Category: Kids/Parenting

Tips, tricks and adventures in parenting two kids.

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Kids/Parenting

A full hand!

Hayden turned five yesterday! We had a little party with his preschool class, complete with s’more cupcakes (mmmmmmmmmmm).

The first thing he got for his birthday wasn’t really planned, but I had to make a quick run and happened to ask if he was old enough, and he was:


His first library card!

He insisted on checking out my books for me. I let him enter his own PIN on the touchscreen at checkout. He was very happy. (He was also quite proud of the map the librarian gave him. I was quite proud that he printed his first name himself.)

He got the Pillow Pet (or Piwpet, as Rebecca calls hers) he’s been wanting since before Christmas, and the “mo-trol” car (remote control) he’s been wanting since he played with his cousin’s at New Year’s, as well as some awesome building toys that he’s already hard at work with. (He’s built a two foot tall crane on the dining room table!)

Also fun: Aunt Jasmine is visiting!

In the last week, Rebecca turned 2.5, Ryan turned… another year older, Hayden turned 5 and Rachel will be 8 months tomorrow. Me, I’m just a loser 😉 .

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Kids/Parenting

Getting bigger

I haven’t blogged about my kids in a while, it seems, and then they’re growing up so fast, I don’t know where to start!

This morning, Rachel used the couch to stand up for the first time! This is her last week, using the rocking chair (also the true first):

She’s still growing, but not quite as fast as she used to be. She was almost average sized at 4 months (a first for one of my children!), but at 6 (really 7) months, she was closer to the 35th percentile in weight. (Height was at the 98th percentile, but since she’s not abnormally long/tall, the doctor and I think that was probably a mis-measure.)

Rebecca is growing, too! She’s officially two and a half today. Lately she seems to be speaking much more clearly. For example, she doesn’t say “pea’ bu’ saas” but “peadut butter sammatch.” She still doesn’t say her r’s, favoring y’s and w’s instead. (“Diapehy” is a favorite of mine.)

She started having serious problems with bedhead, so I tried to get her to use scrunchies. If I did her hair “wike Tinkie Behww!” or to match mine (“We matsh?”), she was excited to let me touch her hair (a first!). I got her a few scrunchies at the dollar store last week, and she lets me do her hair almost every day now.

Hayden is learning new words. He likes to sound out words often these days (Last night: “G-g-g-gum. G! Gummmmm. M!”). He loves preschool, especially when it’s our turn to teach/host. He’s also experimenting with more photography, because he saw the Newborn Photographer I hired to take him pictures (revolving around his latest favorite toy) and self-portraiture.

Warning: extreme closeup!

I fear I’ve created a monster, though: last week, I showed him the folder of Internet bookmarks I had just for him. I showed him how to open the browser. I showed him which link (of the 2-3) led to PBS Kids games. And now all he wants to do is play on the computer! (We have a few rules, of course: he has to ask first and get off whenever we tell him to.) It’s a little annoying during a lot of the day, but makes for a quieter quiet time. (And Rebecca happily taking naps again is helping with that, too!)

I love that they’re growing and discovering new things ad getting more independent, but I’m always sad to feel their early childhood slipping away.

What milestones have your kids hit recently?

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Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Getting into the groove of gratitude

Almost a year ago, I attended a parenting class. Basically, the takeaway was to actually apply consequences to your children’s actions instead of just talking about them. (Which is a big old DUH—and an awful lot of work.) But the thing that’s really made a difference in our home was the teacher’s other point.

Last week, I came across the statistics backing this up again and I thought I’d share.

They say that children get a lot more negative messages than positive ones. Some of these are understandably necessary: no, you can’t have candy three meals a day; no, you can’t touch the hot stove; no, you can’t run into traffic. But can you imagine if you were told “no” as often as a four-year-old does?

(Yes, yes I can. “No, you can’t do what you want right now. No, everything anyone has ever told you won’t work to help this child. No, you can’t get the amount of rest that is physically necessary to your mental health and wellbeing.”)

Those feelings of negativity lead to frustration. Kids (and moms!) need more positive messages—research suggests as many as four to five positive messages per negative message. The positive messages can also serve as positive reinforcement to get your kids to do what you want (woot!).

So I’ve been working on giving my kids lots of positive reinforcement and messages for almost a year. I can’t say it’s been an amazing transformation and now they’re perfect angels—but I know that it’s making a difference to my kids.

I know because the simplest little things that I do for my kids sometimes prompt some familiar-sounding responses:

“Mom! You made me a sanwich! I never been so happy!”

“Mom! I so p’oud o’ you for getting my paper!”

But most importantly, I get to hear things like this:

“Dankoo for zip me up!”

“Thanks for picking that up!”

“Oh, thank you!”

And that’s a positive message every Mom could use.

What nice things do you recognize in your kids’ mouths?

Photo by Michele Truex

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Kids/Parenting

Merry Christmas!



Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

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Kids/Parenting

Rachel is ready

We don’t have a way to upload our regular videos right now, but I got this one with our still camera (hence quality, shakiness and silence) today. As a reminder, she’s 5 months and 10 days old:

She’s got that lateral motion down. Forward is . . . a work in progress.

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Kids/Parenting

My kids the comedians

Hayden came in my room the other morning. He held up one hand, and held his other hand in a claw shape, running his fingers up and down his upright palm. “Do you know what this is?”

I didn’t know whether he’d ever heard of “a spider doing push ups on a mirror,” but he did just hear the brain sucker joke the other day . . . but apparently I hesitated too long because he just told me.

“It’s my hand scratching my other hand.”

One of Rebecca’s favorite foods (and there are only a few she likes at all) is peanut butter. She knows where to find the knives.

The other day she brought me a butter knife and something from the shelf where we keep peanut butter. In the end, she didn’t like the prunes.

Rachel found her feet!

Things I’d hoped would never be uttered in my house:

“No, we can’t eat POOP!”

“That fly just landed on Rebecca’s diaper. Oh—then it keeled over.”

Hayden and I were grocery shopping a few weeks ago. As usual, he asked for something on just about every aisle. Twice. Three times. I unflinchingly said no.

Finally, Hayden had had enough. “Why do you always say no?”

“Because it’s my favorite word,” I quickly replied.

“Well, my favorite word is yes.”

“Great—so, if I told you to clean the whole house when we get home, you’d say yes?”

He only hesitated a second before he said, “Yes!”

Sadly, I decided quiet time was more important than enforcing our child labor contract.

Share your cute kid stories!