Parenting – Page 2

May 9, 2013

Happy Birthday Matty!

My main squeeeeeze and numero uno Dad of the Year is turning 33 today. I truly appreciate him EVERY DAY, even when I’m giving him crap about not rinsing off his plate of mustard (don’t ask), but especially on this day, I want to reflect on his awesomeness.

We have had a crazy month or four. Big decisions. Extra work. Crazy schedule. He has been there right by my side, my equal in every way (probably my superior, honestly), supporting, picking up slack, working hard and doing it with his cute Matty grin (most of the time anyhow). Just for fun, I’m going to list 33 things that are awesome about Matt:

He is always thinking of cool things to show the kids and wants them to learn and experience.
He can seriously rock a woodshop.
He likes good TV.
He is an excellent date.
He is a super hard worker.
He cleaned up two episodes of puke in the middle of the night and didn’t wake me up.
He can knock out an IKEA build in record time.
When I leave him with the kids, I have no doubts that they will be well taken care of and happy.
He does laundry.
He gets along well with my family.
He is responsible with money.
He is tall dark and handsome.
He is an excellent friend and I love spending time with him.
He always goes the extra mile.
He loves Colorado.
He is a grill master.
He is very social and loves to have people over.
He never begrudges me a girls night out.
He researches every purchase to the nth degree.
He loves to travel.
He takes and picks up the drycleaning … there are donuts involved, but he still does it.
We have a great time talking together.
He is an excellent teammate and partner.
He has loads of enthusiasm.
He is very generous.
He loves a good road trip.
Ben and Tabby adore him.
He has the dubious task of taking the kids to school every morning.
Even without training, he can usually beat me out in a race.
He is always keen to try something new.
He is always keen to learn something new.
He places no restrictions on Tabby because she’s a girl or Ben because he’s a boy.
Life with him is never dull or ordinary.

We don’t tend to do major gifts for each other and since he recently got his mountain bike fixed and bought a new mobile phone – both of which were big ticket items – I’m doing something smaller.

After school and work today, Ben and I will be making him a lovely Victoria Sponge cake, filled with lemon curd along with a nice dinner. There may also be one or two other little surprises in there.

February 5, 2013

Analog Fun

We are major criminals on the digital entertainment front. Between smartphones, tablets and iPods, there are six portable digital devices at our disposal (!!) and man do we make good use of them. We play games and watch TV and movies. Tabby has reading and math flashcards on them. We have books both for adults and kids on them and of course music! It’s not a bad thing. But it can be a pretty pervasive thing. The kids pick them up on an early Saturday morning to watch Phineas and Ferb and give us some much-needed sleep in time. They are the go-to entertainment while waiting for the other sibling to do his or her lesson. They are essential at restaurants, particularly if it’s a longer meal or if the kids are already out of sorts. But the requests for tablets or phones ALL THE TIME gets to me. I don’t want my kids to become those people. I don’t want Matt and I to become THOSE PEOPLE.

So we limit screen time, not only by how much they’ve earned but also by the virtue of it not belonging in most situations. The (home) dinner table is phone free with the exception of me checking in on and recording their chores at the beginning. It then goes away. Car trips are without the devices unless we’re driving more than 1.5 hours away. It’s far from perfect, but we’re really making an effort to unplug and be with each other.

At the dinner table, we have a box of Table Topics, Family Edition that we pull cards from and discuss. In the car and while grocery shopping and at restaurants, we play a bunch of different verbal games. ISpy is a perennial favorite as is “Guess Which Animal I Am?” I particularly like this one because it’s a good thinking game and really teaches abstraction. It’s still a little hard for Ben yet, but Tabby seems to really be picking up on the idea of asking broader questions to narrow down the field. We also quiz them on numbers and letters (math and spelling for T) and family facts like our address and phone numbers.

Wanting to add to the repertoire, I found a few other games I’m keen to try: Continue reading “Analog Fun”

January 23, 2013

Allowance, etc. Update

Well it’s been a while since we started with the allowances and chores and it’s going well. My SIL said she had to read through the system twice and still was confused and it does seem confusing, I think, but in practice it’s really pretty simple. The key has been having the app to manage everything. If I had to do this with charts and actual money, I’d go mad. Still, there are tweaks we’ve had to make.

We started off by giving the kids an allowance (automatic) of 10 minutes of screen time but found that with the chores they do which earn them 5 min for each chore, they didn’t really need it. So I nixed that. The stars, which are their measure for good behavior, have been just right. They can earn up to 3/day. They’ve been a very effective tool for reminding the kids about “good choices,” “good manners” and “good attitude.” They’ve cashed them in (20 ea) for a trip to the swimming pool already and I’ve got a groupon to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature in the wings for the next family outing prize.

Tabby has been quite gung-ho about earning extra money, especially since she was required to contribute $10 for her hedgehog’s equipment (a drop in the bucket, let me tell you). She has vacuumed the couch and the main level and she’s done a ton of extra math, reading and writing work as well. And she’s been great about making her own lunch, though help is still required. I think I need to start teaching her some more chores, like mopping the floor and folding the laundry. It would pay off quickly! Ben is much less enthusiastic about earning money, but screen time is a great motivator for him, especially since he just found a new TV show to love, Phineas and Ferb.

It’s been interesting, too, watching them figure out how to work the system. I don’t care if they clean up their rooms on a daily basis. All I care about is if, at bedtime, their rooms are clean (playroom too). As long as they’re clean, they get their 5 min of screentime for this “chore” and it’s been a good motivator to keep things clean instead of cleaning them up when Mommy and Daddy say so. The whole point of this is for them to learn good routines and be responsible and hopefully that’s a good indication that it’s working.

January 11, 2013January 11, 2013

Digital Allowance

Of course once we’d decided on the basics of all this allowance/chores/responsibilities stuff, we had to figure out how to track it all. We wanted flexibility and ease and though I love charts, they didn’t seem to quite cut it. I didn’t want to be printing out new charts every week and making changes to them constantly. And they hardly serve when we’re away from the house! But then I did what I always do. I went back to my nerd roots. There’s got to be an app for that.

I looked on both of my mobile devices and the best selection of apps by far was (unfortunately :P) for my iPhone. I downloaded over 10 and in the end, I had two serious contenders: iAllowance and Tykoon. Tykoon was nice because it’s backed by a cloud and has the ability to have kid accounts and parent accounts, meaning that I could set everything up on my parent account and then Tabby could see her balances and chores on her iPod without messing with my settings. But it really fell apart in customization. The accounts that are set up are stock. You can’t rename them. And it also seemed to focus too much on obtaining material things … your kids can “spot” things and take photos of them with their iPhones and there are spaces for wishlists. It is still in Beta and hopefully it will improve because it has pretty good potential. It also had the advantage that you could setup chores for both kids simultaneously. But in the end, iAllowance worked best for the way we want to manage things.

Above is the home screen. You can click on each child to see their current data or you can click the > on the right to do setup for each kid. And it shows their current totals. iAllowance has three currencies (perfect for us!): time, money and stars.

Continue reading “Digital Allowance”

January 10, 2013February 19, 2013

Responsibility

One of my big goals for the new year was to get our family organized with chores, allowance, etc. Raising kids who understand the value of hard work and the We’ve been talking about this for a long time and going over the way we wanted to structure all of this. We want the kids to have allowance, but we debated over whether we should tie it to chores or not and ultimately decided not. We decided to have them do certain daily chores that they are expected to do just because they are a member of our family, things like unloading the dishwasher (silverware caddy and kids cups at this point), setting the table, keeping their rooms neat, hanging up their backpacks and the like. I didn’t like the idea though that there was no penalty if they didn’t do them, so we tied these to screen time. For each chore they complete, they get 5 min of screen time.

Then there was the matter of money. An article I read that was a proponent of not tying chores to allowance suggested the idea of making kids gradually more responsible for “fiscal chores” – things like buying their own popcorn at the movies or food for their pet or later things like car insurance and gas. I like this idea – I think it is a good introduction to the realities of how much things cost and how far money doesn’t go. So we decided we’d do $5 for Tabby. $1 each of that will go to savings and givings and the remaining $3 is hers to spend as she likes. But she is now responsible for buying her own hot lunch. Hot lunch at $2.50 is one of Tabby’s favorite treats and the $3 would cover it if she wanted it. But since hot lunch is also a treat for mommy and daddy, we decided that every time she made her own lunch she would earn $1.25 so that she can fairly easily earn a hot lunch by just making her lunch twice. We also added a couple of little chores for extra bank, things like vacuuming the main level of the house or the couch and tidying the bathroom that both she and Ben use. And we likewise incentivized doing pages in her math workbook and writing sentences by offering her a reward of $0.25 for every 2 pages she does – reading a book daily is just among her screentime chores. I would also like for her to start running again and I think a $1/mile incentive might be just what she needs.

Ben had to be handled a bit differently. At 3, he just can’t do what his sister can and he doesn’t have the same experiences or understanding. We also tied his chores to screentime and they are largely the same chores. He can’t quite make his bed yet, but he can pick up his room, lay out his clothes and do about 2/3 of what Tabby can do. But we set his allowance at $3. It isn’t coincidence that their allowances align with their age. We plan to up them each birthday, by a dollar at first and then as needed later on. Ben’s $3 is only divided into spending and giving. Saving and other long-term things seem to be still quite a bit beyond him, so he gets $2 to spend every week and $1 to give to others. Being only 3, we decided he wouldn’t get any “fiscal chores” just yet. He can also earn a little extra money by helping us with his lunch. Just $0.50 since we still have to be very involved.

Lastly we wanted there to be some kind of “good citizenship” accountability. Ben in particular has been having a hard time with some behavior – he had two major tantrums while we were in Vail and we’d like to discourage that as well as Tabby’s dramatic/whiny streak. In the end, we decided to grade them daily on the concepts of “good choices,” “good attitude,” and “good manners” and then reward them with things like an extra book at bedtime, a trip for frozen yogurt or a family outing. They also have to work together to agree on a reward, so that furthers the cooperation idea. A trip to time out automatically loses their “good choices” point for the day.

Sound complicated? A bit. So we needed a good way to administrate it. Luckily, there’s an app for that. See my post tomorrow … and an update on how it’s going.

October 3, 2012

On Overwhelm

overloaded — I’m pretty sure I look like that bike.

I’m kind of on overwhelm right now. It’s been a huge week for me at work. And even when the huge things weren’t happening, lots of teeny things were happening all at once. Plop that on a background where my darling hubby is traveling for work and I’m one hot mess. So I am phoning it in this week.

I served the kids frozen meatballs (I did nuke them first) topped with marinara (from the jar – there is no other kind at my house). They liked it so much they’re having it again for lunch today.

I am having the kids do every little thing I can think for them to do … putting Loki in his box in the morning and taking him back out, getting the mail from the mailbox, unloading the silverware basket, ferrying objects upstairs and downstairs, feeding the dog various leftovers from our fridge which are not technically spoiled yet, just a bit past their prime, etc. Dang they’re useful.

I was pretty peeved when I noticed that they moved pizza and applesauce day from Friday to TUESDAY (i.e. yesterday, i.e. we already missed it) at Ben’s school, but Tabby will be more than happy when she learns that I am allowing her to purchase hot lunch on Friday.

Tabby has climbing class tonight and while she is there and Ben is at child-mind, I am going to swim with some girlfriends. I honestly don’t care if we swim or sit in the hot tub, but it will be relaxing and nice. Afterwards, it will be late and we will be totally off our schedule so we’re either going thru the drivethru or we’re eating the meatballs and marinara again.

The house looks like someone tossed it looking for drug money.

I’ve had some pretty good victories this week though, plenty at work, but some on the homefront too. I haven’t missed a workout yet, even if my run this AM was a paltry 25 minutes. The kids are happy and arguably healthier than when they were turned over to me (Ben is almost over his cold). I have remembered everything the kids have needed for school, including random things like picture day forms and an apple.

I would never want to do this on my own, but it’s nice to know I can handle it.

September 5, 2012

Yogurt Cake

I think I might’ve mentioned that a couple of weeks ago, I read a book called Bringing Up Bebe, a comparison of French and American parenting. I really liked the book and enjoyed reading it and I was definitely intrigued by a passage in the book where a French woman was letting her 3 year old bake cupcakes … unassisted. And it hit me that Tabby can really do more than I let her. Granted, I let her do more in the kitchen than most other five-year-olds we know, but she is capable of more. It’s just because I’m a bit afraid of the mess. I’m the mom that makes the kids do playdough outside because I have no interest in cleaning all of those little bits up.

Anyhow, the book goes on to mention that most French children start out making yogurt cake when they’re around three. It is a neat idea because you use yogurt as part of the cake and then measure most of the rest of the ingredients with the empty yogurt containers. So I endeavored to be a bit less crazy and let Tabby and Ben have at it tonight.

Continue reading “Yogurt Cake”

August 8, 2012

Interruption

I am guessing I’m not the only parent who has trouble with their kids interrupting them. I feel sometimes like I can’t even complete a thought let alone a sentence when I’m talking on the phone or with Matt. I’ve tried some of the things that the “experts” suggest, like making sure I give them my undivided attention so they feel like they are heard. I’ve also gotten fed up and put the kids in time-out after repeated interruptions or just lost my temper. But nothing stopped making them interrupt, no matter how politely they did it, “Excuse me! Excuse me!”

So a week or so ago, I put Tabby in time out after constant interruptions, but when her time out was over, I talked to her. I explained to her that when she interrupted me it was like she was saying that what she had to say was more important than what I had to say. I asked her, was that the case? No, she said. Then I explained to her that it was pretty much saying that she was more important than me. Was that true, I asked? No, she said, everyone is equally important. Correct, I said. We talked about how hard it can be to wait, but that it was the polite, kind thing to do.

And just like that, it’s been days since my last interruption … from Tabby. Ben is a different story. We’ll civilize him one of these days! Maybe. I don’t know that it will be long-lasting, but so far this has been the only thing that’s even helped. So I’m hopeful. It is lovely to have her at an age where logic and reason are possible.

July 30, 2012July 31, 2012

Easy Reader EBooks

Tabby is getting to the point where she needs more to read than just sight words, but finding her books that are age appropriate and worth reading – let’s just say I’m not big on Fairy Princess Barbie books – is pretty darn hard. So when I saw Playdough to Plato’s great idea of making your own Easy Reader books, I knew I had to give it a go. I thought of going with the paper model, maybe putting it together in InDesign and printing it out, but then I thought that maybe I could make a Kindle Book! I’m techie, how hard could it be?? Turns out, happily, not very hard. Here’s how you do it.

A couple of notes: first of all, I did this on my Windows based PC. It looks like it would work for a Mac, but I don’t know and I don’t have a way to test. Also, from what I’ve read, the resulting file would work on a variety of eReaders, but since I only have a Kindle Fire, that’s all I’ve tested the file on. This is the method that worked for me and I’ve had no problems with it, but mileage may vary, etc. I am happy to have any feedback from you and I will try to help if I can!

Continue reading “Easy Reader EBooks”

July 12, 2012

Doodles and Such

While we were on vacation, Tabby and I spent some time doodling – in the Oodles of Doodles book to be exact. Doodle Books, in case you’re not familiar with the concept, are quite similar to coloring books but quite a bit more open-ended. Instead of a full picture for you to color, they provide a backdrop or a start to a picture and you fill it in with your own artwork. She is still very much in the learning-to-draw portion of things, but she and I were able to have a very good time filling up a few pages in the book. I plan to take it along again this weekend while we’re camping.

Yes, camping. Again. I am a bit exhausted just thinking about it, but we hadn’t taken Loki out in a while and we had the camper out to have it serviced, so it just made sense to go. No one was available to join us which was kind of a bummer, but also kind of good. It keeps things simpler and will give us time as a family. I’ve been downloading some books to read aloud to the kids and stuff like that.

I also have a few word games I’m planning to take with us. There’s a great site called Playdough to Plato (love that name!) that’s dedicated to fun learn-to-read games. Tabby is well on her way with the reading and can stumble through a lot of the early readers, but she’s been so into the whole thing that I want to help her make more progress. They’re also great because they can be adapted to the level Ben is at, recognizing letters. Most of them also only require some paper or notecards and some markers.

Here they are if you’re interested.

1. Climb to the top – kids roll a dice (made with a cube block and some sticky labels) with sight words or letters on each face and see which one of the six sides gets to the top of the chart first.

2. Same or different – a card is divided down the center with a line and then on each side of the line two letter or number combinations are written. The child then has to decide if they’re the same or different. This helps them to train themselves to visually differentiate between common words that are close to one another.

3. Showdown – you make two sets of cards with the same letters, numbers or words on them, varying in quantity and complexity based on the age of the child. You pick a card from your deck and read it. The child then has a few moments to shuffle through their pile and find the corresponding word/letter/number. Once he’s found it you say “1-2-3 SHOWDOWN!” and you both turn over your cards. If they match … YAY and if not, the child can go through their pile to find the matching one.

I also found this cute math game for addition. We regularly practice addition in the car with Tabby so I think she can handle it. Wonder if I have enough dice.