Colour me happy, and clean!

by Vicky Bath time is always a lot of fun at our house. Joel requests a bath every single night, and plays in the tub until his fingers are pruney. Last year for his birthday, a friend gave him a big tub of Crayola Color Dotz. I had never seen them before, but they were a huge hit! The container of 30 red, blue or yellow dotz did not last long once Joel realized he could change the colour of his bath water by mixing in different colours! His request for a bath each night quickly turned into a request for a 'colour bath!'

If you have a child who does not like taking baths, I'm sure these would help turn bath time into a fun experience!

You can find Crayola Color Dotz at Mrs. Tiggy Winkles for about $5.99 for a container of 30. I recently found Alex Toys 'Rub a Dub color your tub' dots at Winners for $3.99 for 50 tablets.

Product Description:

Crayola® Color Dotz™ are fizzing water colour tablets that turn ordinary bath water into colourful, fizzy water. The red, yellow and blue tablets of Crayola® Color Dotz™ are great for colour mixing, allowing children to create their own unique colours. Crayola® Color Dotz™ provide children of all ages with a world of colourful fun in the tub. Non-toxic.

Color Your Tub Fizzy Tints - Turn ordinary bathwater into a tub of colorful fun! The primary colored tablets (50 each in red, blue and yellow) can be mixed and matched to create all the colors of the rainbow. There are enough tablets for over 50 colorful baths! Suitable for age: 3 year(s)

All About Kids

by Vicky When I was a child, the only toy store around was a small Toy World at the local mall. I remember saving my birthday money to buy myself a Pogo Ball. Remember those? It was my favourite toy until it got a slow leak and never quite bounced the same way.

Another favourite toy was my Cabbage Patch doll. She had gold coloured hair and blue eyes, and wore a teal dress with lace around the edges. I remember the day she became mine, like it was yesterday. We were on a family vacation in the states, and stopped in at Toysrus. I stood in front of a towering stack of Cabbage Patch dolls and my mother said 'pick one.'

Fast forward 25 years, and I still get that rush of excitement when visiting toy stores - especially when it's All About Kids! All About Kids is the mother of all toy stores. You will love it. It is my first stop for birthday presents. The selection is remarkable, and the toys are good quality. It's an educational supply company, so they carry a very large selection of art & craft supplies, games, puzzles, and equipment for daycares and preschool. You'll find all the big names there, like Little Tikes, Melissa & Doug, Plan Toys, and Playmobile. But they have THOUSANDS of items to choose from.

The front has a good selection of outdoor toys and structures, and a play area for kids - but who are we kidding here, you try telling your kid they have to stay put in a huge warehouse! The back of the store has teaching resources galore - lots of posters, borders, and anything you could possibly need for your classroom.

What I love about buying toys here is that you can find such a variety of things that you don't see at the other big box stores. You won't be bombarded with all the latest Pixar characters on every toy. You won't see aisle after aisle of battery operated toys that break before the batteries wear out. You'll find quality toys like this marble run game for example; it was a huge hit for both my "boys"

Or this set of wooden playfood that Joel gave Kiernan for his last birthday.

Or this set of Gears! Gears! Gears! that we gave one of Joel's preschool friends for his 3rd birthday.

I'm thinking Mieka might just NEED to have one of these dolls for her 1st birthday.

All About Kids is tucked away on Canotek Drive, in an East End industrial park, so it's not obvious to find. But it's definitely worth a stop in!

All About Kids 5369 Canotek Dr - Map (613) 742-0308 www.allaboutkids.info

9:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Mon. to Fri. 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. Sat. Closed Sundays.

Vicky is the mom to 3.5 year old son named Joel and 9 month old daughter named Mieka. You can read her blog at blog Some Kind of Wondermom.

Zucchini chocolate chip muffins

by Vicky Here's a great kid-friendly muffin recipe that contains not only chocolate chips, but zucchini! They're great for after school snacks, or to take on playdates. I can't take credit for them though, they came from Shannon's blog 'Crafty Mom Cooks'. Check out her blog for some really great recipes the whole family will enjoy.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 3/4 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 egg, lightly beaten 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup milk 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup shredded zucchini 1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. I'm a big fan of Epicure, and I really love their cinnamon and real vanilla extract so those are the ones I used.

Also I used brown sugar, but you can use white if you prefer.

Combine the egg, oil, milk, lemon juice and vanilla; mix well and set aside. Stir into dry ingredients. Add the zucchini, chocolate chips and walnuts (which I skipped this time). I use the finest grater I have for the zucchini, which makes it disappear into the muffins, (not that I'm trying to deceive anyone).

Fill greased muffin tin. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden brown on the top.

I was trying out my Pampered Chef muffin stone for the first time, and muffins tend to stick until it's well seasoned, which is why I used muffin cups, but you can make these without the cups. These muffins are moist and really tasty. They don't last long in our house! I'm sure I'll be making them weekly come September once Joel starts school (eep!)

(Photo courtesy of A Crafty Mom Cooks)

Camping with kids

by Julie Did you give up your camping adventures the minute diapers entered your home? Ya, me too.

I had never camped as a child, only as an adult. I fell in love with camping for:

•    The satisfying feeling that would come over me from having pushed my body hard from the hiking, canoeing or portaging to get to the site. •    The heavenly feeling of being in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but read my book or take a nap. •    The romantic nights, sitting around a campfire sipping red wine.

Now, review that list again and imagine putting children in the picture. Doesn’t work, does it? All the reasons I loved camping … *poof* … gone.

But recently, my husband and I have headed back into the outdoors – two kids in tow. Although our much-loved list is now adapted, we haven’t had to give it all up entirely.

•    If you’ve been a hard core camper, the notion of “car camping” is depressing indeed! But rather than throw in the towel, seek out quiet, more rustic sites (hint: look for sites that don’t offer facilities like showers). These will have far few people and don’t line up camping sites in a parking-lot style. Instead, each site has been carefully developed for some privacy and remains treed. (You can see photos of a camping site we recently stayed at in Algonquin Park here.) •    Take turns with your spouse to allow for some quiet time. One parent takes the kids for a hike or simply stays as the alert and awake supervisor, while the other is free to doze off or get completely absorbed in a book. •    After all that time in the fresh air, your children will be tired and ready to drop into bed! But, unfortunately, so are you. Try hard to stay up for at least 15 minutes of time together – alone – cuddling and staring at the camp fire, before you join the kids in sleepy-land.

There are plenty of great tip-lists available via a simple google search on camping with kids, so I won’t even try to replicate them.

Instead, I will share with you a list of tips directly from my seven-year-old daughter.

•    Go for hikes! Go on an animal safari and look for garden snakes. •    If not in public, let your kids swim nudie! •    Let the kids get as dirty as they want. •    Collect sticks and make a tipi or a fort. •    Let the kids read as late as they want! •    Bring your two-wheeler bike. •    Make s’mores after dinner.

And, last but not least, she offered these wise words of wisdom to camping parents:

•    Don’t be worry warts!

Julie is an Ottawa local and mother of two. Her personal blog is Coffee with Julie.

Being prepared: having a family emergency plan

by Brie I am a pretty cautious parent. I always have to walk down the steep staircase first in case my 3.5 year old or nineteen month old slips. I am always checking to make sure the park gates are closed and no kids can escape onto the busy streets. I always check both ways, and then check again, before we cross the street. That's just me. I feel better when I feel like I am being careful, or as I like to jokingly say, paranoid.

One thing I haven't done, and now plan to, is make a family emergency plan.  This is right up my alley.

I have been thinking about this because May 2 to 8 is Emergency Preparedness Week. I watched a short video made by Public Safety Canada that discusses what to do in different scenarios to make actual situations less stressful and save time during an emergency. The video had a number of good suggestions. I liked the idea of having copies of important documents and photos of the kids kept somewhere other than the house in case of an evacuation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFZzuPe6QAc&feature=player_embedded]

Now I just need to sit down and write out the plan. Thankfully there is an easy online tool on the  GetPrepared.ca website that will walk you through the things you should include in your plan. The website also provides tips on how to talk to kids about emergencies, how to prepare if you or a family member has special needs and what you should do for your pets.

They also talk about having an emergency kit. Reviewing the list posted online I can see that there are some items that we need to add to the kit we already have in our cupboard. My mother-in-law, who is maybe even more cautious than I am, made up kits for us with emergency supplies of food and water. I need to add copies of important documents, an extra set of keys and a copy of our soon to be created emergency plan.

What about you? Do any of you have family emergency plans? Do you have any tips to share?

Brie is the mom of a 3.5 year old daughter “the girl” and eighteen month old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.