Today was a big day! My two year old went on three new non-kiddie rides at an amusement park (pirate ship, caterpillar ride, and log flume) and also went number 2 on the potty twice

Please don’t eat your shoes

2 year old taking a big drink of milk. “Tastes like ahhhh”

Our local school district provides swim lessons as part of a PE unit to all second graders by busing them to a local indoor facility. They even have free swimwear available for students who don’t have it. A previous school district I was in had a PE program where 3-5th graders got to learn to ride bikes, they brought in a huge trailer of different sized bikes. There’s a lot of physical activity that some people take for granted without realizing that not everybody has the same opportunities. Programs like this are so important.

Yesterday while sitting at a table waiting for ice cream my two year old looks at me and says “I wanna touch the wall. I wanna touch the wall a widdle bit” So I told her to go ahead. Helped her down. She walked over. Placed her hand on the wall. Then came back to sit. Kids.

Using a stroller fan to cool down hot food. I prop up the fan and then my hands are free to stir the food around. Works much quicker than blowing on it and don’t have to worry about getting lightheaded

So an attempted achievement we had was going ice skating yesterday. There was a toddler class where the ice wasn’t clean from the previous day’s practice and kids could go out on their street shoes. They have sleds to pull them around, mini hockey sticks to hit around pucks, Pom-poms to throw in the net, and other activities to get them used to the ice surface. Then they put on skates off-ice and get used to the feeling. My child took three steps onto the ice and stated “I need all done ice”. We tried for about thirty minutes to get her comfortable in various ways and she wasn’t having any of it. I think a big part of the problem was for whatever reason she was literally the only kid there. So it was her and three adults, two of whom were complete strangers, in a completely new environment, with no other kids to feed off of. So while it didn’t go as I had hoped, she did step on the ice for the first time and hopefully when we go back in a few weeks she’s more comfortable with the idea.

Coming home from vacation we sent my husband on the plane first to set up her car seat and I boarded last with LO to get out last minute energy. She saw a plane outside the big window and yells “Hi dada! Go ahead! See you later!”

The one near us has a self serve dog wash. I can take my dogs and use their water, their shampoo, their towels, their dryers, and not have my bathroom covered in dog hair for $10.

So here’s one of our conundrums. Toys in the bath. Several months ago a little rubber duckie got caught under the tap when the tub was filling up. This sent our then 18 month old into a panic. We’ve had to completely remove toys from the bath and have only just been able to recently add them to the water after it’s filled up (before that toys even near the water would have her screaming, crying, and throwing them as far away as possible). Toys can stay in the water when it’s draining, but not filling. If the toys are in the empty tub she says “it’s okay. Toys okay.” but you’d think somebody was dying with the way she panics if there’s anything (even a wash cloth) in the tub while the water is on. She loves water otherwise.

Bubble gun in the bath. I shoot bubbles towards the ceiling and it gets her to look up long enough for me to rinse her hair. Also, we have finger paint soap. For awhile she was refusing to get her body washed after a string of bad diaper rashes from daycare. She would stand up to paint the wall and we could get her clean.

My two year old saw a bug and immediately knelt down by it, exclaimed “ladybug! How sweet!”, then proceeded to stand up and attempt to stomp on it repeatedly.

I’m a teacher and a few days after my first (and only) was born the Uvalde school shooting happened. Postpartum emotions play a part, but it is really difficult to escape the growing negativity about the state of the world. She’s two now and while I do still have many concerns about the future I’m focused now on making each day as positive as I can for her. In my experience, in time, the intensity fades a little. You do what you can, accept you can’t control everything, and make the best with what you have.

2 years old - a puppet at a puppet show story time. She was in tears at the first song then for the rest of the show she kept repeating “puppet not bite you” and “puppet stay in blue box”.

But then later said “I need more puppet” so maybe she got over it.

Kids.

Librarian at a PreK-5 school (3-11 years old). I teach 45 minute classes to everyone each week. 700 kids, 32 classes. Less stress than classroom teaching while still following the same schedule.

We have to change our word/phrase/spelling for walk every year or so with our dogs. It’s currently called “going on an adventure”.

I never had the impression that the last prequel book and movie were very popular. Sometimes it’s okay to just let things die.

Different article:

Among the books ordered returned to the library shelves are “Caste: The Origins of our Discontent,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson, and “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. A book about a transgender teenager was also among the eight books ordered to remain on library shelves.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-appeals-court-rules-some-books-be-restored-to-texas-library-shelves/ar-BB1nLSzx

But I can’t find a list of all 8 or a list of the 17 books originally banned.

The Scholastic comment in the article is no longer accurate. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208419749/scholastic-book-fair-diverse-stories-apology They did have an optional diverse collection for their book fairs but have since added them back into the regular delivery for book fairs.

To the issue at hand, if Ruby Bridges was able to live through it as a child, your child can learn about it.

I browse Lemmy. Sorted by top 12 hours in the voyager app. That gets me through a few hours each day during the week. Then on the weekends when I have a little extra scroll time I go to mastodon when Lemmy is exhausted, and then I visit the few Lemmy communities I subscribe to sorted by new. I also have Feedly for RSS feed articles and Pixelfed occasionally. I have an almost 2 year old. My husband has a couple mobile games (mostly Pokémon related) that he’ll use for a few minutes at a time.

Edit: I’ve also used Libby to read ebooks. If I have to stop suddenly because kids, I’ll just highlight whatever word I stopped on and pick back up later.