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If you have been there and done that.. you know it is no easy task! It might not even be accomplishable at times! When I was pregnant my doctor told me the key was to gain just enough weight for the baby and not too much more. I starved myself of icecreams and chocolates (well almost.. I did sneak them in every once in a while!) to make sure I was not just gaining too much weight! I walked like a crazed lady to make sure I was fit and kept in shape even when I was bursting at the seams so to speak!

Then the baby was born and much to my dismay I still looked pregnant! After a quick consultation with the doctor I was assured that the breastfeeding will help and soon I will be able to crunch and walk it off! But then I was not able to breast feed my baby.. no milk! Sigh! The kiddo was formula fed from almost the end of the first month, so there went that dream of losing the extra calories!

Now I had to strive hard to lose weight.. I armed myself with an elliptical bike and started trudging my way to weight loss! But handling work and home, not to mention the life changing event of having a baby left me with little or no time for exercise. The hubs would take the kid and baby sit while I had dedicated time to my workout.. but I always came up with an excuse to stop. And the guilt (of not spending time with my baby) was just one of the many excuses!

I did lose few pounds and the people around me noticed and complimented me on it. Between that and a hair makeover, I felt so good about myself I stopped the workouts! 4 years later it dawned on me that I still had a few dozen pounds to lose and my baby was no longer a baby, he was a preschooler! I had always been reed thin all my life and now I was fretting over my weight constantly!

After failed attempts at dieting switching to brown rice and giving up sugar did not seem to work. It then dawned on me that no pain no gain. So I trudged it to the gym every day and started to run! I ran like the hell was after me, crunched my abs till they hurt from exhaution.. and in a few weeks the results began to show, the scale began to budge! I was getting there! I wish there was an easier way, but for me there wasn't!

Eyeing that bar of chocolate with longing, I ask you... how did you lose the weight post baby? What are your suggestions?

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Letting your children do some chores around the house is a good thing! It makes them more responsible and it helps you get some of your work off your plate right? So how soon would you get them started? We started when my son was little over one. He would clean his toys up and put it back into the toy box. It was a fun activity which he had learnt to enjoy! My sister in laws kids who gave her a tough time with cleaning up after themselves joined in his fun chore one day and started doing it. How we did it was play a race you to the toy box game and see who could get more toys in. The kiddo ended up getting 5 toys while I got the rest 25 however it was a good start!

Since then that has been a house rule. Any toy that does not get cleaned up goes to an unreachable but visible corner and stays there for a few days! And then the promise is renewed and the toy is returned to the kid! We also make it a point to clean up after ourselves when we are on a play date, even if the other kid created the mess. This has been fairly easy for me to implement I must say! However many kids come home and leave a mess that they dont clean up! We had this friend who would come often on a play date, and never clean up! I tried everything.. even pointedly asking the kids to use up the last 5 minutes for clean up. But the mom was obtuse, the minute the clean up activity started it was like a cue for her to get the jacket and shoes and start preparing her son for leaving! It was so infuriating.. and more so for my son! For now he had to clean up a big mess he did not even create completely! Meanwhile the family moved and the problem was gone before we could figure out a way to solve it!

Last year during Thanksgiving Cheeky's school came up with the idea of making them do chores around the house. For every chore the kid would be paid something and at the end of the month he would buy some goodies with that money for a less fortunate child. It seemed like a great idea. And Cheeky did more than his share of chores that month. He would be found helping with the laundry, dishes and other little tasks around the house. Since then however we just lost momentum and it is back to being mommy's job or daddy's job as the case maybe!

Now I am thinking that the 5 yr old needs to start doing some chores more regularly. With that thought in mind I started looking up ways to make the activity fun and rewarding! My thoughts went back to the time when we were training him to stay in bed and not run to our bed every night! We had a stay in bed monthly chart where he got stars for every night he stayed in bed and got rewards at the end of the month! Even simple rewards like a Happy Meal have worked wonders for me!

Another more interesting method maybe what another parent suggested in a forum I was reading. She said throw in a bunch of tasks written on a paper each in a bowl and have the child pick his tasks for the day! This will add some variety and make it more interesting for them! This might especially work if you have more than one kid! (Now I should do an adult box and make sure the Hubs picks the Dishes one .. God do I hate that!)

And then there are the chore charts to get us organised and help us stay on track! I checked the internet and there are so many available resources.. even for kids as young as 2 and 3 yrs old! So this thanksgiving we are all geared to get started! Time this mommy got some thanks. What say?

When did you start your kids on doing chores? What methods have worked well for you?

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Tutu's Bliss recently wrote a post about Kindergarten - here and this got me thinking.

My son Cheeky goes to Kindergarten. He has been a happy go lucky kid who enjoys school. Last year he went to Pre-k and had so much fun. True to his name he is quite Cheeky too.. he had told his teacher that his hand hurts and very often would get out of any writing they required him to do! While suppressing my laughter I tried very hard to tell him he shouldn't do that! He hid under the table at clean up time and played truant! He is a fun kid and means no harm, just that he is Cheeky! The teachers have always loved him and he has never been in trouble at school.. not even a time out! He is a well behaved kid and likes to let the teachers have that good impression about him!

This year he started Private Kindergarten. He seems so stressed about school now! I think it is just the fact that there are so many rules to follow? So much pressure to perform? I am not sure! There is no pressure from us for him to perform. I must add that he is way ahead of the kids in his class. He can read well already, he can do math way advanced for his age.. and most of this out of interest, he sits with me and enjoys working with his worksheets at home! But he seems to feel the pressure when they ask him to do work sheets at school.

Is it because school has meant a fun place for him and now all of a sudden they are expecting him to do a lot more? I am not sure! He has lots of friends at school and seems to have a good time overall! He enjoys the fun activities and his teacher had glowing reports about him at the recent parent teacher conference. However there is one problem though. They give them graded papers every once in a while. And give the kids grades - A+ and so on. Cheeky has got an A+ on every one of those papers.

When he brought back the first paper home I just laughed and assumed that every kid would be given an A+. But no, the little imp tells me some friends make B- and even D. And somehow he seems to know that A+ is the best grade to be at! The other afternoon he was very upset! He claimed he had been asked to draw a zebra and he just couldn't draw the body! "I am not going to get A+, I am going to get a bad grade" he wailed. I looked at him in surprise. I went to school in a country that gives way too much importance to grades, and according to my parents I did not do that well in Kindergarten. But then I never once gave it much thought. When my mom would tell me to focus more or otherwise I will just have to repeat Kindergarten again I was thrilled! "Yay!! Then I would be the oldest in the class!"  I am said to have declared!

And here my son was fretting over the grade for drawing a zebra? Are you kidding me? I assured him that I did not care what he got.. and that he should just put down whatever he knew and not worry about it either! I marched to school the next day to demand why they are grading his zebra.. apparently they had no intention of grading it either!

At the conference I discussed this with his teacher, and while she agrees with me that grading Kindergartners is a bit ridiculous; she says she has to follow the curriculum! Also she adds that other kids are like me.. bragging to parents about a D and my son is the only one who is stressing over getting everything right! She thinks that is just his nature and there is nothing we can do about it other than keep assuring him that is okay to be wrong too!! I have told him that, but my son enjoys being right and has taken to making me grade his worksheets at home! Sigh! I am told with the public school system next year this will change and they will only share the progress/ grades in the report cards and not on everyday papers. I am hoping that will ease the pressure a bit! For now, we are just going to take a vacation and have some fun!

So what do you think? Is grading at Kindergarten ridiculous or a developmental necessity?