Hellobee Boards

1. I'm assuming you mean dinner, in which case how is it only taking you 15-20 minutes? We have a good hour between walking in the door and sitting down to eat, so D gets a small snack.

2. We have doubles. He has a daycare lovey and a home lovey. Same with his blanket and crib sheet - they never get used at home so it's not a big deal if they're not available.

3. We haven't had this, so I can't weigh in.

@Mrs. Lion: when my so. Is hungry before dinner he gets some veggies to snack on! I don't mind if he fills up on those!

Good luck!

Ah I love #1! This is by far our biggest struggle. We usually don't get home until around 6pm and we start bath time routine at 7pm so this hour is just complete and utter chaos and I wish we had it figured out. Some days my kids have snacks for dinner and other days they manage to eat dinner. Honestly it's a shit show for us right now and I keep telling myself it will pass and it will get better. This is one of the things I dislike about being a working parent!

We eat after she goes to bed so she gets leftovers from the night before. But when DH travels I will eat with her but it is easy stuff since the two of us and she is so picky.

We bring her a new blanket every Monday, uses it all week, and the take home on Friday.

1. Same as @Smurfette: about giving her leftovers and eating later. If I finish cooking before bedtime she will sometimes have a few bites of what we are eating too.

2. Our daycare doesn't want LO bringing loveys and luckily they launder nap blankets there. If I have to wash her jacket or back up clothes, I just run a load as soon as we get home and it's ready by bedtime/morning.

3. LO has been in daycare since she was 11 weeks old, so I don't have an answer for this one - she's actually started begging to go to the park on the way home every day. I would guess maybe he just needs some time to get used to the new normal? Hope it gets better!

1. I don't know... she isn't that hungry after school? I guess I'd maybe hand her some crackers or something? ETA: We eat dinner a little later (630ish, we get home from daycare at 515) and I always send extra food to school to give LO with her afternoon snack because I figure she needs a big snack to tide her over until dinner... it seems to work.

2. Backups! We have 3 crib sheets, 3 sleep sacks, and 3 loveys. One of each goes to school and one is used at home with one in her closet in case something gets dirty. Everything comes home from daycare on Friday and I pack the stuff from the closet and wash the stuff from daycare then that gets recycled to LO's room and the stuff that was in her room gets washed and moved to the closet. Her lovey is a stuffed bunny and once she got attached to it I just bought extras and I rotate them frequently so they are wearing the same and she doesn't seem to realize that there is more than one lol.

3. She doesn't "never want to leave" but she is happier at home! I'm embracing it because I'm tired.

1. Small snack on car ride home. Meal prep as much as possible in advance.

2. We have 3 loveys. One stayed at daycare all week. On Friday when we brought her sheet home, they'd both get washed and brought back Monday.

3 haven't experienced this, but it seems natural that kids who are away from home during the week would wAnt to relax in their own environment and play with their own toys on the weekend, especially if they're more introverted!

1. I basically cook on the weekends and just reheat during the week. I portion smaller bits and pieces of stuff into tupperwares for DS and I can get him a meal in under 5 minutes. I keep steamed carrots, frozen peas and corn, cut up sausages, and portions of leftovers like pasta or spaghetti or rice and throw it on his EZPZ mat with a sippy of milk. Freezer always has meatballs, nuggets, and turkey corn dogs as backup and I also keep chopped fruit to throw on there as dessert. I can then quickly nuke our leftovers and join him at the table while DH sits with a glass of water and hangs out with him.

2. We have like 20 loveys, no joke, because DS chews on them before falling asleep. So he gets a fresh one every night and every day in his daycare bag. He also has 4 sets of his blanket/pillow set - one for crib, one for daycare, and then the other two as backups if they get gross midweek.

3. DS isn't a homebody per se but he is introverted and wants to be with both DH and I on the weekends - he's always happiest then. If we do go out, it's either church on Sunday or the park behind our house so I guess he sees it as a routine place that is okay with him.

1. give her a snack at pick up to eat in the car
2. As soon as you walk in the door Friday afternoon throw the nap mat and blanket/lovey into the wash - the lovey will be clean and dry before bed
3. no advice there

@Mrs. Lion: What do you mean, that he doesn't want to go places, like on the weekends?

I noticed my son became like this when he started going to daycare as well. He started at age 2, I went back to work, so on the weekends he likes to be with us. As time has gone on, he's learned that when we say we're going somewhere on the weekend, it means we're staying with him, as opposed to leaving him there, so we're able now to venture out a tiny bit more than we used to.

My husband is a total homebody though. It's difficult in the winter when we have no where to go. In the summer, we're at the pool, so that helps.

I can only answer #2, since DD only goes part-time so #1 doesn't apply and #3 doesn't really apply either.

Her crib sheet, blanket and lovey for daycare are only for daycare so we wash it over the weekend and bring it back the next week.

@Mrs. Lion:

1) my LO is pretty used to the schedule at this point, so she has a snack at school around 3 (or at home with the nanny on those days), and then she eats dinner at 6. She doesn't really need anything in between that.

2) We have triples of everything and we wash each weekend. Then the blanket/lovey for school stays at school all week.

3) she's still happy to leave the house for errands or to go to the park with me

We do appetizers while dinner is getting ready.

So fruit that I've already pre-cut (strawberries, pineapples, apples). Or raisins, whole grain pretzels, cheerios. Something that will take the edge off but that wont be something that makes him want to ignore dinner for (fig newtons, fruit snacks, peanut butter crackers).

@Mrs. Lion: I only have input on 1 and 2...

1) I make a casserole on Sunday that DD can eat and likes. This way...if she is melting down, over tired, needs food immediately I can just microwave it and she is happy. Usually a pasta or rice casserole which I know she loves. It helps on nights where she just cant wait to eat with us or does not want what we have!

2) We dont have this issue bc DD never took to any blanket/lovey in particular. But my sister has this issue..."silky" being gone is a life or death situation. So they bought a back up for when "silky needs a bath"...so they have a duplicate silky.

1. How on earth do you manage to survive the 15-30 minutes it takes to get food on the table with hangry overtired children?!? For the love....
--Snacks. Veggies and fruit. Applesauce pouches. Activities for them to do.

2. How do you manage to ever wash blankets/loveys that go to school? I feel like there is never enough time that I am actually home to do a full load of laundry without someone needing to sleep and needing their lovey!
--We wash everything once a week. I bring it all home on Friday and it all gets washed sometime over the weekend.

3. Did anyone else's kids never want to leave the house after starting daycare? My 3 year old loves his school and doesn't mind going to school, but when we are not at school he just wants to be home all.the.time. I totally get that he wants the downtime (we do too) but this is a huge change in his personality/preferences. Before starting daycare he always wanted to go places! Does this change over time or should we just embrace it?
--It could just be a big change for him so now he's really loving spending time in his own space. He rules the roost here, not so much at daycare. Embrace it for now. Encourage him to try other things, though.

Sounds like things are going well otherwise!

1. We used to just feed LO dinner - leftovers, really simple stuff (cottage cheese, apple sauce, cucumber cut up, frozen sausages) - and eat later. Recently we moved his bedtime back so we could eat together. It took about a month but now he is able to wait a little longer. We often try and get him involved in cooking, it distracts him and he will eat a little bit of what we are cutting up.

2. We sometimes don't - we also only have one lovely and one favorite blanket - or we try and do it first thing in the morning on the weekends so it is ready by nap time. I prioritize DS sleeping well over having clean stuff. Maybe I'm just gross

3. We run in to this too. I think full-day day care is pretty stimulating for him so it is nice for him just to have downtime on the weekends. We try to talk about the fun things we are going to do when we go out and build up some anticipation.