Oh me, oh my, the things she'll try!

She will not share her little toys
Not with girls and not with boys
But she will share in all THEIR toys
And if they won't, hoo boy!  Hoo boy!

She does not like sauce on her plate
She thinks plain noodles are just great
Except when you least expect it
That's when sauce is now requested!

She does not want her hot dog cut
No, not cut, oh wait but!
If you don't then yes, she does!
Yes she does!  Cut at once!

She likes to climb upon the couch
If you say no, then you're a grouch
She likes to jump like heavy bears
Who cares about the folks downstairs?!

She likes to hang upside down
From the chairs like a circus clown
Rumble tumble up and down!
From the ceiling to the ground

She does not like that bad word "no"
It sometimes makes her sad tears flow
No and no and no and no!
That word will stunt her chance to grow
But if to bed she must go,
Her favorite word becomes "NO!"

She's frustrated and loud
More boisterous than a crowd
She's busy and crazy and so much more
Oh the life we live when we're only four!

---
This post was written by Sherry at Chaos Theory for the
monthly Blog Exchange - can you guess who she's
impersonating?  When she's not pulling her hair out to
the constant voices in her head, she's the mother of
two girls, 4 and 1.  She also does a bit of freelance
writing, spends far too much time on the Internet, and
watches a shocking amount of prime time television.
Kendra is keeping Sherry's blog warm, so go visit her
there today!  Don't forget to try to guess who Kendra is
supposed to be!

Parenting Question?

I have a parenting question that we need help with. The Babe has learned a new skill. He learned how to work the computer mouse. The hubby and I helped him learn how to maneuver around the disney website. He calls it his 'game' and wants to play it all. day. long. every. day. I think it's fairly educational for a 3-year-old and slightly better than t.v. or movies.

The question is how much should I let my 3-year-old play on the computer per day?

Because it's new and the computer is something he sees mom and dad play on a lot, I think he would play on it for as long as I let him.

The 2 problems are: a. we only have 1 computer so if he's on the computer entertaining himself then I have no computer to play on and b. when I'm on the computer doing something super important (like beating my high score on diner dash), he whines all day, "I wanna do something fun." So I guess the part of 'B' that I struggle with is, how do I play with my 3-year-old and get stuff done?

What ever happened to kids who would go outside and pretend and have fun doing that?

Yesterday, I set the timer for 15 minutes and told him when it went off he had to be done. The timer went off and I thought, "He's being really good, why interrupt?"

Any suggestions?

January in Pictures

I've had a request for more pictures. Supposedly, you haven't seen the Little Lady in a long time. So here is the month of January in pictures.

This one is what the Little Lady loves to do best which is watch her brother. She loves to watch him play or eat. Anything!

This one is perfect! I laid the Babe down in the crib next to her and he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. Very cute!

The Babe was eating some chocolate and wiped his mouth. I turned around and got this beauty.

These last ones are at the Babe's 3rd birthday party. I'm terrible for not write him a birthday post but it was a crazy day. First is the cake.

Here's the Little Lady sporting her party hat.

Isn't this great. The Babe surrounded by girls!

Last but not least, we've entered the world of solid foods.

Stupidity at it's Finest

Yesterday was crazy! I went to my ballet class and when I tried to park there were no parking places. at. all. I looked for 15 minutes until my class started. Then I got mad and parked in this weird place because I was in a hurry. I ran to class and when I came back there was a gate that they had closed and locked where I parked my car. Oooppps.

Well soon there was quite a crowd of people who had also parked behind this gated area. Come to find out, it was a construction zone and after the construction people left they locked the gate.

So after calling everyone we could think of and find, I saw a campus policeman and flagged him down. He came and told us that we shouldn't have parked in the construction zone in the first place. He also told us that our cars were stuck there all night because they didn't have access to the gate lock code.

We only have one car and 2 drivers and 3 kids in car seats. It was 9:00 at night. My children should be in bed. Luckily, I had a cell phone. I call up the hubby and he says, "Hmmm...call a cab?" He gives me a number for a cab and I call. Then I wonder how much a cab is going to cost and whether they will take my debit card (because I never carry cash). I forgo the cab because of expense and the lack of cash. He ends up calling our neighbor and borrowing his car while the neighbor sits with our sleeping kids so the hubby can come get me.

During this time, I was standing outside the gated area without a coat in a leotard, tights, thin jeans and a thin sweater. Sounds like me huh? I'm freezing my ballet bum off. I walked across the street to Carls Jr. because it'd be easier to find than in the huge parking lot unless you just looked for a tall skinny piece of ice.

At Carls Jr, there are a few people inside. First is a non-scary black lady who is not eating but reading the newspaper with a younger girl who is her daughter. I sit close to her and after talking on my cell phone I decide I had better order something or they'll kick me out. Being the idiot I'm turing out to be this night, I order a shake. On my way, we meet scary homeless man #1. We meet him because he cat calls me the whole time I'm ordering. Here we meet nice tough Carls Jr. employee woman. I tell her that I'm petrified of scaryville Carls Jr. and ask her when she closes. She tells me 10:00 but that she won't kick me out until my ride gets there.

I get my shake and go back to sit down to eat it. Scary homeless man #1 sees me with my cell phone and says, "Let me borrow you phone."
I said, "No, thanks."
He laughingly said, "What you think I'm going to steal it?"
I said, "Actually, yes."
He then goes on for a few minutes about how he doesn't mess with "little girls" just people like king kong and the boogie man.

At this point, I'm starting to freak out. You know the kind where you wet your pants (proves I am a little girl) but no I didn't wet my pants. Homeless man #2 comes by and scares us a little. The nice, tough Carls Jr. employee woman came to our rescue and scared the homeless people out.

Finally at 10:00, the hubby pulls in. It makes me realize that there are freaks out there and I should be careful of where I live and what kind of places I go to. I live such a sheltered life.

Now the only problem is we're both home and the car is across town. They unlocked the construction area this morning but now we have to find a way to get back over there to get our car.

Ballet Starts

Yesterday, I started my ballet class. The deal was that if the hubby taught this semester then I could take a ballet class at the university also. I signed up for Ballet 1 because I haven't danced in 2 years. Last night, we started dancing. It was very, very basic. Like this is 1st position, 2nd ect.

I have missed it so much! I think it's the discipline that I have missed. It's hard to pinpoint. Ballet is a very controlled movement. I mean you don't just kick your leg up, you use your muscles to make a graceful movement.

I'm not taking this class to become a dancer or anything. I'm really excited to do it because yesterday was a really bad day (Monday's always are) but when I got home, I'd forgotten all about my children being awful all day and was ready to go at them again. It's nice to have a break.

Got GERD?

I am ecstatic and elated! My daughter who has spit up at least 5 times after every feeding 24 hours a day 7 days a week actually ate without spitting up afterward AT ALL! It's 8:30 p.m. and I might actually go put her in the frufist, frillist dress I can find because I know she isn't going to spit up on it!

I'm still in shock carrying around a towel with her just waiting for her to erupt one huge spit up that combines all of the other 5 she normally does into 1 but it hasn't happened yet. I might actually get to get my carpets cleaned before she turns a year old. We cleaned them just before she was born and they look worse than ever but I wasn't going to get them cleaned until she turned 1 and stopped spitting up. Thank You Reglan! (aka medicine she's taking) I'm thinking about buying stock in the company who makes it. I will actually admit that I am thankful for the doctor who prescribed it also (which is a lot coming from me).

P.S. Just as I was editing this post, she spit up. But not a lot.

The Pediatric Triathlon

I am still recovering from yesterday and I think I've settled enough to actually write about it. For some insane reason, I decided to take all 3 of my children to the doctor with back to back appointments. I thought, "We'll just get it out of the way and sure it will be stressful for the hubby and I but oh well."

No, the hubby decided to start teaching yesterday morning so not only could he not go with me, he took our 1 car as well. So the smart thing to do would have been simply cancel the appointment. No, I'm still not thinking clearly.

I decided to go by myself with 3 children under the age of 3 and I had to borrow my good friend's car to do it. She offered to let me borrow her double stroller also!

On the way, I see the horrible accident where a car was actually upside-down sitting on it's roof and I'm driving someone else's car.

We get there and their parking lot is under construction so me being not so smart parks in the parking garage with no elevator. How am I going to get my double stroller down a flight of stairs? I ended up just carrying both car seats and letting the Babe walk. We make into the doctors office and sign in. The lady at the reception desk hands me a clipboard with 3 enormous stacks of papers to fill out saying, "With the new year, we need you to update your records." Couldn't they just have said has anything changed? No. Ok then you don't need to fill out paperwork.

We make it into the room and the doctor comes in. He tells me everything is fine with the Little Foster Man but my daughter is the one who's messed up. Apparently, it isn't normal for her to spit up 5 times after every feeding. Spitting up 5 times a day is normal. He gave her some medicine for GERD and so we'll see if that helps the spitting up (not that I was really worried about it). With 3 rounds of shots, we were out of there in a record of 2 hours start to finish!

We survived and I am only a little stressed a day later.

P.S. I wrote this post on whatever date it says, I was just too stressed to actually look and see that I had saved it as a draft instead of actually posting it.

New Header Idea

With 2007, I wanted to do something fun with my blog. I stole an idea from dooce, a blog I read occasionally. She makes a new header every month. So above is the January header. If anyone has an suggestions for another month, please email away (or leave it in the comments).

P.S. There is a new poll down there so scroll down and admit it.

You Know It's Time to Stop Bathing Together When....

I usually get into the bathtub with my children at night. It's sort of nice because I get about 3 minutes of undisturbed bath before the hubby gets the Babe undressed. I do it mostly because then we can put the Little Lady in and I can hold her then when she's done we'll put the Little Foster Man in and get everyone bathed in about 30 minutes!

I often wondered when I should stop doing this because my son is almost 3.

Today's the last bath together.

He looked at my chest tonight for a minute (which isn't completely abnormal because he got curious when I started nursing and asked some interesting quesitons) and then looked at the toy pictured below. He said, "Look mom, she has chests too. Big Ones!"

Delurking

It's National De-lurking Week! What is lurking? For all you un-internet lingo savvy people, here's what wikipedia says it is:

In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely participates.

Still don't understand? It's when you read my blog regularly and never comment. The point is this week you should comment on the all the blogs you read but never comment on.

Tell me a little about yourself! Yes, I wanna know who you are! Go ahead, tell me i'm a terrible writer/parent/crazy loon.

P.S. I fully understand that this will tell me that a have a total of 1 regular reader and I'm ok with that.

Back on the Binky

I'm sad to say the Babe has relapsed into his binky addiction again.

He was very much a binky baby. When he was fairly little, we restricted the binky usage to bedtime only. We didn't want him to be one of those kindergarteners who takes their binky to school the first day.

After a while, we tried taking the binky away during bedtime. It was hard! He'd find an old binky here or there. He'd hide it. If he didn't find one, he'd cry at night till I'd finally give in.

Finally, I cut the rubber part of the binky off so he could hold the binky but there wasn't a sucking part. He did realize it was "broken" and we'd throw it away every night. Then after he was asleep, I'd get it back out of the trash and put it away from the next day he'd ask for it. He finally stopped asking for it.

After the Little Lady was born, it became clear that he wanted her binky now and when we got the Little Foster Man, it got worse!

We've tried to address it and be firm with a no-binky policy. That didn't work. Now we're trying a let him have it approach in hopes he'd lose interest. It's not working and the bad part about it is he's got a little rash under his lip from sucking the binky all day.

There are lots of binky lying around our house with 2 little babies.

We don't know what to do now. Any suggestions?

Ohio State Loses

Today's a sad day. The Buckeyes lost the big game tonight. I'm pretty disappointed. Even Congress was out of session for the game today. The Buckeyes were undefeated. The Gators (who beat them) had lost 1 game this season. So it was a great match up! But my buckeyes choked. It was pretty bad too with the final score of 41-14. We had to go to the gym to watch the game and our babysitting time was up so we didn't even get to watch the pathetic beating.

We'll get it next year.

P.S. Bet you didn't know I was soccer fan.

Car Seat Opinion

I have stayed away from the car seat issue because my opinion is far from typical. Recently, in this article, they found that 10 out of 12 car seats failed their testing. The tests were done about 5-8 miles above the federal requirement of 30 miles per hour. Let's hope that we're not driving any faster than 38 miles an hour if we get into a car accident.

Before I get onto my soapbox about car seats, the part about the article that bothers me the most was this quote. It was from the CEO of Evenflo, which is the maker of the car seat that performed the worst in the test.

"Over decades of doing testing, we know that unless every variable is strictly adhered to - from the way the seat is strapped in to the crash test dummy used - the variables can affect the result."

This doesn't make any sense! Now he is simply pointing the finger at us when in reality he needs to stand up and take the blame. Car seats shouldn't take an engineering degree to install and use properly! It shouldn't be the fault of the user when moms are trying their best to install those things properly it's just too complicated!

Now for my soapbox. For a long time, I've struggled with car seats in general. I understand the concept that it protects our children but I can't understand how it's humane to strap our children down to anything. If I strapped my child to the bed for 6 hours in my home, CPS would be out here the next day if someone found out. Even if I did it for 15 minutes, they'd take me to jail.

I do put all my children in age/weight appropriate car seats even though I don't quite agree with the concept. I also realize that they do save children's lives.

Squeals of Delight

Thankfully, the Little Lady has been doing a ton better this last month! Yesterday, she turned 4 months old! She's started eating rice cereal twice a day is loving it! She's also grown out the colic a little. Or maybe it's just that we're understanding her better.

As anyone who has called me recently knows, she has started the cutest thing. I'm pretty sure the Babe never did this, it's a girl thing. She's squeals! Not just a normal cooing type squeal but a high pitch hurts yours ears squeal. She does it all day long. It's pretty cute.

Pirates of the Restaurant

Today's gem comes from the Babe when we were eating out the other day.

After we were finished eating, a few construction workers came and sat down in a booth next to us. One of them happened to be wearing a bandana around his head.

The Babe looked over and said loudly enough for them to hear, "Look Mom, a Pirate!"

This is the part where I climb under the table and die from embarrassment.

Is there a Professor in the House?

The hubby is have an incredible week! Today he finally got the answer that he is going to start teaching a class at UNLV! We are super thrilled! He's always wanted to teach but didn't want to become a teacher because they hardly make any money (not that we currently make any money). So he's always had this dream of teaching at Junior College on the side while still being an Engineer most of the time.

We're going to see if his dream is really all that he's built it up to be.

Usually to teach at the University level, you have to have a doctorate degree (which he wants but I would never let him get). But a lot of times they will allow adjunct teachers to come in and teach a class here or there. He'll be one of those. He's only teaching 1 class and it's going to make his work schedule CRAZY! But we'll survive and see if he likes it.

He assures me that I can be his secretary/grader/slave. Yeah! But supposedly out of the deal I am getting to take a ballet class this semester. I'm super thrilled about that!

Is there a Professional Engineer in the house?

Today the hubby got his letter saying he passed his Professional Engineering Exam! So he's not technically a professional engineer yet because he has to work for X number of years. His time will be up in May. He was super excited because he hardly studied for the test and he took it just after the Little Lady was born.

Another exciting bit of news today. I sold the baby grand piano today also! It was a little big for our house and it wasn't really the piano I wanted. So I sold it for a profit and I'm happy about it! We'll see how it plays out but if everything goes right then the people will come pick it up next Tuesday. We'll be a 1 piano family again.

We should have went out to dinner and celebrated or something.

2006 in Numbers:

Posts: 181 (with November winning with 22 posts)

Children on January 1^st: 1.

Children on December 31^st: 3.

Pets acquired: 37 (25 of which were tomato caterpillars)

Attempts at Potty Training: 9.

Potty Trained Kids: 0.

Sewing Projects Completed: 9

Bruised/Bloody Accidents: 4 (all of which involved the Babe)

Raises: 2.

Vacations: 9 (NO, I did not count the trip to the hospital when I had the Little Lady)

Children killed (by parents) on vacation: 0.

Baseball Games Attended: 2 (and no that is not enough)

Posts About Fighting with the Babe to get him to eat: 10.

Recipes I listed: 18.

Pictures of Success from the Garden: 4.

Complaints about Doctors: 6 (can you tell I love Doctors)

Posts I wrote about wanting the Little Lady out: 31.

Times I’ve wanted her back in: number is too large to be determined.

Note: I went through all my archives today and these are just the ones that I chose to blog about. I'm sure there were more that I didn't blog about and can't remember.

From Baby to Young Girl

“I think I’m sick,” you said.
“I don’t think so but how bout I sit with you for awhile.”
“Ok.”

In the next few moments, I noticed how much you’ve changed in just 3 years.

My how you have grown in 3 years.

When you came into this world you needed me so much-everything depended on me. You were my world and I was yours.

Life continued like that for 14 months.

Then you discovered the freedom that came with walking, you found friends, and DORA. You were still my world and I was still your world but I had lost a little piece of you.

Then you turned 2 and the next 12 months were filled with toddler beds, shapes, colors, counting, pottying, dressing yourself, and more DORA. You were still my world but somedays I didn’t feel like I was in yours.

Now you are 3 ½ (almost), you can spell your name (eyes closed even), tell me every letter of the alphabet, reach the sink- without a step stool – and you still
L O V E DORA…

…but you have been (for the first time) choosing other things over the character that has brought joy to you for so long. With all the changes you have had, Dora has been there steady and strong. There was a time I said “I am sick of Dora” but the last few weeks watching you and realizing you are growing up I have been thinking “Where is Dora?” She, like me, is still there but not needed as much as she once was.

I don’t know what changes the next 3 years will bring but I am glad I get to share them with you.

This post was written by Adymommy. She blogs at http://www.adymommy.blogspot.com/ where she writes about her life with 3 young kids and a wonderful husband. They plan to homeschool so they do lots of crafts and "homework" with the kids and she is always looking for fun educational things to do with them. I have a post about Becoming a Mother over at Adymommy's blog today. Please check it out.