In my last post I mentioned that my 4-year-old daughter apparently has a penchant for bad boys and promise the story in a later post. Here it is. All names have been changed.
One day as we were driving home from daycare, The Punkin announced "I'm going to marry Tony and Rhodey."
"Well," I respond, "Marriages usually work better if you choose just one."
Silence. I think I confused her, possibly because one of her grandmothers has had three husbands. I decide to take a different tack.
"Which one are you going to marry first?" This one she can answer.
"Tony," she replies without missing a beat. Poor Rhodey. Or maybe poor Tony. He's apparently going to be the starter husband.
The next morning I repeat this story to the daycare director, who also happens to be Rhodey's mother.
"Oh no," Ms. Rhodes commisserates. "Those are the two who give their teacher the most trouble. They are always into something."
Perhaps this is just a warning salvo. A heads-up at the age of 4 so that we can be on our toes when she's a teenager.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
When Iron Man met Batgirl
It's been a while since I've posted. A long while... A long, long while... There's many reasons, but that's not the point of this post. So, I'll just jump right in to my story.
The Punkin came home from daycare yesterday with a picture she had drawn. Now, she's 4 and is getting pretty good at stick figures and she even draws a recognizable car, but this particular picture was a mash of green, red and black scribbles.
"I draw this for you," she announced and handed it to me. I looked at it, told her how good it was and I was promptly informed that it was upside down. I turn it right side up and ask her to tell me the story that's in the picture.
"It's Iron Man," she says. For someone who's never seen the movie and can't read comic books yet, she's fascinated with Iron Man. Or maybe it's Tony Stark. I'll have to post later about her apparent liking for bad boys. But that's a post for another time. Back to this story... I say "how cool". Then, she adds, "And Batgirl."
"I have the coolest daughter ever!" I say, genuinely pleased that she's drawing superheroes. Her dad just shakes her head and mumbles something about "mixing universes".
"What are they doing?" I prompt her and for a moment I'm expecting her to say something like "getting married."
"Fighting bad guys," she says.
That's my girl.
The Punkin came home from daycare yesterday with a picture she had drawn. Now, she's 4 and is getting pretty good at stick figures and she even draws a recognizable car, but this particular picture was a mash of green, red and black scribbles.
"I draw this for you," she announced and handed it to me. I looked at it, told her how good it was and I was promptly informed that it was upside down. I turn it right side up and ask her to tell me the story that's in the picture.
"It's Iron Man," she says. For someone who's never seen the movie and can't read comic books yet, she's fascinated with Iron Man. Or maybe it's Tony Stark. I'll have to post later about her apparent liking for bad boys. But that's a post for another time. Back to this story... I say "how cool". Then, she adds, "And Batgirl."
"I have the coolest daughter ever!" I say, genuinely pleased that she's drawing superheroes. Her dad just shakes her head and mumbles something about "mixing universes".
"What are they doing?" I prompt her and for a moment I'm expecting her to say something like "getting married."
"Fighting bad guys," she says.
That's my girl.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Can't Get That Earworm Outta My Head
So, I read this article on CNN.com about what it possibly the 'nets next Rickroll. The article is not about Rick Astley or "Never Gonna Give You Up", but it did mention it. Now I can't get "Never Gonna Give You Up" out of my head. It's like I've been rickrolled by Anderson Cooper. Thanks, guys.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Sometimes I feel a little bit like Kermit
This post is for Michelle over at Plus One. Check out her blog in general and, specifically, her contest for unpaper towels.
When we have kids we think about many, many things – from giddy, happy things like baby’s first Christmas and starting new family traditions to the ugly side of parenting like loss of sleep. But one thing we never think about beforehand is the environmental impact of having one or more children.
What exactly is the environmental impact of children?
Diapers are the first thing everyone thinks about and disposable diapers certainly add tons, quite literally, to the waste stream. But what about water? Electricity? Gas?
As I sat down to write this post I smugly thought about all the great things we’ve done to lessen the environmental impact of adding one more person to our family…and realized that we really haven’t done all that much.
I recycle glass, plastic, metals and paper products, but I did that before The Punkin got here. (I need to take a moment to brag on The Punkin here. The other day she put her father’s coke can in the recycling can and told me she was “de-cycling”. I was so proud of her.)
I’m a little bit of an electricity-nag, always going behind my husband and cutting off lights, sometimes getting yelled at if he’s still in the room when I cut the light off. And I wash all our clothes except towels in cold water. (I do make the allowance of washing towels in warm water.) But, again, I did those things prior to having a baby.
As far as water consumption, I’ve made one small change recently. Our bathtub faucet drips and I’ve started putting a bucket under it and using the water collected to water plants. Better than it going down the drain. But that’s the only change.
Our one bright spot is our gas use. I’ve not measured it, but I’m sure our gas consumption is about even, if not less, than before we had a baby. Driving to daycare does add another mile or two to our daily commute, but overall we’re not driving as much. We don’t go out to eat as much, we stay at home more in the evening, and I plan trips to the grocery store and KMart instead of going out for one thing at a time.
But aside from gas, our overall consumption has increased. Heck, just through toys alone, our consumption has increased. I’m sure Grammy was responsible for the demise of an acre or two of forest last Christmas simply from the packaging and wrapping paper around all the toys. I did make a valiant effort to collect and recycle as much of the wrapping paper as possible and all the boxes. But still, I was a little appalled at the amount of STUFF my child received at Christmas. But my feelings about the overabundance of toys in her life will be saved for another post.
So this post is not so much about what we’ve done as what I’m going to do.
And what am I going to do? I’m going to take it one step at a time. Right now I’m doing research on cloth diapers. I had big plans about cloth diapers with The Punkin, but ultimately ended up going for the convenience of disposable. With He-Who-Is-Not-Yet-Named, I’m making a commitment to cloth diaper at least part time (and by part-time, I mean weekends) or full time if our day care is open to it.
Ultimately, I would like to have a garden with a compost pile to further cut down on our waste stream and provide fresh produce for my family. That feels like a big project that will take a couple of summers to fulfill. So, while I’m greening up my family one-step at a time, I may come up with a five-year plan of ideas. If anyone reading this has any ideas they’d like to contribute, let me know and I’ll see about incorporating them into my family.
When we have kids we think about many, many things – from giddy, happy things like baby’s first Christmas and starting new family traditions to the ugly side of parenting like loss of sleep. But one thing we never think about beforehand is the environmental impact of having one or more children.
What exactly is the environmental impact of children?
Diapers are the first thing everyone thinks about and disposable diapers certainly add tons, quite literally, to the waste stream. But what about water? Electricity? Gas?
As I sat down to write this post I smugly thought about all the great things we’ve done to lessen the environmental impact of adding one more person to our family…and realized that we really haven’t done all that much.
I recycle glass, plastic, metals and paper products, but I did that before The Punkin got here. (I need to take a moment to brag on The Punkin here. The other day she put her father’s coke can in the recycling can and told me she was “de-cycling”. I was so proud of her.)
I’m a little bit of an electricity-nag, always going behind my husband and cutting off lights, sometimes getting yelled at if he’s still in the room when I cut the light off. And I wash all our clothes except towels in cold water. (I do make the allowance of washing towels in warm water.) But, again, I did those things prior to having a baby.
As far as water consumption, I’ve made one small change recently. Our bathtub faucet drips and I’ve started putting a bucket under it and using the water collected to water plants. Better than it going down the drain. But that’s the only change.
Our one bright spot is our gas use. I’ve not measured it, but I’m sure our gas consumption is about even, if not less, than before we had a baby. Driving to daycare does add another mile or two to our daily commute, but overall we’re not driving as much. We don’t go out to eat as much, we stay at home more in the evening, and I plan trips to the grocery store and KMart instead of going out for one thing at a time.
But aside from gas, our overall consumption has increased. Heck, just through toys alone, our consumption has increased. I’m sure Grammy was responsible for the demise of an acre or two of forest last Christmas simply from the packaging and wrapping paper around all the toys. I did make a valiant effort to collect and recycle as much of the wrapping paper as possible and all the boxes. But still, I was a little appalled at the amount of STUFF my child received at Christmas. But my feelings about the overabundance of toys in her life will be saved for another post.
So this post is not so much about what we’ve done as what I’m going to do.
And what am I going to do? I’m going to take it one step at a time. Right now I’m doing research on cloth diapers. I had big plans about cloth diapers with The Punkin, but ultimately ended up going for the convenience of disposable. With He-Who-Is-Not-Yet-Named, I’m making a commitment to cloth diaper at least part time (and by part-time, I mean weekends) or full time if our day care is open to it.
Ultimately, I would like to have a garden with a compost pile to further cut down on our waste stream and provide fresh produce for my family. That feels like a big project that will take a couple of summers to fulfill. So, while I’m greening up my family one-step at a time, I may come up with a five-year plan of ideas. If anyone reading this has any ideas they’d like to contribute, let me know and I’ll see about incorporating them into my family.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
And the Waiting Begins…
A few weeks back I told you about going in for our first trimester Down Syndrome/Trisomy 13 and 18 screen. We had to wait about a week for the results. (Which I neglected to post, btw, but the results were good. My risk of Down Syndrome was halfed to approximately that of a 31 year old and my risk of Trisomy 13 and 18 was something astronomically in our favor like 1 in 7800.)
But waiting that week for those results was nothing like the eight hour wait I have today.
Here are the facts:
1) I went to the doctor this morning for an ultrasound.
2) At 17 weeks along, the baby is big enough to determine its sex.
3) My husband couldn’t come to this appointment.
So what’s a girl to do? We want to know the baby’s sex, but I thought it would be sweet for us to find out together. So I asked him last week if he was OK with me finding out or if he’d rather I get the ultrasound tech to write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope for us so we could open it together after work.
At first he said either way, he didn’t care; but this weekend he developed an opinion on the matter and said he liked the idea of us finding out together after work. I have to admit, at first I was (selfishly) glad he said he didn’t care. Instant gratification—I could know as soon as the ultrasound tech knew. But a little (ok, a sizeable) part of me is glad he wanted to find out together. It will be sweet. … But instant gratification went right out the window with his decision.
Right now two people on this planet know the sex of my baby – the doctor and the tech. I’ve got the Top Secret Information in an envelope which I sealed so I wouldn’t be tempted to peek. And I’ve got a seven to eight hour wait until I can share this information with my husband. Today may be the Slowest. Work. Day. Ever.
One hour down…
One last note: I want to go on the record here as saying I think it's going to be a boy. We'll know if my spidey-sense was right or not in a few agonizingly long hours. If you want to go on the record with your guess, leave a comment.
But waiting that week for those results was nothing like the eight hour wait I have today.
Here are the facts:
1) I went to the doctor this morning for an ultrasound.
2) At 17 weeks along, the baby is big enough to determine its sex.
3) My husband couldn’t come to this appointment.
So what’s a girl to do? We want to know the baby’s sex, but I thought it would be sweet for us to find out together. So I asked him last week if he was OK with me finding out or if he’d rather I get the ultrasound tech to write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope for us so we could open it together after work.
At first he said either way, he didn’t care; but this weekend he developed an opinion on the matter and said he liked the idea of us finding out together after work. I have to admit, at first I was (selfishly) glad he said he didn’t care. Instant gratification—I could know as soon as the ultrasound tech knew. But a little (ok, a sizeable) part of me is glad he wanted to find out together. It will be sweet. … But instant gratification went right out the window with his decision.
Right now two people on this planet know the sex of my baby – the doctor and the tech. I’ve got the Top Secret Information in an envelope which I sealed so I wouldn’t be tempted to peek. And I’ve got a seven to eight hour wait until I can share this information with my husband. Today may be the Slowest. Work. Day. Ever.
One hour down…
One last note: I want to go on the record here as saying I think it's going to be a boy. We'll know if my spidey-sense was right or not in a few agonizingly long hours. If you want to go on the record with your guess, leave a comment.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Headline Hijinks
I'm convinced that the people who write headlines do not always read them aloud. For example, this gem from MSN.com: Utah's lack of size spells big problems. The story is about the Utah Jazz basketball team. However the headline makes it sound like the wives of Utah are ready to revolt because of, ahem, unsatisfactory size issues.
Happy Monday, everybody.
Happy Monday, everybody.
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