Learn about tantrums, toilet training, and strategies to make the "twos" truly terrific. The Parents Place in San Rafael is offering a Terrific Twos (14–36 months) workshop for parents tomorrow evening, August 15 from 6:30–8:30 pm. The workshop will cover setting limits, coping with aggression, developing socialization skills, and more.

Instructor and parent educator Susan Byrd facilitates Parents Place workshops for parents of toddlers and preschool-age children. Her areas of expertise include issues for new parents and young children, such as sleep, toilet learning, limit-setting, tantrums, positive discipline, parent-child separation, and adjustment to school and family changes.

The workshop cost is $35 per person and preregistration is required. You can preregister here.

I grew up hiking on the trails of Mt. Tam with my family, and have fond memories of walking around the summit of the mountain and marveling at the fantastic views. The East Peak of Mt. Tamalpais is a great place to go for families looking to take a hike with small children, and it also offers what are arguably the most spectacular views of any hike in the San Francisco Bay Area, so it's a great spot to take out-of-town visitors, too.

The easy, paved, .7-mile Verna Dunshee Trail that circles the mountaintop is accessible and perfect for strollers, too, and it's recently been repaved and upgraded. In addition to panoramic views of the Bay Area, the East Peak has a small visitor center and gift shop, as well as a seasonal snack bar offering candy, hot dogs, ice cream, and sodas. It's always a great place to stop for a treat after a family hike.

You'll also find the Gravity Car Barn and Museum near the snack bar. Open to the public on weekends from noon to 4 pm, the Gravity Car Barn pays tribute to the long gone Mt. Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway, an excursion railroad that from 1896 to 1930 transported visitors up to the summit of Mt. Tam via steam train, and back down to Mill Valley by means of a free-wheeling gravity car, a replica of which is housed inside the gravity car barn and is rolled out when the museum is open.

Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear.

Nicole's meal plan for this week features quick and easy shrimp and green bean stir fry, 3 cup chicken with garlic spinach, rocket pesto with linguni, chicken fried rice, and these flank steak pinwheels.

It seems like premade flank steak pinwheels are the rage at the grocery stores where I live. I have bought them and never really thought that they were all that good. In this recipe, I attempt to make them juicer and tastier than anything you buy pre-made. The result is a fantastic salty-sweet filling that my family gobbled up. My son especially loved the sauce to dip the steak in. I served it with Israeli couscous and an heirloom cherry tomato salad.

Servings: 4–6
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes

Marin Mommies presents a guest article by financial planner and mom Tanya Steinhofer.

Once my son’s savings piggy bank accumulated a fair amount, it had been my plan to take him to a local bank to open a passbook savings account, so he could experience opening an account, have tangible evidence of his money and watch it grow. I recently began the search for a passbook savings account and came to the realization that this type of account has gone the way of the Dodo bird. For those unfamiliar with this type of account, it’s a savings account that comes with a physical booklet that gets stamped with the amount of deposits and withdrawals (similar to a check register). So I broadened my search to see what type of savings accounts (not investment accounts) are available for kids. I called a few local banks and some national ones with large footprints locally, as well as one online-only bank (ING Direct).

This puffed pancake or "Dutch baby" is a favorite breakfast treat in our house. During the summer we love to make this puffy, custardy pancake with fresh berries, like wild blackberries that we go out and pick ourselves. Blueberries and raspberries work great, too. We also make it with apples and other seasonal fruit at different times of year. The kids love to watch this pancake cook through the oven window, since the batter puffs up dramatically as it bakes.

It's actually quite easy to forget to put on your oven mitt when you're moving the hot pan in and out of the oven—I know this from painful experience—so always make sure you have one on you hand before you reach in to grab the skillet handle. Needless to say, this probably isn't a recipe for little ones to help with, but they can with measuring ingredients and mixing the batter.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup fresh berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, or even a mix)
• Warm maple syrup or powdered sugar for serving

The start of the school year is just around the corner, so it’s the time to start shopping for those back-to-school clothes, backpacks, lunchboxes, and all the supplies needed for school itself.

The costs of all those clothes and other necessities add up, of course. Seeing how much you actually spent on back-to-school stuff can often come as shock. Fortunately, there are ways to cut down on the expenses of back-to-school. Here are a few tips to get the things your kids need while not breaking the bank:

1. Make a list of the items your kids need and prioritize them by importance.
2. Once you make your list, stick to it when you go shopping. All those little things you put in your cart can really add up.
3. Check your home school supplies inventory before you set out on a back-to-school shopping trip. You never know what you’ll find that you can check off your list.
4. Set a back-to-school budget and stick to it.
5. Seek out those end-of-summer sales and stock up if you can.
6. Research clothing, backpacks, and other items online first to compare prices and find the best deals.
7. Visit your local consignment stores, especially those that specialize in kids’ clothes like Marin Kids Consignment in San Rafael. You’ll be amazed at some of the deals you can find there on gently used and like-new items.

Marin Mommies presents a guest article by Rebecca Wood Breen, LCSW, Parents Place Coordinator, Marin County. She highlights some of the programs and services offered to Marin parents by the Parents Place in San Rafael.

Your 2-year-old constantly throws himself on the floor when he doesn’t get what he wants. Your 5-year-old torments her 3-year-old sister. Your 13-year-old won’t speak to her step-father. And you’re so worn out from managing one domestic crisis after another that going to work in the morning seems like a vacation.What can you do?

Parents Place in Marin County can’t take you away from your challenges and problems, but we can help you resolve them and make life better for yourself and your family. We gear all of our programs toward practical, effective, easy-to-implement solutions that are custom-tailored to meet your family’s specific needs. Our range of services includes:

• Support for expectant and new parents, including a free New Moms’ Support Group, Preparing for Childbirth with Yoga couples workshops, Infant Sleep and Infant Massage workshops, and breastfeeding support. We recognize the importance of support and community during this exciting and challenging transition.

Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear.

Nicole's meal plan for this week features skirt steak with chimichurri dressing, tomato pesto penne, chicken with zucchini and cherry tomatoes, grilled eggplant, red pepper, and tomato foccacia sandwiches

Building on my famous quick roasted chicken thighs, this recipe uses the best of fresh seasonal favorites such as sweet red bell peppers and vine ripened tomatoes. We mopped up the sauce with a fresh loaf of herbed bread but pasta would be a nice accompaniment too.

My kids love keeping busy with hands-on activities, whether they're crafts or science projects, or art. While I try to keep a good stock of supplies for creative activities on hand, sometimes it's a stretch to come up with something new and put it together with what I have. That's one of the reasons we were so excited to get our hands on a sample of the new Kiwi Crates—activity kits designed to keep kids engaged and busy.

Created by Bay Area mom Sandra Lin, Kiwi Crates operate on a subscription service: for $19.95 a month, you get a crate of creativity appropriate for kids ages 3–7 delivered to your door. Themes include "Colorful Inspiration", "Dig into Dinosaurs", and "Growing Gardens".

Our sample was the Growing Gardens crate, the contents of which are pictured below. It contained three projects: a window garden kit to plant and grow beans and squash indoors, supplies to create our own one-of-a-kind veggie pots, and some recipe cards to write down the tasty creations that we'll eventually make with our vegetables.

My kids have been getting excited about the summer OIympics, which officially started last night in London. In honor of the games, we decided to make our own Olympic medals out of recycled materials and stuff we had in our craft drawer. We raided the recycle bin and found a corrugated cardboard box for the medal, but cereal boxes or other heavy card stock work fine, too.

The medals turned out great, and the kids had fun making them. We made the Olympic torch in the photo from a cone of heavy white paper and orange tissue paper.

Of course everyone wanted to have a gold medal, so silver and bronze got left out this time, but if you have enough paint then you can make all three kinds. Here's what you'll need to make this craft: