2nd Annual - What's In My Boy's Easter Baskets? 1st Annual - What's in Livvy's Easter Basket?

With Easter around the corner again this year, I am happy to share with you the bunnies agenda for the upcoming Sunday! If you have followed my posts, or know me as a person or just an OT, you are very aware of my feelings related to nutrition and my passion for health, which has grown exponentially in the past 10 years. I truly believe that the american diet is contributing to not only childhood obesity, diabetes and asthma, but also the ever-growing developmental challenges kids have today. Just because it's Easter, it is not an excuse to "drug" kids with a basket filled with genetically modified, processed sugar and food dyes. Be creative and think outside of the candy box.

First, my mom got all the kids these adorable Easter baskets from Personal Creations. When I just went to their website to give you the link, it shows there is still time to order before Sunday!

Now, for the boys. I did stick with the same trend as last year, but this year I went with Fish Sticks instead of Zoo Sticks to change it up a bit! These are just so great for working on fine motor skills, hand strengthening and promoting a correct grasp to help carry-over to holding a pencil, I couldn't resist. When you do use these with your kids, whether it's for eating, playing, or cleaning up small toys, such as Legos, please encourage them to use their "pinchers" getting the optimum fine motor gains from the activity.

Next on the list...playmobil has become a minor obsession in our house lately. Henry discovered a playmobil toy at our local (and amazing) bookstore in Manchester. Henry loved the toy because it was a toy that you could take apart, put together and pretend play with, and Lukey soon enjoyed playing with the playmobil too. I love them because they encourage using two hands together, have small, intricate parts requiring fine motor precision and strength, and they all have inter-changeable parts we are finding out as well! This Easter, I found that playmobil had these eggs for sale, so I purchased two, again at our local bookstore (support local and happy environment :) as there is no shipping required), but I am giving you the link to amazon, where they are also sold. I know the boys will be psyched! 

Lastly, I bought the boys new, re-usable snack and sandwich bags (happy environment :) These are great to use instead of plastic baggies, due to decreasing waste and they are also so much safer and healthier than the awful chemicals in plastic bags. I bought these at our local coop, but I previously bought some at Target and they are readily available in many locations, even some grocery stores. As with last year, I also bought the boys Lake Champlain chocolate carrots. Lake Champlain is a fair trade Vermont company, which makes me feel okay about splurging on the chocolate!

I also am going to make the boys homemade, vegan "peanut" butter cups. I don't have a picture because when I made these for a gluten free alternative when heading to a birthday parts a few weeks ago, they were not picture worthy! However, they tasted delicious. I am not saying that these are healthy, but they are much better than Reece's peanut butter cups. Here's what you need: 1. Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips 2. Organic Cashew Butter 3. Organic Coconut Palm Sugar 4. Himalayan Sea Salt - 4 ingredients, simple right! Melt the chocolate chips on the stove. While they are melting, stir the palm sugar and sea salt into the room temperature cashew butter. Once melted, pour a little of the chocolate to coat the bottom of a mini-muffin pan (lined with unbleached muffin liners), place a dollop of the cashew butter mixture on top of the chocolate and then cover with more chocolate. Place the tray in the fridge and voila, once cooled, you have an awesome indulgence. You can use peanut butter as well, but I like to limit the amount of peanut butter we eat due to the aflatoxin. One of my favorite websites, as my frequent readers and Facebook friends know, tappstips.com also has a tahini version of this, which really packs some health benefits into a small treat.

Now for Miss Livvy! Luke's basket was rather scant last year due to him being 1, so Liv's is looking the same, as she is just coming up on 5 months. Livvy is getting an amber necklace, to hopefully help with her teething (my kids all teeth ridiculously early!). I'm also getting her a "girly" book from again, our local bookstore, because there may come a time that she gets tired of reading up on her excavator's and front loaders! That's it that's all for Liv! 

Again, we will be cutting our Easter grass from construction paper instead of buying the fake grass from the store, which I feel is a waste. Cutting is also such a great skill to work on with kids, and when you are making Easter grass, you can just let them go wild with the blunt, kid-friendly scissors. Varying the paper (plain white, construction, oak tag) will also increase or decrease the resistance. This is great if you really want to work on hand strengthening or if your kids are older, give them the oak tag and a green crayon and leave the thin paper behind!

Enjoy your Easter everyone!