conduct a taste test

One of our favorite easy and interesting activities to do is to have a taste test. 


All you have to do is pick several versions of one type of food, make up a chart with the characteristics you will be judging and start tasting. 


This can be done as simple or complicated as you like, depending on your kids ages. 


We have done this with apples, cheese, nuts and seeds, olives, ice cream and even candy bars. 


Kids will try anything if it is in a taste test and are sometimes even able to broaden their palates.

Merit Badge Tales - Amy

POOP!

For nearly six months, every poop from our son was an EXPLOSIVE poop. Out of his diaper, running down his leg and onto the floor in clumps. It was especially bad if he was in the Bjorn - something about pressure points.

The worst experience happened while we were at Target shopping and heard that familiar sound, "plop, splat!" My husband hurried out with Oliver to change him and I strolled around the store with the other kids. We finished, checked out and headed out to the car. When we got to the car it was as if some terrible struggle and abduction had occurred. There was bright yellow poop pooled by the passenger door, smeared on the car, on the dashboard and in the seat (this is the nature of breast milk poop, you know!) My son's clothes were in a pile and he and my husband were gone. A mom walked by the car as I was surveying the situation and warned her children, "watch out! Someone squirted mustard all over the ground!"

Fearing the worst, I threw my 2 kids back in the cart and began searching for the missing baby. While walking back to the store, I noticed there was a poop trail leading from the store and I began to get really nervous. I mean, good God, what had happened! Did Ollie explode and vanish into a poop realm and take my husband with him? I finally located my dazed husband wandering around the store with my naked baby and gently led him back to the car where we vowed to double up on pants or better yet, switch to a sling (preferably a water proof one).

Merit Badge Tales - Nicola

SEX

I almost wouldn't know where to begin in choosing a story for the new sex badge, but we have DEFINITELY earned this one! We've done it all -- everything from nursing the baby in order to have "just a few more moments, please don't cry now, I'm almost there" to soaking right through the sheets from a pressurized milk disaster.

A couple of my favourites would be the time that my son walked in on us to see his father's back end poking out the top of the bed and exclaimed, "I see Daddy's bobbum!". Or the time that he needed to have his doctor's stethoscope fixed and brought it to me right in the middle of intercourse. I took it from him, reattached the missing piece, and handed it back without missing a beat.

As for mood music, it has always been Dora in our house. If we hear the "We did it!" song start and we haven't actually done it ("Oh no! The song!"), we know that its time to put on some major speed. Keeping the romance alive...