Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

I Got Another Award! I Am So Cool!

Hi everyone! Its late and I don't have too much to say right now. Plus I have a bad stomachache because of JIMMY! LOL... just kidding,.. it is only partially his fault because he brought me a big old glass of chocolate milk, which I cannot resist, despite the fact that I am lactose intolerant! As soon as I took a sip of that stuff, I could already feel my stomachache coming on. But I went ahead and chugged it, like an idiot! Then I told Little Bear that Jimmy was trying to kill me, and Little Bear ran up the stairs shouting, "Jimmy, how could you try to kill Nicki!"

At any rate... the award I got is the Friendly Blogger Award, and it was passed along to me by Corrie from Just Because My Pickle Talks Doesn't Make Me An Idiot. Corrie is a new blogger friend of mine, who I met back in October when Tanya from Teen Autism gave me the Lemonade Award! I love getting awards! The hardest part of getting awards, though, is choosing people to pass it along to. I read a pretty small circle of blogs, so I'm pretty sure there are a handful of bloggers that I just keep foisting awards upon!

At any rate, I think I am going to give this Friendly Blogger Award to Tanya, because she is one of the most friendly bloggers I've met! She is very friendly to me... she always comments on my posts, she ordered one of my books, and she helped out my young friend Tory who was raising money for foster care. She's also friendly to the rest of the world. She often finds herself in a position where she must advocate for her son, Nigel, who has autism. But she grasps this opportunity to make the world a little more friendly, for Nigel and for others with special needs, by being friendly and explaining autism to others. So, Tanya, sorry to do this to ya, but here is the Friendly Blogger Award!

I looked up the rules to this award. It was hard to do, since apparently most bloggers no longer post the rules for this! But I thought I'd do it. Here are the rules I found:

1. Take a Photo or install one now .
2. Do not change clothes,do not trim the hair, the main image is to be captured (we want to see the real you...he..he..) .
3. Post a picture that is in edit.
4. Post these instructions (required).
5. Tag people to show appreciation to them that touch your heart because of their friendly attitude (required).

 So, here is the most recent picture of me...

That is me and Pufferfish on a flying ride at the pumpkin farm! It was taken just a few days ago! Pufferfish looks so happy, doesn't she?

OK! That is all! I will see you tomorrow!
 

We Made It Friday Showcase: Glow In The Dark Paintings!

I've been mysteriously missing from We Made It Friday Showcase for quite a few weeks... first because I didn't have Internet access at home, and then because I was just too busy. But here I am, excited to show you the glow in the dark paintings we made for our Outer Space Week! I bought Tulip brand glow in the dark fabric paints. They're meant for fabric, obviously, but they also worked very well on construction paper! You have to hold these paintings up to a light for a few seconds, and then they glow very well. These pictures, though, were taken in daylight.

Little Bear made this one...

and this one, which is a little harder to see...

Pufferfish made this one, which is much harder to see. It still glows at night though.

What do you think of that?

 
 
 

When Life Hands You Lemons...

OMG, everyone, I've gotten a blogging award from Tanya over at Teen Autism! This award is given to bloggers who seem to have a great attitude and make the best of things! Tanya is one of my favorite blogger friends... I wish I could give the award back to her! (But then she'd have to find ten more people to give it to, and that might be a lot of work!) I am very honored to have this award, and I know tons of other bloggers who should get it! It's going to be hard to choose ten, but here it goes...

1. Makenna And Camille!  I first found this blog when I was looking for information on CHARGE Syndrome, because I was scheduled to work at the CHARGE Syndrome Conference. I actually met Makenna, who is a sweet and spunky eight year old and an excellent big sister as well, at the conference, and I've been following this blog ever since. Makenna's mother is working hard to ensure that CHARGE Syndrome doesn't prevent Makenna from living a full life and having lots of adventures!

2. PADS Chicago! This is one most of you probably haven't come across. Some of you may know that I was homeless for several years, and I often stayed at a local overnight shelter called PADS. This blog is by a woman who stays at PADS now. She writes about homelessness, what causes it and what it causes, and how everyday people can reach out to homeless people.

3.Asperger Square 8. Bev is an adult with Aspergers Syndrome. She writes extensively about human rights for people with autism. You may or may not agree with her opinions on how some agencies that claim to help people with autism actually hurt them. But you'll definitely enjoy the eye-opening, truthful videos she creates to show how absurdly many people view and treat those with autism!

4. The Quirk Factor: Resistance Is Futile! This mom blogger writes about her spirited little boy, Jaysen, who has PDD_NOS. Not long ago, their entire house burned down, and it also caused their car to blow up! This little family was displaced for a while, but they stuck together and managed to get through it and make a normal life for themselves again!

5. Stimeyland! This SAHM has her hands full with three very spirited and adventurous little guys, one of whom has autism! Stimey amuses the world with her stories of her boys and their antics. In the summer I always enjoy reading about Camp Stimey, where she creates her own little summer camp to provide structure, stimulation and fun for the boys while they're out of school.

6. Baggage And Bug! I probably pass an award along to this blogger every chance I get, because I love her blog so much! Baggage is my hero! Battling depression, anxiety, ADHD, and physical illness might cause some people to hide away in their homes and spend their lives watching TV under a quilt... but not Baggage! She instead chose to open her home, by adopting one "hard-to-place" kid from foster care and providing a wonderful foster family for several others. Baggage has definitely been through her share of trials and tribulations... but her love for Bug, Bubba, Snowbaby and the other children she cares for seems to carry her through.

7. Zip 'n' Tizzy! The nicknames of these two little boys, ages 5 and 3, illustrate how nutty this household can get! But who can help falling in love with these sweet, funny little boys... and with TIzzy's best buddie, Doggie!

8. The Karianna Spectrum! Here's another mama raising little boys, one of whom has autism. The Cat and Spliggle are definitely a couple of little characters! I've loved reading this blog and watching these two awesome boys grow! The Cat, especially, has changed so much in the past few years, as he's learned more and more how to control his own behavior and to navigate the social world of primary school!

9. Big Blueberry Eyes! This blog is named for Kayla, whose beautiful eyes have been described this way. Kayla, who has Down Syndrome, has a little brother named Lucas, a mother who loves her like crazy, and a daddy (who also loves her like crazy, of course) who is in the AIr Force and is currently deployed.

10. Gabi's World!  Shannon blogs about life in her big, happy blended family... which includes Gabi, a sweet kid with Down Syndrome who also has a huge fear of lawnmowers, a silly sense of humor, and a sneaky sense of mischief!

Okay, thats my ten people!

It actually took me twenty-four hours to finish this post because I had to keep stopping to do other things... and now that I am hitting "Publish" I'm sure it will take me another twenty-four hours to go to everyone's sites and tell them I've given them the award... but its worth it! :)

We've Enrolled In Tot School!

It seems like, in the past, I've planned most of our activities with Little Bear in mind. Pufferfish has just been a tag-along, participating however she could in the things that Little Bear did. But Pufferfish is getting bigger now, and she's so smart. I thought that, now that Little Bear is in school all day, I could start focusing more on activities for Pufferfish.

So I was browsing the Internet searching for ideas for projects to do with toddlers, and I stumbled upon Tot School! Tot School is the brainchild of Carisa, who mainly blogs at 1+1+1=1. She came up with a way of, basically, beginning to homeschool her toddler, and she also came up with a way for others to share the things they do with their tiniest "students." Every Sunday, participants link up to the Tot School blog.

And this brings me to my first Tot School post!

Our theme for this week was Transportation, but I also decided to introduce Pufferfish to a Letter Of The Week... an idea I borrowed from No Time For Flashcards. So on the first day, I got a yellow posterboard and cut out a giant letter A, so I could, literally, introduce it to Pufferfish.

 

The A basically hung out with us all week. It played Hide And Seek with all of the kids the other day (they took turns hiding it) but mostly it just lounged around. Here it is sleeping in Pufferfish's doll's bed!

 

That first day, we made Alligator A's, an idea I also stole from No Time For Flashcards, 

 

I also free-handed this picture of an Ant, which Pufferfish colored while I told her the Letter A story from Jolly Phonics. (I remember the stories for a few of the letters from when I worked in a school, but I'm gonna have to check out the book from the library soon to find out the rest!)

 

As you can see, Pufferfish got a little crazy with the googly eyes here!

Another day, we focused  more on our transportation theme. We used toy cars and paint to make tire tracks on paper, and then we had a mini-carwash so the girls could wash the paint off their cars. (Tigerlily spent that day with us, so she got a healthy dose of Tot School too!)

 

 

Two of the cars, which I got from the Dollar Store, came with a little roll-out road mat that you could drive cars on, so the girls played with that for a while too.

Then, revisiting our A theme, we glued Cheerios onto paper to form A's!

 

Today I was feeling kind of sick, and Pufferfish was cranky, so it was more of a lazy day. I did teach Pufferfish a version of Red-Light-Grreen-Light. I cut out a green circle and a red stop sign, and Pufferfish ran across the living room, running when I held up the green circle and stopping when I held up the stop sign! she caught on pretty quick... although when it was her turn to hold the circles, she had more trouble, because she kept on holding them both up!

I also made some construction paper stencils. Here's a truck Pufferfish colored with a truck stencil I made...

 

and one she watercolored with an A stencil.

But most of the day, I spent trying to get her to lay in bed with me while I read her as many stories as she wanted!

So that concludes the first week of Tot School! Not bad, considering I threw the week of activities together with stuff I aleady had around the house! Next week we're going to learn about farms and the letter B!

Commercial Break: Check Out ShopWiki

The school year has started, and since Little Bear and Rafael are in school most of the day now, I've been lookin for some extra kids to take care of along with Pufferfish! As it is, I watch Rafael every day after school. And I might have two-year-old twin girls coming once a week, starting next week! Tigerlily joins us too, once in a while. It would be really nice to find just one more kid, maybe a three or four year old, to watch full-time.

Anyway, if I start watching more kids, I thought I might use some of the money to buy some extra toys to put out. I'd probably stash them away, and take them out only during child care hours, to make them more exciting and enticing for Little Bear and Pufferfish. I'd especially like to find a few "boy toys" for Rafael, who is the only boy in the house under the age of 12, and who often feels surrouned by girls!

I started looking on Shopwiki for some new toys and games, and I found some good ones! I liked the Chase And Race game, which seems a little like Candy Land but more fast-paced for slightly older kids, and the I Spy Eagle Eye game. Great choices to keep Little Bear and Rafael busy after school!  I also found a whole bunch of different kinds of blocks and building sets, which I think would be perfect gender-and-age-neutral toys for all of the kids to play with together. I also looked at some toy chests, organizational items and furniture for the playroom. I'd love for Pufferfish to have a little rocking chair like the one she loves to sit in at the library. And I love those interactive rugs like you sometimes see in day care centers and preschools! Finally, I checked out heir extensive offering of children's books

The cool thing about ShopWiki is that they don't get paid for selling the items. They get paid for showing ads on the site. So, they dispay just about everything on the Internet... .not just the products that givee them kickbacks for selling them!

Anyway, I'll have to see how much money I end up making, before I start counting my proverbial chickens. But if I am able to afford a few extra things, I'll definitely be returning to ShopWiki!

Vote for my wish!

Just a quick note... I've made a wish on Greedyorneedy.com! If enough people vote for it, I could win $100 towards my trip to the CHADD Conference! There's only three days left to vote for this month, so if you get a chance, please check out my wish and vote for me! Thanks!

Things I Love Thursday: Yoga For Kids!

A few weeks ago I participated in Things I Love Thursday. I really liked reading about what everyone else loved... and I even won the Little Debbie 100 Calorie Snack Cake Giveaway! What could be better than that?
So I thought I'd do it again today.
A few weeks ago I was doing a "healthy bodies" theme with Little Bear and Pufferfish. We never actually finished our theme week, because it was during moving week so everything got chaotic and crazy! Anyway, the other day I was fishing through my backpack, and I found this DVD I had ordered for our healthy bodies week. Its called Yoga Kids! Its geared for kids between the ages of three and six, and it guides them through fun yoga movements in alphabetical order.
Pufferfish mostly enjoyed watching the animals on the DVD, but Little Bear really liked doing the yoga! Her mom used to do yoga sometimes, so Little Bear knew what it was. She dragged the crib mattress into the back room to use as a "yoga mat", and she did yoga until lunch time!

Here is Little Bear doing one of the yoga poses.

Little Bear tries out an enthusiastic "ohm!"

Which brings us to another addition of "things I never imagined myself saying...":
"We do not punch each other while we're ohm-ing!"

Things I Love Thursday

I'm kind of in the mood for a meme today, and I found this one called Things I Love Thursday, so I thought this might be the perfect time to share my newest obsession.
For some odd reason, I've always loved going to new grocery stores. Throughout my childhood, my mom always grocery shopped at the same few chain grocery stores... Cub Foods, Dominick's, and Jewel. Whenever we'd go on vacation, I loved seeing what other grocery stores existed in different parts of the country! I have no idea why this is. I guess when I was a kid, the northwest suburbs were my world, and it was just amazing to me that other people existed every single day and did their grocery shopping in completely different grocery stores!
Every summer we'd go way up north in Wisconsin, to Manitowish Waters. We would do all of our grocery shopping at a small, local grocery store. I was absolutely fascinated by its' existence!
Anyways, when I grew up, I continued to shop at the same old grocery stores that my mom had shopped at when I was a kid. But we recently moved to a different town, and I discovered a special local secret... Mr. Z's grocery store!
Its a lot like the tiny grocery store I used to go to in Manitowish Waters... its been open forever, and hasn't changed much at all in at least the last thirty years or so! The aisles are much narrower than in a regular grocery store, and there's a general small-townish feeling about it.
The first time I took Little Bear, Tigerlily and Pufferfish there, it was because we were on our way to the new house (before we actually lived there) and I needed some baby wipes right away! Its such a small store, I was able to get through the store, grab the baby wipes, and get to the checkout in a matter of minutes.
As we checked out, the cashier asked me if she could give the kids some stickers. I said "of course," thinking that she would give the kids some of those little round stickers that they put on the caps of milk jugs to prove that you've paid for the milk. But the lady walked over to the service desk, and came back with three sheets of very cool, shiny animal stickers! She gave one to each of the kids. It made their day, and turned an ordinarily pain-in-the-butt errand into something really special for them!
After that, I decided that I was going to try to give Mr. Z's my grocery shopping business as much as possible. I appreciate the fact that its a small, non-chain grovery store that has managed to stay open all these years, even while other similar stores have shut down!
So the next time I needed some food, I brought Little Bear, Tigerlily, and Pufferfish to Mr. Z's again. This time, they were delighted to push their own tiny carts around the store (although I had to holler at them fifty million times to slow down and try not to run people over!) This definitely kept them from being bored and whiny during our grocery shopping!
Finally, in the front of the store, I spotted something that reminded me of my own childhood. They have a machine where, for a quarter, a chicken will lay a plastic egg, with a surprise inside it! The chicken makes a loud cackling sound as it lays the egg. I hadn't seen one of those since I was about five years old!
I gave each of the girls a quarter, and they happily bought plastic eggs from the chicken.
I think Mr. Z's has their loyalty as much as it has mine!
I love you, Mr. Z's! Please, please, please don't ever shut down!

The Play Room

I have been missing the We Made It Friday Showcase lately, and I really wanted to post something for it this week! But, with the move and all, we really haven't had time to do any arts and crafts.
However, we have been working on putting together the play room in the new house! Its pretty cool! All the kids' toys will be in there, and since there are no beds, there is a lot more space to store stuff and play! I've been trying to make it easy for the kids to find their toys and also for them to clean up their toys! Here's a sneak preview of what we've been doing.

One of the problems at the old house was that the girls had so many stuffed animals, and no where to put them. We had them up in a net, but the kids always wanted to play with their animals and would knock down the net trying to get them down! So Diana got this cool laundry hamper to store stuffed animals in. Little Bear helped me put it together. She actually did very well at figuring out where all the poles went, and she was the one who figured out... on her own... how to put on the wheels and how to attach the nets! It was a nice little project... and look how great it works at holding all their stuffed animals!

Here is the neatly organized closet, with easy access to games and Legos! I forgot to take pictures of the bins we have, but we do have plastic bins along the edges of the room. One stores toy food, one stores dress up clothes, one stores Barbies, and two store all of Pufferfish's random toys and busy boxes and stuff. I am making picture labels for the bins so that the kids will easily be able to see what goes where! We also have a book shelf which I hope to fill up with even more books over the summer when we do all of our reading programs!

Diana found these stick-on chalk board panels at the Dollar Store! Can you believe it? We had been thinking of painting a wall with chalkboard paint, but this works out even better... and I can always get more panels if they want them!

Finally, we got these stick-on letters and flowers at the Dollar Store too, to make a very cool design to greet everyone who walks into the room! I love the Dollar Store!

We still have to put up all of their posters and pictures, and our art wall is going to be in this room also. Isn't it cool?
Anyway, stay tuned for another blog post soon! Little Bear and Pufferfish and I are going to take a tour of the fire station tomorrow!
See ya then!

Its Potty Time!

Its time for another Parent Blogger Network Blog Blast! This time, they and the people with Pull-Ups are looking for some potty training stories!
Well, this comes at a pretty timely manner, because Pufferfish is just about ready to start potty training. She actually has one of those tiny little potties in the bathroom, and she's used it a few times. There was one time that she was in the bathtub, and she kept telling Diana that she had to go potty. Finally Diana took her out and set her on the potty, and she peed!
But apparently it was a fluke.
If someone else has to go to the bathroom, Pufferfish will also claim that she has to go. But a lot of the time she'll just sit on her little potty for all of three seconds, and then say that she's done, and run to flush the toilet.
Mostly, its all about flushing the toilet!
Everyone has different ways of potty training kids. My mom claims that she potty trained my brother and I by spending hours in the bathroom with us, reading stories to us and doing ABC activities as we sat on the potty. (She also says thats how I learned to read, at age two... from those countless potty-training hours!) A lot of other people like to try sticker charts and other rewards. Some kids just seem to figure it out on thier own by watching their parents or siblings.
I've just checked out the Potty Project site and it looks pretty useful! They have video blogs of six families that are actually trying to potty train their children right now, and they have a lot of articles and tips on getting the big job done, including a screener to help you figure out what stage of potty training your child is in, andcustomized progress charts.
I'm glad this site is here now, since Pufferfish is in the very beginning stages of potty training. I'm sure it will come in useful!