Posts by: brentwithabeard
Last Saturday, I received a tip from Gary North’s Tip of the week , that had a video link in it about helping your kids become entrepreneurs: Why you should, and some tips on how to do it. Below is the video (This video does contain a little swearing and talk of alcohol.)
The speaker in the video introduced me to a great idea for helping to teach my kids to think creatively, and to help train them to look for opportunities to make money (i.e. entrepreneurs).
He advised to tell your children to look for things they can do around the house, business, etc. that need to be done. Then, approach him with the desire to do it, as well as a price. They negotiate the price for the task, and the child does it. They then receive money for the task.
So, I approached Arwen, my oldest at 5 years old, and told her this idea. She immediately started looking for something that needed to be done. What did she pick? She chose to help de-weed our flower bed around the back of the house.
I then asked her what she’d charge me to do it. She said that she’d do it for $0.60. I agreed! I also promised the same to Charis (my 4 year old) if she helped.
Arwen then spent the next hour and a half, tirelessly picking out weeds and grass in our flower beds.
She did a great job! She didn’t get done, but she had quite a bit of work to show for her effort.
Charis helped some too, but she kept getting distracted. She did help with the cleanup.
All in all, I’m excited about using this new advice with helping my children become entrepreneurs. I want nothing more than for my children to go so much farther, and learn so much more than me when it comes to business. I think this will help build the skills they need to do just that.
The girls and grandpa are working on planting their seeds.
Here’s Ezra in his underwear, eating his breakfast, and reading an Oriental Trading magazine.
Mamma, workin’ hard in the garden!
My beautiful wife and baby girl, Evelyn, cuddlin’ on the couch…
Arwen is reading to Ezra in the big chair in their room.
Charis holds up her favorite… cheese pizza!
It’s kind of interesting to note from the vote on the healthcare bill, that the states that will benefit the most from the bill, are those who did not vote for it (i.e. Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma…). Some states which voted for it, had some of the least “need” for it (i.e. North Dakota, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts…). Check this out:
Today, I went with my fellow team leaders from work for a community service project. We went out to Pinson, AL, to help out the Freshwater Land Trust clean up some land.
Notice the trailer park in the background...
This was some stonework done by the previous owners of the property.
We left our store around 8:15 this morning, and arrived in Pinson around 9:00, to meet our guide for the day. He took us out through the land we were on, and showed us the vision they had for the land we were going to be working on. Right now, it is a property overgrown with a plant called privet.
Privet is like kudzu in its tendencies to be really annoying and take over everything. There land was covered in it.
So our major projects for the day, were to plant some trees, and get rid of as much privet as possible. Easier said than done.. but with 14 people helping, we were able to get a lot accomplished.
We worked ’til lunch time, and then went over to the Turkey Creek Nature Preserve. The park was closed, but we had a special privelege to go eat there while the park was closed. They took us to this place called “The Falls” where we got our sack lunches, and ate on top of a ginormous rock overlooking some beautiful water rapids!
That big rock on the left is the one.
The view from the top.
After lunch, our guide showed us an old Civil War site where a Southern blacksmith lived. Supposedly, he was helping the Confederate army, when the Union came through and burned down his house.
Next, we came back to the land where we were shown an area where some beavers had created a damn in the springs.
We then went back to cutting more privet, til we couldn’t stand cutting privet no more.
I came home in time for Missi to leave to go to Joann Fabrics with the baby to get some fabric for some furniture. So, I decided that despite being sore and dirty, it would be a great time to get some work done in the yard.
I watered our garden, helped dig some trenching on the property behind ours to help out our yard when it rains, I filled in some areas of our yard (particularly along the side of the house) that had sunk pretty deep because of sitting water.
Arwen helped me with this.
And finally, we got some old Whole Foods paper bags, and picked up some trash from the construction sites which had blown onto the property behind ours.
I’m going to be sore tomorrow.
Two heads are better than one, but up to now, my wife’s head has been the main one building what is now becoming our family business. I have only been minimally involved with what my wife has done such a wonderful, and diligent job building for the last 4 years, her soap business, Cheeky Maiden Soap Company.
I’ve slowly increased my help and involvement by helping her build our website, lift a few things occasionally, help with ideas, and help keep track of finances for the business. I always said that making soap would just not interest me…
But I recently decided that if we we’re going to build this thing big like we would like, then I would have to be involved more in actually helping to make our soap. My wife is just not physically capable of making the volume of soap that we would need to make.
So… we’ve now become a full fledged team! Tuesday, we made 18 logs of soap (or 360 bars) together. On her own, she could normally make only 9 logs.
Our business is drawing us closer together than ever.
Our plans to grow our business would not be possible outside of our teamwork. We’re also trying to homeschool our kids at the same time, so we need each other now more than ever.
Here’s some pics from our day:
Instead of Uncle Sam, we should now refer to the federal government as “Doctor Sam.”
There’s a good article on CBSNews.com, summarizing what the new health care bill will do. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Here’s a few things that stuck out to me, that will have a huge effect on our personal finances in the years to come, not to mention the beauracracy that this will add…
First, six months after enactment, insurance companies could no longer deny children coverage based on a preexisting condition.
Do you understand what that means? I don’t like a lot of the big business world, but there’s a reason why insurance companies deny children insurance who have preexisting conditions. It’s because they will drain the system. The government has no concept of this, because they don’t create budgets, and live within their means. Businesses have to do that in the private sector. Governments just print more money.
I have four children, and I can tell you that none of them have a “right” to health insurance or health care. To say that they have a “right” to something, is to say that someone else has to lose or sacrifice their “right” to that resource. There are consequences to all the one-liners that are thrown out by our incompetent politicians. A “right” is NOT some subjective concept, or some abstract ideal. When we give people “rights” we’re giving them something objective. In this case, it’s a doctor’s time, expertise, and medical expenses. To say that my child has a “right” to this, means that someone else has the “duty” to perform medical services for my child!
Children with preexisting conditions going onto the government or insurance company’s dole, will drain the system, and drive up costs for the rest of us. My supposed “right” to healthcare for my child, would take away your ability to get service, and to hold onto your money.
What’s more, is that by 2014, ANYONE with a preexisting condition cannot be denied insurance!
Second, part of the funding for the bill would come from an excise tax on indoor tanning salons! Now that’s just weird and random.
Third, “Insurance companies must allow children to stay on their parent’s insurance plans until age 26.” Really? Are people now classified as children until they’re 26? I’m 28, does that mean I’ve only been an adult for two years? I’ve been married since I was 21, and have 4 kids!
The main problem with this one, is that older children would normally pay higher insurance costs on their own plan. By extending the age that they’re on their parents plan, this again, will spread some of the costs around to us.
Fourth, “In 2014, everyone must purchase health insurance or face a $695 annual fine. There are some exceptions for low-income people.”
I can’t find any other word for this but “wicked.” To force someone to pay for health insurance is STEALING! My money does not belong to the government for them to decide to take it from me for a service I do not want.
This will actually raise healthcare costs, because people who do not have low enough income, may decide to take a lower paying job to avoid the fine. Or, people who are forced to purchase insurance will find every reason to go see the doctor as often as possible. When they do this, that will eat up available resources, decreasing supply, therefore increasing demand and costs. Either way, costs for everyone will rise.
Doctor Sam says, “Who needs an apple a day to keep them regular, when you can have a government sized enema instead?!”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0
Our kids have been acting strange lately. This winter has lasted longer than normal, and their little minds can’t stand being trapped inside.
So what do they do? They start doing weird stuff…
That’s a stuffed pig behind him…
One of the things my kids love to do, is go “explorin.” What that means, is that they want to go play in the giant disaster area that is the rest of what was supposed to be a 300+ subdivision. The builder had gone bankrupt shortly after we bought our house, and had only built 12 houses up to then.
Lesson: Don’t buy a new home, in such a new subdivision.
Anyway, we went a little farther than we had ever gone the other day, and this is what we found:
A mini version of the Grand Canyon in our backyard! That’s Arwen down there.
Here’s some other pics from our exploration.
Kids need to play outdoors. It’s good for their souls…
I’d feel like a jerk if I did’t share the rest of our potty-training story, so here goes. I ended the last post with a short blurb that we had not managed to get Ezra to poop yet. But we continued trying to entice him with candy as payment for a doodle in his potty chair.
He would go to the potty, but tense up when it started to come out, so he held his poop in for a couple of days. A couple of times we found some poo or skidmarks in his britches, but nothing more. He would try to sneak off by himself throughout the day, and we were sure it was to relieve himself in his britches.
Last Sunday, we went over to someone’s house after church. Being that they had small kids too, we let our kids off to go play play with theirs by themselves. Big mistake!
I went upstairs to go check on them, and got that smell…
We had the forethought to bring a couple of changes of clothing, but it is still no fun cleaning poop out of your child’s clothing over at someone else’s house.
After getting him cleaned up, I let him off to play again. Big mistake!
A little while later, he pooped in his pants again!
This time, I left him in it all the way home, and hosed him down in cold water once we got there. Since you can’t practice going to the potty and back in poopy underwear, I decided that a cold shower, every time he pooped, would help to rid him of this bad habit.
Monday goes by, no poop.
Tuesday comes, I’m at work, and he poops in his pants twice that morning, for my wife to clean up. She was not happy. She was even more unhappy about giving him a cold shower.
Wednesday. Now it’s been almost a week, and the kid has still not pooped on the potty. I had to go to work at 9:30 yesterday, so I decided to spend a little time talking to him about his poopin’ situation.
We had been telling him (only verbally) that there would be a candy prize for his poop, but he had still not complied. So… I decided to pull out one of the biggest and baddest pieces of candy in our stash. I waved it in front of his face, and told him that if he would simply poop in the potty, then this piece of candy could be his.
He immediately went to the bathroom, and peed. I told him that was not sufficient, and I needed him to poop. Well, nothing happened before work.
Around 4:00pm yesterday, my wife called me at work to tell me that he had finally pooped in the potty! My wife and girls had a big celebration that included suckers, gum, and a lot of dancing and whooping it up.
He was so proud of himself. His whole demeanor changed. He was a new man! No more pooping in his pants!
He then got up later that night after being put down to bed, to get up and poop in the potty again!
So… in sum… we learned:
- Don’t give up if they don’t get it immediately.
- Don’t just offer the candy verbally, show it to them, but whatever you do, don’t break you word and give it to them before they’ve met your expectations.
- Continue to practice whenever possible.
- Continue to ask him if he has dry pants.
A few years ago, a family friend of ours let us borrow a book called, “Potty Training in Half a Day.” It was a book that must have been written in the 70′s. Ezra is our third child, and the third child that I’ve potty-trained using the ideas from this book. They’ve been successful every time. Potty-training is not about trying to get your child to acquire the ability to control his sphincter, but to get him to learn self-control over it.
Children know how to use their sphicter, they’ve just never been required to. Since they were babies, they’ve gone in their pants, whenever and wherever they’ve wished. You’re simply there to help break the old habits, and introduce new ones. Remember that, should you try to use these ideas too.
Requirements
The main requirement for this to work well, is to have a mostly obedient child. If your child does not respect or obey you, this won’t work, and your attempts to teach your child self-control in this area, will reflect how well you’ve done in others.
A lot of times, one parent will have more control of the child than the other, but it’s vitally important to this process that both parents buckle down when it comes to potty-training to be successful.
Also, they say that you want to have your child able to pull their pants up and down before attempting this, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal. Ezra’s been the least coordinated as far as doing this, and it’s not been a problem. Just something to think about.
I would also recommend that whoever is training the child primarily, take at least 2 days off from work, so that there’s plenty of time for training reinforcement, in case things go longer than expected.
Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t happen in less than a day. I do the potty-training in my house, b/c my wife is easily discouraged. If it takes two days, then fine. My first two kids took a little more than a day, but it still worked, and this didn’t drag out for weeks or even months.
Supplies
You’ll need a few supplies to do this:
- A doll that pees in a toy toilet (pictured)
- Cut out some extra cloth for a couple extra pairs of underwear for the doll
- Candy/Cookies for treats (or something else the child doesn’t get very often)
- Juice/Milk (or some other beverage the child doesn’t get very often so that they’ll drink a lot of it)
- At least 6 pairs of training pants
- Preferably a toilet for toddlers, although you can teach them to just go straight in the regular toilet
- Towels
What to Do
First, we all sat down for a good breakfast, and then I sent everyone out of the house for the first half of the day. This is important, because you don’t want any distractions. Then, I filled a cup with apple juice for him to drink out of (you want them to be drinking constantly).
We then took off his pants and diaper, and put on a pair of training pants. I got our doll out, and we gave the doll some water, and then I showed Ezra how the doll pees on the potty. I then praised the doll, and made a big deal out of the doll putting their pee pees in the potty. Ezra did the same.
I then gave the doll a little mini Oreo cookie for going on the potty, which Ezra then got to eat. The point being to get him excited about going to the potty. I then had him empty the toy toilet into the regular toilet.
Next, we fed the baby again, but this time, when he wasn’t looking, I wet the doll’s pants, and had him feel the pants to see if they were dry. I then acted disappointed that the baby pee peed in her underbritches. Ezra did too.
Now, several times throughout this process I asked him if his pants were dry. This is important. You want him to focus on having dry pants, and not just putting his pee pee in the potty. So I asked him if his pants were dry. He felt them, and said yes, and so I gave him a cookie for dry pants!
I then had him practice walking to his little potty chair, pull down his training pants, and sit down to see if he could pee. He did, but nothing came out. No problem.
He pulled them back up, and we repeated the process with the doll.
Somewhere in there, we were visited by some Jehovah’s Witnesses. This was a big mistake on my part. I shouldn’t have answered the door. But I couldn’t resist.
While having a discussion with them, Ezra looked out our front window at them, and happened to have an accident while watching them! 
Well, in potty-training, accidents are progress, because it means that you now have an occasion for teaching!
Here’s what I did, and what I did EVERY time he had an accident. I took his hand and told him that we needed to practice going to the potty. I took him from the site of the accident to the potty chair, where I made him pull down his wet training pants, and sit down. I made him stand back up, and we walked back to the site of the accident where I again told him that pee pees do not go on the floor they go in the potty.
We did this 3 times. The third time I let him sit longer to see if he had any pee. He didn’t. No problem.
We changed his training pants, and then I gave him a towel and made him clean up his pee. He then put his dirty britches and towel into the dirty clothes.
We then trained again with the doll. Occasionally asking him if he had dry pants, and rewarding him with a cookie or candy if he had dry pants.
A little while later, he had another accident. Still progress. We repeated the steps listed above.
Again, trained with the doll, and took a break. After less than an hour and a half into this process, he came to me saying “Potty!” So I helped him get to the potty, and he peed for the first time on the toilet! I did notice however that what really happened was that he stopped himself after he had started peeing on the floor. Still… not bad. He’s getting it.
We then went an hour and a half with no action, before I asked him to sit down and try to go on the potty. He sat down, and went on his own! I then had him empty the pot on his potty chair.
Another hour and a half later, he did this again! Then lunch and naptime.
After naptime, he woke up, and immedieately peed on the floor next to his bed. Here’s where I slipped up a bit… I forgot to make him practice again.
He still made it through the rest of the day without another accident, and even went through his first night without peeing in his bed. He woke up crying in the middle of the night, so I helped him to the potty, and then first thing the next morning, he took himself to the potty, and came into our room showing us his pee in the removable pot of his chair! He was so proud of himself!
A couple of notes… you want to slowly ween them off of candy throughout the process, b/c you want to get past giving them candy every time they go to the bathroom. Also, don’t let up your diligence in training after an accident. I made the second mistake, and the second day, after I went back to work, he regressed slightly while I was not there with him.
Pooping
Ezra’s the first one who’s been kind of weird about pooping in his potty chair. My other kids, although they trained slower, didn’t have a problem pooping in the potty chair.
The trick though, is to continue to do the practicing every time there’s an accident, even a poo poo accident. Offer candy for anything new that they do.
I’m writing this on the third day of his new life in underwear. Today he had one accident first thing this morning beside his bed again. I think he needs to go in the night sometime. Other than that, he had no accidents, although he didn’t poop all day today either. He’s still struggling with that.
I hope you have a Whole Foods Market near you. If so, you can find these two great products that I like to help you get more fiber in your diet.
Fiber is not just needed by your body for bowel movements, but is needed to help with sugar balancing, overall digestive health, and by extension immune health. Fiber, when taking 35 grams or more a day, can actually help you lose weight. It won’t help you lose 30 pounds in 30 days, but it will help you lose it at a lot healthier pace.
365 Organic High Fiber Cereal
The first product is an organic high fiber cereal from our private label brand, 365 Organic. This cereal has 8 grams of fiber per serving. The serving size is only 1/2 cup! And at only $2.99 (our B’ham AL price), you can’t beat it. An average bowl of cereal for most people is 2 servings, which is 16 grams of fiber.
I know you’re wondering if this tastes like cardboard, but it actually tastes really good. I hate cardboard.
365 Birdland Multi Seed Bread
The second product, is a bread we carry in our bakery. Again, this is a private label brand. It’s our 365 brand Birdland Multiseed Bread. This bread packs a whopping 5 grams per slice! That’s 10 grams for a sandwich!
This bread is surprising soft, and doesn’t taste like cardboard either.
Our Family Soap Biz
