Summer is here, time for a break!

Today is Berhane's last day of preschool for this year! Parents and family members were invited to join them in a beautiful performance. They're wearing colorful t-shirts that they painted themselves. How impressive. The sang, danced; they really entertained us. We met all his friends he being telling us. It was fun! fun! fun!

Old Skool party

Cleveland May 25, 2008. Family and friends. This was a beautiful party. We ate, danced and played games.

15 Simple Ways to Keep Your Partner Happy

15 Simple Ways to Keep Your Partner Happy By David Wygant Updated: May 27, 2008 So you're in a relationship and your partner starts nagging. She tells you that you just don't understand her, and that she really wishes that you would just do more "little things."

It's not the big things that make her happy; it's paying attention to the little details and showing you care that is really meaningful. She doesn't necessarily need lavish gifts -- she needs to know you're thinking about her.

Here are some ideas to get you started doing these "little things" she really wants:

1. Rub her feet instead of asking her if she wants you to rub her feet. Make it look like you want to do it.

2. Make her dinner one night. Don't ask her if she wants you to make dinner. Make her dinner before she gets home.

3. Light a candle so that she arrives home to a nice environment instead of coming home to the glaring lights of the television and other things.

4. Send her a text in the middle of the day telling her "I miss your smile from this morning" or "Last night was amazing!" or "The conversation we had last night was great."

5.

Send an eCard in the middle of the day... something cute to remind her how much you really care about her.

Send an eCard in the middle of the day... something cute to remind her how much you really care about her.

6. If she's going on a business trip, offer to drive her to the airport or pick her up to make her life that much easier.

7. Let her have control of the remote control. Don't monopolize it for a change. Just give it to her and let her actually sit there and enjoying watching one of her shows. Then you can share one of her interests by watching it with her.

8. Offer to iron one of her shirts or take her clothes to the dry cleaner.

9. Clean up the bathroom without being asked. Don't just sit there and ignore the mess around the toilet. If you know it drives her crazy to see water splashed all around the sink, dry that area after you use it.

10. If you work out together, enjoy it with her instead of rushing through your own workout and then not letting her workout at the same time.

11. Take a shower together, then wash her hair, scrub her back, and give her a spa treatment. Do this and enjoy it!

12. The next time she gives you a massage, give her a massage the next day. Offer it! Don't just say you'll give her a massage...do it!

13. Surprise her by making plans. Tell her, "We're going out tonight honey." You can even just go out for a drink or dinner somewhere. It's taking the initiative that's important.

14. Decide on and set aside one night a week as date night. Have a date like when you first started dating.

15. Call her in the middle of the day and just say hello. Don't wait for her to call you.

It can be simple to keep her satisfied. It's not necessarily about what you give her financially or what gifts you give her. That's a cop out. It's the little things. The guy who makes the biggest mistake is the one who ignores their significant other then all of a sudden give them an expensive gift to make up for it. That doesn't make up for it at all.

Asian Festival 2008

Look at that beautiful art! We were entertained by the beautiful Asian dancers and much more.

Asian Festival 2008

Today we went to the Asian festival. It was fun. Will post more pictures tomorrow.

Yes It's My Birthday Today!

Home Made Chocolate Cake Yammie! Home made Orange Chiffon Cake

Taken Yesterday1

Taken May 18, 2008.

Potty Training

I know I'm tired and busy, but I have to squeeze some time for the blog otherwise Autumn will be here without sharing enough. When my son turned two, he started showing signs to be potty trained; such as; mommy I want change, and he woke up dry sometimes. I was not on top of him for many reasons, first, I thought potty training will just happen, and second I kept postponing. I had someone from "Help Me Grow" that came to my house once a month, and they told me that boys are potty trained later than girls between 3-31/2 . To support their statement, I came across a lot of articles from Children magazines that says the same thing. Thus, I was not pressed about potty training him. I bought a potty, and told him what's for and tried to remind him to use it. By the time he was 2 1/2, I removed him from diapers to pull ups that I called big boys pants. He was excited for a moment; actually he started peeing in the potty, but still doing # two in his big boys pants. I tried to motivate him with stickers and M&M, but it didn't work. When he turned three, I started to worry because he understood almost everything, and knew exactly what he was doing, but refused to use the potty. My mother in-law told me not to worry much. She told me that she has never seen a 4 year old not potty trained, so by the time he is 4 he will be using his potty. I talked to a couple more people, and they told me he should be potty trained. I decided to go online and find info about other moms that have kids around my son's age. Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one. I end up finding even funnier stories. One boy who was 31/2 would tell his mom, "mom I'm going to my room and poop now." As I read other mom's stories, I began to laugh at myself. One thing many other mom responded was, don't enforce potty training. Sometimes ignore the child for a while and then come back later. I also leaned that a new change can be a big issue such as, a new baby in the family or moving to a new house. I could not stop telling him to use the bathroom every time I change his big boys pants because I was tired of changing him. I promised to give him stickers or M&M if he use the toilet to do # 2, but all he says is "OK mom next time." Every time I asked him where do we do # 2, he sweetly respond "In the toilet." I never shouted at him, I really tried hard to be calm whenever I talk to him. I have been thinking hard about what to tell him that might work. After I came home with the baby, I knew he was a proud big brother; thus, I told him that he need to show his sister that he is a big boy. He needs to use the potty. All he say was, "Ok mom." At first I thought he was just saying his ok mom as usual. Before I knew it, he called me to go help him wipe. I thought it was a joke. I went there, and called Brian to witness. After he went for three days, we decided to let him wear underwear. Berhane will be 31/2 on May 14th, and I'm proud to say that he has been using the potty since April 3 of 08. He is officially potty trained.

Happy Mother's Day

Two Days ago, my son told me that he is making a present for me. I asked him what it was, and he said, its something I can put on my table. Today he came home with these beautiful gifts Thanks son. You really made my day!

Mothers day enjoy!

I like this. Thanks Kapala for forwarding it to me.

By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief.

I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education - all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations - what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent, this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.

Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the 'Remember-When-Mom-Did' Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language - mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, 'What did you get wrong?' (She insisted I include that here.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Here is an interesting article ma sister Tamko sent me

Study shows breast-fed children are smarter

By Will Dunham May 5, 2008

WASHINGTON—A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said Monday.

more stories like this

Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, the researchers in Canada and Belarus reported.

About half the 14,000 babies were randomly assigned to a group in which prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding by the mother was encouraged at Belarussian hospitals and clinics. The mothers of the other babies received no special encouragement.

Those in the breast-feeding encouragement group were, on average, breast-fed longer than the others and were less likely to have been given formula in a bottle.

At 3 months, 73 percent of the babies in the breast-feeding encouragement group were breast-fed, compared to 60 percent of the other group. At 6 months, it was 50 percent versus 36 percent.

In addition, the group given encouragement was far more likely to give their children only breast milk. The rate was seven times higher, for example, at 3 months.

The children were monitored for about 6 1/2 years.

The children in the group where breast-feeding was encouraged scored about 5 percent higher in IQ tests and did better academically, the researchers found.

Previous studies had indicated brain development and intelligence benefits for breast-fed children.

But researchers have sought to determine whether it was the breast-feeding that did it, or that mothers who prefer to breast-feed their babies may differ from those who do not.

The design of the study -- randomly assigning babies to two groups regardless of the mothers' characteristics -- was intended to eliminate the confusion.

'MOTHERS WHO BREAST-FEED ... ARE DIFFERENT'

"Mothers who breast-feed or those who breast-feed longer or most exclusively are different from the mothers who don't," Dr. Michael Kramer of McGill University in Montreal and the Montreal Children's Hospital said in a telephone interview.

"They tend to be smarter. They tend to be more invested in their babies. They tend to interact with them more closely. They may be the kind of mothers who read to their kids more, who spend more time with their kids, who play with them more," added Kramer, who led the study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

The researchers measured the differences between the two groups using IQ tests administered by the children's pediatricians and by ratings by their teachers of their school performance in reading, writing, math and other subjects.

Both sets of scores were significantly higher in the children from the breast-feeding promotion group.

The study was launched in the mid-1990s. Kramer said the initial idea was to do it in the United States and Canada, but many hospitals in those countries by that time had begun strongly encouraging breast-feeding as a matter of routine.

The situation was different in Belarus at the time, he said, with less routine encouragement for the practice.

Kramer said how breast-feeding may make children more intelligent is unclear.

"It could even be that because breast-feeding takes longer, the mother is interacting more with the baby, talking with the baby, soothing the baby," he said. "It could be an emotional thing. It could be a physical thing. Or it could be a hormone or something else in the milk that's absorbed by the baby."

Previous studies have shown babies whose mothers breast-fed them enjoy many health advantages over formula-fed babies.

These include fewer ear, stomach or intestinal infections, digestive problems, skin diseases and allergies, and less risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that women who do not have health problems exclusively breast-feed their infants for at least the first six months, with it continuing at least through the first year as other foods are introduced.

Trip to the Library

Yesterday, we took Ndamona to the library for the first time. She liked it. I learned that almost all moms have something in common. You can meet another mom for the first time, and you can talk for hours. I don't know why I never ask for numbers. Next time I think I will at least an email. Yesterday, I told Brian to leave us with the kids at the kids area while he go look for some books. I met this woman, who is a mother of three; we just talked like we knew each others for years. My son got so excited playing on the computer thus, he forgot he needed to go potty. At the last minute he jumped up, shouting "mommy I have to go potty." I quickly, put Ndamona in the car sit, and before we took off, he went pee in his undies. I looked in my bag just to realize I forgot to put in an extra underwear for him. The mom I was talking to quickly handed me a pull up, and thank God I had an extra pant.