Iseeooo

Elly has taken to say “I see you” mashed up like one word.  She uses either for when she wants to see you and doesn’t, or when she does see you while peeking.  It’s both the cutest thing ever and SO heart breaking when I hear “Mamma?  Iseeooo?” in this little sad voice when she’s going down for bed, or waking up.  It was pretty funny when she was playing with the bathroom door, shut herself in it, then there was quiet followed by an oh so sad “uh-oh…  Mamma?  Iseeooo?”  Heart meltingly awesome <3

E!!

We’re working on letters and numbers, counting and colors and so on. For their first birthday they got these foam letters/numbers for the bath tub (thank you Noah). At first they just served as teethers, but now they are starting to pick out various letters, numbers and colors (Y is Amelia’s favorite right now). As with learning anything there seems to be a lot of guess work involved, so we do our best to correct. Amelia’s first guess for any letter when you ask her “and what letter is that?” is “E!” well except for Y she knows that one, no exception.

I didn’t think much of it until two days ago. She had a fist full of letters and was proudly carting them around. I asked her “What letters do you have there?” She runs over, thrusts her hand at me, and say “E!!” while giggling. I say “well lets see… Here’s a T, this one is a P, and that blue one is a number… the number 3!”  Then it dawns on me that she might not be as mistaken as we think she is. There’s a lot of letters/numbers that can come out “E” in toddler speak… B, C, D, etc.

MESS!!!

“Mess” is a new word they’ve both latched onto the past couple weeks.

We can’t get them to leave “off-ee” alone.  I think it’s because we have an eclectic collection of mugs.  Most are irresistible to kids because they are fun shaped or have fun things on them.  So we’re forever trying to remember to keep our mugs out of reach and sometimes learn what was out of reach 2 weeks ago is in reach today.  While I was nursing Ana and Gourry was doing something with Mia, Elly got his coffee cup.  Said cup was in a recently out of reach place, apparently now in reach.  She grabs the mug, squees “off-ee! off-ee!!! hahaha” and then promptly spills it all over herself, the entertainment center, and the floor.  She says “ooo mess!!”  I’m watching the whole thing unable to do much besides go “GOURRY, YOUR COFFEE!!!!”  Gourry scolds her, takes the mug away, and while trying to keep both twins out of the spilled coffee sops most of it up.  They don’t give up easy and the scene turns into a frustrated and angry dad dealing with two toddlers unwilling to listen and tracking coffee to places we’d rather not have it.  Mia is trying new ways to bypass dad because she really wants to investigate what happened.  Elly gives up on getting in the middle, starts chanting “mess mess mess” and heads the other direction.  About the time Gourry is ready to throttle Amelia for not listening Elly comes back, still chanting “mess mess mess.”  In her hand?  A paper towel!  At that point Gourry couldn’t be mad anymore.  How adorable!!

The whole thing went from start to finish in a matter of a few minutes.

Mom brag~

Mia is counting a lot.  It usually goes 1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 1 3 2 3 3 3 and so on.  This past week Gourry caught her counting her crib bars.  When she ran out of 1’s 2’s and 3’s she said more more more more more while pointing a them.  She was so focused that when Gourry touched her she jumped a foot!  Barely 17 months~

Elly is less into counting and reading, but still crazy mechanical.  She’s figured out all the child locks in the house before 16 months.  She’s worked out how to unlock the dog food, open it, and scoop out food for the dog.  There’s some toys that she’s figured out faster than any of the other kids have to date at Mom’s daycare too.

Together they keep us beyond busy.  Just because they have different interest doesn’t mean they both can’t count or open the dog food.  As they figure stuff out they teach each other.  Man are we going to be in trouble~

“The great Baby Einstein scam”

Honestly, how are people shocked anything in this line didn’t make their kid a genius?  One, the concept is just nutz.  Stimulate your kid with this toy while you ignore the child and cook dinner.  With an hour a day of this product your kid will grow up to be a genius!!   How many of the parents sat and watched the vids with their kid, or listened to the CDs?  If they had they’d know that compared to pretty much anything else considered educational out there this was near the bottom.  There’s a popular theory that classical music is great for young kids.  I agree that it is, but pretty much any instrumental music is great for growing brains.  It’s actually better to vary the styles (Western, Eastern, African, etc) according to on going studies. What isn’t so great is listening to such music in 32 bit midi, which is about how awesome any of the Baby Einstein CDs I’ve heard are.  Not to say everything Baby Einstein has is crap because some of their toys are pretty good, but over all the line is sup par when compared to the stuff Vtech and Leapfrog put out.  Go go marketing genius I guess.

Link

The great Baby Einstein scam

by Mira Jacob, Shine staff

Of course it was too good to be true.

The New York Times reported Thursday that Disney is offering a refund to buyers of its ubiquitous “Baby Einstein” videos, which did not, as promised, turn babies into wunderkinds. Apparently, all those puppets, bright colors, and songs were what we had feared all along—a mind-numbing way to occupy infants.

This news has rocked the parenting world, which had embraced the videos as a miraculous child-rearing staple. Videos that make your kid smarter while you prepare dinner? Genius!

Or not. According to the article, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two years old stay away from watching screens. In the letter threatening Disney with a class-action lawsuit for “deceptive advertising,” public health lawyers hired by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood cited a study which found a link between early television exposure and later problems with attention span.

For many parents, this was the most unsettling of “duh” moments, and a confirmation that nothing, when it comes to child-rearing, is as ever easy as we’d like to make it. So why were we so quick to seize on Baby Einstein videos as technological tutors?

Call it the perfect storm of parenting. Who doesn’t want to believe that there is  a magical, wondrous, no-parental-guidance-required product that will turn their kids into Mensa members? The combination of our lack of time, our paranoia over our kids performance, and our faith in  technology primed this generation of parents to accept the clever advertising around “Baby Einstein” as truth, just as parents before us have seized on corporal punishment, or the teachings of Dr. Spock.

Still, the idea that a caper this big could be pulled off (according to the Times, in “a 2003 study, a third of all American babies from 6 months to 2 years old had at least one ‘Baby Einstein’ video”) is mind-boggling. Disney’s refund is about as close as we’re going to get to an actual admission that we were sold snake oil, and it casts a pall over the other “educational” toys out there.

So now what? Lose the Leapfrog? Whisk away the Wii? How do you plan on keeping (or cutting out) technology in your child’s life?

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