You know how to make me laugh

Yesterday over our lunch I asked Kylie if I could have a bite of her cheese slice. She said, "Mommy, you are much too wrinkled to eat cheese."

Okay then.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Do they make an app for motherhood?

I recently bought an app called Home Routines. It has some pre-made lists of common clean-your-house chores and lets you decide which ones are daily, weekly, and monthly. Then you get to check them off as you do them. Actually, you get a star by the item when you do it.

And it got me to thinking. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an app for motherhood. A lovely list of items for you to tick off. And at the end of the day, you could sigh with relief and pleasure and say to yourself, "I was a good mother today" instead of laying in your bed at night filled with guilt or worry because you thought you hadn't done enough or were to impatient or distracted.

Let's make our list together, shall we? I would really love to see you additions/subtractions and comments on this.

I'm going to use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to get started and then I'm branching out from there. I'm slanting this for the stay-at-home mom with a three year old.

Food:
Over the course of 3 meals and 1-2 snacks, offer water, two cups of milk, 1 cup of fruits, 1 1/2 cups of veggies, 3 ounces of meat/beans and 4 ounces of grains. Limit solid fat and sugars. (taken from the My Pyramid website) You lose star points if you offer too much candy throughout the day.

Sleep:
Pre-nap routine
Bedtime routine
Kiddo should sleep 10-14 hours in a 24 hour period.

Cleanliness:
Did I keep her clean throughout the day?

Security:
Did I create a safe and secure environment for her?

Love/Belonging:
Did I create an atmosphere of love and belonging?

Friendship:
Did I provide opportunities for her to make friends?

Esteem:
Did I provide opportunities for her to build self esteem and confidence?
Did I provide specific praise?
Was I kind? Was I patient?

Discipline:
If there were discipline issues, did I reinforce established boundaries in a good way?

Stimulation/Education:
This one if THE BIG ONE for me. This is the one that can give my night sweats and make me wonder if Kylie would be better served in a pre-school. Feel free to add your own ideas.
Spend 20 minutes or more each day reading stories together.
Provide a craft each day (coloring books count). Extra points if there is glue involved.
Work on ABC's and Numbers
Work on problem solving and memory
Get actively involved in her pretend play. Be the tickle monster, fairy queen, or whatever story she wants to act out.
Play hide-and-seek with her.
Expose her to different experiences like museums and zoos.

Television/computer/iphone time:
Did she watch one hour?
Two hours? More?

Exercise/Play:
Did she get at least 30-60 minutes of exercise?

Sports:
Attend the swimming, gymnastics, soccer, dance, t-ball or whatever sport class you have scheduled.

What do you think? I know there should be more but my mind has shut down. Kylie ate one blueberry and two bites of bacon and now we need to get ready for art class. Yeesh. I'm tired already and it's just 9am.

And for those of you who come to the blog just to see a cute Kylie picture, here you go.

Playtime

Bubbles!

If I had to use one word to sum up this weekend, it would be bubbles. Kiddo is CRAZY for them. I picked up a couple of bottles of bubble juice and this mega pack of different sized wands at Target. Best money I've spent all month. Kylie will spend over an hour at a time using the different wands to blow bubbles. She marches through them, tries to duck under them, out run them and make as many bubbles as she possibly can. I've had to drag her away from the outdoors and the first thing she's asked for in the morning and after her nap is bubbles.




Kylie honey, you don't have to blow on the bubble wand quite so hard. (Love the fist action here and the sheer intensity!)


A little more relaxed.

Over the top

Whether it's wearing a tiara for breakfast


or ribbons, a boa and a pink hat for a short horseback ride,


over-the-top is simply Kylie's style.

Here are a few recent scrapbook pages (from pictures and stories from August).

Hanging around

A new development is Kylie's joy at hanging her body. She hangs from playground metal bars, from the swings and from handicap bars in bathrooms. I've had to discourage her from trying to hang from our bathroom towel bars and I'm afraid I'm going to hear a big crash from them any day now. She's really strengthening her upper body and lengthening her torso with all this hanging around.

These days we hear the phrase "What happens when..." all the time. If I say "Kylie don't do this or that" I know I'm going to hear her ask, "What happens when I do it?" It's her version of asking why. "What happens when I hang on the towel bars? What happens when I pull my shirt off at the store? What happens when I try to jump off the stairs?" and so forth.


The kiddo is getting fast when she runs. Since she could walk, I've made her hold my hand as we get out of the car and walk somewhere. She pulls at my hand wanting out of my grip. I live in fear that she's going to run into parking lot traffic so my grip is pretty dang strong. At the playground, she's been practicing "freezing" when I say "freeze" which eases my mind. And still, when I see her running full out to chase a butterfly across the field I've been impressed with how fast she's getting.

She loves it when I spin her on this tire swing. I'll spin her really fast and she hangs on tight and laughs and laughs.


There's more I want to write but she's awake and needing me. So I'll leave you with a iPhone picture of one of her funny faces. She struck this funny face pose after telling me the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide!"

Birthday pictures

Like last year, we kicked off Kylie's birthday the night before with pre-birthday cupcakes.




Kylie waited very patiently until after lunch on Saturday to have her cake and presents. She was so excited, she was doing little happy dances in her seat.


Kylie has several favorite shows and characters but The Backyardigans are by far her very favorite. So it was fitting that we have a Backyardigans cake.


I think she likes it.


We let her dig off all the icing she wanted which really delighted her.






We all had a slice and Kylie kept digging at it until pretty soon it looked....


like this.


Kylie enjoyed opening all of her presents. I think her new pom pons were the favorite of the day. She kept cheering for all the rest of her presents. (She's wearing a dress-up Ariel outfit here).


It was wonderful that my Mom made the long trip from TN to share Kylie's birthday with us.


It was a perfect day.

Tomorrow she turns three!

Tomorrow our darling girl turns three years old. Happy Birthday Kylie!

Wordless Wednesday 4/14

Health

Thanks to all of my commenters. (You know I love comments!) And a special thanks to planetx for her recent question about Karen's health.

I am so happy to announce that Karen and I are BOTH 40 POUNDS lighter. That's 18 kilograms. That's a bunch of weight. There haven't been any more heart scares with Karen (thank heavens). And we are both still working to get lighter and healthier.

I'm very tickled that I hit my 40 pounds lost goal before Kylie's birthday on Saturday.

Breathtaking

She takes my breath away.







The yellow on her cheek was from rubbing dandelions on them to "paint" them.

Honey Bee Tree

We bought our honey bee tree toy about a month ago. We play it a bit differently from the package instructions.

First we make a good home for the bees by putting leaves into the tree.


Inevitably, the leaves become magic wands and Kylie and I take turns casting spells. "I command you to sleep!" "I command you to laugh!" "I command you to dance!" And so forth.


But then the majority of the leaves make it into the tree and it is time to add the bees.


Kylie tries the chopstick method but is soon back to dumping bees into the tree with her hands.


And then we quickly pull out the leaves so the bees come tumbling down.


Our honey bee tree--a happy little toy.