountain', one of the three big mountains of Qingdao). Back then we used to just get some water, a few beers and something from local vendors.

Simple, but important things you need to do with your kid

Every parent in the world wants their kid to be loving, smart, kind, successful, polite... just the very best, really. But raising one is no joke, and every parent knows that "making" them into great people is not as straight forward as we wish it was. To help you along, I want to throw around some ideas of simple, but very important things and activities that could really improve your kid's view of the world and him\herself.

How to fly with a 2-year old

About 2 years ago I posted a similar article that listed a few things you need to consider while flying with a baby. It would still be relevant for those of you who has a baby of 1 year and under. However, traveling with a kid who is 2 and a half years old is a whole other thing, therefore today I want to give you some tips about those unpredictable loving-and-hating semi-independent guys and most importantly on how to keep them happy during a flight.

Camping with a toddler

Hello, everyone! Last week I couldn’t upload anything, because I just got caught up in chores and projects, but don’t worry, I am going to make up for it, because today’s post is going to be a big one. So, please, get comfortable and let me convince you to go camping with your impossible toddler.

Are you and your partner ready to have a baby?

I’ve been talking a lot about mental health and parenting, but somehow forgot that probably the most stressful and scary time is when you are still expecting a baby. So in the next few weeks I would like to bring up the subject of pregnancy because there is so much to discuss.

 

The topic of this week’s post will be having the talk of whether or not you and your partner are ready to have a baby. It’s worth mentioning that I’m specifically targeting the situation when you have a conscious choice to make. So when you are thinking about having a baby and want to know what exactly to discuss with your partner or you just found out you are pregnant and want to be prepared beforehand for all the possible arguments, because trust me children bring out quite a few.

Our job as parents

Children are all unique, incredibly curious, fast learning and observant little humans. You’d be surprised how early they start having their own personality completely separate from yours and not necessarily even influenced by it. Even before they learn how to speak, they deserve the right to have control over their life. Yes, they are still inexperienced and cannot get by without help, but it doesn’t mean that their life belongs to their caregivers.

Your job as a parent is to provide them with your protection and offer your wisdom as well as expose them to a variety of situations in order to help them learn, develop and grow. After all, they are not meant to stay with us forever, therefore it’s our job as parents to assure that they are capable of living on their own. And it’s not only our responsibility to make sure they survive in the world, but also that they are happy, because 70-80 years of feeling incapable, useless, unappreciated and unhappy is not living at all.

Teach them how to be independent by showing them how to do everything. Let them simply observe, try and make mistakes. Also let them be children. It’s very easy to rush things and just wait for them to go to school, go to bed, grow up, become responsible and etc. But those early years of childhood are the only ones when they are going to feel truly childishly happy. When they can just be silly, depend on you and get dirty in the puddle.

Don’t try to change their personality. They are living their own life and they should be entitled to their preferences. Instead of trying to make them be the way you are, try to bring out the important traits such as love, compassion, responsibility, confidence and the respect for others while letting them keep their own perspective of the world.

They are unique little people. Respect that and don’t try to transfer your own dreams, goals and preferences onto them. Support their decisions even if you don’t understand them. I know it’s tempting to get them involved into something you like, but if they truly don’t enjoy it, you have no right to force it on them. They are your kids, yes, but their choices are not yours to make. Make peace with that. Trust their instincts, let them choose their own path and love them no matter what.

Be honest with them. You are human. You make mistakes sometimes and that’s all right. Don’t be afraid to admit to them. No one is perfect. Apologize to your kids if you’ve done something you regret, even if they are little, even if you feel like they can’t comprehend the importance of the situation. Remember that they feel frustrated and stressed too sometimes. Don’t let miscommunication cause you a conflict.

Respect and trust goes both ways. If you don’t tell them “please” and “thank you”, why should they? If you don’t trust them and question everything they say, why should they trust you with what you are trying to teach them? Finally, if you are judging them for something they’ve done and don’t even try to put yourself in their shoes, they will do the same thing back to you. It’s all teamwork, all right?

And in the end if you accept them for who they are and love them no matter what, you are going to get the best friend of your entire life. The friend that will not be afraid to share his fears with you, the one that you can be insanely proud of and the one that will love you more than anything in the world.

10 tips that I picked up from Montessori

It has occurred to me that lately I haven’t been able to stimulate my daughter enough. She was so eager to learn everything and I really wanted to teach her about our amazing world, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Therefore, we decided to send her to Montessori school so that trained teachers can teach her everything with proper materials and knowledge.

 

It was the best decision we have ever taken. I can not stress this enough: Montessori method is amazing! It is gentle, it considers the needs of every child individually, it is very effective and it teaches kids to be kind and polite to people around them as well as encourages them to clean after themselves and be organized.

Since for two weeks I went to school with her, I have picked up a few interesting and simple tips that actually make a huge difference in a long run. I try to mimic teacher’s behavior at home and now that I know it actually works I want to share those tips with you so that you too can have a content responsible child and eliminate both yours and your child’s stress.

How to trick your 1 year old into eating

My daughter has never been picky with food. She loved vegetables, ate all the soups that I offered her and never complained. She used to get very distracted and needed to be reminded that she still had food, but that was our biggest problem. Then, all of a sudden at around 1 year of age she started refusing to eat. She would try to get out of the chair, cry, push the spoon away, throw away all of the finger foods that I was giving her and just reject anything I had to offer. That was pretty hard on me, because she was not gaining enough weight already, so when she started to eat 3 times less than she normally would I started to get very stressed out. I was terrified of having a picky child as well.

Now about a month has passed since then and my daughter is eating pretty well. I feel like I've picked up a few little tricks along the way, so today I’m going to share them with you.

My experience with sleep training

Finally. FINALLY! I am a proud mom of a sleep-trained baby and I can’t believe it! So, here I’ll be sharing my personal experience with it. Please, remember that I’m not offering you any kind of advice, because I am a first time mom and I’m completely clueless and terrified.

Also, the original post that lead me to this particular sleep training program is right here - http://www.parenting.com/article/sleep-training. I strongly suggest you check it out.

Long story short, my baby is really spoiled. I let her fall asleep during breastfeeding, then when she would wake up after 30 minutes I would walk her to sleep, offer her some more milk when she wakes up every 2-3 hours at night and if this doesn’t work, I would just walk her again. It was terrible, but I didn’t want to cry it out, because we tried it once and it went horrible for us. All that was until we went to our doctor for 9 month check-up. He said that she was 200 g underweight and I needed to feed her more solids and only breastfeed her 4 times a day. That’s when I realized that I can’t do it unless she sleeps through the night. I started getting anxious and worried because I didn’t want to go through it again. But my daughter’s weight was more important. That’s when I stumbled upon that post about gentle 9 days sleep-training.

Judgmental advice

Hello, everyone! I suddenly felt the urge to write about this, because I’ve had enough!

Being a parent is tough. I happen to believe that it is the most important job we have, because, frankly, we are just animals and we need to reproduce and raise our offspring, so we are genetically programmed to make a big deal out of it. Maybe this is the only way we can do a good job.

Everyone has their own idea of what being a good parent is. And being arrogant self- absorbed species that we are we all think that our way to do it is THE way and the rest of parents are crazy, because they raise their kids differently. Before I had a kid I thought it was funny how much people got invested in my pregnancy. They would ask me tons of questions, they would share their experiences, they would tell me what to expect and most importantly they would give me advice. A lot of advice I didn’t ask for, didn’t need and on subjects that were not their business in the first place. I liked it then. Talking about babies was exciting and new and I couldn’t wait to finally experience it all.

When I had my baby however advice suddenly stopped being nice and interesting and started being very judgmental and annoying. I started having a lot of stupid arguments with my family, for example, my mom and I nearly got in a fight because of potty training. People who had kids 20 years ago would give me advice based on something that they were told and that is already proven to be incorrect. People who don’t even have children would give me advice based on I don’t even know what. People I barely know would tell me what to do even when we weren’t talking about my daughter. The conversation would always go a little something like this: “Hey, your daughter is so big already! Is she eating solids yet? You know that you should give her vegetables first, right? Otherwise she will never eat them.” Or “Hi! Wow, I haven’t seen you guys in a while. Does Sofia have teeth already? No? You should have this checked, because my friend’s son is two months younger and he already has two teeth.” Or “Is she sleeping through the night? No? You need to cry it out asap otherwise you will suffer for the first 2 years of her life.” Or “You are giving her egg yolks? No, no, NO! When I had my baby (5 or 10 or 30 years ago) I was told that you shouldn’t give them eggs until they are 1 year old.” And so on and so forth.

And the worst part is even if I explain them that the reason I give her egg yolks is because only egg whites have proteins that some kids are allergic to. Or the reason I don’t want other people to touch her is not because I’m a dick or afraid of a curse or something, but actually because they haven’t washed their hands after touching money. Or that it’s ok she doesn’t talk yet, because she is learning 3 languages instead of one. Even then they still refuse to even consider that they might be wrong about something or that it’s ok that different people have different approaches to parenting and none of them are wrong.

And then it goes like this: “Well, of course she is getting sick, it’s because you don’t let her eat sand and build her immune system.” “No wonder she is so small, you don’t give her formula along with breast milk.” “You are not potty training her. She is going to wear a diaper until she is 18” and etc.

When people say something like this, I really want to be rude and say something like: “Mind your own business” or “First have children and then give advice about them” or even “Why don’t you take your advice and shove it…….” Well, you get the idea. But instead of saying that, I want to tell you this. No matter how many children you have or how early they started talking or how many diplomas in kid psychology you have, please don’t be so close-minded. Try to remember, how tough it was to be a new parent. Try to consider that you might be wrong about something if your knowledge is not updated. Try to imagine how many people have given advice to the person that you are talking to. Try to understand that they might be very tired of hearing them or might have another opinion about it and it’s ok. Try to consider that you might actually offend someone. And if they snap and say something rude, please keep in mind that they are not robots and they lose their patience sometimes and have emotions that are out of their control. Just try to consider another person’s feelings for a second.

I hope I didn’t offend anyone with this post. I just needed to let it out. The bottom line here is: Let’s all be a little bit nicer to each other and try to keep an open mind. Then, I believe, we will all be a little bit happier.

Flying with your baby

Finally after almost a month of traveling we are home: all exhausted and ready to get back to our calm and boring life for a while. I apologize for taking forever to write this post, but even after two months of being home I can’t get all the things sorted out. Every day is such a rush and a total mess, but if you are reading this, chances are, you are a parent yourself and you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Today I wanted to address a very scary and curious for any parent thing – taking your baby on an airplane. If you are looking for a fast answer, there it is: taking your baby on an airplane is all right and not scary and you can totally do it and get out of it alive.

 

Here are a few things to consider:

How to keep it together and not go insane with a baby.

Being a parent is, hands down, one of the hardest things ever. It requires great patience, self-control, time management, multitasking and a great amount of sacrifice. At first it can be so overwhelming that you can’t help but wonder, how do everyone do it and manages not to lose their mind. Today I wanted to share some little tips on how do I keep it together and try to still stay on top of everything.

Ways to get your little one to sleep

Hello, everyone! So, baby sleep is like magic - really cool but with no proof of existence. When I was pregnant, I read an article that said that babies sleep 15-16 hours a day. I thought to myself: "Well, this is great! I don't know what is everybody whining about." Little did I know...
Now, my daughter is three months old and I feel like I'm finally figuring everything out. The most helpful advice I can give you is try different things. Babies are constantly changing. Believe me, the thing that worked one day might completely fail the other day, but don’t give up. Since your baby doesn’t have any habits yet, you have to give them time to develop one.
Here are a few things that helped our baby to sleep better. I hope you find it helpful.