No-Knit Weekend

My best bud and her son came to stay with us last Thursday, and departed today around noon. Geographically, we're usually about as far apart as you can get and still live in the continental US, so this was a very special visit. Thusly, no knitting for most of the time they were here.

Instead, we took the kids, who are nine months apart in age, to several parks, our local children's museum, a cool kid-oriented restuarant, rode the light rail to downtown and went to a toy store. My son is having a bit of a tough time because I haven't been allowing him to exercise his own controls enough, so there were times when things seemed to be self-destructing for us a little bit. But I learned a ton during the visit and all the outings, and the boys enjoyed the heck out of each other's company.

Several months ago, I checked out a book called Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood by Jim Fay, and though I came to the book with great skepticism because of it's title and because I expected it to be about structuring your child into oblivion, I did get some great tools from reading it the first time. I also passed on the title to my best friend and her mother, and they seemed to like the idea. Best Friend's husband took a look at it and urged us all to go back and read again (truth be told, all three of us only read the first six chapters). B.F. did that and has had spectacular success with her son who is nearing three years old. The recent visit reinforced for me that I had missed a few things in my first reading, so I'm going to have to read it through again, though in the mean time I've tried a few things I learned from watching B.F. and son. The difference might reinvigorate my interest in parenting.

I've also come across another book that both B.F. and Rachel have taken an interest in: How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and How To Listen So Kids Will Talk. I've already snagged it from the li-bary and I'll probably want to babble about my new discoveries later on, so stay tuned.