Work With Me
From web developers & project managers to UX & QA the Nerdery needs you!
Advice
Get more DropBox space AND be better prepared for a disaster.
Who loves DropBox and who wants more free space? Well everyone that uses DropBox of course.
And who has cataloged the contents of their house for insurances purposes? Probably not many.
Turns out, that you can do both right now.
DropBox is beta testing a new version of their Android app that auto syncs photos and videos you take to DropBox. For every 500MB of photos and videos automatically uploaded, you’ll receive another 500MB space, up to 5GB total. So all you need to do is install the beta app and start uploading.
How to get free passes to the MN Zoo and other great places.
Zoo Goats
Did you know that some Minnesota libraries have free passes to all sorts of MN destinations?
We were lucky enough to get our hands on a MN Zoo pass last week and the whole family got into to the zoo for free!
We got to feed the baby goats, see the fish, lions and all sorts of other animals. Lily had a great time not only with the animals but also watching all the other kids.
The program is called the Museum Adventure Pass and they can get you into:
- The American Swedish Institute
Pudding Finger Painting
Dads Pudding Finger Painting
Have you ever wanted to do finger painting with your little one but was to worried about them eating the paint? Well try pudding instead.
We use vanilla pudding and add in some food coloring. Now we can finger paint without having to worry.
Granted Lily doesn’t like getting her hands dirty so it hasn’t gone really well. Next time we’ll just put it directly on the table as she doesn’t seem to have a problem with getting the table dirty.
Sliding down a pre-shoveled path works great.
Having a nice sliding hill is one thing, but it can be a lot of work to carve out a path.
However, we realized that the neighbors had a walking path down the hill that they kept well shoveled. It happened to be a little icy too and was perfect for sledding!
It’s great because there is just enough snow & ice to cover the grass, yet we didn’t have to plow through anything. The sides are high enough to keep the sled from veering off the path and it was easy to walk up. Win Win.
Tips to giving medicine to your little ones.
We’ll Lily has completed her first round of medications. She had to take both eye drops and liquid meds and she did pretty well.
With the eye drops the trick was to turn her head to the left try to put them in the corner of her left eye, right by the tear duct. Once in, turn her head to the right and they’d slide right in. Then do the same for the other side.
This works really well except when your kid doesn’t want to be sitting there. Then it’s best to bribe them.
Do your part to fuel your kids imagination.
The thing I love most about kids is their imagination and creativity. The world is theirs to conquer and they fear nothing.
As parents, we should fuel our kids imagination by either playing along and/or doing what we can to help out.
VW has a great ad out right now that sums this all up very nicely.
Volkswagen Star Wars Commercial: The Force
“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” – Jamie Paolinetti
Easy Last Minute Christmas Gifts for Toddlers
Are you running out of time to get a gift for your toddler? If so, here are a few easy and fun ideas.
- A Cardboard Box – Lily loves the boxes that bring gifts in them more for the boxes than what’s inside.
- A Plastic Tub – You know, one of those storage tubs. Much like a cardboard box, it’s just fun to get in and out of. And this one won’t break as easy.
- Paper – Paper is great. You can use it to make noise, rip it into pieces and throw it all around.
Successfully transitioned from formula to whole milk and bottles to sippy cups.
I don't have a drinking problem.
Once Lily turned one, the transition was on from bottles to sippy cups and from formula to whole milk. It took a couple of weeks, but she’s successfully transitioned.
The biggest thing to remember is to go slow. We fist started introducing sippy cups instead of bottles before we started transitioning milk.
We’d give Lily one for a snack every now and then so that she’d get use to sippy cups. She also got water or juice in them so, by the time we wanted to transition to milk, the cup wasn’t too big of an issue.
Overnight diapers help stop Lily from waking up at night.
Last week I wrote about how Lily was waking up at 4:30am. We thought it might be because her diaper was getting too full so we got ourselves some overnight diapers.
She still wakes with a really full diaper, but it’s not like her pjs are wet. And since we started using them, we’ve only had one night where she woke up 2am and I think that was due to something different.
If you’ve got a baby who’s starting to wake up way too early in the morning, try some overnight diapers and see if they help. They worked wonders for us.
Our first weekend away from Lily.
Over Labor Day weekend, we had our first weekend away from Lily. It was two nights, and nearly two days, of just me and the wife with no baby and it was fun; weird but fun.
As new parents, we get so use to carrying the diaper bag, pushing a stroller and doing all those parent things that we almost forget what to do when we don’t have a kid.
It was weird to not be carrying or pushing something. There was no food on the floor or diapers to change. There was just the two of us, and it was fun!
