First Impression

This past week the toddler, her daddy and I went to the toddler's school for "parent orientation" -- yes, it's crazy they have 'orientation' for preschool!

The toddler went to play with some other children in a classroom while daddy and I listened to the director telling us about drop off and pick up routines, dress code and of course, tuition!

We were all able to meet the toddler's teacher, Mrs. Figola. The toddler (I guess I need to call her the preschooler now, huh?) was THRILLED beyond words to meet Mrs. Figola. You see the 5 year old at the daycare house, Jeffrey, also had Mrs. Figola as a teacher!

When it was time to leave, after an hour of orientation, the preschooler started crying and screaming, "I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL, I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE!". Daddy had to grab her by the hand and lead her outside, through the throngs of other parents staring at our preschooler.

Nice first impression, huh?

Body Art

What's more fun than laying on the driveway, looking up at the passing clouds and outlining your toddler with chalk?


...having your toddler trace your large body and it coming out looking more like a monster than human.

For boys only?

I don't really think of myself as a feminist or a huge 'women's right' movement proponent. Not that I'm against women's rights, of course I am for them. But, I also don't feel prejudiced against or not given opportunities because I am a female in this day and age.

But, since having a daughter I have noticed quite a few instances where we as a society need to do a little work:



You see, my daughter likes race cars. For those of you who know me and my family you know my daughter LOVES the movie Cars and LOVES Kasey Kahne (see previous posts) and my husband and I see no problem with that and we let her have her little obsessions. (although at times I want to tell her the movie is broken because I'm SO TIRED of watching it!)

She also likes to color, so when you can print coloring pages off the internet of her favorite topics (and Kasey Kahne's car at that), that's even better!

However what I'm offended and upset by is the website. Take a look:

Can you see that address? coloring-pages-book-for-kids-boys.com WHAT?!?!? For boys? You mean if you're a girl a) you can't view/print this page and b) you must not like cars ????

That's a ridiculous website -- I still can't believe it! My husband printed the pages. If I found that website, I would have refused to print the page and kept looking. I suppose the princess pages are "for-girls" only, huh? It's the year 2008, come on people -- get with the program: equality for all! (yes, that's a very liberal statment for me)

My feminist blood is still boiling...

Just passing by...

Just scooting through the summer...

I can't believe I'm going to be a mom of a preschooler! I still think of my little girl as a toddler, but after Labor Day, she'll officially be called a 'preschooler' since she starts preschool then. Where did the last 3 1/2 years go? When I hear other people say, "time just flies by", I think to myself -- well, you must not have a strong-willed toddler! My days don't really fly by -- not when you're dealing with a child who likes to push her limits, reaching for every boundary she can find and trying to figure out if mom and dad will go beyond the boundary and just give in this one time. Then if mom won't budge, maybe dad will....and vice verse. It's a trying time for a parent of a toddler/preschooler and maybe that's just it -- she's on the border, on the fence, between toddler hood and being 'school-aged' and ready to face the world head-on. She's figuring out life between being a 'baby' and being a 'big girl'.

I think it's hard on all of us...

I think I've lost my husband...

...to cable TV!!!

Yes, we now have cable TV (my father-in-law will be so excited!)....but, not by my choosing. We moved into this house in Oct. of last year and my husband and I agreed that we shouldn't sign up for cable because we'd be so busy moving, painting, fixing a house that we wouldn't have time to even watch TV. That proved to be true through the fall, winter and spring. Things are really no farther done in our house than at that point, but we had Netflix for a while, watched TV series' on DVD (our favorites: The Office, Boston Legal, Scrubs) and just watched basic TV that we were able to get on our antenna.

My husband has been starting to bring up the cable TV topic with me the past couple of weeks and I have sort of been able to skirt around the issue and avoid signing up. It's not that I don't like TV, it's actually quite the opposite -- I'm afraid we're going to get glued to the TV and be cable TV junkies. My daughter would LOVE to sit in front of the TV all day!!

So, this weekend my hubby was talking to a local friend who said they hooked their TV up to their cable internet and are able to get cable TV through that port. So, my husband had to try it when we got home and what would you know? We now have cable TV -- cable TV that we've had all along and didn't know it!

It was nice to watch the Olympics last night with a clear picture, you see we've been watching TV off of our antenna and at best it's still fuzzy. So, we now have a clear picture and lots and LOTS of channels.

I still don't know how I feel about it. I did make my husband unplug it last night because the cable was running through the living room. But, I'm sure when he returns from work, he'll plug it back it and we'll be glued to the TV....

...if you don't hear from me for a week or so, send someone over to cut our cable line!

What I've learned from gardening...

This year I tried my hand at gardening and here are some of the things I've learned:

1. Planting a garden is easy: just throw some seeds in the ground and voila, you have a 'garden'.

2. Tending a garden is much harder and time consuming than I imagined -- I'm not of the extra patient-type, so to go out there and weed doesn't appeal to me. I think I've weeded twice this year -- both of those times were when my mom was visiting and I saw her out there weeding, so I felt guilty and joined her!

3. The mosquitoes around here are deadly! In order to weed my garden, I needed to douse myself in bug spray in order to stay alive out there -- and that only usually lasted about 10 minutes before the bugs started biting through the layer of bug spray.

4. The wild berries (photo above) were actually the easiest to tend to -- I did nothing -- there were wild out in the over growth in our back yard and my mom and dad found them and told me of their great wonder -- we picked twice -- once when my parent's where here and once on our own. The rest of them went to the birds!

5. Cucumbers are really easy to grow -- they are kind of wild -- growing vines everywhere, but you have to pick them at the right time, otherwise they start going to seed....more for next year, I guess.

6. You need more than 3 stalks of corn in order to reap a 'harvest'.

7. Tomatoes are also pretty easy to grow, except you have to give them a cage to climb up and I'm still not sure we'll get any this summer/fall -- I'm still waiting for them to turn orange/red.

8. You also need more than a 9 foot x 5 foot area in order to have a garden. I planted about 6 different things, but are only going to be able to gather cucumbers and tomatoes -- the rest either got eaten by the animals or were over powered by the vine-type vegetables.

Lessons for next year -- plant a bigger garden with the veggies spaced further apart and invest is some really good mosquito spray!

7 years ago...

Seven years ago today, I married the man I now call my husband. We dated through college and grad school, a total of 5 years before getting married. So, we've known each other now for 12 years -- seems unbelievable!

The running joke in our house is that both of us forgot the date of our anniversary a couple of years ago. We thought it was August 10th, but my in-laws pointed out that it is actually August 11th.

So, here's to you honey:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!

Peter, who?

Another work story....one of my favorite kind of patients -- the confused ones. So, I have this patient at work who is 76 years old who was just diagnosed with a brain tumor. Because of this, he is severely confused but pleasant. Last week, this was our conversation:

me: "So, why are you here?" (knowing the answer, trying to work with the patient to re-orient)
patient: "Well, I have this cataract"
me: "Oh, in your eye?"
patient: (looking at me as if I was a fool, however very seriously stated) "no, in my peter"

Okay, change the topic now!

In the health care field most days are not full of joy and happiness. Many days are filled with sadness, illness and death. So, when a gem of a patient comes along, we all soak in the honesty and innocence of a dying patient....