live from sublurbia

I wondered when this stage would arrive. I’d read my friends blogs, envious of their kids’ imaginations - imaginary friends, imaginary names … he did a little bit of that but not a lot. But his imagination is getting broader and broader; thank you Galaxy Trio!! Continue Reading »

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Yes, I’m back and feeling all bloggy again. And it was a bit of a rough winter, unexpectedly weaning my toddler, holiday madness and all kinds of things. But I’m back and will be reworking the site into another bloggy format, incorporating all the pak-mam posts (Amanda, I know, I suk, I’m so sorry! I have your new address, and again, very sorry about your contest prize!) and tweaking a few other things. But I need to beta the new software first before I decide to roll it out or just do with what I have here.

No TOASTS this week; still getting back into the swing of things. Spent a hilarious amount of time trying to explain to the kiddo what Leap Year Day is; between that, the music critiques, and trying to get him to understand the concept of Sarcasam and why it’s rather inappropriate in a child his age, I’m pretty wiped this week. But more soon.

So, how are you going to celebrate Leap Year Day with your kiddos?

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You read it in most parenting books, or hear it in amazed hushed tones from friends and family: “Shh! They soak it up like a sponge! Keep your voice down!”

But they don’t just hear things, they see them, too. On a recent business trip, I observed a 15 month old girl keeping herself amused in the air port, walking around, playing with her purse, holding her mother’s phone to her ear and jabbering at it. Hands free. She had the perfect shoulder tilt to hold it in place while walking and rummaging through her little purse.

My youngest still looks alert and says, “Hello, Ish me” whenever she hears “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell on my 80’s station. Which really amazed me when I realized I had stopped using that as a cell phone ring tone when I was eight months pregnant with her.

But the eldest … he’s been exposed to my musical tastes a bit longer, and it’s starting to show. Continue Reading »

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We used to have a cat named William. She was a sweet fluffy black and white cat, but woe to anything you owned that was colored red. She’d take it and it would be hers. Full stop, end of record.

We found this out one year we had room for a Christmas tree in the “new” part of the house (granted, the first part of the home was built in the late 1800s, so the “newest” part of the house may be a more accurate description). We put up the tree, knowing that cats love trees, as we did most years - but this was William’s first tree experience. Continue Reading »

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[Think of a Something Thursday]

It’s the season of decluttering (wait, when isn’t it?) and a friend at work gave me a large box of kid books. Yay! Sometimes I wish my peers had more kids my age, but it’s times like this when I’m glad I lag behind.

I’ve been handing the books out to the kids one or two at a time, and they are loving them, adding them to the bedtime book rotation, piling each book atop their loads of others. But our books are really slightly out of control. Not that I mind that much, but it makes it difficult to buy books for the kids; I certainly can’t keep track of them all.

So I started looking at the software options out there, and reviewed three in time for Thanksgiving weekend. We’re going to spend Black Friday selling outgrown kid’s stuff in a bit of a Black Friday garage sale, and entering our books get organized. We’ll have an idea of what we’ve got, and we can share this list with friends and family looking to add to our collection.

http://www.bookbump.com http://www.librarything.com http://www.readerware.com Continue Reading »

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Now that Wolfie’s doing better at doctor visits, we let him play with his “doctor tools” more, instead of solely on doctor-visit days. Plus we’re starting conversations about private parts, sharing and not sharing them - our conversations are getting a bit interesting.

Last night he asked me what my nipple was doing (I was pumping milk for the youngest and the great milk cube project) and that digressed into conversations about penises and how girls pee without one. I’ve got a few private parts books to share with him, and we’ll take it at his pace.

There isn’t one catch-all book, but the few we’ve got will be a good starting point.

This morning he decided he was going to play with his doctor toys (an aunt got him a kit and we started augmenting it when I fell pregnant with his little sister, he took it along to his own doctor visits and our midwife visits). Temperature-taking, bandage binding, stethoscope application to belly, heart, lungs; this play kept us busy for at least half an hour. Then it was time for the shot.

He hasn’t seen or gotten many shots, so the injection toy is pretty theoretical to him. He happily shot me up and down my arms, enough to make me look like a heroin addict in happy fun play land. Then building on his new-found anatomical knowledge to give me a shot in the heart because I was very very sick …

Guess we should take Pulp Fiction out of his movie rotation.

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Originally written January 2004 … unearthed for a “parenting moment” contest.

Sometimes I wonder about baby books.

Why don’t they tell you not to rub the baby down with a little curry powder?

So, as some of you may have heard, I had a fun morning. 11am I get a call from daycare that Wolfie has a red rash all over his tummy and backside and diaper area that came seemingly out of nowhere. I call the hub to consult, as he changed the diaper this morning. Wolfie had some rash in the diaper area, but not all over, this morning. Continue Reading »

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We tried to switch it up last night, me putting the boy down, he putting the girl down. We had a bottle of milk that was use it or lose it (we’re still working out what to send and how much for her, and ended up with a bottle of frozen that was use or lose at the end of the day) and figured, why not?

Not so much.

Both kids in the tub, scrub a dubbing. Hand off the girl to the hub, finish up with the boy. The boy asks to be wrapped up in a towel, and I do, but no, it’s wrong. He wants it over his head and around his body. So, I wrap him up in the towel, head to tush as best I can (he’s getting so tall!), and he kneels and pulls himself down to the floor.

“Look, mommy, I’m in a cocoon!” Starts to wriggle and break out the top, even though his cute little tush is hanging out the bottom. “Look, mommy, I’m coming out of my cocoon!” He stands up, triumphantly holding his towel aloft like wings. “Look, mommy, I’m a butterfly!” Swoops in, gives me a big wet hug. “Thank you for helping me make a coocoon, mommy.”

Bedtime madness ensues. We end up switching kids, yadda yadda yadda. But we’ll get the hang of it.

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I live in the flippin paradise, but don’t do a lot about it. We just spend so much time, sometimes, living a bit of a commuter life style, that we don’t take some time and just stretch and enjoy what we’re paying such high taxes for (aside from schools, which we start reaping the benefits of this fall). Continue Reading »

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My daycare director is coming up on her anniversary here and all we got her was a break out of pink-eye. Let’s see. If the first year is pink-eye, the second year is probably chicken pox. I think she cut her teeth on a Fifth Disease breakout when she first got there.

But seriously, I’m going to tell her to set up an Amazon store to augment their fund-raising (corporate has them doing March of Dimes activities, but they also do stuff to raise money for staff parties) and we’ll skip the chicken pox. Continue Reading »

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