Parenting Tips

Friendly Fun

Houseguests kept things fun and exciting this weekend. I hope they come back soon.

Fresh Moves

Look What We Got for $1

Merry Christmas from Sesame Street. And it is in mint condition. Angus is still in full-on Christmas mode, complete with carols and wishing folks Happy Holidays, so it was a timely purchase. The music is ehh, but the illustrations amaze me. The Sesame Street of today is not not up to the gold standard of my youth. The Elmo generation has no idea of how hip the Street once was.

Explore

Smoke stack of TVA chemical plant where elemental phosphorus is made, vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

If you haven't yet, go on over to Flickr and check out the Library of Congress' photostream. Thousands of images chronicling the history of photography, and the history of America, are waiting for you to discover them. It is an amazing collection. My favorites are the color slide images from the 1940s, rich with color and amazing in composition.

Also, check out this guy.
He tears open stuffed bears, unstuffs them, turns them inside out and then restuffs them. So super rad.

Sugary Sweetness

Favorite Angus quote of the Weekend: "No, Daddy. Put your hand down. Be quiet and eat your coffee." (This was after Tony dispensed a minor threat intended to hurry Angus' lunch-eating along.)
Favorite Triumph of the Weekend: Watching Angus overcome his two-year long intense fear of the Digestive System display at CMOR and hearing him say, "It's not scary! It's nice!"
Favorite Food of the Weekend: Peanut Butter Banana Muffins with cauliflower. Mmmmmmm. You have no idea how delicious these are......
Favorite Noah Moment of the Weekend: Watching him do the "scary feet" routine from Monsters, Inc.
Best Laugh of the Weekend: After Angus picked Noah up basically by the neck and carried him across the living room, he looked at his grandma and proudly proclaimed his method of baby hauling to be "just like mommy does!"
Best Natural Wonder of the Weekend: Butternut squash's heart-shaped cavity.

Monster Invasion

Angy's obsession of the moment is Monsters, Inc. He loves to pretend to be a monster coming out from under the bed and will throw you a cue if you miss your mark of when exactly and how exactly to show your fear. He wants very specific "Aaaahhhh!" type screams only. Nothing overdone or too showy. He will make you do it over the right way if you get too Broadway. No showboating! With great luck, I found this dinosaur/ dragon/monster suit for him on a particularly good thrifting day this week. He was giddy and couldn't wait to get to the full length mirror to admire his ferociousness. Now he gets more bang for his buck when he tries to scare us because he just knows he is terrifying in the costume.

And he is drawing monsters now. I couldn't possibly be more proud. I have been waiting for this milestone rather impatiently. I LOVE little kid drawings of themselves and the way they see the world. It is just too precious and hilarious.

TASTY LITTLE SIDENOTE, ANYONE? I used to babysit for this family we will call the Whites. Little Boy White's friend, whose family incidentally would later become one of my all-time favorite families to sit for, was mauled by a dog at a birthday party. Bigtime. His face was ripped off and over 200 stitches were required to reattach his nose and forehead. Really bigtime. Anyway, the kid I was watching wanted to make a get well card for his buddy and drew this horrendous picture complete with a bubble-bodied dog with large fangs drenched in blood hovering over a sobbing child covered in tears and blood with the word "Sorry!" canopied above it all in little kid script across the top. It was so rad. I intercepted it before delivery could be made, though. I didn't want to be the person responsible for any flashbacks. Little Boy White's parents were pleased with my decision, and later told me they had put the drawing in their son's babybook.

Anyhow....on Christmas, Angus started drawing people. Well, preschool renderings of people and robots---the kind with a circley body/face hybrid and stilt-like limbs. And now he has started drawing monsters.

He was just born cool, folks. There's just no denying it.

10 Things

A while back, I was tagged by Nancy with the task of creating a list of ten things one might not know about me. It takes some doing to rustle up alone time around here, but this is what I have come up with so far.

1. As is the case with most control freaks, I am highly uncomfortable being the passenger in moving vehicles. I toe the line between sanity and panic attacks by back-seat driving alongside the poor soul lucky enough to be chauffeuring me. There are very few exceptions to this. Morgan is one of them. She drives fast, but she drives well. I am another exception. I am okay when I am the driver.

2. I am a super fast reader and can read upside down (the page turned upside down, not me turned upside down) just as fast as I can read right side up. The only person I know who can probably read faster is Sherrie.

3. I secretly feel guilty that I brought two perfect children into such a broken world.

4. Tony calls me Deputy Dog and thinks I should go apply for a job as a police dog because my sense of smell is so overactive that I can smell things most other people can't. This is not a good skill to have. I really wish it was keen sight instead, but who gets to choose these things?

5. Cats kind of scare me.

6. Ever since Angus' second serious asthma attack, the one where he was actually diagnosed, I monitor his breathing at least four times each day, every day. I do this in the morning, at nap time, after nap, before bath, and before bed. I watch for signs of tugging for air, for signs of his stomach puffing in and out. I listen for wheezing. Does the meat between his ribs show with each inhalation? Does the space on his throat between his collarbones suck in when he takes a breath? It's tiresome and I feel like Shirley Maclaine in Terms of Endearment, but when you have seen the thing you love most in the world with blue lips and flaring nostrils and pale skin, crying and gasping for air you vow to never allow it to happen again. And you make sure that no backwoods dumbshit of a doctor ever turns you away without giving your baby proper care again.

7. A very superstitious girl am I. I knock on wood. I don't step on cracks. I take care of business when salt is spilled and all the other ones, too. I hate it when someone tells me a new superstition because then I feel I have to follow that one, too. For instance, someone told me last year that you should never tell anyone about a nightmare before breakfast or it will come true. Check.

8. I've pretty much always been the funny friend of the cuter girl. I like that role. And it used to throw me off when I would befriend someone funnier than myself, since my role would then be all out of whack. Frances and Sherrie and Morgan are all good examples of this. Not only are they the prettier girl, but the funnier one, too. Note to any men out there: combos are the way to go, fellas. A pretty girl who makes you laugh is a keeper for sure.

9. I hate eating shrimp because the texture feels biting off a finger at the knuckle. (This shrimp texture description was coined perfectly by a girl I once knew. Thanks again for sharing, Deborah!)

10. I honestly expect to stay married to Tony till I am old and wrinkled.

So here's the deal. I have no idea who reads this outside of my family and a few close friends. So, if you are reading this and you have a blog, you should consider yourself tagged and do a 10 Things List, too. If you do one, leave me a note so I can check it out. I'd like to get to know you better, every last one of you.

Happy New Year

Then and Now

So much change in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Goodbye, 2007.

Angus and His "Motorcycle"