While watching Noggin today (which we are known to do often at our house,) we saw a quick clip (i.e., commercial) for a new children's program coming to Nick Jr. in August called, "Yo Gabba Gabba!" This show, that claims to "put the funk in preschool", is hosted by a cool looking guy with an even greater looking hat named "DJ Lance Rock" and uses five dancing and singing toys to teach life lessons to your preschooler.

If you thought "The Backyardigans" were a… Read More

The Cheese Eater started swimming lessons this week. A little late in the summer for lessons, but with our traveling, it was the best we could do.

Honestly, I glad that we waited. It seems that for the past couple of years, the Cheese Eater has made gradual improvement each summer. At the beginning of last summer, he refused to go beyond the steps without hanging on to an adult. By the end of the summer, he had started to venture out… Read More

Yes, it seems that I am already counting down the days until my son's first day of kindergarten.

Just last week we received a letter from the school informing us that our first-born will be in the afternoon kindergarten class. I wasn't surprised by the news. When asked at his kindergarten assessment which we preferred, the morning or afternoon class, I said that either would work for us and had meant it. It didn't matter to me which class… Read More

Coming home from a vacation is always such a downer.

As soon as you pull into the driveway reality sets in. Suddenly all you can think about is everything that needs to be done: unload the car, unpack the bags, do four hundred loads of laundry, go through the large pile of mail, sift through a week's worth of newspapers, pick the dog up at the kennel, and have the Cheez-Its professionally vacuumed out of the back seat of the car. There's… Read More

My post today is part of Family.com's Comment Mania! Contest. Basically, they'll give a prize to the person who leaves the best comment this week (on the full article, not this blog post), so be sure to go over there and check it out! Here's a sampling:

This wasn't a cute, 10-piece jigsaw puzzle with a picture of something my 3-year-old son, "the Cheese Eater," was familiar with, like a dog or a fire truck; this was the whole United States --… Read More

We moved to California exactly one year ago this July 5. The first few weeks after we moved, I kept telling my friends back home, "I just feel like we're on a really long vacation." Living in southern California, it's easy to feel like that; one day at Disneyland, another day at the beach. But then life settled in for us, school started, and the vacation finally ended.

Until now!

I am so fired up to finally be taking a real vacation. We are heading down to … Read More