My Kids Groove Playlist

My new favorite time of day with the boys is dance time. I love to watch Warner, because he is totally uncoordinated and awkward when it comes to dancing (a gene that I'm afraid comes from my side of the family)  but Busters got a nice groovy, cool bounce that goes right to the beat. 


If you have some tiny tots that you would like to get moving and exercising when the weather is too cold to go outside, I highly recommend an indoor dance party. It's great fun! 

So, without further adieu here are some of my favorites from my Kids Groove playlist.

Kids Groove Playlist

Run Baby Run by Caspar Babypants This song is Buster and Warner's absolute favorite, which makes it my favorite, because it's so stinkin cute to watch Buster do all of the actions. I do the actions with them, P90x style, and its a great 3 minute work out.  How can it not be, when "jump baby, jump" comes right after "run baby, run".  Whew. It works ya. 
I'm Me by Charlie Hope The first time I heard this song I was at a library reading time with the boys, and I knew I had to have it in my life.Warner loves this one, but what little four year old boy wouldn't love a song with snakes and lions and pigs in it?
Butterfly Driving a Truck by Caspar Babypants
My Flea has Dogs by Caspar Babypants
Mr. Rabbit by Caspar Babypants
1234 by Feist 
Twist and Shout by The Beatles   Buster takes the cake for his Ahhhh Ahhh Ahhh Ahh Yeowwww. He can mimic it perfectly. I love it most of the time, accept when he pulls it out when I'm driving in heavy traffic.  It can get a little on the loud side, if your not prepared for it. 
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by Fredrika Stahl Careful with this song, because it's so good that it might melt your face off.  We don't really have this on our kids groove playlist, because it's too mellow for our fast style of dancing, but I thought I'de post it, because I absolutely love it.

What songs do your little tots love to groove to?I would love to hear. Music is best to be shared.

Buster Talk

MVI 0036 from Jessica Brown on Vimeo.

MVI 0063 from Jessica Brown on Vimeo.

Bread!!

So, I've been doing a little experimenting with my diet lately. With the New Year, came a desire as well as a serious need to purge some unhealthy things from not only my life, but the little lives that I care for in this life of mine. So it has begun.  Less sugar. More veggies. Less meat and processed foods. More whole grains and exercise. Nothing extreme, just little by little I've started adding more veggies here, taking out sugar there. Focusing more on plants and less on meats and so on and so forth. My hope is to create some healthy habits for our family that will increase our health and energy in the long run.

It's been a few weeks since I have been doing this experimenting on my family. Trying out meals like THIS 
that are more plant based and less processed.  Surprisingly my family loved ok liked it that one. In summation, it has only been a week or two of this, but I've been seeing some happy results. However, I get the feeling my family is having a hard time with the change of menus.

Case and point: Last night while talking to Jaron on the couch, I all of the sudden noticed him zoning off into the air.  He looked like he was in some sort of craze and started mumbling something softly. Upon closer observation I could make out a few of the words that were leaving his lips:

 "Hamburgers. . . mmmm. . . ribs. . .ohhh. . . roast. . .yes. . .  hot dogs. . . uhhh. . . steak. . . ahhhhh".

Once he noticed I he was being observed, he quickly snapped to and said "Look at me Jess! I'm wasting away to practically nothing!" and then he gave me a most pronounced and glorious frown.

I was not surprised when I called him today at work to find that he was at the local Jack in the Box buying a 99 cent hamburger. 

He escaped the boot camp and indulged.

I can't say I blame him. 

One of the things I have been experimenting with, is going off of gluten products. I thought I would see if it helped my asthma. My asthma has been super bad lately, and I am sick of spending 50 precious bucks a month on my stinkin inhaler. I'm not trying to jump on any band wagons here, or claim to be a celiac, but as it turns I have not used my rescue inhaler once since going off of gluten. I'm not totally solid on the fact that this was a clear cause and effect relationship, but as long as I am wheezy free, I'm happy can learn to live with staying away from the big G.

The lack of bread around here has been a BIG change for our family.  And as yummy as rice, quinoa, beans, veggies and other healthy grains are, it has been a little rough on some of us.

Case and point: Today, I decided to surprise the kids with a treat, a big freshly baked baquet from the local bakery. I brought it home and our home smelled wonderful the minute I stepped foot in the garage door.

Liv, who gets her super-freak-human ability to smell anything and everything from me, was the first person to notice the delicious glutenous aroma that was filling our kitchen and home.  She searched and sniffed until she saw it there lying like a gorgeous chocolate cake on top of  the kitchen counter. 

 "Mom!" she yelled in excitement "Look! It's bread"!  She then lovingly picked up the loaf, sniffed it, closed her eyes and said

"It's . . .  a. . .adorable"

whilst hugging it to her chest tenderly.

I'll keep you posted on how this whole change goes for us.  In the very least hopefully we can get some laughs out of it.

Warner Learns How To Read

The other day, Olivia and I were reading a BOB book together and she was doing really well at sounding out all of the phonetic words. She was taking her time at doing this. I didn't even realize he was there but when she wasn't going quite fast enough on the word "sat", I heard a voice behind us say quickly "sssssat!", before she could finish saying it. 

What the heck?  I looked behind us. There was Warner standing up behind us peering out over our shoulders.

When did you learn how to read kid? I thought it was just a coincidence. Maybe he had read the book with his Dad and had just memorized the shape of the word. So I tested him out on a different BOB book right before his nap a few hours later. We cozied in, and I pointed to the first word. He sounded it out slowly, "Ma ma, o o, pu pu. Ma-ma, o o, pu-pu. Ma-o-pu. Mop!" He sounded each word out until he had slowly read "Mop was a big dog". I couldn't believe it. Warner was reading!

I have always wanted books and words to be important in our family, so Jaron and I started reading to Liv every day at a really young age.  We taught her the alphabet while we read her the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom". I would point to the letters on the back and on the cover and sing the alphabet song with her.  She learned her alphabet. Then I bought this online homeschool program and taught Liv her letters and the phonetic sounds. We worked on it quite a bit. Then after some starfall time, and more reading, and more reading, finally the reading came along.  All this is to say it has been a very conscientious teaching effort on my part to teach her how to read. 

But Warner has not gotten all of the attention that his oldest sister has, for obvious reasons.  Having two was busier than having one, and then right about when he was the same age that Olivia was when I started teaching her letter sounds, Buster was born. 

Thus we see, as my Mother in-law always says, that if we raise our first child well, then she will raise the rest for us. :) I guess Warner has proven this to be true.

Here is a picture of Warner writing. Once again not something I really sat down and taught him, like I did with Liv. At our family reunion last summer Grandpa Paxman made our kids some name blocks out of wood.  I credit those name blocks for teaching Warner how to write.  He gets them out every couple of days and copies the letters of all of our names.Thank you Grandpa Paxman, and thank you Olivia, and thank you Warner for being an observant little lad.

While I was Sleeping

Remember this post that I did four years ago, where I fell asleep nursing Warner and Olivia decided to get creative with the Eucerine cream? Yes, well, it's amazing what four years does to a little girl, because this is what I found her doing after I had fallen asleep with Warner on the couch a couple of weeks ago. Yes she was cleaning. And this is not the first time she has done this without being asked. She had wiped off all of the counters, cupboards, and chairs, and picked up all the toys. I loved my two year old Olivia, but four years later I love her even more, and not just because she's not smearing oily cream all over furniture.

Seen and Heard

Warner to Liv "Olivia, I felt a gold fish cwum go thwough my bwain".

LAUNDRY DAY

And. . .
just because he crawled up to the camera lens and started smiling while I was taking Warner's laundry pile picture, here's a picture of the small kine too.
 

Happy Wednesday

 

Nothing makes my day, like an email from Jen with her bowling stats.

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FROM. JENNIFER

Christmas 2012 Highlights

Christmas Morning with just our family. Opening presents and stockings. Happiness, joy, surprises.


My personal favorite present was found in my stocking from Santa Clause. . .tickets to Les Meserables and with a babysitter all ready to go. Best present ever: a date with the husb to my all time favorite musical.

Tubing with the Packards and Pettibones at a Snoqualmie resort. So fun! Warner was so scared the first time we went down, but he liked it the more we went.

A delicious dinner at Scott and Annette's where we enjoyed wonderful company and wonderful food. We missed Jeremy and Monica though. 

Swimming with the whole family at an indoor pool. Watching Warner's tiny little body run and jump off of the diving board, over and over again flinging his bum out in front of his body the second he gets in the air. Watching Buster float on his back and tranquilly stare up at the ceiling like he had not a care in the world.  Watching all of the kids in line at the diving board ooh and ah as they watch my awesome husband do gainers, back flips, front flips, and swan dives off of the diving board.

Endless amounts of nerf gun wars. The best was when Jaron thought it was a genious idea to sneak into the castle and take cover, whilst shooting all of us through the windows. Warner, who was supposed to be on his team, became a traitor and joined the girls in wasting Dad, who ended up being a sitting duck with his large body in that tiny castle. :) Talk about getting wasted. It was awesome.

Staying up late watching shows with Jaron, adopting the life style of a college student again, staying up late to hang out, and sleeping in. Luckily the kids slept in too.

Having Liv home from school for two whole weeks. I'm going to miss her when she goes back. We all loved having her home all day everyday.

Having nowhere to go, and just generally enjoying the hermit life.

New Year's Eve party at the Reno's. So fun to see old friends from the Park Orchard ward and get to hang out with the Packards one last time. :( 


It was a wonderful Christmas I give it two thumbs up.

One thing that was not a highlight was bringing in the new year with the flu. Not fun. Warner threw up from 10:30pm to 4:30am and just when I thought it was finely time for rest, I heard Buster throw up in his crib. I learned that three year olds simply do not know how to throw up in bowls, and 8 loads of laundry later literally, I'm happy to say the flu (knock on wood) has left the building. At least I hope.

Olivia's favorite Christmas present was her friends of Legos Olivia and Nicole surf beach scene from Grandma and Grandpa Brown. She has played with it everyday. She also loved her card board castle that she got from Santa.

Warner's favorite gift I think is the nerf guns.

Buster's favorite gift was his exercise trampoline. He gets on it everyday, holds on to the handles and says "Dumpee dumpee dumpee!".