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If By Yes

Monthly Archives: October 2013

Why Angry Birds Is A Great Game For Preschoolers

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

angry birds, board games, children's games, education, games, Knock on Wood, parenting, preschoolers, toys for preschoolers

Before you pelt me with garbage, I’m talking about the real life version, not the strangely addictive app with the noises that sound like the women in Monty Python sketches.

That’s right – if you didn’t know, they make a REAL LIFE VERSION.

angry birds

I mentioned it briefly in my post about Owl turning three, but I want to explain in greater detail why this may have been one of the best toys my child has ever received.

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I Like Three.

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

ages, child development, parenting, playing independently, three

I do.

At least, so far.

Owl turned three in September.

Owl turns 3We held his party at Science World, which was expensive, but he had a good time, which is the important thing. I suffered a lot of anxiety around that party, even after it was over. Especially after it was over. I can’t explain why in any rational way.

Owl had a blast.


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Watching his little friends help him open his presents while explaining and showing off their presents was TOTES ADORBS.DSC00092

My adult friends stood around awkwardly until we released them to go explore Science World, but I’m glad they came.

Owl managed to bash himself in the face moments before cutting the cake, giving himself an instant and angry shiner, but that was the only set of tears that day.

And three? So far, it has been awesome.

DSC00096

The whining, which he had been trying out in the latter half of his twos, has cut down dramatically over the last couple of months.

I still have to remind him to say “please” fairly often, but I don’t have to keep demanding his “polite voice” over and over again ad nauseum.

His whiny voice only creeps in maybe once a day or so, and is silenced relatively quickly.

But even better, he has suddenly developed the ability to PLAY INDEPENDENTLY.

It’s like a MIRACLE.

I mean, not all the time, and usually for no more than 20 minutes or so, and not if he’s feeling hungry or tired or the wind is southerly, but you know what?

I’ll take it.

It started with Angry Birds.

I started letting Owl play Angry Birds on my iPod while I took my shower and got dressed in the morning.

I considered it a minor step up from watching On Top of Bald Mountain and the Danse Macabre on Youtube, which was my previous way of occupying him long enough to get clean and dressed but came with a much more defined time limit.

I say “minor step up” because the the jury is still out on videogames. We’re all sure in our souls that there is no way they can possibly be good for children, but the research keeps coming up indicating otherwise: improved problem solving, improved fine motor coordination… even creativity, oddly and inexplicably.

But then, on his birthday, he got the real life version of the Angry Birds game (which, by the way, is awesome, and PH and I MAY have practiced launching birds at the blocks ourselves after he went to bed some nights).

But more on that in another post.

He loves every part of that game. He likes to build the towers, trying to make them match the cards. Then he likes to knock them down.

He preferred playing this to playing the iPod version!

Next thing I knew, I was checking my Facebook, showering in a leisurely fashion, dressing, drying my hair, and all to the sound of blocks smashing downstairs and a little voice saying “oops! I missed it! I’ma try with the LELLOW ONE!” in a constant running commentary.

When he got bored of Angry Birds, he moved on to Lego.

…I like three.

20131025-073501.jpg

Costume Name Fail

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

costumes, dragon, fail, Hallowe'en, t-rex

ipodmisc 486

You know, has wings, and three horns. THAT tyrannosaurus.

Creepy Hallowe’en Stuff Comes In Different Shapes and Sizes

20 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hallowe'en, laity, October, pumpkin patch

Hallowe’en is a time to embrace our fears, but for the most part, we keep that stuff away from our small children.

Hallowe’en for Owl means costumes (he’s going to be a fire man, although originally he wanted to be an astronaut) and candy and pumpkins. Lots of pumpkins.

So we took him back to the Pumpkin Patch.

It’s a great time, and HE had a blast.

ipodmisc 523 ipodmisc 522 ipodmisc 535

We enjoyed ourselves too, but PH and I found ourselves feeling creeped out on more than one occasion.

It’s strange that children, who often find mundane TOTALLY NORMAL things to be scary, manage to overlook the bizarre horrors hiding all over the place at the Pumpking Patch.

ipodmisc 533

Pumpkin Dad is possessed by the devil

ipodmisc 534

Creepy native baby born without soul

ipodmisc 525

Sally and the other kid from Cat in the Hat seem to be sinking into the mud and pleading desperately for help

ipodmisc 527

Just… what…

ipodmisc 520

Triffid-like dead sunflowers hanging over us

Terrifying soul-less wooden cut outs not withstanding, we’ll go again next year. He has so much fun, bless him, and isn’t this what kids are for? Excuses to go to lame, childish things like this and not feel self-conscious about it?

I r a grown up

I r a grown up

Beloved Dog, The Reprise – Or, In Which I Take Spoiling My Dog To A Whole New Level

08 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

diet, dogs, home cooked diet, home made dog food, IBD, pancreatitis, recipe, ultrasound

20130819-141320.jpgSome of you may remember that a year and a half ago, I threw myself into a panic over Beloved Dog. Some routine bloodwork based on my paranoid suspicions revealed that he tested positive for pancreatitis, despite having none of the symptoms of it.

I put him on a low fat diet, rechecked him a month later, and he STILL tested positive. So I sent the blood to the lab for a more detailed answer. I wanted to know HOW positive.

Well, apparently a normal Spec CPL number is between 0 and 200. Over 200 is borderline. Over 400 is definitive. Beloved Dog was at 600.

Cue panic and tests.

Well, ultrasound showed pretty much nothing. Ditto when, a month later, Beloved Dog began urinating tea brown liquid. A little thickening of the bladder, some funny nodules on the spleen that, when tested, turned out to be nothing significant.

So, on the advice of the ultrasound vet, I dismissed it as nothing. He said that the spec CPL test is wrong sometimes.

Just to be sure, I put Beloved Dog on an extremely low fat diet. But his weight melted off and he got skinny as hell. And I’ve always kept him pretty lean to begin with, so we’re talking prominent ribs, sticky-outy spine, etc.

I changed his food to a more moderate level of fat and simply kept him away from fatty treats.

And he seems to have been doing fine.

It’s just the little things:

The fact that he has taken to having bowel movements in the house. Even if he pooped outside earlier that day. Several times.

He isn’t cuddly.

I mean, he was never a CUDDLY dog. Not the way a Lab or a Pug might treat you like their personal cushion. But he liked to lean up against you, It seems like over the last few years that has faded away. Now he wants to curl up in a corner and for you to leave him the f*** alone.

20131005-191147.jpg

Behold, my doggy fortress of solitude

Then there’s the abdomen thing.

Whenever a dog comes in for an exam, vets always palpate the abdomen. Sometimes if there’s a cancer or something in there they can feel it, and how well the dog tolerates it can tell them if his stomach hurts or not.

That test doesn’t work on Beloved Dog, because he always grunts and hunches if you touch his belly. I dismissed it as a mannerism, until the pancreatitis test last year. Now I’m not sure. Humans with pancreatitis report it as excruciatingly painful, even in chronic form.

Anyway, I just left the matter to rest. After all, he SEEMS fine. Likes to run, loves to eat. Gets into mischief occasionally. Hell, compared to a lot of the fat, greying, stiff-limbed 9 year old dogs I see at my clinic, he seems remarkably youthful.

Then, on Sunday, I fed him a piece of lean steak leftover from Owl’s bowl. I was thinking “to hell with the pancreatitis thing. He’s been fine for a year. There’s no fat on this piece, anyway.”

My nose woke me up at 6 the next morning. We pulled back the closet door and nearly wept. Messy, stinky poop everywhere and judging from Beloved Dog’s hunched and guilty posture, he wasn’t done. I shoved him out in the yard for a good hour.

Then I brought him into work.

Physical exam was about the same – tense abdomen, grunts when palpated, otherwise nothing unusual noted. I did some repeat blood work, and his organ function looked the same as last year.

In fact, strangely similar. His cholesterol was up a bit last year, which often doesn’t mean much. Except a year later, despite having eaten nothing for 12 hours, his cholesterol was, if anything, higher than last year.

So I ran another Spec CPL, to see how his probably-false-positive for pancreatitis was coming along. Now it was 764, instead of 600. I asked the lab to add on a check of his amylase and lipase – two enzymes secreted by the pancreas as well as several other organs during gastronomic upset. They were elevated, too.

20131007-200033.jpg

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