Tell Me All Your Thoughts On God

Spirituality is, of course, often a subject of fascination for our kids. It may be difficult to find ways to discuss these issues and keep it on their level, but we do the best we can. It's really cool when they start asking questions about God or heaven or whatever seems to interest them along those lines.

Heidi and I are both very spiritual people and we both grew up in Christian churches - hers was fundamentalist Christian and mine was Baptist - but we're not regularly attending any particular church right now. At some point we both think it might be good to get involved with one again (neither fundamentalist nor Baptist, though) and to expose Anna to more structured spirituality - though in a less rigid way than we were. We want her to learn about diverse points of view and come to her own conclusions because we feel that leads to the most genuine kind of belief and faith.

Photo from dreamstime.com

Deep Thoughts

No, not "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey. ;)  I'm talking about the most fascinating of all deep thoughts:  toddler deep thoughts. Some of them are completely random. They may make no sense. They may make eerily perfect sense. They may come from a place so deep and profound inside your child that perhaps you didn't know it existed.

Wherever they come from, they sure are intriguing.

I think my deepest thoughts while I have some "uckles"

Friday Fun: Anna's Snuggly Friends - A Photo Essay

I was a collector and hoarder of stuffed animals as a child. I absolutely loved them and kept many of them through my teenage years. So, understandably, I get it that Anna loves stuffed, snuggly friends and I often buy them for her.

Perhaps this is my little reminder to myself NOT to buy Anna any more, at least for the time being, because it’s clear she already has more friends than any kid needs.  Here are some of Anna’s friends in these first 3 years:

The Gender Divide, Part 2: Superhero Butt

In a previous post, The Gender Divide, I discussed the sharply delineated pink and blue aisles at toy stores and the resulting, prevailing attitudes that girls should like dolls and princesses and boys should like cars and trucks and soldiers.

Now, with the advent of intense potty training, we’ve hit a new iteration of this problem:  big kid underwear.

Teach Your Children

Returning to our series about researchers’ most important skill areas for parents, we come to #5 on the list, education and learning.  It’s probably obvious to everyone that it’s important to “promote and model learning” and to “provide educational opportunities” for our kids.  What is interesting to me here is the variety of views out there about how best to go about accomplishing this.

One debate revolves around whether flash cards are useful or not. I will save thorough discussion of that for another post, but I will say that even though hands-on learning is best, I do think flash cards have their place too. Anna really enjoys them and has gotten quite good at connecting pictures with letters.

I Want My Fish Back!

We stared at the mess on Anna’s floor, mouths agape. Anna had slept in our bed the night before (something we’re STILL working on, but I’ll save that for another day) and we just woke up. Sleepy-headed, we left our room, directly across from Anna’s, but quickly stopped in our tracks, facing her doorway.

Gravel. Water. Fish Bowl. The mess was all over Anna’s bedroom floor.  My tired eyes tried to process the carnage before me.