Mommy Needs Block-Building Lessons

Reagan: "Mommy, can you make me a train for mommy-doll and daddy-doll?"

Melanie: "Um, ok, let's see... Daddy could probably make this better"

Reagan: "Mommy, can you make me a real train?"

Melanie: "Ask Daddy to make you a train." (I might have been able to do a better job than this had I not already known I was going to have her ask Daddy to make one) :-)

Reagan: [walks over to Cameron] "Daddy, can you make me a train?"

5-10 minutes later ...

Reagan: "Oh... that is a real train."

Reagan Teaches Us Now

Reagan confidently told Daddy that unicorns are called unicorns because they have corn in them, but you just can't see it. She completely came up with this herself. I had just taught her what a unicorn was the day or two prior and had specifically explained that they "had a horn on their head and were a pretend animal".

Also, there are a lot of corrections:
"No, that is a skirt, not a dress."
"No, that is a jacket, not a coat."
"Those are not shoes; those are sandals."

Reagan: "What are you eating Dada?";
Cameron: "pot pie, just like you"
Reagan: "Why did you say 'I am eating pot pie just like you?' I am not eating it yet because it is too hot."

Reaching Goals!

With http://www.kibotzer.com/ I lost 13 lbs! Before, without any accountability or deadline, it was waaaay too easy to spend all my time planning the perfect workout schedule rather than just doing things each day to go in the right direction. Having the visual aid of the "Yellow Brick Road" with Kibotzer not only made that shift happen automatically, but also continued to show me the big picture, reminding me that progress was being made, something that's very easy to second guess. Looking at the road, you see the progress you've made and it reinforces that what you're doing is working and motivates you to keep it up. It was really the key to my success!

My brother, Danny, created the graphs and he and his wife Bethany have been creating a website out of it, with some help on non-technical things from me and technical things from other friends of theirs.

It's a really simple process: sign up on the site with your email and your starting value for your goal (whether it's increasing the number of pushups you can do or decreasing the number of cigarettes you smoke a day or any other goal you can dream up, basically) and a graph is created for you, with its own unique web address. You receive a daily email (from the "bot", named Kibotzer) asking for your data and within seconds of replying, you receive an email with a link to your graph (which remains private unless you want the extra exposure for more motivation). You then check it out, see the progress and stay motivated. Voila!

Bethany used Kibotzer to successfully lose weight too - 4.5 kg's (about 10 lbs). Check out our progress, past and present, with our Kibotzer badges (Bethany created this feature so people could show off their work on blogs or webpages)!

Melanie's:

Bethany's: