Top Tips to Help Your Little Ones Have a Great Night Sleep

All parents will have had first-hand experience of a tired child, as my Mommy does with me. With grumpiness ruling, your child can be a handful, as they struggle to deal with the day’s events while running on empty. It is therefore imperative that you ensure they get the best night’s sleep possible. Here’s how you do it…

Ensure their safety

Making the transition from cot to bed can be a troublesome process. Used to the security of a cot, it is not unusual for parents to hear bumps in the night, as their child falls out of bed. This can cause injury so it is necessary to take precautions to prevent this. A bed rail will stop your child from rolling off the end of the bed, without taking away the maturity of a proper bed. There is a great selection available at Safetots, with wooden, mesh and tube designs. 

Remember to take precautions when designing the layout of your little one’s room. Radiators can get piping hot, especially in winter months, so avoid pushing your child’s bed up against it, as your child could accidently burn themselves during the night. 

Relax and unwind

Sending your toddler to bed after an exhilarating game of football is hardly going to encourage their sleep. They’ll have bags of energy and want to keep playing, so adopt a calming bedtime routine that will give your child their much needed rest. 

Start off your bedtime routine with a bubble bath followed by wrapping them up in some cosy pyjamas. Tuck your child up in bed and spend some quality time with them by reading them a story. Use a soft, quiet reading voice as this is more likely to soothe your child off to sleep. As for me, a bedtime story and a good night prayer always works.

Relieve nervousness

Irrational fears are common with children, especially when it comes to sleeping. Whether it’s a fear of the dark, a dislike of being alone or the prospect of a monster under the bed, your child can do everything to avoid the nightmare of going to bed. 

If your child is afraid of the dark, you can invest in a nightlight that will provide a dim light that will help relieve their nervousness and gently ease them off to sleep. Gradually, your child will learn that the dark is not frightening and they will be able to sleep without the nightlight. My Mommy always has a bedside lamp that she leaves on until I doze off to Lalaland.

Children are easily influenced, drinking in everything that is said to them. If siblings or friends try to scare your child with ghostly tales and spooky stories, make sure your child knows that they aren’t real and are only a joke. Such clarification will nip this fear in the bud, preventing it from becoming more serious and affecting their ability to sleep at night. 

You can find more information about helping your child sleep, here.

How about you Mommy? How do you help your little one get a good night's sleep?

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Scribble Cards For "On The Way"

Does your family like to go on roadtrips? What do you usually do to keep your little ones from getting bored along the way?

I may just have the answer to that! The scribble cards for "on the way". Actually, I just translated it in the best way I can. :-) It is actually called "Kritzelkarten für unterwegs" but its English original name is "Usborne Activity Cards Holiday Doodles".

This handy and small activity box is composed of 50 doodle cards that encourages children to add details to the pictures and even to answer some easy mazes. There is also a special pen with which to doodle on the card. So whether you are in the car, in the plane or in the train, or even at home when it is raining and too wet to play outside, you will never get bored. You could let your imagination run wild and these set of cards allows you to be more creative as you try to continue on with the drawings.

Like drawing the earrings on this woman's face:

To putting in the decors and creatures in the fish tank:

I guess it will be more interesting if the pen comes in different colors too!

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Exploring the Animal Kingdom With Tiptoi

I enjoy going to the city library. The new one along Mailänder Platz is a very modern one and it has got an entire floor for the children's section on the 2nd floor! What I love about this section is that we are allowed to make some noise... but not the annoying kind of noise. We can ask questions, ask our parents to read a book aloud to us or play some educational board games.

On my latest visit to the library, I was in the mood for some animal adventure and so I took the educational gameboard Adventure Animal Kingdom (Abenteuer Tierwelt) from the shelf and my Mommy got the Tiptoi pen from the librarian.

It is a game with four levels of difficulty: green, red, blue and yellow. It was easy to play the game. I choose the green and red levels. For the green level, I just had to tip the pen onto the animal cards that look like puzzle pieces and listened to the general information about the animal. There are cards that have paw prints logo on them and/or sound logo on them. The paw prints are for the red level I think and you will try to match the paw print from the round cards to the type of animal. You can use the pen to help you find the right animal with the corresponding print as it will tell you what animal it is and then some more additional information. As for the sound logo, it allows you to learn what kind of sounds animals make. It helps you identify (if you are in the zoo, for example) what kind of animal it is just by listening to the sound it makes.

It really is an interesting game. This is a great gift for children who are in the early stages of school as a supplementary learning material. Just a good way of confirming that indeed learning can be FUN! 

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Dressing Up For the Homecoming

Little as I am, I love going to parties. Whenever I am invited to one, I almost always ask my mom if I could wear a dress. Most of the time, I come wearing a dress since in most of these gatherings, we always get the chance to dance.  

Perhaps when I am grown, I will never tire of wearing dresses, being the "princess" that I am. I would look forward to those school dances when I would dance the night away, wearing my best dress. Even when I am already away from school and starting my own career, there will always still be chances to dance especially during Homecoming. I may not be the homecoming queen but just being there at homecoming will be more than enough. It would be lovely to see old familiar faces again and reminisce on days past. But I know these are yet to happen many many years from now. 

But for those of you who are going to the Homecoming this year, do you already have something to wear? I think the Homecoming is an important event in an alumnus' life and it doesn't happen very often. So if you still haven't got anything to wear, there are a lot of appropriate dresses to choose from. For this season's homecoming dresses 2013, there are many designs and colors to choose from.

I especially love this little black dress in A-line and chiffon. This will look good on anyone!

Or this princess cut A-line dress in champagne color is also very sweet and elegant and perfect for the younger ones:

Start looking now for your homecoming dress and look your best in this year's Homecoming! And oh, let me know how it went!

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