A Pink Cake for Isaac

Isaac has finally turned 4. Now when people assume he's 4 almost 5 at least they will be right that he is 4 years old instead of 3. He had a friend party last year so this year it was just family. We went swimming at the community indoor pool. The boys just finished swimming lessons so they were excited to be able to play there as much as they wanted. We then picked up some pizza for the birthday dinner then had cake and ice cream.

A word about the cake. KC wanted to hang out a little with Isaac on his special day so they went to the store together to pick out a toy and his cake. Originally Isaac had been saying he wanted a chocolate cake with blue frosting, but they came home with a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. Isaac really loves strawberries so I guess he couldn't resist it. I didn't think much about it until later when I realized this kid who is very much boy was going to have a pink cake. Oh well it tasted great.

Screen Free Week Results

After the boys helped me do some Saturday morning chores and after we had some lunch I declared Screen Free Week to be over. It is now almost 3 hours later and they are finally using a screen. I would say that this week was fairly successful.

My purpose in torturing myself this week was to help the boys get more used to finding entertaining activities to do without resorting to the computer, TV shows, or video games. This last week I heard "Mommy, I'm bored" plenty of times but soon they got used to playing with toys, making up games, and playing board games. Here are a few highlights for the week:

• Andrew and Isaac learned how the play the card game War and love it.
• They played, Sorry, Mouse Trap, Chutes and Ladders and Memory.
• They spontaneously read books in their room.
• Andrew took a book down to the basement and joined his Daddy who was studying
• The boys spontaneously cleaned up their toys once.
• Isaac willingly helped me vacuum and do the dishes.
• I was entertained with puppet shows for nearly an hour.
• They both willingly let me cut their hair. Isaac actually said " I want a haircut."
• KC got more studying done than usual since he wasn't tempted to watch TV in the evening.
• I read 3 books. (probably didn't help with the productivity)

So in the future I think we will do this again. Maybe not once a month, but as needed.

Screen Free Week

Beginning this week, on Monday April 5th, our family is going to attempt to institute our first SCREEN FREE WEEK. If any of you have kids like mine they are often either on the computer or watching TV or playing a video game. If any of you are like me you are often on the computer, checking email, blogs, and Hulu. Heck, even my baby watches Baby Einstein.

Typically this isn't a problem but sometimes I find that me and my boys become too attached to our screens. Case in point my boys earlier were fighting because on was watching something on the computer and the other was on the TV. The problem was that they each kept on turning their show up louder because "they couldn't hear."

So we are going to have a week of screen detox for the family. KC can only partially participate because of his job, but told him that he can't do any extracurricular screen stuff while working. There it is KC, you now have to follow it, ha!

So I'm going to print off my SCREEN FREE WEEK signs and tape them on each screen. Why don't you join me? Click the sign for a larger version and print it off.

Assuming we don't strangle each other by the end of it we are going to do this the first week of every month. Wish us luck!