After my last (non-review) whiny post about our lack of a summer, I decided to do something about it. Tornado Dad was headed out to California for a conference, so Tornado Boy and I got a fabulous deal on a timeshare room and we spent 5 days at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA. While we were there we also visited Water Country – the companion water park and also the Virginia Living Museum. It was still really hot, but we just dealt with it and had a wonderful time seeing and learning lots of new things.

After we got back from Williamsburg, we went to visit my in-laws and also Tornado Boy’s great grandmother, whom we call Big Mammaw. She is 92 and is at an assisted living facility. She has been having an increasing number of health issues of late, so we’re trying to see her as much as possible. Tornado Boy also got to see his two cousins while we were visiting. They are some of his favorite people in the whole world. He had a blast playing with them. They worked on showing him more about baseball since he was about to start playing t-ball.

Next up was a trip to New York to see a college friend of mine and her two boys for a few days. We all had a wonderful time together. Tornado Boy really enjoyed having a constant companion for a few days. It was nice to kick back and relax. The highlight for the boys was visiting a space museum. I’m hoping that my friend will share some of her pictures when she gets them loaded from her computer.

On the way back, we visited Tornado Dad who had another work conference going on. We ended up sleeping in six cities over the course of two weeks. Needless to say, we are exhausted! We are thankful to be back home and sleeping in our own beds.

So… right before this two weeks of insanity, I started a medical weight-loss program. Great timing, right? A friend had joined the week before and I opted to do it with her. Well, that produced a major surprise in my life. The program includes a complete physical, blood tests, urinalysis and EKG. When the lab results came back, they revealed that I had a major problem with my thyroid. I visited my regular doctor and have been put on medication for life. I got very little information, so I spent all of my spare time since then reading about hypothyroidism and trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to me. The doctor said that it’s been likely bothering me for a very long time. I had tons of symptoms, but really had no idea that there was something significant going on. I had just chalked them up to the fact that I was getting older and I’m heavy. I’m hoping that the diet plan – which happens to be a good match for my thyroid issues, along with the thyroid medication will help to alleviate a lot of the problems that I was having. Scary news, but hopefully good results.

That, in a nutshell, is what has been going on for the past two weeks. School and t-ball start this week, so hopefully we’ll be able to get back in a routine that includes regular blog posts. I’ve missed it, but I definitely needed the time to do some heavy-duty reading.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Duck At The Door was our “fun” book of the week. The cover illustration caught my eye at the library. Max the duck has decided that he doesn’t want to fly south for the winter. The book tells the story of what happens when Max knocks on Irene’s door. She already has quite the menagerie of pets and she lets Max stay. You’ll have to read the book to see how Max does with the rest of the animals. This book was pretty cute and there are a couple of other books in this series. I think we’ll check out Duck Soup next.

Tornado Boy had camp this past week and he really surprised me on the way in on Monday when he expressed some concerns about not knowing how to make a friend. This struck me as very odd since he’s a really outgoing kid with a pretty strong core group of friends, one of whom was also going to be at camp. I gave him some advice and took his concern to heart. A couple of our picks this week revolved around friendship. The best was the book How To Be A Friend. It’s part of the “Dino Life Guides” series of book and it’s illustrated by the same man who writes the “Arthur” books. This is a good book about friendship. It talks about how to make a friend, deal with conflict, shyness, deal with people in general and how not to be a friend in a kid-friendly manner. It touches on bullies and how to deal with them, too. This book has concrete suggestions and really handles the topic well.

Can I Play Too is also about friendship, but it’s a lot more playful than the other book. We love Mo Willems and we had read several of his books (Knuffle Bunny, Edwina the Dinosaur), but this is the first of the books featuring Elephant and Piggie that we had read. One of the things that I really liked about this book is how expressive it is. It’s simple, but very fun. Elephant and Piggie are getting ready to play catch when Snake appears and wants to play, too. It’s worth reading the book to see how they resolve the issue.

We read a couple of other Elephant & Piggie books as well. They’re cute and short and great for reading when you only have time for a quick story.

Tune in tomorrow to hear about the book Stars, Stars, Stars!

You can find out what other preschoolers are reading this week over at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Tornado Boy gathering his $4 from his bank

Proudly displaying his new Zhu Zhu pet that he helped pay for.

Carefully building a Zhu Zhu house

Learning that his hampster is stronger than he thought.

Tornado Boy is in love. Her name is “Nugget”. After a few weeks of begging (very unusual behavior for him), I relented and let Tornado Boy pick out a Zhu Zhu pet when we saw them in stock today. Since it wasn’t a purchase that I planned to make today, I hadn’t had him get out his money in advance of our shopping trip. I had told him that he needed to save up $4 for a hamster. I could have sworn these things were $7.99 around Christmas time. They’ve gone up to $10, but I didn’t penalize him because I had already told him what his contribution would be. I made him keep it in the packaging until we got home and he could pay for his purchase. I don’t know when I’ve seen him more excited about something. I’m not sure how long his excitement will last, but he’s a very happy boy today and Nugget got a big kiss before bedtime.

My Father-in-law is the one who taught me about the 50% rule. He implemented it when my husband and his brother were kids as a way to make sure that they had a vested interest in their large-ticket purchases. He found that they became much more selective about what they wanted, and that they took better care of the items that they had saved up for. I thought this made a lot of sense and was a brilliant way to teach kids about saving, caring for and valuing their toys.

Up to now, Tornado Boy has had a piggy bank, but we really used it mostly as a learning tool to help teach him about coins – which was which and how much they were worth. We’d put our loose change in it most nights and have him help us by identifying the coins and seeing what was in there. Once it got full, we’d change it out at the Coinstar machine for gift certificates (no fee that way).

We are not giving Tornado Boy an allowance yet. We’re trying to balance the fact that the child is a part of the family and has some basic expectations about how they contribute to the family. Typically, Tornado Boy’s “chores” consist of things like clearing his plate from the table, putting his dirty clothes in the hamper, folding some small towels and cleaning up his own toys. For this particular venture, I paid him to do “extra” or new chores. He did things like help me put away laundry, helping clear out some old plants in the yard and putting away some of the silverware from the dishwasher. He was very excited and asked to help with “my chores”. It was nice to see him really understanding that he was working towards something, rather than just having it be given to him.

I’m not sure when we’ll start giving Tornado Boy an allowance. One of the things that I’m most interested in is seeing if rewarding him can help him to focus and listen better. I’ve got an old Melissa and Doug reward chart that I probably should dig out. It might be worth more to us rewarding good behavior rather than trying to “create” chores for him to do at this point. We’ll see. It is nice to have him understanding the concepts of saving towards an item and contributing to it.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.