I *love* Roomba (here's why)

Roomba is fantastic.

I really, really believe that robot vacuums have changed my life for the better.

Right now, daddy and Timothy are working on the van and I'm settling down to grade papers. At the same time, we're vacuuming all the bedrooms. Nobody has to do the work, but we're still going to have clean floors.

Roomba allows me to spend more time WITH my child and less time cleaning up after him. When it's snacktime, sometimes we count raisins and end up with them ALL over the floor. Ordinarily, I would have to go get out the vacuum or stoop over to pick up each raisin. Not with Roomba!! I press "clean" and it picks up every single raisin.

When people see my roomba, they always ask me if it works. I really, really recommend it. It picks up all the surface dirt and leaves the carpet looking really fresh. It will also pick up sand, popcorn, sawdust, etc - whatever really needs to be cleaned up. I won't say that roomba gets all the deep, down surface dirt, but it does a good job with daily cleaning - and you can have your carpets looking (and feeling and smelling) clean daily.

My point - if you're a parent, like us, who's trying to teach your toddler to read and do math and swim and have encyclopedic knowledge and walk and run and play an instrument and have perfect pitch and appreciate art...you probably don't have a lot of time. Invest $200 and leave the cleaning to the robots.

All dressed up...

...with no place to go.

We were going to stay half-way last night instead of driving the whole way home, but Timothy was doing great in the car so we decided to drive all the way home (we got home at 11pm) so that we could go to church in the morning.

Why do we bother? I know this is probably the 10th time I've asked this but, honestly, why do we even try??

In 15 minutes we got paged that he had been screaming the entire time. We've tried the nursery (at many different churches) at least 12 times and every single time he screams and screams and screams.

Does anyone know what to do? Has anyone been through a similar experience? Does anyone have any advice for us?

Because it's getting really old for us to get all dressed up and drive to church, only to leave 15 minutes later...

Video - City Museum

Daddy didn't like these slides because he thought Timothy would get his fingers pinched (he didn't). But they had fun, anyway.

City Museum

Timothy crawling up the cage to who-knows-where

Does this look like a good idea to you?

Today, we went to City Museum. What a complete disaster!!

Daddy is just too safety-oriented now (no wonder he wants to work in safety). He just kept pointing out all the dangerous areas of this place. It was one big accident waiting to happen - who thinks it's a good idea to let kids crawl through dark, wet tunnels that parents can barely fit through...and that end on a totally different floor in a totally different part of the museum (without telling parents that).

The toddler area even had kids crawling in metal tubes 15 feet above the ground (again, if something happened, parents couldn't reach). I applaud them on their *idea* but it just didn't work for us.

It might be fun to take a 12-year old to, but Timothy was just the wrong age for this, I suppose.

Timothy had ENOUGH and was ready to go, but we spent $12 a person so we at least wanted to see the darn circus at 11. He didn't want to. First, he tried crying. Then, he looked at us and said "bye bye bye bye bye." Finally, he didn't think we were getting the message, so he frantically signed "finished" When I asked "You're finished with the museum?" he signed "YES!"

We went and ate Chicago Style pizza at Uno's Chicago....yummmm is all I can say. It was the best pizza I have ever had in my life. Wow!! Timothy had fun counting oyster crackers, but then he had an all-out tired and fuzzy meltdown so we had to get everything to go.

St. Louis Zoo

My little learner

Daddy and Timothy went to the St. Louis Zoo today...they had a great time!! The weather was nice, and it looked like rain but it stayed dry. They took a little stroller, but Timothy walked most of the way, daddy reported. He really liked the Children's Zoo.

The most amazing thing is that the St. Louis Zoo is FREE!! What more could you ask for?

The Magic House

Dear God, please forgive us for throwing away all of those White Castle burgers. We don't like to waste food, and we do know there are starving children in Africa. We tried to eat those tiny little burgers...Really - we did. But they were soggy and onion-y and none of us liked them. And how were we supposed to know that the 2-person meal came with TEN burgers? Yuck!!


This morning, daddy had some things to do so Timothy and I spent a few hours playing in the hotel. They have a gymnasium, so we ran around and played with all the bouncy balls we won at Jillian's because mommy's so good at Skee-Ball (ha!). We have 7 bouncy balls. I took four away and I said "7 minus 4 equals..." and, instead of saying 3, Timothy said BALL BALL BALL.

We also played in the wading pool, the playground, and the big pool. Timothy made a friend in the pool. The little boy was so confident in himself and so polite and so comfortable talking with me...I had him marked for a homeschooler almost immediately. Sure enough, a homeschool child. Timothy tried to keep up with him, swimming underwater, but he just couldn't swim like his friend.

Daddy and Timothy took a long nap while I worked on a paper (that I'll be presenting tomorrow at a national conference).

Then, we went to the Magic House. We were going to do the zoo, but it started raining. The Magic House was really really crowded and quite HOT...apparently they don't believe in using the darn air conditioner. However, the Magic House was truly awesome. It was voted the #1 Children's Museum in the nation, and I can see why. It had everything you could think of for kids to do...a bank, a grocery store, a place to fish (and release your fish and watch them travel downstream), a toddler area, sand, water, art studio, building area. It was truly astounding. Timothy ran up to a sign that said "No running" and pointed and said "NONONONO shaking his head."

David and I had a conversation about how the creators of Magic House might have belived in the importance of convergence, because they were encouraging physical activity as much as possible (especially creeping through LOTS of weird tunnels). Timothy really did have a great time, but about 1.5 hours after we arrived he had a meltdown. He wanted to stay but he didn't know what he wanted...that typical terrible-two stage that you can expect when you're on vacation and you've been going going going all day long. We left and, after he had an all-out screaming/stomping/frantically beating his fists fit (and a snack) he felt much better.

Today, we also tried St. Louis style pizza for lunch. I didn't even know there *was* a St. Louis style pizza!! Timothy took one bite and that's all he wanted, and daddy and I ate it but we probably wouldn't order it again. We're glad we tried it...it was unique and interesting.

Tomorrow, I'll be at my conference all day so daddy and Timothy will have ALLLL day to play by themselves. They're talking about the zoo or the botanical gardens, but it might rain, so it's looking like they'll do one (or more than one) of the museums.

If you're from the St. Louis area and have advice on things to see or do, please let us know in the comments. We don't want to miss anything really great.

We have ARRIVED!!

So I'm sitting in our hotel room in St. Louis. We were supposed to drive halfway, to Memphis, last night, but plans changed a little bit and we decided to go all the way to St. Louis (we got here at 11pm).

Timothy did much better on the long drive than we had hoped, so we're quite happy about that.

Yesterday, we went to The Wonder Place in Little Rock, AR. http://www.thewonderplace.com./playspace.html We have pictures, but we couldn't find our camera cord so we can't upload them yet. The Wonder Place was really great. At $7 a person, it was a little bit expensive, but a child could easily entertain himself for several hours in there. They had a water play area, sand, a store, a house. Up on top of the house, they had a little piano and drums and different musical instruments, and this is where Timothy spent almost ALL his time. David and I were just thrilled..."He chose music!!" we kept saying.

We talked SO much to Timothy, and it's been so much fun because he talks right back to us. "Timothy, that's the Mississippi river!!" gets "manwiba water water!"
"Timothy, do you need a diaper change?" gets "no no no diaper finish"
"Timothy, do you want a grilled cheese?" gets "no...water"
He just went over to the waffle we got him for breakfast and said "Hot, hot food"
Oh, and now he went to the door stop and said "What's it?"

We're having fun!!

Hasta Luego

It was such a special day today because a new ROOMBA arrived. Timothy's been very, very protective of Roomba, quite concerned when it went under the sofa or made any sort of noise. "Roomba!" he would call, peeking under the couch to make sure it was coming back...

We had a long conversation before bed tonight about vacation. We'll be leaving tomorrow for a family trip, and we're planning to go to lots of different Science Museums and Playgrounds. I think we're going to have a great time together as a family...we're ready to get away!! Woohoo!

Timothy's new Spanish word is manana - he said it to Maria man times today.

Encyclopedic Knowledge

For the last couple of weeks, Timothy has been most interested in the Picture Dictionary CD-Roms from IAHP (we have one).

Each CD-Rom has 15 categories of Bits of Intelligence that the child can view in 5 languages (we only do Spanish and English). The child can see the words (in large red letters), the encyclopedic knowledge cards, or both at the same time.

Timothy loves these so much that he actually throws a big fit when I tell him it's time to stop. I think he'd sit through all 15 sets 3 times if I'd let him.

Benefits:
- The child sees the words AND the facts
- The cards flash very quickly
- The child learns the corresponding Spanish AND English names (for things like hyacinth and the Chinese flag and latissimus dorsai muscle)
- There's NO work for mommy...all I do is choose which sets to show and press play
- One CD-Rom lasts a good long while, especially if you rotate the languages

The drawbacks: $30 each CD-Rom...though for 15 sets of Bits that really isn't that bad.

I just wanted to share this resource, because Timothy absolutely LOVES these right now and your child might, too.

If you're interested in purchasing one, visit the Gentle Revolution store.

SWIMMING!

We've been enjoying the nice Spring weather here in Texas!! It's beautiful!!

We had cousin Elizabeth with us for a week and we went swimming every single day with the exception of Tuesday (rain).

The kids had a great time...and so did we!!

Easter Photos