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Showing posts with label kid behavior. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kid behavior. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Any More Parents?
Every night FFM chooses who will put him to bed. It's usually Travis since F spends a big chunk of time with me during the day. We all say our goodnights and the selected parent does the tucking in and last little snuggles. After this F regularly asks, "Are any more parents coming up tonight?" Yes, that back up pair of parents we keep in the guest room closet will be in momentarily for one last goodnight.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
On the Subject of Bathrooms
1. Only parents of boys will understand the pit that comes with hearing, "MOM! I PEED ALL OVER THE BATHROOM!" Even better, 6:15am on a Saturday.
2. At the swim meet today the facilities for women were a little limited. No matter what there was always a line at least 4 deep for the 2 stalls. When I went in one stall was occupied (and apparently had been for a while) by a very young girl singing her lungs out to "Let It Go" from Frozen. On one hand it was totally annoying because, you know, we all had to go, on the other it was gratifying to know that my child isn't the only one who will sit on the pot for thirty minutes singing and telling stories to himself.
2. At the swim meet today the facilities for women were a little limited. No matter what there was always a line at least 4 deep for the 2 stalls. When I went in one stall was occupied (and apparently had been for a while) by a very young girl singing her lungs out to "Let It Go" from Frozen. On one hand it was totally annoying because, you know, we all had to go, on the other it was gratifying to know that my child isn't the only one who will sit on the pot for thirty minutes singing and telling stories to himself.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Fashionista
No, not any of the adults in this family. FFM. And I'm not sure males are called fashionistas, but I couldn't come up with anything better. FFM loves clothes. Colorful, stylish, hip clothes. He knows the names of his favorite designers/brands and will always pick those shirts and pants before what he calls the 'plain' ones from Gymboree or Crazy 8. When the catalogs come he pours over them, pointing out the outfits he wants.
F outgrew pretty much all his long pants over the summer, blowing past those NWT ones I had stored from last year's end of season sales, and what do you suppose he asked for? All skinny colored jeans,no blue ones please Mom. His favorite pair right now? Teal. Followed by the red ones, the light red ones, and the golden ones (his words, not mine). Every shirt he picked out this fall was button down. He'd wear button down shirts with slacks every day if I'd agree to spring for that many 'fancy' shirts. (with a tie every few days just for kicks).
The dark side of all this, little boy shirts aren't usually made of that spiffy stain resistant/wrinkle resistant, looks great out of the dryer fabric that men's clothes are made of. Here is a sign of the depth of my love for my child:
I DETEST ironing. I had to do a fair bit of it as a youngster and as an adult I only iron if I REALLY REALLY have to. As soon as I started buying my own clothes I avoided anything that had to be ironed. Thus the true, bottomless love of a parent, I iron down the worst parts of his shirts. No starch. How long before he can afford dry cleaning?
F outgrew pretty much all his long pants over the summer, blowing past those NWT ones I had stored from last year's end of season sales, and what do you suppose he asked for? All skinny colored jeans,no blue ones please Mom. His favorite pair right now? Teal. Followed by the red ones, the light red ones, and the golden ones (his words, not mine). Every shirt he picked out this fall was button down. He'd wear button down shirts with slacks every day if I'd agree to spring for that many 'fancy' shirts. (with a tie every few days just for kicks).
The dark side of all this, little boy shirts aren't usually made of that spiffy stain resistant/wrinkle resistant, looks great out of the dryer fabric that men's clothes are made of. Here is a sign of the depth of my love for my child:
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
F's Semi-Famous Hot Oat Pucks
This spring we made some adjustments to our food storage so FFM could easily reach and prepare meals on his own while I recuperated from hip surgery. I still avoid having him work with sharp knives and hot surfaces unsupervised, so it was tricky to figure out some of his favorites. He prefers to make his own breakfast a lot of the time, which is great since I'm not super chippy in the mornings. Thus F's Hot Oat Pucks were born.
We keep a bag of these in the freezer and he can help himself and microwave a couple anytime.
F's Hot Oat Pucks
4 C milk
2.5 C water
4 C regular oats
1/4 C maple syrup (or sweetener of your choice or leave out if)
2-3 T cinnamon
1 C toasted chopped walnuts
Raisins, Craisins, and/or frozen berries of your choice
Bring milk and water to a boil and add oats. Cook about 5 minutes, or until your preferred consistency. Remove from heat. Add maple syrup and stir through. Add cinnamon, walnuts, and fruit and stir until well combined. Let cool for 5-10 minutes
Spray two 12-count muffin tins with cooking spray. Alternatively, use silicone and skip the spray. Fill cups all the way to the top with oat mixture. We have various sizes and I try to fill them so that the pucks will all end up about the same size. This means filling giant cups only halfway.
Place all your tins in the freezer for a few hours until totally frozen. To remove from a metal tin you may need to run a little warm water across the back of the tin. To remove from silicon pan simply pop out by pushing on the back of each cup. Put into a freezer bag and return to freezer.
When you are ready for Hot Oats, place 2 pucks into a 2C glass measuring cup and add a splash of water or milk (more if you like your oats runny). Heat for 2 min and 30 seconds for a 1000w microwave. To serve F's favorite way, tip into a bowl and add 3 generous spoonfuls of yogurt and stir. Yum!
F's Hot Oat Pucks
4 C milk
2.5 C water
4 C regular oats
1/4 C maple syrup (or sweetener of your choice or leave out if)
2-3 T cinnamon
1 C toasted chopped walnuts
Raisins, Craisins, and/or frozen berries of your choice
Bring milk and water to a boil and add oats. Cook about 5 minutes, or until your preferred consistency. Remove from heat. Add maple syrup and stir through. Add cinnamon, walnuts, and fruit and stir until well combined. Let cool for 5-10 minutes
Spray two 12-count muffin tins with cooking spray. Alternatively, use silicone and skip the spray. Fill cups all the way to the top with oat mixture. We have various sizes and I try to fill them so that the pucks will all end up about the same size. This means filling giant cups only halfway.
Place all your tins in the freezer for a few hours until totally frozen. To remove from a metal tin you may need to run a little warm water across the back of the tin. To remove from silicon pan simply pop out by pushing on the back of each cup. Put into a freezer bag and return to freezer.
When you are ready for Hot Oats, place 2 pucks into a 2C glass measuring cup and add a splash of water or milk (more if you like your oats runny). Heat for 2 min and 30 seconds for a 1000w microwave. To serve F's favorite way, tip into a bowl and add 3 generous spoonfuls of yogurt and stir. Yum!
I don't usually sweeten his oats, so I don't always put in the maple syrup. Sometimes I have smooshy bananas around and I mix them in at the end, too. Nuts go in when I have them handy, and if you're an adult you might like to add half a teaspoon or so of salt for your palette.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Wet Hands
This is what I'm talking about when I say F is "on all the time." He runs at 110% during all waking hours. There's no downtime, no break, no mellow bits. It's full tilt boogie from 7am to 7pm. Drying hands on a towel is just so BORING!
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Master of His Own Destiny
Our household passed one more marker of childhood this week, F learned to tie his own shoes. He's had these shoes for a few weeks, fancy shiny ones he picked out all on his own. The laces are extra long for kiddos who are just learning to tie.
An added bonus, he can now also tie the string in his swim team jammers...which previously Mom or Coach had to tie.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Now You See It, Now You Don't
Two completely unrelated, amazing things disappeared recently.
1. The Lunch Battle
Since my surgery F's been eating school lunches on the days he's at school for a full day. While our school lunch program is decent, with a fairly "healthy" offering pretty much every day, they also offer a total kid meal every day. There isn't one day a week when you can't get chicken nuggets, pizza, or a hot dog. It's hard for chef's salad, pasta, or teriyaki chicken bowl to compete with pizza. While I was down for the count I think F ate pizza for about four meals in a row. When I bounced back I suggested that he think about which thing was the best for his body and pick that.
Today, for the first time since spring break, I managed to move fast enough in the morning to pack him a lunch. I literally squealed with glee when it came home looking like this:
Guess Mom's lunches are edible after all. Perhaps this is the beginning of a long, healthy relationship with the lunch box.
2. We took out the spruce tree that was taking over the front of our house. Now, we LOVE our trees. They are all about 30 years old, huge, mature, beautiful but SO SO big. As soon as we moved in I had the 6 dead and dying Aspen trees cut down. When the wind blew they'd knock the eaves and roof. It was freaky. A previous owner planted the two spruce in the front and they are stunning trees, BUT HUGE. We trim the one closest to the house twice a year. You can't tell from this angle, but when you'd look out our front window all you'd see was tree from 2/3 of the window. It constantly bumps against the house and windows ( we've been trying to keep it hacked back).
We see a lot more of the side of our neighbor's house now, our 3 year plan includes some large shrubs and a new smaller tree for the space. We'll also put in a walkway from our back yard to the front.
On the surgery front I'm still pretty swollen (it's really hard to elevate your hip) and I'm barely limping. I still can't put all my weight on my right leg going up/down stairs. It's getting stronger every day, but PT says it'll take a while to get it back. I told her she's got until the start of ski season to get me up and kicking at 110%.
1. The Lunch Battle
Since my surgery F's been eating school lunches on the days he's at school for a full day. While our school lunch program is decent, with a fairly "healthy" offering pretty much every day, they also offer a total kid meal every day. There isn't one day a week when you can't get chicken nuggets, pizza, or a hot dog. It's hard for chef's salad, pasta, or teriyaki chicken bowl to compete with pizza. While I was down for the count I think F ate pizza for about four meals in a row. When I bounced back I suggested that he think about which thing was the best for his body and pick that.
Today, for the first time since spring break, I managed to move fast enough in the morning to pack him a lunch. I literally squealed with glee when it came home looking like this:
 |
| not a speck left! |
2. We took out the spruce tree that was taking over the front of our house. Now, we LOVE our trees. They are all about 30 years old, huge, mature, beautiful but SO SO big. As soon as we moved in I had the 6 dead and dying Aspen trees cut down. When the wind blew they'd knock the eaves and roof. It was freaky. A previous owner planted the two spruce in the front and they are stunning trees, BUT HUGE. We trim the one closest to the house twice a year. You can't tell from this angle, but when you'd look out our front window all you'd see was tree from 2/3 of the window. It constantly bumps against the house and windows ( we've been trying to keep it hacked back).
The crew arrived just as F and I were headed out the door for school drop off. We made sure they were working on the right tree and I dashed off to school. When I came back 30 minutes later (must have time to chat with the other moms!) The tree was GONE.
The guys hopped in their bucket and shaped the remaining blue spruce, it's a nice cone shape now and the twin tips at the top are gone. Poor F missed the whole thing. Luckily the stump remover came later in the day and F got to watch him grind the stump to nothing.
We see a lot more of the side of our neighbor's house now, our 3 year plan includes some large shrubs and a new smaller tree for the space. We'll also put in a walkway from our back yard to the front.
On the surgery front I'm still pretty swollen (it's really hard to elevate your hip) and I'm barely limping. I still can't put all my weight on my right leg going up/down stairs. It's getting stronger every day, but PT says it'll take a while to get it back. I told her she's got until the start of ski season to get me up and kicking at 110%.
Friday, February 22, 2013
The Lunch Struggle
I loathe the days F eats lunch at school. He faithfully hauls the lunchbox he picked out, opens it, and then pokes at one of the three items I lovingly packed and puts it all back. A nearly entirely intact lunch returns to me at the end of the day. Plus, one grouchy, grumpy, tired kiddo who has low blood sugar and is taking it out on me.
During the winter break I decided to attack the lunch struggle with all available forces. I checked out lunch cookbooks, I read online articles about cute food, I purchased cute pokey things to stick into/onto food.
During the winter break I decided to attack the lunch struggle with all available forces. I checked out lunch cookbooks, I read online articles about cute food, I purchased cute pokey things to stick into/onto food.
So cute! Wouldn't your lunch taste better with cool stick things stuck in it? Or these snazzy lunch box notes complete with stickers?
Before school started back up T and I sat down with kiddo and had a talk that went kind of like this,
"But I do eat my lunch!"
"Well, no, you don't. You bring it all home."
"Sorry, I forgot."
ARGH! The I Forgot. No more cursed words could ever be found in a 5 year old's vocabulary. Yes, you can remember the name and number of every single ski lift on the mountain and exactly what color socks we all put on 17 days ago, but you forgot to eat your lunch.
I bought a cookbook and F and I went page by page and stuck flags on all the items he deemed good enough to eat. Now, this child is not a picky eater. He just has better things to do on his lunch hour than eat. I soldiered forth, stuck my fancy sticks, cut cool shapes out of bread with my cookie cutters, and I thought FOR SURE he would eat lunch. Nope.
Next conversation went like this,
"You may NOT go to all day kindergarten if you don't EAT YOUR LUNCH. You have one more day to show us that you can eat lunch before I cancel all day kindergarten FOREVER!!!! MWAH HA HA!" Ok, so maybe not quite so dramatic but you get the drift. F finally did, too.
Next day, the only thing left in his lunch was the stick I stuck in his wrap :)
Monday, November 5, 2012
The Grandest Puppet Show
We had some spare time a couple nights ago and FFM put on a puppet show for us. It was the "GrandMax Puppet Show" in the Grandest Puppet Show Theater. It started out great and then got really, really, really repetitive. Travis requested some new dialogue and perhaps a plot twist.
I suggested that perhaps F could draw from a story he knows for some inspiration. He thought for a while and then said, "I know, someone could get in trouble!" Perhaps we need to change up our book selection.
After some more repeating...Travis suggested perhaps the animals could DO something. Abruptly, instead of the kangaroos just making friends, the Mama Kangaroo took action and politely told the baby kangaroo, "You can't go outside right now I didn't put sunscreen on you!"
You just never know what twists and turns will take place in fine theater.
I suggested that perhaps F could draw from a story he knows for some inspiration. He thought for a while and then said, "I know, someone could get in trouble!" Perhaps we need to change up our book selection.
After some more repeating...Travis suggested perhaps the animals could DO something. Abruptly, instead of the kangaroos just making friends, the Mama Kangaroo took action and politely told the baby kangaroo, "You can't go outside right now I didn't put sunscreen on you!"
You just never know what twists and turns will take place in fine theater.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Not What We Planned for Our Weekend
October is a fickle month. We never know if we are going to have warm, balmy sun or a blizzard. This weekend we had a little of everything except the blizzard. We tried to go to our favorite pumpkin patch, open only this weekend, and were thwarted twice by lashing rain and gusting wind.
Since Daddy was busy taking lots of measurements FFM really wanted to help. He was getting a little in the way so we made our own plan. He had a Mission Notebook and two pages of measurements to take. His mission was so much fun! He measured all kinds of things, a chair, a phone, an animal, a window, it went on and on.
Saturday night I headed out to girls night out downtown and the boys stayed in and had pizza leftovers for dinner and read lots of books.
Sunday, ah lazy Sunday, the sun finally came out. We opted to wrap up some of our outdoor chores that have been lingering. We had some exterior trim to paint after gutter work a couple of weeks ago, winterize the lawn, cut back some of the perennials, and hack back the cobwebs that pop up everywhere. FFM mucked out his playhouse and got it ready for winter.
We had a few moments of panic when FFM disappeared and neither Travis or I could find him anywhere. After the recent Jessica Ridgeway news we JUST had a chat with him about stranger danger and not taking off without permission. No kid in house, front yard, or backyard. There weren't any other neighbor kids out and about so we were at a loss. We finally found him camped out in our car. We got our new one on Monday and he's still very excited about it. When he found it unlocked he climbed in to play in and 'clean' it. Another stranger danger chat and a few tears later we were all calmed down. Now I just hope the car is OK!
We wrapped up early, had early dinner, and had time leftover for family game night. We love game night! Add in cheesy caramel corn and Dots and it's one great time.
Saturday we planned on early breakfast followed by pumpkin hunting and fall festival. We ended up spending a lovely morning with extended family, then browsed for new light fixtures indoors out of the pouring rain, and hung out at home. Travis changed out our front and back door hardware while Finn and I worked on our own project.
Saturday night I headed out to girls night out downtown and the boys stayed in and had pizza leftovers for dinner and read lots of books.
Sunday, ah lazy Sunday, the sun finally came out. We opted to wrap up some of our outdoor chores that have been lingering. We had some exterior trim to paint after gutter work a couple of weeks ago, winterize the lawn, cut back some of the perennials, and hack back the cobwebs that pop up everywhere. FFM mucked out his playhouse and got it ready for winter.
We had a few moments of panic when FFM disappeared and neither Travis or I could find him anywhere. After the recent Jessica Ridgeway news we JUST had a chat with him about stranger danger and not taking off without permission. No kid in house, front yard, or backyard. There weren't any other neighbor kids out and about so we were at a loss. We finally found him camped out in our car. We got our new one on Monday and he's still very excited about it. When he found it unlocked he climbed in to play in and 'clean' it. Another stranger danger chat and a few tears later we were all calmed down. Now I just hope the car is OK!
We wrapped up early, had early dinner, and had time leftover for family game night. We love game night! Add in cheesy caramel corn and Dots and it's one great time.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Cool Book Lists for Kids
I love books. Our whole family loves books. We are certifiable bibliophiles. One of my most favorite things about being a parent is sharing books with my child. Now that he's reading on his own it's even more exciting, we read together, he reads to me, and now I catch him curled up in random places with a book of his own. The back seat of our car is littered with paperback early readers and when he's not listening to a book on his headphones F reads a book to me or any other passenger in the car.
This is a habit I want to feed. I have this longstanding underlying fear of running out of books. If you are a reader you understand this. You have to have a good backlog or you just don't feel right. Now this stretches to my child and I want to make sure he's got plenty of books, too. We're avid library patrons and many of the librarians know us both by name, even more by sight. Sometimes, however, I get in a slump and can't think of any good books. Right now we're in the space between picture books and chapter books and I'm navigating the waters of "readers" (early reader, middle reader, advanced reader etc) and there are so, so many of these books and a lot of them are just awful.
I found a few lists that have been inspiring. They are all over the place, shoot the library is a great place to find booklists, but here are a few of my current favorites. Please shout out your own favorites, I'd love to hear what you've found, too.
PBS Parents Bookfinder
A great search engine that allows you to type in age, theme, reader level, and keywords.
PBS Parents Best Books for Boys
OK, so you don't HAVE to be a boy to read these books but I've found that like clothes there are far more books aimed towards girls than boys once you hit a certain age. This list breaks it down by reading level making searching for that novel for your nephew or picture book for you new grandson a piece 'o cake.
67 Books Every Geek Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10
This list is so much fun. It was written by a Dad and I found it when F started choosing chapter books in lieu of pictures books at bedtime every night. Chapter books at bedtime created an interesting shift in our routine. Travis and I went from rushing through bedtime stories and secretly hoping the other would get picked, to hoping we'd get picked to do bedtime and secretly reading the chapters we'd missed when the other got to do the nightly read. I admit I've had to pay some library fine so I could finish reading a book that Travis and F got to read.
Teacher's First 100 Best Books
Trying to remember those classic books you loved as a child? Nothing groundbreaking here, when you're in the mood for the oldies but goodies try this list. The link above goes to the 1999 list which is neatly organized by age, if you are interested in the updated list from 2007 click HERE but be prepared to sift through as it's not organized into any categories.
Common Sense Media
I discovered Common Sense Media when F started school and got his own computer. I wanted to make sure he wasn't stumbling into unsafe or inappropriate places online and stumbled upon their website when doing research. Their forte is age appropriateness of media - so if you're wondering how soon before you can crack out Harry Potter without scaring the pants off your kiddo, they'll give you some suggestions.
Oprah's Book List for Kids
I'm going to lay this out there, I'm not always a fan of Oprah's book choices. But she makes them and sometimes they are very good books. Mainstream with a hint of cultural awareness, this list is decent and includes our favorite early reader characters, Elephant and Piggie by Mo Willems. It's a flash slideshow, so bring your patience.
Book Awards
Don't forget kids books win awards too!
Caldecott - Awarded to the artist of picture books
Geisel - Distinguished books for beginning readers
Children's Notable Books - Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) chooses the best of the best kid books
This is a habit I want to feed. I have this longstanding underlying fear of running out of books. If you are a reader you understand this. You have to have a good backlog or you just don't feel right. Now this stretches to my child and I want to make sure he's got plenty of books, too. We're avid library patrons and many of the librarians know us both by name, even more by sight. Sometimes, however, I get in a slump and can't think of any good books. Right now we're in the space between picture books and chapter books and I'm navigating the waters of "readers" (early reader, middle reader, advanced reader etc) and there are so, so many of these books and a lot of them are just awful.
I found a few lists that have been inspiring. They are all over the place, shoot the library is a great place to find booklists, but here are a few of my current favorites. Please shout out your own favorites, I'd love to hear what you've found, too.
PBS Parents Bookfinder
A great search engine that allows you to type in age, theme, reader level, and keywords.
PBS Parents Best Books for Boys
OK, so you don't HAVE to be a boy to read these books but I've found that like clothes there are far more books aimed towards girls than boys once you hit a certain age. This list breaks it down by reading level making searching for that novel for your nephew or picture book for you new grandson a piece 'o cake.
67 Books Every Geek Should Read to Their Kids Before Age 10
This list is so much fun. It was written by a Dad and I found it when F started choosing chapter books in lieu of pictures books at bedtime every night. Chapter books at bedtime created an interesting shift in our routine. Travis and I went from rushing through bedtime stories and secretly hoping the other would get picked, to hoping we'd get picked to do bedtime and secretly reading the chapters we'd missed when the other got to do the nightly read. I admit I've had to pay some library fine so I could finish reading a book that Travis and F got to read.
Teacher's First 100 Best Books
Trying to remember those classic books you loved as a child? Nothing groundbreaking here, when you're in the mood for the oldies but goodies try this list. The link above goes to the 1999 list which is neatly organized by age, if you are interested in the updated list from 2007 click HERE but be prepared to sift through as it's not organized into any categories.
Common Sense Media
I discovered Common Sense Media when F started school and got his own computer. I wanted to make sure he wasn't stumbling into unsafe or inappropriate places online and stumbled upon their website when doing research. Their forte is age appropriateness of media - so if you're wondering how soon before you can crack out Harry Potter without scaring the pants off your kiddo, they'll give you some suggestions.
Oprah's Book List for Kids
I'm going to lay this out there, I'm not always a fan of Oprah's book choices. But she makes them and sometimes they are very good books. Mainstream with a hint of cultural awareness, this list is decent and includes our favorite early reader characters, Elephant and Piggie by Mo Willems. It's a flash slideshow, so bring your patience.
Book Awards
Don't forget kids books win awards too!
Caldecott - Awarded to the artist of picture books
Geisel - Distinguished books for beginning readers
Children's Notable Books - Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) chooses the best of the best kid books
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Extra Deep Thoughts
It's kind of like pulling teeth to find out what goes on in the mind of FFM sometimes. Other times it just vomits out. Today I get this from the backseat as we were pulling into the driveway after a quick errand,
"Mom, where did the first person come from? There wasn't anyone from them to be borned (sic) from so they had to come from somewhere. Where did they come from?"
I'm tempted to blow him off. It's the end of a long day at the end of a long week. I've been single-parenting it this week, it's the first whole week of school so everyone's been a bit loopy, and I'm just plain pooped from a long hot day. But I can tell he's serious. He's using critical thinking to try to figure out this question and he's stumped, the least I can do is give him a couple simple options to think about.
So I tell him in 5 year old terms about Creationism and Evolution and what science says and what religion says (he requested that we start going to church and is learning a few things in Sunday school). I tell him that when he feels ready it will be his choice what to believe. I tell him what his Dad and I believe and that he'll know when he's old enough to decide for himself and that he might change his mind and that's OK too.
Then, the moment's gone. FFM, after soaking it all in and asking a few more good questions along the way, gets supercrazymanic and we hustle off to bed. Nothing like a kid to keep you on your toes.
"Mom, where did the first person come from? There wasn't anyone from them to be borned (sic) from so they had to come from somewhere. Where did they come from?"
I'm tempted to blow him off. It's the end of a long day at the end of a long week. I've been single-parenting it this week, it's the first whole week of school so everyone's been a bit loopy, and I'm just plain pooped from a long hot day. But I can tell he's serious. He's using critical thinking to try to figure out this question and he's stumped, the least I can do is give him a couple simple options to think about.
So I tell him in 5 year old terms about Creationism and Evolution and what science says and what religion says (he requested that we start going to church and is learning a few things in Sunday school). I tell him that when he feels ready it will be his choice what to believe. I tell him what his Dad and I believe and that he'll know when he's old enough to decide for himself and that he might change his mind and that's OK too.
Then, the moment's gone. FFM, after soaking it all in and asking a few more good questions along the way, gets supercrazymanic and we hustle off to bed. Nothing like a kid to keep you on your toes.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Things You Only Say When You Are A Parent
"Yeah, time to go home. I have a poopy sock in my pocket."
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Surviving the First Weeks of School
Ah, holiday weekends. Labor Day was full of work around here. All kinds of work. Housework, construction work, parenting work.
FFM is on a sleep strike and it's taxing our parenting skills to the max. Is he stressed about school? Is he strung out about piano lessons? Did Dad being out of town the first week of school throw him for a loop? Is the new routine messing him up? Our analysis leads us to believe he is testing boundaries, and pushing HARD to see how far he can go.
The end result is that FFM looks like the walking dead. He's got dark circles under his eyes that rival black holes from Deep Space Nine with lovely violet accents. After a long weekend of trying multiple strategies we're having the most luck with super duper early bedtime. This gives him enough time to mess around in bed before going to sleep that he actually a reasonable amount of sleeping done. It's still not enough, though, as the circles are only getting worse. Top it off with the season's first cough/cold he just caught and I fear disaster before too long.
After getting enough sleep that he was finally lucid we chatted. He's not worried about school. He missed Dad last week but that wasn't it either. Piano made him a little worried (he moved up to the next level several months early) but a good day of practice and he's feeling much better about that now. Why no sleep? The very blunt answer I finally got from him- it's boring and he doesn't want to do it anymore.
Ugh. Annoying. It's not fun to toe the line with your kid. We did it, a kids got to sleep after all, but I want to make him understand WHY he needs sleep. I want him to WANT to go to sleep. He makes all kinds of good choices on his own, so I thought about ways to align sleeping with those choices he already makes.
Lately he's been on a anti-artificial color kick. He doesn't choose a lot of snacks with artificial colors because they are bad for his brain (totally over simplified explanation, but it works for a 5 year old). By no means is this hard and fast, we/he have not eliminated artifical colors from his diet, but he ate a super bright sno-cone one day and wondered where the colors came from. He didn't like the answer. He likes doing "healthy" things and avoiding "not-healthy" things. *bling* little tiny bulb goes on over my head.
Today we discussed how sleep is healthy for you. How missing out on sleep is just like putting unhealthy things into your body. It's not punishment to go to bed, it's just like eating fruits and vegetables. Then we put him in charge. We told him how many hours of sleep his body required and we told him to figure out his own bedtime. Voila, 7pm it is, and this time it's HIS choice, which apparently makes all the difference in the world. No more bedtime dramas. Shazam!
FFM is on a sleep strike and it's taxing our parenting skills to the max. Is he stressed about school? Is he strung out about piano lessons? Did Dad being out of town the first week of school throw him for a loop? Is the new routine messing him up? Our analysis leads us to believe he is testing boundaries, and pushing HARD to see how far he can go.
The end result is that FFM looks like the walking dead. He's got dark circles under his eyes that rival black holes from Deep Space Nine with lovely violet accents. After a long weekend of trying multiple strategies we're having the most luck with super duper early bedtime. This gives him enough time to mess around in bed before going to sleep that he actually a reasonable amount of sleeping done. It's still not enough, though, as the circles are only getting worse. Top it off with the season's first cough/cold he just caught and I fear disaster before too long.
After getting enough sleep that he was finally lucid we chatted. He's not worried about school. He missed Dad last week but that wasn't it either. Piano made him a little worried (he moved up to the next level several months early) but a good day of practice and he's feeling much better about that now. Why no sleep? The very blunt answer I finally got from him- it's boring and he doesn't want to do it anymore.
Ugh. Annoying. It's not fun to toe the line with your kid. We did it, a kids got to sleep after all, but I want to make him understand WHY he needs sleep. I want him to WANT to go to sleep. He makes all kinds of good choices on his own, so I thought about ways to align sleeping with those choices he already makes.
Lately he's been on a anti-artificial color kick. He doesn't choose a lot of snacks with artificial colors because they are bad for his brain (totally over simplified explanation, but it works for a 5 year old). By no means is this hard and fast, we/he have not eliminated artifical colors from his diet, but he ate a super bright sno-cone one day and wondered where the colors came from. He didn't like the answer. He likes doing "healthy" things and avoiding "not-healthy" things. *bling* little tiny bulb goes on over my head.
Today we discussed how sleep is healthy for you. How missing out on sleep is just like putting unhealthy things into your body. It's not punishment to go to bed, it's just like eating fruits and vegetables. Then we put him in charge. We told him how many hours of sleep his body required and we told him to figure out his own bedtime. Voila, 7pm it is, and this time it's HIS choice, which apparently makes all the difference in the world. No more bedtime dramas. Shazam!
