"It's Like Preschool on TV"

I always promised myself that I would never let my child watch television, especially with all the articles out there that state it causes ADD, childhood obesity, etc. But, unless you are a "super mom" and your child is the most angelic being out there, it is virtually impossible to get anything done around the house without allowing a little bit of TV watching. What's important is to be aware what programming you are allowing your child to watch. For myself, I only let James watch shows that are educational. Luckily there are a vast number of those out there now so we aren't just limited to Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, like our parents were.

I am lucky enough to be a stay-at-home-mom, which allows me to work with James on his alphabet, shapes, colors, etc. But some of the shows that he watches really help to reinforce the things we teach him, which I find awesome. Thanks to "Team Umizoomi" he has more easily learned the different shapes and numbers (and not just 1-10). It's even introducing him to addition, which I believe he's starting to pick up a little. In the "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" episode shown below, they were teaching 3-D shapes like, cubes and pyramids and to my surprise he could name all of them!

I know it's better to just teach him these things and reinforce them myself, but let's be honest, unless I have a whole staff to manage my household that just isn't realistic. So mothers if you allow your child to watch television, don't fret over it. As long as you use educational programming (and there's TONS out there) they will be fine. I have a sneaking suspicion that those "professionals" that write all of those articles against allowing your children to watch TV, either don't have children or have significant amounts of money for a nanny to keep them preoccupied.

Potty Training Hell

So no parent looks forward to potty training their child, but it is a necessity that must be attended to. We have been gradually potty training James, who will be three in November, since he turned two. Bribing with M&M’s to “pee on the potty”. We even started using the training pants and used them as an incentive. “If you pee on the potty, you can wear your big boy pants”, etc. He was getting really good at this and has been going on the toilet three to four times a day (although only #1), so I decided it was time to take it up a notch. There is a method of potty training in which you take your child’s diaper off and allow them to run around the house pantless. The idea is that they will be more aware when they need to go bathroom on the toilet and not in their diaper, which they are no longer wearing. I thought this would be a great idea since James definitely understands the concept of using the toilet and just needed a little reminder to use it. (Here's a pic of him diaperless, aren't baby butts too cute!)

I believe James, as do most children at his age, just go potty in their diaper out of convenience. They are busy playing or doing something far too important to stop and go to the bathroom on the toilet. But if they don’t have a diaper on they’ll go use the restroom, right? Wrong! At least in our instance we were wrong. I know this technique has worked for many people, including some of my friends, but we weren’t so lucky. Today, James pooped and peed on the floor, not once, but twice. That’s right, he did it once and we thought it was just a fluke. We talked to him about it extensively, told him why it was wrong and thought we’d give it another go. “There’s no way he’ll do that again,” we thought. Yeah…not so much. We have thus resorted to putting diapers back on in hopes that he will still use the toilet when he needs to. I didn’t expect potty training to be a breeze, but I guess I did hope that my child would be the exception to the rule and just pick it up like that (snaps fingers). Oh the joys of parenthood. Hopefully I will be able to write a blog update soon that says James is finally potty trained. Until then, we will continue to keep the diaper companies in business :-)

My Little Fish

So with summer in full swing, we are swimming at my parents house as much as possible. At the beginning of the summer James was apprehensive, to say the least, about getting into the water. Even though his memory seems to be impeccable, it was as if he had completely forgotten how much he enjoyed swimming last year. He eventually got into the pool with much hesitation, but would not move from the steps. Little by little, he started warming up to the idea of swimming again. He used to only get off the steps as long as one of us was holding him, then one day out of the blue, he wanted to swim on his own. Now we have a hard time even getting him out of the pool. Here's a snippett of him swimming all on his own using a noodle.

To avoid his apprehension of swimming reoccuring next summer, I plan on enrolling him in swim classes over the winter. Hopefully he will continue to enjoy swimming as much as he does now.

4th of July weekend

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend. Mike's mom and sister came into town to visit for the weekend and we had a blast. The weekend was kicked off with a 4th of July parade at James' school. All the classrooms made adorable t-shirts for the kids and they marched around the school parking lot waving American flags.

Here's James with his whole class after the parade...aren't they adorable?!

The next morning we headed down to the zoo with the whole family. Since we have a membership at the zoo, James has been multiple times, but he still enjoys it every time.

He was fascinated with the monkeys and watched them for almost 10 minutes

Here's Mike's mom, Gerry, James, Mike and Mike's sister, Kate

James absolutely LOVED riding the train...not sure why we hadn't done it before this, but it will be a necessity everytime we go to the zoo now.

We spent Sunday floating in the pool and then had a fajita dinner at my parents. It was a nice relaxing day and great to spend it with almost the whole family.

James dancing with Papa & Gigi (my parents)

Here he is with his Nanny (Mike's mom)

Finally we had a wonderful, laid-back 4th of July with friends and family. Just another day of floating in the pool and cooking out. What better way to spend America's birthday?

Here's James floating in the pool...he has become quite the little swimmer

James and Aunt Roar cheering on Aaron, who was doing back flips into the pool

Everyone hanging out in the pool

My patriotic cake :-)