Posts tagged kids
Writing on the Window
Breathing on the Glass
Evie just came flying out of her room
Yelling about there being ghosts on her chair. Of course, Eric and I both followed her in (him to banish said ghosts and me to see what the “ghosts” were). She was freaking out about how they kept sticking to her and moving around.
Anyone want to guess what the “ghosts” were?
You’ll never get it.
She thought about a dozen escaped styrofoam balls from her bean bag chair were ghosts. When she went to point them out to Eric, the static kept making them move and one stuck to her foot and she panicked. lol
Kids are funny.
Needless to say, the ghosts are gone and all is well in the Legos house again.
I have to try this.
Bounce Magic has gone so far above and beyond to help us find Bunny that it melts my heart. They’ve posted about it on their facebook wall, the one worker there (Steve) stayed two hours after they closed on Wednesday night looking for Bunny, even after Eric was there for an hour and a half doing the same thing earlier in the day (with Steve’s help) and now they’re offering a free monthly pass as a reward!
Tomorrow they’re going to call all 45 people who came there on Wednesday to ask if they’ve seen Bunny or if someone accidentally “adopted” her. (You have to sign in and put your phone number down just in case when you get in.)
I really can’t believe there are still companies out there willing to go the extra mile like this. Evie loves her Bunny with her whole heart and I think Steve understood that. It helped that he told Eric about his own daughter and her well loved Teddy Bear, I think.
I hope someone has Bunny and they bring her back. I would love to see the joy on Evie’s face when she gets to see her again.
(Click through to check out their facebook page. This is the second post they published about Bunny and I -under Eric’s name- just put up two pictures so they know what to look for.)
The Care and Keeping of Him
If you only have daughters then this blog post is not for you. If you do not have sons, if you have not had the pleasure of wiping a wrinkled pair of testicles clean of poop then this blog is not for you.
The thing about your little man’s little package is that it deserves way more attention than you may have earlier considered.
Who knew?
I thought it would be easy having boys, especially easier than girls. I dreaded having our first child, a daughter. I dreaded changing her diaper with all those lines, wrinkles and road maps of awkwardness. But that was nothing compared to the care and the keeping of him and his package.
The male penis is the gift that just keeps on giving. Three boys later and still feel like an amateur of testicle cleaning. If there’s a trick, I haven’t figured it out.
And that’s just the balls. What about the bat?
If you have kids, you need to read this blog. If you don’t have kids, you really need to read it. This guy is hysterical and everything he says is dead on. So you childless people? Read and learn. It’ll probably be fantastic birth control.
Also? I am so glad I had a girl.
I made a cute little chalkboard for Evie yesterday! The chalkboard was made out of a flooring sample from Home Depot! Check it out:
They have a ton of samples in the flooring section and they have a bunch of linoleum samples cut into perfect squares too, for anyone who wants to do some linoleum printing. I just painted it with Martha Stewart’s chalkboard paint (which I got for $3, thank you Michael’s for the 50% off coupon!) and viola! Tiny chalkboard for Evie! Now she can stop asking to play with my vintage one hanging on the wall. The edges of some of the samples even have grooves where the flooring is supposed to fit together where you can store your chalk!
After I took the picture I realized Evie didn’t have an eraser so I made of one those too. I just took a small rectangular piece of foam that I had laying around, glued felt to one side and a piece of cardboard painted black to the other. She just LOVES it! As you can see, she keeps making me draw Yo Gabba Gabba guys, specifically the stuffed ones she has and loves the best. (Omg, stuffed Plex is her best friend until forever.) This couldn’t have been easier, and I’m sure there’s a ton of other things you could add to it, maybe for a teacher’s gift? (I just thought of that right now and I’m so excited! Too bad Evie isn’t in school yet!)
The whole project cost me the price of the paint! The flooring sample was free, I had chalk and enough scraps to make the eraser. Three bucks! You can’t beat that.
TEACHING:
you’re doing it right.
Something about this bugs me a lot and I can’t quite place it.
^^ The last commentary. I think what bothers me about this.. is that you’re essentially telling a kid that if they fail a test, they’re not going to go anywhere worthwhile in life. Standardized tests aren’t the best measure of intelligence, and middle school/high school math is pretty much a joke, and usually not taught well. Plus.. doing poorly at one subject doesn’t mean you’re unintelligent. We all have different strengths and weaknesses.
While standardized tests might not be the best way to measure intelligence, it’s the only standard we have, thus the only relevant one. I love this. If they do badly in high school, odds are they’re not going to go very far. Middle and high school aren’t a joke. How many people have you been annoyed with because they don’t understand basic grammar or haven’t known how many states there are? If kids don’t put in an effort while they’re in school, it won’t matter how intelligent they are because everyone is always going to be judging them on the fundamentals they never bothered to learn. If they treat high school like a joke, how are they going to get into or through college? All the blue collar jobs are being shipped out of the US and in the future, having a BA is going to be the equivalent of a high school diploma. It’s going to happen even faster if they keep lowering the standards. When I graduated high school, there were two diplomas we could get: a regents diploma or a standard one. Having a regents diploma was considered an achievement and something to be proud of because it wasn’t as easy to get. Now, there’s no such thing because people were angry that it was too hard. Parents didn’t like knowing their kids didn’t do as well as they could have so instead of pushing them harder, they lowered the standards, chopped a ton of information out of the classes and called them all regents diplomas. The difference between a regents diploma and a regular one was one more year of science and one more year of math but most kids just couldn’t be bothered.
This all falls back onto the soft kids that are being raised now. Everyone is told they’re special and they’re all treated like the world revolves around them and coddled instead of being taught. They’re told they can be anything they want to be but no one bothers to tell them they have to work to get there. Too many kids have the world handed to them on a silver platter and then the parents wonder why they don’t have common sense or any kind of work ethic. Maybe if some of them worked at Burger King and tried to live on that money they’d be a little more motivated to kick high school’s ass and the parents wouldn’t feel the need to undercut the kids who did work hard, making the effort they put in to get that degree worthless.
A funny thing. (Maybe TMI)
Yesterday, Eric mom watched Evie for a little while and while she was watching her, I guess Marylou was telling Evie why she shouldn’t be wearing diapers anymore. (Yes, she still does. She’s the most stubborn thing in the entire world and everything I’ve ever heard has told me not to “push” her and that she’d do it on her own so I’m patiently waiting…)
Anyway, later on, Evie followed her into the bathroom and when she was pulling up everything, she noticed Marylou was wearing a pantyliner or something and she looked at her and said..
“Grandma! You wear diapers too!”
So.. yeah. I’m pretty sure Evie is going to be in diapers when she graduates from high school.
Remembering the Past
The people who sold the house left a bunch of stuff in there that they couldn’t sell at the estate sale (because everything was priced ridiculously high) and my dad made my brother and I go through it all and take the stuff we wanted before he threw it out or donated it.
There were a ton of books (woo!) and I took a bunch of them home but what really caught my eye was the folder of cards left in the boxes of books. There were birthday, communion, Christmas, every kind of card you could want from the early 1960s through the mid 1970’s. There were even little Valentine cards you take to school to give to your friends. They’re all signed, which sucks, but I took them anyway and I know there’s something hiding in all those cards. There has to be something I can do with them! I just can’t figure it out.
I think I took them because leaving them behind seemed so sad. They were selling the house for their mother, and these were obviously important to her. They were her kid’s first birthday cards and the cards she got for her baby shower and it seemed too tragic to throw them, and her memories, away. I have a filled photo album I bought at Amvets one time too. Maybe I’m just too sentimental but someone needs to remember these things for her, even if her kids don’t want to.
I want to do something with them but at the same time, I don’t want to ruin them or sell them and have the thought lost. I just have no idea about how to go about that. I follow some insanely crafty and artistic people… Do you guys have any ideas? Do you think selling digital copies of the cards would work? Some of them are so beautiful that I feel like people need to see them but I’m selfish and don’t want to give them up either. If I did try to sell digital copies, could I just add a dotted line for people to cut around, if they’re not square?
Bringing Up Baby: Are. You. Kidding Me?
This morning, as I do most mornings, I watched the Today show. I have no idea why I do this to myself. More often than not, this show ignites a fury within me that can’t be healthy before noon, but I do it nevertheless.
So what set me off this morning? This story. A short piece about a…
This is propaganda? I’m with you on the almost foaming at the mouth anger. Would anyone call a little girl playing with [insert standard male toy] gender identity propaganda? Of course not, because there’s a double standard here. Women are supposed to be able to do anything, cross standard gender rolls or stay within them but the minute a boys toes are painted pink he’s gender confused? I call huge bullshit on that. Shame on anyone who thinks this is anything other than a little boy wanting to emulate his mother, who he loves and holds above everyone else. Kids love colorful things and finding out you can actually paint on yourself and it’s ok with mom makes it almost required that a kid, any kid, does it too. No child would ever know it was “wrong” unless someone told them it was. They are innocent and don’t think in terms of “confused” or not confused. Fun is fun, pure and simple. Adults should take a lesson from kids. I wonder if all the people complaining about this were always so uptight. Maybe they were born with a manual on how to act like the “correct” gender. I know Evie wasn’t. She loves matchbox cars and playing video games just as much as her littlest pet shops. I dream of the day Eric teaches her how to change her own oil and brakes. Why would I ever place a “confused” label on that?
Before knocking me up
just know, if I don’t get to drink or do drugs for nine months, then you don’t get to drink or do drugs for nine months.
I would never ask that of Eric, nor did I. For 9 months he treated me a like a queen, buying me any food I wanted, rubbing my feet almost every night, anything I asked really. He wouldn’t let me reciprocate either, so the least I could do was let him live those 9 months for the both of us. I was the designated driver no matter what anyway!
(Source: tomyhusband)
Docs Turn Away Unvaccinated Patients
I’ve always wondered how parents could get away with not vaccinating their kids… I know I had to show proof I was vaccinated before I could enroll in school, even pre-school. Are all the parents that are refusing to vaccinate also homeschooling their kids? Is this only a rule in NY, more specifically Erie county? And after the guy who said autism was caused by vaccines came out and said he lied, what reason do these parents have for not doing it? They removed the mercury, even though at such a low dose I can’t see it doing much damage. I mean, I’m not sorry it’s gone but I think that was the last reason not to get shots for the kid. What else is there? I’m still keeping my eye on Guarasil (or however you spell it) because it seems like there’s a high rate of problems but even those are low. What good reason do these parents have to exposing babies who haven’t gotten the chance to get vaccinated to these terrible diseases that should have been wiped out long ago?
