Some More Favorite Books!

I did a post a long while back about some of our favorite books.  Now, thanks to Dolly Parton's
Imagination Library, our wonderful friends and family, and many of my old kids books, I have a few more to tell you about!

Brennan's Favorite Books-
Brennan loves to read, both alone and with us.  He has several books memorized so well that you would think he really can read!  I might just start working on that... :)

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?-

Brennan loves this book because of its predictable pattern and bright pictures.  He has a very easy time 'reading' this book to himself or to me.  Like most Eric Carle books(Also authored 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'), I think most little kids would like this one. 




Llama Llama Red Pajama & Llama Llama Goes to School-

All of the llama llama books tell endearing stories with some kind of moral.  These books instill the ideas of patience and trust, important lessons for every child to learn.  The rhymes in these books are great and the pictures are just as sweet as little llama, himself.  Brennan even has his own stuffed llama to cuddle with at night!

Where's my T.R.U.C.K.-

This book is so cute and clever.  When Tommy loses his favorite truck, he will leave no stone unturned in an effort to find it!  The situation looks grim, but as luck would have it, his persistence pays off!  I love the fact that it is easy to be really enthusiastic with this book, which kids just L.O.V.E., too! 


Bryleigh's Favorite Books- 

Look at the Animals-
This book is absolutely perfect one of baby's first books.  Featuring animals doing what they are best at, the simple, highly contrasting pictures will grab baby's attention and keep it!  We have another book by the same author, Peter Linenthal, called Look, Look! It has the exact same features as the first and Bryleigh loves this black, white, and red book a lot, too.

Baby Faces-
Like most other babies, Bryleigh really likes looking at other babies, or even herself in the mirror.  This book plays into their love for checking out faces by showing clear baby faces conveying different feelings or emotions.




Mama's Favorite Books-

Sleep Baby, Sleep-

I love this book for how it encourages children to live up to their full potential.  It highlights personality traits such as strength, happiness, curiosity, and more.  The rhythmic verse and calming pictures make this perfect for bedtime.  As an example, "Soar, baby, soar.  The whole world you'll explore.  Fly like the goose who climbs and roams yet always knows his way back home.  Soar, baby, soar."  Each verse is sweet and inspirational- a great story to end story time with!

The Mine-o-saur-
Teach your little ones why it is a good idea to share with this adorable book!  The Mine-O-Saur learns to share the hard way, but it all turns out well in the end.  I love the flow and rhyme of this book and Brennan does, too.


Check out any of these books for your little ones and you'll be glad you did!

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A Great, Inspirational Story and a Lesson in Compassion!

I got this email forward from my Mom this morning.  And it brought out classic "me"- bawling on the couch like a baby!

"The Folded Napkin - A Truck Stop Story"
 
If this doesn't light your fire, your wood is wet!

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy. But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie.
 
He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.
 
The ones who concerned me were the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded 'truck stop germ'; the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks...
 
I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.
 
After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a breadcrumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table.

Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag.
 
If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.
 
Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.
 
He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.


A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine.
 
Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Bell Ringer, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table.
 
Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Bell Ringer a withering look.
 
He grinned. 'OK, Frannie , what was that all about?' he asked..
 
'We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay.'

'I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?'

Frannie quickly told Bell Ringer and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery then sighed: 'Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK,' she said. 'But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is.' Bell Ringer nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.
 
'What's up?' I asked.
 
'I didn't get that table where Bell Ringer and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pony Pete and Tony Tipper were sitting there when I got back to clean it off,' she said. 'This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup.'
 
She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed 'Something For Stevie'.
 
'Pony Pete asked me what that was all about,' she said, 'so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this.' She handed me another paper napkin that had 'Something For Stevie' scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie lookedat me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply: 'Truckers!!'
 
That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.
 
His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called ten times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy.

I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting
 
'Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast,' I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. 'Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate you coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!' I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.
 
I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins 'First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess,' I said. I tried to sound stern.
 
Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had 'Something for Stevie' printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.
 
Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. 'There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems.. 'Happy Thanksgiving.'
 
Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well.
 
But you know what's funny?
 
While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big, big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.....

Best worker I ever hired.

Plant a seed and watch it grow..

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Wordless Wednesday

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Oh Boy... A Kitchen Mistake!

I am so glad that this is just a picture I saw on Facebook!  Boy, if my hubby did this and left it for me to clean, we'd have some issues!  Have you ever burned through anything?  I will admit that I let one of our plastic bowls have a run-in with a burner once.  I think the toxic smoke was the worst part!

If this happened in  my house,, I think I would drill a little hole in the back and hang it up in the kitchen!

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Wordless Wednesday- Fun times with the kids

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Ch Ch Changes... to our sleeping habits

It seems with kids that just when you get used to something or something works well for you, something else goes to heck on you!  At least that is how it seems with us.

A couple of months ago I blogged about Brennan's new bed time routine.  I am happy to report that this routine is still working quite nicely for us.  He actually looks forward to bed time.  The catch, however, is that we never know just how long he'll stay asleep and/or in his own bed.  Since Brennan was several months old, he's been going through good sleeping streaks that last anywhere from a few days to a couple of months.  As soon as we start to think that, "This is it!- he's finally sleeping through the night!" He mixes it up again and becomes a terror after dark.

He's in one of those terror streaks now.

Every night we have been jolted from sleep just a couple hours into it by our crying and screaming two and a half year old.  One of us scurries into his room as quickly as possible to hopefully hush the screaming before he wakes his sister, who is happily sleeping only a few feet away.  We rarely are successful in preventing her from waking and needing comfort (AKA mommy feeding her... probably mostly for comfort).

Brennan usually begs for a bottle, which we rarely allow in the middle of  the night anymore,asks to come into our bed, and finally concedes if we will sit in his chair or cuddle in his toddler bed until he falls asleep.  This may happen once or several times.  Sometimes he is more demanding, though, and will demand to sleep in our bed.  We can try to fight him on this, but he is so stubborn that quite often it is best to just give in so that we can all get a little sleep.

I think part of the problem is that he is getting jealous that Bryleigh gets to sleep with us quite a bit.  You see, when she wakes up, I run in, grab her, and bring her back to our room.  She is very hard to feed and get laid back down in her crib right away without her waking up and freaking, so I normally just lay in bed and feed her so we can all sleep.  Typically some time later on in the night, I wake up enough and put her in her pack and play in our room until she needs feeding/comforting again.

Well, we are really getting sick of having all four of us in a queen size bed!  So we knew that things would have to change.  On Sunday night we tried something new.  I took a Mickey night light that we weren't already using (we don't use night besides the 'on' light on our music machine/projector) and plugged it into a timer.  I explained to Brennan that he needed to stay in his own bed and go back to sleep after waking and noticing that the light is off, but we he sees that Mickey is lit up and shining, he can come in with us.  It is set to come on and 5:15.  He very clearly understood what we wanted him to do.  Sometime between 12:00 and 1:00 on Sunday night (Monday morning) he woke up and came out into the hallway, calling for Daddy.  He didn't come up to our bedroom door, but instead stood in the bathroom dooorway and waited for him.  He obviously remembered that he wasn't supposed to come into our room.  Ryan brought him back to his room and cuddled with him in his toddler bed- a bit of a squeeze.  Needless to say, I fit better in a toddler bed at only 5 feet tall.  After that one wake up, he slept in his own bed until 6:40.  That is great and on the later side for him! 

We used the light again last night.  I asked him to tell me what the 'night light rules' were and he flawlessly explained them to me.  Last night he slept in his own bed until 4:45 before getting up and looking for Daddy (I am always tending to Bryleigh by the time Brennan wakes).  They repeated the routine of going back in his own bed until after the night light came on.  Then they came back into our bed, since Brennan wasn't quite asleep (it came on a few minutes early as these non-digital timers are hard to set perfectly...).

I know it isn't a miracle cure, but it does seem to encourage him to stay in his own bed.  We'll keep working at it and being consistent and maybe one of these days he'll sleep through the night on a regular basis.

Bryleigh's issues are different.  I don't expect her to sleep through the night at not quite 5 months old.  I am realistic.  However, I would like bedtime to get easier with her.  Many times I lay her down and she wakes back up crying within a minute.  We may repeat this 3 or 4 times before finally having success.  I can't let her fuss herself to sleep due to the shared room- ahh, the joys of a shared room.  She also normally wakes up the first time only 3 hours or so into sleep.  I would love to get a little bit longer stretch out of her.  And though it is unrelated to sleep, she still will not take a bottle.

Tackling her sleeping issues is much harder than reasoning with our two year old.  We're starting by stretching out the time between her daytime feedings.  Most days she wants to snack all the time rather than having good feedings.  Now, I'm making sure to wait at least 2.5 to 3 hours between feedings to ensure that she's getting really full at each feeding.  We're hoping that by learning to go longer between feedings during the day will translate to night, as well.  We're also thinking that by eating less often when fussy during the day, and walking or bouncing instead, we might be able to break some of the comfort feeding stuff, which would help immensely at night.  And we're trying the bottle some during the day- not every day, but sometimes.  We would love it if some day she magically just took it!

Well, that's about it.  Here's hoping our ideas will work well!  Wish us luck and if you have any amazing tips, please let me know!

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Wordless Wednesday- Typical Days

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