20 Random Things I've Learned...

... after three years as a mother. :)

1) Pediatricians are not always right.
2) I really do know my daughter best.
3) Sleep "issues" come and go and in the end, it really doesn't matter if it is/was teething, growth spurt, mental leap, or nightmare. I help her through whatever it is, and eventually we get back to sleeping again, so why even try to guess...
4) There are great days and there are "those" days and you just hope to have more of the one to counter the frustrations of the other.
5) Parenting is the most mind numbing yet glorious job you can do. Finding a way to salvage your mind and do a good job is the trick. (Especially for SAHMs.)
6) Children are funny.
7) Watching your child do anything dangerous truly does stop your heart. Better make sure you are in good enough health to handle it.
8) If you can, stay close to your family. Support is priceless!
9) You WILL find yourself making up the strangest rules because you never knew what a creative little being you raised and what they would imagine up to do with a hand, a vanilla milk shake, and some whipped cream. The more creative the child, the more creative the rules.
10) Teaching a child proper behavior can sometimes be better than child proofing something. How will they learn what to do versus what not to do if they aren't even presented with the situation in the first place.
11) The only toy anyone wants to play with is the one that the other child is already playing with. I mean... if they like it, it must be the only thing worth liking right now. Hehe...
12) To go with 11... Once they learn the concept of taking turns, that suddenly becomes the reason the other child needs to give them the toy. They WANT A TURN! New rule needs to be put into place. Who knew?
13) You really will treasure and fawn over the blob of color your child tells you is a picture of your face.
14) There's nothing funnier than destroying daddy's tower.
15) A kiss from a child given freely, even slobbering all over you, is divine!
16) Talking poop is just another everyday conversation.
17) Your detergent can get food out of your clothes over, and over, and over again.
18) The generation gap is real.
19) Everyone, nowadays, has too many toys, but I think we need one more. :)
20) Being a family as a couple is SPECIAL, being a family with children is MEANINGFUL.

I'm sure I've got more, but I've got to get some sleep. Just some thoughts. :)

Ari and Jasmine's Princess Birthday

Ari and her girlfriend Jasmine are the same age and have birthdays one day apart so they had a joint birthday party this year. It was a princess birthday party with essentially all girls. Ari is always more interested in boy things, so while all the other girls were interested in a princess costume for the most part, our girl went for the pirate costume. Hehe... It was a fun time for all!



Don't know why my embed is not working, but in case it starts working, I'm leaving it in. If it doesn't work, feel free to go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30157232@N06/sets/72157612684614593/show/

to see the pictures. :)

Praise

Time... time.... time... I have not been posting and I'm sorry for it, but I have discovered this little known thing called Facebook and have been essentially spending my few free moments on there now instead of keeping up my blog. Facebook just makes it too easy to keep up with EVERYONE all at once. For those of you who have the ability to keep up with multiple playgroup message boards, blogs, facebook, and all the other things, my hats off to you. I don't know how you do it. :) Now back to my thoughts on Praise.

I have heard a lot about how child development classes are teaching people that you shouldn't over praise children. That it will teach them to listen to other peoples opinions or value of success more than their own. I have been praising Ari loads since she was little and have never given it much thought. After hearing all this I have been observing the interations as they occur and Ari's reaction to all the praise. Here is my conclusion...

Say what?? Too much praise is bad? Showing my child I value her successes is bad? Teaching children to want to please someone other than themselves some of the time is bad? We all know and see that children are inherently selfish beings when they first come out. The only thing they are focused on is themselves. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that through praise, these selfish beings will suddenly not care one iota about themselves and will just want to please others. I do see, that Ari is starting to want to please us some of the time, but I don't think that learning to please your parents some times is a bad thing. I remember when I was younger, the worst punishment I could get was when my parents said I disappointed them. That one, would sting for a long time while any groundings were just there and then not.

I hope that she does learn to please others sometimes and not just herself. I do make sure to sometimes throw in a "You must be so proud of yourself!" to emphasize for her that I hope she is also pleased, not just us, but why not do things to make others happy and proud some of the time. There are so many times we don't see and things we don't witness that there are plenty of opportunities for her to do things because it pleases her and no one else.

So I say... PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE!!! Hopefully, your child will learn there is balance in life between pleasing ourselves, pleasing others, and making our parents proud of us. What a great gift to give a child. :)

Sea World Butterfly

Ari Update Promised

I know... I know... Lately, life has just been more than enough to keep me busy. I'm sorry to any loyal followers for being disappointing the last month+. This is still going to have to be a quickie. Mostly because I have been getting death threats from family members who are wanting Ari updates! :) So.. In this set, you'll see the sunset from our backyard, Ari with friends, Ari with her family, playing video games, going on a nature walk and throwing rocks, going on a firetruck, playing at legoland and at the mall, and eating chocolate. I think that about gives the overall summation. :)



Thanks for being our friends and giving us such great memories and for following my erratic blog!

I Love You This Much Award

Thank you to Rhonda for loving my blog enough to give me this award! She is a great blogger with a beautiful family. If you haven't checked out her blog before, then definitely go and read. :)

I think most everyone I know has already received this award, but I don't think my good friend, Anissa, has so I'm passing it on to her. She is an amazing woman, artist, and friend. Check out her blog to see daily interesting photos she has taken. Also scroll down to her cool 40th B-Day celebration post and link to the photos. She had a "death" theme and the costumes were awesome! Thanks for being great and having such a great blog!

Life Vs. Blogging Life

Have you ever found yourself in the situation where there are so many cool things going on in life that you want to blog about, but your so busy living it, you can't actually get around to blogging it. That's the last few weeks. This is going to have to be semi-superficial so that I can give a 10 ft. down view of what we have been doing. I still haven't gotten my stuff together enough to work with my pictures, so those will still have to wait.

We have had a plethora of Jewish holidays lately. If you don't know them, here is the quick list.

Rosh Hashanah - Jewish New Year
Yom Kipur - Holiest Day, Get Written into the Book of Life
Sukkot - Celebration of the Tabernacle and Harvest
And coming up next week:
Simchat Torah - Translated Joy of the Torah, Too hard to explain fast

On top of these holidays, my husband and I took another one night away vacation to San Francisco one of these past weekends. It was great and we were able to see his brother and sister-in-law.

We have some new memberships to local attractions that I would highly recommend. Ari is in love with Legoland and Sea Life. If you live anywhere nearish to Carlsbad, CA, I highly recommend getting a membership. If you have not seen Sea Life yet, I also highly recommend checking it out. This new aquarium put the Birch Aquarium in San Diego to total and complete shame. It may as well be a puddle compared to Sea Life. We are there at least once a week now.

Another great membership is to the Natural History Museum. Ari is a girl in love with Thomas the Train, rockets, helicopters, Go Diego Go, and lately, lots and lots of dinasours. We took her there recently and had so much fun for the whole family. They also have a mommy and me event there that we might try to make some time.

The last membership is to the new Children's Museum in downtown. She had a blast with painting the volkswagon, blowing bubbles, and creating streets with tape all over the lower floor.

Besides all of this, Ari has been having a really hard time sleeping lately. Who knows why and does it really matter? In the end, whether it is teething or growth spurt or nightmare or something else, no matter what, I'm going to comfort her and try to help her through it and be tired as a dog the next day. So... I've realized I can stop guessing and just focus on getting through whatever it is. The hardest part isn't the waking up over night, though that is no fun either, but it is trying to get her to sleep. She has been having a really hard time unwinding into sleep and we have been starting at 8 with 2 bed time shows in the hopes that 2 will unwind her more, then at 9 she goes up to brush her teeth and read books and then we struggle to get to sleep until after 11. Again, like I said, I'm sure we'll get through it, but I'm not getting a lot of extra time to do much of anything except catch up on sleep.

Oh... almost forgot... in the time I've been away, Ari started preschool and I've pulled her out of preschool. Hehe... That is a story for another time. I'll post again soon with the details. :)

I'm sure there is more, but I'll have to write that later as well. :)