Preschool Funding

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If you wonder why I’ve been so quiet lately, it’s because I’ve been busy reading and writing for LJ Idol. But I really out to be putting more effort into driving votes to a contest that deserves greater attention .

Winning the audience prize in the Baby Steps video competition could fund my son’s preschool tuition through the end of the year. We’ve been living paycheck-to-paycheck, so that would be a godsend.

EVEN IF YOU’VE ALREADY VOTED, please go to the Baby Steps competition page to cast your vote for my video. You can vote every two days, so please bookmark it and return. The deadline is March 28.

The still of my video shows my son with two puppets. It’s the first video on the first page. It looks like I’m soundly beating the competition, but a contestant on a later page has four times as many votes, having apparently learned about the ability to vote multiple times much earlier than I did.

Please share this post! In return, I’ll gladly help you promote any personal project.

In other news, I’d be grateful for suggestions for new WordPress templates, since this one doesn’t look as good on the newest version of WordPress.

Mommy Files: I’m a Dragon, Rawr!

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Playing Carcassonne

KFP plays Carcassonne with his dad.

My son, age 3, first demonstrated his puzzle abilities at Philcon 2012, where he surprised my husband and I by matching up random Carcassonne pieces to form a little city. That Christmas, we gave him his first jigsaw puzzle, and we’ve accumulated more in the year and a half since.

As often as he pulls out Duplo blocks or his wooden train set, he sits down on the tile floor (the best flat surface) and puts together dinosaurs, ducks, and the food-laden illustration from “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” I love to see him solving new puzzles: the look of concentration on his face, the exhilaration when he finds a match.

Since my husband is a gamer, he’s also thrilled with our son’s latent abilities. I’m foreseeing a future of family gaming nights and some very special father-son time.

And special mommy time, too. In fact, as soon as I finish posting this, my Kung Fu Panda and I will be playing our version of Carcassonne. Instead of playing competitively, we draw tiles and put them together to form the most interesting little medieval land we can.

He is waiting for me right now, holding up the wooden dragon from one of the expansion sets, declaring, “I’m a dragon, rawr!” He’s also decided it’s a Komodo Dragon, because he learned about them on one of the PBS nature cartoons he likes.

Days like this, I feel like I’m doing something right.

If you haven’t yet voted for my entry in the Baby Steps Competition, please stop at the voting page and click on the box at the upper right of the preview window for my video (the preview shows my son with two puppets). If I win the audience prize for this contest, it will help pay KFP’s preschool tuition this year!

Video Contest Countdown

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First of all, thanks for all the support so far, but if I’m going to win the audience prize in the Baby Steps video contest, it’s going to take a lot more. Right now, I’ve got about 28 votes, whereas the top vote-getter has twice as many.

If you haven’t yet viewed it, please take a moment to watch this video of me and my little man, Kung Fu Panda, called “Puppet Problem Solving.” It should make you giggle. I’ve embedded it here for maximum convenience.

Afterwards, if you liked it, please go to the voting page (http://on.fb.me/1c22MbO) and click on the box in the upper right-hand corner of the video. Here’s an image to show you exactly where to click.

Voting page for Baby Steps competition with arrow

A judging panel will award top prizes based on how well the videos met specific requirements, but they’ll also give out a cash prize for the top vote getter. Winning that cash prize would help defray the costs of KFP’s preschool tuition for the rest of the year.

Thanks again for all your support!