Cutural diversity and Children

We all want  our children to grow up in a world free from bias and discrimination, to reach for their dreams and feel that whatever they want to accomplish in life is possible.

We want them to feel loved and included and never to experience the pain of rejection or exclusion.

But the reality is that we do live in a world in which racism and other forms of bias continue to affect us. Discrimination hurts and leaves scars that can last a lifetime, affecting goals, ambitions, life choices, and feelings of self-worth.

I have said before that in our house we are trying to bring up our munchkins in a way that they can be comfortable in who they are.

 That despite their dietary differences to other children due to allergies and intolerance's, they too can be proud, have fun, be loved, experience the joy of a birthday party, dream, attend a playgroup, get grubby....and many more things so important to childhood

and all the while living a life with allergies.

Our children are beginning to understand how they are different to other children around them and have accepted their differences of food choices and what we have to do to stay safe.

I not only want to teach my children about the importance of food allergies/ intolerance's and how it affects our family and other people.

 I also want them to have an awareness of different cultures in order to prepare them to meet the challenges and reap the benefits of the increasingly diverse world they live in .

I want to raise my children to celebrate and value diversity and to be proud of themselves and their family traditions. We can teach children to respect and value people regardless of the color of their skin, their physical abilities, or the language they speak.

I have started to introduce my munchkins to different cultures by surrounding them in positive things from a variety of cultures, placing these things in our home environment to be read, played with, listened to, loved, watched, respected and spoken about in our day to day lives.

Below is a photo of some of these things that we gathered up for a photo :) looking back at this photo, I forgot sooo many things but you get the drift.

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that I have a baby obsessed little girl, yet amongst all her dolls and babies , even the male and female golly wogs my children have.....we don't have any life like looking  dark skinned baby dolls!!!

In my opinion every little girl needs to have a doll with dark skin and dolls of different cultures.

Think about it for a minute, when we as parents go down the toy isles in the shops we see so many blonde hair blue eyed dolls, brown hair, brown eyes, western cultures, rarely a realistic red head doll with freckles.

It's often very hard to find a doll with that lovely chocolate brown skin, a doll with slanty eyes from Asia, a doll with a physical disability, a aboriginal doll, ...unless you search endlessly, travel or go to a specialty shop..

what does this tell you???

When you think of Disney movies often the heroine's of the story line are princesses or beautiful girl/women with clear pale skin, long blonde/brown hair and lovely clothes.......

Thankfully they are producing and selling a lovely Baby Tiana in the Disney selection of Princess babies thanks to the recent movie......so off I went down to my nearest K-mart and brought her.

Although she was in the shop amongst five other Disney Baby Princesses, all with white skin, two with blonde hair, one with black, one with brown and one with Orange hair.

I had to move aside the other dolls and search through quite a few before I found a brown Baby Tiana right at the back of the shelf.....mmm I wonder if that was a coincidence!

I'm only hoping that more people go searching for the baby that is different to their child instead of selecting one with the same hair colour and skin to match the child.

I'm not saying it's wrong to have a white doll if you want one but simply to give your child the opportunity to incorporate other cultures into their play.

I f you don't know where to start when trying to introduce different cultures to little ones, here are some easy ways:

• get picture books from the library from other country's to explore animals, people and places from different cultures.
• Introduce your child to different types of musical instruments and talk about where they come from (ie. bongo drums, maraca's, tin whistle etc)
• When selecting music for your child to listen to think about cultural music (amongst our music we have music from Finland, Africa, India, American Indian, Irish and so on)
• Have fun at the appropriate age to introduce the concept of food from other cultures (this is easy the diverse foods we can buy in Australia because of our mixed cultures)
• If you have family or friends traveling to another country, give them some money and/or ask them to bring you back a traditional object/toy.
• Take the opportunity to explore other cultures celebrations with your children through craft, games and food (e.g. valentines day, Chinese new year, St. Patricks day...)
• Have fun Scrap booking about country's and their cultures.
• Select children's books that show a positive cultural message.    ("Ten Little Fingers, Ten little Toes "by Mem Fox is a good one for little ones) There are many more when you go looking.
• Sing songs and finger rhymes in other languages
• Introduce your children to the concept of sign language, it's use and have fun learning some words.

These are all simple things you can implement in your family life to give your children an open mind when it comes to different cultures and help them to reap the benefits to a wide world of culture and diversity. To learn, to enjoy, understand and respect how other people live and look.

My BIG little girl

Once again I have been reminded that my baby girl is growing up...
For the first time in almost 4 years we no longer have  a cot set up in our house, our baby girl moved up into a BIG bed a couple of weeks ago and hasn't looked back.

It's a bitter sweet moment for Mummy and Daddy knowing that she is no longer a "baby" in a cot, but in a single bed (still and always our baby :D)- climbing up and down all by herself and loving it.
Watching her grow, learn and using more self help skills is great, but their is always that little sigh when you realise that your baby doesn't need your help quite as much anymore.

We are glad that we made the change though and she has been fantastic with the transition, it helped a great deal that we waited till she asked for a bed.....so much so that she was tucking herself into her brothers BIG bed trying to claim it as her own :P

Thalia came to the shops and helped to pick out her BIG bed, a quilt cover was purchased some time ago (Fairy themed) to suit her personality and interests and we took the opportunity to "do up" a Big girl room.
Her beloved Pop was very kind to assist in painting her room while we holidayed in NSW back in February and after taking out the cot and change table ( nappies are now changed on her bedroom rug she got at Christmas) a few finishing touches were made by Mummy and the room was ready!

So far she hasn't ventured from her bed at night or during her day nap to play with toys, bang on the door, create some chaos, sleep on the floor or rearrange her room, but I'm sure it will come.

Here is a photo of her sleeping on her first night in the bed, sleeping soundly and very close to her prized car "Lightning McQueen" (Disney Cars Character) -  it almost looks as if they are kissing :D

So How does your family plan and make the transition from cot to bed and at what age?

Golden Chicken

GOLDEN CHICKEN

This is one of the favourite chicken recipes at our house at the moment.

We added it to our dinner menu when the munchkins started the fail-safe diet in October of last year, it's from the Sue Dengate 'The Failsafe cookbook'.

The book doesn't lie when it states that there is a tantalising smell during cooking and it has a very lovable taste!

Ingredients:

600 g chicken breasts, skinned

Marinade-

2 tbs canola oil

3 tbs golden syrup

2 shallots, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 pinch citric acid

salt to taste

Method:

Cut chicken into strips or shaker nuggets.

Add chicken to marinade and coat well.

Cover and marinade for 30 minutes if possible.

Preheat grill or BBQ. Cook until browned on first side. Turn chicken and cook until done.

Test the chicken with a skewer.The juices should be clear when the chicken is cooked.

To prevent burning, keep chicken pieces touching.

Serve with mash potato and other permitted vegetables, or on rice or fried rice with chopped swedes, bean shoots, green beans, shallots, garlic and salt.

Bird Crafts

The munchkins and I had a fabulous time making lots of different bird crafts for Miss 2's Bird birthday party.


 So I thought it would be nice to share these crafts with you and the "how to do's" along with them.


These crafts are cheap and easy to make..... don't be afraid to have a try.


Hopefully someone else can have the fun we had while making some of these crafts.

Proud Peacock paper plate craft
For a simple bird craft or a crafty peek into India's animals (The peacock is native to India) all you need is:

*dinner size paper plate
*glitter
*pens, markers, pencils or crayons
*paint fingerprints or stickers for peacock feather spots (we used stickers)
*peacock feathers (we googled 'peacock feather' into images and printed out some paper feathers to cut out and stick on)
*glue
*blue paper for body

Allow children to decorate plate, draw lines with blue, green and purple shades of markers, the lines should all cross in the center of the plate. Have the children dip their index finger into a selected color of paint (we used colourful stickers) and make fingerprints here and there on the plate.

Let children apply glue and glitter and your choice of feather (real feathers, paper feathers found of Google etc) and put aside to dry.
While the plate is drying draw a ten pin bowling shape out of blue paper for the body. A beak can be either drawn on or cut out of paper as well as eyes. To finish glue all you bits together !





Hand print Rosie tree with doves
This birdie tree was a project that came together over the space of a couple of days.

First of all we made the adorable paper doves over at DLTK's craft for kid's.
They are easy to make and a fun craft using the technique of tracing the child's hand. All the doves body parts except for the hand print wings are found on the above link with instructions, simply print cut and paste. :) my munchkins enjoyed colouring on their birds too.



Stage two of our tree was involved Mummy drawing a branch shape on brown cardboard for cutting.
If you need some inspiration simply look outside into nature, do a sketch at the park or look up tree pictures on the Internet. I used roughly 3 lengths of big cardboard sheets to make this tree branch.
Make sure you leave enough space on the branch for the dove(s) to sit.

The third stage of our tree was a printing craft.
We got creative with paint and made some roses and leaves for the tree.
The rose print was made but cutting off the end of a celery bunch (something we almost always have in the fridge), it makes the perfect flower/rose print.....add pink paint a ta daaaa!
We also cut out a leaf shape from a common potato and with green paint made leaves for the tree.
This was a opportunity to get messy and learn to mix paints and make colours (yellow and blue make green, red and white make pink).

The forth stage to our tree was yet another hand print craft, since the munchkins enjoyed tracing hands so much. This time we used two shades of green cardboard for tracing our hands to make hand print leaves.
We spoke about the different sizes of our hands and how big our hands have grown and how our body grows bigger as we get older.

The last stage of our tree was gluing, stapling and blue tacking all the bits and pieces together to make a perfect home for our doves.

This tree made a great wall art feature for Thalia's bird party and is still on our wall today for the children to enjoy....one of these days Mummy will take all the bit down and put away what we can reuse and keep.

Bird tree table decoration

This table decoration is attractive, cheap and fun to make!

• The birthday girl and I went for a few walks in the park together to find some nice tree twigs and small branches to assemble together for the perfect tree.
• Once the tree twigs and branches were selected, they were painted white and when dry were put together in a vase from the cupboard.
• To decorate our tree we already has picked up some sweet little glitter birdie clips (decorations found with all the Christmas ones from a cheap shop).

For our tree to be just right for the party it needed a little something else and then we found what we needed to do.

Kelly at Be a fun Mum posted how to make a hanging Christmas peace dove decoration, so we simply changed our paper colours and patterns to suit the party colours and we had some lovely doves ready to hang on our tree :)

Tissue paper pom pom flowers

Okay, so these are not birds but birds like flowers don't they? :)

and they were simply too cute and girly not to make.

Thankfully I was able to find a very helpful and easy instructions to follow to make these.....while the kids were in bed. I wanted these hanging flowers to be a surprise for he birthday girl on her party day.

Here is the link for Martha Stewart's tissue paper pom poms that I used. They look stunning, easy to make and quite inexpensive.

My little man still has a blue one hanging in his room :P

Birdie's and their nests

Birds nests can be made from all sorts of things and what better decoration for a bird party than a bird and it's nest!

Pictured are two nests we put together for decorations using twigs from the park, bright feather amongst the twigs, leaves and topped off with bird ornaments found and brought at cheap stores for under $5 each. We choose mummy's ornamental bird cage and a big wooden bowl to put our nests in.

Thalia's bird themed Paper bunting

Paper bunting are easy to make and can be made to suit any theme, we laminated our paper flags so that they could be kept as a keepsake and a room decoration for Thalia.

Each triangle was cut out so as to fit inside a A4 size laminater sheet.

The photo is not very clear but each triangle is a different patterned pink scrap booking paper, we then stuck white paper doily's in the centre of each one. Paper doily's can be found very cheaply at shops such as crazy Clark's, reject shop, Sam's warehouse and so on.

We cut out pink letters to spell Thalia's name and found pictures of blue birds to stick on each flag on the letter.

To finish it of the flags were individually laminated, 2 holes were punched in the top of each one and pink ribbon was used to attach them all together to hang.

Bird feeder

We found this nifty fun design here, the munchkins enjoyed making it with me and the birds love it too.

It was also a way to attempt to lure and invite birds to the bird party :)

Loot bags

These we so inexpensive compared to the ones you buy and I think homemade is almost always nicer and more environmentally friendly!

I purchased the pink and blue paper bags (pink for girls, blue for boys) and glued on white paper doily's to the centre of each bag. The munchkins helped me to choose a birdie sticker from our sticker stash to suit each special little friend to stick on the doily. Then the names were written in pink or blue pen next to their personalised birdie :)

Paper plate owls

We made these paper plate owls with some friends after finding the project on the Internet.

You can find the instructions here, we added the lovely button eyes, scrapbook paper collage and feathers to make it such a hoot ;)

I hope you have enjoyed looking at our bird crafts, maybe you can put some time aside to share some bird craft love with your child :)

Miss 2's Bird party

Most of you probably already know that I'm a sucker for Children's party's..
I love the decorating, the organising, the fun, the laughter and the food :P

I make fairy bread, not because my kids are all that fond of it...but because I loooove it and it brings fond memories back of my childhood.

Last year for Thalia's birthday we had a ladybug cake but due to her being so young we didn't get too carried away with the theme apart from the cake and loot bags.

This year that she has blossomed in her personality, knows exactly what a birthday and birthday party is... a big smile appeared on my face and the planning begun.

With Thalia's help the theme was picked ...BIRDS


As the planning and decorations progressed, it turned into a theme of blue birds and pink blossoms
- a colour and picture combination that seemed just perfect for our little girl.

In preparation to my munchkins birthday parties in the last 2 years or so, we seem to have developed a bit of a unplanned tradition. A month or weeks prior to the party my munchkins and I dabble in crafty creations based on the party theme to decorate our house.

This both creates art/craft activities for us to do leading to the excitement of a party, saves us on party costs for decorations/loot bags, makes a nice homemade personal touch to the party and adds to the fun.

I love baking the cake and party foods and attempting to make them fit the theme....thank goodness I enjoy baking, as it can often be a challenge to come up with new and exciting cakes/party foods that are allergy friends and suit my children's requirements as well as tasting good for our guests.

below are some photo's from Thalia's bird party- a lovely afternoon/night with many friends


a cute caged birdie to
join in on the celebration!



out the back

handmade my mummy - Thalia's own  paper bunting
laminated for a keepsake or room decoration.

birdie tree tables decoration

birthday girl checking out her new kitchen before most of the guests arrive

a very precious photo of Thalia and her great Grandma

 

party bags and blue bird nest

some of the party food

The Craft table- compete with lots of chunky glitter,
foam stickers, crayons, bird pictures and glue
for lots of crafty fun.

The birthday girl playing with play dough
a must for a little person's party...
pssst and big people like it too

water play

 

Our very full pool on a very hot day

Cake time!! sadly I didn't remember to get a close up photo of the cake
but it's a chocolate nest made from Chocolate Aero bars
and homemade honeycomb covered in chocolate.
Inside the nest are 3 cupcake birds with eyes and beaks,
Thalia's cupcake had a lolly worm in it's mouth :)

3 good friends enjoying cake

pass the parcel

birthday girl wearing her new much loved Dorothy tail.
a very big wiggles fan.

Her new kitchen and homemade birdie wall art

All the wonderful pressies, thanks to all her beautiful friends ox

There will be a later post focused on all our homemade bird art and how we did it. :)

hope you enjoyed looking through our party pics

Our Baby girl turns 2

having afternoon tea cupcakes on her birthday :)

It was just over a week ago on the 4th of Feb. that my baby girl turned the BIG 2.



I still remember the excitment when I took the pregnancy test and saw two fat lines, I remember her first little movements inside me, the moment when the sonographer told us that our baby was healthy and we were having a girl, the time we took to pick the perfect name, the first time I saw her, the first feed .....
we were plunged into a world of pink and I wouldn't go back.



It all seems like it happened just a moment ago, but since that time I have learn't so much, had wonderful moments, watched the milestones and loved every step of the way...

Dearest Thalia

 Mummy loves you so much baby girl.

I feel so blessed to have you as my daughter,

you teach me something new every day.

 I look forward to spending many more  precious moments in time with you.

Happy Birthday!



 "A little girl can be sweeter (and badder) oftener than anyone else in the world.
she can jitter around, and stomp,
and make funny noises that frazzle your nerves
yet just when you open your mouth
she stands there demure with that special look in her eyes.
A girl is Innocence playing in the mud,
Beauty standing on its head,
and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot."

-- Alan Beck

Despite trying to explain to my husband, both when we found out we were having a little girl and when Thalia was born that there is a special "something" between a father and a daugther; he thought having a daughter would be much the same as having a son.....

just with the addition of Bling, hanbags, a possible shoe fettish, piggy tails, frills, angel hair, fairy costumes, dolls and all things girly :P

Although he loves both Declan and Thalia to bits, he now does agree after watching Thalia grow and having their special bond develop that I was quite right....there is a very special something between a daddy and his little girl, so much so that he now passes the message on to soon to be dad's expecting a girl and new daddy's of girls in his group of daddy friends :D



 



Daddy and his little girl taken at Thalia's 1st birthday party <3



"Certain is it that there is no kind of affection

so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter.

In love to our wives there is desire;

to our sons, ambition;

 but to our daughters

there is something which there are no words to express"

-Author Unkown

***

There's something like a line of gold thread

running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter,

and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough

 for you to pick up in your hands

and weave into a cloth

that feels like love itself. ~John Gregory Brown

Mummy and Daddy love you to the moon and back baby girl!!!

talking food with my little man

This was just too cute not to share.
A proud moment where Declan shows that he is becoming more aware about his food allergies and that he does understand.
It's nice to know when they appreciate special home baked treats too :)

Today I handed Declan a homemade honey biscuit topped with chilled chocolate and sprinkles
- a special treat for morning tea.

Declan: "Mummy" (looking at the biscuit)
              "Is this biscuit from a packet?"

Mummy: "No it's not a packet biscuit Declan. Mummy made those special ones just for Declan and   Thalia. They are safe for you."

Declan: "We have to check the packet for the packet ones don't we."

Mummy: "Yes, it's very important to check packets so we can make sure the ones from the shop are safe for you to eat."

Declan: "Yeah, no eggs and nuts. They make me sick!"

Mummy: "Well these ones are very safe, Mummy didn't use eggs or nuts to make them."

Declan: Thank you Mummy, I'm happy it is safe. It's looks yummy!!"

Mummy: "I've very happy that you like the biscuits Declan. You make Mummy very proud when you ask questions about food to check it is safe. When you get older you can help Mummy and Daddy read the packets to check if foods are safe for you to eat.
Your getting very clever!

Declan: Thank you Mummy, I love you (spoken with a mouth full of biscuit and giving mummy cuddles :D)

It's nice to see all the hard work paying off trying to educate him to safely live a allergy life.
Now he has started Sunday school and is attending places with his peers where unsafe food is being eaten, it's very important that Declan knows to always ask about food before touching and eating.

Now that his sister has a Play Kitchen and play foods (safe and unsafe) it's interesting to hear their little conversations and questions when playing about "pretend eggs" and comments like "Thalia, what do we do with eggs and nuts? I think we should put the eggs over here away from the other food so we can keep away".

It makes me happy to see
1. that they are playing nicely together
2. they are enjoying pretend play with the new kitchen and food
3. they both have an understanding of unsafe and safe foods and their allergies
4. they remind each other and others of food issues though both pretend play and real life circumstance's.
5. they are able to learn about allergies through play and enjoy it.

Amen to allergy awareness! :D