Mama Dice Comprobarlo

WonderBaby speaks Spanish. Not quite as much as she speaks English - and her English is pretty limited, seeing as she is 17 months old - but still, it's there. Water is agua, cows are vacas, sometimes bye-bye is replaced with ciao (not Spanish, I know, but idiomatically latin) and yes with si. Once, when I asked her where her Pablo (don't ask) was, she said alli esta (over there).

She speaks some Spanish because her caregiver speaks Spanish, exclusively, with her. I wanted her to learn Spanish because I speak it, and because her godfamily is Spanish, and because I fully intend for her to spend time in Spain, it being a place very much of my history and very dear to my heart. So, we've been taking every opportunity to expose her to the language.

Boca Beth was just such an opporunity - a Spanish-language learning program for children, something to pop in the DVD/CD player to augment what she's learning from her caregiver and (much more casually) from me - so I jumped at the opportunity. Our Boca Beth package included the musical CD My First Songs In Spanish, the DVD I Like Animals, a Boca Beth Coloring and Activity Book, a Boca puppet and a maraca, and WonderBaby appropriated all items immediately. Puppet was flung about, maraca was shaken and CDs and DVDs were thrust at me aggressively: ya ya ya ya ya! (WonderBaby also knows some German.)

The DVD was great - simple and engaging and just the right amount of crack-like rhythm to keep WonderBaby bouncing and hooting. (And, as I've said before, anything that distracts her from Teletubbies is GOLD - oro - in my books.) Add some maraca, and you've got a dance party with video back-up. Afterwards, chill-out to some mellow moments with the puppet and the colouring book and there's one afternoon well spent. Siesta, anyone?

My only reservations were with the musical CD. For one, I personally didn't like the music (that said, I also don't like WonderPets and I loathe Barney but I won't turn them off if WonderBaby grooves to them. And she did groove to the Boca Beth CD.) For two, I found that the repetitive transition between English and Spanish in the songs made it a bit difficult to really get into the rhythm in sing-along. As a Spanish-speaker myself, I found bouncing between languages awkward - I would have rather heard and sung-along with one whole song in Spanish, and then heard and sung-along with the entire English version, than heard one line in English, then in Spanish, then another in English, and so on and so on and so on. And I'm not convinced that this is actually effective for language development - from what I understand about second-language learning, the more immersion and the less 'back-and-forth' between languages, the better (this is why Dora isn't effective as a language learning tool - children might learn some select vocabulary, but not 'whole language.') So we'll probably stick to The Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack and the old Spanish pop songs from my iTunes library for the music part of our program.

But, still, WonderBaby liked it, and so I'll certainly pop it in the player when she asks for it. And, as I've already said, the DVD was very good, as were the colouring book and toys. We'll totally keep using them to augment our own Spanish program.

Y por eso, todo es bueno. Gracias, Boca Beth.

All of these products can be found on the BOCA BETH official website and the CD and DVD can also be found on Amazon.com. More reviews can be found through the Parent Bloggers Network.

Spread The Word

Have I said lately about how much I love BabyLegs?

When you are travelling in uncertain climates with a toddler who insists upon climbing every elevated surface that she sees, an tiny (read: easily packable) item of clothing that provides extra warmth and knee coverage is worth many, many times its weight in gold.

BabyLegs, Overnite diapers and Children's Gravol: keeping travelling parents happy since whenever it was that someone figured out their special travel magic.

Why didn't someone tell me sooner?

Whatever Gets You Through the Night... Or the Flight

So, this review is shamefully late, due to circumstances beyond our control. BUT, but... the lateness of this review afforded further opportunity for product testing. So - all's well that ends well, no?

The product: Huggies Overnites diapers. The tester: WonderBaby, she of the exuberant bladder. The testing conditions: long nights, one long flight and one super-long car trip.

It was clear from the moment that we began using the overnight diapers that this would be an easy review to write: they worked, totally. No wet bursts in the night, no overflowing pants in the morning. Perfect. So it was that I thought that there really wasn't anything to say, review-wise: the overnight diapers work beautifully overnight, and I would totally buy them.

End review.

But then we - WonderBaby and I - took a cross-country trip involving airlines and road trips and lo, the overnight diapers revealed themselves to be useful for more than just nights. (Insert astronaut joke here.) One Huggies Overnite diaper lasts longer than a flight from Toronto to Vancouver, and longer than a road trip from Vancouver to the north Okanagan of BC (a four hour drive), and certainly longer than a flight from the Okanagan back to Vancouver, and (I'm presuming) longer than the flight from Vancouver to Toronto.

I'm actually pretty certain that we could fly from Vancouver to Japan or Toronto to Capetown or anywhere to the moon and - barring any unnecessary poo - be fine with one Huggies Overnite diaper.

It's not that I'm averse to in-flight diaper changes (well, actually, I am so averse), and it's not that I would altogether avoid diaper checks - but knowing that we can stretch the time between changes on long plane trips and road trips and the like makes travelling a lot easier.

So there you have it: Huggies Overnite diapers... not just for overnight.

And... if you leave a comment HERE, you could win a package of Overnights of your very own! Enough for a trip around the world, or two.

To Sleep, Perchance

I've struggled with insomnia for as long as I can remember. It's not a constant plague, but it is a recurring one, with bouts intruding upon my life every month or so and lasting for days and sometimes weeks (the worst stretch: four and half weeks late in the third year of my PhD, during which time I would turn up at seminars - and, once, a friend's thesis defense - and fall asleep sitting up. Not cool.) Add to this history of insomnia one restless and nap-averse toddler and you have a recipe for disaster. When Her Bad Mother does not sleep at night and WonderBaby does not sleep during the day, life becomes very unpleasant.

So when Julie and Kristen send around an e-mail asking if anyone was interested in checking out Michael Breus' Good Night: The Sleep Doctor's 4-Week Program to Better Sleep and Better Health, I was all, like, HELLS YEAH. Where do I sign? And, do you need my soul in exchange, or anything like that?

But then the book comes and I read the first half and am all excited to see if it will work on me - and no insomnia hits. For weeks. Weeks and weeks. Weeks and weeks and weeks go by and I have no trouble sleeping. Even when I hit a patch of extreme busy-ness (communications conference in Kentucky; re-launching MommyBlogsToronto; marking crap-ass undergraduate papers), I continued to sleep well. (I did, I should note, have some sort of mock-cardiac arrest towards the end of those weeks but dammit - I SLEPT WELL.)

So, no, I didn't exactly implement the smart sleep strategies that Dr. Breus recommends, nor did I put myself through Sleep Boot Camp. I'm superstitious - I figured that if I messed with whatever it was that was allowing me to sleep soundly through a period of stress, I would be asking for trouble. But I did study the book closely, and noted that some of the things that I had been doing incidentally were things that the good doctor recommended as part of good sleep habits: not checking e-mail (or, um, blogging) in the hour before bedtime, not consuming alcohol before bedtime, sticking to a regular bedtime, having a wind-down period, etc. It hadn't occured to me that these might be strategies for ensuring good sleep (with the exception of the early computer turn-off policy - I realized that I needed some distance from my virtual life before settling to sleep in real life), but lo and behold, they (among other things) are exactly that.

And that, really, is what is so useful about the book - without beating you over the head or insisting that you must follow this advice or die, it encourages you to take a careful look at your sleep habits and figure out what works for you and what does not. For some people, reading is good pre-sleep ritual (note, however, that it might matter what you read. This hadn't occured to me: I always read before bed, but hadn't paid much attention to what I was reading. This was one of many duh moments that I had while reading Breus' book.) For others, reading (or sex, or conversation) is too stimulating. Some people can't fall asleep without the TV on - he discourages this, but states matter-of-factly that if you're one of those people who needs the television to sleep, by all means keep doing it, but be alert to issues like level of volume, and maybe get a timer to turn it off or manage the volume.

I really appreciated the fact that he was not dogmatic about sleep strategies - I've read too many books about getting your child to sleep that warn dire consequences for straying from THE PROGRAM to have any patience for dogmatism in the arena of sleep. The emphasis on figuring out what works for you - and the provision of really, really good strategies for figuring out what works for you - rather than insisting upon adopting specific practices that may or may not be practical or desirable takes the stress out of addressing your sleep problems. And that's, like, three-quarters of the battle right there.

So I'm keeping this book on my bedside - it's already proved useful, and I've no doubt that when the insomnia hits again and I need to hit sleep bootcamp, I'll be ready.

FINAL WORD: Either this book has talismanic properties and the mere presence of it at my bedside is ensuring good sleep, or even casual adoption of its ideas and strategies and - most importantly - attitude toward sleep is effective in improving sleep. I'm pushing over two months now of no insomnia, and that's unusual for me.

Check out more reviews of Good Night at the Parent Bloggers Network; and check out Dr Breus' sleep advice at his website - www.yoursleepcoach.com

My Baby Can Read! (And Dance!)

I loved reading from a very early age. So early, that I don't have any recollection of being taught to read. I recall my parents telling me stories, I recall holding books in my hands, I recall sinking into those books and disappearing into their pages... but I have no recollection of struggling with words, of making an effort to bring those words into focus.

I must have done, of course. I was not born a fully-formed reader. Still, it seems to me that whatever my education in reading, there must have been something organic about it if all that remains of the memory of that education is the vague recollection of the first pleasures of the text.

So it was that I was somewhat skeptical of the idea behind the 'Your Baby Can Read!' program. Not because I doubted its claims to be able to teach babies to read, but because I doubted the desirability of doing so. Sure, I might get WonderBaby to read the words in her books, rather than just fondle the pages and kiss the pictures, but to what end? Shouldn't she love her books for the simple joy of being able to embrace their bookiness, before rushing to decode the letters inside? Shouldn't the relationship begin as an erotic one, such that her intoxication with the book compels her to explore every inch of its mysteries, from form to image to word and beyond?

And, how could I overlook the disconcerting irony that attends to teaching one's child to read with a DVD?

Still, I was curious. So we gave it a whirl.

And it works. Sort of.

WonderBaby can now identify the words 'Hi' and 'Cat' - and, sometimes, 'Dog,' although she resists saying dog, because she is insistent upon the true status of dogs as cats at the moment - on a flashcard, without pictures. And she certainly loves the pictureless flashcards (pictures slide in and out of the side of the card). But then again, she's always enjoyed plucking novels from our bookshelves and sitting down with them and pointing at the lines of text, so I'm not sure to what extent her love of the flashcards is due to the program.

And she loved the video - not as much as she loves Teletubbies, but the very fact that she let me play the DVD instead of Teletubbies for minutes on end was an accomplishment in itself. She loved the songs, and has become a fanatic enthusiast of the song 'Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.' She loved pointing at words on the screen, and shouting hi whenever the little girl who narrates appeared. And the whole system made good sense - incorporate text with images, use music and children to make it fun. Sesame Street has been doing this, brilliantly, for decades, but WonderBaby hasn't warmed to Sesame Street yet - she hasn't warmed to anything on television or DVD save Teletubbies - and so it was amusing and interesting to see her response.

Still... she was never interested in watching for more than ten minutes or so at a time, and I was never interested in compelling her to do so. So when she would toddle over to the TV and push the power button off and say no, that was that. And when she would wander away from the TV and reach for Hug or Maisie's Colors or Goodnight, Gorilla and shout Ya Ya Ya Ya Boo! (book), my heart would swell and I'd remember: This is how we read.


Last word: at $79.95 for the complete 5-dvd set with flashcards, I'd consider it, if only because she looooved the flashcards, and because the dvds provided much needed respite from Teletubbies (that is, after I learned to fast-forward through the opening sequences featuring the good doctor Titzer, creator of the program, who seems a nice guy but bears a disconcerting resemblence to Steve Buscemi and tends to go on.) The musical sequences were like crack for WonderBaby, who would begin dancing and hooting immediately. And if the idea of teaching your young child to read in this way appeals to you, then by all means go for it - even with sporadic viewing, WonderBaby learned very quickly to recognize certain words. We, however, will stick with books.

(With thanks to the Parents Blogger Network!)

Because I Know You Really Wanna Know What I Think

... about all of the STUFF that we have to wade through in figuring out just what it is, exactly, that is going to make our lives better. Can we buy our way to better parenthood? TO HAPPINESS?

Maybe.

I'm dedicating myself, here, to the task of exploring just how far our credit cards (and/OR - three cheers for that OR - our craftiness, our co-operativeness, our deft hands at bartering) can take us in this game of parenthood. Which is just a precious way of saying - HERE BE PRODUCT REVIEWS AND ASSORTED MERCENARY MISCELLANY.