PerryWinkles Kids Blog

We are pleased to announce that you can now shop for PerryWinkles Kids’ collection of smocked girls’ dresses and cardigans at The 5 Fifty 5 Shop at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The gift shop is operated by the Hospital’s Women’s Auxiliary volunteers and proceeds are directed toward patient-related projects.

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), affiliated with the University of Toronto, is Canada’s most research-intensive hospital and the largest centre dedicated to improving children’s health in the country. As innovators in child health, SickKids improves the health of children by integrating care, research and teaching.

With a staff that includes professionals from all disciplines of health care and research, SickKids provides the best in complex and specialized care by creating scientific and clinical advancements, sharing knowledge and expertise and championing the development of an accessible, comprehensive and sustainable child health system.

PerryWinkles Kids specializes in little girls’ comfortable, trendy and practical girls’ hand-smocked dresses, in sizes from newborn to size 6. PerryWinkles Kids works only with machine-washable high-quality natural fabrics, like soft pima cotton, that are easy to care for.

Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - fine girls’ clothing

The end of October marks a very busy few weeks for my family. My eldest daughter’s birthday is on October 26th. This alone would be enough to keep me busy for a whole week. Keira is a typical 4-year old (nearly 5-year old) little girl and takes her birthday very seriously - or at least wants everyone around her to. She wants a birthday party with her friends from school. I tried to plan a small get-together at home with just 5-6 little girls from school, but she wasn’t ready for that. She wants a party with 15 kids from her school (mostly girls this time - first year she has made this distinction). She wants a Barbie cake and a pinhata. I am probably not being a good parent in giving her all this, but I am happy that I can do this for her and I will. On top of all this, she is expecting a birthday present from her parents…so I will oblige.
But the celebrations do not stop here. We have a big family here in Toronto and Keira being the first grandchild gets a lot of attention from them. Grandparents, great-granny, aunts, uncles, cousins all want to celebrate Keira’s birthday with her. So, we’re having another party the day after the one with her classmates…just a very casual lunch at our home, but still a party.

This would all be OK if my daugther’s birthday was not so close to Halloween, which brings a whole other set of celebrations. While we plan her birthday party, we have to decorate our house for Halloween, make sure she has a costume (she is BatGirl this year), bring treats for her school’s Halloween party…and of course go trick-or-treating on the 31st. (What to do with the Halloween candy is a whole other topic!).
I’m so tired…and December, the real holiday season, is not even close!
Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - specializing in little girls’ smocked dresses

Following up from my post “Parenting advice from a Montessori Pro”, I wanted to add some ideas of activities that parents can encourage their young children to do. The more your little girl or boy is allowed to help around the house, the higher their sense of self-respect will be. All your everyday chores might take you a little longer with this exercise, but the end result should bring every parent much satisfaction, not only as your children learn to help with the house chores, but as their self-esteem flourishes.

Here are some ideas of activities for young children at home:

• setting and clearing the table
• folding napkins
• washing and drying the dishes
• bringing in the mail and newspapers
• caring for plants: watering, misting, removing dead leaves
• sorting and folding laundry
• collecting the linens and towels that need to be laundered
• putting away groceries
• filling the water glasses at the dinner table
• sorting the shoes in the hall closet
• preparing for bath time and tidying afterward
• gardening: planting bulbs, cutting flowers, raking leaves

Also, here are some ideas to do around your home to provide a friendlier environment for your little children:

• provide shelves for toys, books and games. Try to avoid toy boxes.
• have some area in the kitchen or family room with some low shelves or a cabinet where some of the child’s things may be stored. A child size table and chair is also a great idea.
• avoid having too many toys. If you have too many toys available for your kids, they will end up not spending much time with any of them. Rotate the toys to create new interest.
• provide low hooks for your child to hang his or her own clothes.
• provide a stepping stool for your child to reach the sink and toilet.

I have come to realize that I have to learn to give my two young daughters more credit as to what they are able to do. The more I encourage them to help around the house, the more it becomes natural and I know that in the long term, their self-esteem will greatly benefit.

Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - specializing in little girls’ smocked dresses

I love Quinoa. I eat it for lunch at least once a week and serve it to my family also at least once a week, as a rice or pasta replacement. I love Quinoa for its taste, but I think more importantly for all the nutrition it provides my family of 2 little girls and my husband and the ease of cooking it. A main food staple of the Inca civilization in Peru (where our little girls’ smocked dresses are made), quinoa has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years and has fed millions of people.

Quinoa is known as a wonder food, the “Mother Grain” or a “super crop” thanks to its great nutritional value. Quinoa contains more protein than any other grain (an average of 16.2%, compared with 7.5% for rice, 9.9% for millet and 14% for wheat). It’s also a good source of dietary fiber and is high in magnesium, potassium and iron and a good source of phosphorous, calcium, vitamin E and several B vitamins. Quinoa is also gluten-free and easy to digest and it contains an almost perfect balance of all eight essential amino acids needed for tissue development in humans. Quinoa has been a great addition to my family’s diet; my little girls have been eating it since they were infants starting to eat solids.
My favourite ways to cook quinoa are:

• Quinoa salad - mix the cooked quinoa with pretty much anything in your fridge. I love tomatoes, feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, toasted pine nuts, left over meat or firm tofu, corn, fresh herbs. Pour some freshly-made salad dressing and you have a great-tasting and filling lunch or dinner accompaniment.
• Quinoa as a side dish - Serve quinoa instead of pasta or rice with all your favourites meals like meatballs or oven-roasted salmon.
• Quinoa in salad - Make up your usual green salad and ad some cooked quinoa to make your salad more filling (and tasty and unique!).

One of the latest recipes I’ve tried for quinoa comes from 101 cookbooks. Definitely worth the try! Cook quinoa the same way you would cook rice and be sure to remember to rinse your quinoa before using it, as the saponin on the quinoa makes it taste bitter if not rinsed off. I truly believe this is a miracle food - extremely nutritional, tasty, and very easy to cook and integrate into your family’s diet.

Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - fine little girls’ smocked dresses

My 2 1/2- year old daughter, Sara, was supposed to have started Nursery School a couple of weeks ago. I say ’supposed to’ because we showed up the first day of school and realized that she had to be fully potty-trained - I had totally missed this important detail and Sara was not quite potty-trained (I showed up with a bag full of training diapers). So, Sara stayed at school that one day and we went back home to start the ‘boot camp’ of potty-training. I was convinced that she had it in her to be potty-trained in a few days and I was even more decided when she had a great day at school and wanted to go back the next day.

The method that worked for me was just going ‘cold turkey’. We got home that day from school and I talked to Sara and told her that there would be no more diapers (except for bedtime). That night, my husband and I put together a chart for Sara where she would get a sticker for every time she would go to the potty. We also got her a special present (yes, a Dora toy) that we put on top of our kitchen pantry for her to see and hopefully realize that she would be working towards that. Finally, we got her a little potty so that she could feel she could go to the bathroom in her own terms with a toilet her size.
The first few days of this exercise were extremely frustrating. It seemed to me that Sara had no clue what I was trying to teach her. Every single time she had to go to the bathroom, she went in her pants…with no diapers of course. It was an exhausting few days, both physically (from cleaning her accidents and asking her every hour if she needed to use the potty) and mentally (I was feeling guilty and defeated). But every day she had less accidents until one day she asked a few times when she had to go. Suddenly the successes were more numerous than the accidents. We are now in day 16 (yes, it took a little while!) and we haven’t had an accident in a few days. She is asking every time she has to go to the bathroom, be it at home or out of the house.

So, tomorrow we will try her first day of school again. I have all the confidence in the world that she will be fine. I also know that she will likely have accidents, especially since she will be so occupied in the first few days at a new school. But she is so proud of herself to have gotten here that I know she will do great.

Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - fine girls’ smocked dresses

Last night I attended a lecture called “Freedom of Choice & Development of the Will” at my daugther’s Montessori school in Toronto.  The speaker was Sandra Girlato, who is the director of training at The Foundation for Montessori Education in Toronto, Canada. Sandra proved to be a very entertaining speaker who inspired me to want to be a better parent.  Her parenting tips, for children between 1 and 6 years old, based largely on the Montessori thought, were just amazing.

The main theme of the lecture was the idea that children, even as young as 1 year old, need to be given the opportunity to make choices.  We as parents cannot do everything for them.  These choices that we can provide our children with come in the form of whether she will wear pants or a skirt today, to what colour socks he/she will wear, to what they want on the dinner plate from the choices you offer….just small choices, or choices about things that might seem trivial to an adult.  The younger the child, the simpler the choices you give them of course.  But by putting your child in a position where she or he will have to make such choices in their every day lives, you are promoting their ability to think and will eventually lead them to be confident, intelligent adults - with a strong will in them.

There were a few things that really brought the point home to me.  She said, for example, that most of our homes are not built for little kids, which is pretty obvious.  But she said if you want your children to be a little more independent and, for example, help themselves to (healthy) snacks, set up your pantry so that these choices are accessible to your kids.  She also mentioned that small children do not deal well with too much choice - she said that, for example, having too many toys at home creates bored children because it presents them with too many choices and they are almost unable to make a decision as to what to play with.

Sandra’s insight, and delivery in a very engaging and entertaining manner, provided me with amazing practical suggestions to improve my parenting.  All in all I took away the fact that children have a lot more ability than what we accredit them with…and slowing down can do wonders for little children and their families.  Let them butter their toast (even if they butter it on both sides), let them choose their clothes (even if the clothes don’t match)…it might make for a slower morning at the beginning, but it should be well worth it down the road.

Maria

PerryWinkles Kids - fine girls’ smocked dresses

One of our favourite fabrics to work with for our Fall and Winter collections of little girls’ hand-smocked dresses is viyella (vī yel′ə, vi-). This gorgeous fabric is made of natural fibres and is soft and cozy, making it perfect for dresses for every little girl during the colder months. For the 2008 Fall and 2009 Winter we used viyella in our stunning and unique new Jane hand-smocked dress.