Happy Birthday Little Boy

With my parents here, blogging takes a back seat. Just the way it is. But I had to stop in and wish my littlest baby a Happy Birthday. Even though at 4 he’s not exactly reading blogs, especially mine. Though, he’d probably read Spiderman’s blog. Especially if Spiderman blogged about band-aids because those two things are what he’s most interested in these days. Well, Spiderman band-aids and Bakugans. Have you seen these things? (Bakugans) Actually they’re kind of cool. Weird dragon-like transformer things. Really meant for older kids, but he loves playing with them.

Anyway! Happy Birthday, my little man. I love you so very very much.

Before I forget…

Finally tracked down our elusive babysitter so that Sam and I can escape tonight for some alone time. There’s been about a million things I keep meaning to tell him, but someone always interrupts, the phone rings… something happens and I never get to finish my thought. But finally, tonight, there won’t be anyone else to bother us. It will just be him and me. And I can sit across the dinner table from him, peacefully without any interruptions … and completely forget all the things I had meant to tell him throughout the week. =sigh=

Seriously, with mommy brain, how am I supposed remember these things until date night??

Math and Word Games for Kids for the iPhone

We tried a bunch of new games recently. Anusen (itunes link) is a small family run company that makes a very nice selection of word and math type games for kids, including a few in Spanish. Their QA team is made up of a selection of preschoolers. Our test team here (a 4 year old and 9 year old) really enjoyed playing them. As of this writing, the games are pretty reasonably priced, at just $.99/each. Definitely worth picking up a few to try.

Here are the ones we tried:

Word Magic
A game that helps teach spelling. You can have the game leave the first letter of the word open or a letter in the middle of the word.

Math Magic
Tests your skills at basic math equations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and rewards your little mathematician with stickers when they get a handful right. With Rachel’s class reviewing math facts at the start of school this year, this was a great way for her to get back up to speed.

Match Magic
“Draw” lines to connect matching pictures, shapes, numbers or colors. Zachary particularly liked playing this one.

Count Magic
In this game you have to catch falling items until you catch the correct number, and then the scene changes and you can play again. The game counts the items as you catch them. This was another one Zachary really enjoyed playing.

Math Series
This game has you fill in the missing number in the series. You can set the level of difficulty from simple to more complex. ie. [1 2 3 _ 5] or something a little trickier [3 6 9 _ 15]

Match ’em up Math
Another game where you draw lines to connect one side to the other – but in this case, it’s math problems to their solution. Equations can be in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So the age range on this is pretty big.

Sibling Explosives

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“Jenn, I don’t think oil and water is a good comparison. They’re more like gasoline and a match.”

So true. Even when they play together, it’s dangerous. There is no such thing as their playing “nicely” together. There is playing wildly where someone will get hurt. Or there is fighting where someone will get hurt. Ironically, that someone is usually the older one (Rachel). The other oddity is that when Rachel is out of the house for a few hours for whatever reason, Zach can be calm and happy and very pleasant. The instant (without exaggeration) he hears her step foot in the house, he’s having tantrums, freaking out, acting wild.

Gasoline and a match. Yes. That’s definitely my children.

Trains, Planes and Zachmobiles

So many times I have something I want to say, it’s too short for a blog post, but too many characters for a twitter update. I know there was a twitter knock off that let you use as many characters as you wanted, but I’m not quite ready to add another social media outlet to my list. LOL! So blog posts it will be. I’ll put these in a new category: Too Long For Twitter. 😀

I once almost bought a used train table from a woman who said she was selling it because her kids were no longer using it for it’s intended purpose (ie. a TRAIN TABLE) and instead were using it in their attempts to imitate Superman, getting up on top of the table and jumping off. I didn’t end up buying it from her and bought a new set instead but I swear I’m starting to want to sell ours for the EXACT SAME REASON.