Trip downtown with Laura and kids

I think we hit the peak day of the cherry blossoms. The reason for venturing downtown with 3 kids was the cherry blossoms but I didn't get many pictures of them.



Not sure what was up with Dylan. He just wanted to lay on his belly everywhere for some reason.
Here's the lineup. Now picture us all on the metro coming home during rush hour when there was a backup of the trains. We planned to get out of there before rush hour but we went the wrong way on the train for about 5 stops. But we did get a seat going the right way. It was a long trip but the kids were good, thankfully.

Amen!

I figured out this week that Dylan knows the word Amen. It sounds a lot like "mine" right now but I think he's getting better at it. At meals, when we pray, Dylan puts his hands together and now as soon as I say "in Jesus' name we pray," Dylan says Amen! Sometimes I don't even get the "in Jesus' name we pray" part out.

One of the songs we sing with Dylan is "If you're happy and you know it." We do four verses: clap your hands, nod your head, shout AMEN, and do all three (at the same time). As soon as we say "if you're happy" Dylan is already clapping his hands or nodding his head. He even puts his fingers up to his face during the "then your face will really show it" part. And of course he says AMEN. It's super cute.

Potty Time

We decided that it was time for Dylan to become acquainted with the potty so my mom bought him the one I picked out. We have him sit on it when we change his diaper. Most of time, to get him to sit for more than 2 seconds, I hold a book in front of him and he flips the pages while he sits. I do the sign for potty while he sits there too. One day he actually peed while sitting on the potty - pure coincidence I'm sure. I tried to make a big deal out of it but Dylan didn't seem to think it was as cool as I thought it was. I'm not trying to potty train Dylan any time soon but I figure this gives him the opportunity to show me he is ready when that time comes whether that be 6 months, or Lord help us 2 years from now.

Easter Pictures

Uncle Justin and Dylan

Pap Pap, Dylan, and Gammy

My mom bought Dylan a bunch of balloons for Easter

Great Grandma S.

Swimming in the tissue paper from his gifts.

Easter egg hunt with Cheerios in the eggs.

The Blueprint

It's rare that anyone takes an interest in something that I do at work so this "coverage" by Colbert is unprecedented. The full report that he is holding is available online here. If you don't have time to watch the whole video, the part about the blueprint starts at 2:30 into the segment.

WaPo article on working part-time

I actually talked to this woman before she wrote the article. (Apparently I wasn't interesting enough for the story but I'm not offended...:)

Come on ride the train....and see the bunny

Pictures from our Easter Saturday trip to Uniontown Mall!

The Easter train that looks suspicious like the Christmas train minus the tree plus the bunnies.

I love how people talk about Easter bunnies....was it a cute bunny or a scary or ugly bunny....you decide...

Who needs actions when you've got words

Dylan's latest "words" (I use the term loosely): wa wa for water, choo choo for train, and pa pa for pap pap (grandpap), we think - he started saying pa pa after we spent the weekend with my parents last weekend and tried to get him to say pap pap, but he hasn't said it yet when we show him grandpap's picture - he usually says "ma ma pa pa da da" so I think he knows pa pa is a person.

More Richmond Pictures

This is me and Dylan in front of the White House of the Confederacy, where "President" Jefferson Davis lived.
Cool building...
Cool houses...
Can you tell I was having fun with the camera...

The clouds were really cool that day. This is a statue of GW.

The Capitol Building.
Building that looks a lot like a building on W&J's campus (W&J's campus also designed in Jeffersonian style).


Statue of Washington in the Capitol. The busts around the room are of the other 7 VA-born Presidents.

Rotunda that is only visible from inside...
List of VA-born Presidents:
Martin and Dylan in the House of Delegates room.
Governor's Mansion.

Part-time work

Saturday's Post had this article on part time working moms. One of the working mom list-serves that I belong to brought this article to my attention. I am exploring ways that I can be an advocate for part-time work (as opposed to full time work). As the article states, "A 2007 Pew Research Center report found that 60 percent of working mothers across all income and education levels said they would be happiest working part time, a jump of 12 percentage points since 1997. However, only 24 percent actually had part-time hours." After reading the stories from moms on the list serve about how they struggle to get their kids home from day care in enough time to feed them before they fall asleep and stay up late doing housework and have husbands who don't get home until 8pm when they aren't on travel, I'm more and more convinced that something needs to be done to help these women lead more relaxed lives and be able to spend more time with their kids as they desire. Many would choose part time if it was offered. I think the culture needs to change make part time work a more accepted option. Setting precedents and getting more women to work part time will enable employers to hire more of us. I'm so fortunate that I've been able to work part time in the government and I hope that I can help other women come up with part time arrangements with their employers.

This is amazing...

I got this in an email forward. I thought it was pretty amazing the way this little girl sang all these notes in this song (maybe not on key) and sang it so slowly and with such fervor and dramatic pauses. Anyway, enjoy!

Follow up thoughts on training children

To clarify some points from my earlier post....

I think what I was getting at in the post was the extent (amount) to which we should train children and the scope (types of things) of the training. I'm assuming that we should train and children should obey their parents. I'm still wondering about the things I'm asking Dylan to obey and whether or not they are reasonable or right. Once I decide to tell Dylan he needs to do something it then becomes an issue of obedience but my thinking originally was more about the earlier step in deciding what I'm asking him to do.

With regard to expectations, my comment that I think we expect too much from kids is that we expect too much of them without training. You can't expect a child to do something you want him or her to do if you haven't taught them what it means to do what you are asking. A baby can't be expected to be put in a crib and fall asleep by himself without training, or a toddler who has never been asked to be quiet and usually gets lots of praise when she says things because she's learning how to talk can't be expected to all of the sudden be quiet when you take them to into a museum. And I think some parents too often assume that the training will work faster than it does or think if you tell a kid three days earlier not to touch something that they can remember that and won't touch it again without having to be told again.

However, I think I have just realized that I was erring too much on the side of thinking that training takes longer than we think, at least the negative training (as opposed to positive reinforcement when they do something good). You know, I was just being too darn patient...:) At some point you have to say this isn't working and we have to try something else. That is where I am at right now. So, just like when I was pregnant or right after Dylan was born and I had an issue I felt like I needed to resolve, I am researching and talking to other parents and pretty much obsessing over this right now. Ah, it feels good. I felt like I haven't had anything to obsess over in a while. Maybe if I could just think about things (especially child rearing strategies) more continually then I wouldn't have these obsessive times. I think my problem is that I think - there is a problem, I need to fix it, let me analyze the heck out it and fix it so I can forget about it. [My husband would tell you that I'm not like that at all because he often sees me make a decision and continually question it and stress over the negatives of the decision that was made (even though those negatives outweighed the positive). I would agree with him that I'm like that as well. Not sure how to reconcile those two except to say that I'm a complex woman and I respond differently depending on the situation but I can't define what makes me respond differently at the moment and this post has gone really off topic so I'm going to stop now.]

Children's Museum of Richmond

The Saturday before last we went to Richmond for a day trip vacation. The first stop was the Childrens' Museum of Richmond, or the closest thing to heaven for Dylan. This place is great! Lots of things to explore and climb and play with. Here's Dylan in one of his favorite things - a car!


We helped Dylan climb up the jungle gym.

Daddy had fun at the museum too...
Playing with water is fun!

Waiting for Daddy...

I had to stand back a little to get this picture because I knew as soon as Dylan saw me with the camera...

He would come over and want his picture taken...

Training children

So I'm soliciting opinions on something I've been thinking about lately. The topic is training children in such things as sitting still (Catherine, your recent milestone there with Hannah got me thinking more about this) and not destroying something that other (older) kids have made while playing on the floor and can range to such things as potty training. I see two schools of thought - 1, you can't possibly expect a child of x age to be able to do y (ex. not knock down something that his older sibling has made) so don't even try to correct that behavior because as someone at a party said to me when I was trying to tell Dylan to stop messing up this puzzle I was helping and another child with, "you're expecting him to not act his age" - 2, kids should learn right from wrong as early as possible and children learn by repetition so you need to start earlier than later. And for things like potty training or signing, what does it hurt if you start early (as long as you are willing to deal with the frustration until they are "ready.") I think what complicates this is that, as we hear so often, kids are so different developmentally and so it's hard to tell someone or may be looking for answers to this question when their child is "ready" to be potty trained or sit still, etc. Obviously there's no easy answer to this and it depends a lot on the specific instance (potty training is a lot different than teaching a kid not to touch something hot) but I'm wondering if you all have any insights as you have thought about this issue.

To the grandmother who told me that I was expecting Dylan to not act his age, I wish I would have said "I don't expect him to obey at this point, but I still want him to ingrain in him what is acceptable behavior." I'm not sure the grandmother would have disagreed with me. I think her point might have been, which I totally agree with, is that too often parents get frustrated when kids don't do what they are told even after many repetitions, not realizing that kids just aren't wired like us to be able to do that. It takes much training and much repetition (and a certain unknown age?) until a child will behave. That frustration can lead to things like abuse if taken to the extreme but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep telling our kids that something is wrong even if they don't understand it yet.

Oh, we have....

In response to Catherine's comment on my last post, we have begun putting food in our hair as shown below.

Aftermath of first attempt at eating by himself with a spoon

Oh boy, she's got the camera again.

See what a mess I can make!

Wait, one more thing, let me tell you....

Oh no you don't....no more pictures or I'll start crying...

What have I done....

Haircut by Mommy

I decided that after Dylan's first haircut I would cut his hair to save money. Well, I know why we pay professionals to do these things. Dylan's hair came out pretty choppy and uneven. The pictures do not do justice to the horrible job I did. There's a big chuck of hair completely missing above his left ear. I'm not upset about it though. But I am considering taking him to Hair Cuttery next time. Not so much because of the way it looks but because of how hard it was for me to get him to be still long enough to do it. I actually had to finish the one side another day.