the naming process...

i've had a girls' name that i've loved since i was pregnant with ben. i've thought about it for two years and since i was pregnant, i've said it's nickname and full name over and over aloud to tim. we continued to agree that it was our name. when ben started referring to my baby bump as "baby blake" because we have a friend with baby named blake, i thought maybe i'd start calling the baby by her name to ben so he could get used to hearing the name. and since we were using the name to ben, the name came out to a friend here or there in the last month. and all of a sudden, i'm like, "maybe i don't like this name!" i suggested one of our alternates to tim this past weekend and he was very agreeable. "that could be the name," he said in reference to the new name. what? how can we change now after having a name picked for 2 years? oh my goodness...naming children seems like such a big decision yet after you've done it, that's it. we don't think of it again! augh! too much thinking...

free "is time-out a waste of time?" webinar

i have mentioned Rookie Moms, a favourite blog of mine, a few times on my blog. they are hosting a free, online, one-hour class by a parenting expert, Amy McCready that will answer the question, "is time-out a waste of time?" it's for parents of children ages 2 - 15yrs and like i said, it's FREE! i've never done a webinar before but you don't need a webcam - you just watch and there's a chat feature so that you can ask your questions to Amy. read Rookie Moms' experience taking her class here and then follow the links to sign up. then you and i can discuss later! it's set up for an afternoon session and evening session on Aug. 30 and it's EST so it happens here on the westcoast at 6pm...hopefully we can drop ben off with the grandparents that night so tim and i can both watch it without disruptions.

we'd tried doing time outs with ben before he was 2 where we'd put him in his crib and leave him for a minute or so. when i'd come back in to get him, i'd say, "you're in time out because ____. can you say, "sorry" to mommy for ________." and he'd do the sign for sorry. this wasn't all that effective though.

then i tried doing logical and immediate consequences for misbehaviour. misbehaviour was usually having a tantrum and throwing something all over the floor. logical consequence: sit next to the stuff you threw and you can't leave until you've picked it up. this worked pretty well until misbehaviour was no longer as easy as this to come with the consequence.

i tried having a spot in the kitchen (in front of the pantry door) where he had to sit and wait for the timer to beep. we did this about 3 times and then ben would do something "bad" on purpose and then run to the time out spot and say, "beep, beep, beep". hmm... we immediately stopped doing that.

this past week, we've had a couple run-ins with ben over throwing sand/bark mulch at the park. we say, "stop", and he keeps going. we try to put him in a time out until he's willing to say sorry and he's all like, "bye-bye mommy. bye-bye." grr... the problem with having to say sorry is that pretty soon sorry means nothing and he knows he can just say it glibly and finish his time out. we don't want to have this happen so the other night, tim and i brainstormed as to what would be a better punishment. we decided we'd try to come back around to logical consequences again. if he's throwing bark mulch at the park, give him a warning that if he throws again, we're leaving the park. then actually LEAVE the park when he does it again. etc etc. sounds good in theory but i'm interested to see how it works.

so when i read about this webinar, i thought, "perfect!" - i'd love to get some tools and strategies that we can use right away! comment here if you're planning to register so that i know who i can chat with about it afterwards!

early mornings

when tim and i got married, i would sleep in until 11am or so on the weekend. tim would be up between 7 - 8am. if he made any noise between 7 - 11am, (before i got up) i would be choked. poor guy. after about a year of this, i started getting up earlier because it seemed like that's what grown ups did.

i was always amazed at people who were up at crazy hours (like 8am) and mowing their lawn or hammering something that seemed to need 100 nails. who WERE these people? go back to bed!

one summer, i was sleeping and it was only about 7:30am so tim was sleeping too and the doorbell rang. it didn't just ring once, it rang about 10 times quickly - like you'd ring it if you were pranking some house in the middle of the night. i was like, "what the heck?" and rolled over - i wasn't going down to open the door at 7:30am. then the person rang it again like a crazy man. i was so angry, i got up, threw on a sweatshirt, opened the door and it was the neighbour from behind our house. we'd never met before. i opened the door and said, "it's SEVEN THIRTY!" and i burst into tears. he was like, "sorry about that. i just wanted to let you know that there are some guys here to cut our tree in our backyard. some of the branches hang into your yard - could they come into your yard to cut them?" of course, that was fine with me. i went back upstairs to bed but the sound of chainsaws outside our window made it a little bit difficult to sleep. i was SO annoyed to be missing a morning of sleeping in during summer vacation.

fast forward 4 years and 7:30am is now what we consider to be sleeping in. when ben asks to go outside, he knows that my response will be "you have to wait until 8 o'clock". sometimes that means waiting 2 hours before leaving the house. once he gets outside, he's loud and often whiny. if you are my neighbour and trying to sleep in, i'd just like to apologize for now being "those people".

tool man

sporting the new tool belt - that's a "cell phone" in the front center pocket - essential.

a book nook

here i am about to blog again about ben's room being in the works - you must be thinking, "what the heck is taking you so long to finish that room?" haha. wellll, technically, we could definitely move ben in now but it's not going to look like my imagined finish product because we're going to have both the "big boy bed" AND the crib in that room for awhile. but we're okay with that. however, before we do that, i was waiting for my cousin to come visit and use ben's big boy room as her guest room. now that she headed home yesterday, ben's crib is moving in TONIGHT! after buying a train table that is huge, we put it in the room and those three items fill up the room completely. so for a few months, it will be a little crowded in there. BUT once the crib has left, we will move the train table into that space and voila! a book nook will be born.

we already have the shelves up for it with some books on them. we used IKEA Picture Ledges as shelves so that we could have the fronts of the books facing out for easy choosing.

while i'm loving how they turned out and how much ben likes putting the books on the shelves then taking them off, i found this book shelf idea where they've used IKEA spice racks. these are nice because the books have a little railing to keep them in. (coincidence that their child is also named benjamin...)

so there are a couple very cheap and space efficient book nook ideas for you! let me know if you've done something else!

super moms

today, my cousin sarah (visiting from ontario!) and i took ben to the "choo choo park" (one of the many parks around mill lake). lately, when we go to the park, i hope that ben will play on his own so that i can sit under a tree in some shade...i'm not the most mobile these days. after pushing ben on the swing for awhile, he got tired of that and headed off to the bouncy teeter-toter thing. i headed the opposite direction to the shade. sarah and i sat in the shade watching ben sit on the teeter totter until a little girl his age (and her mommy) came over and bounced with him. all seemed to be going well so i stayed put. then the mom pulled out some bubbles - ben was right in there with her daughter, wanting to blow bubbles. i'm sure the mom was thinking, "where's this neglected child's mother?" - i headed over. we chatted and she was super nice - i joked about sitting in the shade and watching ben from afar. the mom was happy to share the bubbles with ben.

after a bit, ben headed off in another direction so i followed him and bid farewell to the nice mom and daughter. once i had him playing on his own again, my stomach has just been SO achy (because it's HUGE) so i went back to the shade to sit down. minutes later, ben is back with mom and girl and the mom is pulling out two velcro-y board things that the kids put around their hands then can throw a beanbag back and forth and try to catch it. ben has one and the girl has one and they are throwing and catching like two year olds... :) the girl is quickly bored and heads off but ben is still keen to keep playing so this mom is playing with him! i jump up from my shade and head back over. i can't believe this mom has brought so many OTHER toys with her to the park! to me, the park is what it is - i'd never thought of supplementing the park play equipment!

ben and i play together with this board/bean bag game and when the girl and mom return, i have ben give back the game and say thank you. i suggest the slides and we begin to walk that way. mom and girl are walking with us and the mom says to girl, "do you want something to eat?" ben looks at me and says, "eat! eat!" uhh...sorry, ben - YOUR mom didn't bring anything to eat. the mom asks me if he'd like some fishy crackers. oh my goodness - this mom is a SUPER mom! it was pretty impressive. i declined the crackers as i knew he wasn't actually hungry and we parted ways as our kids found interest in things on opposite sides of the park.

there are some pretty cool moms out there - i hope to meet this one again one day. hopefully, i'll at least have a snack for my kid (and an extra for her kid?) on that day.

pinterest

like i've mentioned before, i read a LOT of blogs. when i find projects/activities/recipes that i want to try out, i either email myself the link so it will be SOMEWHERE in hotmail, blog about it here, OR i'll post it to my facebook wall. neither of these work that great to keep track of things.

after a couple days of friends posting facebook statues about pinterest.com, i thought i'd check it out. i wasn't sold so after setting up an account, i just left it empty. then 5 friends started "following" me. ack! i can't leave it empty now, can i? so i went back and put in a little more effort to figure it out. WELL! this site was MADE for me! when i find a blog post somewhere out there that i want to remember to check out further, i just log into pinterest and post it to one of my boards. all my boards are organized into categories. i already have a handful of toddler activities, crafts, personal DIY ideas, home organization ideas, etc! i'm loving it.

the other great thing is that cool people everywhere are posting stuff too and you can browse through your friends' boards or other peoples' boards and if you see something you like THERE, you can "repin" it to your own board. so what this means is that this is a perfect procrastination tool for anytime!

so, i thought i should warn you that now that i'm reading more and more DIY/recipes/toddler crafts, you may be seeing the word pinterest pop up on the blog a lot. now you know.

(if you're wanting to set up your own account and need an "invite", send me an email rebeccashulba@hotmail.com and i'll send you one.)

a great read

i subscribe to a blog called "dear baby" and today's post was so well-said. every mom has gotten fed up and frustrated and the author just reminded me to remember the big picture. go read it if you've ever wanted to pull your hair out because of your kids.

predictions

the other day, (actually, after the agrifair) we went to wendy's for supper. (yay!) all the ladies working were east indian and they were chatting away with each other in punjabi while we ordered our meals. after we'd ordered and were standing there waiting for our food, the cashier said, "do you know if you're having a boy or girl?" "i'm having a girl!" i replied. the couple women who were standing there looked surprised. i asked, "did you think it looks like a boy?" they all nodded. then they shouted to their coworker at the take-out window, "it's a girl!". the fry cook missed it so they repeated to the fry cook, "it's a girl!" apparently, they'd all been talking about whether it was a boy or girl in punjabi while i was ordering! haha. pretty funny. people love to predict.

agrifair

i'd never been to abbotsford's agrifair before and tim hadn't been for at least 20 years. this past weekend, we decided to check it out. we figured it would be fun for ben to see the animals and hear some live music.

we went in the morning right when it opened and walked around then went home for lunch and nap time. we came back in the afternoon and stayed until dinner. we definitely made the most of our $10 entrance fees.

ben's favourite animals - the baby chicks.

"big gacor!" - ben

checking out the old tractors too...

we watched a couple shows in the kidzone - a trampoline show which was way better than it sounds and this trails bikes show - stunts from standing still positions. pretty cool. (the pic is of a guy jumping from a 7 ft high box to a 4ft box - a distance of about 10ft.)

watching the stunts.

back to visit the chicks. see the one poking it's head through the fence? ben's staying a safe distance away from them. we also soaw lots of chickens, roosters, sheep, horses, cows, and goats.

playing.

watching some of the rodeo from a shady spot on the hill.

a fun day for all of us. i love summer stuff.