Baby Einstein...It's Crap?

Ok, so my mom calls me yesterday after spending all weekend at some conference on learning and education. (she is a teacher) Anyway, she calls to tell me that one of the topics discussed were the baby einstein videos. Basically, not only will they not help my childrens brains develop, they are completly harmful! Apparently they have done a bunch of studies and for every 1 hour watched it can reduce a childs vocabulary by 6-7 words!! Once again, I feel like mom of the year. It didn't help that my one child who never watched the videos has the best vocabulary and spoke the fastest. So, in my despair over possibly having to get rid of one of the best inventions I had found to make my babies happy, I decided that maybe it wasn't true. Everything is at least worth a google search right. Well... here is what I found...

The claim always seemed too good to be true: park your infant in front of a video and, in no time, he or she will be talking and getting smarter than the neighbor's kid. In the latest study on the effects of popular videos such as the "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" series, researchers find that these products may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers.

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

Oh well, I guess it's ruined for me. One more thing on a long list of things to feel guilty for in the life of being a mom.

So, the real question is do I feel guilty for the damage I have already done or do I feel guilty because in all honesty, I wish I had never discoved this and could have gone on watching and loving the videos in blissfull ignorance, thinking I was such a great mom by helping my babies brains to develop. Yeah, sometimes ignorance is a great thing..... If I just ruined it for you as well, sorry. At least now we can complain together!

Bella Mozzarella

So, here is the lastest addition to the Eames Family. Our new puppy Bella, which the kids have adapted to "Bella Mozzarella". She is incredably sweet and the boys love her! The main down fall so far is that, like most girls, she seems to have a shoe fetish. I am constantly chasing her down to rescue whatever shoe she has managed to swipe. On the upside, maybe this will finally cure my family of taking their shoes off where ever they please and just leaving them there!!

The beginning....

Ok, so I am starting one of these things even though I am not completely sure why and I don't fully understand it yet. At least Melanie will read it and I know my mom will check it out. Oh well, I can never seem to find time to write in a journal anymore so maybe this can be close enough.
Last night we went out to spend the day with Sean's parents. They bought a new house about 40 minutes south of us and the only word to describe it is palacial! I don't know what they are going to do with all the space. My mother in law is already missing her old house and I think I can see why. As nice as the new one is, what do 3 people do with 8 bedrooms. We just joked that when we come next time we will stay the weekend and stay in the West Wing of the house.

So, today was church and I really enjoyed it. Both Speakers were really good and thought provoking yet down to earth. Now I am home, Sean had to go back to the church for a meeting, I am supposed to have a meeting for the Stake YW tonight but Sean is most likely flying out to LA tonight so I don't know how I am going to make that one work. His new job is going to take some getting used to. He is gone all the time! Basically Sunday night he flys out and then he flys back on Friday night. If I am lucky they will be walking a store in Phoenix during the week so he will be home for an evening but this may not be the case this week. Anyway, last week wasn't all that bad but give me unil week 4 or 5 when it hits me that I have 5 more months of this and I will probably have a minor breakdown.

I am not sure what else to write, maybe I will get the hang of this soon, maybe not. Stay tuned to see!!