Yay! Four books down!
This one took me a while to read, but only because I really wanted to soak it up. Dan and I read and used the advice in "Happiest Baby on the Block" and it really helped Rosalind during her first few months.
"Happiest Toddler on the Block" is for parents of children one year to four years old. Dr. Karp's methods of preventing and eliminating tantrums may seem, at first glance, to be a bit on the "hippy" side, but after using some of his techniques with Rosalind I can tell you that after repeated use, they really do work.
It was interesting to learn that when anyone (including toddlers) get really angry our logical side of the brain shuts down and the emotional side hijacks everything. With toddlers, who seem to have a shorter fuse that their parents, this is very true. They don't absorb long sentences, full of logical reasons why they can't have their favorite toy at the dinner table. All they hear is you not understanding what they're trying to communicate.
One of the key components of Dr. Karps technique is to connect with respect and speak "Toddler-ese"; short almost caveman like sentences. For example: "You're mad! Mad, Mad, Mad! You want! Want Minnie. Want Minnie now!" By saying the emotion you see on your toddlers face and using short sentences you let them know that you understand. Combine this with also using somewhat exaggerated facial expressions and hand motions and you can successfully communicate to a child with little verbal skill that you understand what she/he is trying to say.
When this is accomplished, I can tell you from experience that the child will calm a bit or altogether. It's then you can offer an alternative, a distraction, you can try and say "No, mommy says not now. Later.", offer a compromise "Five more minutes with Minnie and then it's dinner time". Anything like that.
The more you do it the better it gets. Rosalind really responds to it, though sometimes it takes several minutes of doing this to really reach her.
Then there's things like "Feeding the meter" which is focused play time of five minutes throughout the day, "gossiping" where you tell her toys in front of her how good she was at lunch or in the bath, giving her choices. Now this one is really neat. We started doing it with Rosalind with food. We give her a choice between two things when she wants more to eat and she loves it! It makes her far more cooperative at meals because she feels like she has some sense of power over her life.
Now, if Rosalind is doing something dangerous or breaking an important family rule, there are immediate things that are done, followed by connecting with respect. The rule here isn't to let the child run rough-shod over me as a parent. The idea is to let her know that her feelings matter to me, that I respect her and that she should do the same. So, when I'm really upset, or she does something dangerous, I get to speak first: "No! Danger! Stop!" and then when she's safe: "That makes mommy very scared and mad when you do that." It works when she's being really disobedient too: "You make mommy very mad when you won't listen. Mommy mad." It helps teach a child to take others' feelings into account; maybe not right away at one year old, but eventually, after repeated use.
There is a ton more in the book. Advice for practically every scenario imaginable, and advice particular to different temperaments. If you have a child between the ages of one and four, or have a child approaching their first birthday, I highly recommend this book. I will be returning to it again and again as Rosalind gets older.
I may not use everything in this book, but I'm trying a lot of it and liking it. As I said, it doesn't undermine my authority as a parent, but instead helps me communicate boundaries to Rosalind and starts to build the foundation of a loving and trusting relationship with her.
I give it four stars.
Next book is "Buddhism for Mothers" by Sarah Napthali
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Book #3: "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" By Stieg Larsson
I do not know how to feel about this book. At one point I was convinced I would only give it two stars; at another point I wanted to give it five. Now...I may have to settle for three.
I do not read many mysteries, they tend to bore me. But "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson had made such a huge stir in the book community I had to read it.
The first 200 pages of this book was more exposition than anything else. The tone was very much like a detective in an emotionless voice relating events. We're introduced to most of the major and some of the minor players. And the information that's related seems unconnected. It was the curiosity of how in the world these disparate things fit together that kept me reading. That and I'm a stubborn reader.
At about page 200 things exploded. The book suddenly became an addiction. No, a NEED. I had to keep reading, I looked for any moment to turn on my nook and read at least a page. I read about 150 pages in two days.
Once the mystery was solved, however, I still had about a hundred pages left of the book. What was left?
Well, here's where the star rating drops.
Remember how many people felt that the movie "Return of the King" was the movie that wouldn't end? Well, this was the book that would never end. I'm trying very hard not to spoil anything, but there's a sub plot that they take the last hundred or so pages to resolve. It's a great resolution, but it takes far too long to get there.
The two main characters are complete opposites. Kalle Bloomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Of the two, Salander is the most interesting and is the girl from the title. She's got lots of secrets, and I have a feeling only a few are revealed in the book. Salander is one of the most interesting female protagonists I've read in a long time.
Bloomkvist is a financial journalist who's hired to solve the 50 yr mystery of a missing girl. It was very creative and organic when the two finally met and started working together; but it was frustrating that it took as long as it did to get them into the same scene. The book ended by leaving the relationship between these two in an annoying cliffhanger.
It's a dark book, and there were times I put it down because there was a definite creepy factor. But if you read mysteries and thrillers this is something you're probably used to.
All in all, would I recommend this book? Yeah I would. Especially if you like this genre. I am tempted to read the next book because I have to know what happens to Salander, but I need a break and will be reading the first in the Foundation series next.
Book #3 down, 47 left! It's a good start to the goal!
I do not read many mysteries, they tend to bore me. But "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson had made such a huge stir in the book community I had to read it.
The first 200 pages of this book was more exposition than anything else. The tone was very much like a detective in an emotionless voice relating events. We're introduced to most of the major and some of the minor players. And the information that's related seems unconnected. It was the curiosity of how in the world these disparate things fit together that kept me reading. That and I'm a stubborn reader.
At about page 200 things exploded. The book suddenly became an addiction. No, a NEED. I had to keep reading, I looked for any moment to turn on my nook and read at least a page. I read about 150 pages in two days.
Once the mystery was solved, however, I still had about a hundred pages left of the book. What was left?
Well, here's where the star rating drops.
Remember how many people felt that the movie "Return of the King" was the movie that wouldn't end? Well, this was the book that would never end. I'm trying very hard not to spoil anything, but there's a sub plot that they take the last hundred or so pages to resolve. It's a great resolution, but it takes far too long to get there.
The two main characters are complete opposites. Kalle Bloomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Of the two, Salander is the most interesting and is the girl from the title. She's got lots of secrets, and I have a feeling only a few are revealed in the book. Salander is one of the most interesting female protagonists I've read in a long time.
Bloomkvist is a financial journalist who's hired to solve the 50 yr mystery of a missing girl. It was very creative and organic when the two finally met and started working together; but it was frustrating that it took as long as it did to get them into the same scene. The book ended by leaving the relationship between these two in an annoying cliffhanger.
It's a dark book, and there were times I put it down because there was a definite creepy factor. But if you read mysteries and thrillers this is something you're probably used to.
All in all, would I recommend this book? Yeah I would. Especially if you like this genre. I am tempted to read the next book because I have to know what happens to Salander, but I need a break and will be reading the first in the Foundation series next.
Book #3 down, 47 left! It's a good start to the goal!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
2011 Book #2: "Honeymoon in Tehran"
I'm counting books I complete in 2011 as going towards my list, so even if I start a book in 2011 but don't finish it until 2012, it doesn't count.
"Honeymoon in Tehran" by Azadeh Moaveni is the followup to her first memoir "Lipstick Jihad", a memoir about Iran and a young female journalists search for her culture, faith and a place to call home. In the first memoir she was forced from Iran due to the Bush administration grouping Iran into the "axis of evil", it made it impossible for an American journalist to do her job properly.
At the beginning of "Honeymoon" she's living in Cairo, and flies occasionally into Iran to investigate stories for "Time" magazine. She's asked to cover the election in which Ahmadinejad was elected. She describes the shock of everyone on his election, the supreme underdog that no one knew anything about.
Prior to the election, the women were still required to wear chador, but women were allowed vibrant colors and designer scarves. The government "tolerated a grassroots women's movement of considerable vigor..a society with 90% female literacy, whose women received 60% of the college degrees awarded each year."
Surprising when we view Iran as one of the countries that are so oppressive to women; not that I'm saying they're perfect, especially now.
Post Ahmadinejad, most of the "freedoms" that the more moderate presidents of years past allowed or turned a blind eye toward have been taken away. Over the course of a few days in 2007, 150,000 women were arrested for improper dress. From 2006 through the present authorities will randomly kick down peoples satellite dishes, and round up their pet dogs because they are "unclean". These are just a few of the things that Ms. Moaveni discusses in her book.
It's a lot like her first book in the sense that she exposes some misconceptions about the Iranian people as a whole; mainly that the majority are not fundamentalist Muslims that want to kill all Americans but instead people that are not that different from you and me. They try to provide better lives for their children than the ones they have had, they want to get married, have children, successful careers, access to the arts, to trashy TV. If you wonder why these people stay, the answers range from the inability to afford moving, to the frustration that they shouldn't have to leave the country to make good lives for themselves. Believe it or not, people love this place, they've built lives here and it's heartbreaking for them that their government makes it so difficult to live in a place they love.
It's this that Moaveni shows with such candor and sensitivity. She loves her family and friends in Iran, she loves Iran even; the country of haunting Persian poetry, citrus scented orchards, beautiful mountain ranges, people of humor and charm who love and accept her. You can feel her sadness as she has to realize that all these things can't overcome the daily humiliation and restrictions of the theocracy of Iran.
As the title implies, she marries a man whom she meets in Iran who, like her, was raised outside of Iran after the revolution of 1979. He shares much of her frustration but none of her romanticized acceptance of Islam, which she learned at the knee of her grandmother in the sunny suburbs of Southern California.
I learned much about the society of Iran through her troubles acquiring a simple marriage license after she and her soon to be husband found themselves expecting a baby. She was terrified the morality police would find out she was unwed and beat her until she either died or miscarried or both. Once they were married and the baby was born a whole new set of problems showed themselves, such as proper vaccines, not being able to take her son out for a walk due to the pollution, parks that were over run with "hoodlums" and the nagging question of how to raise a free thinking young man in a country that more than frowned upon it.
This book was an eye opener, just as much as the first one and I recommend everyone read it. The information is sound, much more than you'd find almost any media outlet (especially Fox news). In this day and age, where the Middle East is so important and yet only partial truths are offered in our media, I believe the point of view of someone who's lived there among it's people, had contact with politicians, mullahs, scholars, musicians and reformers is invaluable to us.
"Honeymoon in Tehran" by Azadeh Moaveni is the followup to her first memoir "Lipstick Jihad", a memoir about Iran and a young female journalists search for her culture, faith and a place to call home. In the first memoir she was forced from Iran due to the Bush administration grouping Iran into the "axis of evil", it made it impossible for an American journalist to do her job properly.
At the beginning of "Honeymoon" she's living in Cairo, and flies occasionally into Iran to investigate stories for "Time" magazine. She's asked to cover the election in which Ahmadinejad was elected. She describes the shock of everyone on his election, the supreme underdog that no one knew anything about.
Prior to the election, the women were still required to wear chador, but women were allowed vibrant colors and designer scarves. The government "tolerated a grassroots women's movement of considerable vigor..a society with 90% female literacy, whose women received 60% of the college degrees awarded each year."
Surprising when we view Iran as one of the countries that are so oppressive to women; not that I'm saying they're perfect, especially now.
Post Ahmadinejad, most of the "freedoms" that the more moderate presidents of years past allowed or turned a blind eye toward have been taken away. Over the course of a few days in 2007, 150,000 women were arrested for improper dress. From 2006 through the present authorities will randomly kick down peoples satellite dishes, and round up their pet dogs because they are "unclean". These are just a few of the things that Ms. Moaveni discusses in her book.
It's a lot like her first book in the sense that she exposes some misconceptions about the Iranian people as a whole; mainly that the majority are not fundamentalist Muslims that want to kill all Americans but instead people that are not that different from you and me. They try to provide better lives for their children than the ones they have had, they want to get married, have children, successful careers, access to the arts, to trashy TV. If you wonder why these people stay, the answers range from the inability to afford moving, to the frustration that they shouldn't have to leave the country to make good lives for themselves. Believe it or not, people love this place, they've built lives here and it's heartbreaking for them that their government makes it so difficult to live in a place they love.
It's this that Moaveni shows with such candor and sensitivity. She loves her family and friends in Iran, she loves Iran even; the country of haunting Persian poetry, citrus scented orchards, beautiful mountain ranges, people of humor and charm who love and accept her. You can feel her sadness as she has to realize that all these things can't overcome the daily humiliation and restrictions of the theocracy of Iran.
As the title implies, she marries a man whom she meets in Iran who, like her, was raised outside of Iran after the revolution of 1979. He shares much of her frustration but none of her romanticized acceptance of Islam, which she learned at the knee of her grandmother in the sunny suburbs of Southern California.
I learned much about the society of Iran through her troubles acquiring a simple marriage license after she and her soon to be husband found themselves expecting a baby. She was terrified the morality police would find out she was unwed and beat her until she either died or miscarried or both. Once they were married and the baby was born a whole new set of problems showed themselves, such as proper vaccines, not being able to take her son out for a walk due to the pollution, parks that were over run with "hoodlums" and the nagging question of how to raise a free thinking young man in a country that more than frowned upon it.
This book was an eye opener, just as much as the first one and I recommend everyone read it. The information is sound, much more than you'd find almost any media outlet (especially Fox news). In this day and age, where the Middle East is so important and yet only partial truths are offered in our media, I believe the point of view of someone who's lived there among it's people, had contact with politicians, mullahs, scholars, musicians and reformers is invaluable to us.
Friday, January 7, 2011
The sexy and the not so sexy.
So it's been a while since my last post, mainly because Rosalind's two top front teeth took TWO MONTHS to breath through and so Dan and I have spent the last two months not sleeping...Oh yeah, did I mention the stomach flu she also got at the end of the teething extravaganza?
And oh, before I forget, two weeks after she FINALLY started sleeping again, her "eye" teeth decided to start coming in.
I've discovered that sleep deprivation isn't good for a marriage, or for trying to edit a final cut of a book, or for trying to work out four times a week, or for...anything.
I have been reading, however, you know, in my somewhat coherent times. I just finished "Guilty Pleasures" by Laurell K. Hamilton and I was not impressed.
First of all, I figured out the mystery half way through the book and was thoroughly annoyed by Anita Blake's inability to figure out what was relatively easy to see. Plus, I heard so much about how sexy the series was, but was disappointed to discover that in the first book there was NO sex. Now, usually it's not a big deal for me, but when you're in the mood for some sexy Vampire slaying action with a mystery twist and there's no sex, and little mystery it's a keen disappointment.
However, the BEST erotic book I've read thus far was "Everything Forbidden". It wasn't written porn, it had a truly interesting love story. The sex was integral to the story and STEAMY. Though short, the story developed quickly and the main characters became endearing and real very fast. I highly recommend it.
Before I sign off, I wanted to let you all in on one of my New Years' goals:
50 books in a year:
*3 of them classic Sci-Fi; I've decided on "Dune", the first of Asimov's "Foundation" series, and "Stranger in a Strange Land", I may add an anthology of Bradbury shorts.
*2 of them classics: "Northanger Abbey" and either "Wuthering Heights" or "The Picture of Dorian Grey"
That leaves 45 books, and I'll go ahead and count "Guilty Pleasures" as one since I finished it in 2011 and I'm about to start "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".
Any suggestions on the other 43?
And oh, before I forget, two weeks after she FINALLY started sleeping again, her "eye" teeth decided to start coming in.
I've discovered that sleep deprivation isn't good for a marriage, or for trying to edit a final cut of a book, or for trying to work out four times a week, or for...anything.
I have been reading, however, you know, in my somewhat coherent times. I just finished "Guilty Pleasures" by Laurell K. Hamilton and I was not impressed.
First of all, I figured out the mystery half way through the book and was thoroughly annoyed by Anita Blake's inability to figure out what was relatively easy to see. Plus, I heard so much about how sexy the series was, but was disappointed to discover that in the first book there was NO sex. Now, usually it's not a big deal for me, but when you're in the mood for some sexy Vampire slaying action with a mystery twist and there's no sex, and little mystery it's a keen disappointment.
However, the BEST erotic book I've read thus far was "Everything Forbidden". It wasn't written porn, it had a truly interesting love story. The sex was integral to the story and STEAMY. Though short, the story developed quickly and the main characters became endearing and real very fast. I highly recommend it.
Before I sign off, I wanted to let you all in on one of my New Years' goals:
50 books in a year:
*3 of them classic Sci-Fi; I've decided on "Dune", the first of Asimov's "Foundation" series, and "Stranger in a Strange Land", I may add an anthology of Bradbury shorts.
*2 of them classics: "Northanger Abbey" and either "Wuthering Heights" or "The Picture of Dorian Grey"
That leaves 45 books, and I'll go ahead and count "Guilty Pleasures" as one since I finished it in 2011 and I'm about to start "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".
Any suggestions on the other 43?
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