Monthly Archives: May 2010

My Pet Monster is a 1980′s toy that looks like this:

Ari’s Uncle Mike passed down his own childhood My Pet Monster toy to Ari. There is a missing item in this picture, My Pet Monster’s orange handcuffs. They will be accounted for shortly…

I thought Ari would like My Pet Monster, but he was terrified of him.

But then, he discovered an activity that he could do with My Pet Monster’s orange handcuffs:

For the past two years, I’ve done most everything I do with Ari by my side. And if he wasn’t next to me at a given moment, he demanded to be moved so that this situation could be corrected.

Suddenly things have changed. When I’m in the room he wants “Daddy!” When I tell him to take a nap he wants to “Sleep with daddy!” Today after we painted pictures together, I went to check my email and he screamed “grandma!” He demanded to see his grandma until she came upstairs to play with him.

He’s asserting his independence from me big time, but I am not ready for this! I’m not sure if he’s angry that I’ve been working a lot and therefore seeking revenge when I am actually here.

It’s not all bad. We still play together, but his demands for other people are growing rapidly. I’m not the center of his universe anymore and that makes me sad.

Not only is he demanding other people, but he is on a sleep strike. He hasn’t napped for three days in a row.

Is this the “terrible 2′s?”

My best friend Mint, an early childhood teacher, sent me a link to a great online toddler game. Naturally, I tested it out on Ari immediately. It was a hit!

Moothergoose.com’s At the Seashore Tap & Type game is similar to Kneebouncers in that the player (your toddler) can press any key and not harm your computer.

In the tap and type game, whatever letter is pressed, a picture pops up with a word that starts with that particular letter. For example, if you press the letter “H” a helicopter appears:

When you press the letter “V,” a ship with “Vikings” comes up on the screen:

And there are corresponding sounds associated with each image. It is quite clever.

If you have a computer obsessed toddler, try out At the Seashore Tap & Type!

Today I had the opportunity to teach 3rd and 4th graders how to ride a bike. Some of them had never been on a bike before, some of them had tried to ride in the past, but had no success.

An instructor from Bike New York came to The Brooklyn New School to teach the Learn to Ride program for kids.

After a group of us teachers learned the Learn to Ride curriculum, I had a chance to try it out and it really does work.

What you do is this:
1. Remove the pedals from the child’s bike
2. Have the child walk the bike around without pedals - (I called the pedal-less bike the learning bike)
3. Once the child is comfortable walking the bike around, tell them to gain some speed and walk the bike around quickly
4. When they are going pretty fast tell them to lift their feet straight up in the air in front of them and glide forward on the bike. This teaches the child to balance on the bike. It also makes the kid feel awesome.
5. When the child feels steady and can balance on the bike without pedals, it’s time to re-attach the pedals.
6. Now they are ready to start pedaling on the “real” bike.

The Learn to Ride technique really works! I am so excited to try it out on Ari when he is older.
For more information on Learn to Ride, click here.

A scary thing happened to me yesterday. I attempted to put my jeans on, and stopped because they refused to move. They were halted by my stomach. Much like Staten Island to the rest of the five boroughs, my stomach has decided to branch off and form its own colony. It’s big and proud, and it’s not letting my pants on.

I realized that one of the reasons that my stomach has expanded is that I hate letting food go to waste. Ari is a picky eater, if he refuses to eat something I make, I feel obligated to eat it rather than tossing it in the trash. Forget eating for two when you’re pregnant, I’m eating for two now!

My parents bought me a exercise ball for Mother’s Day. Hopefully I can use this to convince my stomach from proceeding with it’s outward expansion. That is, if Ari lets me use it…

Yesterday was my sister-in-law’s baby shower. Wil and I took turns chasing Ari up and down a large set of stairs. I was running out of steam, fast. My mom and dad provided relief services as well, pushing Ari in the outdoor swing and making him laugh.

While chasing my spark plug around, I met a woman at the shower named Julie. I let it slip that I was frustrated because I have a hard time getting Ari to stay away from dangerous activities. Whenever I take him away from a situation where he could injure himself, he screams.

Julie has an 8 year old. She remembered the 2′s vividly. She had this to say:
“What you have to do, is make it fun. If you’re insisting that he do what you want him to do, he’s going to resist. Make it fun!”

With this simple statement, I realized that I was approaching my child in a way that wasn’t working. I was telling him: Do this! Because I said so. Instead of insisting, I could find ways to laugh at the situation, and make it fun.

Those who know me will tell you that I tend to get really excited about things. These people would be right. I’m trying to remain calm at this moment, because something pretty exciting happened today. It was the first time I’ve ever seen it happen.I feel like this something that happened might be the start of further wonderful things to come. Don’t worry, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Without further ado, here is what happened at 6pm this evening: