Party Hat Bowling

Due to some inclement weather on my son's third birthday we had a lot of leftover party supplies.  On occasion he likes to dig them out and play with them.  Sometimes he sets up a little birthday party, but lately he has been setting up a rough boy-version of bowling.  Something I have affectionately begun calling "Party Hat Bowling."  To play, he sets up the hats in a semi-sort of bowling pin style and then he takes the box that held the supplies and throws it at the party hats trying to knock them over.  Any knocked over result in being quite pleased with himself.  This games gives him lots of excitement.  So I wanted to share this hilarious game with you and to show you some photos and videos for an example.  Enjoy!

Boys Harmed by "Hookup Culture"

Earlier today I came across an article talking about the "hookup culture" and how is it also detrimental to the adolescence of  boys and not just girls.  I have always found it interesting the way the girls and women are more often portrayed as the only ones harmed in a situation, especially if it is sexual.  Men are always shown as the aggressor and women are almost always shown as the victim.  Of course in a bad situation, there can be a victim on both sides. 
As a mother of a  three-year-old boy, I have been trying to learn all that I can about what boys go through as they grow up to be able to understand and talk and most importantly listen with understanding to issues I admittedly don't know much about. I grew up in teenage girl hell, and never had any brothers. Although the majority of my friends were boys we didn't spend a large amount of time talking about feelings.
I have found that this is the trend also with men my age as I am single. It is not rare for me to get 3 or more messages in a week from people that I do not talk to on a regular basis saying something derogatory or asking for a nude photo out of the blue. I have at times received some extremely negative and downright rude responses when I do not oblige. 
I have also found that given my past experiences, I reached a point in my life where I found it hard to envision a man with really connecting on an emotional level. I know this was one of my issues in dating in the past.   I also know that some of this stemmed from my own childhood in the "tough love" approach taken by my own and many other fathers around me at our age.  If you aren't bleeding, you aren't hurt.  If you aren't puking you aren't sick.  If you were to see my father cry, the Earth must have shattered, etc. 
I have been so blessed to have the opportunity to try to learn even more from the eyes of my son. I have already (at a mere 3 years old) felt pain from the words and actions of one of his friends as directed towards him. I hope that I can do my best to teach him to be gentle with other people (any crush/dating prospects) but more importantly to be gentle with himself and to be confident that it IS manly to rise above situations and to have feelings. I hope this does not scar him during adolescence and I know it is a fine line to walk during some points in his life, but by being an understanding person, life will be much more satisfying and fulfilling and his connections with people will have so much more meaning and be long lasting in the long run. At least that is my hope anyway, I know that boys are very different from girls, and I am in a constant state of learning even in my "old age." I am just hoping to be able to do the best that I can to give him life long tools to feel the least amount of hardship with a single mother. 
I am very sad to see how much the "social" connection is disappearing with the younger generation. We are social creatures by nature and we need to have that face to face contact, and be hugged and loved in person, not over a computer screen....
The biggest negative comment I have about this article is as I stated before that in addressing the harm that the "hookup" culture is having on boys, it never really addresses the fact that some of them may be feeling guilt or regret or may also be feeling violated, and it NEVER painted any of the girls as the aggressor, when I know that they are out there in a lot more abundance than anyone is really talking about. 

If you are interested in reading the original article, it can be found here: Experts Say Boys Also Harmed By Hookup Culture

Random Liam Moments: January 2014

I had such a great time sharing Liam's random moments from December that I thought it would be fun to share them monthly!  Here are some of the highlights from the last month.

Liam will only wear his Cars Light Up Shoes and his Airplanes zip-up hoodie for a jacket.  It doesn't matter if it matches or not.  We get into a huge fight if I really want him to wear something else or extensive acts of bribery...  Usually I find it's not worth it and just wash them both constantly instead haha.

Liam and I were playing and he told me to go to timeout. At lunch I ate a carrot off of his plate and he told me to go to timeout again. We are watching Despicable Me 2 right now and we always talk about wanting chip hats... I told Liam I wanted a Chip Hat and he said "No I want one, timeout!" Somehow I think this has backfired on me

Liam just let out a really long fart, and then there was silence before he said bless you. I don't know why it was so funny but I just laughed hysterically for almost 5 full minutes.... In case this is funny to anyone else I wanted to share, otherwise I am probably just sleep deprived hahaha. Usually he says excuse me but I think he wasn't sure what to think hahaha


Liam says to me "I have to go potty" as he is playing in his tent so I told him Let's go potty" and we started walking to the bathroom. He informed me "I peed in my pants" He is not one for accidents so I am frantically touching his pants all over looking for a wet spot saying "did you really, how come?" He says "No, ha I'm funny" and laughs hysterically....... Children...

Liam is playing with his food, he had a cheese curd and ripped it in half and one of them was Liam and one was mommy, they were having conversations and playing hide and seek, and at the end they hugged and said "I love you Liam" and "I love you too" and then they were eaten haha. At least they were loving cheese curds...

 Three must be when it starts.... he calls my kisses yucky and now he doesn't want to wake up if I try to wake him up telling me no waking up and that it's time to sleep... 3 going on 13..... And he wakes up wanting chocolate in the morning throwing a tantrum when I won't let him have chocolate for breakfast. I feel like I have a teen girl going through PMS some days haha


 Liam is playing with his food, he had a cheese curd and ripped it in half and one of them was Liam and one was mommy, they were having conversations and playing hide and seek, and at the end they hugged and said "I love you Liam" and "I love you too" and then they were eaten haha. At least they were loving cheese curds...


So a grand maul tantrum ensued after trying to make Liam some oatmeal and he wanted chocolate cream of wheat, so after he calmed down I made him cream of wheat and myself oatmeal.... guess who just gave me his cream of wheat and is now devouring my oatmeal.... little stinker

Liam was watching videos on Youtube and got onto one of making a polymer clay minion from despicable me, he has now been enthralled in polymer clay pixar character creations for the last 45 minutes. I guess this means that it's time for mom to buy Liam some clay or to start making and baking actual objects with the play doh.

 Oh no it has started already at 3, Liam wanted a hug and I kissed his cheek, he just wiped it off and said yuck Where does he learn this? I said No yuck haha

Liam was trying to "cold hands" me while I was making lunch and I made him stop, so then I hear him squealing running around the house so I went to go see what he was doing. He had both hands up the back of his shirt and was saying "cold hands" to himself and squealing haha. I love my child.

This evening Liam and I were watching the second Lilo & Stitch: Stick has a Glitch. Liam has watch all of the Lilo & Stitch movies many times and is very attached to them. He has only seen this one a couple time though and it's been awhile since we last watched it. Towards the end Stitch is running out of power and almost dies, I was watching him and his eyes started to tear up, he was actually feeling emotion towards Stitch and genuinely sad for him and then when their love brings him back to life I was cheering and Liam was happy but his eyes were still wet, if it would have went on for longer I think he genuinely would have cried for Stitch. I found this very interesting because although he knows what goes on in movies now, I haven't seen him get emotionally into something in quite this way. It made me very happy that even though it sucks sometimes I am glad for the decision that I made early on to limit my adult show time to only after Liam was in bed and wasn't watching it. I didn't want him picking up things off of adult themed shows/movies until he was able to better understand what was going on and how to process those things. It is also nice to know that my boy shows compassion towards others even if they are intangible to him.  

 If you want to check out the moments from last month go to:
 Random Liam Moments: December 2013 
 

Random Liam Moments from the Past Month

Liam has had some great random moments recently and just thought that I would share some of them with you to make you chuckle like I did, and perhaps you can make some comments on them as well :)  Comments are always welcome :)  Welcome to motherhood of a now 3 year old boy.

*When Liam woke up from his nap earlier today he had gotten out his photo album from his 2 year old class and had it beside the bed since he must have been looking at it to fall asleep, I thought that this was cute and put it away, when I went to lay him down for bed tonight he lifted up his pillow and had taken two picture of just himself out and had put them under his pillow.... I have no idea what to think about this haha. At least he was happy in both pictures, maybe he wanted to be happy in his dreams, any ideas? (Perhaps he got it from Lilo & Stitch)

*Liam is currently eating his mandarin oranges by picking up an orange with his fingers placing it on the top of the fork, bringing the fork to his mouth and then picking up the orange with his fingers and putting it into his mouth..... there's got to be a better way haha

 

*

Liam just told me he was hungry for a burger and I told him we needed to eat healthier now that the holidays were over. He said "ok I want a cupcake" haha. Lesser of two evils I guess haha

Liam has learned to say "excuse me" after he burps, and today he started telling me that it came from his tummy haha.  

Liam has to hug and kiss both the dog and cat multiple times before bed and also say goodnight to the moon and stars.

Liam has decided that he likes tea in addition to cocoa now :)

 We ordered the stuff this evening and Liam and I will soon begin making out own bubble tea at home yay.  Honeydew is our first flavor.  

Liam prefers his cheap construction trucks to his trains :(  Stupid expensive Thomas haha

Liam has started learning words to songs he hears repeatedly and sings along zealously, especially songs from movies, and he makes up the parts he doesn't know, just like the rest of us haha

Despicable Me 2 has been the reigning champion of the house along with Bolt, Wall-E and Airplanes....  he hasn't even wanted to watch anything on Netflix lately it's crazy...  George still takes over every night before bedtime though.

When grandma was here visiting she rocked Liam to sleep one night and now every night after being put into bed, Liam will come out into the living room with a blanket and want to rock for a few minutes and then he is good and will go climb back into bed and go to sleep.  I don't mind it at all because I was sad when he stopped wanting to be rocked and it lets me hold him close and snuggle him a little bit more :)

 Liam refuses to wear any shoes except for his Cars shoes that light up.  The only way that I can get him to wear another pair of shoes is if he is still asleep when I go to get him dressed for school and I can sneak some on him and get him out to the car before he knows what's going on. 

Liam seems to only crave pizza, burgers and chocolate right now.  He will still eat other things, but that is all he asks for and the occasional cupcake ;)

My song for the day

 

Reasons to Appreciate the Toddler Stage

I read an article today that lists 10 reasons why the toddler stage is the best stage and I just loved it.  If you are having a bad or a hard day with your toddler, it is a must read.  I wanted to add a couple of my own reasons onto the list as well.  The 10 listed in the article are as follows:

1. They still nap = winning. *Oh man do I appreciate each and every minute of nap time. 
2. They don't know how to spell *As Liam and I live alone this isn't as much of an issue because I don't need to spell things to another adult, but in the event that I do this is helpful.
3. You can give 'em a paci when they're being loud *Long car rides can be better with them that's for sure.
4. They want to sit in your lap all the time *I try to appreciate each and every moment of this stage and how close Liam wants to be with me and snuggles with me and things I am awesome.
5. They think everything you do is hilarious *And want to be tickled all the time.  
6. They let you have control of the radio in the car *I treasure this, in fact right now the only thing that Liam complains about with music is if I need to turn it up.  
7. They call you "Mommy"  *I love being called Mommy :)
8. They keep you active *Oh man yes they do, and that is why nap time is so treasured
9. They're easily impressed * I love that everything I do is so awesome :) 
   
10. They let you you hold their hand *I already have to wrestle Liam into this one a lot of the time, as he has started the "ow you are hurting me by barely touching me" stage

I have a couple of my own to add to the list:
11.  They can't tell time.  *I am going to be in big trouble on those nights that i try to start bedtime early when he can tell time
12.  They LOVE to play outside.  *I never have to beg Liam to go outside to play, in fact I have to bribe him to get him to stay inside sometimes because he already has been bathed and jammied and I don't want him to get all dirty
13. They don't pronounce every thing right * I honestly LOVE this about Liam, such as the way he says Elephant (Epitant).  I try to treasure it every time he says it because I know the days are limited and I wish that he would never say it right. 
14. Reading books is fun *I hope that I can say that at all ages, but I know that as some kids get older, reading books isn't the "cool" thing to do and hopefully he will be able to stand up to that. 
15. Yelling out things we see from the car * For example, water, bus, train, airplane, etc.  Liam and i have so much fun doing this that I find myself about to yell something out even if he isn't in the car with me. 


There are so many wonderful things to find in all stages of childhood, and these are just merely a few!  What are some more that you have found or would like to add?  I will add more as well after I see the responses. 

If you would like to read the original article it can be found at:
10 reasons why the toddler stage is the best