L’ Shanah Tovah! It’s Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and time to celebrate!

You’re not Jewish? Join in anyway. It’s always a good time to acknowledge life and renewal, and any good celebration always includes good treats.

The traditional treat for Rosh HaShanah is apples dipped in honey. The combination represents looking forward to a fruitful and sweet new year. My personal preference? Gala apples – just the right texture and flavor to mix with the richness of the honey.

Oooh…honey. Honey is drippy and sticky, and serving it to your little ones means more honey on them than in them. Bit O Honey candy to the rescue. The miniature bars can be served with apple slices, or larger bars cut up into small pieces for little fingers. Just check the label first if you have a concern about food allergies.

Here’s to a sweet and prosperous New Year!

It may not have a face or a tail, but it’ll get you through in a pinch.

We all love the Wubbanubs.

Who knows how many wee ones have sucked themselves to sleep on those cute little animals attached to pacifiers? It’s a stuffed animal, it’s a pacifier, it’s a win/win!

Until…uh oh! Wubbanub falls out of the grocery cart, or Mommy can’t find it in time to bring it to Nana’s. Then what?

I whipped up this improv “Wubbanub” today for my grandson. I grabbed a pacifier I already had on hand, then took a silk handkerchief that had belonged to my mother and ran it through the loop at the pacifier’s end until I had equal lengths of fabric on either side.  As you can see above, I kept tying knots until I came to the ends.

Our little man took to it immediately. The silk was soft and the knots were interesting to feel. I had the added satisfaction of knowing he was holding a little bit of his great-grandmother, who would have loved him to the moon and back.

This can be done with any soft fabric (a baby washcloth or dishtowel) as long as you can pull it through the pacifier’s end loop. In fact, I did this many times for my daughter twenty-some years before Wubbanubs hit the market. It’s a grandmother’s trick from ages back.

Safety warning!

This is an in-a-pinch hack, not a final solution. Unless you stitch the knots to keep them permanently tied, do not leave the baby unsupervised with this make-shift toy. We don’t want a little one to untie the knots, suck, swallow, and choke on a loose end of fabric. Keep an eye on your sweetie until she’s asleep, then remove the pacifier.

Here’s another use for my favorite silicone chew beads.

Silicone teething beads can help you teach your baby to balance while sitting.

My grandson is four and a half months old, and starting to get the hang of sitting up, until – whoops! – he wobbles. Baby down! Fortunately, he’s also at the stage of the iron grip, where anything that gets into his little grasp stays there until his fingers can be coaxed open (frequently releasing strands of my hair. OW!)

Why “fortunately”? Well, why not use the iron grip to teach another skill? I pull out my silicone beads, open the clasp to make a long string, and place a bead in each of his hands about eight inches apart on the strand. Then I take the loose ends of the beads and hold the the string up straight and tight, pulling him into a balanced sitting position. If he leans to one side or the other, I pull to the opposite side and straighten him up.

Of course, eventually he decides that the beads should go in his mouth, so we take a chewy break, then start over.

Seriously, I know my daughter successfully survived her childhood, but how did I survive motherhood without these beads?!

Cloud dough, that is. A more traditional receipe as well as a safe-in-the-mouth version for the littles who have to taste everything they handle.

This creative tip was shared by a childhood friend who is now a proud grandmother living in Arizona. It comes from the Happy Hooligans website, where you’ll find loads of other great suggestions for kid-friendly crafts and activities.