What I'm Reading: Parenting with Love and Logic

So, with the whirlwind of events that took place all-together at the end of last year definitely took it's toll on Bella. Perhaps it was simply because of all the change. Maybe it was because she was approaching the age of 3. Maybe it was because Mommy was going through a rough time and wasn't herself. Maybe a combination of all of the above. But for whatever the reason, my beautiful, compliant, well-mannered baby girl started to not be so compliant and well-mannered. And the discipline that had been effective before, was not so affective anymore. Time-outs - she could take 'em or leave 'em. Spankings? she'd try to hide her tush, but even those didn't really seem to be phasing her at all. I loved the idea of logical consequences - but how in the world do you really play that out? I needed to bring in reinforcements!

I heard about the book Parenting with Love and Logic from some ladies here who were either just learning about it, or who had been using it as the backbone of their parenting regime (or teaching regime!!) for some time. The more they talked to me about it, the more it seemed....well...Logical.

It's all about using logical consequences to teach kids. We don't really teach them - they teach themselves. We simply give them choices CONSTANTLY throughout the day. Instead of ordering them around and saying "Put on your coat - it's cold outside" we either say "Would you like to wear your coat?" or "would you like to wear your coat or carry it?" The love and logic way teaches them to make the choice themselves and live with the consequences - either by being cold and not having a coat, or by making the choice to put on the coat that they are carrying when they get cold.

Of course - there's a lot more to it than small decisions like carrying a coat.

If a kiddo acts up in the grocery store - the next time you go to the store, you have a friend watch your kiddo and say to the child - "I'm sorry - you can't go with me to the grocery store today, because last time you went with me, it was very difficult for me to get my shopping done. So you are going to stay with Mrs. so-and-so today...but you're going to have to find a way to pay her for watching you..."

They can pay with chores, tonka trucks, tutus...whatever they have that is of value.

You can even set up a plan ahead of time, when you're having a consistent problem at the store, and have a friend wait in the parking lot at a certain time (unkown to the child) until they recieve a phone call and they just "show up" to pick up the kid and take them home because of their misbehavior...and they have to pay the friend for their time.

There are so many aspects of it - but essentially, it all boils down to eliminating power struggles, building self-esteem in children, raising responsible kids in the long-run - and eliminating the tendency for parents to act out in anger. It still takes a good amount of self-control and creativity on the parent's part, but it really is fabulous.

"the van is leaving in 5 minutes. You may choose to leave hungry, or not hungry. your choice."

"would you like to calm down and show self-control here, or would you like to do it in your room?"

"would you like to eat nicely at the table or would you like to play on the floor?"

so far, with Bella, it has worked wonderfully - I'm definitley still learning and testing the waters a bit. But isn't parenting a learning process in general?

Anyway, highly recommended read. Especially if you're having problems with power struggles :)

How to Make Baby Cereal

So a good amount of people have been asking me about how I make baby cereal at home. Ask, and you shall recieve... Here's a step-by-step with pictures :)

Sidenote: I used the store-bought cereal for Bella, and she did fine with
it. I didn't even think it was possible to do homemade baby cereal, so I
just ignored all of the additives, etc. in the stuff. This time around, I
had to be aware, because Balian did NOT do so hot on the store bought
cereal. Turns out there's all kinds of craziness in those little
boxes. If you want a healthier option, this is it!!

For all of these instructions, you can use white rice, brown rice, or oatmeal. Here, I'm showing oatmeal.

1. Pour old-fashioned oats (Quaker, off-brand, organic, whatever. Just make sure they're old-fashioned. The quick cooking ones have ingredients other than just oats!) into a food processor.


2. Process on High Speed for a minute or two...

...until they are ground up into a course powder...

...that looks kinda like this. (rice will take longer to grind up because of the hard outer shell)

3. Put the powder into a container, and store until you need it to make cereal.

4. To make cereal: Use 1 cup of water per 1/4 cup of oatmeal powder. I do 4 cups of water and 1 cup of oatmeal powder at a time, now that Balian is eating more each feeding.

For rice, I have found that I need to increase the water a bit.

5. Boil the water.

6. Slowly whisk in oatmeal powder.

7. Whisk continuously (reducing heat, if needed) for 5-10 min, or until cereal gets to a very thick consistency. (they need to cook for a while...the more they cook, the easier it will be for baby to digest...so they say) I usually keep mine at a pretty high heat (just under high) and cook for about 5 min. and it has worked wonderfully.

Rice seems to thicken much faster, so consider turning down the heat and cooking
longer...combine that with adding more water at the beginning, and it may have a better result.

This cooks down a good bit. I transfer the cooked cereal into one of my 3.2 cup Rubbermaid containers and stick it into the refrigerator.
When I need to make some cereal for Balian, I scoop out however much I need, microwave until just warm (probably 10 sec. on a normal microwave. Mine's slow, so I have to do 30 sec.), stir up a bit on it's own, then add breastmilk/ formula until it's the right consistency. You can store the cooked, non-mixed-with-milk cereal in the fridge up to 3 days (I'm sure I've done it for a day or so more than that, and it's been fine).
Otherwise, follow the same rules as the ready to mix stuff - discard any unused, prepared (with milk) portion.
If mixed with milk ahead of time, follow the guidelines for breastmilk and formula as far as refrigeration requirements. (ex. refrigerate immediately, use within 24 hours, only keep room temperature for however long...etc.)
Hopefully this isn't too overwhelming - just trying to cover all the bases. It really is easy, especially considering how much healthier it is for baby!
Let me know if you have any questions!!

Let's Compare

I can't help but notice how much Balian and Bella are alike. Their personalities are definitely very similar...but lately I've noticed how so many of their facial features and manerisms (as well as fat rolls) are similar as well. What do you think? Do they look alike at this age?

Bath Time:

Tummy Time:

And wearing someone else's sunglasses time:

What We're Reading Now

Neil and I have found that we love to read together - but not just any book like novels, etc. We like to read books that really challenge us - together - so we can talk about what we are reading/ learning, and how it applies to us as a couple, our family, etc. It's also a great way to brainstorm.

We are reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. I had heard of the author from my friend Maryann, and wanted to read his book Forgotten God. Then, thanks to Allie, I found out that there was another book, Crazy Love, that perhaps we should read first.

This book is kicking my butt.
It encourages us to look at scripture like we're 12 years old and we've never read it before - no preconcieved notions. And that's hard enough - when I read what Jesus has to say - without those things - it makes me really understand how much I fall short of where I need to be.
It challenges the heart - the very essence of who I am - my motivations - my desires - my compromises.
It helps me understand just how lukewarm I am - and how much Jesus probably wants to spit me out of his mouth.
I'm being challenged all over again by parables, and trying not to assume that I'm the seed that fell on good soil.

There is so much that has been tugging at our heartstrings lately (well, let's be honest - the past almost year and a half), and we haven't really known what to do about it. God gave us hearts longing to serve the desperate, the poor, the hurting, and the orphans. We've struggled to know how to act on that. We've been seeking out vision - but it hasn't really seemed to "come to us" so we haven't really done anything about it.

I'm learning that it all comes down to knowing my God better. And being intentional. I can't just sit on my butt, or trap myself in my house, or only surround myself with other "like-minded" individuals, and expect to have opportunities come knocking at my door. If I truly want to help those who are helpless, then I need to seek the helpless out. I need to find out where they are and what I can do to help. It's amazing how when I have my eyes open to the things around me, instead of just myself, I learn a lot about those things. People who have lived in this town a lot longer than us, know where to find the poor. You just have to ask.

My eyes are being opened to so many things that I can do to benefit the kingdom - even as a stay-at-home mom. Ways that I can reach out to those that are hurting - or those that may just need to be taught a skill so that they can use that skill to either make a living or help others. I feel like I've been waiting around for an answer or an opportunity - when all of the answers come from just knowing my God and seeking Him out, as well as looking at my abilities and actually using them to be fruitful and helpful (can you tell I've been reading the parable of the talents??).

There are so many things, just from simply reading scripture like it's brand-new that I'm wrestling with, in the sense that it bothers me that I'm so far from doing things right.
Like when we throw a party, not inviting our friends and family, but rather inviting those that can't return the favor...

...But we'll save that for another time ;)

Getting to know the Joneses: All About Bella

Full Name: Isabella Marie Jones

Birthday: April 11

Age: 3

Height: 3 ft. 2 in.

Weight: 35.5 lbs.

Hair: blonde (though getting darker), curly, and typically unbrushed, frizzed out, and crazy.

Eyes: blue

Where I live: Texas

YOU KNOW WHAT?

Counting: I can count to 20. I'm working on the 20-30 range at the moment - but it seems harder.

ABCs: I can say my ABCs, I recognize all of the capital letters, all but about 2 of the lowercase ones, and I know more than half of the letter sounds. vowels are the hardest, because they say more than one thing, although I know both sounds that both "a" and "c" make...

I'm working on learning to write some letters too - Here is some of my "writing" abilities (mommy lets me trace her letters).

Reading: I'm learning some word recognition while I'm also learning to sound out some words too - I can recognize words like cat, eyes, gorilla, tiger, dog, elephant, chimpanzee, zip, and baby...and names like Bella and Pamela. but I can also sound out words like cat, dog, hat, etc.

Shapes: I know the normal ones (square, triangle, circle, star) as well as some harder ones like rectangle, oval, trapazoid, and I'm working on the pentagon, hexagon, and octagon. those all look the same to me though.

Colors: I can recognize and name them all - just recently I finally was able to not get yellow and orange confused.

Bible verses I have memorized: Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer, John 3:16, Colossians 3:20

Here's a video of me doing Psalm 23: (this is the first video mommy has been able to post of it because of the video camera issues ...not nearly as cute as an 18-month-old saying "shepherd" in a soft squeaky voice, but still really cute!)

Chores I help mommy with sometimes: put clothes in, turn on, and put soap into the washing machine; take clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer; put my clothes away in my drawers; sweep; vacuum; clean the bathtub; wash Balian's bottles/cups; bake; cook; and the newest thing - roll out bread dough.

A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: My Favorite...

color: Purple

book: Dora 123 (Tag Jr. by Leapfrog)

things to sleep with: pink elephant, blue elephant, and pink bunny

baby doll: Judy Apple (did you see all the pictures in the last post?)

way to help mommy around the house: make granola

foods: strawberries, PB & J (with crunchy PB), pears, and grapes.

drink: juice. whatever/whenever mommy will let me have it.

to wear: tutus, bloomers, rainboots, leggings, tights, leotards, headbands on my head like Rambo, a purse at any given moment, as well as any necklaces or bracelets I can find.

Ladybugs or butterflies: ladybugs

zoo or beach: zoo

Favorite things to do right now: play on my swing set and torture my brother any way that I can. I especially like to bite his fingers really hard right now - that really gets him crying!

Ft. Worth Zoo

My mom and dad both had the day off, and I've been wanting to get the kids out to do something fun during the day (so Neil can have some peace and quiet sleeping). So, we all went to the zoo today! It's about a 45 min - 1 hr. drive, so it's definitely a trip, but definitely doable with a bit of flexibility and lack of normal naps for the kiddos - but totally worth it!
Don't worry, I'm not posting a ton of animal pictures...although I did take a lot. Here's pictures of everything EXCEPT the animals from our trip to the zoo:


Bella with "Baby Judy Apple", who is now a girl instead of a boy since I made "her" a dress. You'll see that Judy Apple was part of the family today. She's in every picture with Bella :)



Bella and Poppy.


Poppy with Balian


Balian chillin' out in the stroller...

...then falling asleep eventually.

The four of us: Bella, Balian, Judy Apple, and I ;)

A Few Things

Just a few things that we have discovered here, at the Jones house...

1. The fabulousness of a double jogger. I can run with both kids. It's more weight to push with another kid, but the kids to great together in it, amazingly enough...and we can use this for a bike trailer too! multi-purpose - I love it! After two weeks of working up to 3 miles with this baby, I was able to run 5 miles on my own! heck yeah!

2. A cat had a litter of kittens behind our backyard fence

3. The rock path that we thought was a really random, incomplete path actually goes from our front driveway around the side of our house to the gate of the backyard. Who knew that it was just covered in weeds and about 2 inches of dirt?

4. Neil's parents and grandparents came into town to celebrate Bella's birthday with us. One evening, after coming back to the house from taking pictures for our neighborhood directory, we found Grandpa Hillard sitting on the front porch just staring at this moth that was on Balian's pack n' play. He said that in the one hour we were gone, This moth sprouted and grew these wings. seriously. wings came out of this thing in one hour. God's creation is seriously amazing. Grandpa liked it so much he decided to let it hang out on his shirt for a while...

5. I wish I had a picture, but I don't. Bella and I were cleaning out a flowerbed (that you can faintly see in the background of the rock picture above) that was full of leaves and dead stuff and probably hadn't been cleared out in a couple of years. In Texas, I don't like piles of leaves just lying around...for this reason...we found 3 snakes in there! 3! they were all just grass snakes, but the third one we found was about 2 ft. long and about 2 inches wide - apparently grass snakes can be Texas -sized too!

Testing, Testing, do we have video?

It seems as though we've had constant fights with our video camera. When Bella was born, we didn't have video because the camera itself wouldn't work. Now, for over a year, we've been able to use our video camera, but haven't been able to download the video onto our computer, because the program it used, Windows Movie Maker, stopped working. No matter what we did, nothing worked. We tried uninstalling and reinstalling even, and nope. nada.
Well, recently my mp3 player died, and we decided to sell out and go with the new iPod Nano...it's small, which is good for running...but also, it has a video camera built it! tada! what a fabulous way to kill 2 birds! and we can take it with us anywhere!! love it.
anyway, here's our first video download in over a year - there will be many more to come!
This is Bella having fun playing on her slide, since Daddy built her a swing set for the backyard for her birthday. Crazy for a birthday gift, right? well, we said when we settled it was one of the first things we wanted to do...and it was her birthday...so a good excuse with a deadline. fabulous!