The Turtle

Having a boy after having a girl is such a different experience. We all know about the increased likely hood of getting peed on. And it also hitting us in the face or something. I hear it has to do with the cold air but Toots has apparently decided it's more than that. Or he just likes to keep me guessing. Anyways, I got so much advice after we found out he was a boy. You know like, make sure his little peepee is facing down in the diaper. Laws of gravity there I suppose. All the tips about getting him circumcized and how to take care of it. The one thing that nobody ever told me....is it's true about the turtle. Know what I'm talking about??

Here's what happened. I was giving Toots his bath before bedtime and for now he has this yellow foam thing that just lays on the bottom of the tub. I had sat him up so I could wash down the back of his head and all that and when I looked down saw....well the turtle had disappeared into his shell!! Mr. X was in the bathroom with me and I pointed it out to him. His response..."Well it's cold in here". Seriously???

Now I've heard guys talk about that. You know....it's so cold it shriveled up inside. But did anyone ever think that it REALLY happened? I sure didn't. I thought it was just a phrase, not something that actually happened.

Apparently it does though and my son was playing peek a boo with his turtle. I wonder what other surprises he has in store for me.

Pound for Pound Challenge

It's that time of year again, we're all (well most of us) making resolutions for various things. A lot of them involve in some way either losing weight or getting in shape or eating better. For me, I didn't make a resolution about it but I do have a goal to try to lose the rest of this baby weight. I did it in 2007 before I got pregnant with Toots, losing an awesome 40lbs! I know I can do it again. I came across the Pound for Pound challenge on another blog and thought what a GREAT IDEA!! I can lose weight and at the same time money will be donated to help feed the hungry. For every pound lost they will donate $.10 to Feeding America which is equal to a pound of food! Go HERE for more details and to make your on pledge for the challenge.

4 Months Old

Well Toots is 4 months old now. Well as of almost 2 weeks ago that is. We had his well check up last Tuesday and haven't had a chance to update on here. His stats are 13.8lbs and 25in. Tall and skinny the doc put it but right on track.

He's gotten more interactive in the last couple months, responding to our crazy antics in an effort to get him to laugh. He loves being sung too and just laughs hysterically most the time. He's perfecting rolling over, if he ever gets that arm out of the way, and he's figured out the jumperoo. We also did make the move to start introducing rice cereal.

The first taste

Numming on the spoon

Wait...where you going with that!

So far so good. He's taken to the spoon really well. He only gets about a TBSP at a time which isn't much but I'm not looking to make it a main food source or anything. It will probably be awhile before we start introducing anything else although I've already got my blender and freezer ready to go. I plan to do my own baby foods just like I did with Monkey. It's so much cheaper and it's really not that difficult. You just need to have the space to store it in the freezer really.

I gotta post this one too because his personally and temperment are really starting to show. In this one....that doggie is going DOWN!

Toy Review Part 2

Our next favorite toy...The LeapFrog Tag Reader System.

This particular toy is one of my favorites. Monkey enjoys it but it does play 2nd fiddle to the Leapster. We've all seen the reader systems out there. The touch books and such. This one though I think is superior to those. For one, it's much more portable. You can play with the book by itself or use the "pen". The reader pen also has volume control and the ability to hook up head phones to it. In the age of too loud electronics, that is every parents dream.

The system comes with one book and then there is a pretty large selection of books to add to it. Whats the best part you wonder? With this system it comes with a USB cable that connects the pen to my computer. It will then download and tell me about how Monkey is learning. It keeps track of which questions she answered correctly, how long she spent on a particular book, which games she played the most, etc. You create whats called a learning path that you can customize for your child. It includes information like their age and current grade level and then will use that to determine what level the child is reading/playing on.

Yet another good investment I think as in just since Christmas I've seen Monkey's reading skills improve. The books have lots of options for play. Either reading the story to them or helping pronounce each word individually plus the various games. I do suggest rechargeable batteries again if the child will play with it a lot. It uses 2 AAA which monkey when through the first set in one day.

Toy Review Part 1

So I figured I would do something a little different for the time being. Until I can find something new to blog about. Monkey got several neat toys for Christmas so I thought maybe I would do a review of them to pass on the information. So here goes.

First up....her all time favorite toy so far. The LeapFrog Leapster.

I had originally thought about getting her the Nintendo DS however after talking to Mr. X we figured this would be the better bet. For one it's much more durable than the DS. When the leapster 1st came in I took it out and played with it for a bit to see how it worked. In that I dropped it. Didn't even cause a blip on the screen. This thing is solidly built and will withstand those oops moments so common to 5 year olds. Also, this teaches them how to use the system with all new games. When Monkey first got it out I did have to show her for all of maybe 5 minutes how to do something. She has since learned it all on her own.

As for how she likes it? As i said it appears to be her favorite toy of all. She will play with it for hours if we let her. It's great for when I need to run errands and she is stuck in the car. I wish we would have had it for our recent trip back home that was 12 hours one way. Imagine the number of "are we there yets" you can avoid.

Some tips...invest in rechargeable batteries and/or the AC adapter. We have the rechargeables and we put them on the charger about every other day. I still ant to get the AC adapter so that while at home she can just plug it in and not run off batteries. If you try to run off regular batteries and your kid plays it a lot you WILL eat through them really fast. It takes 4 AA and i got the batteries for $11 at walmart and then the charger.

Hmm..What else. The system comes with 2 built in games which Monkey played the most with at first. One is a coloring game. The other is kinda like old school Frogger but it involves them identifying letters and numbers. I bought some additional games and so far the Disney Princess is the game of choice. It helps with identifying letters both upper and lower case as well as words. I think there is some math in it too. She played with it for hours yesterday and all I kept hearign from her was "Awesome" or "Yea!" or "Mommy look at this treasure".

Over all I think it was a good investment. It's great for people who want something that their kids will enjoy for a long while but will also teach them various learnign things as well.

Coming soon.....the LeapFrog Tag Reader!