Thursday, July 15, 2010
July 5, 2010
$1000 retail + 45 minutes = AWESOME!


EDITED TO ADD: Not my $1000, of course.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
That'll do pig
Emma hugs a pot-bellied pig she met yesterday at a library program. They offered to let her kiss the pig, but being the southern belle that she is she told them "never on a first date."

Tuesday, July 13, 2010
I HATE COWS!!!
Just in case you're thinking this is some sort of karmic justice for my cow hatred let me point out that those bastards started it. And keep escalating it. Really, I've done nothing to them, except seethed. But this really takes the cake. I went out to the car to load Jack into his seat this morning. My car handle, painted to match my car, was chewed clean of paint. Yeah. I am not happy. What the hell will this do to the resale value? He tried two other handles, but this must have been the tastiest.

It puts me in a terrible place because the cows belong to the son of my landlord, with whom we maintain an amiable enough business relationship. If I call him out on this I fear we'll face retribution in some way, maybe rent creeping higher, or just finding a way to force us out. I really don't know what to do, but if I ever hope to unload this car it can't be looking like that.

I really, really hate cows.

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Monday, July 12, 2010
Housekeeping
I did an update of my blog "Friends." I updated Jessica and Sunita's links. I dropped a couple that have gone invitation only. If you've merely moved and would like to be added back, let me know. None of the changes were personal, just based on the status of your blog. Hell, I even kept people who haven't posted in TWO YEARS! By the way, where did "Nice Mommy, Evil Editor" go?
Vocabulary
At fourteen months Jack is establishing the beginnings of a recognizable vocabulary. Words we can recognize consistantly are ma ma, da-djoo, more, and car (or car-car). "More" is often accompanied by pointing and usually applies to food at this point.
Apps I love
For those of you who drank the Kool-aid and own an iPhone or an iTouch I thought I might share some of my favorite apps. I'm always looking for ideas and suggestions about apps myself. I can easily nickle and dime myself with those cheap little buggers.

The one app I rely on every day is Nutrition Menu by Shroomies. You can journal what you eat each day and it offers (uh...non-proprietary) points calculations for most of it. It even handles Flex Points (or a fascimile thereof). If something isn't already in their food lists you can add it as a custom food. You can chart your weight and watch it go down (because who tracks it going up?). You can apply exercise points from their long list of options.

The only thing I've found disappointing about this program is that the library isn't as extensive as I'd like. I may need to find a supplemental program with a more comprehensive food library. Any suggestions?

I know myself and one of the keys to being able to lose weight for me is journaling faithfully. It's a pain in the ass, but effective. The best program I ever found for that was the old (and elusive) WWCalc on the Palm Pilot. This isn't quite as good, but it comes as close as anything I've found.
The Caverns
We did a lot of fun stuff on Father's Day. The biggest thing we did was visit one of the caverns in the region. This one was the most casual one I've been to. Only two rules, no smoking and don't touch. I've been to caverns that had ten rules before you could take one step down the hole. This cavern had an elevator to take you underground. We took a lot of pictures, but I'm not going to bore you with pics of formations when you can see professional quality pics just by Googling. We had a good time, but the tour could have been shorter, as far as my kids were concerned.





Sunday, July 11, 2010
Kid's TV
Now that Emma's tastes have become sophisticated she primarily watches Scooby-Doo! (any form whatsoever), iCarly, Phineas & Ferb, and SpongeBob Squarepants. All of those are tolerable enough. But it makes me sad that she's moved on from shows that I actually liked. Jack has had no interest in any of the Baby Einstein fare. Every morning while I shower he sits in his exersaucer and watches Blue's Clues. Emma never got into Blue's Clues, so you never know how their tastes will run.

Shows I wouldn't mind Jack liking:
Little Einsteins
Backyardigans
Sesame Street
Go, Diego, Go!
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
Handy Manny
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan
Phineas & Ferb

Shows I really hope he doesn't like:
Dora the Explorer
Little Bear
Franklin
Wow Wow Wubbzy

Shows that I feel...meh.
Wonder Pets
Wiggles
Imagination Movers
Lazy Town
Yo Gabba Gabba

THE show he's not allowed to watch because it grates on my ever-loving nerves:
Max & Ruby
It's about time
Emma had her first guest over to play at our house today.This is the first time we've called up and invited someone, "Can _____ come over and play this afternoon?" We had a list of four girls we were going to dial up. We got to number three after the first two offered only answering machines. As it turned out #3 and Emma were quite compatible. There were no eruptions or spats, just a sulk or two over both of them wanting the same toy. They played in the pool, in Emma's room, on the front porch, and on my bathroom floor (!?!). Emma's friend was here for about four hours and I'd say three would have been perfect. Not that things went sour, it's just that the tiny conflicts came in the last hour.

Emma was a very gracious hostess for the most part. I was very proud of her. She was very cute when I was loading her friend into the car to take her home. "Thanks for coming!" "I hope you had a good time." "We'll have to do this again at my house or your house." She must have said "I hope you had a good time" four times, but her friend didn't take the hint and say that she had. I'd say her friend was not really processing what was going on there, because the first thing she told her mom when I dropped her off was that she'd had a good time.

It took so long to come to this point because we had to achieve three things at one time: Emma's room being clean, the house being presentable, and M and I being available to supervise for the swimming part. Harder to put all three of those together than you'd think.
My big fishie
This girl loves, loves, loves the water. Every day she's either in the town pool or our pool. She doesn't much care how cold it is, either. She gets that from her dad's side of the family. She took swimming lessons every night last week. I'm not really clear on what she learned, but I think we'd have to be at the big town pool for her to really show us her skills.