Three (More) on Thursday

Who does the grocery shopping? (Brian does ours and I feel un-Proverbs 31-like because of it.)   

Well, my Brian does ours, too, and I often have the same feelings.  I hear of other women going to the grocery store with their whole brood in tow and I wonder if maybe I should  or could do the same.  However, this is what we've chosen and for now, this works for us.  I do all the meal planning and the list making.  He does all the shopping and bringing it in the house.  We both put it away, I do all the cooking, and the whole family does the eating! 

How much TV is too much (for the kids), and what do you feel is actually worthy of watching? (I feel like mine are watching waaay more lately...but we're also reading, both independently and aloud, waaay more than we used to)!   

Tough question because I am constantly torn about this myself.  I do not have a  set TV limit, but we are certainly not a household that has the TV on all day.  We read lots of books, spend time outside, color reams of pictures, do some crafts, build Legos, and play pretend with paper dolls.  Because I know my children are physically and mentally active, I do allow a little down time in front of the television.  Of course, when they are sick I allow a little (a lot?!) more and when it is warm and sunny day, I allow a lot less.  Each day has its own set of circumstances. 

As far as what they watch, I think we fall on the conservative side.  My kids watch nothing straight from the television except PBS Kids, and their DVDs are carefully chosen.  One of my children is very sensitive to what he sees and hears and has suffered nightmares from seemingly innocuous selections. 

How in the world do you wean a nursing baby? I mean, seriously, I'm clueless!   

This is probably too big of a topic to tackle in one small paragraph, but I'll give my short answer.  I've fairly successfully night-weaned my children at around 18 months, but I've never done much in the way of initiating day-weaning because it just sort of happened.  Gavin nursed the longest (longer than most people feel comfortable knowing about), but he outgrew it eventually.  (I "outgrew" it long before he was ready.)  The other three weaned when I was pregnant with the  next baby.  Whether it was the taste of the milk or the quantity of the milk or whether they sensed my reluctance to continue or whether they would have naturally weaned around that time anyway, I'll never know. Of course, they didn't just go from ten times a day to none.  It was gradual, gradual reduction.  There will be a day when you think that it is never going to happen...and then before you know it, it has.

These questions were submitted by Kathi.   Leave me your 3 questions in the comments and I'll tackle them another Thursday.