Updates on life

Been awhile since I dropped in here. My work has kept me crazy busy. I spoke at Evo Conference – spreading my love of all things WordPress. And… this past weekend we had to bring our puppy back to the breeder we got him from.

I hadn’t posted much about him  – we were dealing with a lot. Aside from the normal craziness that is raising and housebreaking a puppy – he was not healthy from the beginning. He had an EXTREMELY sensitive stomach, and after several hundreds of dollars of various tests – no one could determine exactly why or what was wrong with him. We fed him plenty, but he remained skinny and the food he ate practically flew through one end and out the other so quickly.We finally found a food that he would somewhat tolerate – but it didn’t make things perfect. It was a grain and gluten free, single protein food that had to be rehydrated. Then he had a massive flare up and even that stopped working as well as it once did.

If that wasn’t enough to deal with, the real killer was his aggression. Within the first week of having him here, he growled and snapped at me at a way I’ve never seen a *normal puppy* do. It was bizarre. And no one really believed me that a PUPPY would show aggression like this. They said it was “posturing” not aggression. Ok… so we paid top dollar for a great trainer who whipped us into shape about how to behave and treat the puppy so that he would know we were alpha. We did this for months. The problem began to get worse, not better. He would be sitting in a room – no “triggers” near by (no food, no toys) – he wasn’t sleeping, he’d be wide awake – just hanging out – and my daughter who has always been very gentle with him and respectful of him, would come up to pet him – and for no reason at all he would growl at her. Then my husband – who SURELY he must see as ALPHA in our pack – would come up to him – and again, he would growl at him.

I spoke to another trainer, and they said with all his problems – since we had the option of bringing him back to the breeder – we should take it. This is not the right dog for our family.

Who knows, maybe he needed to be in a bigger house – or a bigger back yard – or he needs other dogs with him to keep him in line. Whatever it is – he didn’t belong with us. It broke our hearts – it wasn’t for lack of love that we brought him back. But I have a responsibility to my family and I have a responsibility to him. However, my family comes first and I was worried about the direction this was headed. I was worried that growl would very soon turn into something more disastrous. I’m glad he’s with the breeder – she’ll take good care of him. Maybe she’ll be able to determine the source of his issues – and then place him in a home that’s more appropriate.

In the meantime – we are once again trying to heal from the loss of a dog. Bad timing too. So close to my daughter’s birthday again when last year we had to say goodbye to our other dog after 12 happy years. And I am on the hunt again for a dog. This time I think we’re going to go with the same breed we had last time and that we are so in love with: a Cairn Terrier or Westie (West Highland Terrier).

Maya’s Dress Up (for the iPhone and iPad)

MMaya’s Dress Up.

In this game you can select from a number of different dolls to dress up: Maya herself, or one of her friends. You can change their hair style and color. There are hundreds of different clothing, shoes and accessories. You can change an item’s color or how they’re “layered” on your doll. You also have a number of different backgrounds to choose from. The selection is massive, really. And the publisher has plans to continually add new items.

You can save your favorite designs and send them to your friends.

Here’s a video so you can see how the game works. Or learn more about this game on the publishers website.

We’ve downloaded a few other free dress up games but none had the kind of selection this one does.

Maya’s Dress Up iPhone App: $2.99*

Maya’s Dress up HD iPad App: $4.99*

*Price at time of this writing. I received a copy of this app for review purposes.

Doing the impossible: Teaching Art Appreciation to a 5-year old and a 10-year old

I
know it sounds impossible – but I actually pulled this off. You know how half the time, well ok for me it feels like most of the time, I feel like I strike out more often than I hit a home run. I hear myself saying more often than I care to admit “Well, that didn’t go as well as planned.” But this time? This time I hit it out of the park.

It began when my mother told me about an exhibit going on in San Francisco: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and beyond at the de Young Museum. I rushed right over to my computer and bought tickets for Sam, the kids, my parents, and me before I even thought twice about it. Then of course it dawned on me that spending the afternoon in a crowded museum, looking at old pictures on the wall probably wasn’t going to be the most fun the kids ever had. So I came up with a plan. I would make it into a game.

As luck would have it, my parents had plans to go to this exhibit two weeks before. So I asked her, as she went through, to make notes of a few of the paintings in each room, so we could later develop a “scavenger hunt” – age appropriate for a 5 year old and another for a 10 year old. (Ok, yeah, my mom did a good part of the hard work here – I still think this was a huge success).

The day of our tickets to see the exhibit, we came armed with two clipboards and two pencils. For Zach, the questions were basic enough: Find a painting with a golden vase. Find a painting of a cow. etc. It was challenging enough and he really enjoyed it. The only difficulty we had was really thanks to the crowd.

(On a side note: I’m a bit frustrated and annoyed with the museum. They’re very clear that they don’t want people bringing sketchpads, because to have people standing there sketching the pictures would “slow the flow of traffic throughout the exhibit” – and yet, they push the purchase of these audio tours that has everyone walking around the rooms like drones at a snails pace (or rather standing there FOREVER listening to the audio tour) rather than actually moving on through. I really would have preferred a time when NO ONE was using an audio tour – I think it would have gotten people moving more so I could have actually gotten within a few feet of a painting, instead of standing on my tip toes trying to get a peek from behind twenty people.)

Anyway, thankfully the kids were small, and my goal had shifted from wanting to see the paintings to wanting my kids to enjoy the experience. So I stood way in the back and sent Zach down underneath to sneak up to the front (all grownups who could easily see over him) so he could get a close look at the painting.

Can I tell you how proud I was to see him go up to the painting – point at it excitedly and tell me he found the painting of =whatever we were looking for=. People looked amazed that this little kid was actually excited to be there. Excited to be looking at the paintings. (Between you and me, so was I! LOL!)

Scattered within the scavenger hunt were a few “Which is your favorite painting in the room? Why is this your favorite?” or “How does this painting make you feel?”

Rachel’s was a little harder “Find a painting that shows 6 smoke stacks? Who painted it?” “Who painted a picture of a circus in this room” “Name 3 paintings by Henri Seurat (in this room)”

Rachel, who thought the whole scavenger hunt thing was beneath her before we started, really got into it once we were there. I came to find out that she had very specific and sometimes surprising opinions about the paintings.

Now here’s the best part. Aside from the fact that we got through the entire exhibit without a single meltdown – I considered it enough of a win. But then something happened tonight that just totally sealed the deal. My mother had bought a coloring book that had paintings from the museum in it for you to color. Zachary was playing with it after dinner – found one of the paintings and said “I remember this one! This one was on my checklist!… This one too! This is the one of the man fishing!”

It’s out of the park! 😀

Merry Puzzles – iPhone & iPad game

Did you know there’s only like 9 days until Christmas? (We do both Hanukkah and Christmas in our house. Yes, there’s probably a reason for tweets like this one:

Heh. Truth be told, I haven’t finished shopping – so a note from Santa is still a possibility. But I’m sure they’ll be angels the day before just to make me feel guilty if I didn’t get them anything…

In any case, one present I got earlier this month was this Merry Puzzles app (available for both iPhone and the iPad). There’s a bunch of adorable illustrations, cut into random little squares that you have to put back together again. The illustrations have built in animations you’ll see once the puzzle is completed. There’s a few different levels. Zach has stuck to the easy level. I tried one at the “expert” level… yeah, I’m no expert for sure. So there’s definitely a huge range of challenges there!

Merry Puzzles iPhone App: $0.99*

Merry Puzzles iPad App: $1.99*

*Price at time of this writing. I received a copy of this app for review purposes.

Free App Alert: Memory Mania

JVacation’s over for another year. So to cheer up all the kids who just started back at school, we’re now giving away MemoryMania completely free! This is a limited period giveaway offer.

MemoryMania is the biggest memory match game for kids in the AppStore. In MemoryMania users find 20 different sets of cards to choose from, and each set contains 15 different pictures. That’s 300 pictures – no other memory match game can compare with MemoryMania!

There are two game modes – a classic memory match, where you look for pairs of cards, or a hide-and-seek game, where you try to remember where the picture is and uncover it.
MemoryMania users love the 2 different game modes, the large choice of cards and the cute design that’s just perfect for kids.

Here’s a link to see a video of the app. And if you’d like to read more about the app, you can do so on the developer’s website.

Memory Mania: FREE*

*Price at time of this writing