Pee-yew!!!

Tonight K was in the bathtub, and she was cleaning her various parts as I named them.

Whenever she has a stinky diaper, I make a big deal over it, and say "Pee-yew! You're stinky!"

Well, as she got closer to her girly-parts, I was all set to say the technical name for it, when she said "Pee-yew!" and pointed proudly right to her nether-region.

Great. Is it possible I'm already giving her a complex?

Slacker Mom

I am a slacker mom. I'll be the first to admit it. I am proud of it. I think there is nothing wrong with giving a child a bit of freedom to determine what happens in this world. Everything's a learning experience. My job in life is to make my child independent.

I read Confessions of a Slacker Mom http://tinyurl.com/2bw3l7 and loved it! I got it from the library, so if you're a cheapo like me, check there first. The author says that her children are well-loved and important to the family, but the parents are not there to cater to the children's every whim. I love that. My 22-month-old knows to get her own cup of juice off the kitchen counter where she left it, and to put it in the sink when she's through drinking it. I am not here to serve her, and she is happy to do things by herself.

I do not have safety mechansisms all over my house like a giant daycare center. Our fireplace corners are unprotected. We have no safety faucet hot water thingy in the bathtub. I decided before she was even born that I wanted to houseproof my baby, not babyproof my house. I always wonder, in those uber-protected houses, what happens when the kid goes somewhere else? Do they scald themselves on hot water? Are they drawn to every unprotected outlet in the house? When does the learning process take place, if they've never had to deal with it?

I get kid catalogs with oodles and gobs of "necessary" equipment for protecting a child against himself. I often wonder who buys all this stuff. If we could all live in a rubber room, I guess we'd be safe.

The moms (and it's usually the moms, not the dads) that think they invented parenting just make me roll my eyes. We all grew up with a miniscule amount of safety features availble, and yet we're still alive and kicking. None of this is directed at anyone I know personally. It's just that reading parenting articles from different viewpoints sometimes lays a guilt trip on just about everyone that doesn't subscribe to the author's doctrine. I think all moms should realize that everyone is doing the best they can, and what works for one family, may not work for another.

Slacker Moms: unite!!

(Oh, and there's a Confessions of a Slacker Wife too that is just as good.)

Room-ba! Room-ba!

I am beyond excited -- my Roomba arrived today! It is a little disk-shaped "robot" that vacuums your floor while you are away. With the amount of doghair we have, I think this will be a lifesaver.

I can come home to a freshly-vacummed house every day! If only it cooked dinner, too.

I am slightly disappointed that it has to charge for 24 hours first. I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to program it, and until Friday to enter my April-fresh particle-free home.

Next up: The Woomba. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8zMIkMlOWU

Boomshine

I have a new obsession. If you have not played Boomshine http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine/ you need to try it. It is so simple. You just click on dots, and they grow and encompass other dots. It's pretty mindless, which is probably why I like it. The best part is you can't die. You simply keep playing until you complete all 12 levels, or until you want to turn it off. The music is Yanni-esque, so it's very soothing. I just leave it on underneath other windows on my computer, so I can check in throughout the day.

Just had to share... have fun!

Grandma J

My grandmother passed away on Friday, April 13. She would have been 87 next Thursday.

She was strikingly beautiful when she was younger. As she aged, she was very concerned about her appearance. She had a brain tumor, and that made one side of her face droop. She never could smile like she wanted, and she didn't like how she looked in pictures. I'll post ones of her when she was 19, since that's how she would have wanted to be remembered.

Thankfully, the end came fast. Less than 24 hours after we got the call that she was taken to the ER, she was gone. That's what she would have wanted. She never wanted to go into a nursing home, rely on anyone for help, or be any bit of trouble. She lived in an apartment by herself. She was independent until the very end.

We have a very small family. Grandma J had two daughters. She had three grandkids, and two great-grandbabies, one of which she never got to meet. My daughter was the light of her life. We were coming for a visit this weekend, and she had been talking non-stop about how excited she was to see her. We made it to the hospital Thursday night, but Grandma J didn't even know we were there.

We are planning the arrangements now. My aunt flew in from Chicago, and my sister will be in from New York around midnight tonight. Grandma J wanted something very simple for a service. She wants to be cremated, and she has a plot and tombstone next to my grandfather in Illinois.

Everyone who ever met her loved her. My mom's friends would stop by and visit her, not because they felt any obligation to, but because she was genuinely a nice person to talk to and visit. My friends and my sister's friends loved to stop by and see her when they were in town. She never had a cross word to say about anyone, and she never complained about a thing. She never wanted to take up our time, but it was our pleasure to get to spend time with her.

We will all miss her.

Tiptoeing Through the Bluebonnets

We did the traditional park-the-kid-in-the-bluebonnets-and-tell-'em-to-look-cute thing last week. Here's the best and the worst. We only got about 4 good ones, and the rest all look like the second one.

What a day!

Our washing machine has been doing strange things lately. It won't complete its spin cycle, so I have sopping wet clothes to attempt to put in the dryer. If I can even lift them out of the washer, they take hours to dry. I hung towels and jeans on the clothesline in 40 degree weather, just so they would dry before Memorial Day. I hate crunchy jeans and towels, but I guess I can live with it.

I called a repair guy, and he said he would be here yesterday afternoon, so my husband volunteered to come home early to meet him. I am so glad he got home first! When he had left for work, he evidently didn't latch the laundry room door all the way, and the two dogs (80-pound Labs) had free run of the house. Ordinarily that's not a bad thing, but one of them, I'm not sure who, has had some gastrointestinal distress lately. DH said there was sh!t from one end of the house to the other.

Needless to say, I dawdled on my way home. I was not in a hurry to be greeted by that mess. By the time I got home, DH had actually done a good job cleaning it up. Every door in the house was wide open to let the house air out. After K went to bed, we did a massive vacuum and steam-cleaning job. I think it will be OK, but that is never a fun thing to come home to.

Oh! And the repair guy came. He said in his 30 years of repairing washers, he's never seen one spin and agitate at the same time, which is what mine was doing. Yay, I'm original. He said the transmission is out. I had no idea washers had transmissions! He can put a new one in today... for $250. That's right on the cusp of Do I Fix It, or Just Buy a New One. I would love a front-loading high efficiency washer, but those are around $1200, which we are definitely not ready for. Even a new cheapo Sears one like ours is around $500. I think we'll make this repair, but the next time something breaks, we get a new one.

Ugh! Please let nothing break or crap today.