Day 362 - Fingerpaints with No Mess

Today's first time parenting tip - Try Crayola Color Wonder Fingerpaints and Coloring Book if your baby likes to color but you don't want a mess

Coloring might be your infant's thing. If you let him mess around with crayons or fingerpaints every once and awhile, you know how much of a mess they can be. Especially fingerpaints. They have a way of getting on and staining everything, no matter how washable they say they are.

Enter Crayola Color Wonder Fingerpaints and Coloring Book. Your baby simply touches their finger to the non-toxic "paint" cups, and then they touch the wonder paper, and they're off! The color appears right before there eyes.

The great thing is, the special "paint" only leaves a color on wonder paper. So if some does get in the carpet or on the wall, its pretty easy to wipe off. Plus, it's less messy than fingerpaints.

The only thing I don't like is that you can't color outside the lines. I'm big on teaching kids to think non-linearly, and coloring inside the lines (even though you can make a purple sun or a blue lamb) seems kind of restrictive. All in all, a fun toy. I think my wife had a great time with it too.

Parenting, Paint, Color, Crayola, Finger, No, Mess

Day 298 - Keeping the House Clean with an Active Baby

Today's first time parenting tip - Do a daily "partial" cleanup

When you've got a baby, toys, a short attention span and the urge to move everywhere, your house can feel a lot like a plastic jungle with toys, tupperware, books and clothes all over the place.

One of my son's favorite activities is to carry stuff back and forth across the apartment. And since he's only interested in things for five minutes at a time, you can see how the mess could pile up quick.

If my wife and I tried to have everything in its place all the time, we'd go insane. So instead, we pick up his mess once a day when he goes to bed. And "putting something in its place" is a pretty loose interpretation too.

Instead of having things perfect, we'll stack all the books on the floor, put all the small toys in a box and the bigger ones arranged along a wall. Since our son is just going to get them out when he wakes up, there's no sense making everything perfect.

This way we don't spend a ton of time cleaning up and don't get overwhelmed when all our hard work gets erased the next day. And half the fun for our son right now is pulling everything out and discovering his toys all over again.

Parenting, Toy, Clean, Sanity, Mess