My little "Painter"

R has been doodling a lot lately. Today for the first time he drew some objects (instead of writing letters and words :). This is what he drew for "Sun" and 'Pumpkin". I guess we will have to wait and see what he draws next. Very soon we will come to know if he has any scope of becoming an artist !

R Bloopers : Episode 1

Baby in Tummy

When we came to know we were expecting our second one I started preparing R for the arrival of the baby. I would point at my tummy and say our baby is here. He got the idea quickly and would point at my tummy whenever we asked "Where is our baby". However, one day he pointed at my tummy and then his tummy and said baby is here :). Since then I have stopped asking him that question !

Oh, Sh** !

Ever since R started talking we have been very careful of what we say. However, there are those occasional gaffe's. One day R wanted to do his favorite ABC puzzle (which has those tiny little zillion pieces :). I was carrying the board for him and the whole thing accidentally fell from my hand. Instinctively, I said 'Oh Sh**!'. He looked at it and then repeated it and of course couldn't help repeating it again and again. Fortunately for us, he seemed to have forgotten it easily as well.

Personalized ABC Book

Last year I got addicted to digital scrapbooking. One of my biggest achievement was this personalized ABC book for R. I took pictures of R with things that he liked or activities that he was doing during the first 2 years. He loves this book mostly because of his own pictures. Seeing him enjoy the book totally made all my efforts worthwhile. It has also become a good memory book for him.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time on making the layouts etc, Shutterfly has this nice ABC book template which can be used. You just need to upload the pictures and write the words etc. Definitely worth a try !

Here are some sample pages from the book.

The Alphabet Race

R has been watching Sesame Street for about a year now. His favorite section is of course Elmo's World which comes at the end of every episode. One of the episodes of Sesame Street had Elmo participating in the "Amazing Alphabet Race". Elmo needs to find all the letters of the alphabet on sesame street within a time period. R absolutely loves this episode and it has by far been his most favorite.

Having motivated by this we have been playing this game with R as well. Once in a while I give him a random magazine and ask him to find all the letters of the alphabet. He loves it and gets really involved in finding the letters. There are lots of high-five's after finding some difficult letters like x, z, q etc. Another variation is to find the letters on the way to the park. He has spotted letters on car license plates, on road signs (like STOP, NO PARKING) etc. It has always made the walk more interesting - although occasionally we do get frustrated when we don't find the letter 'Q' :).

The "On the Go" Laptop

Almost a year ago R got this laptop as a gift. I think he was just about 2 when he got the laptop. This has been one of the most used toys in our house and in fact we got a replacement for it as he broke the one he got as a gift. He has spent hours on it and I am pretty sure he picked up a lot of letters and words from the activities on the laptop. He used to carry it with him in the car and thanks to this laptop we have had quite a few nice meals at restaurants. As with toys, R has now moved on with this one - although I do make it a point to get it out every once in a while and it still holds his attention for at least an hour.

Pros:
This laptop comes with 30 different games, one of which shows you an upper case (or lower case) letter and the child needs to correctly push the corresponding letter. The activities are extremely intuitive and R figured out most of them on his own.

Cons:
The actual size of the screen is pretty small although this doesn't seem to bother the kids. The precision of the mouse is not very good and it got a little frustrating for him once he got a hang of using it.

Make a Match

R got hooked on to the "Make a Match" game while spending time on StarFall. Some of the letters (D , H and M) had a small version of matching letters to objects and he really liked it. One day while shopping at Target I found this really cheap card Matching game (cheap = $1) and I got it for him. There were a total of 36 cards which was a little overwhelming for him. We split it into a 2 part game of 20 and 16 cards and he absolutely loved playing with it. He is able to play the entire game all by himself and it is pretty funny and entertaining to watch him play. We start the game by placing all the cards face down. He opens the cards 2 at a time. If they don't match he says "They don't match" and puts them face down again. After opening a few cards he will eventually find a matching card and will loudly say "They match" and get them out of the game.

I would definitely recommend this game or any version of it to all the moms out there !

Morning Mantra

Past two mornings had been particularly bad with R. He would start throwing a tantrum the moment we mentioned the idea of leaving the house to go to his daycare. All he wanted was to watch some Elmo on TV and he would refuse to move. It was weird seeing him like this and we just let him cry out. Today I reached a breakthrough with him. After having cried relentlessly for 15 minutes he came and hugged me and keep whimpering a little bit. I started talking to him in a calm voice trying to divert his attention. I asked him if he would like to sing the ABC song. He said a firm 'NO'. Then I asked him if he wanted to sing 'Twinkle Twinkle' to which he said another 'NO'. I pursued further (at this point he had stopped crying and was listening to what new ideas I might come up with) and asked him if he wanted to play his favorite word game. He got down from my lap, wiped his face and said a beaming 'YES'. He quickly ran and got the game. I sat with him for 5 minutes and we made 5 words and his mood seemed to have completely changed. After having done the 5 words he said "pack-up time" and cleaned up the tiles etc ... and said 'Mommy, C'mon lets go'. Within 2 minutes we were out of the house on our way to the daycare.

It is amazing how a simple 10 minute game with him helped lift his mood. I had figured the Morning Mantra and I couldn't be more relieved. I have now decided to spend at least 15-20 minutes doing some activity with him in the morning ....

Diaper Days and Date Nights

I just found out today that Camera Cinema's have weekday afternoon movies where babies are welcome. Their website says "Our Diaper Days and Date Nights movie screenings are a great way to get out of the house with your little one(s) and meet up with other parents and their cultured babies in a kid-friendly environment."

I am not sure if I would really go through the effort of packing up everything and hauling the baby and then feeding and soothing him through the movie. I'd rather watch a movie at home over a period of N days ! But who know baby #2 might change my opinion :)

More details can be found at:
http://www.cameracinemas.com/diaper.shtml

The "Dog Pit"

During the Christmas holidays R learned how to use the laptop (the adult one :). He used to be able to do some basic navigation using the keyboard while playing on StarFall. One day we just gave him our old laptop to explore the site on his own. Within a few days he mastered the mouse control and was able to navigate and play things on his own.

One of R's teachers recommended trying out the PBS Kids website. I showed him the games for Word World and he quickly got hooked on to it. His favorite is the Dog Pit. This game has now become his new blackmail weapon for getting things done his way! I am extremely impressed by the quality of the game and the site in general and would definitely recommend giving it a shot. The only problem I see is that the site is extremely slow which sometimes does test the patience of the kids who have no idea what "loading..." in general means :)

R on the Board of of Fame

Every now and then (once a quarter or so) R's daycare puts down interesting facts on the white board about the kids in the class. This particular one in Sept 2008 had R's name on it and we couldn't be more proud of him :). He is generally a quiet kid but looks like he cannot hide his enthusiasm when it comes to letters !

A game of Opposites

R recently got a hang of the concept of opposites. It started with a simple 'YES/NO' and 'UP/DOWN'. I then remembered having got a book of opposites a year back. It was a gift from one of R's friend at the daycare. The book: Winnie the Pooh's Opposites has quite a few opposites which are simple to understand although I was never too fond of the pictures. I guess that was the reason I had kept the book away until now. R was thrilled when we showed him the book and within a few days he knew all the opposites and is able to read the whole book all by himself.

R has now invented a game of rapid fire opposites. He starts with a word and we are expected to say the opposite for that word. He changes the words so fast that almost always we have lost the game ! I have to remember to take a video while playing the game - I am sure this again will not last too long

M O M

R has been spelling a lot of words lately. A couple of weeks back he got up crying in the night and yelling "Mommy, Mommy". After about a minute of crying he started spelling out the word Mom 'M O M, M O M" in his sleep. I think he was hoping that at least we will understand now :). Both me and hubby had a nice laugh in the morning. I guess that is the level of his obsession about letters and now words.

The same thing happened yesterday. I was able to get out of work a little early and I surprised him at the daycare. The kids were all playing outside since the weather has been so gorgeous. His teacher saw me and called him out. He saw me from far and started running and saying 'M O M, M O M' - everyone around him started laughing ! I am sure this is just a phase but it is so very entertaining.

Bay Area Train Rides for Kids

Last week there was a thread on the parents list at work where everyone suggested train rides around the bay area that kids would like. I thought it would be a good idea to create a map of this. My hope is to take R on most of the popular train rides. He is so into "choo-choo trains" these days. We started off by taking him to the Oakland zoo last weekend where he had a blast. Next stop is the Sonoma Train Town.

Here is a link to the map:
Kids Train Rides

Whats GNU ?

After reading some reviews on Amazon, I recently got this game Whats GNU? for R.

Although the recommended age of the game was 5-8 years old I thought I would give it a shot - considering that he is so crazy of building words. He definitely got a real kick out of the game the first time he saw it. I did not follow the rules of the game and just asked him to make 3 letter words given a card with a starting letter. He absolutely loved the concept and quickly started building words. The one that impressed me the most was when I gave him the letter O card. I was racking my brains to come up with a simple word for him and he suddenly looked at me and said "Mommy, I know ONE". He got really excited when I praised him by saying "good job !"

Here is what he came up with in his first attempt of playing the game.




I am looking forward to having more fun with this game...

Being known as R's parents

Back in November I was waiting for our big 20 week ultrasound at the clinic. Hubby was supposed to drop R to the daycare and meet me there. I remember him entering the clinic beaming with happiness. After probing a little bit he told me about this little incident that happened at R's daycare.

R's daycare needs the parents to enter an access code to enter the children's room. The code is a 5 digit number. It has been a while that R has been dialing the numbers and he now knows the numbers by heart. He now confidently walks and dials the numbers and opens the door. Today apparently a parent of a preschooler was waiting behind R. After R opened the door she looked at my husband and asked him if he was 'R'. My husband confirmed it and asked her how she knew him (he thought maybe the kid went to R's class). Turns out that all the teachers had been raving about R in other classes - as the kid who knew his alphabet, numbers and who can spell his own name! Seeing a small kid enter the numbers so fast and correctly made the parent guess that the kid was 'R' :).

It was truely a memorable moment for us - to be known as R's parents :). I guess we will have to start getting used to it.

The motivation for this blog

I have always wanted to have a blog to share/log some of the exciting events in my son R's life. However, trying to find time between a full-time job and taking care of R was very hard and time just went by. The closest I got was to creating an album each month and sharing it with friends and family. Now that we are expecting our second one I feel like I have already forgotten some of the exciting events that happened in the past 2+ years. The blog is my attempt to salvage some of the exciting events that happened in the past and to capture new ones that happen all the time. I hope to blog some of my personal experiences on raising a kid as well.