Crazy Kid Nightmares: Flushing Friends

My daughter had another crazy nightmare. She dreamed one of her best friends ("Eve") was being flushed down the toilet. She kept repeating, "Eve...down...toilet."

Eventually, I convinced her Eve was safe at home sleeping. She was really surprised by that.

The next day, whenever she went to the bathroom, she looked at the toilet fearfully, and said, "Eve flushed down toilet?"

I have now convinced her that neither she nor her smaller friend could fit down the drain.

But what will she come up with next? I personally had recurring dreams about a family of alligators that lived under the bathroom sink. How about you?

Your Baby Can Read Review

Your Baby Can Read Review
It seems crazy at first. Can a baby really read? A quick look at YouTube proves, yes, they can!

Your Baby Can Read DVD
I watched the Your Baby Can Read beginner DVD with Munchkin when she was about 2 1/2. She liked it, and began identifying words (a little) after a few views. I made it very interactive by using sign language, movement, and other fun things while watching it. However, at her age and with her experience in DVD watching, she didn't LOVE this DVD. It would have been better for her when she was one or younger. And since she can ask for whatever she wants now, she requests other DVDs, like Word World, and Veggie Tales.

Your Baby Can Read Books and Flashcards
I thought the books and flashcards might be better for her at this stage. Your Baby Can Read provided books and flashcards for me to try and review. The books are really cool. They show one word on each page, but a flap lifts to show a corresponding image and additional text.

This is fun, but the sliding flashcards are the best. She likes these so much, she asked to take one to preschool for show-n-tell. She takes the flashcards for eyes and nose, opens them to show the picture, and holds the picture eyes over her eyes. It morphs her face into a silly image. She has us do the same.

We've been using the flashcards and book sporadically for several months and now at age three - she can read all the words!

We've started a new reading game with the book. She chooses several words from the book, and then I weave them into a story. Every time I get to a chosen word in the story, I show her the word instead of saying it. She then "fills in the blank." We both love this game. I'm tempted to order all the books, simply to have more variety in words for our story times.

I gave one set of the Your Baby Can Read review products to a friend to use with her two year old with the understanding she'd keep me updated. Her daughter could read all the words within a month or two of consistent reading.

Does Your Baby Can Read work?
I believe Your Baby Can Read products can teach young children to recognize words. Is it the only factor in the success of Munchkin and her friend? Probably not. Both children have been introduced to letters, phonics, and word recognition through other means. Your Baby Can Read products can be used as a starting point, or as a supplement to other activities. Either way, it is another fun way to interact with your child.

My Husband is a Volleyball Model

My husband is a volleyball model. Sort of.

Photo-blogger Steve Manuel posted a photo of my husband digging a ball at the ocean front.
Look at those lines and angles! It's a work of art.

Visit the blog, Manuel's Views, for more great photos.

Feeling Good and Loving It

On this blog I've talked about my problems with food allergies and medications. If you've followed HollyTriedIt for awhile, you know I had sinus surgery last year. And recently, I had a Vitamin D deficiency. What you've never read on my blog is..."I feel good!"

But I do! I really do!

Tonight, I played soccer with my husband and daughter. No pain, no weakness, just energy and laughter.

I want to hear a collective blogosphere cheer celebrating with me.

Tissue Bugs

Don't worry, tissue bugs are not some new form of bed bugs or dust mites that will traumatize your nose and psychie. Tissue bugs are not some new way to transmit swine flu, avian flu or any other form of pandemic flu. "Tissue bugs" is simply the name my daughter gave...lint. Kleenex lint to be precise. Pull a tissue out, and voila, thousands of them are released into the air.

My husband told her that it was actually lint, but I loved "tissue bugs" so I started calling it that. My daughter promptly corrected me, "Mommy, it's lints!"

Do You Ever Get Lost Following Your Dreams?

All my life I've been a dreamer. In 3rd grade I dreamed of opening an orphanage (like George Mueller). In sixth grade I dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast (like Mary Lou Rhetton) and an Olympic luge racer. Come on, it's possible! One's a winter sport and one's a summer sport.

In high school I wanted to fit in while standing out (like...I don't know, Anne of Green Gables?) In college, I dreamed of being a camp director...and leading a life free of pain.

In grad school, I wanted to get a Master's Degree to pave the way out of a dead end job. A job that I could throw my heart and soul into, without being hampered by my body. Being a camp director just didn't seem possible when my body was wracked by pain and I never knew when I would be hit with hypoglycemia s0 overpowering that I couldn't stay awake (Turns out, it was severe allergies).

Then I dreamed of writing books or being a successful blogger (like Dooce without all the hate mail or Robin McKinley without vampires.). Now I dream about being cured of food allergies and gorging on Pizza Hut Meat Lovers Pizza without falling into a two-day coma-like sleep.

Turns out that my dreams were getting less....well, dreamy. Life got in the way of my dreams. But I'm not the only one who got lost while following their dreams. Blogger b(LIST)fulness examines a similar situation in her post Sometime Dreams Just Might Get in the Way of Your Dreams.

"I realized that it had been a long time since I had allowed myself to dream. Somehow I had become focused on everything that might prohibit my dreams from becoming reality."

And I read this Twitter post -

Mike_Wesely#QUOTE: "What I do today is important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it." ~ Author Unknown

So now, I'm re-evaluating. What is my dream? A job I love? Hours and hours of time with my family every day? Hours and hours sitting in a beach chair sipping fruity drinks? How do you balance multiple dreams?

If you have the answer for my life, feel free to let me know!

Twitter Users in this Post:
@MaryLousWeigh
@Dooce
@Mike_Wesely
@HollyTriedIt

Vitamin D Deficiency Caused Blogging Deficiency

Yikes! It's been months since I've written. It just seemed so hard...It was something I loved, but I just couldn't do it...Everything seemed hard.

After getting sick every other week since Christmas, I went to a dietitian. Four vials of blood later, I find out I'm vitamin D deficient and low in vitamin B. So now, I'm taking prescription vitamin D and a handful of vitamins everyday. But it must be working, because I'm blogging again!

"Wedgie! Wedgie!" - Why I Purchased Cloth Diapers

The Wedie Issue
Every night, put a pull-up on my almost-three daughter. And every night she screams, "Wedgie! Wedgie!" She yanks at her pull-up and begs us to fix her wedgie. This was pretty humorous...at first. But the awful pull-ups were keeping her from falling asleep.

In a last-ditch effort to have my daughter asleep before Lost starts, I purchased cloth diapers from CottonBabies. I talked them up all week. "Your new, soft diapers are going to be here soon. No more wedgies!" She was thrilled when the box arrived and she loves choosing which color to wear. She still cries, "Wedgie!" But only once, and it's easily corrected with a tug here or there. Aahhh....now I can really focus on the problems in Dharmaville.

Catapulting Poop
Now, I considered that I might have to clean poop from these cloth diapers, and then brushed that thought aside. She never poops at night. Well, she didn't until night two in her comfy-cozy BumgeniusMoonbeam diaper. I had discovered these amazing Archer Farms Fruit Bars at Target. Munchkin loved them as much as I did and seems to have inherited my propensity to consume in bulk any food I enjoy and am not allergic to. Next morning at 5:45 a little voice wakes me from sleep, "I pooped in my diaper." Great. I took her to the bathroom. The diaper came off easily without making a mess. I turned it over to dump it in the toilet and SNAP the poop flew off the diaper and landed with a splat on my bathroom rug. Munchkin screamed, "Too bright!" and turned off the lights...It didn't go very well after that.

Twitter users in this post:
@Bumgenius
@Cottonbabies
@hollytriedit

Mommy Bloggers--How Do You Do It?

I have been absent from the blogging world for awhile. At least one member of my family has been sick every other week since Christmas. During that time, I had a short-lived attempt to workout every weekday morning. It failed after two weeks because I was sick. The second attempt failed after 1 or 2 days because my daughter was sick and then I was sick.

On a happier note, I started a Girls Only Game Night to add some much needed fun. Amazingly, I didn't have to cancel any of them due to myself being sick. But just about every time, some one called in sick...with morning sickness.

Tonight, both my husband and my daughter are sick. But they are cozily snuggled up in their beds, so now, I am free to blissfully blog.

All this makes me wonder...how do mommy bloggers do it?

Flirting: 10 Years Later

When I first met the man I married, flirting took the expected forms: a look, a compliment, a gift, or a touch. But things are different 10 years and child later. I thought flirting might be over (at least until she leaves for college).

But it turns out, we still flirt, we've just developed a more sophisticated love language. I'll cook dinner when I want him to know I think he's awesome and horribly handsome. I send him out for extra competitive man time on the volleyball court, or I take out the trash (at the exact moment before it would overflow. Not a moment sooner, not a moment later. That's how he likes it done. Got to save those trash bags!).

He cooks me dinner (most of the time), makes a blazing fire in the fireplace, and puts our daughter to bed so I can relax. Because really, relaxing and unwinding is a huge gift to me. Better than a bouquet of flowers and as good as a Wii.

Has your flirting become more sophisticated over the years?