Blog Break

Hellooo… sorry for the silence. I’m taking a little break and will return early next week.

Till then, have a great weekend!

Stay-At-Home Mom’s Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

And that is in US Dollars!

Don’t fret working moms, your motherly duties are worth US$68,405. Yeah, that’s in addition to your actual job income. Cool eh? Now if ONLY it really translated into REAL money…

Read all about it here. (I found the article by way of Rocks In My Dryer)

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

I can never eat…

…papaya EVER AGAIN.

Little Missy loves the fruit and has been chomping up a lot of it the last two days.

Well, what goes in MUST come out.

The smell… (Oh. My. W…! THE smell!) The fragrance-before and the foul-after seems to have some distinguished semblance…

Even the colour of her “you-know-what” was “distinguished”.

…I leave the rest to your imagination.

Now every time I look at the fruit (the REAL fruit)… I can do nothing but ”imagine”.

I CAN NEVER EAT PAPAYA EVER AGAIN.

‘Nuff said.

P/S: You can blame hubby for this unappetizing post. I was sharing my thoughts on this with him when he cut me short with this exclamation… “Too much information!!! If you need to talk about it, don’t tell me, just put it in your blog!” 

WFMW - What Doesn’t Work For Me

I haven’t done Works For Me Wednesdays (WFMW) for awhile now but seeing this week’s theme, I couldn’t resist.

The first thing that popped to my mind was… screaming!!! By that I mean screaming at my kids to stop screaming. Totally DOES NOT work. They always end up screaming even louder than before (and yet I still find myself screaming at them at times!?)

Second thing that did not work for me was the pacifier.

No, I wasn’t dead set against the whole pacifier thing to begin with. Trust me, I was the regular desperate, stressed out new mom who tried everything to stop baby from crying and helped baby fall asleep. (Of course having colicky babies made me all the more desperate!)

So hubby and I tried the pacifier right from day one when baby arrived home. Baby took to it. Suck, suck, suck. No more crying? Woo Hoo! But wait… what’s that I hear a minute later? Waaaaaaaa! What happened? The pacifier dropped out. Okay, calm down. Just pick it up and put it back to baby’s mouth. There you go. Hmmm… sweet silence again… yah, right! Just seconds later, it falls out again and baby wails and we have to plug his/her mouth again. This cycle just went on and on and on… until baby got frustrated (and frankly so were we) and just flat out rejected the pacifier.

This didn’t just happen with baby no.1 but with our baby no.2 too.

In the end, our babies pacified themselves with their own thumbs (which somehow they naturally outgrew on their own). And eventually we got our babies to fall asleep on their own by letting them cry it out. After a few naps and night sleep they got it and just went to sleep on their own without fussing.

Yes, we tried carrying the baby to sleep initially, especially in the evenings (they were colic!). But that didn’t work either. After a while, they’d cry to sleep even when we were carrying them. So I figured, “if you’re gonna cry to sleep even when I’m carrying you (yes, even rocking didn’t help), well baby, I’d just put you down and let you cry yourself to sleep!”

Of course it was terrible to hear the crying but it was well worth the pain. Putting them down for naps or night sleep became a breeze. Just a song or two and down they’d go wide awake and they’d just doze off on their own.

For other stuff that does not work (for them) click over here.

Dadsense?

Almost a year ago I posted the super popular Momsense video clip (if you have not seen it, you HAVE to, especially if you’re a mom).

And just a few seconds ago, I discovered this (below). It was done by the same comedian, Anita Renfroe in response to Momsense. You have to watch it all the way to the end. HILARIOUS!!

Teaching “My” and “Your”

Even as Hubby-jr speech development is progressing well, he still lags behind his peers. One key problem area is in using “I”, “You”, “My”, “Your”. He frequently mixes them up or just refers to himself by name.

To address this, his speech therapist introduced these two activities. The second is a progression of the first.

First Speech Activity

She played a simple game in which she and Hubby-jr had to take turns. After playing for a while and Hubby-jr understood the rules of the game, she stopped and asked, “Whose turn is it now?” His natural reply was “his name” (if it was his turn) or “teacher” (if it was the speech therapist’s turn). She’d then intervene and teach him to say, “It’s Hubby-jr, MY turn” or “It’s teacher’s, YOUR turn”. She’d ask the question, “Whose turn is it now?” at every “turn” requiring my son to reply correctly each time before the game could proceed.

After he got the hang of this, he was taught to drop the name and just say, “It’s MY turn” or “It’s YOUR turn”. But she was the one always asking the question and all answers came from Hubby-jr. Back home I did this exercise with him too but with different games.

Second Speech Activity

As a progression, she played this very simple game with Hubby-jr. Sitting face to face, it’d start with her giving specific commands to which my son had to respond. “Touch my nose” (he’d have to touch the therapist’s nose), “Touch your nose”, “Touch my shoulder”, “Touch your lips” and so on (you get the idea). If he made a mistake, she’d repeat the command and guide his hand to the correct place.

After he got the hang of this, he’d get his turn to give the commands and the speech therapist would respond. The game then became one where both of them would alternate in giving the commands and always required the use of “my” and “your“.

This is quite a fun game which my son enjoys. I’ve played it a few times with him at home too.

Since the above exercises he is using “my” and “your” more although he still mixes them up at times and he still prefers to use names rather than pronouns.

Through the process of teaching him ”my” and “your”, I discovered that unknowingly I’ve acquired the habit of using “mommy” instead of “I” or “my” when talking to him. Slowly I’m undoing this and when I consciously change my sentences to use pronouns I can see that he too makes an effort to respond using pronouns!

Wordless Wednesday - Safety First

“Now all I have to do is learn to paddle!”

WW.

Do You Know?

It’s almost a year since I stumbled into the blogosphere and I’ve gathered some really interesting/useful tips. Here’s a few very neat “how to”s I’ve yet to share with you.

How to:

• chill a drink in two minutes
• treat burns with ketchup
• treat ear infections (natural remedy)
• revive limp vegetables - this seems to apply more for salads. I’m not sure if it’ll make a difference to stir fries.
• teach a child how to add/subtract

So far I’ve only tried putting ketchup when I scalded my hand. Yes! It worked. Pretty amazing huh?

For other tips I’ve shared on my blog click on Parenting Tips category found on the left bar.

The Wonder of Aqua Doodle

I’ve lamented about Hubby-jr’s lack of interest in writing or even doodling (just about anything to do with having to manipulate a pen or pencil) last year in this previous post. Hence it didn’t quite help when his former class teacher told me at year (2007) end review that this year (at K1) the worksheets in class would increase significantly. She meant well and wanted us to see if we could encourage him in the writing department.

We tried during the year end break but without much success. It was always such a chore to him. So I didn’t push too hard. I didn’t want to kill the joy of writing altogether!

Thankfully since the start of the year, his present class teacher managed to persuade him to write! Hubby and I were so proud when we saw some of his work - he could write his name! (My poor son, Hubby and I picked a four syllable name for him. Yes, a LONG name for someone who doesn’t like to write.) And so we were content that he was writing albeit with much coaxing in school.

And then… one day a miracle happened.

I chanced upon this Aqua Doodle thingy at a toy store (Kiddy Palace) and bought it.

Lo and behold Hubby-jr took to it like fish to water. He just wrote and drew endlessly for a week! He practised his ABCs, 123s and even drew some stuff. It was amazing to watch. The fervour has since simmered down but occasionally he still writes and draws on it (voluntarily!)

Just what is it about the aqua doodle that could lure my son into writing/drawing mania??? Only the good Lord knows! But I’m mighty glad it did.

P/S: Aqua Doodle is a mat in which you can write with water and the writing disappears as soon as it dries. The set I bought comes with a sponge tip pen which you can fill with water.

Wordless Wednesday - Walking The Dog?

For other WW click here.