La Famiglia D!

We've moved, baby!

Yep, we're gone for good. Check out our new family blog, La Famiglia D.

Web address: http://lafamigliad.blogspot.com

Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along.

Water Baby

Driving down the road, I saw two little girls sliding down a playset slide into a baby pool. Never thought of this (mostly because we use the baby pool out front, usually while Daddy is weeding the garden, and the playset is out back). I had to try this the very same day. Maddie went down the slide enthusiastically 3 or 4 times and loved the splash factor. I thought, "I'll go get the camera, now that she likes it!" Yeah, she never did it again once the camera came out. But we happily played until it was too dark to see the pattern at the bottom of the baby pool... and we were all dotted with nasty bug bites anyway.

Maddie In the Baby Pool (with a Slide!)

Then Friday we went to Brigantine. Must say, we LOOOOOVE Aunt Laura's choice of residence. Thank you for the use of your awesome beach house, Aunt Laura! Maddie and Aunt Laura got lots of frolic-on-the-beach time. There were those jellies that look like clear Nickelodeon slime, and moon jellies, so we didn't get in the water much. See, I scream like a banshee when I come in contact with these critters. I'd like to blame it on a traumatic tenticled-jelly wrapping around my leg and stinging me repeatedly when I was like 10...but I think I'd still be a sissy about them anyway. (Our first shore trip this summer makes up for dozens of jellyfish-infestations, though. Amazing beach day, that one.) Then we headed to Ocean City and hit the boards. Maddie was mesmerized by the lights and sounds of Wonderland, just like last year. But THIS year, she was big enough to go on the rides. Bob and I have been waiting to put her on the carousel all summer, and nobody was disappointed. She loved it. She rode the firetrucks - gripped the back of the seat with a "this is slightly scary but moreso cool, so I'm liking it" look on her face. She rode in the boats too, and the little boy who sat in the front seat (we said he was her driver) actually looked a bit like Bobby as a kid. She was ok with him (she likes the older men) and she drug her hands along the outside of the boat pond. Bobby even took her on the Elephants (and she liked this more than Bobby did).

Shore Trip

Gotta love a good shore trip:

We Are Family

Wordle is fun.

Rules of Etiquette?

I'm going to piggyback on a Parenting Hacks post (love them, see side bar) today. Here they've listed rules for children's behavior. Maddie's entering the age where we can't smile apologetically in and give the "well, she's just a baby" shrug when she has a tantrum or steals a toy from another kid. I'm not going to say that parents are actually supposed to be in complete control of of their toddler's behavior...but you can sure get the stink eye when they act up in the grocery store. And then there was that little puzzle-stealing incident in the library... Although we've still got a while before door-holding and not slurping soup, I'm sure it's good to know ahead of time the rules you'd like to have in place when your kids are older.

We're big about eating meals together, "please" and "thank you", and "excuse me", right now. We'd also like her to stop tormenting our poor dog. And of course there's the screeching-when-mad thing. But come on, she's 1.

My goal is for my kids is for them to be the kind of kids I love to teach. They don't have to wait to be spoken to to speak all the time, but when they talk to adults, they speak, well, like they're talking adults. There's definitely some etiquette I'd like my kids to have, ideally. I'm not sure how much of our house rules would include these antiquated rules from the 50's listed below... but you never know how rigid I'll get in my old age, as I edge towards 30.

Anybody have to follow these rules when they were kids?
What's your big house rule?

Here are some etiquette “rules” or “suggestions” addressed to children from the 1950s that I found on a loose sheet from an old handbook, I thought they were interesting to share.

Considering that these were standard expectations just 50 years ago, it’s a reminder of how fast things can change.

CHILDREN IN THE HOME

1. Always greet the members of your family when you enter and always bid them goodbye when you leave.
2. Always rise to a standing position when visitors enter, and greet them after your elders.
3. Never address a visitor until he has started the conversation unless he is a person of your own age or younger.
4. Never interrupt a conversation. Wait until the party talking has finished.
5. Always rise when your visitor or your elders stand.
6. Never let your mother or your father bring you a chair or get one for themselves. Wait on them instead of being waited on.
7. If you leave or cross the room you should say “Excuse me.”
8. If a visitor should say, “I am glad to have seen you,” you should say, “Thank you.”
9. Never run up and down the stairs or across the room.
10. Talk in a low, even voice. It denotes refinement.
11. Always give way to the younger child. It is your duty to look after them instead of fretting them.
12. Never retire without bidding the members of your family good night.

Follow these suggestions and you will assist in making the members of your family happy as well as in benefiting them in many other ways.

The next big toy craze ...or a sign of the apocalypse?

What, the Tickle Me Elmo Christmas riots weren't enough?

I can't decide if this is the awesomest toy that I absolutely will be getting for Maddie for her birthday (that will surely help her practice motor skills and speak clearly and enthusiastically to her, developing her verbal and listening skills)...

Or if it pretty much goes against every fiber of my being.

OR if it's a sign that the robots are getting much too intelligent and will one day take over the earth, enslave all humans, and make us wear red fur suits.

Videos Here.

*sigh* ...I think Elmo had me at "Jazz Hands!"

Dad and Cait Visit

Maddie's Granddad (Meg's Dad), and her Aunt Cait paid us a visit this weekend. Below are two albums and some adorable pictures. The highlight of the weekend was our outing to a playground. Enjoy!

Dad and Cait's Visit

Playing at the Park with Dad and Cait

3 New Ones

Believe it or not, there is some sand still left in the sandbox.

Playtime Outside August 2008

Happy 1st Birthday, Lindsey!
(Sorry Maddie was more interested in your presents, cake, and trampoline than you.) The lovely little birthday girl had an awesome party on Saturday.

Lindsey's 1st Birthday Party

C. Shells in concert at Haddon Lake Park.
(Subtitle: More fun with the expensive, on-loan camera)

C. Shells Concert

Goodbye.

John A. Staub 1927 - 2008

Love to a wonderful grandfather.

Obituary

Title: "Shopping Cart Covers Are Not Just For Germaphobes" or "Why I Can't Drink Starbuck's Frappaccino For A While"

Yes, this stuff: And by "shopping cart cover", i mean this thing:
We went to Sam's Club, our fun monthly bulk-shopping that we so enjoy because somehow buying a giant box of rice or 10 cans of soup makes you feel rich and powerful. We grab a cart, and as Bob negotiates Maddie's shoes the the leg holes of the shopping cart cover - the one that I think we don't need anymore because she's getting towards 2 and we're not germaphobes anymore - I notice a large piece of broken glass in the basket of the cart. Disgusted, I throw it out of the cart, and I half-notice a broken Starbuck's Frappacino bottle on the ground next to the cart return. I don't think much of the bottle, because right then I get wolluped in the face by an foul odor. ("Even Stink would say that stinks!")
"Nice. Let's get another cart, " I say. Bob says he smelled it when he got out of the car and he thinks it's garbage water, not the cart, so we should just hurry inside to escape it. Ok, I'm all for no more stink. As we walk inside, we notice the smell is getting worse. "It smells more like somebody threw up, now." Bob says. EW.
We get inside and I notice a wet spot on Maddie's shirt. OH! She must have thrown up! Now I get it. A former refluxer, she still throws up every once in a great while for no reason, and walks away, usually without so much as an "uh-oh". So I of course torture the poor child, now on her 2nd store stop, by wiping her pants, shirt, arms, legs, face, (and hair) with Wet Ones. Ah, throw-up, bye-bye.
Something still stinks. Ok, Maddie, have some water. Still stinks. Have some goldfish, stinky-breath!
It's not so bad once we're shopping, but every time we get walking I notice I smell it again. "It's smelling more like spoiled milk." I say. EW! Did I give Maddie milk that was too old for breakfast? Trying to remember if I'd so much as sniffed the gallon before pouring it in her cup, I search again for throw-up all over my kid, this time thinking it would be resembling spoiled milk. And I'm expecting a call from DYFS on my cell. Nothing, but boy does it smell like something.
In the bakery section I re-torture my poor child with another Wet One. Poor kid. We've been shopping for maybe a half-hour. Then Bob puts dog food in the bottom of the cart and when I look down I (just then!) notice that the cart is very stained and splattered. With something murky-brown. I notice it's on the cart basket, handle, underneath all our stuff, my purse, etc. Lovely...
EW. I think of the one piece of broken glass in our cart, and the broken Frappaccino bottle in the hot parking lot. And it all comes together, and I about puke. EWWWWWWW! There's spoiled, rotting god-knows-how-old Starbucks Frappaccino (mocca flavor, I believe) all over our cart!
We quickly finished shopping, checked out, and put Maddie in the car. (With another once-over with the Wet Ones, because come on, now I'm just skeeved beyond belief. You should have smelled this, the smell itself was diseased.) Then we wiped down every item in our cart with wipes, because that smell was NOT coming into our car, thankyouverymuch! We undoubtedly got some looks; "what kind of clean-crazed freaks wipe down all their groceries with antibacterial wipes?". Side note: I have to say, I'm not a big fan of these wipes. I give the counters a once-over with them every night at home, and that's it. We use with the students at school constantly, but those little germ factories need to stop making me sick. I'm very cool with a decent amount of germs in my house, everybody needs antibodies. No, this is not just my excuse not to clean, but I digress. We were, again, NOT taking that odor home with us. So we scrubbed brown shmutz off our Sam's purchases and belongings, gagging from the smell of spoiled milk mixed with rancid coffee.
So I believe that little (STINKY) episode just talked me into using the shopping cart cover for a few more months, big girl or not. Cause...EW.
Oh, and I used to loooove that Frappaccino stuff. Used to.

Maddie and Kodaly

As music educators, Meg and I are both familiar with things like Solfege syllables and Curwen hand signs. And of course, we feel the need to pass that knowledge onto our daughter. It also helps that Meg is a Rogers and Hammerstein fan. Check out this video (this is old, from May or so):



And just in case you are no familiar with Curwen hand signs, here is a chart to help you:

Success with the Big Girl Bed

So the general thought is that there's no "right time" to switch a baby from a crib to a toddler bed. It's just when they start to crawl out of the crib themselves. My (Meg's) sister threw her leg up over the crib bar and turned escape artist at, I believe, 15 months? Correct me if I'm wrong, mom. Well Maddie decided to go an alternate route to crib escape. Instead of throwing a leg over, she liked to see how far she could lean out over, trying to touch her toes from outside the crib. I caught her on her way to the floor, head-first, exactly one time. And we decided it was time to "convert" her crib to a toddler bed. Oh, apparently a toddler bed is a crib with one wall removed, by the way. We got a bedrail. We installed it, she loved it, and she actually slept in it without complaint - and without trying to get out of her room when she woke up. In fact we've yet to find her out of the bed after sleeping. We do find her during the day, playing in her room, climbing up and down and up and down from her Big Girl Bed. So, for all your long-distance folk (and not so long distance folk, too) here's the Big Girl Bed in action:

And the pictures, because, come on, there's got to be pictures:

Maddie's Big Girl Bed

BabyToupee.com ...because bald babies are apparently out of style?

Ok, so every now and then on a tech or parenting blog I'll find something truly amazing. Usually an awesome invention, art project, or cool new book. Today, I found this, and let's face, stupidity must be shared. Clearly, for parents who should have just gotten a dog, I give you BabyToupee.com:

"The Little Kim", "The Donald" and other ways to ensure they'll need therapy someday...

Angelina Jolie's Baby Picture?

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Blank family tree - Family tree chart

Ok, it's a stretch.

But she did win the gold for swimming in Barcelona, and I uh, swam for the Gettysburg Sharks...

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Free genealogy - Dynasty

How cool! The Robert Report (say it the French way!)

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

D'Errico Look-alike Meter

Ok...not what we've been told, but hey, computers never lie, right?

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Family search - Geneology

More Summer Fun

Here are some pictures and a video from our recent trip to Aunt Laura's house in Brigantine for Pop's birthday:

Brigantine Trip

Here's more Maddie pictures, and a video of Maddie getting "watered" at Nana and Pop's:

Maddie July 2008

Fireworks!

This was really one of the neatest nights to be a parent. We went to Sterling high School for the municipal fireworks display on July 3rd. A local string band played and Maddie danced and ran and partied and cried for more whenever they stopped. She named a lot of the instruments, too (music teacher parents = early introduction to instrument identification). "Geetaw!" "Vi-lin!" "Tuppet!" (Ok, there were no trumpets. They were saxophones. Same color, and you blow, that's all she's concerned with.) We talked about the fireworks all day, and by 2:00 she was begging for "fi-werks" every 2 minutes. When she saw them, we figured she'd be terrified. We brought the lovey and the paci for good measure, so as to not have to carry a wailing toddler back to the car in the dark. Of course, because we were prepared for terror, she was VERY into them. The only fussing came when the display was over. "No no no no no no MORE!" It was unspeakably cool to see her in her element, running around to the music on the grass.
Good stuff.

July 3rd Fireworks

Milestones to move

Ok, I'm a slacker mamma, and the milestones are just burying me. I'm going to post and link to them in the sidebar, so bear with this giant list, taking us from our kiddo's birth up to last March. And don't mind the number signs as bullets. I have no intention of fixing every one of those...apparently blogger thinks I'm just rollin' in free time and extra patience. So number signs we got.


#First Tooth! (At 15 months!) March 10th
# First walk in the snow - February 22nd
# Can REALLY walk - Feburary 19th
# Eats w/ a spoon (pretty well) - February 15th
# Takes first steps! - January 10th
# First ear infection (at 13 months, not bad!) - January 2nd
# Stands alone more than once (for over 10 seconds) without falling down! - December 28th
# Walks across the room holding one of mommy's hands only, without falling - December 20th
# Walks across the room holding onto walker toy - December 15th
# Words she speaks (meaningfully), as of today: Hi, wow, daddy, pretty, d-gee (doggie), tree, cheese, dees (this or what's this?) - Nov. 27th
# First real "sick" day - November 26th
# FIRST BIRTHDAY!!! Nov. 20th
# Points at what she wants - Nov. 19th
# Waves "bye" - Nov. 10th ish
# First Halloween! - Oct. 31st
# Last bottle - The tolerate/hate relationship is OVER - Oct. 31st
# Last dose of Zantac - Oct. 31st
# Started weaning off Zantac - Oct. 17th
# FIRST WORD! "Hi!" with a wave! - definite Oct. 15th
# Can (finally) get back down from a stand herself - October 6th
# Cruising around furniture - (around) October 1st
# Pulls to a stand alone at coffee table - September 13th
# Pulls to a stand alone in crib - September 13th
# Plays Peekaboo - September 10th
# Pulls up to standing (without our help) - September 3rd
# Claps her hands when you clap or sing to her - August 30th
# Goes from crawling to sitting - August 28th
# First bee sting! :-( August 23rd
# Pulls up to kneeling - August 20th
# Feeds herself a few rice puffs - August 20th
# Goes from sitting to crawling - August 13th
# Crawls forward - August 12th
# Pulls up to kneeling in crib: August 11th
# Creeps forward on hands and knees: August 11th
# Drinks a significant amount successfully from a sippy cup: August 10th
# Waves “Hi” intentionally: August 8th
# Dances side to side to music: August 1st
# Walks around the room with help (two hands): July 31st
# Grabs mobile above crib and pulls– July 30th (And up to the attic that goes!)
# First “piano”: July 30
# Scoots on butt: July 27th
# Big kid (convertible to toddler) car seat: July 24th
# Raises arms to be picked up: July 14
# Bops whenever music plays: July 4th
# Imitates sounds (sort of): July 2nd – “Hi!” to Aunt Laura
# First vacation: June 30th through July 7th – Ocean City, NJ
# Creeps backwards: June 21st
# Can take out and put back in paci on own: June 19th
# Up on hands and knees: June 16th
# “Reads” a book the whole way through: June 14th – More Spaghetti, I Say!
# First cold: June 13th
# Passes toys from one hand to the other: June 11th
# Creeps in a circle: June 4th
# Responds to name (definite): May 27th
# First time in the pool: May 30th – loved it, got cold though
# Sits alone: May 20th
# Protests when a toy is taken away: May 13th
# First fruit : May 12th - bananas!
# First concert: May 8th – Daddy’s school concert
# First trip to the shore: May 5th
# Sits in the shopping cart basket: May 4th
# First veggies: April 30th – peas, ate the whole jar!
# Gives hugs: April 25th – Daddy, when he picked you up from Shannon’s
# Rolled from back to tummy: April 10th
# First time all-day at a babysitter’s: March 28th – Mommy went back to work, staying with cousin Shannon
# First laugh: March 26th – laughed at Mommy saying, “whoops!”
# Finds hands: March 24th – and boy are they cool!
# Eats in High Chair: March 23rd
# Sits supported: March 22nd
# First solid food: March 20th – rice cereal (loved it!)
# Christening: March 18th: Very good girl!
# First Playdate: March 8th - Katelyn from MOMS club, also 3 months old
# Stands supported: February 28th – loves the view from up there!
# First babble: February 8th – “talks” to the birdies on the swing!
# Held rattle for the first time – February 17th – Granddad’s old rattle!
# First long car trip: February 17th – Traveled to Gettysburg to visit Mommy’s family
# Reached for a toy: January 30th
# Slept through the night (8 hours): January 21st
# First (definite) intentional smile: January 6th
# First juice: December 28th – for tummy troubles
# First time at church: December 24th – Christmas Eve Service – slept through it!
# Rolled from tummy to back: December 19th
# First time w/ ‘babysitters’: December 13th – Nana & Pop (Mommy & Daddy went to Mommy’s school concert)
# First time ‘worn’ in carrier: December 3rd – loved it!
# First time shopping: Grocery shopping at Sam’s Club – December 2nd – slept!
# First restaurant: Wendy’s! December 2nd – slept the whole time!
# First walk in the neighborhood: November 29th – screamed the whole time!
# First doctor Appointment: November 27th – 20 ½ inches, 8 lbs. 4 oz.
# First outing: November 26th – Nana & Pop’s
# First visit to a park: December 1st
# First home bath: November 24th
# First sneeze. November 22nd
# First yawn: November 22nd
# First holds head up herself: November 21st – 1 day old!

Pfft! What are you, nuts?

...would have been my (polite inner monologue) response a few months ago if someone would have asked me to try potty training a 1 1/2 year-old. Um, aren't you supposed to wait until they're at least two? Or, at the very least, till you have a 2nd kid and get sick of mistakenly putting size 4 diapers on your newborn in your sleep-deprived state of confusion? Why start that whole mess if you don't have to - diapers are easy! They're predictable (except for the occasional gasp-then-remember-you-fed-her-red-peppers-last-night diaper change). In potty training, aren't you living in fear of accidents, tied to the potty, not going out as much, peeing on sofas and store carpets...and again, diapers are so easy! Why go there until you absolutely have to?

A month or two ago Maddie insisted on trying to sit on our toilet. Cuteness. Then she discovered that Momma and Daddy were captives when they were on the toilet, so many books must be read from there. Um, no. We got her her own little potty out of need for a place to put her in the bathroom, and because she knew and used the words, "potty", "pee-pee", and "poop" often enough, even associated them with her own need to go. She'd actually successfully peed in it twice for Bob's mom, but after dozens of attempts on my part, I'd gotten nothing out of her. We ended the school year, we traveled, we completely flip-flopped her whole routine and haven't gotten quite back on track for summer yet. The "potty talk" had tapered off almost completely, too. I figured we'd give it a rest. I mean, come on. She's 19 months old. Who the heck would try this at 19 months old? She has no clue how to take her own diaper off, and I'm in no hurry for her to learn, judging from stories of my sister's poo-smeared walls as a child. I like the system we have going, and Luv's are pretty cheap. Again, why go there?

Um, because Maddie has decided that she'd like to try it, thankyouverymuch.

She pooped in the potty today!

After lunch she said, "potty" insistently. I wondered briefly if she had just figured out a new means of getting out to the high chair fast...but no, she padded off to the potty. She can't take her clothes or diapers off yet, hasn't even tried...(see why I thought this would come later, when she could actually attempt undressing herself?) but I helped her, and after a few minutes of singing snippits from Philadelphia Chickens, we had POOP!
A small party was thrown, there was much jumping on the bed, and now, I guess, we're potty-training? Or at least sitting on it a lot more. But WOW would it be cool to have her at least most of the way there before school started. Wouldn't it be nice to kiss the diaper boxes goodbye (although I find them great for storage and paper recycling organization)! And how great to leave the house with no excess paraphenalia, save perhaps a sippy cup in my purse?

And of course, this could all be a giant fluke. Tomorrow could be business as usual. She sat on the potty twice more today, nothing but more Sandra Boynton songs. Hey, as long as she's not in diapers past Kindergarten. (Don't laugh, I've seen it!)

Well, at any rate, I hope she gives me a few days to do a little (bathroom) reading up on this, I'm not prepared. Any and all potty training advice/anecdotes would be appreciated here. I've heard there's supposed to be charts and M&M's involved. Little scared of how.

Anyway, YAY MADDIE for her potty-awareness. :-)

Summer Movies

Maddie reads with Pappy, gets cranky:



After the Princess Party, (running off the cake?)




"Elmo's Splashtime Sprinkler Mat" in action, plus outdoor play: (loooooong video)

First Pics of the Summer

Visit to Gettysburg

After the Princess Party

"Elmo's Splashtime Sprinkler Mat"

Pajama Tirade!

Searching online for the general price of toddler jammies. Going to the outlets in G'burg next week, and I'm not buying it just cause it's Osh Kosh or Baby Gap. They need to beat Wal-Mart & Target's prices for me, please! So I check out a major retail store's site and search for girl toddler sleepwear.

Gah! All Disney, all princess, except for one token Dora (throwing our Hispanic chicas a bone because Disney refuses to touch their ethnicity with a feature-length film?) But that's just my minor beef:

Why are we mommies expected to shell out extra money to the Disney corporation for the honor of advertising their characters on our children's chests, when our kids barely know who these animated figments are? Every jammie on the page was giving free rent to a corporate character. The 2nd page had cartoon-free jammies, two of them. $9.99. One had cats on it. We're into cats right now, I thought, "me-ow, right up our alley." (Get it, alley? I'm not my wittiest after midnight, sorry.) The cartoon character ones were selling for $12.99 and up. Honestly. I don't get it.

I've been informed by a few older (but wiser?) friends who have children older than my own that I might as well start dressing her in Princess this and Dora that now, because in a year or two I won't have a choice at all in what she likes and wears anyway. Yes, a colleague, a teacher with a masters' degree, told me this. To her face, I rolled my eyes. In my head, "the heck you say!" Well really, by this logic, when she's 10 and tells me she's going to watch reruns of Southpark (you know it will still be on Comedy Central), I'm supposed to shrug and buy her a nice Cartman T-shirt?

Now, to be fair, there's nothing objectionable about these little girl icons, besides their narrow vision of ethnicities and occasionally being a little too "tee-hee" for me. I have no major issue with the afore-mentioned characters. Dora is at least educational, and anything you buy from a PBS show gets its profits sent back to more educational programming, so I'm cool with the inevitable Elmo birthday party or two, etc. And except for the extreme overuse of the most obnoxious shade of magenta around, the Disney Princesses haven't done anything to annoy me personally. Yet. But why do these major retailers seem to think that I need no other option for my kid's PJ's? They're selling them in 12 months sizes! At 12 months, how many Disney movies could they have seen, let alone bonded with the characters? (Hmm, maybe all the little 12 month olds DO know their Cinderellas from their Ariels, and my 19-monther is just not up with the trends! Ack!)

But why not shapes? Why not numbers and letters and basic neighborhood vocab like trees and dogs and cars? I love "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid", but do I need to advertise that fact on my kid's shirt (she's seen neither, by the way, we may work on that this summer, but I doubt she'd be all that interested after "Under the Sea: is over. It's all downhill from there anyway.)

*sigh* Ok, tirade about relatively unimportant things over.

But I gotta tell ya, if I'm going to be expected to shell out extra cash for advertising space on my daughter, it's going to look something like this:

May & June

Maddie May 2008

Family Picnic 2008

Maddie June 2008

Father's Day Party

MASH Game: Predicting a 1-Year Old's Future is Fun! (Sorry for the big space, scroll down!)

		I will marry One of Brangelina\'s kids.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Sesame Street in our fabulous Apartment.
		We will have 2 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Fairy Princess Pink model of Elmo\'s tricycle.
		I will spend my days as a official goldfish cracker taste-tester, and live happily ever after.

A Bad Equation

+

+
=

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick

The minutes till summer are slipping away - HOORAY!

With both concerts done and school winding down, our family has some more time together and a significantly lower stress level. Not leaving the recorder entirely behind, however, we discovered that Maddie has a good ear; she identified the beloved "Snuggle Puppy" and "Cows" songs from hearing Bob play them on recorder. If you're not familiar with this modern instrument (of torture), it's a plastic tube with open holes that's supposedly simple enough to learn in 3rd grade. We think they pick 3rd grade to send home recorders because the kids are roughly in between the terrible two's and the horrific teen years, and the parents need some kind of test of their patience to keep them on their toes. Maddie's picking it up a little early, though. :-) She can blow through it and lets us finger the notes occasionally, and loves it when we play her songs. Always a dancer. She's also singing along with songs now. The ABC song gets its phrases completed, and she can fill in words in a handful of other songs. Our favorite is the "Whoa-oh-oh-oh-Nose!" part of the song, "Your Nose". ;-) Neil Sedaka fan, we guess.

We hope to do more singing and dancing this summer. We're still counting the days (17 school days or 28 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes total) and making little lists of things we want to do and stuff we want to go see. Zoo, beach, park, backyard, repeat. Gonna be good. Well, happy getting close to summer everyone. Hanging in there till then.

Congrats to Laura!

Aunt Laura graduated from Stockton College on Saturday, May 10th. We're proud of her accomplishments, especially since her intelligence and hard work earned her the title of VALDICTORIAN!!!! Her speech was excellent...definitely beat the seantor guy out for best speaker. We were especially impressed with the VIP seats - ever sat in front of the graduates at a grad ceremony? Very cool.

Here's the pictures from the day. Again, CONGRATS LAURA! You're already a wonderful role model for our little girl to look up to. We love that you'll be showing our daughter that you can have it all cool, beautiful, intelligent, can mix a nice drink, AND do dead-on impressions of our crazed yellow lab.

Laura's Stockton Graduation