Dear Princess, Ten Things I Love About You

1. The way you crinkle your nose when you smile.
2. The way you beg for your shoes every single time we walk past the basket or see them at a store or at a museum (as below). Oh my girl, we're gonna have so much in common.
   
3. The way you think you are a big kid and try to weasel your way into your brother's games and onto any dangerous surface.
   
4. The way you always know when someone has a sweet treat and demand your rightful share.
5. The way you are so very happy when you find your baby doll or your blankie.
6. The way you're standing up ready for us to lift you would of your crib, but, oh no! wait! First you need to scoop up as much stuff out of your crib as possible- blankie, (non-special) blankets, baby Annie, and all the suckies (pacifiers) you can reach.
7. That you love to blow kisses. And raspberries.
8. That you are adorably cute in whatever wacky outfit your mama put on you. You are SO much fun to dress in the morning.

9. The way you wiggle your little finger on my touchscreen phone, like you know what you're doing.
10. The way you make me feel complete. I didn't realize I was missing something, until there was you.  I love you baby girl, don't grow up too fast.

(Ten things about your brothers, coming soon.)

Random Friday: The shocker is at the end.

• The most recent custom banner, I think this is number 52.
• I'm skipping the challenge today. It's to dress up jeans and a T-shirt and I'm just not feeling it.
• Thanks for all your good thoughts for the Bug and back to school. It's been a tough few days. He is very needy and clingy. 
• Speaking of, I think he is scared of... lightbulbs. Yeah, I know, crazy. But I really think he is afraid of the light fixtures, specifically the one over the vanity in the bathroom, but sometimes others.
• I've started the process of cleaning out the storage unit. We're hoping to sell a ton of stuff and then put the rest in our garage and save ourselves the monthly money.  It's gonna be a huge project.
• Mike is off this weekend (which means he'll only go in for a couple hours each day) and we have no plans except to work a bit on the storage unit.  I've pretty excited because we've decided to bring my sewing cabinet back to the apartment. 
• Hexes are coming along very slowly, but I did add two more small rings this week. (Link in the left sidebar, if you're curious.)
• Have you ever felt like you have so many good ideas, and you're right on the verge of breaking through to something big, something successful, but you just don't have QUITE enough time in your day to get there? No? Just me?  I've had several very stressful days this week where I had so many things that had to be done and all I could think about was how very close I was to finally getting somewhere with other things. The had to be dones are what are paying the bills, while the almosts might pay bills one day. It's a tough balance.

What I read this week:

• Nothing. Seriously. I know.

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry by Lenore Skenazy

The Pirate has started telling me over and over that we can't talk to strangers. This is not something that I've taught him and actually isn't something that I want him to learn. I assume this is something they have talked about at school and every time he says it I see flashing lights in my head that spell out "Stranger Danger!!!" Here's the thing though, I'm just not worried that someone will abduct my kids. If I hesitate to let them play outside alone, it's more for the neighbor's comfort than my own. (Hey, my children are LOUD. I'm just thinking of how to be neighborly here.) I won't let the Bug go into the boy's restroom yet, but that's because he doesn't quite have the mechanics down (and he still likes to look or crawl under stall doors to visit other people. Now THERE's the Stranger Danger!) and not because I worry about someone snatching him. I tend to base most of my decisions on what they are capable of doing alone, not fear. I only give my kids limited outdoor freedom, but this is more because I don't trust them NOT to help themselves to things in other yards and not to get lost than because I don't trust the neighbors.


All of this fits nicely with the points laid out in Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. She advocates letting our kids do things that we were allowed to do as kids. Play outside. Walk to school. Go in the bathroom alone. Eat whole grapes. Skenazy interviewed a lot of experts, people whose job it is to do things like research how many pieces of Halloween candy have really had razor blades in them (none) or poison in them (once, but it was a family member aiming for his own kids, not a stranger.) The book is full of details about how few kids walk to school now compared to our generation, and about how quiet neighborhoods are now that all the kids are inside instead of in the front yard.

The most striking chapter is near the end and I'm going to steal some of the details with you, if only to get you to read the book. One kid in 1.5 MILLION is abducted killed by strangers. They are 40 times more likely to die in a car crash, but my kids are in the car almost every day. They are ten times more likely to die in a house fire, but we slept in our very own beds last night. They are 20 times more likely to drown, but we spent the whole weekend at the lake, in and out of the water. Sexual abuse by strangers is down something like 79% since we were kids. (I can't find that exact quote, I could be off a few numbers.) There are some good strategies on how to teach your kids to be safe- it's fine to TALK to strangers, just don't GO with them! (This is a good thing, as the Bug has a tendency to walk up and introduce himself to everyone he sees.) I don't want to repeat the whole chapter here, you really should just read the book.

The entire book is worth reading. It's fairly short, less than 200 pages, and is full of humor. Skenazy has been named "America's Worst Mom" for allowing her kid to ride on the subway alone and isn't afraid to use that title to poke fun at herself. If you're a parent, I recommend that you pick this one up. It's short and fun and full of encouraging information and ideas.  You can read more at Lenore Skenazy's blog and get a feel for how she writes, as well as her take on the Lieby Kletzky tragedy. It's a great blog, as well as a great book.

Free Range Kids
by Lenore Skenazy
Jossey- Bass
2009
213 pages

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Going Green: Napkins, Swiffering, Baby food and Diaper wipes!

So often it seems that making the green or environmental choice also means making the more expensive choice or the choice that requires a lot more work on your part or the choice that is a lot messier on your part. Composting? Messy. Recycling (at least in my town) is not done curbside.  The energy efficient appliances often cost more up front, and my things always need replaced when we have the least amount of disposable cash.

With our recent move our budget has been restructured in such a way that I've been looking for ways to cut unavoidable costs. With two kids in diapers it is a given that we have to buy diaper and wipes. I could certainly go all cloth, and perhaps  that would end up cheaper or greener, but I am not willing to do that.  I did discover that for the baby at least, that flannel squares will work much better at wiping her little tush than store bought wipes of the cheaper variety. (For the Bug we still buy store bought ones.) I mixed a little baby soap, a little squirt of baby oil, and some water in a plastic wipes box, and I quick hemmed some flannel and now we have reusable wipes. I toss them in a little plastic basket in the laundry room after each use and when I'm down to one or two I do a small load of laundry, just the wipes,  on hot water with some bleach and that's it. And if you want to know the real details, the flannel was a couple old receiving blankets we no longer use, in a distinctive print so no one accidentally wipes their nose with one.

Baby food has been  more expensive with each child and I'm much more confident and relaxed with my third child, so we plan to make a small bit of food, and then mostly feed her what we're eating. I have a stick blender and I'm not afraid to use it! Plus, no more little jars into the garbage and landfill!

I hemmed a bunch of blue receiving blankets into Swiffer sized squares and bought floor cleaner of the spray and wipe variety instead of buying pre-moistened disposable Swiffer cloths. Works just as well and the Bug gets to help me with the spray, which he loves. He knows the blue rags are for the floor and often does it all on his own (minus the Swiffer itself.)

We've been using cloth napkins for years now and I don't buy paper towels for general use. We do keep a roll or two around for specific things like cat puke and cleaning toilets, but they aren't kept in a location that tempts you into drying your hands on them or wiping up milk with them. The cloth napkins are make from regular cotton fabric that I hemmed with my serger. We have little kid sized ones and adult sized ones. The Pirate even takes a Pirate printed one in his lunch.

Since I know that I can't afford the big environmental changes, it makes me feel good to know that I'm keeping stuff out of the landfill and saving myself money all in one go. I know there is some debate about washing all that extra stuff and the water usage,  but since the financial considerations are just as important to us right now, this is working. I admit I feel a bit crunchy when my in-laws come to dinner and I hand them a cloth napkin or pull out one of little miss's Christmas tree print wipes, but I also feel incredibly frugal to be reusing things in new ways, instead of just looking at them on the closet shelf. What things do you do that both saves your family money and helps the environment? What else could I be using those blankets for?



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Wordless Wednesday, the chair must be magic

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copy write Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

Trick or Treat!

Trick or Treating should be a drinking game, no? A Kit Kat? Take a sip. A bag of mini- M&Ms? a drink. Someone else in your costume? A drink. A Tootsie Roll? Drink nothing or you'll be drunk before you make it around the block.

Anyway, here's the required pictures of my cute kids.

 Ballerina

 

Vampire

 Astroboy

No one knew who the Bug was, no one. And half the houses said, "Oh look how cute she is!" referring to the Bug, but he LOVED it. Here's what he looks like in the movie:

We had a pretty small haul, by my standards of my youth, but the boys are in candy heaven.

Back later with another post, I think, should the children cooperate today!

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copy write Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

Picking a Baby Name, both for real and online

Picking your baby's name is one of the hardest part of pregnancy, or was for me anyway*. You want to find the perfect baby name, one that one get her teased, that won't be #1 on the baby name charts, that won't relegate her to a lifetime of Bella H, that won't immediately link her to the year she was born (Hi, Lisa!). If you're like me you pored over the baby name books, double checking the meanings and then checking the Social Security Administration charts to see where it ranked this decade or last decade. You choose the perfect spelling (please just use the "normal" one, will ya?) I used this website a lot, it was by far my favorite online resource.

We really struggled with naming both the boys. The Pirate was our first and we were unprepared for the pressure of choosing the right baby name for him. We had a name in mind for much of the pregnancy, but even as I was in labor we were reading baby name books. We narrowed it down to two and a few hours after his birth decided on one. The Bug was 4 weeks early and while we knew he would have his grandfather's name. we didn't have a clue what name we'd actually call him. We finally named him mere hours before his release- and it turned out that we named him a very popular name for his year (in the top 20, top 10 the year after his birth!)  We did not have internet access at the hospital.  I still love it, and it fits him perfectly.

Girl names were more fun for me. My family had a tendency to give girls the L sound in their names so I kept looking for a good L name. Fairly early on I realized we could name her a name with the nickname "Ellie" that would fit the bill. I fell in love with both Eleanor Frances and Ellis Katherine.  I was 99% sure she was one of those. The weekend before her birth Mike asked, "How do you feel about...?" and I liked it, but not more than the other two. The baby was born on Tuesday and what do you know, we named her the new suggestion. For the record, it even starts with an L! I'm a bit worried that it dates to the 80s and 90s, but it is still in the top 50 last year. It is, however, more of a classic name (think Mary or Caroline) than a trendy one (MaKayla or Bella.)

While I don't post my kids names on my blog, it's no secret what they are. If you google me even a tiny bit you'll find them. I don't go to extremes to keep them private and fairly openly refer to them by name in email. I considered actually calling the girl by her name on the blog, but to keep things uniform, I'll be choosing a blog name for her. I haven't done so yet, because nothing really strikes me. She'll be 8 weeks old tomorrow and it's about time I decided on something before she becomes "baby girl" by default. The Pirate wants me to call her The Princess (he really loves his sister, can you tell?) but it seems like such an easy answer. I considered calling her The Pea, from The Princess and the Pea. I'm still undecided, so I'm taking suggestions. What should we call our baby girl? It doesn't have to follow the pattern of "The ____" but it needs to be cute. If I get more than one suggestion, I'm make up a poll of my favorites.  I'll start. I suggest we call her The Princess.

*Yes, there are some people, usually girls, who choose names in 8th grade and never waver. This boggles my mind.

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copy write Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

Diaper bags: Take it all or just a diaper?

I'm sure we've all seen (or been) the type of mom who lugs around this diaper bag (or one similar). It's big and bulky and contains every possible thing that your baby might need. Every. Possible. Thing. This is usually the same mom who is also carrying her own purse alongside the diaper bag. I am not that mom. In fact, I never really was. Here's what I do instead-

This is my purse. Yes, I carry a giant purse. It's convenient. Plus always important to have room for your book,right?

(review of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden to come)

You can see my wallet, my book, the edge of my planner, and the edge of cute little bag, with animals on it.  This is what it looks like when you take it out of your purse:

And this is what you'll find inside it:

Mine has two onsies, two size 1 diapers for the baby, one or two size 4 diapers for the Bug, and a burp cloth for a changing pad. You could also fit a small disposable package of wipes in there, if you only had an infant to deal with. I go through way too many wipes and keep them separate.

Here's the thing. You don't NEED all that other stuff, especially if you are breastfeeding.  You don't need lotion and clippers and full outfits and butt paste every time you leave the house. You need a couple diapers and an outfit in case of a blow out. For most errands, you won't even need that! Surprisingly, a baby can live an hour or three without a diaper change. Shocking, I know. 99% of the time, she won't need fed.  I regularly take the Pirate to school, stop by the bank and the grocery store, or maybe the library, and never once have to get out her diapers or feed her.

Sure, if you know you're gonna be out of the house long enough to feed her you'll want to take a bottle (if she's bottle fed), but you don't need the whole can of formula. And here's the trick to that- leave it in the car. Take that giant diaper bag you got for your shower, and fill it with duplicates of all that stuff- spare outfits, extra bottles, formula, what ever it is you might need- and stash it in the trunk. Just remember to pull it out every so often to add larger clothes as your baby grows. (Though to be completely honest, I don't even do this any more. I do have spare clothes in the car for them.)  Once you've lugged that bag everywhere for a few months you'll realize how little of it you really need. Just take the basics, anything else you can come home for or buy a new one since you're at Target anyway. Make sure your purse is big enough to toss this little bag in and you're good to go!


(Want one of your own? Email me. They're cheap.)

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Silly Bandz Barter at it's best

Forget sticker charts, we have Silly Bandz!  My boys have only just discovered the lure of the silly bandz, and the Pirate is just now figuring out that you can trade yours for "better" ones.  I've taken the band trading to a whole new level though, I'm using them as a consequence. Do something with attitude? Give me a band. Get caught doing something sweet? You get a band. Call your daddy a "liar liar pants on fire"? Give me ALL your bands. Pick up your dishes without being reminded? Get one back!  I dread the day that they suddenly aren't cool, but maybe my kids won't catch on for a while.

So far it's a good system. The only problem? I have to keep straight whose is whose, which means I'm a 35 year old woman wearing Silly Bandz on both arms. (not my arm pictured above.)

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copy write Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

I was gonna post today but...

I had plans to post something awesome today (no, don't know what, but something) but I am too tired to think straight. Miss Girl was crabby all evening yesterday, finally went to sleep about 10:45. Then she got up at 12:37, 2:30, 3:30, 4:40 and stayed up til 5:30. Of course she is sleeping NOW. I think I will join her!

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

First Day of School!

Yesterday was the Pirate's first day of school! I know there are moms all over the country who experienced the exact same thing, and it was just as shocking to them, but HOW IN THE WORLD DO I HAVE A SCHOOL KID???

Because the Kindergarten program here is a half day thing (ugh, not even half day 12:10-2:45!) he also had to swap to a new daycare/preschool. While we love the old place, she doesn't have the means to transport kids to school, especially not to a variety of schools. So we got everyone ready and first went to the new daycare. Here's the Pirate's smiling face- he was a bit excited.

And here he is with the Bug. No, there aren't uniforms, the Bug just really REALLY wanted to be like his brother.

After a bit of help extricating the Bug from the new place ("I go Westside too! I go school!") we left him there for the morning. Grandpa came over around lunch time and Mike and I went and picked up the Pirate to take him to "real" school.

He had a little problem with his lunch, therefore, new clean shirt for school. We took him in and expected to have to settle his nerves, but he barely looked back at us.

At the end of the day, he could not stop talking about what fun he had and all the new things he did. He learned to do monkey bars all by himself! (I have yet to see this in action.) He colored a book about being at school!  He ate a hot dog! Sadly, he did not learn how to read. (I guess he thought it would happen in a day?)

Overall, he had a terrific day and is so so SO excited to be a big kid.

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

Preparing for Baby, Part 2. At home.

The second of my three part ramblings. You can find part 1, at work, here.

Ok, so in addition to having your office ready to abandon it, you (if you're me) need to have your house in some semblance of order. First there's the whole "where are we gonna PUT this new person?" question to answer. In our case, the boys will stay in the room they are in (technically The Bug's room) and the toys will stay in the room they are in (The Pirate's room) and the Baby will live in our room. For a while. I expect that we'll keep her in there until Christmas or so, at which point we will hopefully have some bunkbeds for the boys.  I'm hoping that a gradual introduction will work better with the Bug, instead of just tossing him out of what he knows when this small loud person appears.

This still leaves the matter of all the baby STUFF. I've spent the past few weeks moving clothing from one dresser to another and moving dressers from one room to another. This gave us more dresser space for the boys and freed up the built-in closet (more or less) for the baby. Most of her clothes will be in there, along with the majority of the blankets and extra stuff. A small basket of clothes, her diapers and wipes, and a handful of receiving blankets will reside in our room.  I bought a new little folding cradle for our bedside (which obviously I have not yet tried, but it looks awesome) and I expect that we'll use our little cosleeper like we did with both boys. (The First Years Close and Secure Sleeper, Colors May Vary, it has a little light on it for middle of the night checks and everything. I *highly* recommend it, even with that ugly link.)  I'm not planning on buying bottles at this time, and we already have most of the other baby gear we need.  We will need to do something about the current car seat, maybe recover it, maybe replace it.  We have a good stock of diapers on hand. If the baby arrived tomorrow, WHICH SHE WON'T, we'll be ready enough.

The last part of getting the house ready is the hardest and most ongoing part. I don't want to bring my baby home to a messy house. Worse, I don't want to call someone (Grandpa!?) in the middle of the night to come stay in my messy house while I jaunt off to have a baby. Every day I'm cleaning a small section and trying (haha) to keep on top of the clutter. I figure another couple months and I'll have it under control. (Ignore the fact that I expect a baby in less than a month.)  I'd like to have the yard mowed before then, so Mike doesn't have to think about it. It would be nice to have the car all clean and shiny when we bring her home.  I need to buy some paper plates so I can avoid dishes for a few days. The list is never ending!

While I haven't quite succumbed to the traditional freak out of nesting (yet) I fully expect to go home one day soon and start scrubbing floors with a toothbrush.   With the Pirate, I had to clean out the garage the weekend before his birth. The weekend before the Bug was born I found myself disassembling the hood to the microwave because that grease HAD to go!

If you have kids, did you have a day of full out cleaning panic that signalled the baby's imminent arrival? What household changes did you make to make room for them? Were you prepared or did the baby catch you off guard, as the Bug did to us?


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NutureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman is a must read for every parent.  It really made me think about some assumptions I've made about my own parenting and about how I would parent in the future.

This is the description from Publisher's Weekly:

From Publishers Weekly

The central premise of this book by Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) and Merryman, a Washington Post journalist, is that many of modern society's most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked. Two errant assumptions are responsible for current distorted child-rearing habits, dysfunctional school programs and wrongheaded social policies: first, things work in children the same way they work in adults and, second, positive traits necessarily oppose and ward off negative behavior. These myths, and others, are addressed in 10 provocative chapters that cover such issues as the inverse power of praise (effort counts more than results); why insufficient sleep adversely affects kids' capacity to learn; why white parents don't talk about race; why kids lie; that evaluation methods for giftedness and accompanying programs don't work; why siblings really fight (to get closer). Grownups who trust in old-fashioned common-sense child-rearing—the definitely un-PC variety, with no negotiation or parent-child equality—will have less patience for this book than those who fear they lack innate parenting instincts. The chatty reportage and plentiful anecdotes belie the thorough research backing up numerous cited case studies, experts' findings and examination of successful progressive programs at work in schools.

(Sorry, kinda long!) As I was reading, I marked a dozen passages that I might want to quote in my review, as well as having to call up a parenting friend to talk about it and I had to read whole paragraphs out loud to Mike.  This is one of the best books I've read this year and I recommend that you pick it up. (Plus, Amazon has a great price on it right now!)

One of the most fascinating chapters to me was that on lying. Of course all kids lie, but as the authors point out, all parents want to believe their kid to be the exception. (I do!)  But lying for a kid turns out to not be exactly what lying is for an adult.  "In studies where children are observed in their homes, four-year-olds will lie once every two hours, while a six-year-old will lie about once every hour. Few kids are an exception. In these same studies, 96% of all kids offer up lies." (Page 80) Wow.  The book goes on to explain how a kid learns to lie, and why. It goes on to explain that if you ask a kid why they shouldn't lie, it's because they get punished for it, not for any moral reason. This just leads a kid to get better at lying to avoid the punishment. It's all very fascinating.


One other interesting quote and then I'll let you read the book yourself. In the section about how kids play with others, there are a series of tests done on different types of aggression. Most people would assume that fighting shows (always the Pirate's first choice) would be worse to watch than educational shows like Arthur and Clifford, but this turns out not the be the case. In their quest to teach children a moral lesson, the educational shows spend half the episode setting up a moral conflict- which only teaches young children how to manipulate and insult their friends. Shows like the Power Rangers or Star Wars have physical aggression, but the studies show kids are more likely to increase the verbal aggressions than actual hitting and fighting. Suddenly I feel much better about the tv we watch around here!

For another opinion, go read Janssen's review. As always, her's are much better written than mine! In a nutshell, you really should read this one, it's fascinating.

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Twelve
September 2009
352 pages





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The last T-Ball Game

T-Ball ended a couple of weeks ago, with both sadness and joy. The Pirate never really got into the gamehe complained that it was boring and I think he was a bit overrun by some of the other players. Most of his team were a year or so older than him, and he just wasn't quite ready.

For the last game he rallied a bit (I think it helped that several cousins and grandpa came to watch), and insisted that he lead the team across to shake hands with the other team.

He was beyond thrilled to get a trophy (they all did), and was so very proud to take a picture with his dad when it was over.

The Bug, as expected, can't wait until it's his turn.

I'm guessing that next year we'll gently try to encourage him to play again. I think having a year of school under his belt will make a big difference in how he plays with others. Just last night the three of them were outside playing baseball in the backyard and he was way more involved than he had been the entire season.  If not, there's always soccer.

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Mom, this helmet is broken!

The face part won't stay up!

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.