Tunes for a 2 Year Old Stuck In My Head

"We're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship, floating through the sky..."

Alex has discovered Disney's "Little Einsteins." I admit it's a refreshing change from Bob the Builder. There aren't many other shows he's attached to... he had a brief stint with "Go, Diego, Go," occasionally enjoys "The Wiggles." But he is now OBSESSED with Einsteins. It's a cute show, and we have to watch at least one episode a day. The music keeps getting stuck in my head, though! I'll be sitting at my desk and I'll catch myself humming some of the tunes.

What's even funnier is that Craig and I have had to help each other decipher which episode Alex wants to watch. "I want the something," means the one where they go to Egypt to see the Sphinx. Sphinx is kind of hard for a 2 year old to say, let alone understand. "Rocket ship" usually means he just wants to watch Einsteins.

I don't think he's ever paid as close attention to any other show. He'll narrate the show, and tell you what's going to happen before it does. At least he's learning things from it. If he's going to enjoy TV, at least it's a good message that's teaching him something.

So "Rah Rah Rah, for Rocket!" (All you Einstein-loving parents know exactly what I'm saying, don't you? Admit it! You sing it too!)

Going Green

I am attempting to go green. Well, maybe not totally green, but I'm trying to make my little corner of the world a little bit greener. I bought two "green" grocery bags at the store today. I was actually really excited by this. The bags hold a lot more than I thought they would. We took a bunch of plastic bags to the recycling drop off in the store, and grabbed two of the green bags. My plan is to buy a couple more green bags each trip. They cost $1.50 a piece. But anything that reduces the number of plastic bags out there has to be good, right?

I mean, we just emptied out the big pile of plastic bags before Christmas, and we're up to a mountainous level again! I try my hardest to use them over again, whether for cleaning up after the dog, lining the little garbage cans in each room, as lunch bags, but I don't even make a dent in the stack.

An estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. That's 1 million bags used per minute. And, according to the EPA, more than 380 billion of those are discarded in the U.S. Less than 1 percent of those are actually recycled. (the previous infomation was taken from oprah.com)

So I'm going to try out this green grocery bag thing. We already switched to the compact flourescent light bulbs and we're trying to use more rechargeable batteries. I'm not building a windmill in the backyard yet or buying an electric car. But maybe these little steps will help make a difference down the road... especially if other people take little green steps along with me! So how about it? Anyone else out there going green, even in small ways?

Happy Birthday, Jonathan and Nathan!

Today is my nephew Nathan's Birthday. At age 4, he's about 18 months older than Alex. I'm sure as the two of them get older they will be good buddies. His brother Jonathan turned 7 on Saturday, too. The picture to the right shows Jon, Nate, Alex, and Matt. I can't believe how big all the boys are getting. Yes, there are currently 4 grandkids on my side of the family... all boys. We keep hoping to break the streak, even though we love all our boys dearly. We'll just have to see what happens, whoever has the next baby!

Potty Training Plateau

We've reached a potty training plateau at the Hofer house.

Alex decided over Labor Day weekend last year that he wanted to use the potty. My brother Mike and his wife Jen were in town. I think Alex just wanted to impress Uncle Mike. The kid announced he wanted to use the potty and proceeded to go potty and earn about 100 stickers over the course of the weekend.

Well, we've had to increase the rewards (now it's a sticker AND M&M's), switch to pull-ups (while they are more expensive, I don't mind. We don't seem to go through as many as we did diapers), buy "big boy underpants" for the ultimate reward, but we've made little to no progress since then.

My mom even bought one of those "potty ring" deals. You put it on the seat and it makes the opening smaller so little bottoms don't slip through. It has Bob the Builder on it. Alex loves it.

Unfortnately our love affair with the potty ring was short lived. Less than a week after we started using it, Alex slammed the toilet lid on it, the splash guard went in the water, and Alex flushed before Daddy could fish the plastic splash guard out. (As a result, Craig will likely have to remove the toilet from the floor and explore the plumbing, as the splash guard is stuck somewhere between the toilet and the sewer output. Hopefully that repair won't end up being another blog topic!)

If we put him on the potty, he'll go. We've tried to make it a routine. Go first thing in the morning and ask constantly during the day. He simply won't tell us when he has to go. Pee or poop. And as for the "looking for signs..." forget it. This kid will be a fantastic poker player.

I'm not sure how helpful they are being at daycare, either. I know that he sometimes goes in the potty there, but I just don't feel like they're making enough of an effort. I've talked with his teachers, explained that we're working on it, but I think they get too busy with 10 kids in the class to pay as close of attention to that as they need to.

The next trick will be to place clean underwear underneath the pull-up. So he knows what it's like to feel wet. Hopefully he won't like it, forcing him to tell us when he has to go. It won't be fun, but it may just do the trick.

Friends

I've seen a lot of my local friends this week. For the longest time, I felt like it was hard to make friends here in Milwaukee. After a few years, that changed though. I made really good friends with a couple of people I worked with. Then good friends from the Quad Cities moved up here, so that was an instant friend! EASY! I joined a FABULOUS book club full of strong women.
Met some more great people through work. Changed jobs, kept up the friendships with the old work buddies, and have even made a couple of new work buddies. I feel really lucky to have such a great circle of friends.

Thursday nights a group of girls from the TV station and me get together to watch "Grey's Anatomy." Unfortunately, because of the writers strike, we're out of new episodes. So we've decided to keep getting together anyway, and we're going to make it a game night. I'm really excited about this, because I like playing games almost as much as I like reading... which is a lot.

I've also managed to keep up with the book club friends pretty well. We're getting together for dinner tomorrow night at my new favorite restaurant, Guadalupe. It's going to be so great to see them!

I also love hearing from all my friends scattered across the country. I hope you're all enjoying the blog. I hope some of you will be inspired to start your own, or drop me an email or post a comment. Friendship is such an amazing gift, and I feel really blessed to have as many great friends as I do.

Catching Up

We are enjoying a weekend of catching up as a family. We slept in today. Well, Alex got up at 2AM and 6AM. At 6AM, I brought him into bed with Craig and I, and we all managed to get about 2 1/2 more hours of sleep. It was glorious!

We've had a semi-lazy day. Vacuumed, went to the grocery store, we're heading to Kohl's in a little bit to get Alex some new gym shoes. Then tonight the three of us are planning to go to dinner at Maggiano's. YUM! It's nice to spend so much time together after the craziness of the last couple of weeks.

My presentation went great! Everyone liked what I have in the website so far. We're shooting to launch it in the middle of February. I'll post the link in here, so everyone can check out my work.

I started a new book last night. It's called "The Friday Night Knitting Club." A total chick book, which I need after the last couple of books I read. Both were pretty heavy subject matter, so I consider this one a cleansing of my mind.

Stress and Nerves

I have a big presentation in front of a group of relative strangers tomorrow. I've been tapped to fill a pre-created website with content for an initiative to get Milwaukee list as a healthy city.

I've never met the people on this panel, but they send snarky emails sometimes. I'm pretty new to all this converting of files and creating/building of webpages. Go ahead, put me down because I don't know how to make a JPG from the PDF you sent me. Obviously you put the picture in the PDF somehow. How hard is it to send me the original file?

But I digress... I don't want to win an award for crabbiest new blogger of the year. Just wish me luck. That's all I need!

I did get to work out today. I ran on the ellipitcal for 35 minutes. My legs are sore, as it's been over a week since I had time to do any sort of physical activity. My goal is to go again tomorrow. I'm sure I'll need to relax after showing off weeks worth of work to a room full of critics.

Off to get some sleep! This lovely presentation is at 730 tomorrow morning! EEK!