is it bad if I can't feel my ass?

I hurt. Every square inch of me hurts. Okay, maybe one eyebrow feels normal, but the rest of me hurts. Like an idiot, I celebrated day one of twelve as a single parent by going to a spinning class at lunch time. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Weigh in at Weight Watchers, then go sweat. Holy shit, was I wrong.

After 15 minutes, I couldn't feel my ass. At all. I think if I could have done the standing stuff the butt would have felt better, but I thought I was going to fall every time I tried to stand. I had the resistance high enough, but the handlebars were so wobbly that I never felt stable, even in the saddle. I suppose the music was meant to be inspiring. I didn't recognize any of it, though I know that just screams, "You are old!"

For some reason, I thought the class was half an hour. I would be wrong about that. It was an hour. Here's my logic: The class is at lunch time, at work. Most people take an hour for lunch, and partaking of this activity involves walking to the class location, changing clothes, doing the class, removing the sweat and stink that has accumulated on one's body, then walking back to work. If the class is an hour, well, how does that work, so to speak?

I'll probably try it one more time but I am just a glutton for punishment.

go win stuff

If you like free stuff, and frankly, you're kind of a freak if you don't, go enter Burgh Baby's mom's contest. It's all for a good cause. All you have to do is leave a comment. Or ten.

new look, new name

Huge thanks to NapWarden for my spiffy new look. Pop on over there. Say hello and wish her luck with the marathon on Saturday. How she managed to fit in my makeover with her training I will never know. 

You'll also notice "three dogs and a baby" has finally been replaced. We haven't been three dogs for more than two years, and we haven't had a baby for a while either. The change was long past due. I've been known as ClumberKim, both on-line and IRL, a good long time and that's not likely to change, so here we are.

Eleanor's new words:  burp, poop (both used in entirely appropriate contexts!)

situation normal, all effed up

Eleanor is in week three of her cold. Now it's the coughing. Still with the running nose. I think she may need to see the doc. Sleep is what is really suffering, hers and ours. If her throat is sore it isn't due to the cold, but more likely all the screaming she is doing. Night time used to be so easy. A properly executed routine resulted in a snoozing child, one not heard from until morning, with the exception of the occasional very brief howl that did not require parental intervention. 

All that seems to be out the window. I hope it is just the cold and solving that will solve everything. If not, with CD leaving Tuesday, I'll be skipping BlogHer and just sleeping in the posh hotel for two days.

New words:  water, help (sounds a lot like "up") and one more I can't remember (see above)

hurry up and fall behind

I spent most of the day in a board meeting. As board meetings go, it was relatively painless, and it's been fun to get to know the other board members better. It's a group with which I had no prior experience at all.

I was so eager to do a little shopping before heading home that I left the meeting just a little too quickly. The result? Another hour in the car, driving back to the hotel to get my laptop, left in the meeting room. When I called the hotel upon returning home they sent me to the lost & found voicemail. After two hours of not getting a call back I called again. The operator said my message would be received and responded to on Monday. Um, no. Try again. Kudos to the operator who tracked down my laptop and made sure it would be at the front desk whenever I managed to get there. Excellent recovery on his part.

And just a few other random notes:

Eleanor took a three hour nap this afternoon. She has some new words:  pizza, "I'm sorry" and the names of a few of her friends and teachers, especially Ivy, Julia and Audra.

Oliver is having a rash of challenging behaviors. I hope he gets his act together before CD leaves this week. He will be gone 11 days and it will seem even longer if Oliver continues to throw books, hit everyone, scream, and generally act like a twit.

The Burgh Moms are coming tomorrow. Well, not all of them. Just a few. Hold me.

the straight poop

It's been a few days since I have given everyone "the poop" on Oliver's efforts at abandoning diapers. I am pleased, no bursting, to report the news is all good. He is wearing underpants all day and a diaper at night. He tells us when he needs to go. Everything seems to be fairly regular and normal looking.

Two breakthroughs in the last couple of days include using our first floor bathroom, and its full-sized toilet, with a potty seat insert. Until last evening he has always insisted on using a potty chair in the kids' bathroom upstairs. He just started dumping it in the toilet himself, which I had read is the first step towards getting them to use the big toilet. Apparently so.

He told me tonight that I could get another seat insert for his bathroom, after we took the other one for a test upstairs, and that I could put the potty chair in the closet until Eleanor is ready to take it for a spin, so to speak.

And perhaps the most important breakthrough is that he pooped at school for the first time.

Here ends (I hope) the chronicle of Oliver and the potty. We still have a ways to go but I think readers may safely assume no news is good news. We need to get his bedroom door to stop sticking so he can eventually make the late night potty runs by himself. He will also need pull-ups for that to be a success. He will need to make the transition to standing up to pee, too. I'm happy to declare victory for now. He was clearly ready and what a huge difference that makes.

dinosaur city

Pittsburgh is known for the dinosaur exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. On an average day, I see sculptures of at least four dinosaurs. Needless to say, Oliver loves spotting the dinosaurs, so I decided to take a few pictures during my walk yesterday.

The light wasn't right for a good shot of Dippy but I captured the one at the Board of Education building, and the one in front of WQED. What I didn't realize is that last photo would be a victim of a strange iPhone bug.



It's supposed to be a tribute to Mr Rogers, complete with cardigan and sneakers. Never in my wildest PhotoShop dreams could I have accomplished that!

bac(k)on the wagon

I went back to Weight Watchers yesterday. It was a rude awakening. No, not the fact that I have 32 pounds to lose. I expected that part. It was the "you get to eat 21 points a day!" part that hit me like a ton of mac and cheese. The last time I got serious about my weight I was nursing and not sitting on my ass for most of the day. 35 points a day was very, very nice. Try cutting your food intake by two fifths and let me know how your brain processes the data. This isn't gonna be pretty.

When I finished eating lunch, I had six points left. Desperate times call for desperate measures so I went for a 30 minute walk that earned another point. I have ended the day by using three of my weekly points, but all in all, it could have been much worse. I just have to keep typing and not heading for the freezer and the pint of Ben & Jerry's (made with milk from COWS, thank you very much) that seems to be calling my name.

But this is Bacon Wednesday so let's talk bacon. On Saturday I was eating things like salad with bacon and gnocchi with bacon, knowing full well my bacon days were numbered. Enter Hungry Girl. She's a smart one and must have known of my bacon loving dilemma. I give you the Hungry Girl's Guide to Bacon. She mentions about a few items we've talked about before, like bacon salt, but she reviews all the turkey bacons. While not the real thing by any stretch of the imagination, it's a reasonable substitute. And I did mention desperate times, didn't I?

a leetle wine with dinner

It was between Goats Do Roam and Three Blind Moose. I went with the moose. Goats, though cheap, are good enough for company, whereas the moose were (also plural, see, there's three of 'em) an unknown quantity. Must not have been too bad. I had an extra half glass. It went nicely with the pesto our neighbor shared. I threw in some of our home grown tomatoes, a few mushrooms sauteed in garlic oil, some dried hot red pepper and a splash of garum colatura oil. Yeah, I know that last one sounds weird. Get some and taste it. I don't even like fish with fur.

So that extra half glass seems to have left me with diminished faculties. And no doubt puts a challenge before the 'burghing blog moms, or maybe it's the blogging 'burgh moms, I dunno anymore. How much wine can they get in Kim on Sunday, and how amusing will she be? Unlike some of our other gatherings, I don't have to find my way home afterwards!

stuck

Bubba, our twelve year old adopted Clumber, landed himself in a bit of hot water this afternoon. Now that they are loaded with fruit, he's obsessed with the tomato plants. We have erected a number of barriers to keep him out. With his very touchy digestive system, we don't want to take any chances.

After letting him out into the backyard this afternoon, I came back in to do some work. When I realized he should have been asking to come in I went back outside, expecting to find him in the tomatoes since he has been very persistent in getting around whatever we put in his way.

His luck ran out today. He was trying a route behind the air conditioner and must have lost his balance, not surprising given his dodgy back end.

I had to climb in with him and lift him out, but getting a photo first was irresistible. Fortunately, he seems to have forgiven me.

where does he hear this stuff?

Oliver's latest quote/whine:  I never get to play!

Excuse me, young sir, but at this time in your life, your job is to play. We are firm believers in play as the way very young children learn. We would not have our kids in the programs they are in if that was not our philosophy.

Oliver usually trots this lame line out when I have just told him he can't swing golf clubs in the house, or when he has been asked to pick up toys he has finished playing with. Something truly onerous and mean like that!

This use of the word "never" is very troubling to me. I make it a point to never say "you never" or "you always" with the kids or CD. It's something I have to work at and remind myself of, but I have been pretty successful in purging that sort of thing from my speech. It might be in my head, but it's not coming out of my mouth.

Oliver must have heard it at school, or come up with it on his own. I'm not sure which. Now I just have to figure out how to remove it from his vocabulary. Yeah, I know. Good luck with that.

Mamma Mio

In honor of CD's birthday tomorrow we went to Mio Kitchen for dinner. We have a long list of restaurants we need to try but when I looked at the growing list of 'burgh dining establishments on Open Table it was Mio that jumped out at me.

The meal was a wonderful blending of tastes and textures, beginning with an amuse bouche of cauliflower puree, smoked salmon, basil oil and chives. I went the bacon route, with a salad with blue cheese and bacon and a small portion of gnocchi with shrimp carbonara and (teeny tiny) peas. I had just a taste of CD's dark chocolate tart. Will get my own next time. He managed not to lick the plate but I think it may have crossed his mind.

I had a very tiny bottle of Rosa Regale, my new favorite cheap, goes-with-everything bubbly (thank you Andrea Immer). It was perfect -- a full flute plus a tiny bit more, or two smallish glasses. I love bubbles when the occasion is special, but champagne by the glass is always off-the-charts in restaurants.

All was well on the home front when we got home too.

the after shot

Here's what she looked like AFTER the mojito!

hey bartender!

Get that girl a drink!

wordy wednesday

Eleanor's new words, all before 8am!: waffle, bubble, Boo Boo (a small blue gosling who likes to eat)

And a few more that happened after CD and I went out for the evening:  Poop! (an announcement of her mad multi-tasking skillz during dinner) and bath (a post-dinner activity)

Not to be outdone, Oliver had some words for us as we were leaving. He was having dinner so we said a quick goodbye and I told him to have fun. He said, "You guys have fun too!" (And don't let the door hit you on the way out, perhaps?) Oliver has never had a problem with separation so this wasn't much of a surprise. At his various day cares he has barely noticed when we leave, or has pushed us out the door so he can get to the real business of the day, playing with his friends and teachers.

Bacon Wednesday will be back next week.

there was a post in here somewhere

Since I seem to have, um, misplaced (in my brain) the post I had planned today, here's what is going on:

After no poop for 72 hours, we have ignition. In the potty even. Three times! There's still lots of "I'm not feeling well" associated with the poop, but I think we're making progress. Oliver woke up an hour after going to bed and asked to go to the potty. Once there, he said he needed to poop and that I needed to go away for a little bit. He asked me to come back before he finished so I'm not sure what is up with that, but I'll do anything he asks at this point. I did take the opportunity to explain that if he pooped a little bit each day we wouldn't be having all this drama.

The social calendar is heating up. We have a sitter tomorrow night so we can go to a reception and concert. This weekend we have a few families coming for brunch, a date night to celebrate CD's birthday, and a baseball game on his actual birthday. We're also plotting for a regular date night with one of our sitters. I'll be shocked if we pull it off, but it's a worthy goal.

I finally contacted a professional about a blog re-design. Shut up...I'm really doing it this time. Stay tuned.

Eleanor's new words: chair, wow

it's just a fantasy, woah oh oh oh

So I'm dipping a toe in the fantasy football waters and damn if the water isn't FINE! After picking 10th out of 10 in the draft, I'm sitting pretty. Mine was the only team in the league to score over 100 points last week. I'm currently in 3rd place for total score, but there's still a whole quarter left in the Dallas - Philadelphia game (that I am not watching -- thanks Comcast and your fabulous customer dis-service!).

When it started I said I would make no roster moves. I'd live with what I picked. And there I was today, tweaking. Ditching a kicker, adding a wide receiver, debating whether T.J. Houshmandzadeh deserves a spot on such a stupendous roster, populated with more than a few guys I had never heard of. (Advice???)

Last week I told a friend, a die-hard FFB veteran, that if I was lucky enough (and I do mean lucky as I know I have no mad skillz) to win the league I would hang it up forever. Now that's public and there's no backing out. And here I am, totally addicted.

Of course, with this post I have now jinxed myself entirely, setting myself up for years of misery. Are you ready for some football? Bring it on.

here comes the judge

With the exception of an unfortunate few moments with a dog who thought I looked like lunch, I had a delightful afternoon at the puppy match. I was nervous, to be sure, but I think I managed to hide it well. Many of the exhibitors were clearly more nervous than me. I hope I was able to make everyone relax and enjoy themselves.

I tried to remember the original function of the breeds as I took my first look at them, and tried very hard to reward those positive attributes that I thought would help the dog fulfill that function. Though I had been studying my breed standards for weeks, since I didn't know which breeds I would have in my ring I must admit none of them were committed to memory. I tried to focus on the first paragraph which is a general description, and of course, any disqualifications. Sporting dogs were mostly easy to study. The Hounds? Not so much. As it happened, the only hounds that entered were Bassets, a whole pile of 'em, including a litter of eight 13 week old puppies. Now THAT was fun! Noodles on leashes that walked only when they wanted. What a hoot.

After reading lots of Annie Clark's advice on judging over the last month or so, I really hoped I would be lucky enough to have "the eye," and that classes of dogs would walk into my ring with numbers painted on their sides. It did happen, but not often. I have a long way to go and a lot to learn.

So what did I see that I liked? I saw a number of nice Irish Setters. One class was especially difficult. I could have ventured into fault judging but really didn't want to do that. It was especially satisfying when the young dog I sent forward to Best Junior Puppy in Match competition won! The adult English Setter I sent forward also walked away with Best Adult in Match.

I judged Best Senior Puppy in Match. I was very nervous and again, it was so much more fun than I expected. I would have dogs to judge without having read their breed standards. I had a really nice line up of puppies. Five of them could have won it easily, but I had to pick just one. My choice was a Pembroke Welsh Corgi bitch. She looked every inch a Pembroke, used her ears, was in great coat, and did not seem to notice the heat.

If I get asked to do this again I won't hesitate, but I will study even harder.

Eleanor's new word:  Banana

poop-free and dried

I am making an effort not to discuss any bodily emanations today. It's hard, but we're going to give it the college try.

Today was StoryWalk, and in many ways it was a lot like last year. It rained every few minutes, sometimes hard, and it was humid and sticky. Parking was much easier this year and the crowd seemed a bit less. The stories were great, also like last year. The difference is Oliver's attention span. We were there nearly 90 minutes this year, whereas last year I don't think we made it even 45. That means we heard more stories! He was really great about listening, and even thought about getting a book for Eleanor. He kept asking why she wasn't with us. I told him next year she would be the age he was last year and she could come too.

One story we didn't hear was Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies, but we bought it anyway and read it tonight at bedtime. Big hit! We also picked up Dear Zoo, mostly for Eleanor but Oliver wanted to read it too. I think in another day or two he will be "reading" it to her. His memory is really amazing. He's a month away from 3 1/2 and can tell you his address, his phone number, how to spell his name, and all the words to In the Night Kitchen. He is starting to spell all the street signs, and just about everything else he sees that has letters. I'm one proud mum.

Eleanor's new words:  balloon (she says "moon"), brother

brave sheep

Oliver showed his compassionate side this morning. We were talking about the weekend ahead and my upcoming judging assignment at a local puppy match this Sunday. A couple of weeks ago I explained this to Oliver. He has been to dog shows before and has watched them on tv so he understands the basics of what goes on. As a result, he likes to say that I'm going to be "the pointer." He doesn't mean the breed of dog, he means "the one who points."

In the course of our chat this morning I mentioned being a little nervous about being "the pointer." I've never done it before and I'm worried. Oliver had the perfect response. "It will be alright, Mum. You need to be a Brave Sheep*."

*The reference is Mem Fox's brilliant book The Green Sheep.

Guesses

If after reading yesterday's post you guessed "another sock and a whole lot of poop and barf", "Penguin", and "both ends", you would be entirely correct. The good news is she is clearly feeling MUCH better than yesterday.

Oliver still claims to not be feeling well, and despite taking a nap at school today asked again if he could go to sleep early (7:05pm). He's not pooping all over the place, and especially not at school, but he's still not at all himself. I heard there was a lot of angst over the school potty and many tears throughout the day.

I'm predicting two dogs and a kid to their assorted, and right next door to each other doctors tomorrow.

a pin in my balloon

Those four poops in the potty yesterday? All you experienced parents, just stop laughing at me right.now. You know a case of the squirts when you hear about it. Me? Not so much. When he kept saying, "I'm not feeling well" every time we went to the potty I foolishly thought he was just learning to read his body's signals. Clearly not. He's really not feeling well.

Today Oliver came home from school with four bags of dirty clothes. I lost count of how many outfits the bags contained but there are at least three pairs of pants that are not ours.

Back at home, Bubba pooped all over the dining room. I got some more advice from a vet friend about what to try. We might finally get an IBD diagnosis.

And the end to a perfect day? Penguin barfed up a sock, one of mine, that had been gone since late Spring. Not at small sock either. Good times around here. Any bets on what's going to be expelled next, by whom, and from which end?

hat trick, plus one

Maybe I should have called this one "grand slam". Pick your own sports metaphor. We have had four, yes FOUR, poops in the potty from Oliver today. All at home, but that's okay. It's only a matter of time before he shares the wealth at school.

Last night didn't go very well. He clearly needed to poop, and was doing everything he could think of to get me to put a diaper on him, even going so far as to announce at 6:55pm, while still at the dinner table, that he did not feel well and wanted to go to bed. He knows bedtime means diaper and I saw right through his ploy. We tried and tried with the potty but he wasn't going to cooperate. Since he had been dry five of the last six mornings, I decided it was time to take a chance on putting him in underwear overnight. I put a spare mattress pad, usually stored in Eleanor's room, within easy reach, just in case.

At 3:15am he woke up wet, with a very wet bed. We took care of everything quickly and efficiently, with surprisingly little drama. I put him in a diaper and clean pjs, and he went back to sleep. He was dry in the morning, and immediately went to the potty. Still no poop though. After breakfast he started asking to go to the potty frequently and saying he didn't feel well. The second time he asked I reminded him of what happened on Sunday, when he asked to go every 5 minutes, then pooped in his pants about a minute after getting up from the potty. He agreed to stay on the potty just a little longer. Finally our timing was right and he pooped in the potty! His first words? "I am feeling much better now, Mum." No kidding, kiddo!

It seems the experience made an impreesion because he told us he needed to pee and poop on the way home from school tonight. And as soon as we got home, that's exactly what he did. Then he did it two more times before going to bed, for a total of four poops in the potty today. Each time he has said he doesn't feel well so we talked a little about that. He will often say, "My body is telling me I need to pee" (all thanks to the Elmo's Pottytime DVD) so I asked him if he's starting to understand how it feels when he needs to go potty. It's clear we have our breakthrough.

Though he's staying dry during naps at school, I'm still putting a diaper on at night for a little while longer. I am sure we are not entirely out of the woods but this was a very good day, potty wise.

so many moments

There are so many small moments in my kids' lives that I want to capture and use to embarrass them later on keep forever. Yet I never have the video camera handy, and I have never watched any of the video we have already shot, except for a couple of little clips that CD loaded on our website. Not even the ultrasound videos that I'm not entirely sure I could locate quickly.

Another of those moments happened during dinner tonight. Eleanor has been playing with fake phones at school and here at home, but she decided to improvise. She held the half ear of corn she was eating up to her ear and said, "hi" over and over. If I recall correctly, the first glimmers of pretend play happened a bit later on for Oliver. Either that, or I wasn't terribly observant. (No need to answer that.)

I would say that I hope I never forget how unique my kids are, but there's no danger. They find ways to remind me every day.

so close and yet

First let me say how incredibly proud of Oliver I am. The kid is doing incredibly well with the underwear. He has been dry in the morning five of the last six days. We had a weekend free of pee accidents, despite Eleanor being under the weather and pretty grumpy and my stepping up the reminders that thumb sucking should be happening only when it's dark outside.

It's the poop thing where it all falls apart. Oliver was SO CLOSE to pooping in the potty tonight. He didn't poop at all yesterday, which is troubling but not unusual. After dinner tonight he asked to go to the potty ("just pee, mum!") three times in  20 minutes. Not 1 minute after the third potty trip he ran to me saying that he pooped in his underpants. He was upset, but not devastated, and I reminded him that accidents happen, it's okay, etc. And also that if he'd stayed on the potty one more minute we wouldn't be having this trauma.

He just so darn close to having this challenge, ahem, behind him. And I am so close to having just one kid in diapers. He'll have to forgive me if I'm a little bit over-eager.

take me out to the....dog show?

I'm off (not unlike a prom dress) to a dog show tomorrow. Since having kids my dog show weekends are sadly few and far between. I'm hoping to get back to it more seriously next year, if I have a new show dog by then, but for now I just dip a toe in the water here and there. I go to my breed's national specialty, one or two local shows, and most years the American Spaniel Club's flushing spaniel show and Westminster.

A few months ago I got a call I never, ever expected. It was a friend asking if I would be willing to judge at a puppy match. I was stunned but finally managed to ask about the breeds they wanted me to judge. I figured it would be spaniels, but the answer was that they wanted me to judge all the sporting AND hound breeds. Holy moly.... Then I was really stunned, and asked for some time to think it over. 

After consulting some friends who judge regularly and getting nothing but encouragement, and remembering that this is a puppy match and about as low-key a match as there could be, I accepted. I ordered the binder full of breed standards from AKC, and a few books written by seasoned judges, and started studying. Before I started taking Eleanor with me on the bus in the mornings, I spent that time reading breed standards. It was the perfect amount of time to get through one long standard, or a couple of the briefer ones. I would love to say it helped, but some of the standards left me more flummoxed than I was before.

So now, with one week before my judging assignment, I'm going to a show. I'll watch a bit of the breed judging, then steward the group judging. I'll be watching the judges carefully and hoping to find the experience calming. Hopefully I will see that I really do know how to do this, and maybe I won't be so scared next weekend. Yeah, right.

Eleanor's new words:  apple (referring to the fruit, unlike Oliver who first used it to refer to CD's laptop), Manny (we watched a little bit of the Dodger game)

standing up and sitting down

Two topics tonight. First and foremost, did you stand up to cancer today? There's a lot of folks I stand up for. For my dad, who died of leukemia when I was 16. For my best friend's mom, who also died of cancer. For Randy Pausch. That's just a few of the people I could mention. 

I had my mammogram yesterday. What have you done for yourself? For someone else? Get on it!!

And the sitting down part? That's Oliver, sitting on the potty! Remember, his teacher Miss Penny told us to leave the diapers at home when we brought him to school this week. On Tuesday, there were three bags of wet underwear and shorts. On Wednesday, there were two. On Thursday, just one. And today? NONE! 

Now this does not mean we are out of the woods, not by a long shot. We are still having issues with poop. There has yet to be a successful poop in the potty during this latest potty training, ahem, push. Maybe this weekend we will have a breakthrough. 

Eleanor's new word:  pig

a smashing good time

Ah, mammograms. I had two back in 2001-2002, pre- and post-op. Then came the babies and the breastfeeding, and a reprieve. When my OB discovered my 40th birthday came and went without another peek at the girls I was given strict orders to schedule one 3 months after Eleanor weaned. This is one of the few areas I do exactly as I am told.

Back before the first mammogram I expressed some concern about the procedure to my primary care doc. He responded by telling me about his colonoscopy. I guess if you are a man, these are analogous (no pun intended). Having had very recent experience with both, I can tell you they are not in any way, shape, or form the least bit similar.

The mammogram today was a lot quicker than I remember. Wedge, smash, hold your breath, breath. Repeat on the other side. Then assume "the pose", which seems to mean "turn yourself into a corkscrew with one relaxed shoulder", smash, hold your breath, breath. Repeat on the other side. It took a while, but I figured out the difference.

Past mammograms I have had involved all of this, followed by another wait, then doing some more smashing, then more waiting, rinse and repeat. It seems those were diagnostic mammograms. Today's adventure was a screening mammogram. The big difference is nobody looked at the results while I was there, so if they need to take another look I will need to take another few hours off work and spend a lot more time watching Ellen in the waiting room. Fun!

I get to call for results next week, and I'll be hoping all is well and I don't have to go back and do it all again.

the season for pork...

or maybe bacon bits, now that the republicans have taken the stage. 

In honor of the political conventions, here's a recipe for pork chops stuffed with bacon and gouda, seasoned with Penzey's pork chop blend, which tastes like bacon. It's a veritable terducken of bacon.

out to dry

I guess I didn't make myself very clear in an earlier post mentioning Governor Sarah Palin. Here's my REAL problem with her:  As a parent, I am impressed that she is a mom to five kids and is also very successful in a high-powered career. But as a parent, I can't believe the position in which she has put her family, especially her pregnant daughter. If she did know about the pregnancy before accepting the vice presidential nomination, she also knew what sort of light it would shine on her family. 

And if John McCain also knew about the pregnant daughter in advance of the vice presidential selection, as an older, wiser player on the national stage, as well as a parent himself, if he had an ounce of compassion he never would have asked Governor Palin to join him on the ticket.

Palin and McCain are not neophytes. They know what can happen if the press gets so much as a whiff of scandal. I can't believe they didn't see this coming. And if they didn't, NO ONE working on the campaign thought this might present a problem and spoke up?

It's hard enough to be a seventeen year old, without being pregnant and in the national spotlight. If Governor Palin would hang her own child out to dry, and John McCain would knowingly let her, they are not the people I want in the White House.

your lips say, "no no"

Monday is daughterday this week, since we kind of skipped over Sonday. Besides, I think there will be plenty to say about Oliver tomorrow.

Eleanor's language explosion gets more and more interesting every day. She is understanding even more than she is saying, and can follow simple directions, like putting her shoes away or going to get a particular toy. I have given up looking at my booksor comparing to Oliver's development to see if she's early or late on this. She's her own girl, doing everything at her own pace. 

She is also learning some defiance and 'tude. She was throwing her cup of milk (with a lid!) on the floor over and over. I would ask her if she wanted the cup and she would say, "No!" If I put it on the table she would reach out to get the cup back.

Today's new words included poodle and Elmo. About half an hour after CD put her to bed I heard her talking in bed, saying, "elmo, elmo, elmo." We may have created a monster with that one.