Friday, December 2, 2011

Hiking Day


Saturday morning after Thanksgiving... Mom and Cullen hiking at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach. A great day!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Cullen 4.0

Cullen is now 4 years old! It was a tough year compared to others, but these past two months Cullen has been doing extremely well physically and developmentally. We are grateful for the prayers of family and friends! Here are some recent pictures... especially for "Great Pop-Pop"!





Saturday, January 22, 2011

The Cullen's Choice Awards!

Presenting... the Cullen's Choice Awards!


As you can see, Cullen has learned the little boy art of enjoying a good, educational video. Those of you who have already seen Food, Inc. and the Temple Grandin movie might be looking for the next big educational video. So perhaps you probably wonder, what might Cullen recommend? Here's your answer...

One of the first videos Cullen grew to love was The Letter Factory, recommended by a friend who is a school teacher. This letter captivated Cullen and helped him learn all his letters and all their sounds. He has since graduated to The Talking Words Factory, also recommended.



Cullen loves Baby Babble and Baby Babble Two. Which is amazing, because the the plot is remarkably thin. Objects are shown, sounds are made, people appear and say things like "Mmmm" before quietly exiting the screen. Videos like this must be heavily researched, because you'd never guess something so stultifyingly simple could captivate a kid for hours. Similarly, the Teach2Talk and Teach2Play videos have been a giant crowd-of-one pleaser as Cullen's been learning to talk or engage in age-appropriate play.



The first Thomas video I bought was this one, because it was a collection of songs. The strategy seemed to work, because Cullen enjoyed it and grew to like the other Thomas videos too. But then again, kids just seem to love Thomas - I hear this is especially true of kids on the spectrum. I recently bought Thomas' Snowy Surprise at Walmart for $5 - an appropriate theme for the past month! Cullen calls it "Thomas Snow" with the emphasis on the word "snow."




A friend told us about the Laurie Berkner Band. Just bought this today, and Cullen has already tested it out. I think it's going to be a big winner. Which is good for Berkner, because if you receive Cullen's nod of approval you really could go far.
But as for Cullen... as long as the weather is cold outside, he's not going anywhere too far away!