My friend Alison posted this on her blog today:

I think JK Rowling is amazing... she has taken a generation of kids that are so glued to their TVs and video games and has given them back their imagination. I see it with babies who can't even speak yet their mother's plop them in front of the TV -we are building yet another generation of couch potatoes.... And Ms. Rowling is offering up a story that takes children (and adults) to another world.... making children think, feel, and READ!

Ouch. (To Alison’s defense, she actually was not responding to my post, but to something a woman did at her play center.) As a new mother it is tough to take criticism. I read things about how I’m supposed to be raising Jack and compare them to how he’s actually being raised and often I come up way short.

Lest the rest of you think my picture yesterday will doom Jack to a lifetime of sitting on the couch watching television, I thought it would be fun to show you what we did today.

4:15 a.m. (yep, you read that right, 4 a.m.!) Jack woke up to eat. Usually he goes back to sleep right away after this feeding. NOT TODAY. We rocked in the rocking chair for a while but he just wasn’t having any of it. Joe got up and changed a diaper for me and we headed to the play room.

5:00 a.m. Jack played on the floor while I stared at him bleary eyed. His new favorite thing to do is called cruising – he holds the furniture and walks around the room. He’s very proud. I realized he was trying to pull books out of the shelf (they are so tightly packed in there they don’t move), so I started putting his toys on the shelf. He loves this new game. Go get a toy, pull it down, play with it a while, hop up and get another toy.

5:20 a.m. Tired of the play room, Jack and I headed out to the living room to play with blocks. This involves me building up a tower of blocks and Jack knocking it down. Repeat until Jack is bored.

5:30 a.m. Jack is bored. We go to his room and sing the following songs: “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “Clementine” and “Today” (a Girl Scout Song)

5:45 a.m. Jack is finally back asleep.

6:00 a.m. The jackhammering on our street begins. I do not get a nap.

6:30 a.m. Jack is awake! We play “10 little monkeys jumping on the bed” (yes, it is a somewhat violent rhyme. Are all those monkey’s dying when they break their heads?) Jack plays with my laptop case and his old shoe.

Here he is engrossed in the laptop case:



7:00 a.m. Breakfast time. This can last either 10 minutes or an hour depending upon his mood. Today was a looooong breakfast involving lots of playing. He was in a good mood but not overly hungry. He is dead set on practicing his consonants and I finally got a good video of him “talking”. ClickHERE to see it

Here are some eating pictures, not from this morning but still pretty cute:


He’s feeling the yams. I’m not sure what for, but he seems intrigued.


Sometimes you just have to bang your tray a little.


But in the end he’s too curious for his own good.

8:00 a.m. We washed the yams off in the sink, although I just found more in his hair. I changed his clothes and we went back to the play room. We read “How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms”, “Percival the Plain Caterpillar”, and “Rise and Shine Busy Bugs”.

8:15 a.m. Jack was done with the reading and did more cruising.

8:30 a.m. Jack crawled after the dog, scaring her. This made him laugh so he kept doing it. Then he played with blocks and coasters.

8:50 a.m. Jack had a little snack of milk and went to sleep at

9:00 a.m. Nap

9:30 a.m. I heard him babbling in his room, but didn’t go in to get him. He’s supposed to nap for at least an hour. I have to get the laundry started and pick up as much as I can while he’s in there.

9:45 a.m. He started to complain. (I just read a little trick on a blog I just found called a little pregnant. She said if the kid is supposed to nap for an hour, leave him in there for an hour. So I did. Ok, not quite an hour.)

9:55 a.m. I went to get him. Changed his diaper, changed my clothes and we were off to the gym. (Yes, I’m back to the gym. You know what they say? 9 months on, 9 months off? Well, Jack will be 8 months old next week so I have 1 month left to get back to my pre-pregnancy size, darn it.)

11:30 a.m. Home from the gym, where the wee one almost fell asleep in the car on the way home. Luckily he made it in just long enough to nurse and crash at

11:40 a.m. NAP, while I showered, ate, changed out the laundry, caught up on email and blog reading, and had a blissful break until

12:50 p.m. Yep, 1 hour and 10 minutes. Just long enough to relax.

1:00 p.m. More monkeys jumping on the bed, hair braiding (mine), diaper changing (Jack’s) and heading out to Whole Foods to buy more fruits and vegetables for Jack’s meals. On the way to the store we stopped at a drive through car wash. Jack was fascinated. I don’t think he ever figured out what was going on.

2:45 We arrived home.

We are starting to run out of food (not yams, of course, but everything else), so I bought some jars to tide us over. Here is what Jack thinks of jarred baby food:



3:30 After a botched attempt to feed Jack some chicken, we went back to the play room and I turned on Sesame Street. Jack was not interested. Instead he pulled all the toys off the shelves and banged the keyboard.

4:00 p.m. Off to Safeway. Yes, that’s two grocery stores in one day. I needed ice and diet coke, neither of which are available at Whole Foods. Plus Jack likes the store.

5:00 p.m. We arrived home and relaxed while watching the news. The lightrail is progressing and should be ready by the time Jack enters high school, and a woman left her child in the car again – this time with it running – and a car thief stole her car and child. This is why I never watch the news.

5:45 p.m. Jack was ready for dinner, then his bath, then, blissfully:

6:30 p.m. SLEEP. Let’s hope he sleeps longer than 4 a.m. I’m off to have a glass of wine and knit a sock.

7:42 p.m. Darn it. He woke up. Will he go back to sleep on his own????