"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 :-)

Peach Picking

As I mentioned in my previous post about strawberry picking, we were planning on making a trip back out to Marburger's Orchard to do some peach picking and last week we did so. It was a hot day (like most days have been lately), so I was anxious to leave as early as possible. Unfortunately, my cohort (Aunt Roar) is not such an early riser, so we didn't get on the road until around 9:30, putting us there at 10:30. I know it's still in the morning, but that hot Texas sun is already in full force at that hour. Luckily we were given some reprieve from the sun using the shade of the peach trees. As I expected, James loved picking peaches just as much as any other fruit.

Since he couldn't reach most of the fruit on his own and he weighs a solid 30 pounds, we decided to give him the job of looking for the fruit that was ready to pick and pointing it out for us. So if you ask him how to properly pick a peach, he will tell you that "they have to be all yellow with some red and orange coloring, no green."

He did an awesome job and in only 30 minutes our box was overflowing. We ended up with 12 pounds of peaches to split between Aunt Roar and I. Since that is such a large amount of peaches, I have been making new recipes with peaches. Here is a recipe for peach cake that turned out wonderfully. It works great for a breakfast cake or a dessert cake with ice cream.

Peach Cake

Ingredients:
3 egg, beaten
1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup orange juice or peach juice if you have it
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups fresh peaches - peeled, pitted and sliced
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil, juice, flour, salt, cinnamon, baking soda, peaches and pecans. Mix thoroughly by hand.
3. Pour into prepared 9x13 inch pan (or bundt pan) and bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 50 minutes or until done.

1st Dentist Appointment

So yesterday we had James' first visit to the dentist and I was thrilled at how well he did. I have actually been putting it off for a while just because I was afraid he wouldn't cooperate at all. Much to my surprise he did exceptionally well and we were even able to get some x-rays of his teeth. The dental assistant told me that they rarely can get x-rays with children his age, but he was all for it. I loved the Pediatric Dentist we went to (Alamo Heights Pediatric Dentistry). They are definitely geared towards children, with a video gaming room, tv's tuned to children's programming, and a large fish tank to mesmorize the children. Here's a picture of James playing in the video game room:

It's a large structure that looks like a big coral reef with tv screens inset in it with touch screen games. The kids can even crawl under the strucutre, which James loved. It was the coolest thing I've seen. After playing here for a while, we were called back to the room where James was able to brush the big yellow dog's teeth:

This allowed him to get comforable with the idea of letting the dentist look in his mouth and it worked like a charm...

Here he is waiting for the dentist to take a peek in his mouth, with the cool shades on and everything :-). The dentist said his teeth look great, although they could tell he had fallen a couple of times and hit his teeth, which is very commom among boys his age. They also said that he grinds his teeth, which I guess I shouldn't be surprised by since both myself and my husband do the same. Once his permanent teeth come in, I see a night guard in our future. They told me that I should be flossing his teeth as well as brushing them twice a day. All I have to say is, I have a hard enough time brushing his teeth and now you want me to get him to sit still long enough to floss...HA! Well, I guess I'll try, but I don't see it becoming an every day thing until he's a little older.

All in all, I was very happy with how his first visit went. Fingers crossed it goes just as well the second time around in 6 months.

Father's Day

So another Father's Day has come and gone. We had a really nice one and I was especially happy to be able to spend the day with not only the father of my child, but my father as well. Since we were living in Northern VA and just recently moved back to SA, it has been about 6 years since I was able to spend Father's Day with the one father that matters the most to me, my dad. I know it's just another "Hallmark" holiday, created by the evil capitalist to make us spend more money, but I rather enjoy celebrating it and spending it with the important people in my life. Yesterday was really nice. It started by James and I preparing a nice breakfast in bed meal for my husband. French toast, scrambled eggs a la James, and turkey sausage. Here's a photo of chef James cooking his eggs:

It's a very common thing for James to help cook weekend morning breakfasts, but he was very excited on this particular occasion since it was for Daddy. If I had more patience in the kitchen with James, I would have him help with every meal because he did a great job. The meal turned out great and Mike really enjoyed it.

Mike will probably kill me for posting this picture, but I couldn't resist. James was also very excited about the card we made for Daddy, which turned out great:

After breakfast we headed to church with the family and then to my parents for a day of swimming and relaxing. We ended up making a pitcher of Mojitos to enjoy in the pool and they turned out great. They were super easy and very refreshing. Here's the recipe for anyone who is interested:

Danielle's Mojitos
Ingredients:
· 8 sprigs (large) fresh mint
· 1/2 cups sugar
· 1/4 cups fresh lime juice
· 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated lime peel
· 4 cups ice cubes
· 1 cups white rum
· 3 cups club soda, chilled
· Mint sprigs for garnish
 
Directions:
1. Remove leaves from mint sprigs. In blender, combine mint leaves, sugar, lime juice, and peel. Pulse until mint is chopped.
2. Fill pitcher with ice and add mint mixture. Pour in rum; stir. Fill with club soda. Pour into 6 glasses. Garnish with mint sprigs.
 
At the beginning of the summer, James was slightly apprehensive about swimming even though he thoroughly enjoyed it last year. We have since been making an effort to take him to my parents a few times a week to swim so that he can get more comfortable with it. He is really starting to warm up to it more and more. My hope is that he will be swimming like a fish by the end fo the summer.
 

 
After enjoying a day of swimming, I made a wonderful steak dinner for the whole family. It was a great Father's Day and I am looking forward to spending many more with my entire family.