Misc. November Pictures

I cannot believe that November is coming to a close!

In November we:

Read the "Football" book

Read the "Thanksgiving" book

Learned all about popcorn

Continued cards, bits, dots, words

Tried lots of new foods

Spent time together as a family

Had lots of fun with our extended family

Talked about the truth behind the first Thanksgiving

Crunched leaves that were falling, talked about the seasons

I'm so excited about December, though! Our plans:

We have 4 homemade "Christmas" books for Timothy

We're doing a "Countdown to Christmas" at Circle Time

We're going to the Dallas Aroboretum's reindeer petting zoo

We're going to a drive-through light park (Santa Land) http://www.santalandtexas.com/

We'll have a daily "Christmas mission"

We're going to our Christmas on the Square tonight

We're going to Christmas in the Park

We're going to read the nativity story and act it out

We're going to watch Christmas videos in the car

We're going to have family sing-alongs with Christmas songs

We're going to a candlelight service and talk about baby Jesus

And more...

It's going to be GREAT fun. Stay tuned for a terrific December!!

Disney

We don't want Timothy to be easily influenced by media or peer pressure. The Christmas hysteria has me so glad that Timothy doesn't watch television (advertising) - I cannot believe the toys some kids just "must have."

We've always wanted Timothy to be DOING, not WATCHING. We try to get him to play with blocks and puzzles and cards and our dog and sticks...anything but sit in front of the tv like a bump on a log.

Why, then, does my kid keep saying "Disney"? He's said it at least 15 times in the past 2 days. Disney, Disney, Disney. I *love* that he's talking, but WHY DISNEY?!?

Completely unrelated, here's a video of Timothy doing cards at lunch. I just really like how silly he looks at the beginning.

How do you tell when a kid knows the cards? When he won't even look at them!

Timothy Swimming (in the Bath)

We made a mistake. Timothy was swimming independently, holding his breath underwater, at 6 months of age. But he got sick and we got busy and we didn't work with him as much as we should have.

He still enjoys the water, though.

Timothy Talkin'

Timothy's been talking lately...when he wants to.

The other day, I gave him a bottle of water. Of course, he spilled it all over the kitchen floor. "What happened to your water?" I asked. He said "I spillED it." I was soooo excited because it's the first time that he conjugated a verb and used the past tense.

This morning, he's had diarreah and a really bad diaper rash. I've been holding him, letting him drink a bottle and watch videos. He's seen several (though I'm not proud of it).

We were in the bath a few minutes ago, and I was thinking to myself about when he said "duck" a few days ago when we said "quck quack"...I was trying to figure out why he hadn't said it again. As if reading my mind, he picked up a duck and said "duck". Then he said it several times more, pointing at different ducks in our rubber duckie bathroom.

Then, he said "I hear Disney." Clear as a bell. I didn't hear anything Disney (we did have music on but it wasn't Disney). Then, a couple minutes later, he said "I hear" I asked him what he heard and he said "Disney." When we got out of the bath, I saw that one of his baby Einstein DVDs was looping through the menu screen, playing a little song. I guess he could have heard that, but I really don't think so. It was weird.

When he was ready to get out of the bath, he looked at me and said "All done." Because he has a diaper rash, I let him walk around diaperless for a little while. He walked into our entryway, yelled "watch!" and urinated on the floor. He looked down just before he started and was fascinated with it. Hey, I'm just glad he did it on the tile.

Hurt His Ojo

I came home today and Maria was frantic. Timothy flipped out of his bounce house (on purpose) onto the toybox and cut the bottom of his eyelid and underneath his eye. He now has a black eye.

It was an accident - these will happen. But, in the meantime, it still looks bad.

Well, I'm trying to upload pictures but my camera keeps saying "USB error". So, no pictures right now!!

Yesterday, we went to PETCO. We looked at all the animals and Timothy got to walk around and explore. He LOVED it.

David held him up to see the turtles. "These are Russian turtles!", Daddy said, pointing. Timothy shook his head NO and said BOX! They did look a lot like box turtles, one of the cards Timothy saw 4 months ago.

I can't say that Timothy was insisting they were box turtles, but it was interesting none the less!

Happy Birthday, Granny!

Timothy's Granny had a very special birthday yesterday!

We went out to celebrate and then we spent the night with her. We had a great time!!

We have an action-packed couple of days ahead of us, but we'll update when we can!

Bubbles

We went to Dollar Tree today. They had several balloons out, so Timothy was pointing saying "balloon, balloon, balloon."

We went down an aisle and he pointed and said "bubbles." I looked and - sure enough - there was a container of bubbles. It was an awkward, wavy container of bubbles, not the regular round kind, so I was surprised he recognized it.

The next aisle, he pointed again and said "bubbles." I glanced over and said "No, sweetie, those are books." He stuck out his bottom lip and looked SO hurt and said, very meekly, "bubble?" I looked back at the book and it was titled "Homemade Kids Crafts" and then below it said "Make your own bubbles." It DID say bubbles!! I told him what a smart boy he was for reading the word! I *love* when stuff like that happens!!

He's been a bit of a grouch today. I was just playing with his learning maracas in Spanish mode, where it flashes different colors and says the name in Spanish. I was trying to get him to play along when he took the maraca, threw it, and said (yelled) "NO ARCO IRIS!" (In English = no rainbow).

He must have picked that up from Professor Parrot...they have a song called "los colores del arco iris" (the colors of the rainbow). Again, I was floored.

I was just glad that I'd watched Professor Parrot enough to know what he was saying. The maraca was talking in Spanish, though, so I guess he thought he needed to, as well!!

Looking Back...

Timothy has fallen in love with the IAHP Picture Dictionary CD-Roms. We showed him dogs yesterday and when I put him down after they were done he threw a big fit wanting back in the chair to see them again!

Today, we showed them in Spanish and he smiled a BIG smile as soon as he saw the word "perro" - I think he's reading in Spanish, too!! :-)

He's been really interested in the computer, though.

We showed him some old problem solving videos and he wanted to see this one again and again...



In this video, he is not even 10 months old yet!!

It just goes to show how much we learned, though. As we were watching, I was embarassed at how much I didn't know back then...I gave him 5 words that all began with the same letter (c) and expected him to problem-solve. No wonder he got them all right except for those words!! Now, we know enough to make sure the words don't all look the same. Live and learn, I guess.

PS - DADDY, I really want a food dehydrator for Christmas. I want to be able to make my own organic dried foods. I REALLY want one!!

Things that Make Us Smile (Short Videos)

Christmas Presents

Shh...don't tell Timothy!

He has SO many toys that he really doesn't need another one (and we don't have room for it!).

So, for Christmas, we want to focus on art supplies, educational supplies, and blocks.

We're getting him:
EDU Science Planetarium Projector
Art Easel
Leap Frog Word Whammer
Play-Doh

We want to get him Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, but we set a budget so we're trying to decide which one out of the two to get. We also considered getting him a Rody horse because we knew he would love that.

I think this year he's going to LOVE opening presents!

Eating

We're back to a decent diet, here.

This morning, Timothy ate eggs, broccoli, leftover cashew butter sandwich on whole wheat, pinapple, and GREEN BELL PEPPER!

For lunch, he had sweet potato pancakes, dates, and spinach bites.

I just got a kick out of seeing him eat that bell pepper, though!

Daddy and Timothy are still reading through Oliver Twist - they read another chapter today while I graded papers.

I went back to work today after taking a week off. It felt soooo good to go back! Now I have a TON to do before the end of the semester!!

Daddy stayed home with Timothy and it sounds like they had a fantastic day! They got back into our normal schedule and our Doman routine. They did math cards, Bits, words, foreign language, and they even read Oliver Twist. They played outside, had circle time, and went to the park. Additionally, when I came home daddy had done 2 loads of laundry, had fed Timothy all natural organic freshly-prepared meals, and was airing out the house and cleaning out the fridge. Wow!! I sure don't do all that when I'm home...quit making me look bad, daddy!

Tonight at dinner, Timothy signed "more". We said "more what?" He said BANANA! And he enunciated very well!

While we were gone last week, Timothy's diet really suffered. We had to give him processed food a lot more than we wanted to because we couldn't exactly cook. We went to Corner Bakery and were thrilled to see that they had french toast, one of Timothy's favorites. We make it with farm-fresh organic eggs and whole wheat toast, so we just assumed they would, too. Ha - we forgot that french toast normally has powdered sugar. When we got it, we gave it to him anyway and he sat there bouncing up and down while he ate it - he LOVED it!!

We also resorted to giving him a chicken nugget. It made my stomach churn to do so, but we were out and he was hungry. He tasted one and threw it on the ground, so I handed him another. He pushed my hand away, shook his head, and said "No" - no chicken nuggets for him!! Ha!

We ended up going to Whole Foods Market and we bought a lot of good foods for Timothy, including his new favorite cashew butter.

Now...we're just glad to be home!

Planet Pizza

We went to Planet Pizza on Thursday (http://www.planetpizzaplano.com/). We were actually the ONLY people there (literally...the only people in the whole place).

Timothy wasn't that crazy about the rides, but he sure loved the tunnels. We'll certainly be back there again because he had so much fun...and he did quite a bit of crawling through the tunnels to help that midbrain, too!

Pics

Explanations

We explain everything to Timothy. This morning, we were explaining why the beach ball floats in the bath. We explain why it gets dark and why the leaves are falling off the trees and why people don't eat dog food. Timothy is used to these explanations as they're such a natural part of what we do.

Lately, daddy's been very emotional and very distant. Timothy can see it, and today he looked at me and held out his arms, demanding some sort of an explanation. How do I explain this to him?

The best I've been able to do is say "Daddy's sad - let's give daddy a big hug!" I can explain how one element is lighter than another and I can explain how gravity functions, but I can't seem to explain how daddy's feeling right now.

Last night, Timothy and I both slept through the night for the first time in a week. Daddy is still having problems sleeping and eating, though.

We've been enjoying time together as a family, but it's still hard...

Taking Time

For the next week (or more), we're just taking some time to spend together as a family.

Halloween

Timothy had fun at the Edgar Allen Poe-try reading on Halloween. Then we passed out candy at home!!

We've been doing hands-on math at circle time everyday and Timothy really looks forward to it! He walks right in looking for his snack equation!

We saw a behavior therapist yesterday, but I'm trying to process it all at the moment and I'll post when I figure it all out!

Socialization

I woke up this morning with socialization on my mind and, you know what...I don't buy into it.

Parenting is a socially constructed concept, and it changes with time.

Do you think the mothers in the Victorian age worried that their 2-year-olds were not around other 2-year-olds? Nope, I doubt it.

Do you think that the mothers in the prairie day worried when their 15-month-old hadn't been around other 15-month-olds? Nope.

Do you think the puritan mothers sent their kids to mother's day out? No.

In fact, the *best* thing that could happen at a daycare is that your 2-year-old learns to act like all the other 2-year-olds.

I want to get Timothy around other children. We go to the library story time. We're starting a playdate at the children's museum next week. We go to the Arboretum. We're around friend's kids...

but I'm not going to believe that another 15-month-old is a better example of how to behave in society than we, Timothy's parents, are.

Now, mind you, I'm not against daycares in general...but I am against them for OUR family.

In every other period of history (besides the last 50 years), children haven't been "socialized" by other children but by their PARENTS, and I happen to think it's worked for centuries.