It’s been interesting to visit The Sister-in-Law and The Brother-in-Law (parents to Niece #1), as well as The Sister and The Brother-in-Law (parents to Nieces #2 and #3) in the recent months, as it’s illustrated just how different their parenting styles are.

With Niece #1, she’s allowed to watch almost zero television. Her mother prefers natural, Waldorf-type toys. They make gluten-free brownies just for the heck of it and have a pretty rigid eating schedule.

With Niece #2, she has a **TV in her bedroom that’s turned on all the time (even if she’s not in there). I’m pretty sure the Disney Princesses vomited their merchandise all over her bedroom. She’s allowed to have popcicles just 20 minutes before dinnertime.

I’m certainly not saying that either style is inherently good or bad; obviously each style seems to be working for their individual families, and that’s what matters most. It was just interesting to note how different their approaches are from each other, and it had me wondering where we fit on the spectrum.

We prefer to limit TV exposure, but we’re not as hard core about it as The Sister-in-Law is with Niece #1 and we do let Baby B watch some programs and movies now that she’s over two years old — though not as much as Niece #2. I’m not crazy about commercial merchandising such as the Disney Princesses, but Baby B certainly reads her share of books involving popular characters, including Clifford the Big Red Dog and Curious George. We often take a “whatever she’ll actually eat” approach to eating, offering her healthy options and leaving the choice up to her whether she wants to eat.

I feel like we sort of fit in the middle of those two styles, but it really makes me wonder if I can summarize our parenting style easily? What things are most important to us when we are parenting? We want Baby B to question things around her, to never be satisfied with “that’s just how it is” or “that’s how it’s always been done” as an answer. We feel like she needs to learn consequences to her actions and understand why we’ve established the rules of our household. We feel like Baby B has a lot to gain from a wide variety of toys, both plastic/electronic and more natural — as well as from everyday objects found around the house. We don’t want to raise a brat, but we also try to choose our battles and target the most important lessons, knowing that other lessons will come with time as she matures. We have certain expectations for her behavior, but we also understand that she’s two years old and cannot be expected to act like an adult at this age (which is what much of society expects from even kids this young). We want her to know that while she might not succeed at everything in life, she’ll never know unless she at least tries. We try to be laid-back when possible, but confident and consistent when we need to instill discipline.

But most of all, we try to have FUN. We like to get out and see and d0 what’s going on in the world around us. We like to travel to new places and show Baby B new things. We like to plan things but we also like to be spontaneous at times. That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Making the most of the time we have with each other and giving Baby B a good foundation for the rest of her life. That’s my ultimate goal in parenting. So far I think we have a very good start.

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(**In the interest of full disclosure, I should note here that Baby B does have a small TV in her bedroom because her room doubles as our guest room. However, it hasn’t been plugged in since I was doing middle-of-the-night feedings nearly two years ago, so it’s not even an activity option for Baby B. I don’t mind her watching TV at times, but we decide when and what.)

As I mentioned last week, I was wondering if Baby B was dropping her nap on the weekends for us. When we were in Oklahoma, The Husband and I tried an experiment to see if she really didn’t need her naps. We decided we’d give her an opportunity to sleep if she was showing signs of being tired, but as long as she wasn’t, she was allowed to stay up and visit with her cousins. We basically felt like we didn’t want to ruin the short visit with a daily two- or three-hour struggle to get her to nap if she was doing okay without them.

The good news: She did great without a nap.

The bad news: She did great without a nap.

I think our approach on weekends will be this. We’ll institute a quiet time (need to come up with a catchy name for this to make it sound more appealing…any ideas?) that she spends in her room, and it’s up to her what she chooses to do during that time, but she must spend the time in her room. If she doesn’t sleep, no big deal. I suspect sometimes she will, other times she won’t. I just want to make sure we give her the opportunity just in case she still does need it.

My only concern is that without a nap, she’s not getting the amount of sleep that’s recommended for her age, which can start to affect things other than just mood. So we’ll just keep an eye on things and reassess our approach later if needed.

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Today ends NaBloPoMo, and I was once again successful!! Hooray!

It took 15.5 hours to get to Oklahoma (split among Tuesday evening and until dinnertime on Wednesday).

And it took 17 hours (done in a single day) to return home yesterday. (Plus we lost an hour coming home, so it was that much later getting in.)

But we survived our 32.5-hour trek in the car.

We actually did more than just survive it. It went really well.

We left immediately after work and got into St. Louis on Tuesday night around 10:30 p.m. local time, checked into our hotel (thanks for the recommendation, Sarah! It was perfect!), and crashed for the night. (I keep telling everyone this, but I was floored that the St. Louis Arch is shiny. I always thought it was made of white concrete or stone on the outside and looked much like the Washington Monument [which I have seen in person and I know is not shiny!]. My whole sense of everything I know about the world has been shaken up by this discovery!)

We got up early on Wednesday morning, grabbed breakfast for the road, and got back to it by 7:30 a.m. We had packed a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches for all of us so we wouldn’t have to make (or pay for) a lunch stop on the way, and we finally made it to my sister’s house at 5:30 p.m.

We were there to visit my sister, her husband, and my two nieces, one of whom is three months old and we had never met before. The other will be 5 years old next month, and she and Baby B were thick as thieves after mere minutes together. (This wasn’t their first time together; they had met back in January.)

We enjoyed pizza that night and then the older girls took a bath together before it was time for stories and getting ready for bed. We visited with The Sister and The Brother-in-Law for a bit after the kids were asleep, but it had been a long couple of days, so we were in bed by 10:30 p.m. that night.

On Thanksgiving Day, we spent most of the time around the house, with the exception of all of us girls going for a walk during the afternoon (they had gorgeous weather while we were there: upper 60s/low 70s and sunny) while the boys watched a boy movie. I helped The Sister prepare our Thanksgiving dinner, and we enjoyed a nice meal together, thankful for the time we were able to spend together.

We did have a bit of a nontraditional moment when we all left the dinner table to go outside and watch the space station fly overhead. It was amazing to watch because there were two lights to see this time — because the space shuttle was docked with the space station as it was flying overhead! What a unique thing to see. It was awesome to see these two lights flying fast overhead, probably a hand’s width apart if you held your hand to the sky, giving you a sense of just how big these objects really are. We also watched the space station again on Friday night — and there was just one light this time because the space shuttle had landed earlier that day. Anyway, Thanksgiving dinner was nice, and we all went to bed with full bellies.

I didn’t really expect us to do much on Friday, so I was pleasantly surprised when we found enough to do to fill up the whole day. First we got a driving tour of their area, then we went to Lake Murray and drove around and took some pictures since again it was a gorgeous day.

Then we went to lunch at Braum’s, a local chain of burger and ice cream restaurants. (My only rule for going out to eat when traveling is that it can’t be anywhere that we have at home.) We went to a local park to let the girls play on the playground, then The Brother-in-Law suggested we go to Turner Falls, so we agreed we were up for it. (Baby B didn’t take a nap either day we were there — we didn’t even attempt it and she was fine — though probably more about that later in the week.)

Turner Falls was a very pleasant surprise. We weren’t expecting a $15 admission fee (total for the seven of us), but we learned it was well worth it when we found castle ruins to explore and a beautiful area around the waterfall itself. We even stayed long enough to watch the sunset over the falls, which was spectacular. I think everyone really enjoyed our trip to the falls.

We headed to the house to eat leftovers for dinner, and then we put the kids in their pjs and we went back to the park we’d been to earlier, which has a great Christmas lights display — for free (donations accepted) — that we drove through. That was very fun and something good to do that was seasonal.

Unfortunately, we had to hit the road early on Saturday morning, and we left their house by 7:30 a.m. We took turkey sandwiches to eat the road to save time, but we decided to picnic at a rest area in Missouri so we could let Baby B stretch her legs for a bit on the playground there. We also stopped for a sit-down dinner so we could take a good break and recharge for the rest of the drive home. So, I think we could have cut some time off our 17 hours yesterday, but I’m glad we made the stops we did because it made the drive much more tolerable for everyone.

Baby B was amazing in the car. Just wonderful. On the way there, we had a two small moments (one when she needed to go to sleep on Tuesday night and one when she needed to nap on Wednesday) where she was crying for about 20 minutes out of frustration, but aside from that, she was awesome. On the way there, The Husband sat in the backseat with her for a couple hours, but on the way back, she was alone in the backseat the whole time and managed to entertain herself.

Here is a great illustration of how good she was. I’m not really a fan of resorting to DVD players in the car for kids. I think there are plenty of other ways for kids to entertain themselves, and it seems like it’s a crutch for the parents in many cases. But since we had such a long drive, The Husband borrowed a DVD player from one of his coworkers, just in case we wanted to use it. I was glad we had it as an option and would have used it if needed, but I didn’t want to have that be the first thing she did in the car.

Well, the DVD player never left the trunk. On the way back it didn’t even occur to me that we had it until Baby B was already asleep for the night.

So how did she entertain herself so well for all that time? She spent a lot of time “reading” her books. She becomes so engrossed in those and totally immerses herself in them. But mostly it was to our advantage that Baby B is fully in the “why” and question stage, so she was constantly asking questions and asking follow-up questions and asking follow-up questions to her follow-up questions. Or we would start asking her a series of questions that would lead who knows where! It really was a lot of fun, and reminded me a lot of the car trips we used to take when I was a child.

The Brother-in-Law gave us their unused, spare GPS to have after he heard me talking about them when looking at the Black Friday ads. (They had bought one and then very soon after bought a car with built-in GPS, so they didn’t need this one. And no, I had no plans to shop that day; I just like to look at the ads.) GPS is one of those things that is like the video baby monitor: You don’t need it, but it’s a nice tool to have. This is a very basic model, but it got the job done, and it helped make our trip a little more fun too. We’ve named her Maggie (since it’s a Magellan brand), and Baby B quite often would say, “Good job, Maggie!” after she would give us directions.

It was a fantastic trip, and even though I wish we’d had more time there to visit, I’m glad we had the chance to go for the little time we had. It was a long drive, but well worth it. I love that we don’t shy away from difficult trips with Baby B, and I hope eventually it fosters a love of traveling within her.

CLICK HERE to see our Elf Dance.

I love this video because I think it captures a lot as far as how much fun we like to have on an everyday basis. We are silly people. This was taken a few weeks ago at bedtime. (Her curling up in our laps for a story? Ha! Foreign concept in our house!)

At first I hesitated to write a post about being thankful on Thanksgiving Day, because I don’t want to give the impression that this is the only day I’m thankful. And it’s certainly not just the big things (The Husband, Baby  B, our health, good jobs, etc.) for which I am thankful.

So instead, I’ve decided to make a list (not all-inclusive, of course) of some of the smaller things for which I am thankful. Some serious, some silly, but all truthful.

Here we go:

*For Baby B being potty trained. NO MORE DIAPERS FOR HER!!!

*For a good sports bra.

*For finding purple ink pens in bulk (it’s what I use at work).

*For toffee-flavored ANYTHING. Yum.

*For networks that put TV shows on the Internet since we almost never watch TV anymore.

*For doorknob covers.

*For friends who know when to say, “Man, that SUCKS” and just leave it at that.

*For fondue.

*For awesome summer airfare.

*For a certain two-year-old who did GREAT on all our flights this year.

*All of us having swine flu already, so we don’t have to be paranoid about that now.

*For all the times Baby B lets us sleep in on the weekend.

*For all the times The Husband lets me sleep in on the weekend when Baby B wakes up earlier than we prefer.

*For finding an AWESOME babysitter.

*For lovely date nights with The Husband.

*For committing the time to keeping up with this blog and having a written history of our life with Baby B.

For more Wordless Wednesday participants, click here.

The bags are packed, the car is loaded, and we’re ready to hit the road as soon as the workday is finished. We’ll drive the 5 1/2 hours (give or take) to St. Louis tonight and spend the night there, then get up early tomorrow and drive the rest of the 9 hours (again, give or take) to Oklahoma to visit my sister and her family for the holiday weekend. Of course, those are computer-estimated times and do not take into account Toddler Travel Time, so it remains to be seen what the actual final total will be. In any case, as long as everyone stays healthy, it should be a good trip.

I’ve made some posts ahead of time and scheduled them to post each day we’re gone, so as not to mess up my streak for NoBloPoMo.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

For a while now, Baby B has been giving names to things when we’ve prompted her to do so. Her stuffed dog is named Letter. Her fish are named Grandma and Marby (though only the latter remains with our family). She named her caterpillar Peanut Butter.

So it’s been a lot of fun to see her start naming things all by herself, without any prompting from us. Some of my recent favorites include:

• Leeleeah
• Ahleeyah
• Ibey
• Bobby

Yes, all these funny made-up names, then she tacks on Bobby to her rotation of favorite names.

One of Baby B’s favorite things right now is to give names to random characters (and items) in her books that we read. I like to try and quiz her to see if she keeps the same names for the same people, or if she switches them at random. I’m often surprised by how much she keeps the same names she assigned the first time.

She sometimes likes to pretend we are mispronouncing the name, and she makes an effort to correct how we’re saying it. It reminds me of something my sister used to do when we were little. Her stuffed dog’s name was Spng. Here’s a typical conversation:

Sis: His name is Spng.

Me: Spng.

Sis: No, not Spng. Spng.

Me: Spng.

Sis: NO! It’s Spng. Not Spng.

Me: Spng.

Sis: Exactly!

Of course I’d been saying it the same way the whole time, and it was just a game that she used to get on my nerves. (Ah, sisters!) So I just play along when Baby B does the same thing because I know all she’s really doing is playing a game with us. Her own version of the name game.