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Tips for moms with more than one toddler.

“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.” —Sophia Loren

Motherhood is a blessing that words cannot describe. Which is why I pray that every woman that desires such would experience this indescribable joy. Having one child could be a daunting task. Having more than one surely is not for the faint-hearted. Your patience would be tried. I am not even joking. Considering how I struggled a little bit when I became a mother-of-two, I want to highlight, some helpful tips for moms with more than one toddler. These are listed as follows:

1) Ensure the first one conforms and the other(s) would naturally fall in place and behave properly. Once that one has spent some time in the ‘naughty corner’, the other child would most likely try to avoid doing the same thing that landed the other sibling in trouble. Not necessarily as a ‘scape-goat” but as a perfect example for the other child(children) to follow.


2)Never buy different toys with different colors in the name of variety. To save your own life buy exactly the same toy with exactly the same color. For some reason, a different toy in the hand of another child looks very amazing.


3)Never leave them alone unsupervised, not even for two minutes, you might come back to the greatest shock of your life.

4)When you have toddlers in your house and its not nap time and everything is awfully quiet, they are most likely doing something naughty like unrolling the toilet roll all over the bathroom floor or rubbing the whole content of the vaseline container on each other’s head. True life story! With toddlers, honestly, silence in not golden.


5) Get ready to double up as a referee and judge because you will have to break up fights and your will have to settle cases, and mommy has to be fair!

6) You need to perfect your negotiation skills to ensure all the “parties” involved are happy with sharing the available toy resources. Otherwise, your sanity will be stretched almost beyond elastic limit.

7)Accept that your “me alone time” is gone forever unless you get really creative. Hence, manage what is left of your time well.

8) It is inevitable, your hidden snack bag will be discovered one day and will be looted! Be very forgiving when it happens.

9)You need to be the master of “reversed psychology” of sort. For example, you can say to a picky eater (who obviously has not touched his food) “ I just love my baby, he eats all his breakfast”. You will be amazed at how much the child would eat after saying those words.

10)Accept your fate and know your “me alone time “ is gone forever (Oh, is this a repetition? Yes I said it earlier in number 7). Repetition is for emphasis. Even when you think you are alone, your mind is active with thoughts of your children. So my advise is to deliberately take time out to de-stress and not feel guilty about it. After all if you don’t take care of yourself, who will?

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Fun ways to make your family drink more water.

The importance of drinking water cannot be overemphasized. Water is very essential to every living thing on earth, especially since living cells are composed of about 70 % of water. Water helps to keep the skin hydrated and boosts its natural glow. Drinking water helps with digestion, circulation, transportation of nutrients, creation of saliva and maintenance of body temperature. Water also acts as a detoxifier that helps to flush out toxins and get rid of waste primarily through sweat and urine. Also drinking lots of water helps to improve the milk flow for breastfeeding moms.

Have talked about some of the health benefits of drinking water, it is crucial to discuss ways to help every member of the family get the daily water requirement.

The recommended daily amount of water is: 5 glasses (1 litre) for 5 to 8 year olds. 7 glasses (1.5 litres) for 9 to12 year olds. 8 to 10 glasses (2 litres) for 13+ years.

For adults, the 8 x 8 rule is used. Drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Since one ounce is approximately equal to 30 ml, so eight 8-ounce glasses of water will be about 1,920ml. This is roughly 2 Litres.

I am sure this recommendation might be a sort of eye-opener about whether each member of the house-hold is drinking enough water to maintain their normal metabolism.

The following are some of the practical ways to get enough water into your system as well as encourage every other member of your family to do the same:

  1. Get a clear Jug and put water in it. Either the water is from a filter or a water dispenser, fill the clear jug with water. This is for two reasons. First, personally I realized that I tend to drink more water when it is at room temperature. The second reason is that seeing water physically sitting in the clear jug is an open invitation to DRINK! Peradventure, you are an ‘on-the-go person’, just fill up a water bottle with water and take sips throughout the day.

2. To further enhance the appearance of the water in the clear jug, you can add to it some lemons slices or some strawberries. This makes the water even more appealing to the eyes, and you will find the little ones actually requesting to drink water. The water also tastes really good plus its so colorful and “happy”. The result is that you all want to drink more water. Who doesn’t want something pretty?

3. Put a bottle of water and perhaps a cup in every room. I tend to recycle things in my house. Hence, when we exhaust the content of a fruit juice, I do not discard the bottles. What I do is to wash and store water in these bottles and put one in every room in the house. You can put some disposable cups with it. This is because from personal experience, there have been times when I felt thirsty but was too bloody lazy to relocate myself to the kitchen for a drink of water. We want to avoid such missed opportunities to drink more water.

4. This particular advise would work best with kids. Offer them water in fancy cups or in colorful bottles or funny-looking bottles. We went to the Philadelphia Zoo at a point and got alligator-shaped bottles. Ever since, when I put water in those bottles, my toddlers tend to drink more water.

5. Also, this works with toddlers. I call it the “Juice bait”. What I do is to put water in my children’s cup when they are eating and tell them they get some ounces of juice if they drink their water. This works in most cases.

6.Just DRINK! This way you help yourself and also model good behavior for your children because they are watching you. I keep telling my children “water is good for us”.

I say to you today, Water is good for you!

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The Salami Saga

Photo credit: Wadi Lissa

For quite a while, my son kept asking me for salami. For the love of mike what is that? I am a proper African girl and I have no idea what that looks like, let alone cook it. Thank God for google! I looked up the picture and saw the thing looks like meat. I was happy because a picky-eating child is demanding for meat- a rich source of iron. I decided to give it a try and make an “homemade” salami. I went to our local farmer’s market and bought 5 pounds of red beef, which I rarely do because I prefer white meat. Don’t mind me, I am a doctor both by the books and lifestyle, at least most of the time…lol.

I finally got to the ‘plating stage’. I cut up thin slices of cooked meat similar to what I had seen online, cut up some hot dog pieces (this is a season of hot dog for my son, long story for another day), added ketchup and garnished it with cucumber slides to make appealing to him, as great moms do. I smiled satisfactorily at my “healthy” creation.

Guess what? My son picked up a piece of this special “salami”, took one bite and moved on to the hot dog. I even encouraged him to dip the meat in some ketchup sauce. He said “no mom. this is not salami and that is not how the kids on the TV ate it”. 

I said, “Seriously? the TV is source of all my stress? hence forth, I am going to further limit your TV viewing time to so that you don’t getting funny ideas about meals mommy is not used to.” Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong experimenting with foods for kids especially if they will like it. My main point is the impact TV already has on this three old.

I try so hard to keep all screen time under one hour daily as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, for his age.

The academy recommends that for children 2 to 5 years of age, screen time should be limited to one hour per day. For kids ages 6 years and older, parents can determine the restrictions for time spent using screen, as well as monitor the types of digital media their children use.

Babies are most vulnerable to screens. Infants aged 18 months and younger should not be exposed to any digital media ideally.

Take it or leave it, we live in a world of screens.

Whether we admit it or not the electronic media has a powerful influence on kids and we have a responsibility as parents to control it.

We can do something about it now before it becomes a ‘pandemic’ because already it is an ‘epidemic’.