Childhood Obesity Conference

I had the opportunity to go to a Childhood Obesity Conference yesterday in San Francisco. Along with my Public Health degree I am a "Certified Health Education Specialist" which basically just means I have to pay a yearly due and take a certain number of Continuing Education Units every 5 years to keep up my certification. Even though I am a "Stay at Home Mom" right now, I am trying to keep up in the field and try to complete my credits (which of course I'm way behind on even though I already filed for one extension). In short, I have to complete 75 credits over a term of 5 years and let's just say with one year left I'm not even halfway there so I have a lot of credits to make up this year. This is why independent study courses and I never got along very well...
Anyhow, once I drove myself up to the city I really enjoyed the conference. There were four different tracks: Nutrition, Family & Community, Physical Activity & Cutting Edge. I had trouble trying to narrow down what I wanted to attend. It was awesome hearing about all the current research and work in everything from Breastfeeding to exercise among adolescents to activities to get preschoolers moving to Emotional Brain Training. The last one probably fascinated me the most because it is something I feel is true, but hadn't seen a lot of tangible research on it. Emotional Brain Training enables people to address the root cause of anxiety and depression by acquiring the skills to effectively process stress. Laurel Mellin who taught the lecture says she uses this to help obese kids address the real issues at heart, not just the overeating and lack of movement or exercise. She pointed out that in our society during 1980-2000 there was a lot of movement toward reducing smoking, recreational drug use and alcohol abuse and statistics show this actually worked. However, during that time Credit card debt, prescription drug abuse and obesity increased dramatically so society just handled their stress and issues in different ways, we weren't making healthier choices or increasing overall wellness, just transferring the habits. Anyway...Enough of me on a soapbox. I just really enjoyed the conference and learning again! Every time I read something to do with health education it reaffirms why I went into that field in the first place. I love it! Thanks to my honey for watching the girls all day and being supportive of me!

Rainy Days

I couldn't resist taking this picture of Jocelyn as we got some hand me downs from a friend and she was posing in it very proud of her hat. Lillian, of course, had to have a hat as well, so I found the only one I had for her and she wanted pictures too!



The past few weeks we've had a lot of rain. Here and there it will be broken up by a sunny day, but overall we've had some pretty serious hydration. And I mean when it was not pouring down it was alternating between a drizzle and hailing and lightning. It's been crazy. Lillian was standing at the back sliding glass door just staring out at it one afternoon for a little while. Jocelyn woke up from her nap and was pretty scared of the thunder so we looked up online what causes lightning and thunder and then Jared got out one of his physics books and told her about it in more depth than I did. Kind of exciting to watch it and have something interesting going on. We even got all ready to go one morning and then I decided I didn't really want to brave the rain to go to the library so we just read books at home instead. One day we set up our tent in the house, did playdough, water colors, etc. We are keeping busy with all sorts of inside activities.
Jocelyn has already started working on her valentines (luckily I had found some on clearance after last year's valentines day and she didn't forget). As soon as I said that it was valentine's day coming up she marched right over to my closet and pulled out the couple boxes of valentines, ready to start the coloring and cutting.
Lillian is taking very good care of her baby dolls lately and instead of saying "shh, shh, shh" as she pats them on the back, she blows on them as if blowing out a birthday candle. I keep on meaning to get this on video so maybe I'll do that this week... She is also saying more and more words. This week I was doing some laundry out in the garage while the girls were playing in the field of flowers that surrounds our house. I kept checking on them every couple of minutes while I proceeded to prepare lunch and one time I didn’t see them anymore so I went out and called out “girls, where are you? Are you okay?” To which I hear Lillian’s little voice from the middle of the field “ok”. They had decided to sit themselves down right in the middle of the field (which is thoroughly muddy right now due to all the rain) and the flowers were coming up taller than they were! They had a grand old time collecting flowers and enjoying the little bit of sunshine that had come our way.

Imaginary Friend

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned Jocelyn’s imaginary friend “botty”, (with the T’s pronounced strongly). It’s been a very steady friend for almost 8 months now I believe. I say “it” because she’ll say “he needs to come with us to the church” or “he really loves mashed potatoes” or “he really likes to have parties” (I think we threw 3 different birthday parties for him this week which involved getting a lot of food out of the pantry and blowing up a balloon. He usually turns “3” just like Jocelyn but one time he turned 5 apparently). However, when I ask her “so Botty is a boy?” she tells me “oh no, a girl”. She doesn’t seem to have pronoun gender confusion in any other situations except this one. One time we apparently even forgot him at church, but luckily Jared was still there locking up and finishing a meeting so I called and told him to bring Botty home. He comes to the park with us, likes certain foods, you name it! I’m fine with it, as it shows she has an imagination, but it is bringing to my attention that we don’t have a lot of friends her age here. I’m so glad she and Lillian have each other as they play together really well now, but I wish I could offer that to her more! Luckily some people moved into town recently with kids near her age at church, so hopefully the little playgroup I organized with some other moms starting next week will help fill any social needs. In the mean time, she has a good friend that can come to her aid whenever she wants. Some days I never hear mention of Botty, and others he is consistently with us all day long. I don’t remember having an imaginary friend, but I know my brother Nate had “jimmy” his friend so it’s an interesting and new concept for me.