parenting101

My cat is so damn pretty.

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

~~~

Dear Closed Captioning,

No, she did not say "They loved each other". She said "They *loathed* each other". Marianne Faithfull's accent isn't heavy or confusing. Get it together.

Sincerely,

Me

~~~

"Charlie, do you want a hamburger or a cheeseburger?"
"A *hamburger*."
"So you don't want cheese on it?"
".... Yes. I do."

~~~

Last year, we had a nest near my studio door with what I think were wrens. Every time we went out on the porch, they freaked out and flew away. This time, we have a nest near my studio door and one on the pillar near the front door. The birds in them have sturdier constitutions and tend to stay in the nests as we pass. I'm glad for this, 'cause I hate feeling guilty just going onto the porch.

~~~

Bleh. This whole sleep thing is not making me happy. So I will be off for a nap in a bit, and then get up and make dinner and then eat dinner with the family and then go back to bed.

At least that's the current plan. :) Love you, really mean it.

Josh graduates from high school on Thursday.

:D

also,

:...(

Walgreens has a little set of toddler t-shirts with extremely gendered (and kind of unpleasant) sayings on them. Like, one lavender one says, "I'm the princess, mommy's the queen, and daddy just works here."

It would be very, very, very wrong of me to get the small fanperson the black one that says, "Fathers, lock up your daughters."

Very wrong. Yes.

This entry was originally posted at http://cereta.dreamwidth.org/1010718.html. If you can, please speak there. have spoken there.

here's who I spent my birthday with:



we shipped josie off to her grandparents so we could have date night, but kept the travel-sized one who just squeaks and snorts and snores through life, in between nursing sessions.

first there was a quiet afternoon, then we went out for sushi which I can officially eat without guilt since I'm not pregnant! and I had a wonderful martini. then, the movies! we went to the big warren theater that has a cry room just in case olive was going to be upset, and brought hats to cover her ears in case it was too loud. she slept the whole time. ate twice. that was the highlight, we didn't even head to the cry room.

Star Trek was okay. everyone else seems to be loving it. It failed one of my big tests for halfway decent writing: can you have a female character who's not reduced to a daughter/girlfriend/sex kitten? the first Star Trek had uhura... smart, strong, snippy with kirk when he hits on her in a bar! this Star Trek has uhura: whiny girlfriend who makes everything about "us" and can't even put on her big girl face when speaking klingon. why do writers have to do that to women? especially when there's only one main character who's female? (they tried to introduce the science officer, but she was mainly defined as the admiral's daughter... everybody's just gotta be around for a man, huh?)

I mean, zoe on "firefly" had a boyfriend too but she was still a badass, she did her job without being all doe-eyed all time, she wasn't any more distracted by love than her husband was. so IT'S POSSIBLE. and it makes the whole cast of characters seem so much more three-dimensional. like you put some thought into it! when I see these big-budget movies with spectacular special effects, hot actors, and funny dialog, it ruins it for me when the female characters are the same tired boilerplate people, just there as accessories for the men, not even as thought-out as the props.

well anyway, here's to the rest of the franchise, to tasha yar and klingon sisters and doctor crusher. it's good for everybody to have a big Star Trek blockbuster at least once in a decade, I hate to see it screwed up with such obviously lazy writing but it happens.

1. Bring lots of snacks, and some water. And don't let your child hold on to the water. We stopped 3-4 times each way. It will be a lot more stops if they can drink as much as they want.

2. Have something different to do for every hour of driving. A different game or snack or music. For example one hour my son chose the music, the next hour he chose a game. I was basically agreeing to do whatever he wanted at the start of every hour.

3. Make a playlist of music your child likes. We had two, a short one with songs he loves, and a longer one with his songs plus songs we thought he would like that we also like. None of it was children's songs. You can take turns choosing what is listened to, like each hour a different family member gets a turn.

4. No electronics. No tv, dvd, ds, leap pad. You don't need it.

5. A bag of toys that do not make noises that will annoy you. Keep them right next to your child. At some point you will want a break or not know what to do next. Tell them to pull out the toys and play for awhile. This worked fine until my son got bored and started sticking dinosaurs through my head rest to eat my hair.

6. Be stocked on medications that you might need for you and your child. Dramamine (they make one for kids), tylenol, tums, etc. It will be much harder if you or your child are not feeling well.

7. No candy or sugary snacks/drinks.

8. Be ready to play a lot of games. Read up on ideas, or make up your own. But also set some limits. Like "I agree to play any game you want for 20 minutes and you agree to play any game I want for 20 minutes, then we take a 20 minute break."

9. Be clear on any car rules. Depending on your particular situation they may be to not disturb the one driving, inside voice only, no toys in the front seats, seatbelts stay on, windows stay up.

10. If your child seems sleepy try instituting a rest time. Tell them no one is going to sleep but we are all going to be quiet and have a rest. You can give it a set number of minutes. You can keep the music on. But the idea is no games and not much talking. This is the perfect way for my son to fall asleep in the car, if he is going to.

11. When there is a real convenient rest stop, consider taking it, especially if the next one is real far off, even if your child doesn't have to go. Better to have an easy stop then to be rushing around trying to find one.

12. No books unless you are sure your child does not get car sick.

13. Tell stories to each other. There are many ways to do this. You can each tell a story. You can take turns a few sentences each, or one sentence each. If you are telling a story and do not have any ideas, use a movie or book or tv show as inspiration and tell the basic plot and basic ideas as if it is your own story. I told the entire Avengers movie that way.

14. One time I was really trying to get him to sleep and it wasn't working so I made up the dreaming game. One person pretends to sleep for three minutes. The other person wakes the first person up. Then the first person tells what their dream was. Since dreams can be anything it is a nice way of introducing story telling since there is no right or wrong and crazy things can just happen.

15. Fortunately-Unfortunately. In this story telling game the first sentence (or first turn) starts off with "fortunately" and the next one starts off with "unfortunately". And you just keep going back and forth.

16. Fairy Tale Game. The adult starts telling a fairy story and stops at whatever the conflict is (like stopping when the prince can't get to Rapunzel). Then everyone in the car helps come up with at least 5 different solutions. My rule is they can be anything, practical, silly, magical, but they can not be mean or cruel.

17. Color games. You name a color and the other person has to search outside for it. Other variations would be, find a certain number of the color, like find 4 yellow things. Or find a green, then a blue, then a red. You can also do the game with just cars if the landscape does not offer a lot of color options. My son's favorite thing to do is tell me I have to find 100 purple things. Purple is a very difficult color to find while driving.

18. Color Trucks. Take turns naming the colors of the tractor trailer truck cabs.

19. Make a list games. Name 15 things that walk on four legs. Name 10 things in the kitchen. Name 20 things that are blue. Name 5 things that fly. The sky is the limit with these. Work on them together or take turns.

20. Guess the animal. One player thinks of an animal and tells everyone what letter it starts with. Players ask yes or no questions until someone figures out the animal.

21. Read the signs as they go by. Or have your child read the signs. If your child can't read yet, have them read the number signs. Or count the milemarkers. That is one of my son's favorite things to do is notice the mile markers as they go by.

22. Make up games based on things you see. It doesn't have to be super creative. It just has to be something that takes time to do. Because that's what you have, lots of time. We made up a game where we pretend something is wrong with a person and have to go to the hospital, but the hospital makes a mistake and does something crazy to the person. Like "He went in to the hospital with a broken arm, but he came out with an extra hand." And then everyone makes lots of silly jokes about how crazy that is and it is the next person's turn.

23. Would You Rather. Take turns giving two choices for something. Again they could be real things, or silly, or crazy. Would you rather be an astronaut or a zoo keeper. Be a super hero who is invisible or can fly. Eat only ice cream for the rest of your life or chocolate. Be a tree or a flower. Explain why you chose your answer.

24. Alphabet. Take turns coming up with a word for each letter of the alphabet. First person starts with A is for, next person does B, and so on.

25. Another game we made up was Crazy Store. One person is the shopkeeper. The other comes to the store and asks for a particular item, like a toaster. The shopkeeper then tells you about the different toaster options and all of them have funny extras. Like one might have a button to cook any food you want, or print money, or become a light if your lights go out, or clean for you.

26. Counting-Rhyming Song. A changable song that teaches counting to 100 and rhyming. You sing (or just say if you are not into singing) 1-2-3-4, then make up a sentence where the last word rhymes with 4. Go all the way to 100. Example, "1-2-3-4, who's that knocking on the door, 5-6-7-8, I don't want to be late." Some numbers are hard to rhyme with, just be silly about it, like "9-10-11-12 come meet my friend Melve"

27. Sing other songs in silly ways. Take turns changing words to a favorite song. Use different animals for Old MacDonald. Or don't use animals at all, use other things that make noise. Songs with rhyming are always fun to change the words to see what your child comes up with.

28. Discussion topics. Try to have some topics on hand that you know a lot about that you think your child would enjoy learning about. Dinosaurs, space, different types of jobs, how things are different now than they were when you were a child. My father was in the car with us so we talked about my son's, mine, and my dad's childhood and how they were different and why they were different.

That's everything I can think of that we've used for this last, longest ever, car trip. As well as some ideas from previous car rides. We take a 5 hour car ride every year so we've had some practice. Please share any other ideas you might have, I'm always looking for more!

god. so, all this tornado stuff.  layererd on top of everything else that can and does go wrong in this world, i just feel this incredibly heavy sense of doom.  there's a predator out there and you can't stop it.  maybe you think you can cheat your way out of it if you can just wedge yourself between a commode and a wall and hang on, but then you see blocks and blocks and blocks of buildings leveled.  there ain't a fucking thing you can do then.  trees have no branches.  massive oaks pulled from the ground.  you know.  you've seen.

and i definitely can't stand hearing about all these little kids. thinking of them terrified in the hallway with a useless social studies book clasped to the tops of their heads.  hearing a building tearing apart.  being crushed.  or drowned.  i just keep crying.  more missing, more missing.  9 children dead for now.  more coming. more coming.

that's what they teach us down here. hunker under a 25 pound desk with a book on your head and pray to god.  i'm not even kidding.  this is how we practiced (minus the instruction to pray to god).  when i was in elementary school, there wasn't even a hallway to go into.  they didn't send you to the gym or the cafeteria.  we schooled in a low-slung mid-century building on top of a hill... a string of classrooms with picture windows on either side.  book shelves on the bottom and miles of non-safety glass on top.  we would have been safer running down the hill and flattening ourselves into the bottom of the creek across the road.

i didn't want to take my children to school today, but i doubt it's safer here. we live in a matchbox house. i guess it's better than where i was a year ago, sitting in a second story condo closet with violet and hoping st james kept oliver safe and calm. but i am wondering if moving to a place called Old Lake Highlands was a smart move. i guess we think we're hot shit being on top of a hill. i'm hoping a tornado would just slide off of it.

we're a consumerist society.  we've made all of this stuff and then it literally blows around and does it's best to kill us.  a woman in texas last week, cleburne, i suppose, said she was dropping her kids in the tub when all of a sudden, shit was just punching through the walls of her house.  just cracking right through.  in moore, they said entire fucking CURBS just up and blew threw the air and landed at the school.  that school did not have its own curbs, initially.  a giant, steel oil tank flew half a mile.

as you may or may not know, brian grew up in okc (the city with the most tornado strikes in the US... a place to call home!) and went to college in moore.  until a couple of years ago, his brother lived in moore (now in okc, a few miles away).  brian's facebook feed is littered with horror.  one of  his good friends from childhood, scott, lost their home.  fortunately, he and his family weren't home at the time.  another friend lost a house she was renting.  i back-read her feed and saw her frantically trying to find out if her child, a student at plaza towers, was safe.  she was in the upper grades, which were evacuated.  someone he went to school with has a nephew missing from a daycare.  twice, i've seen photos from the national media pop up on an fb feed as someone's neighborhood or long-time friend.  like, this shit's real.  the obama administration didn't shoot it on a sound stage and sell it as an instrument of fear of climate change.

i feel totally helpless.  i've always been terrified of tornadoes. chronic tornado nightmares since childhood. i slept on the couch last night because we were supposed to have storms and i wanted to be able to switch on the tv, though there's a disturbing lack of weather information when it happens in the middle of the night.  i will stay awake for hours in the middle of the night watching radars during storms to make sure a funnel isn't just going to drop straight out of the fucking sky on to my house.  you really don't have a lot of time. we thought we were finally in the clear last week, when i spent two hours last week shaking and watching weather radars religiously before hiding in the bathroom. i was up to get the kids 30 seconds before the sirens even sounded... there was a protracted rumbling.  not thunder (i guess it was thunder), but it was rumbling on and on, like it was truck on the street outside our house.  they teach you here that the sky will turn green or yellow and then there's the sound of a freight train.  it was the freight train noise just going and going and i thought, this is it.  it's here right now.  it's right outside our house.

i'm shaving off time from my life with all this anxiety.  it's coming again today.  look at what my neighbor posted on my facebook.  i seriously wonder if i'm an idiot for not grabbing my whole family and driving away right now.  am i going to regret just sitting here?

if we weren't already mired down with the requirements to fix our foundation, replace our shower, replace our roof, replace brian's car, and pay for one hundred other things, i am not kidding that my ass would be searching for an underground shelter.  i don't see how else you're supposed to survive a mile-wide behemoth with a 2.5 mile debris footprint.

i wonder if the two texas ex-pats i saw on facebook lamenting the lack of tornado sirens in their life still feel that way.  one said he schedules trips home in an attempt to coincide.  that's not shit to mess around with.

1. Bring lots of snacks, and some water. And don't let your child hold on to the water. We stopped 3-4 times each way. It will be a lot more stops if they can drink as much as they want.

2. Have something different to do for every hour of driving. A different game or snack or music. For example one hour my son chose the music, the next hour he chose a game. I was basically agreeing to do whatever he wanted at the start of every hour.

3. Make a playlist of music your child likes. We had two, a short one with songs he loves, and a longer one with his songs plus songs we thought he would like that we also like. None of it was children's songs. You can take turns choosing what is listened to, like each hour a different family member gets a turn.

4. No electronics. No tv, dvd, ds, leap pad. You don't need it.

5. A bag of toys that do not make noises that will annoy you. Keep them right next to your child. At some point you will want a break or not know what to do next. Tell them to pull out the toys and play for awhile. This worked fine until my son got bored and started sticking dinosaurs through my head rest to eat my hair.

6. Be stocked on medications that you might need for you and your child. Dramamine (they make one for kids), tylenol, tums, etc. It will be much harder if you or your child are not feeling well.

7. No candy or sugary snacks/drinks.

8. Be ready to play a lot of games. Read up on ideas, or make up your own. But also set some limits. Like "I agree to play any game you want for 20 minutes and you agree to play any game I want for 20 minutes, then we take a 20 minute break."

9. Be clear on any car rules. Depending on your particular situation they may be to not disturb the one driving, inside voice only, no toys in the front seats, seatbelts stay on, windows stay up.

10. If your child seems sleepy try instituting a rest time. Tell them no one is going to sleep but we are all going to be quiet and have a rest. You can give it a set number of minutes. You can keep the music on. But the idea is no games and not much talking. This is the perfect way for my son to fall asleep in the car, if he is going to.

11. When there is a real convenient rest stop, consider taking it, especially if the next one is real far off, even if your child doesn't have to go. Better to have an easy stop then to be rushing around trying to find one.

12. No books unless you are sure your child does not get car sick.

13. Tell stories to each other. There are many ways to do this. You can each tell a story. You can take turns a few sentences each, or one sentence each. If you are telling a story and do not have any ideas, use a movie or book or tv show as inspiration and tell the basic plot and basic ideas as if it is your own story. I told the entire Avengers movie that way.

14. One time I was really trying to get him to sleep and it wasn't working so I made up the dreaming game. One person pretends to sleep for three minutes. The other person wakes the first person up. Then the first person tells what their dream was. Since dreams can be anything it is a nice way of introducing story telling since there is no right or wrong and crazy things can just happen.

15. Fortunately-Unfortunately. In this story telling game the first sentence (or first turn) starts off with "fortunately" and the next one starts off with "unfortunately". And you just keep going back and forth.

16. Fairy Tale Game. The adult starts telling a fairy story and stops at whatever the conflict is (like stopping when the prince can't get to Rapunzel). Then everyone in the car helps come up with at least 5 different solutions. My rule is they can be anything, practical, silly, magical, but they can not be mean or cruel.

17. Color games. You name a color and the other person has to search outside for it. Other variations would be, find a certain number of the color, like find 4 yellow things. Or find a green, then a blue, then a red. You can also do the game with just cars if the landscape does not offer a lot of color options. My son's favorite thing to do is tell me I have to find 100 purple things. Purple is a very difficult color to find while driving.

18. Color Trucks. Take turns naming the colors of the tractor trailer truck cabs.

19. Make a list games. Name 15 things that walk on four legs. Name 10 things in the kitchen. Name 20 things that are blue. Name 5 things that fly. The sky is the limit with these. Work on them together or take turns.

20. Guess the animal. One player thinks of an animal and tells everyone what letter it starts with. Players ask yes or no questions until someone figures out the animal.

21. Read the signs as they go by. Or have your child read the signs. If your child can't read yet, have them read the number signs. Or count the milemarkers. That is one of my son's favorite things to do is notice the mile markers as they go by.

22. Make up games based on things you see. It doesn't have to be super creative. It just has to be something that takes time to do. Because that's what you have, lots of time. We made up a game where we pretend something is wrong with a person and have to go to the hospital, but the hospital makes a mistake and does something crazy to the person. Like "He went in to the hospital with a broken arm, but he came out with an extra hand." And then everyone makes lots of silly jokes about how crazy that is and it is the next person's turn.

23. Would You Rather. Take turns giving two choices for something. Again they could be real things, or silly, or crazy. Would you rather be an astronaut or a zoo keeper. Be a super hero who is invisible or can fly. Eat only ice cream for the rest of your life or chocolate. Be a tree or a flower. Explain why you chose your answer.

24. Alphabet. Take turns coming up with a word for each letter of the alphabet. First person starts with A is for, next person does B, and so on.

25. Another game we made up was Crazy Store. One person is the shopkeeper. The other comes to the store and asks for a particular item, like a toaster. The shopkeeper then tells you about the different toaster options and all of them have funny extras. Like one might have a button to cook any food you want, or print money, or become a light if your lights go out, or clean for you.

26. Counting-Rhyming Song. A changable song that teaches counting to 100 and rhyming. You sing (or just say if you are not into singing) 1-2-3-4, then make up a sentence where the last word rhymes with 4. Go all the way to 100. Example, "1-2-3-4, who's that knocking on the door, 5-6-7-8, I don't want to be late." Some numbers are hard to rhyme with, just be silly about it, like "9-10-11-12 come meet my friend Melve"

27. Sing other songs in silly ways. Take turns changing words to a favorite song. Use different animals for Old MacDonald. Or don't use animals at all, use other things that make noise. Songs with rhyming are always fun to change the words to see what your child comes up with.

28. Discussion topics. Try to have some topics on hand that you know a lot about that you think your child would enjoy learning about. Dinosaurs, space, different types of jobs, how things are different now than they were when you were a child. My father was in the car with us so we talked about my son's, mine, and my dad's childhood and how they were different and why they were different.

That's everything I can think of that we've used for this last, longest ever, car trip. As well as some ideas from previous car rides. We take a 5 hour car ride every year so we've had some practice. Please share any other ideas you might have, I'm always looking for more!

PRAISE GOD!! I didn't have to have the shot!! I went to work as usual, then once the kids were off to school I went to the ER. I did all the paperwork, was in a johnie, waiting for two nurses to come in and give me simultaneous shots, one in each arm, when the lead doctor came in. "When did this bite happen?" "May ninth". "You've been ten days without symptoms, you don't need the shot!!" HALLELUJAH!!

Regarding last post - co-incidentally, I was at a talk by Dr Charlotte Russell, who helped found ISIS, over the weekend - on the topic of "Infant Sleep Safety: Risk, realities and recommendations"!

(Edited to add a comma so I wasn't crediting her with founding it over a single weekend!)

I've spammed this all over creation already, but I'm putting it here, too, because the Blog Tour link is pointing here. To read my review, please go here.

Thanks! :D

Voting is now open, please consider voting for me: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/653859.html

Thanks!

I have so many feelings about the new Star Trek! Many of them are literally internal, as any emotional reactions I have pass along to a very excitable baby. She was twisting and kicking the shit out of me from the beginning of the movie and now, a couple hours later, she's not relenting. I won't get into it because I don't want to spoil anything, but regardless of the criticisms around the movie, it was FANTASTIC. I laughed, I cried, I squeed over some particularly nerdy nods in the many plot points. So go see it. Then come nerd out with me. If anyone wants to talk spoilers in comments, I welcome it, so consider yourself warned if you haven't seen it yet!

I have decided to buy and load an e reader with ALL the books that are essential reading for children.....books like Peter Pan and Alice In wonderland etc

I am not planning on giving this to her till she is a few years older so i have time.

What books would YOU include in a collection of this sort?