Big Girl Room Make Over Progress

Ari will be 3 years old in just 2  months so it is about time that we move her from her little toddler bed and into a big girl room. I am a planner, so for the last few months I have research and planned what her big girl room would look like. I know for sure that I wanted to stay away from Characters as the infatuation usually only last a few months. Currently, she is in love with Frozen and I just could not possibly give in to having a Frozen room. I think many mothers out there will agree that we are over Frozen (Love the movie!). So here is a quick preview of the progress so far. I will write a detail post when the room is completely finished.

My Photography is Getting Better!

When Ari was a baby I always took hundreds of pictures of her. Anytime she had on a pretty outfit or was playing with something I was there with my camera taking pictures. Then... she became mobile and all that, quickly ended. Taking photographs became a very frustrating task and she was super FAST. Therefore, the picture dwindled and I mainly left the photography job to the professionals. Now, Ari is almost three and she is still very fast but I can now convince her to take a picture by telling her we can go see her best friend Kennedy. This past Sunday, I scheduled our family yearly photos with Amy our photographer. I had it all planned. Two beautiful dresses for my little princess, daddy's bow ties and even mommy had matching dresses. Sunday morning, was not the day I planned for. Ari was in a horrible mood, it was raining, my shoes were very uncomfortable and daddy had to work earlier than expected. Let's just say our photo shoot did not turn out great. I haven't seen the pictures yet so we will see if Amy was even able to get a great photo. After coming home from our very frustrating photo shoot, Ari took a long nap and when she woke up I decided that the super cute dress would not go to waste. I decided to do my own photo shoot in my backyards. To my surprise my photo shoot went surprisingly well and the pictures came out adorable. I realized that day, that my photography skills are getting better. I always talk about taking a professional photography class to learn all of the "official" things about my camera but then life happens. In the meantime, I research, go to Pinterest and watch videos and this has made a difference so far. Now, I really need to take a class! In the meantime, I share with you the photos from our shoot. They are not edited at all so tell me what you think.

Dress is a Rare Edition from Macy's

Samsing Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 7.0

Lately, it seems like everyone is having a holiday Giveaway. At first I remember thinking this is silly and that I would never win anything. Then.... viola I won! Jennifer from www.babymakingmachine.com shared a blog about her current reading list and the new tablet the Samsung Galaxy Tab Nook 4 that she used to get a lot of the reading done and then to top it off she was having a giveaway for the tablet to one of her readers. I was shocked to get the email from her stating that I won. Instantly, I became excited to have a new toy to play with since I am an avid reader. I was also excited about some of the features that it provided like parental control since my two year old is into electronics and manages to find all of the things that you do not want her to find.

 

A week later it was here and I immediately fell in love with my new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook.

The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, is basically a repackaged version of the existing Galaxy Tab 4 7.0. Well, almost, the 7-inch tablets comes pre-loaded with $200 worth of free content, and the core Nook offers a better reading experience than the regular Nook Android app. If you would like more information about this tablet you can go to Barnes& Noble. I just wanted to share my favorite thing about the tablet so far (I am sure I will find many other things I love).


Since I have a two year old, I have to share everything with her. My daughter and I love to read so immediately I began to download books that my daughter would love (Frozen of course). To my surprise many of the books had multiple options: Read By Myself, Read to Me & Read and Record. Pretty cool, mommy doesn't even have to read some of the books. However, the last option in my opinion is the coolest option. You can actually record yourself or anyone in your family reading the books. Since most of our family is out of town this was a great option. Ari could be read to by her grandparents who are all out of town, aunt and uncles or even my husband and I when we are busy. Ari got a kick out of my first recording and even though I thought I sounded funny she didn't seem to mind at all. The best part was how easy it was to do that even my two year old could do it. I cannot wait until she actually begins to read because I will then record her cute little voice reading her first book and keep it a great memory.

Check out the video of Ari reading her Frozen's book that was recorded by herself. Yes, she is making up the story.

Raising a Reader!

If you believe that teaching your child to read and helping your child develop proficient reading skills is the key to success in life, and if you wish to help your children develop to their fullest potential... then your must read this message carefully. 

READ! READ! READ! READ! The best thing that you could do for your child is read to them daily. Teaching your child to love to read will payoff in the long run. As a Reading Coach, my job is to provide teacher with support and professionally development in literacy. My job is to grow teachers professionally. However, the biggest lesson I've learned about literacy was when I had my daughter. I knew that reading to my child was important. To my surprise I began to see the payoff earlier than I could have ever imagined. At one years old, Ari knew concept of prints. She understood that a reader read a book left to right, she could identify the front & back cover, where the authors name could be found and that the book had words and that readers read with intonation. At two, she began retelling her favorite books and even began to pretend as though she was reading the book. Now at 2 1/2 she already can recognize 17 letters and 5 letter sounds and recognizes all of the letters in her name. Let me remind you that she is 2! The craziest part is that I did not do any magical program, or worked with her non stop (she doesn't like it when I try to teach her anything) we just simply read to her every night no matter what. Even my husband who is not a big fan of reading reads to her about 3 books a night.  So the big secret for literacy success is the exposure to books early on. 

I even began to take little Ari to the public library. The library has a section of board books and she loves to pick out books to read. She even has that system down packed, where she know exactly where to return the books and where to check them out. I love to see her excitement for books! Many people assume that she is capable of doing so much because her mom is a reading coach but in reality I do not do anything extra I promise. I just read daily and make sure that she is expose to as many books as possible. This is the best thing you can do for your kids and it's absolutely free! 

Happy Reading! 

Little Ari reading to me! 

 

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Interview with my 2 year old!

This week has been a busy one for Ari and I. On Monday, little Ari took pictures at the mall and they came out super cute. She has so much personality... which led to the idea of the next project below.

 

While reading online I came across a few super cute videos of children answering questions that their parents asked. Some parents asked the same questions year after year to document how answer vary as the little one grow up. Well, this week I got the idea to do an interview with Ari since she is talking a little bit more now. She is such a silly little girl that I just knew this video will be tons of fun to watch when she is 15 (lol).

I quickly googled free site to edit and I found My Stupeflix.com a quick and simple website that allows you to edit and make videos for free. It took me 20 minutes to develop this super cute video of Ari answering some super simple questions (Remember she is only 2!).

Enjoy!

San Antonio TX Trip

It's been a month since I've made a post. However, my new goal for this blog is to make a post at least once a week. I love to look back at my post and read all of my mommy moments. 

Now, to our wonderful San Antonio trip. The hubby has a good friend that just relocated to Texas so we decided to take a trip to visit their beautiful new home and spend some time with them. They were great hostesses and planned a number of events for the 4 days we were in town. But I must admit my favorite event was the drive in zoo. Whoever invented this was a genius! Basically, you drive around the zoo and the many animals would come up to the car and you could feed them. 

Ari loved the animals and she was not scared at all! This was a great experience and I recommend it to anyone in the area.