The Simple Tones of Life

Attachment Parenting

2010-11-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

I read a long-winded article on attachment parenting today. I didn't finish it- I don't have time for anything longer than a few seconds and if I intend to invest more than that, it's going to be for something good.

Apparently attachment parenting is popular these days. Honestly I think it is ridiculous to follow any set method of parenting and furthermore, with the philosophies of attachment parenting I fall into the camp of what-kind-of-bunk-is-this.
Which is really ironic because I am something of a model attachment parent.

I'm never apart from H for more than a few hours a week. He doesn't go to day care. I rarely have a sitter and then it isn't more than a couple of hours (side note- babysitting is expensive these days! Our sitter gets $7.50/hr whereas I was luck to be getting $2/hr). He sleeps in our room and almost always, ends up in our bed. None of this was planned.

Sure when he was just born it was easier to have him in the room for those every couple of hours feedings. And you know I like sleep, so it was even easier just to have him in bed. Then I didn't even have to get up to nurse him! And now, well, now we have no space, so his room is our room.

And I stay at home so I do everything with him. And because of that he is attached to me more than anyone else. So really, when I am awake and he is awake, more often than not, you'll find him attached to me. He takes the attachment parenting thing to a whole different level.

And while I still think the philosophy of it is silly and that you have to do what is best for each child, in many ways it is nice to be loved so much and needed so much. Especially when you hear on an almost daily basis, "I hate you." from your "asserting their independence" tweens.

Things I never thought...

2010-08-02T19:39:00.001-07:00

Over the years there have been many things I never thought would happen. For example, being very un-athletic, I never thought I'd run a race, yet once upon a time I did. And recently I had another one of those type moments.

I started taking a Zumba class to help lose the baby weight I can't seem to get rid of. The people are nice and it is fun even though I totally suck at it. This past week she had us do push-ups at the end. So all the women, except me, are doing them "girl style" on their knees. The one guy that braves the class, had to save-face and do them normal style, although he had his rear end way up in the air. I've never been good at push-ups. But wanting to build up strength and muscle I did them normal style and for the first time ever, I could actually do them. Not many... I survived the 10 or 15 that we did, but I was struggling at the end. I credit it to carrying and swinging around at 35lb toddler all the time.

At the end of class the instructor called me out in front of everyone to make an example of my push-ups. Seriously. Totally un-athletic me getting called out for doing something athletic good. I never thought I'd ever see that happen.

Oh I Love trash...

2010-07-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

I thought the low point of the summer happened about a month back when I sent the kids out to play. They didn't want to go and as bored kids are they found something to do... Rummage through the trash looking for pop tabs. M diligently hunted them out and broke them off and J decided he needed to antagonize her and bent them. She came in crying and I was once again in the role of referee. Referee over trash. (The call was to get to get rid of the tabs and go wash your hands and play in your rooms away from each other, if you were wondering.)

Then today, I thought, it's nice out. The kids can go outside and play for a bit. Of course they are bored and are inventing ways to entertain themselves- rolling around in giant plastic buckets, planting ancient sunflower seeds, and asking me to come out and say, "The party's over now!" Indulging the game I open the door, say the magic phrase and J roars popping up the top of a plastic storage bin and M, well, she jumps out of the trash can.

And then there is me, and I think, "Well, that is really gross and I should make her go take a shower. But they are playing happily and not fighting and enjoying themselves outside... Eh, let her play." Though I did tell her to stay out of the garbage can.

Worthy of a Post

2010-06-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

H sleeps in our room- there isn't enough space for him to have his own room and the age difference between him and J is too great to share just yet. SO every morning he gets awakened by the alarm clock.

Today was no different. And as is his custom, he comes to bed with us and cuddles for a few minutes before getting completely up. However last night was rough for both my husband & I. I went to bed around 11, but ended up unable to sleep most of the night. He came to bed around 2:15. So when the alarm wen off at 7:15, it was painful.

H came to bed and as I was trying to prod T out of bed to get J moving, T wasn't so keen on the idea. Pushing it to the very last minute to get up that he could, he turns to me and groggily asks, "What does the clock say?" H promptly answered, "Beep." It was awesome.

You Know You've Been Watching Sesame Street Too Much...

2010-03-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

When your husband is watching "Family Guy" and they are doing a parody of the counting to 12 pinball short on Sesame Street and suddenly you hear small footsteps rushing through the house and you find the baby glued to the TV, watching said short and he knows exactly what it is.

Right Now

2010-02-28T20:44:00.001-08:00

Right now I should be sleeping. But I'm not. I'm taking advantage of some blissful peace and quiet that I rarely get. Only I am too tired to do anything with it so this is what I did. I checked email (I haven't looked at it since last Friday and those freecycle posts add up). I read comics (I can't remember the last time I read comics). I watched the news (I haven't seen the news in months. I was just happy to hear that it is supposed to be near 50 next weekend). I also tried to make a day by day to do list for the week but I am too tired.

So I am putting off sleeping for a little longer to pay some attention to my poor neglected blog. At least just enough to say I'm tired.

Anti-animotion

2010-01-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

Henry lets his opinion known. Always has. Last night, while my husband was giving him a bath, I took the opportunity to watch a little tv and enjoyed a guilty pleasure of some One Hit Wonder show on VH1.

Henry came wandering out after his bath and Animotion's "Obsession" was on. He looked at the TV and wandered back to the gate and started yelling. Not reaching any measure of success, he came back, looked again, went back and started screaming again. So I went to fetch him, thinking he was simply trying to get Tony to come out here. As soon as we got in front of the TV, he put his fingers in his ears, where they remained until the end of the song.

Luckily, this was not the case for all 80's music, just Animotion.

Scibblenauts

2010-01-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

My oldest son, James, got Scribblenauts for his DS for Christmas. The purpose of this game is to summon an object to help solve the puzzle.

On our drive to Springfield to visit family, he was playing this game and got cranky because what he was summoning wasn't helping. So my husband started giving him objects to summon, starting with God. God appeared as Zeus but he still wasn't getting anywhere. So he had him summon a vampire. Then James decided to summon a "ghost" to fight off the vampire and Zeus (who had been turned into a vampire) were trying to kill him. Only from the back seat we hear, "What the heck?! I have garlic toast!" Followed by a "My character is clinging for dear life to garlic toast!"

As we quickly learned, garlic toast will not save you when faced with a vampire and a vampire god.

Uptight Mommy

2009-12-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

Henry is enrolled in various classes and on Fridays we go to sign language class. Today we were all talking about what signs the kids were using at home and I felt like Henry just wasn't communicating as well as the other kids. Tony works from home on Fridays and when we got home, I turned to him and said, "I'm worried about Henry's language development. He doesn't seem to be signing as much as the other kids. I think we need to do something more." At this point Henry looks up and perfectly signs and says the word "more."

Special Letters Unit

2009-09-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

I have been watching a lot of Sesame Street lately. H is really still too young for it, but it's nice to have some variety from Baby Einstein and well, some of the skits on Sesame Street are still really fun (though how they do Bert and Ernie now is most upsetting).

Having also watched a lot of Law and Order, I found this skit really funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5121VjLwqZM

Chung! Chung!

Orange Chicken

2009-09-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

The night before school started we got Panda Express for dinner. Orange chicken is a favorite amongst the carnivores. J, the oldest boy, downed a whole glass of water, declared it spicy and bolted over to the refrigerator for a second glass of water. After drinking about half of that he started back to the table and exclaimed, "My lips are burning! Seriously what do I do about my lips?!"

I couldn't help but laugh.

On a side note, I may have some photo work taking baby pictures for the women in my fitness class. Woohoo!

Sounding Insane

2009-08-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

The other day we were working on the house to get it ready to sell and the kids were outside. And I hear my husband shouting, "Put that book down right now and go play or I am going to take it away from you!"

And I swear the whole neighborhood thought we were insane.