ParentHacks

Last year I took the time to count how many calories were in my daughter's Halloween candy haul. It was eye opening and mind-blowing. So this year I'm looking for alternatives to candy that don't suck. That is something to give away for trick or treaters besides apples or pencils and other things that kids don't want and don't make them want to toilet paper your face.

Since I've been doing some Spring cleaning around the house (yeah I'm a little behind) I had a symbiotic dilemma of what to do with all the little plastic goodie bag toys we seem to collect all year long. Bingo.

I admit it, I got to a point where I actually felt like I needed an iphone. The rationale went like this: with an iphone I could stay in e-mail touch even when I was at the playground or waiting at school or during those times when my daughter falls asleep in the stroller. It would make me more productive and also a better mom cause if I could work at those times then maybe I wouldn't have to work when we were home and instead just focus on playing. So when our cell phone contracts were up we rushed over to the Mac store. Of course, my husband had also worked out a completely different but just as "valid" rationale as to why he needed one as well.

But while we were at the store, I realized I had a problem. My previous cell phone was such a piece of junk that I had gotten into the habit of letting my 2 year old play with it but I knew there was no way I was going to let her touch my new iphone. I needed one for her.

I am terrible at planning in advance for Halloween.   Alright, I admit it, I'm terrible at planning in advance for everything, but in some very rare cases this can be a good thing. Halloween, is all about getting creative. Sometimes being a slacker-mom on Halloween forces you and your kids to be more creative and have more fun since you are left with putting together a costume that you can make with what you already have or what is easy to get.

Keep reading to find out some great toddler and kid Halloween costume ideas that almost entirely use stuff you either already have or can find in a stationary store.  Plus, the best last minute costume ideas on the interweb.

If you think this blog is called Mommy Poppins 'cause I'm some sort of uber mom, you couldn't be more wrong. Although I admit I love organizing things, in theory, I also love procrastinating, avoiding and flat out ignoring all those yucky, boring chores that go along with being a parent. Case in point, I'm sitting here typing this while knowing I haven't filled out my kids' picture day forms, I only know where one of them is, oh, and picture day is tomorrow...And these chores are endless. You could seriously do nothing but buy shoes, and schedule dentist appointments, not to mention groceries and meals, SNACKS!, lunches! What about new toothbrushes every 6 months! Who has the time?!!

In order to be as good a procrastinator as I am, I've had to develop some good organizational habits to streamline some of those yucky chores, leaving me free to, well, mostly do all those other chores that I should have done last week. I thought today I'd share some of them. They're not big revolutionary secrets, but they do save me some time and money and hopefully will save you some too. Plus there's a giveaway at the end.

All NYC kids should be raised restaurant-ready, but it doesn't happen automatically. My blogger friend, and Izzy's Mom, chronicles her quest to raise her son as a gourmand on her site, Izzy Eats and has been generous enough to share some of her tips for how to eat out at restaurants with kids and enjoy it at every stage of the game. Along the way she recommends some of her favorite restaurants that she's enjoyed with her son. Thanks, Izzy's Mom!

My son, Izzy and I, have been dining out together since he was born. Eating in restaurants was an important part of my life and I wasn’t about to give that up when I became a mother. Instead I wanted to include my son in the pleasures of the table, especially since New York City is a restaurant paradise. Now at age four, dining out is second nature to him. At home or in restaurants, eating with him is a true delight. He is a polite and interested eater which I attribute to his regular exposure to restaurant culture early on. And so, based on my experience I offer the following so that you too can dine out successfully.

What kids eat is very important and having the right snack can actually improve a child's ability to learn. Our school occupational therapy consultant, Casey Halper, put together a list of sensory smart snacks.

That means that they are snacks that help kids stay alert and focused in school without making them hyper and restless. These are great snack ideas for children in school, but would be equally great snack choices for toddlers too.

Some of the themes for healthy sensory snacks are:

• Crunchy and chewy foods help make kids more alert by engaging their senses.
• Sipping or sucking can help organize and calm children.
• And of course fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and calcium rich foods make them healthy overall.

Try These Sensory Smart Snacks:

You don't have to try to fool your kids into eating food that's good for them. You just have to slightly more clever than they are. That's where these five handy food hacks come in. Just little tricks that will help you get more vegetable matter into those little mouths.

One of the freaky things about having kids is that you'll be tooling along in your life when, WHAMM!, they'll say or do something that just knocks your socks off and makes everything stop. If you're lucky, you're not too self-obsessed with blogging or reading headlines on I Can Has Cheezburger to notice and you do stop and appreciate the moment and figure out what's really going on in those little brains. This happened to me this weekend.

While I was very busy in the front of the car doing something important like thinking of soup taglines, a little voice chirped up from the back seat. It said something like this:

"You know, I really understand why J is having such a hard time being four. Because I remember when I was four and I had to grow up a lot and go to big kid school and do a lot of stuff for myself and J was just born so he was a baby and got to have everything done for him and I was jealous and it was hard."

OK so her grammar was probably better than my recounting of it, but that was the gist of it.

The whole ban on bringing water through airport security thing has been driving me mad. First of all, I think that they are not letting anyone bring water on airplanes because two idiots were thinking about trying to make gel bombs is just one of the worst examples of how we are letting the terrorists win.

In addition, I'm beginning to think that they are just keeping this rule around now because they realize how much money they can make by forcing everybody to buy $3 bottles of water now. You would think that airlines would take this opportunity to give out bottles of water on the plane, but no, now they STARTED charging for water on the plane. It's like, "yeah, we know we've got you over the barrel. Pay up!"

This is a pretty serious issue to me, not only for my own comfort, health and miserliness, but when traveling with kids we know how important it can be to have water on hand. I've actually seen them make a mother pour out the contents of a bottle. It's crazy. But, I finally figured out a solu

When we were looking for eCards for Father's Day, we discovered hoops and yoyo on Hallmark.com. Hoops and yoyo are an animated cat and bunny that sound like the kids from South Park and sport an edgy sense of humor. They have a bunch of funny eCards for different occasions, but now my kids just want to go back and watch the animations. Poking around their site we found these Manners Matter with hoops and yoyo animations.