Cheer Up, Emo Kid…

A couple weeks ago, my toddlers where downstairs in their playroom. We were just hanging out after snack, and my daughter Aeris decided to play with a set of Leapfrog building blocks, similar to Duplo.

Aeris is much more independent compared to her sister, and is very focused on what she wants to do with her toys. In this case, she wanted to take all the single blocks and build one tall, skinny tower.

She had about four blocks left when her tower started to bow and snap. She tried reassembling it but once it got too tall, it wouldn’t stay upright. She is only about 3′ tall, and she could not keep a hand on the tower and attach the last few blocks to the top at the same time.

I could see her frustration every time the tower fell. She was getting red in the face, she was slamming down blocks trying to get them to fasten tighter, and she was refusing to let her sister help her. More importantly, she hated that her vision of what she wanted to do wasn’t working.

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Potty Training: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Mary and I had planned on sharing our potty-training stories over a year ago. We had two very different situations, but didn’t want to write about them until we had successfully got our kids trained.

Fast forward one year, we think we finally have some things to share.

Disclaimer: This is not a how-to potty train post. This is simply our two stories and some weird (yet common) things we ran into in the process.

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Beginner In-Sync Activities

Of course it’s *NSYNC. We’re Millennials…

The girls came down with some long-lasting fevers and coughs this past week, so we’re finally coming around to our In-Sync activities. It’s hard to get your kids moving, when all they want to do is sleep it off on the couch. But now we’re up and running and trying something new.

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Child(ish) Reads: Growing an In-Sync Child

Since April was National #OTMonth, I wanted to switch gears from our usual parenting library. So for this edition of Child(ish) Reads, I bring you “Patti reads an OT book”.

I asked Mary for a few title recommendations on occupational therapy concepts that could help the everyday parent understand child development, and I landed on:

Growing an In-Sync Child: Simple, Fun Activities to Help Every Child Develop, Learn, and Grow
by Carol Kranowitz and Joye Newman

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