Category Archives: growing up

7 Minutes in Heaven

Katherine Gets Crafty

One day during my lunch last week I was browsing blogs when I came across this post about Family Rules from the Pleated Poppy. I’m not gonna lie, I spent the next 40 minutes looking at each and every rule board and I was completely inspired. It was then and there I decided that while Andy was gone over the weekend, I would make my very own “Rice Family Rules”.

I started thinking about the rules I wanted to use and it didn’t take me long. There are some very basic principles Andy and I live by and have started instilling in the little Monster. I was also able to pick up some good ideas by looking at the other Rule Boards I found online. I chose to come up with 13 rules for 2 very deliberate reasons. First, 13 is Andy’s lucky number and it’s also the day we were married.

Friday durning my lunch I hit up Michaels for a canvas. I left with 2 canvases (what!? they were BOGO). And some paper. And some paint brushes. Oh and some scrapbook letters. On the way home from work I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a bottle of wine. After Ry hit the sack I poured myself a glass, busted out my supplies and got to work.

Then only to realize that I had left my rules at work. FAIL! I started with a base coat on the canvas and called it a night.

The next morning Ry and I headed in to town to pick up my rules. During her nap I made quite a bit of progress. That evening I finished it up.

Aside from some bubbling, I am really happy with the way it turned out. The best part about it all? When Andy got home Monday night, he stopped, read all the rules and yelled to the kitchen, “Did you make this?” Obviously I replied with a yes. Then he responded “Huh, that’s cool. I like it. Good job Wife.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be but I love that he likes it!

I hung up the Rice Family Rules right next to the front door as a nice reminder each day as we leave our home of how we should live our life.

In case you can’t read all the rules:

Put family first
Be thankful for your blessings
Remember your manners
Say please and thank you
Laugh often – especially at yourself
Think of others
Lend a helping hand
Do the right thing – even when others don’t
Be honest – no matter what
Don’t just hear…LISTEN
Be yourself
Smile & have fun
Work hard, always do your best, never give up

I need a weekend from my weekend.

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This last weekend was the busiest, most exhausting and most fulfilling weekend I have had in quite a while. And, really, I feel kind of bad saying that considering the fact that Andy was gone the entire time. I am not even kidding when I say that it’s Wednesday and I am still recovering. So much went on this weekend that I need seperate posts for each of our adventures! So, get ready for some major blog reading this week…especially since I was pretty neglectful of the Little Miss blog this last week.

First up: Our Adventures in Potty Training -OR- How on Earth did that just happen!?

Yes, my friends. You read that right. And, if you are my friend on Facebook you already saw my post regarding said potty training. I don’t want to jynx it, and I know there will be setbacks, but I think we just potty trained Rylee in 2 days! (ok, mostly 2 days)

I had a really aggressive goal that Rylee would NOT be returning to daycare this Fall wearing diapers. However, since I was not the one home with her all Summer, I didn’t have much control over the potty training…or lack thereof. Andy’s view was: She’ll do it when she’s ready. My view? Let’s lose the diapers already! By mid-August, I was getting pretty antsy and to be totally honest, sick of changing the kid’s stinky diapers. I decided to take matters into my own hands. Ry and I went to Target, bought some Dora undies and some potty treats (AKA: Peanut Butter M&M’s). On the weekends, when we were home, I would have Ry in her undies and set the timer for every 20 minutes. When the timer went off, we hit the head. That tactic didn’t really work out so hot, but it got the ball rolling. Ry was pooping in the toilet more than she was in her diaper…score 1 for the mama!

This last weekend Ry woke up with a bad cough and a stuffy nose {side note: I now do too. What can I say, she’s a giver}. We decided not to go to the family BBQ we had been planning on all week. Bummer for me, but she didn’t know the difference. Instead, we just hung out around the house. Since we were home, I decided to put her in undies. She was diggin’ it. She had a couple of accidents, but all was well.

Sunday, after we ran a couple of errands in the morning, I put her in undies again. By the afternoon when Auntie Kristen was over, we were outside picking pears when Auntie asked Ry if she had to go potty and Ry replied with a YES! So we ran in the house and she went. This is when things really started to click. I don’t know what happened, it’s just like she all of a sudden got it. She didn’t have an accident all.day.long.

Monday was pretty much gravy. She knew when she had to go and she’d let us know. She did have one accident when she was putting money in her piggy bank. She ran to the bathroom as soon as it happened yelling “I’m leaking!”. Then, that night after I put her in a diaper and her PJ’s on she decided she had to go. Instead of going in her diaper, she ran to the bathroom, pulled off her diaper and sat on the toilet…all by herself! SUCCESS!

Tuesday morning, within seconds of her waking up (still in a diaper) she declared she had to go! And yes, I gave her peanut butter M&M potty treats at 6:45 AM. We sent her to daycare in undies…of course back with 3 extra pair of undies and pants. I am happy to report upon picking her up she was STILL in the pants that I dropped her off in. That’s right ladies and gentlemen…no accidents!

POTTY TREATS FOR EVERYONE!

Stay Tuned For…

Our Adventures in Crafting -OR- How Katherine pretends to be crafty
Our Adventures in Canning -OR- How to completely exhaust yourself in 24 hours
Our Adventures in Self-Dressing -OR- Fashion Police Friday

The Real Truth…

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I finally figured it out. I’ve been racking my brain to figure out how at just over two years old, Little Miss Rylee can count to 13. I now have video evidence of how Andy did it…and how he benefited from it at the same time….sneaky, sneaky man.

Also…can I just say, that at approx. 1:07, I think it is particularly sweet how Ry remembers to say please and thank you while asking for my help. I melt.

In other news…Ry peed in the toilet this weekend! She got potty treats to prove it! However, said potty treats were gone within 30 seconds considering they are Peanut Butter M&M’s.

Benefits of Baby Sign Language (For Once? I WAS RIGHT!)

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When our little niece was about 6 months old, my sister in law started teaching her baby sign language. “That’s kinda cool” I thought and tucked away in my wee brain for future reference. Fast forward 2 years later and I have my own little 6 month old. I proudly announced to Andy that I wanted to start teaching Rylee baby sign language! He was skeptic…to say the least. As a teacher, he had read all kinds of information about how teaching your baby sign language will delay speech. However, I had read my own articles about how if you teach your baby sign language, the more gestures they know by 9 months old, the larger their vocabulary will be by the time they are 4 years old. After seeing how easy it was with my little niece, I decided to go for it. We taught her some of the basic signs: More, all done, please, thank you and eat. She picked it up pretty quickly and used the signs well. Like these ones…

Fast forward to Rylee being about 18 months old and not saying Mama. Or Daddy. Or really anything but DANTE! for that matter. I really began to think that Andy was right…again…damn it.

Now fast forward about another 6 months. After a weekend away from the monster, I came home to Ry yelling “MAMA! MAMA!” After that, it was like the proverbial flood gates had opened and all of a sudden the child was saying things like , “Need help please” and “Mama, done talk daddy?” Things have just mushroomed from there.

Wha?? Where did these complete sentences come from!? Hooray! My kid isn’t completely stupid!! Oh, and that’s right…Andy was W-R-O-N-G!

(But I’m not gloating) (Ok, maybe just a little) (But of course not to him)

Fast forward another 2 months. I get an e-mail from Misty Weaver, the editor of BabySignLanguage.com asking me if I’d be interested in her writing a guest piece for me regarding baby sign language. When I saw that Baby Sign Language and Speech was one of the topic options I immediately thought “uhhh, shyea! (Wayne’s World style, of course)” A couple of weeks later, Misty sent me this article.

So, ~~while I sit back and gloat that for once, I was right~~, please read, learn and enjoy!

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Baby Sign Language and Speech
When I decided to start teaching my Baby Sign Language, well-meaning people told me that teaching my baby to sign would slow down her speech development. Most of them said something to the effect of “Why would she bother to talk if she can sign?”

I am so grateful that I did my own research before I listened to them. The research shows that just the opposite is true: Babies who learn to sign learn to speak at an earlier age than those who do not sign.

Isn’t that great news for parents?

Signing with your baby builds synapses in his little brain! Signing uses both hemispheres of the brain. When your baby hears the word, his left hemisphere is activated. When he sees you sign the word, his right hemisphere is activated. The more you sign, the more neurons are firing!

All babies learn to speak at different ages, and usually, there is no reason to panic if a toddler isn’t talking a blue streak at his second birthday party. But we want our children to be able to communicate for their own sakes. A child who can make himself heard is a happier, less frustrated child.

So why not give them the gift of sign? Linda Acredolo, Ph.D. and Susan Goodwyn, Ph.D., two of the baby signing pioneers, conducted studies which showed that at 24 months of age, signing children had vocabularies of 27 or 28-month-old children. They also found that the 24-month-old signing babies spoke in longer sentences than non-signing children.

When the children involved in their study turned 3, they were speaking at the level of a 4 year old.

Are you ready for the real shocker? At the age of 8, the signing children involved in their study had an average IQ of 114, compared to the average 102 of the non-signers involved in the study.

Marilyn Daniels, Ph.D. found that children who had grown up signing recognized letters and sounds better than non-signers, and that signing children were better spellers, and had larger vocabularies.

Are you ready for another shocker? The children in Daniels’ study who had learned to sign had higher reading levels than those who had not learned to sign.

Educators today are operating on the premise that every child has a specific learning style. Each one of us learns best via one of four ways: audio (by hearing), visual (by seeing), tactile (by using our hands), or kinesthetic (by employing large muscle groups). Teachers are taught to teach to all of these learning styles.

Baby Sign Language targets them all! Your baby hears you say the word. He sees you make the sign. He uses his hands to make the sign. And he can, and usually will, sign while using his large muscle groups. No matter which learning style your baby will grow up to prefer, you have your bases covered! Of course signing helps your baby learn language — how could it not?

So, if you run into the critics, which you will if you sign in public, tell them to do the research. The research will back you up. And your baby will back you up to!