live from sublurbia

Think of a Something Thursday!

One of the tips I’ve picked up from daycare, summer camp, and other mommies is a focal point for herding children around. One kid, four kids, or more (especially if they are a leetle bit older). I used it just the other day herding a few five year olds and a two/three year old to the movies and park. I parked the car next to a tree that occupied a median, and had each get next to the tree and hug it once they left the car as I unbuckled them individually.

It worked in reverse, too - they stayed there as I unlocked the car and buckled them all back in, one by one by one.

But I’ve had the darnedest time getting them to stay back from the TV. It’s like herding cats as they get more drawn in to Signing Time or Dora or Magic School Bus and inch back. Until I invented the “no zone”.

The hub was suspicious when I abandoned my pursuit of our usual decorating style: late college years, early messy childhood. I asked to buy a rug for the living room. “Whyyyy …” he he trailed off cautiously. Continue Reading »

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Think of a Something Thursday!

I have never had to label things so much as since I’ve had kids.

My last year of junior high, I needed a new coat and I found a lovely hot pink one (ah … the hot colored eighties; quite a change from the autumnal seventies). It included a zip-out black and pink fleece check-pattern inner jacket/mini jacket/liner. Mom told me to put my name on it, but I didn’t want to. I assured her I would be careful, and keep track of it; putting my name it in was so grade schoool.

I see you nodding along there on the other side of the computer. And the answer is, I’d be surprised if I had it all for even two weeks. The outer coat was “too hot” one Friday afternoon so I hung it up on the rack at my after school hangout. Sure enough, by the next Monday it was gone.

I think I still have the inner jacket - stashed somewhere in the Garage of Doom^TM.

My first trick of labeling things as a mobile pumper was the use of Post It flags. I had a TON of them from a previous co-worker who stuck them on every page to mark every change. I labeled the bottles simply, with numbers. The day-mommies fed the bottles to the kid in the order they were labeled. This was important because I’d send some fresh milk and some frozen milk, and I wanted the frozen milk to be served first. These durable, reusable labels were also great for home use and babysitters. Continue Reading »

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[Think Of A Something Thursday!]

I had a plan when it came to breast feeding and traveling for business. Don’t.

It didn’t quite work out that way, though, as an unexpected trip came my way before my youngest was on cow milk in any substantial amount.

My supply has always been sporadic at best, and she wasn’t helping the situation by refusing formula. I kept up as best I could for as long as I could, but was relieved when she finally took to solid foods. Even then, I pumped at work and home, and slowly built a little freezer stash.

Once I found out I’d be traveling in the middle of the transition to more cow milk, I burned through my stash as quickly as possible and started up a new one. Continue Reading »

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_{Author’s Note: I wrote this out a long time ago, before I came up with the original TOAST (Think of a Something Thursday) format. We’ve come a long way, baybee!}

TOAST: Think of a Something Thursday

Long before I acquired my stable of shopping bags, and when I bothered to remember, I’d tell a store clerk trying to bag one or two items: “No thank you”. A habit borne of managing to accumulate too much junk (which I still do, adventure-girl/packrat that I am) but a habit that also fit in nicely with the Reduce part of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

When I was a kid, the grocery stores in my area were dominated by paper sacks. And that was it for a long time. They were great, useful - book covers, art papers, shipping paper, patterns, “canvas”. When plastic bags started coming around along with the advent of “bag your own” stores in my neck of the woods, the bags were your typical two handled affair seen today. Us kids adapted and used them to make simple box kites. Tie a string, find a gust of wind, and go. No sticks, no tails, no tape and paper and glue … But no sharks teeth or dragons, either. Nothing to paint or enhance. I think after one or two gos we were done and bored.

I started out my latest foray into self-bagging and non-plastic bagging like I do most things. In fits and spurts. (The hub asked me the other day how long my to-do list was. I asked in return, “which volume?”.) But I rounded up a sampling of totes I had anyway (I prefer simple totes instead of most diaper bags) along with the inexpensive reusable bags I mentioned the other day.

Surely there was one perfect bag to hold my ‘fancy’ cheeses, wines, crusty loafs of bread, and swirly pops for the kids, right? Be it a quick trip for a parents-only dinner or the restocking of the hurricane pantry, just grab a cloth bag and go, yes? No, not so much. Continue Reading »

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[Toast! Thing Of A Something Thursday!]

Haircuts. Oh, haircuts. Even though I’ve had my painful haircuts through the years and can sympathize with the long suffering Wolfie I didn’t really talk about how we got him from tears to laughter. While a lot of it was maturation on his part and doing a lot of roleplaying and just dealing with him being shaggy sometimes for months on end, we also put together a fun haircut kit for him to play with and work through his fears of getting a haircut.
Continue Reading »

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[Think Of A Something Thursday!]

I know I hate some foods just by looking at them. Lobster. Squid. Crab. Desert-rat that I was, those foods just look squishy and scary to me. They don’t bother me only during the day: they’ll give me nightmares at night. When I go to lunch with some of my coworkers, I’ll choose a “bad” seat at the table just so I won’t see or be near the slimy tank-creature-ambiance. I know it’s not rational, but snakes alive, I don’t want to look at them or have them lurking behind glass too close behind me.

This also precludes me from eating them as food. There are other foods I won’t eat, based on smell or texture, but I do try. Some foods are “bad” only when raw, so I just hold my nose and try not to breathe in scent until they are cooked enough.

Of course, if I have irrational reasons not to eat some foods, why shouldn’t my kids? But I know enough (and have the experience) to find a good alternative that will keep me going. A plate of yucky looking food is more likely to elicit a request for a jelly sandwich or cookies (my children are optimists, it seems, but settle for treats like strawberries, apples, and cheese just as readily). Or the negotiation attempts will begin as the eldest tries to find out the minimum number of bites that must be taken before milk or dessert is brought out. Continue Reading »

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[think of a something thursday!]

Oh Wilma. What a hurricane. My first Big One. Power out for a week or more. Driving to my sibling’s house while trying to not break curfew because they have power and cousins to keep my little one busy. Realizing we are unprepared despite all the planning when hit by the real thing.

But we survived. Heck, after Andrew folks were glad each successive hurricane wasn’t Andrew. By then we were also glad it wasn’t Katrina and Rita. We drove home a few days later, hoping the power would be back soon, and ready if it wasn’t. Continue Reading »

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It’s not that hard to tuck a handful of crayons into a pocket, purse, or diaper bag. Oh, and a snack. And other toy. And paper to write on, and … and … and …

Or simply plan your outings well. This place has kid-friendly free appetizers. That place has sushi and dinosaur-shaped breaded chicken crisps. They always have kid-proof cups at that steak house we like. It works out splendidly … until they change something or run out.

So I put together a smallish “emergency pack” that does triple duty: snack container, drink cup, and toy holder. We can’t use it for all three at once, but two out of three isn’t bad. Continue Reading »

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[think of a something Thursday]

This week’s post (ghost written by yours truly) was entirely the idea of my eldest child, Wolfie. We were driving the usual eight or so miles towards our house recently, and once we had exhausted the “what did you learn today” questions, he proposed we play some, in his words, “safe car games”:

I Spy, Alphabet Games, Numbers Games, Opposites, Language Word Pairs, and Finding Rainbows. 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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