Brushing Teeth With Kids’ Hello Toothpaste

hello flavors

Since each of my boys sprouted teeth as babies, I’ve only used the toothpaste I could find at my local grocery store, or on occasion, Target. The kids eventually made their preferences known, and they usually choose the watermelon flavor of the major brand’s kids’ toothpaste. Nobody looks forward to brushing his teeth, despite me trying to make it fun and sing-songy, or using those musical toothbrushes, or light up versions, or setting timers, etc. Basically I just say it to them 40 times “Brush your teeth. Brush your teeth. Have you brushed your teeth? Don’t you move a muscle until you brush your teeth.”

But! Then my first Scout Box came – it’s a box of products that I occasionally receive from the Savvy Sassy Moms Product Scouts Program to try, then share on the internets to tell you about them if I really love them:

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Inside, among other products I’ll tell you about later, there were three flavors of a new-to-us toothpaste called Hello.

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…and it had us at “Hello.”

The flavors we received are Bubble Gum, Green Apple, and Blue Raspberry. Bubble Gum and Raspberry emerged as the kid-chosen front runners, and my favorite part about them are that there are no preservatives, artificial sweeteners, triclosan, or dyes. That last one is obvious because the toothpastes are white, not neon green or striped, and when the kids drop some on the bathroom counter, they easily wipe off but in the meantime they are not leaving sticky green glops all over the place. (Somehow white glops aren’t so bad.)

 boy brushing teethReal child using hello on his first day of school. Not staged at all, I promise. (I’m just out of frame in my PJ’s)

The ingredients in the kids’ toothpaste are all listed on the hello website. The company makes an effort to make their products be “earth-friendly” and safe for kids. The price is about the same as the well-known brands, and the product is just better. You can find it in stores or online.

And a bonus – a sample-size of the adult toothpaste came in my ScoutBox so I’ve been using the spearmint flavor and I really love it!

Bike Back to School – Totally Do-able in Agoura Hills

My kids ride their bikes to school, and it’s the most wonderful thing. On days when they don’t have an after-school activity, they burst in the front door around 2:45 PM, yelling “Hi, Mom!” (or fighting with each other, more likely). I don’t have to rush out the door to get them to school on time, or sit in a hot sunny pick-up line of other cars, or jockey for a parking space. It’s all very suburban and old-fashioned.

That was the whole point of moving here.

If your kids are old enough to ride their bikes to school, with or without a parent riding along, you should encourage them to do it! Besides being incredibly convenient for you, it’s also good for them. Check out this infographic that shows results of a study by People For Bikes about bicycling in the US:

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On My Way To School by Sarah Maizes (Children’s Book Review)

School.

We’ve been back at it for a month now, and the bloom is off the rose. Every weekday morning there are groans and whining instead of bounces and enthusiasm like there were during the first few days of school.

While Sarah Maizes’ latest book in the On My Way To… series came out before school started, I am finding that it is useful now that school is a daily reality that has sunk in, however unwelcome.

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It seems funny to review a children’s book, but our kids have preferences for certain things just like we do, right? The best way I have figured out how to discover my own boys’ tastes is just to to put piles of books under their noses and see which ones they pick up again and again. It was easy when they were babies and I read them Goodnight Moon every single day and night. They had no choice. But once they got older and actually started learning how to read, well, let’s just say they expressed their opinions with no reasonable doubt.

That’s why I hoped and prayed that they would love the series by Sarah Maizes. She is my friend and colleague, and she has persevered against all odds (i.e. the intimidating world of book publishing) to publish not one but now three children’s books inspired by her own daughter Livi who stalls and hems and haws when forced to go to things like bed, a bath, and now school.

On My Way To School is the fantastical journey of a little girl who doesn’t want to go to school. “School is for people who need to learn stuff. I have gone to school and hundred times and I already know lots of stuff,” declares Livi. Boy, have I heard that one before.

Turning the mundane, routine task of getting out of bed and getting dressed for school into an adventure filled with snails, pirates, kangaroos, a red carpet, and more, Maizes channels Livi into a story that can help kids wrap their little minds around going to school. Michael Paraskevas’ colorful and imaginative illustrations will hopefully inspire them to create their own adventures out of otherwise ordinary days.

This book is perfect for my 7-year-old who is just getting a handle on reading, and loves the pictures and the story. He creates fantasy worlds for himself all the time, and can, no doubt, relate.

I think I’ll put it under his pillow and hope he awakes with a sense of adventure for school that he receives by osmosis during the night.

On My Way To School
by Sarah Maizes
$14.29 on Amazon