Coloring

My kids were sitting so nicely coloring. They love doing art and I love that more and more they are able to do it without me standing over them reminding them not to color on the walls, paint their hair, or cut their clothes.

This is what a normal parent would see when observing this activity.

She actually spread out her dress and added the hair bow after seeing the first picture so this picture would be better.

 This is what a former teacher notices. Her pencil grip is getting better, but still not quite developed yet.

His pencil grip is perfect. His hand is relaxed and he uses the tripod grip with two fingers tucked into his palm.

A Tale of Two Beds - Part 7

Here we go again. If you are new, feel free to start at the beginning of this series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Frustration
Part 6

There hasn't been a new post in this series since July. Maybe you were holding out hope that my kids had finally realized just to sleep in their beds... or maybe you have met my kids. sigh If you remember, my kids have what we call the prison room, only not quite as nice. They have mattresses, sheets, blankets, pillows, and a stuffed animal. No bed frame or other furniture allowed.

Look Mommy, it's a Snoopy house!

We built it together and will play here instead of sleeping.

Then they get tired and do eventually fall asleep (she is under there). This works well until they do something like roll over or move an arm and the entire thing falls on top of them. If it were me, I would sleep on top of it instead of having it fall on top of me.

Here's a picture from the next night. She at least changed the way she is sleeping so she has more room to roll without it falling on top of her. As long as they sleep, I've decided I don't care.

New Year

Many bloggers are doing a wrap up of 2013 and I'm joining the movement. Since I'm a nerd, let's start with the stats.

I started the blog in 2011 with 47 posts. Yes, that was for the entire year.
In 2012 I had 103 posts.
Last year, 2013, I had an amazing 251 posts.


My best monthly page view in 2011 was just over 500.
In 2012, that increased to 2,600. However that only happened one month and then dropped back to 1200.
In 2013, I passed 3,000 page views per month. That may not seem like a big leap, but it is consistently that high and going up every month.

Clearly I'm starting to get the hang of this!

So, where are my readers from? My top 10 countries are:
United States, China, Canada, Russia, France, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Germany, Australia, and India

Almost half of the people who find my blog come from Google searches. Thanks Google! I now have a Google page rank and I'm ranked on Alexa. It's like I'm a real blog. haha

The top search is for "Parenting with Research" while the second most common search that leads to my blog is "homemade zamboni" for the second year in a row.

My most popular post of the year was about eye droppers. Car Seats, Baby Carriers and Twin Pregnancy are still in my top 3, as they have been for the last two years.

So here we go with 2014. I hope to continue to grow the blog. I hope someone is enjoying and/or learning from this. Thank you to everyone reading this. I appreciate each of you. I feel more connected knowing people are actually reading (or looking at the pictures) this blog.

Wordless Wednesday

This is a sure sign we take too many photos.