Jingle Bells

Adelyn is very proud of these jingle bells that she brought home from MDO and her favorite thing to do of course is to take them off of the handle and shake them while singing her favorite tunes. These bells are hanging on our pantry door (nice benefit of hearing when the pantry is opened haha...like if you know your husband is sneaking the best goodies).  

These are made with yarn, white glitter/sprinkles, egg crates, and 3 jingle bells (hidden under the egg crates).

• Poke a hole in the bottom of the 3 egg crates and turn upside down.
• Tie one jingle bell to one end of the yarn.
• String the yarn through 1 egg crate
• Pick a spot further down the yarn for the second bell and egg crate.
• Tie yarn to jingle bell and then put egg crate on top.
• Pick your last spot for the last jingle bell and tie to yarn.
• Put last egg crate on top.  
• Pick a spot in the yarn to make a knot for the loop.

Brushing Little Teeth

This is a video of Adelyn singing "aaahs" to the tune of the ABC's while I brushed her teeth.  This great idea comes from one of a kind, Tricia Eilers, MT-BC.  She showed me the wonderful trick of  singing "ahh" sounds to get a toddler to keep his or her mouth open while brushing teeth. I had been singing to her myself which worked sometimes but she still closed her mouth at times while listening.

In this video Adelyn is singing an "ah" sound to the tune of the ABCs and also singing an "ee" sound while putting her teeth together while she imitates me singing the solfege Do Mi Sol Mi Do and another vocal exercise (just for fun!)  Be ware, I wobbled on the pitch a couple of times.  

Worked really well for us.  Just pick their favorite song and sing a few ahhs and ees.  Thanks Tricia!

Minds Affecting Outcome

Happy New Year 2013!  

Every January that tradition of "new years resolutions" comes to mind and sometimes conversation and every year I have plenty of things come to mind that I would like to do better. In the midst of all of the election business, devastating news, my death row pen pal's execution and my own thoughts about how minds and habits work, I recalled the other day an event from my sophomore year at Sam Houston.  It reminded me of how our minds play an important role on the outcome of our success. 

My sophomore year was coming to an end. I had just finished my first two music therapy classes, Intro to Music Therapy and Psychology of Music.  I had also finished another year of piano lessons, performance classes, and also a concert and piano finals (juries). 

 Along with me in the piano studio, was a graduating senior by the name of Emily.  I knew her as an excellent piano performance major who's fingers could fly across the piano a hundred times faster and accurately than my own. I am not entirely sure how she saw herself but I did know that before any type of performance or audition she was absolutely sick to her stomach.  I myself was no expert at calming nerves before any type of performance.  I knew how it was to go out there and mess up on notes that I had down in the practice room or just plain forget stuff that I had thought I had well memorized, not to mention sweating hands on the keys. 

The time had come for us at the end of that year, to have our very last piano performance class, a class where we played our pieces for each other.  During this last class we were just discussing the year and Emily announced to us that she had figured out how to not be sick before a performance.  Excited and eager to hear her response we sat on the edge of our chairs in anticipation for the advice she was about to give.  "I figured out how to not be sick by telling myself that I don't have to be sick". We stared at her. What? Really? That's the best advice you have for us? I thought to myself.  By the looks of a couple of others in the room I could tell they were thinking similar thoughts. She went on to tell us about how she realized that she did so much better when she told herself that before performances and focused on that thought. 

I didn't get it.  I knew that when I was little, say maybe 9 or 10, I learned that if I was grumpy or in a bad mood when trying to study or accomplish a skill in sports, I did not do well. I learned then that attitude did have an affect on success. But at the time of Emily giving us her grand advice I did not understand how just telling herself that simple line could make such a big difference. 

Over the next two years though, her grand advice turned out to be extremely grand and helpful.  Not at first though. I went through another piano jury where I butchered something that had sounded really good before all because of nerves. I didn't practice enough, I thought to myself.  I should have done this this and this instead. And maybe I should have but I learned later that those things were not my biggest problem.  I thought about Emily's words more and more over each semester after that whether it was for piano, conducting, test taking, facilitating sessions and behavior modification, and presentations.  Through each of these events it made more and more sense.  In piano specifically, I told myself almost arrogantly (because I really had to in order to do the best I could), "I don't have to be nervous.  This is going to be fun. I'm going to do great. So what if there's a lot of people, that's the fun part. This does not have to be nerve racking. I'm a great piano player. Even if I'm not the best, I'm still good. I have great musicality. I have evidence of these things because I heard myself succeed in the practice rooms and my professor told me these things". These words over and over accompanied with simple deep breaths, 4 seconds in and 4 out, I succeeded far better than I had in the past. 

I realized though that this can apply to any area of our lives just as it applied to so many of my subjects.  We can do anything we want to in life.  If you have a great interest in something what is stopping you from it? There are even great runners in the Olympics run with two prosthetic legs. So is it our thoughts that stop us? There are sometimes real physical and mental limitations, but we just have to verify, "Is there REALLY something valid stopping me from doing this or succeeding?  Or is it just my own thoughts?" 

I need to find Emily and thank her. I hope her own advice has helped her as much as it helped me.

Alphabet Hide and Seek

I have two great friends who started the "No Time for Flashcards" series with their children last year which inspired me to do it with Adelyn this year since she turned 2 1/2 in September.  We have made letters through H which are hanging in a line above our TV upstairs.  I have not yet taken the time to get a good photo of our fun letters but hopefully I'll get that done soon so I can post it as well.  A couple of weeks ago we decided to review the letters we learned by playing Alphabet Hide and Seek.  

Hide and Seek is one of Adelyn's very favorite games right now so this was very motivating for her (and actually I still LOVE playing hide and seek so I also had a blast.)  We picked a letter to hide and then we both took turns hiding and seeking the selected letter. I hid the letters in very simple and semi-obvious spots for my little toddler, to make the challenge achievable.  Adelyn still has not correctly recalled all of the names of the letters we have made, like many two year olds, so this easy set up was great for learning the names of one letter at a time.

For older kids you could probably hide several letters, make the hiding spots more challenging, or even try to hide it on something that starts with the same letter (that may be for 5-7 year olds).  

When you play just remember to set an alarm in case you lose track of the time :) haha. That did not really happen but we sure had fun!!

Home Made Stockings

I have been trying to finish my kids' stockings for the past...mmm 4 years. Guess what?! They are finished!! Every year they had one more thing on them. Last year Adelyn's did not have a cuff and Zachary's cuff was pinned on.  Every year I waited to work on them until advent started so that was part of my problem. I am definitely a very in-experienced seamstress and these stockings are far from perfect or professional looking!  I am hoping though that the kids will not mind and know that they were definitely made with a lot of love. The embroidery on Zachary's stocking that I tried did not exactly turn out. You can make out the word but I think I'll try painting it instead.  :) 

I'm not very good at explaining sewing and I didn't take pictures for each step but here's a quick review. 

• I used Scott's stocking as a pattern and traced it onto foam which I them traced onto fabric 2x. I traced 2x onto a piece of white fabric also. 
• Each piece of the stocking, the front and the back with the penguin, is sewed to a white piece, with batting in between the white piece and penguin piece. i them sewed those two pieces together with the white sides facing out.
• I turned it right side out before sewing the cuff. I'm not even sure if I can explain how to sew the cuff on but I'm sure there are plenty of You Tube explanations out there. Not my forte, but I just wanted to share my success that took more years than I anticipated. 

There was a lot of learning that went with this project but it was fun knowing that this was something the kids would treasure.  I had spent a lot of time picking the fabric hoping they would like it. They were really excited when I finished them and were perfectly happy with the fabric. I think they were just so happy that I had made them a stocking.

As parents we know that we want to be the absolute best we can possibly be to our children and hope as a result of this, that we have given them everything they need to function in our society independently when the become adults.  We also want to love, nurture and enjoy them every day that we are with them and hope that when they look back at their childhood they are filled with positive .  To get to this result we search among friends, family, books, internet sites, speakers and more to improve ourselves and the way we parent so we can reach the ultimate family life we dream of. None of us reach perfection but hopefully we are building healthy family lives and a community that all are proud to be a part of. 

Many of us while growing up, were fortunate to get experience in observing adults raise their own kids through resources such as family, friends or babysitting.  I also feel so fortunate that I had the experience in researching and learning in college before I got married and became a mother.  Without that background I may have been completely over my head in reading materials trying to quickly learn to cope with all of the parenting behavior challenges. Please except my congratulations to all parents who walk into parenting with little understanding of how behavior works, yet learn to handle their own emotions and learn to use healthy discipline techniques.  Parenting is hard work (if you are a parent, you have figured this out!)  

Over these past 5+ years I have been compiling my own set of beliefs on parenting as all parents do. There are hundreds and hundreds of parenting books out there and we have to figure out which ones to trust and what we think is the most healthy.  

I have read some fantastic books about parenting but I have to say that the book that I have posted a picture of above, Parenting with Love and Logic along with the Optimistic Child by Dr. Martin Seligman which I have previously posted about, (click on emotional health resources)  are the closest to my set of core beliefs that I have developed about parenting and behavior modification. Thank you to my friend Becca for introducing me to the program which she heard about through her MOPS group. In my studies in music therapy at Sam Houston State University, we learned about all forms of therapy and we were encouraged to develop our own beliefs, however we focused on cognitive behavioral therapy.  Parenting with Love and Logic, I believe, has excellent examples of behavior modification and ideas on what makes successful children (or raises the odds of doing so).

The book focuses on building self confidence in our children by teaching them how to make healthy and effective choices.  This book encourages us to teach our children to look at situations with the perception that everything is a choice because that's how life is.  We make hundreds, possibly thousands of choices every day.  If children do not practice the skills of choice making every day while they are young, they will have more difficulty doing so when they get older (and the consequences of mistakes humans make in our teens are much more costly than when they are small children).  We change the perception of situations from "mommy put me in time out/calm down area" to "i chose to go to the time out/calm down area when I made the choice to hit my brother". Sometimes children get to choose between 2 things that are both good.  "Would you like the green shirt or the blue shirt today?"  Sometimes they must choose between following directions or facing the consequence (chosen by the parents).  We teach them that every choice we make has consequences.  

The book has a few analogies to Christian stories, however the meat of this book is very evidence- based and scientific and any religion can benefit from the ideas and techniques in this book. I really believe this can change family life for the best and minimize frustration for all members.  Enjoy!

"The most intimate form of community is family" -Fr. Stephen Payne

ABC Play Doh

We did the good old play doh with alphabet cookie cutters which was the perfect Friday activity for us.  We are reviewing the letters Adelyn has learned so far from our "No Time for Flashcards" art which I still need to post!  I love play doh time and it's so good for fine motor skills (including speech...not only talking about the things they make but also because speech is a fine motor skill and improving all types of fine motor skills assists with speech development in that frontal lobe of the brain)!