How to Keep Your Table Clean from Children

Having a child is most certainly the dream of every single parent that lives in this world. Without any children, it is often the case that life will feel so empty for married couples. It feels like there is something missing in their life, even if the couples actually seem to have a happy marriage life. However, when the married couples out there finally have their very own child, there are things they need to pay attention to. One thing is their children’s table. Since children are normally very active, it is not a rare sight to see a children’s table getting dirty every so often. Unfortunately, what the children leave on their table can often leave stains that are very hard to remove without the right tablecloth. With that being said, it is of utmost importance that you, as a parent, figure out how to keep your table clean from children.

To get things started, you need to know what kind of wipe clean tablecloth you need. When it comes to the tablecloth, there are often quite a few options to choose from. Vinyl, for an example, is a great choice for the designs, colors and also the value it holds. However, for those who do not really fancy this particular material, they can always go for the oilcloth material as well. The latter is usually made of printed cotton and is coated with gloss PVC material. Yet, if that still does not sound like a suitable option, perhaps this next one will do. This one is made of acrylic, two layers mostly, and it is often finished with genuine Teflon material.

In addition to all of those options mentioned above, there are times when a wipeable tablecloth comes in handy. One of the main advantages with this tablecloth is that it is normally fairly easy to customize it depending on the type of occasions you are planning to organize for your children. A birthday party is a good example. Nevertheless, when it comes to such a tablecloth, there is one thing that is very important for you to keep in mind. Taking into account the fact that this particular type of tablecloth is normally available in different designs, sizes and shapes, a lot of people often end up making a purchase on the wrong one. Apart from that, wrinkles tend to appear as well if you handle the material inappropriately. Fortunately, you can usually get rid of the wrinkles quite easily by means of a hair dryer. Remember to use only low heat and do not dry it for more than mere five minutes.

Now that you have figured out which kind of children’s tablecloth, you can start paying attention to your children’s table. First of all, you need to see if there is any stain on it. If there is, you need to assess whether the stain is permanent, such as the ink of a permanent marker, or if the stain can actually be removed without too many problems. It is also a good idea to do some researches, either online or offline, regarding the stain before you even think about wiping it away. Keep in mind that by using the wrong material and technique, you will only make the stain spread even wider instead. Even worse, the stain may stick even more onto the table.

Now, after doing your research and finding out how to properly remove the stain on your children’s table, you may often need to use some sorts of chemical cleaner as well. As a matter of fact, there are often times when wipe clean tablecloth needs to be paired with such a cleaning product. However, while you are using a chemical cleaner, there is one thing you will have to keep in mind. You are strongly advised against using the chemical cleaner on your children’s furniture. This may damage the furniture and even worse, your children may well be exposed to the harmful effect of the chemicals.

Now, if the stain on your children’s table comes from food, wipeing the plastic tablecloth combined with mild detergent and warm water should do. Yet, if the stain comes from something rather strong, such as a permanent marker, you will need to use nail polish remover. Remember, though, that you need to use a remover that does not come with any acetones in it.

When you try to clean your children’s table using a children’s tablecloth, you need to keep in mind that you are recommended not to be timid. You need to be firm instead. Make sure that you wipe the stain until it washes away. It is true that you may have to try to wipe the stain a number of times. However, that is the only option you have if you want your children’s table to be clean once again so that your children will be able to use the table safely. After all, there is nothing more important than your children’s safety, is there?

When you have wiped away the stain on the table using the desired plastic tablecloth, you should know that your job is far from complete. After wiping the table, you also have to dry it off. However, before you actually try to dry off the table your children usually use, you may have to use water and mild soap. Just in case you wonder, the water and mild soap will be very useful to get rid of any traces left behind by the chemical cleaner you may have used, as mentioned earlier. Then, when you are done with this, you can start drying off the table for real. It is highly recommended that you not only wipe and dry the table your children use but also the chairs. Your children won’t be able to use the table without the chairs after all, will they?

As you can see, after all being said, keeping your table clean from children is not actually too difficult to accomplish. All you need is the right material and technique and you will be able to kiss the stains on your children’s table goodbye in nearly no time at all.

Christmas Gifts for Babies – Ideas and How to Choose

The Christmas season is approaching very soon and it is time to think about what gifts you can give to the special people in your life. Speaking of Christmas gifts, there are plenty of people out there to whom you can give the gifts, even including babies. It can be your own baby or the baby that belongs to your friend or best friend. However, there are quite a few things you should know if you are to buy Christmas gifts for babies.
To begin with, it is essential to figure out what you actually want the Christmas gift to do, both to the baby and also to its parents alike. Most of the time, you can either choose something practical that the baby can use right away or something that will do the baby a favor for its whole life, even when it grows up. Some gifts, however, although can be used by the baby immediately, they can often be treasured as well and can be used later in the future.

The next thing you need to think about when it comes to buying a Christmas gift for a baby is whether the gift will have any significant meaning. You may not realize this, but it is a fact that some Christmas gifts end up as family heirlooms. This kind of gifts is not usually expensive and yet, it often becomes priceless as time goes by. If you are confused about what type of gifts you can give that can turn out priceless, some examples include a fairy tale illustration book, antique or collectible toys, precious metals and even decorations for a Christmas tree.

If, while looking for a suitable gift for a baby, you become confused and can’t decide what to spend your money on, it is always a good idea to wander around in some baby gift stores you can find out there. Take your time to look around as there is no need to rush. Besides, the storekeepers won’t get mad at you, either, for just looking around at the items available in the stores. Believe it or not, for a Christmas gift, you can actually buy nappies too!

Every baby likes a toy. Therefore, you may want to consider getting a baby a soft toy for its Christmas gift. You need to pay careful attention to the safety of the baby, though. You need to assess whether the soft toy you are buying is actually safe or if it actually poses a risk of hazard. Also, you really should not feel offended when the parents of the baby do not actually put the toy you give on the baby’s side. Safety always comes first.

The next thing you can do while trying to choose Christmas gifts for babies is to consider buying baby clothes. Alternatively, you can even knit the clothes yourself. Aside from the clothes, there are also other items you can knit. Baby blankets and booties are good ideas, to be honest. Or, if you are good with handicrafts, you can also make some for the baby. However, it is of utmost importance that you remind the baby’s parents never to allow the baby to play with the crafts all by itself as it may prove dangerous.

Best Painting Ideas for Kids

Do you by any chance have any children in your household? If so, you may have noticed that painting is often one of your children’s most favorite activities to do during their leisure time. Which child does not like painting, anyway? Speaking of painting activity for children, there are in fact quite a few great ideas you can try. These painting ideas for kids will most likely cheer your kids up, allowing them to spend their leisure time pleasantly and even forget about the amount of time they have spent painting.

When it comes to painting for children, it is often the case that you will need these materials, which are, finger paint, tempera paint, acrylic paint and sometimes, homemade art materials. When you have had all the materials ready, it is time you let your children start painting. For a starter, your children may want to do some finger painting activities. Believe it or not, this is always a fun activity for children, even though some people may think of it as a dirty activity to carry out. Well, they may be right and yet, it is still fun all the same. With finger painting, children are supposed to soak their fingers into wet paints. Then, when their fingers are covered with the paint, they can start painting whatever they like to paint. One thing about finger painting is that it stimulates your children’s sensory art, which is very important for growing children.

The next idea that you can also try is to let your children take part in a body painting activity with their art group. In this case, your children will often need washable tempera paint. Fortunately, there are plenty of tempera paints out there that are non-toxic and should thus be safe for children to play around with. In this activity, children are normally supposed to take off their clothes and then put the paint on their body. It can be anywhere on their body. Of course, it is best to keep their clothes away, otherwise you may have a hard time trying to wash the paint off your children’s clothes.

Puffy painting is a great painting idea as well for your kids. Most of the time, however, besides the tempera paint, this activity requires salt, water, flour and squeeze containers as well. When it comes to puffy painting, some children tend to squeeze the paint bottle in just one place without moving to the other area of the canvas. In this case, you may want to encourage your children to paint other areas of the canvas. If your children squeeze the paint on just a certain area of the canvas, the paint will end up too thick. As a result, it may need a longer time to dry out. What is interesting about puffy painting is that when the paint finally dries out, the salt in the paint will crystallize, making the painting glittery.

Last but not least, you can also encourage your children to engage in a marble painting activity. Most children do have marbles, after all, so why not use them to do something fun, right? In this activity, children can choose which marble to put into which paint color. Then, when they have had their marbles completely covered in paints, they can start rolling out those marbles on a piece of paper to create their painting. Remember, the paper should first be placed on something that can prevent the marbles from rolling off the paper. A plastic plate may be a good idea here.

Here's a really good video on finger painting I found. This one shows you how to paint a fish!

How to Make Your Home Safe for Your Walking Baby

It is something that you can’t avoid that your baby will start learning to walk at a certain age. However, when this happens, there are things you need to do besides just watching the baby walk. It is utterly important that you make sure your house is safe for your baby to learn to walk. But how can you do that? Well, here are some tips on how you can make your home as safe as possible for the baby to start learning to move the first steps of its life.

First of all, you need to know what a baby sees when it crawls. In order to do that, it is highly recommended that you try to crawl alongside your baby. You may want to note that there is nothing shameful about this. Instead, by crawling just like your baby does, you will be able to spot if there is any obstacle in the way and you can remove it immediately before your baby actually touches or hits the obstacle. Keep in mind that some obstacles can prove to be quite harmful for a baby. However, you may not want to remove some objects that are steady and have soft edges. These objects can often prove to help your baby to learn how to stand up all on its own. Nonetheless, make sure that the objects are not heavy. Things like closets and bookcases will injure your baby seriously if they fall onto them.

The next thing you may also want to do is to prop up your baby a little bit. For instance, you can roll a bath towel under your baby’s arms as well as its upper body parts, leaving only its elbows on contact with the floor. Realise it or not, this will help the baby have a clearer look of its surroundings because the baby will have a higher position.

Lowering the décor of your home is often a wise idea as well. By lowering the décor, you make it possible for your baby to notice the décor. This is especially true if the décor item is solid and bright in colors. Baby is attracted to such an item, you see. This will encourage your baby to crawl toward the item. In addition to lowering your home décor items, you can also put mirror in front of your baby. Believe it or not, most babies tend to be attracted to look at themselves in the mirror. Perhaps they wonder whom they are actually seeing that look like them. Who knows, right?

Even though you need to encourage your baby to crawl around the house, you should also set certain limits as to how far the baby can go. In this case, you may set up some staircase gates, if you have staircases, that is. Yet, what is even more important is that you make sure that each and every single one of the electrical outlets has been sealed properly so that your baby won’t be exposed to the risk of electricity hazard.

How to Use a Reward System for Children

It may be rather difficult at times to tell your children to do something if you don’t have anything for them in return. Children are usually very eager to earn rewards for whatever they do. These rewards do not necessarily have to be money. After all, you do not want your children to grow up materialistic, do you? However, when it comes to giving children a reward, there are things that you need to pay attention to. First of all, you need to pay attention to your children’s age range. Different age range is interested in different kinds of rewards.

Preschoolers and Toddlers

For preschoolers and toddlers, simple sticker charts will often do the trick. All you have to do is to let your children decorate the sticker charts themselves. This way, they will be more motivated to do what you tell them to do so as to earn the stickers from you that they can put on the charts. In this case, you need to make sure that the pictures on the stickers are something that your children will definitely like. For an example, if your children seem to have an interest in the automotive world, it is best for you to give them stickers with pictures of cars on them. When your children have decorated their sticker charts, it is recommended that you display the charts somewhere everyone in your house can see. This will please your children and make them proud, resulting in them getting more motivated whenever you ask them to do something.

School Age Children

As your children grow up to the school age, your reward system will have to change, but not by much anyway. As a matter of fact, you can still use the sticker system, only that you have to add something to earn besides the stickers. For instance, a school age child is normally excited about going to the playground to play with their friends or some other children in the neighborhood. Hence, for school age children, you can give rewards like when they earn a certain number of stickers, you will allow them to play in that playground.

Tweens

Tweens may no longer be interested in going to the playground, let alone collecting stickers. With that being said, you will have to think of something else. In this case, you can always give your tweens some extra privileges of sorts. For instance, when your tweens have done something you ask them to do, you can give them more time watching TV, playing video games, browsing the internet and so on.

Teenagers

Last but not least, you still have to think about what kind of rewards you can give to your teenage children. This age range, however, often proves to be the final age range where you have to give certain rewards to ask your children to do something. As they grow older, they will become more mature in thought so you should not worry about any more rewards. For teenagers, however, you can give such a reward as giving them certain privileges depending on their behavior. A good example, perhaps, is that you can let your teenage children drive a car if they have completed all the tasks you assign to them and that they behave nicely in the house.

Popular Children’s Books for Bed Time Reading

If you have pretty active children, there may be times when you find it rather hard to put your children to sleep. It does not matter even if it is already late in the night, active children tend to want to do more and more things before they can actually go to bed. If this sounds like your frequent or even daily problem, then you may want to consider reading your children a bed time story. Fortunately, there are dozens of books you can read for your children when the bed time comes and some of these books are even very popular as well.

To start it off, you may want to read your children the story of Cinderella. This is a very popular story from Walt Disney. It talks about an humble housemaid that turns into a beautiful princess in the end. So, in the story of Cinderella, there is this girl named Cinderella who works as a housemaid at the house that belongs to her stepmother. The house is also inhabited by two of her stepsisters. One day, the prince in the kingdom nearby plans to hold a grand party so that he will be able to choose one of the visiting women as her wife. To go to the party, a fairy helps turn Cinderella from a housemaid into a beautiful princess. However, what changes is only the dress that she wears as her beauty and kindness are all natural within her. So, during the night of the party, the prince happens to dance with Cinderella. Unfortunately, the princess has to come home before twelve at midnight as by that time, the fairy’s magic will start vanishing away. Rushing home, the princess accidentally leaves one of her glass shoes. That glass shoe she leaves are then used by the prince to find Cinderella from all the houses in the village nearby the kingdom. In the end, the prince and princess live happily ever after.

Besides Cinderella, there are still dozens of popular books for children’s bed time reading. One of these books is the book about sleeping beauty. In this book, the tale talks about a beautiful young girl who gets deceived by a wicked witch out of jealousy. The witch makes the young girl have a bite of a toxic apple. After that one single bite, the girl then falls asleep for until only God knows when. The only thing she may ever wake up again is if she finally finds her true love. In the end of the story, her true love actually exists and he kisses her and the beautiful young girl who was once known as the sleeping beauty has finally waken again.

Another good idea for a children’s bed time reading is the story of Frozen, which is a considerably new story, by the way. This story involves Queen Elsa and her sister, Princess Anna. During the queen’s coronation, Prince Anna accidentally makes her mad for asking permission to go out with a man whom she has barely known, who later turns out to be a wicked prince. Her sister claims that she is in love with the prince but Queen Elsa knows that it is not love. Out of her anger, the queen accidentally let go of her magic, the ice magic. She turns things into ice crystals. Even the path she leaves behind becomes crystallized, too. The queen then isolates herself, living outside the castle, in the midst of the cold, snowy mountain. Fortunately, things turn out well in the end and the queen finally learns how to control her magic.

Top 10 Lies That Parents Tell Their Children

Children, due to their young age, sometimes find it rather difficult to understand why they are not supposed to do certain things. In order to cope with that, it is often the case that parents have to find other ways to explain things to their children. One way that has become quite a popular option for generations is to tell children lie. Speaking of these lies, here are some of the top lies that parents usually tell their children.

Coffee Makes People Short

No one really knows where this particular lie comes from. In order to discourage their children from drinking coffee, parents often tell their children that coffee makes them short. However, of course, this is not necessarily true. Instead, according to researches, coffee can actually prevent type 2 diabetes and even some cancer diseases.

Chocolate Equals Acne

Eating too many chocolates is not good indeed. Hence, parents tell their children lie, saying that chocolates trigger acne. However, what really causes acne is the change of hormones in the body.

Sneezing with Open Eyes Will Cause Eyes to Fall Out

Needless to say, this is one very bizarre lie. Parents tell their children that when they sneeze, mucus is propelled at a speed of no less than 100 mph. Thus, if their eyes are open when they sneeze, they may very well fall out. However, the truth is, some people’s reflex is just not fast enough that they do not have the time to close their eyes when they sneeze and yet, these people retain their eyes.

Crossing Eyes Results in Crossed Eyes

Some children like to cross their eyes and parents do not like this. Therefore, they tell their children that if they keep on doing that, they will go cross-eyed. This is not true, though, because eyes have muscles which make sure that the eyes stay in their appropriate position.

You Will Catch Cold Going Out with Wet Hair

Though it may make sense at first, this is a definite lie. Catching cold has nothing to do with wetness. People catch cold when they are exposed to the cold virus instead.

Cramps Happen while Swimming after Eating

According to parents, when people eat, the blood is carried from the muscles all the way to the stomach. Hence, there is a higher odd that people will get cramps if they swim right after they eat and worse, they can get drowned. However, it is really not prohibited at all to exercise after eating.

When Swallowed, Chewing Gum Stays for 7 Years in the Belly

This is very questionable as it has very little to no evidence. The belly is not able to digest chewing gums, that is true. However, it will not stay in the belly. Instead, it will simply go away along with all other stuffs that the stomach cannot digest, either.

Arthritis Comes from Cracking Knuckles 

Parents often tell their children that the sound of cracking knuckles comes from gas bubbles popping up inside their joints. However, what really happens is that frequent knuckle cracking damages the ligament, reducing the strength of the hand’s grip.

TV Damages Eyesight

This is a very famous lie. While TV may actually degrade people’s eyesight, it does not usually do that to children, but more likely to adults instead. This is because children’s eyes have better focus and are more resistant to eye strain.

See in Darkness with Carrots

Carrot does do good to people’s eyesight. Nonetheless, it is not true that carrots give people the ability to see in the dark. This is just a lie that parents invent to encourage their children to eat carrots since most children do not really fancy eating this particular food.