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Hooked on Phonics

Reading fun is afoot at my house. Tabby, who will enter Kindergarten next year is in the midst of learning a bunch of pre-primer sight words. Every night this week we’ve been drilling her on them (truly a record for us as far as consistency goes). It’s making a difference too as she seems to be learning one or two new ones every day.

Though I know she’s supposed to learn these words just by sight (some of them can’t, in fact, be sounded out), we have been trying to help her through some of the phonics as well, knowing it will come in handy later on and give her clues even now.

So apparently, all the phonics and learning to read stuff is working its way into my brain. This AM at the gym, while doing Turkish Getups, we were listening to Ke$ha’s “Tick Tock,” I made some comment about the song and called her “keeeeesha (long E).” My sister, all-knowing corrected me. “It’s keh-sha (short E).”

“Ahh,” I said, “well actually that makes more sense. I guess I thought the $ made the E long.” It was probably a mark of how early it was, as opposed to my wit, that we al laughed like mad.

That would have been a bitch of a phonics rule to teach to Tabby, alright!

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A Few (New) Good Android Apps

I have some new apps for my Android that I am totally obsessed with … and I thought I’d share. If you have any recommendations, please let me know! There are so many out there it’s hard to find the really good ones.

My buddy Mikey found this great app called “Our Groceries” which allows multiple people to share grocery lists, or really any kind of list. You just have an account linked to an email address and it syncs in real-time with all users. SUPER COOL. We are actually going to our phones to add things to the running list instead of the pad on the fridge.

Another one I’m loving is DropBox. I’ve known about DropBox for a while … basically it’s a cloud drive. You get 2GB of storage in the cloud for free and can pay for more. Then you can download a DropBox app on any computer or now your phone and your files are all there. This is super useful for tons of things. I print our plane tix to PDF and access them on my phone. Budgets I edit at both home and work and access on my phone.

My friend, Nan, sent me a cute thankyou card (in the mail!) straight from her iphone. So I wanted to know if such-a-thing was possible from my Android. I wasn’t disappointed!! Postagram allows you to send real postcards from the photos on your phone, including, it seems to ones I’ve linked from Flickr. This would be great for vacation, since you could send your own vacation photos! $.99/card. I haven’t used it yet, but it shows great promise.

HIIT, high-intensity training, deserves a mention. You can set up intervals for workout, including warmup and cooldown and it keeps track of them for you with little “work!” and “rest!” reminders and still lets your music play on.

Last but not least, I must give a mention to Overdrive Media Console. This is an app that syncs up with your local library and accesses their collection of digital media: audio books, e-books and even e-children’s books. Instant, FREE access to digital content. I swoon.

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The Death Star (Composter)

Woot is my best friend and my worst enemy. Excellent deals on stuff. Stuff we even need! Or at least want! Like a composter. We’ve been talking about building or buying a composter for a while now to take advantage of our scraps. We didn’t want to build because we wanted superior smell protection (our house is pretty close to our neighbors) and the ones to buy were all so expensive!

Enter WOOT … which has a new home section, by the way. They were selling a composter for about $80 last week and we bit. It showed up on Friday and sometime on Sunday we decided to assemble it and get it out of the house. At first we were calling it R2D2 because as it was being assembled, that’s what it looked like. Once fully assembled, we agreed … this was no R2D2 … we have a death star!!

Ben was (and is) a big fan. He spent a lot of time rolling the giant ball around the house and playing with the key that opens it. Tabby was very interested in the whole composting process and managed to bust Matt not 10 minutes after he’d explained it to her when he tried to put a banana peel in the trash. Silly Daddy!

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Mo Protein

A bunch of the girls at my gym, my own sis included, are in the midst of a month-long nutrition challenge where they follow The Zone Diet or The Paleo Diet. One of the theoretical benefits of these diets is improved athletic performance. It’s not like I’m an Olympic athlete or anything, but I wouldn’t mind cutting my running pace down and bringing my endurance up and heck, I’m always up for trying something new to see how it works. Both diets are big on cutting carbs and adding protein and while I don’t feel like following either (they’re pretty strict) I thought I’d try cutting some carbs and upping my protein to see what happens.

I track what I eat on a semi-regular basis at MyFitnessPal.com. I am pretty good about it during the week, but not so good on the weekend and sometimes I give it up altogether for a while. It is nice because you can set your calories wherever and then do percentages of the calories for each macro nutrient (protein, carbs, fat). I picked Zone, which is 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat and based on that, it looks pretty doable. I thought for sure I’d hit the right ratio with not too much change to my eating habits.

WRONG. I tend to eat vegetables and fruit. No fat, no protein (with some exceptions, of course). I can easily max out my carbs by lunch and I can go a whole day with only about half of the protein required under this scheme. So now I’ve started trying to find better ways to get more protein. And it ain’t been easy.

I am NOT much of a meat person. If I had to decide between going without meat and hunting/cleaning/dressing/skinning, etc. I would be a vegetarian. Though I guess I wouldn’t give up fish. Love fish and procuring and cleaning a fish would be OK. So the protein thing is not super easy. Hard boiled eggs are my fave. They’re still low in calories, but pretty high in protein and for $4/2 dozen, I can get them all ready to go at Costco, peeled and everything – I don’t like the yolks, so I just eat the whites. Cottage cheese is also a big win. Half a cup has the same protein as 3 egg whites and it’s good with fruit. Lastly, I have added some whey protein stuff to my diet. It isn’t my favorite, but it really does have a lot of protein and it is supposed to be well-absorbed protein. Between these additions and some carby subtractions and some obvious things, like a bit more meat, a bit less bun, I’m getting closer to the 40/30/30. Now if I could just do it for more than a couple days in a row, I might be able to tell if it’s actually making a difference or not.

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Ben’s Big Boy Bed

OK so Ben is (and has been) able to climb out of his crib for a while now. He still almost exclusively climbs IN, but knowing, as I do, a couple of people whose little ones have had broken limbs (one from climbing out of a crib!) I have some anxiety about continuing to allow Ben to sleep in a crib when he is capable of climbing out. But we were not ready to do his big boy room. It will involve a loft bed and without a bit more cognitive development, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to be too far off the ground. So with that in mind, we endeavored to find him a temporary big boy bed (toddler size) this weekend.

We first tried Walmart/Target. Their beds were around $60 but the only choices were dark wood and white. Neither suited and we wanted to find something a bit more to our taste. So we trekked down to IKEA and purchased their SNIGLAR bed which looked perfect. It wasn’t. It was longer than a crib mattress (though the same width??) and on top of that, the single rail was all but useless since the crib mattress came almost to the top of it. Frustrated, we disassembled and got it ready to take back to IKEA (a 40 minute drive, AWESOME).

This morning, I decided to do a last ditch Craigslist search. I’d searched before but found nothing suitable or priced reasonably, but this morning around 7:30 I found one posted less than an hour earlier, for $20 that was perfect. Blonde wood, rails, good condition, for $20. I wrote immediately and within an hour we were cleared to pickup and the pickup was on the way back to IKEA!!

We picked up the new bed, returned the other one and brought it home. Ben was super excited to assemble it and really really pleased when he saw the robot sheets I purchased for him over a year ago. He climbed right in for some photo ops, but by bedtime, he wasn’t so interested and opted for his crib over the BBB. Which is OK … he’s got the option now and we’ll work towards that. I don’t want him growing up too fast anyhow.

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A Funny for Your Friday

It’s bad/hilarious when you hear your own words coming out of your kids mouth. I’m not talking about the stuff you meant for them to parrot, as in yesterday’s post. I’m talking about the *ahem* adult language that sneaks in. Like the day over a year ago when Tabby, trying to figure out how to fold a small stool, uttered, “What the devil??” (one of my favorite phrases).

Anyhow, yesterday we were heading from our sitter’s house to Target (because it’s a day ending in Y, of course). And the kids were in the back seat. Tabby, contrary to the norm, was pretty quiet and Ben was taking FULL advantage of the situation to ask us what everything from a tree to a bicyclist to a car “says.” Suddenly, Tabby saw something that intrigued her and started talking loudly in order to get our attention. Not happy with the change in focus, Ben became quite upset.

“NO SISSY, NO! I MAD AT YOU!! <pause> GOD!!” He was completely exasperated.

Of course we burst into laughter immediately and he kept repeating, “SISSY! I MAD AT YOU!!” over and over. Eventually, he must have realized we were dying of laughter because then it turned to, “NO, MOMMY! IT NOT FUNNY! NO NO MOMMY!”

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The C Word

<whisper>Pssst. Guys … 51 days until … Christmas</whisper>. I know. It seems sacrilegious to me still to be thinking about Christmas this early. I even bought a couple of Christmas gifts LAST MONTH. Like BEFORE HALLOWEEN. I know. *shame*

But. You should see our December calendar. Yes, ALREADY. It’s quite full … and messy! We have a ski weekend, several parties, a turkey-fry with our crazy friends, and even an informational meeting on kindergarten. And of course there’s all the un-scheduled things we need to fit in, like Zoo Lights and gift-wrapping and tree trimming and cookie-baking and mass-attending and caroling and wassailing and one-horse-open-sleigh riding and so on.  So I am already making the list and checking it twice and trying to get as much shopping and crafting done before Thanksgiving as I can. Because come Dec 1, I want to be kicking up my feet and taking it easy.

So. Things I have to do :

1. Christmas shop. This is hard … I will probably place a giant Amazon order, but it’s all the rest that get tricky. Bugging people for lists, running around town. And with the kids it’s the constant battle between having a fun Christmas for them and buying crap they don’t need. Plus I have to help Santa out and keeping that straight in my mind is always tricky.

2. Ornaments. Since Tabby was a year or so, we have been assisting her to make hand-crafted ornaments for the family. And we also do an ornament with the kids’ Christmas photo (sometimes we combine them) too. Last year it was glass ornaments with paint markers. The year before that, teeny tiny canvases with Tabby originals painted onto them. This year something new and I think Ben is ready to get in on the act. Not sure if we’ll do one for each to decorate or what. Should be fun … ish.

3. Other craftiness. I have a few projects I would like to complete as Christmas gifts for some people … some pajama bottoms for the kids, and maybe a few other bits and bobbles here and there. I need to figure out what I’ll realistically have time for and make it happen.

4. Calendars. Another tradition since Tabby was a little one is a photo calendar for all of the grandparents and aunts and uncles. It is not hard, but it’s time consuming to do photo selection. Part of me would also like to do some sort of photo book, but as that makes my head hurt, it probably will not happen.

5. Christmas cards!! Part of me says I should just give it up and let Shutterfly or some other service design our cards, but I really like doing it myself. Plus, when I use Premium Postcard, they send them for me. Cheers!

Lots to do … good thing it’s all fun!

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Brainwashing My Kids

One of our base theories in parenting is that it’s easier to lay the foundation for a “good kid” early than fix a load of problems when they’re 15. There is at least some evidence that supports this and it makes sense to me on a gut level, so I’m going with it. As part of this, I am endeavoring to brainwash my children with some of the most valuable life lessons I’ve learned in my 31 years on this planet (many of them from my own parents who come to think of it may have been successfully brainwashing my sister and I since our formative years as well … hmmm).

When things come up with the kids, Tabby in particular as she is older and somewhat rational, we try to say the right thing so that we not only have a positive outcome but that we have a positive outcome for the right reason. If she’s having trouble with something she’s learning, we encourage her to keep going and remind her that you are best at things you work hard at, no matter how good you are at them naturally. When she gets overwhelmed picking up her room, we try not to just do it for her, but to help her strategerize on how to best attack the problem and find success herself. We advise her to save her money and refuse to let her buy junky plastic toys that won’t last.

So one of our favorite things to instill is the value of hard work and not giving up on something. One day Tabby was doing something, cleaning her room or practicing her letters or whatever and she gave up on it with hardly a second thought. It wasn’t the first time this had happened recently and I was a bit peeved. It was looking too much like a bad habit. So we talked about it and I told her that anything worth having was had to be worked for. I also explicitly told her, “Lazy is the worst thing you can be.”

After I said it, I had a moment of second guessing myself.Was it? Surely being a liar was worse. But really, what is lying if not a form of laziness? You’re lying to make things easier on yourself, right? So you don’t have to deal with what you’ve done or handle the repercussions from truth-telling. And sure, being a murderer or a child molester are worse but we don’t really delve into those subjects with our four-year-old.

Anyhow, we’ve noticed some positive changes in Tabby’s attitude toward working at something. So I think it’s working. Beyond that, I have pretty concrete evidence that she heard me loud and clear. Last week when we were at my mom’s house, Tabby wanted my mom, who was resting on the couch after hours of marathon cooking, to get up and turn on the bathroom light for her. My mom said, “Can you just leave the door open a crack. That should let in enough light. Grammy’s feeling lazy right now, Tabs.”

To which Tabby responded, quite solemnly, “Grammy. Being lazy is the worst thing you can be.”

On another, child-related note …Congratulations to my SIL Theresa and her hubby Bryan on the birth of their darling new baby girl, Autumn!! I’m so excited to be an auntie!

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Cranky Ghost

Well Halloween was a great success. I have no photos of my adorable children in their costumes. I was too busy running all over the place making sure everyone had drinks and forks and such. My husband, bless him, was too busy running around finishing last minute projects. He dreams big and procrastinates much. I tried to put the kibosh on this several times, but to no avail. Ah well, Nan took a bunch of photos and I will be stealing from her. Eventually.

What we did get footage of, however, was Matt’s big project for the year … a crank ghost. It’s run by a fan motor which moves pulleys, etc. to make the thing move. It was all Matt … I did nothing besides lend moral support and help glue a bit of cheesecloth. He also had his buddy, Andrew, help him with assembly. Thank goodness. I’m too short to be of much help with an 8′ tall frame.