Don't look now, Mommy...Slugzilla is on the loose

Today for learning time, Declan and I decided to take a nature hike and talk about all of the things we see. It was a great walk and for a kid with a treasure bucket to fill up, life doesn't get much better. We set off into the forest and, like all boys do, we kicked, cracked, pulled and prodded everything we could to dig up creepy crawlies, roley-poleys and slithery-slimeys.

The first pull provided an opportunity to talk about plants and how they work. Looking at a small plant, we talked about how the plants roots are like straws that drink water from the ground. That water goes up the stalk and out to the leaves. And, with Autumn approaching, we found some specimens to show what happens when trees don't send moisture to the leaves.

The next find was a creepy crawly one. We found some downed trees and under the bark we found a whole colony of ants, which at the sudden loss of their home were scrambling in a terrified frenzy trying to save what they could before doomsday. Cool, huh? Declan also spotted a macaroni log hiding in the woods. Good eye, bud.

We found spiders and worms, daddy long-leggers and worms, but I must say that Declan had the find of finds. We found a few cut logs which were decaying nicely and, with the walking stick, we poked some apart. We found two freaks of nature: Slugzilla and Mr. Roley-poley Giant (guess who named that one).

Monsters vs Aliens

When Monsters vs Aliens came out in theaters we were on it like kids on Christmas. The concept wasn't original by any stretch of the imagination, but it was fun nonetheless. Straight out of the 50s sci fi genre, the movie tells the tale of Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), a young bride to be who, you guessed it, gets hit by an asteroid, absorbs an extraterrestrial radiation, turns into a giant sized Susan and gets locked away in a secret government facility. Ok, so maybe you didn't guess that, but for all of the bad that happened to her, she gets a cool name out of it: Ginormica. Perfect.

While in the facility, Susan aka Ginormica meets a few other creatures that have been locked up over the decades, The Missing Link (aka Link), B.O.B. the blob, Insectosaurus (self explanatory name?), Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. and who leads this rag tag group of creatures from his jet pack and perfectly pressed uniform? None other that General W.R. Monger (voiced beautifully by Kiefer Sutherland).

The villian in the movie is a semi-likeable alien named Galaxar (Rainn Wilson). He is in search of the substance that transformed our loving herione, Susan into Ginormica. He's not very threatening as far as villians go, but kids get the message that he's the bad guy.

The movie itself is beautifully done. The pacing is perfect, I think the voice acting is spot on and the story is just plain fun. To be honest...I'd watch this one even if I was home alone!

Two huge thumbs up for Monsters vs.Aliens!

Swimming Pools and Flys

Today during learning time we perused the computer to answer Declan's most recent question: "How do you make a swimming pool?"

We found a few sites that had step by step pictures showing how they make pools, from marking and breaking ground, to filling it up and doing the landscaping. It was pretty cool (and makes me want a pool).

And regarding reading, we started reading 'A Fly Went By' together. Lil Mister's biggest problem is that he tries guessing the word without sounding out the letters or completing the sentence with what he sees in the picture. To offset that, I'm going to have to extract one word or sentence at a time from the book onto the dry erase board. Less distraction= more focus.

Arts and crafts time went with the whole pool theme and someone got to design their own bathing suit. I drew the outline and finished it off with a pipe cleaner string, but the rest, from coloring to cutting, was done by the master craftsman himself...

The Lego Factory

Today I asked Declan what he wanted to know. I told him that each day he has to ask me something and I have to give him an answer. Anything from 'why is the sky blue' to 'where did the dinosaurs go.'

Today he asked how they make Legos.

My answer was this:

Whistle while we work

Today during learning time we learned about chores. What are some chores and more importantly, why we do chores.

Before my time home with Declan began, I made some minor preparations, one of which was getting a chore chart (which I highly recommend doing some kind of organized chart for daily routine). The chore chart has different sections like 'take care of myself', 'take care of my room', 'around the house', etc. It's really a good thing.

Aside from chores for Declan, we learned about some of Mommy and Daddy's chores. Washing dishes, doing laundry, etc. And seeing as how today is trash gathering day, we learned about why we take the trash out. And what's a better learning tool than Shel Silverstein? We read of the perilous journey of good old Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout.

Then we took a trip around the house to make sure we did our chores. And he helped me with some of mine.

Legos are a boy's best friend

In the mornings we always have playtime. Sometimes Little Mister wants to play games. Sometimes it's action figures, but most of the time...it's Legos.We play Legos so much that the little Lego people now have names.

Hours upon hours have been spent putting those little blocks together and I must admit, there are times that I continue to sift through the Lego bin long after someone has gone up for bed.

They are a truly fantastic way to be creative and also use your imagination.

Crossbows and Catapults

When my brother and I were little we had a game called Crossbows and Catapults. We played the daylights out of this game. Day or night, rain or shine. We loved it.

The concept was simple. You had a small square, plastic mat and on this square you had to build your castle. The castle consisted of a single tower with a turret and a window and you also had about 10 or 12 blocks which you could position however you want to defend your castle. There was also a little flag for the top of the castle and you had about 8 or so little men too (which served no purpose really).

The objective: destroy your opponents castle using, you guessed it, your crossbow and catapult. 5 inches of plastic which could hurl and shoot discs across the battlefield and rain down plastic death for the little pointless men. The first one to get their flag toppled loses. It was awesome.

It was so awesome that I looked for this same game on ebay when the little man hit 4 years old. Building things, destroying things...what 4 year old wouldn't love it?

Much to my surprise, there was a recent revamp and re-release of the same game! Score! I snatched it up and we now play it all the time. They've dressed it up a bit though. The paint jobs are a lot nicer than the non existent ones of days past and they've redesigned the castles, added a cannon and also an extra catapult on top of the castle for added mayhem. And the castle has a rubber band loaded gate which, when hit, pops up and it 'catches' your castle on fire.

The game's instructions tried to turn it into a role playing game with movement based turns and such, but we're more primal in our destructive needs. We set it up and (taking turns) let 'er rip.

There are some small pieces to lose and I do recomend playing this on a hard, smooth surface, but the hours and hours of enjoyment are well worth it.

And who knows? Maybe someday we'll get around to reading the instructions. Maybe.

Reading success!!

Every day, we have learning time and, being the age he is, the priority is reading...so we work on our letters. At first it was letter recognition, especially of the lower case ones. We also started working on word recognition for the more common words, 'the', 'in', 'at', etc. and also the common sounds '-un', '-at', '-ing' and so on. I do this all with the help of my handy dandy flash cards.

All in all, it's been a success. He's read sentences like 'the cat is fat' and 'the bat is a cat'. He's been really doing well. Lately, I've been pushing him to sound out the letters he sees instead of just saying the letter names and the results have been good.

This morning, he read the following with very minimal assistance from me. I think his biggest problem is that he tries to guess the word once he gets one of the word sounds.


Next week, I'll back off the whole word thing and start with sounds again...ease him back into it.

Nap tip no. 1

I've been having some trouble getting the little mister down for naps. He eventually does take them, but it's a battle...bribery didn't work so well, so...

Nap tip number 1?

Exhaustion...


...worked like a charm.

Can you see the bunny?

Little Eagle Eye spotted this on the way to the car this morning......and I can't wait to start the nature series I have in mind...

This little piggie went to market

This morning we decided to go to the local market. After learning time we did arts and crafts. During arts and crafts we talked about what a market was and how it's different from a grocery store.

We talked about how farmers and bakers and candy makers can bring things to market to sell and how almost all of the stuff comes from our area.

We had a really good trip and, after a few decent buys, we'll have an even better supper tonight!

Hey, he wanted it.

Over the last few days it hasn't exactly been too hot, but rather too humid. Every time we'd go outside, lil man was wearing a crown of sweaty hair in about two minutes.

So assessing the situation, I noticed that the little mister's hair looked like a 1970s high school kid's hair during gym class. Not cool.

So this morning we set aside some time for a haircut. I have a decent pair of clippers and I must say, this little $30 investment has saved hundreds of, and potentially over a thousand dollars, by cutting our own hair through the years, especially during my time in the military.

Your best bet is to set aside about 40 minutes (if you're just starting out, maybe 60 minutes) to do the whole thing. I strongly recommend a DVD, in this case, one about bugs we picked up from the library.

As for clean up, it was a dustpan and brush, a plastic grocery bag ad the good ole Swiffer. Not too shabby. As for cleaning up the little mister...a good shower did the trick.

I stripped down little man to his Superman undies, plopped him on a stool and, after wrapping him in a towel with a chip clip, went to work. I was just going to give him a little trim, but he wanted a "Marine haircut" like his daddy gets sometimes, so away I went.

The hair discussion as of late was to keep it longer on the top, but alas...he wanted it.

(I think the muscle shirt sets it off nicely)

Routine Routine Routine

One thing I've learned only after a short while is that routine is key. Something else is that I need to play off of his mood. Yesterday, after nap, he was groggy and a little grumpy, but it was time to go to the library. So getting ready to go created a little tension for him and for me. That can be corrected not by yelling and time outs, but by simple schedule changes. We could have gone in the morning.

The balance regarding schedule can be a little frustrating, but I think we'll settle in just fine. I was thinking of introducing arts and crafts into the mix and I wanted to do it in the morning, but throwing my schedule against it too may require a little adjustment. So this week is experiment week, I believe.

I have my things I want/need to do, he has his things he wants/needs to do and we have our necessary things to do together, like learning, arts and crafts, getting out of the house, etc., so it's going to take a nice juggling act to settle in to the happy medium, but once we get there, we should be ok.

I'll check in later to let you know how it goes today with a heavy Dad list of things to do on my docket today...

Storytime Review: Can You See What I See?

Our trip to the library this afternoon was fanTAStic! We tracked down some educational DVDs and a few other books, but the find upon finds was one of Walter Wick's Can You See What I See? books.

We do have the On a Scary Night edition and I must say, it is still in the top 10 chosen bedtime books since last Halloween.

These hidden pictures are a little more advanced than the typical early age look and find books, and the twelve detailed pictures are of actual hand crafted settings as opposed to hand drawn (or computer generated) pictures of the genre.

There are a total of eight Can You See What I See? setting based books, then there are a slew more of the Seymour and I Spy books out there. Each of the books in this series has a different theme (fairy tales, dreams, spooky stuff, etc.) and the text in the book, which tells you what to look for is very well done with a rhyming scheme and a loose story to follow.

All in all, these books are great for story time, day or night. They can take a little longer than your typical bedtime story, so I recommend setting a three page limit depending on time.

Two little thumbs up.

I lost.

Day 1 wrapped up with a great Lego extravaganza, a trip to the library and a championship match of Don't Break the Ice. The game was going beautifully...










Then I was given the deathblow, which was accompanied by a tiny, evil laugh...










And we have ourselves a new champion...

The morning so far...

So it's still morning one and I can tell I'm gonna need to get a tightrope and a long stick because it's gonna be a balancing act. I need to find the time to work on the necessary things around the house (i.e. clean, laundry, make the appropriate lists, etc.) and I have a little voice saying "Daddy come look at this" while he's having his play time.

But more on the balancing act later. We said goodbye to a (blurry) Mommy as she left and as an added bonus, we found a roley-poley. Aside from that, on our first day (which is mostly a pajama day), we watched the morning Curious George with breakfast and also Sid the Science Kid. Then the TV went off and it was learning time.

We went over the upper and lower case letters and he did great. The typical confusion ensues regarding the lower case mix ups, g/q, b/d, r/f...no worries though, he's doing awesome. We also learned the words, 'the', 'be' and 'it'. Letter sounds were A+ too.

This afternoon there's a trip to the library and maybe a quick stop for groceries, but that'll all be after nap, so wish me luck and I'll check in soon.

The Inaugural Post

Two days. I've been told by some that my days of freedom are limited to just two days. Including today, that's how many 'working' days I have left until I'm a full time Dad.

Being a full time Dad is something I'm looking forward to, but let's not talk about the details just yet. Let's start with a heartfelt thank you. First and foremost, I need like to thank my wife. She is the most loving, kind and selfless person in the world. Because of her I am able to do this. Her patience and understanding is unparalleled.

The opportunities which led my wife and I to this point haven't been completely welcomed with open arms, but the outcome, I must say, is exciting. I, along with roughly 160,000 other men in the U.S., am truly a man of the house. I cook, I clean, I run errands and now, to add to my list, I watch our son from roughly 7 am to 6 pm.

Although he was in a very fine daycare program, my wife and I always wrestled with the fact that our son only spends four waking hours with us daily. The opportunities mentioned above coupled with the constant parental struggle of having an institution raise your kids until school age helped us make the decision to keep him at home.

No matter how you look at it though, this opportunity wouldn't be possible without the support of my wife. Because of this, I dedicate this blog, and the endless days of growth and nurturing to you, dear.

Thank you, honey. Truly.

-Husband