You know who rocks? Sandra Boynton. Mommy and Daddy love her books and I like them too. They are always pushing me to read them...well this one I do like! Barnyard Dance is super fun and Mommy bounces me on her knee to read it. It has a fun song and all the animals dance around. I like to point out the moon, as usual. It is also fun because I recently learned to stomp my feet JUST LIKE THEY DO IN THE BOOK!!!! I am so good at it...I even do it when I am mad!
Well I am just getting into this book, so I don't have a full review just yet. For now, I give it 3 out of 5 cherrios.
Yeah...tons of posts today...whatever. Making up for lost time. This is just a shout out for the breastfeeding cafe I went to when I was pregnant. I may have blogged about it at the time but I am too lazy to look. It was at a baby spa(read yuppy trend) in Cary. On Fridays at lunch, you can go talk with other breastfeeding mamas and a leader for free. It is super informal and GREAT. I had read to go when pregnant to ask questions and such. I found it great for that but mostly, I got to see people breastfeeding in person. Not in a sitting-at-a-table-with-a-cover breastfeeding. You got to see the mechanics and even once I saw an indian woman come in with her 5 day old and mother to get help with latch. Since it was so informal, a lot of moms seem to just come to talk to other moms and offer help. There weren't many people with problems the first time I was there so they were great at just giving me(and another girl) advice. I felt so comfortable and always knew that when LT got here, I had someone I could call. Luckily we didn't have that many issues that I couldn't just get help from healthcare at SAS. I never went back because it was so far away from the house on maternity leave but I wish I would have just done it to see the girls. It would have been a good outlet then. O well. Maybe next time. Anyway, Go Ask Mom on WRAL.com just wrote an article about the cafe and it just got me thinking about it again. Check it out:
We have officially damned the man. By this we mean, cut the cord on cable/satellite. All of it. Bye bye $75 a month tv bill. Bye bye $15 a month XM bill. We cut them both this past week and it feels so liberating. We decided to work towards it this fall with the a) new Apple TV and b) a slowly creeping up of the Directv bill. We started slowly...just trying to see what all we could get for free/over the air. We know we can get the local channels in HD over the air...so done. Then it was our beloved DVR for the shows we do watch. We have skowered the net and found where we can see almost all of them for free. There are a few that we can't...but we are ok with it. The big hit was ESPN really. That is something you can't get somewhere else. I left this up to Kevin really. I would be fine of course. I am just looking forward to not watching mindless tv for no real reason. We are already listening to more music and less screen time.
Now I can't say our start up has been cheap. So chronologically speaking, we first started with a Netflix account and a DVD player with a Netflix streaming app. Works like a charm and we can watch old tv shows we never got into (lost, 24, etc) plus all the movies and HBO series on disc.
Next up was cables to hook the laptop up to the TV...easy enough. Then we could stream Hulu and anything else across. This got annoying because of the need to get up to navigate the laptop.
We also got Hulu plus to get some shows that aren't on DVD yet(modern family). We can also watch most of the regular Hulu stuff through the app too. This is also available on our iPhones and iPad...just not on apple tv yet...odd I know. This is nice but I don't know if we will keep it forever...hard to say now. Just to note though, their customer service is great.
Enter Apple TV. $99 and we get a slick new Netflix interface, ability to rent movies, stream our iTunes library through the TV(so any movies we have on there and music), internet radio, photo slideshows, and, as of the 4.2 update, we can air play music and video from our iPhones and iPad...so when toddler is freaking in the kitchen, we can kick on the music without leaving the room. Boom.
Then on Cyber Monday, the deal of the day was a receiver and speaker combo set for $700. We had been wanting some for awhile but holy fuck they were expensive. This was his Christmas present, and it is really nice. Just the music through it makes it for me. I can walk in the door and flip my iPhone to play on the tv and we have dance parties during Landon's dinner. It makes me happy.
Right before Christmas, we got a flier in the mail from Amazon about a deal on a Roku. That, combined with Amazon gift cards from cashing in credit card points, we got a sweet deal on it and replaced the Directv box in our bedroom. This has mainly existed to allow us to sleep a few extra minutes on weekends by providing endless Blue's Clues via netflix. I will also have to say that it was nice to watch some of our shows on Hulu plus the other night in bed.
Lastly, Kevin found these bad boys. We have them in the cars and we can just hit play on Pandora and it streams right along...pauses for phone calls...everything. O and we already pay for the data on the phone...so it is "free". This was the dagger that killed off XM. We were listening to basically 1 station for another bill that was going up and up. So buh bye.
It feels great to get rid of these high priced bastards. Surprisingly, neither company tried to offer us some deal to stay. We were kinda shocked. We were expecting them to give us an introductory rate or something but nothing. They would downgrade our package! O well..c ya fools...we will be over here sucking up all the interwebs....
So I have been meaning to post this for some time but I wanted a video. I am calling the video a wash because I can never get it. Maybe one day. Anyways, I think this is my first stint in bragging about my kid. I know 'every kid is special' blah blah blah. My kid? He rocks at signing. His comprehension is even growing too. One day I was at Ollies over in Cary just looking around and there was a book for beginning signs. It was $2 and came with flash cards. I figured 'heck, it is worth a try'. Once I brought it home, he loved it.
Now he knew signs before I got this book. They teach them the basics at school and he also has a little friend since infant class that is hearing impaired, so the teachers have learned some more as well. I have also picked up some from shows on nick jr. Anyways, he loved the book from minute one. It is about 10 pages with a picture of a kid doing the sign and what it is. Then there is the word and an explanation on how to do it plus an adult. At first he liked looking at it and doing the few he knew(milk, more, eat, etc). Then he was doing them all...proudly. We got out the flash cards just as a distraction one day and it was like baby crack. He just kept doing them and trying so hard on the tough ones. This boy LOVES accolades. So as of now he can do all of the following:
Hug
Socks
Bath
Coat
Dog (and we taught him to pant with it. So cute)
Sleep
Cookie
Shoes (he looks at his feet...so kinda)
Duck (and he quacks)
Big
More
Book
Daddy (he tries...it is tough but then he sure as hell can say it)
Eat
Water
Toothbrush
Hat
Fish
Ball (tries and can say it anyway)
Cat
Milk
Car(showed signs of it today)
Diaper
Please
Thank you
Drink
So yeah...my kid rocks. Hopefully one of these days I can get a video!
The next cool thing is that we don't have to say them anymore...he just does them. I can hold up a card and he will do it! Amazing. I am so excited for him to communicate with us without all his words yet.
P.S. We also just found a show on PBS kids called 'Signing Time'. It was awesome and we learned more to try with him.
This week's installment is about my new favorite obsession...Baseball ABC. Each page is a letter of the alphabet and baseball terms to go along. I like to pick out all the balls on all the pages. Mommy and Daddy find this obsession strange, it seems. There are no real sentences or rhymes. But I just love it. I could read about "headfirst slides" and "pitching machines" all day. Sometimes, when mommy is running my bath, I go get this book and sit in between the chair and ottoman to just look at the pictures. Maybe this means I will play baseball when I get older. That would be fun....though I don't know if Grandmommy could contain herself.
Anyways, I really like this book but somehow it has disappeared lately. That's odd. Maybe I will find it soon....it still gets 4 out of 5 cheerios!
So...yeah...a little late. I was putting this off because I couldn't just slap up photos and a video and call it a day *sigh*. Well Christmas this year was a lot better than last...not gonna lie. The dog is in good health, the baby sleeps, I am no longer a food source, and he can actually play with stuff. O and it snowed. Yippee!
Christmas Eve, Kevin, Landon and I took the day off and putzed around. That night, we went over to Craig's (the guy who married us) house for his annual bash. We had to go early because SOMEONE'S bedtime....but he even held out and we didn't leave until 8! He was having so much fun chasing his new friend Caroline(see below). I was so proud of him because Craig has a lot of little nick nacks around and Landon never tried to touch ANY of them...even the lit candles!
Even though Landon likes toys, he still doesn't "get" Christmas yet. That being said, we weren't going to do much. We decided we would get him 1 "big" thing and then just some books and a few small toys. Our big gift was a sit and spin. He is still a little small for it...but he is getting the idea. We figure it will grow with him for a bit. We also got him a few little board books. These were more for us in the hopes that he will choose them over some he likes. We are only kidding ourselves. He also got some play doh. We know he likes it at school and heck...it's fun to play with. He plays somewhat with it but doesn't have that much of an attention span.
Now we also knew that we should go small on Christmas because we would be outdone by the grandparents. Boy were we right. As you can see from the photos above, he hit the jack pot at Grandmommy and Grandaddy's first thing. Holy hell. She scored big on a bunch of second hand toys on the Bulletin Board at work. It wasn't wrapped...just a sheet over them all...like we were unveiling a car or something. Geez! We had to leave some of the stuff at Grandmommy's because we don't have the room at the house. We did take the table set home along with a few of the smaller classic toys. We had been sitting him at the dining room table for crafts and coloring but it was messing with my feng shui moving stuff all the time to make room. The table has been fantastic and it only took him about a day and a half to figure out how to climb in the seat himself. He loves to color at it and is learning to put his crayons away when he gets up from the table. So cute.
After a change of plans from the weather, Grandma Judy came up Christmas day instead and brought MORE stuff. He got some new clothes, books, a dinosaur that wiggles and a stuffed Grinch dog(did he have a name?). He is in toy heaven. Grandma stayed with us until Tuesday and we did some shopping and bopping around Raleigh in the snow. Woot!
As for Kevin and I, we didn't do to bad on the Santa loot either. Kevin found a deal on Cyber Monday on a receiver and speakers for the TV and so he had ordered that. We really like it and it does a fine job. I also got him some movies on super sale, some toy story legos, and some stickers for the ipad, mac and iphone. They are retro apple logos. Neat!
I scored a new camera bag I wanted after reading Becoming Mom's post. It is from Jo Totes and it is fabulous. Super big and holds everything...including MY NEW LENS! I got a 50mm f/1.8 for taking portraits. It is taking some getting used to because with my camera body, it doesn't auto focus...so I have to go old school. First time I used it though, I got AMAZING results...see: I also got an engraved necklace with Landon's name and birthstone from Etsy with matching earrings. I got some glittery Toms.
Kevin's parents made us a cornhole set for the backyard and got us a heater for the new porch(yeah gonna blog about it soon, I promise). My mom got us a sweet gift card to GAP, a new calendar, and a swanky iPad case! We got even more but I don't want to just go on and on :).
Man am I tired writing all this out...try living it. A week at home with a toddler is a 'special' kind of 'vacation'. Speaking of...gotta wrap this up...he will be awake soon!
You know who rocks? Sandra Boynton. Mommy and Daddy love her books and I like them too. They are always pushing me to read them...well this one I do like! Barnyard Dance is super fun and Mommy bounces me on her knee to read it. It has a fun song and all the animals dance around. I like to point out the moon, as usual. It is also fun because I recently learned to stomp my feet JUST LIKE THEY DO IN THE BOOK!!!! I am so good at it...I even do it when I am mad!
