January 2009

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Children, Chuckles, and Checks and Balances

January 20, 2009 in Entertainment, News, Parenting, Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. Samantha had her first neighborhood play date.  One of the very first ever, in fact.  I love to observe her in new situations.  I wasn’t surprised to see her gravitate towards the dolls and the toy guitars.  She was her usual cautious self and needed mommy to hold her hand in the beginning, but by the end she was fairly comfortable.  We had a nice time. 
  2. Scrubs is back, and it’s still funny!
  3. Today I watched the remarkable achievement which is the 43rd peaceful transfer of power in our government.  Thank you, Founding Fathers.

A Little Thing

January 20, 2009 in Little Things, Parenting | No comments

Samantha was dancing.

Adam: Hey, she’s doing the robot!

Amy:  Cool!  Hey, Sam, can you do Vogue too?  Strike a pose.  Srike a pose.

Samantha:  BOOGER NOSE!

A Little Thing

January 20, 2009 in Little Things, Parenting | 2 comments

All stickers go immediately on Samamtha’s cheeks.

The Classics: Pachelbel’s Cannon and Journey

January 20, 2009 in Humor, Music | 1 comment

I was a bit dismayed to find out from LB at 3 Ring Binder that the melody from Eric Carmen’s pop song, “All By Myself” was taken straight from my beloved Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto.  I really don’t care if he stole it or it was subconscious or it was a coincedence – I just hope I don’t associate the two forever.

It did get Adam and me talking about copyright infringement in music and Adam found these two hilarious videos, showing how common some chord progressions really are.

 

 

 

I’ve Missed That, She Missed Me, and Don’t Miss This

January 19, 2009 in Homemaking, Humor, Ideas, Parenting, Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. I had groceries delivered to my door.  I have to admit, that is one nice thing about living in a big city again.
  2. Adam picked up Samantha from day care today, and the moment she walked in the door she said MOMMY in the most precious, excited voice.  That’s a rare treat for me.
  3. Funniest and scariest link of the day (ok, so she posted it yesterday) goes to Rational Jenn.  Reading the reviews of the Playmobil Security Checkpoint toy gave me hope for the future of this country.  If that many people can recognize authoritarianism in the TSA, AND be that funny about it, we’ll be ok.  Well, maybe not.

Subscribe to Comments

January 19, 2009 in Technology | 4 comments

I just added a nice feature to The Little Things.  When you comment on a post, you’ll now see a check box marked, “

A Little Thing

January 19, 2009 in Little Things, Parenting | No comments

Because of her persistent pronoun problem and her typical love of nudity, one of Sam’s cutest expressions is now,

NAKED YOU!

Finished, First, and Floor

January 18, 2009 in Homemaking, Parenting, Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. Adam was kind enough to install the final piece of my awesome workspace: the wall-mounted bookcase.  I now have a functional and comfortable place to waste time on Facebook.  I’ll be bragging more about this later this week.
  2. For the first time ever, Samantha answered a stranger who asked her name.  Sure, she pronounced it SEBIE, but she answered!
  3. I didn’t have to clean the kitchen floor today.

 

Typing

January 18, 2009 in Humor, Parenting | 3 comments

I’ve been letting Samantha type on my keyboard lately.  She is able to find quite a few letters, naming them and typing them.  (“Y” is so passé – “W” is now the hot letter.)  She loves it when I hold her finger and help her type her name, and the names of the rest of the family, as we do with pen and paper sometimes also.  She’s found some of the punctuation, too, and today she named the period, BABY CIRCLE.

Doggie Despair, Little Liberation, and Homeward-bound Husband

January 17, 2009 in Homemaking, Introspection, Parenting, Pets, Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day: 

  1. I got in a miserable funk because the dog tracked dirt onto my white ceramic tile kitchen floor – AGAIN.  This led to another pass at organizing Samantha’s closet, unpacking all of her music boxes and stuffed animals, hanging her alphabet finger puppets, hanging her height mirror (I’ll have to post a picture of that), vacuuming and Fabreezing the area rugs, rearranging the furniture in the basement, oh, and yes, cleaning the kitchen floor – AGAIN.  The good part was not so much that I got all of that stuff done, but that I forced myself to stop moping about how much cleaning and unpacking still needs to be done, and just started taking action.  I know, I know, you’re supposed to learn that when you’re about 14, but I’m slow. 
  2. Part of the reason I was able to get so much done today, besides the motivation through despair, was that I finally decided that Samantha knows how to handle the stairs.  I was partway there when I decided to let the dog out without bringing her with me, but I would normally still go up and down with her, just below her on the stairs in case she fell.  I’ve been doing that ever since she started climbing up and down stairs on her own, and I think I’ve only had to catch her twice, and not for a while.  Today I told her she could come up and down with me as she pleased, and she did.  Sometimes she would stay upstairs and follow me after a few minutes, or she might not follow at all.  As with every milestone, it feels like another huge weight lifted from my shoulders.  The freedom was intoxicating, I tell you!
  3. Adam comes home in just a few hours.

Having Kids Really Makes You Grow and Learn

January 17, 2009 in Humor, Parenting | 5 comments

One of the new skills you learn as a parent is interpreting an alien language:

FOG-O, FOG-O, FOG-O.  DIE. DIE.  NO TOUCH WET.  NO TOUCH.  FOG-O.  DADDY CUT TREE.  YESCH.

This means:

The decorative metal frog that we kept outside on the balcony is now downstairs on the deck, and it reminds me of that one frog, well it was a lizard, but it looked like a frog, that we saw at grandma and grandpa’s house, and it was dead, but back to the metal frog, I was not allowed to touch it when it was raining outside that one time, but then I saw it downstairs when daddy was cutting down the tree.  Yes.

Lazy, Lazy, and Lazy

January 16, 2009 in Food and Drink, Homemaking, Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. Adam is out of town on business so Sam and I had pizza for dinner.
  2. Sam was able to hold the handle for the vacuum cleaner and push it forward and back the whole length of our bedroom.  I’ll have maid service soon!
  3. It was 10 degrees for most of the day and I didn’t go outside once.

A Little Thing

January 16, 2009 in Little Things, Parenting | No comments

Sam, looking at the dog’s bared teeth:  WHITE TEETH.

Me:  Yes, Toby’s teeth are white.

Me, opening the cat’s mouth:  What color are Jinx’s teeth?

Sam:  WHITE.

Me, opening my mouth:  What color are my teeth?

Sam: YELLOW.

Mysteries

January 16, 2009 in Homemaking, Mysteries | 4 comments

Why do I need to lower my thermostat when it is colder outside? 

Pull-Ups, Photos, and Pageviews

January 15, 2009 in Parenting, Technology, Three Good Things | 5 comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. I got a handy tip from one of Samantha’s teachers at day care today: you can rip the sides of the pull-up diaper to take it off like a regular diaper.  Do all moms but me already know about this trick?
  2. I finally got around to ordering prints of the best of our photos from the past 6 months or so.  Now if only I can find the photo albums…
  3. Today I got the highest number of hits ever on this blog. 

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