Our Society and Culture Today

FOXNews.com - 3rd Graders Plotted to Kill Teacher

I'm so glad I'm not in the classroom anymore. There is no pay raise big enough to compensate teachers for the way they are treated.

Garden Time!

I love this time of year! After anxiously studying the ground for days, today I finally saw some little teeny plants coming up. They're either kale or spinach - I can't remember which I planted where, and they're too small to tell the difference. It's been raining all afternoon, so by tomorrow there should be lots more stuff popping up. I cannot wait to eat some yummy homegrown lettuce (buttercrunch is our favorite), and peas. There is just no comparison when it comes to the taste, especially with peas. No matter how much you are willing to pay, you cannot go to the store and buy fresh peas picked that day from the garden. I've never seen them in a farmer's market either, although I suppose it's possible. So even though peas take a ton of space for what you get, we grow them. They taste like heaven! Last year I had to fight the girls to keep them from eating them all straight out of the garden. Someday, when we have a big yard and big garden, maybe I'll let them!

Digging around in the dirt is therapeutic. It's hard to feel depressed if you're on your knees with your hands in cool, dark soil tending to plants. I think the key to enjoying it is to not have more garden than you can handle, because then it just becomes a chore. We use the square foot method, which is so much easier than the traditional row method. It takes up way less space, no rototiller is needed, and it cuts way back on weeding. Who wants to spend all their time weeding? Uggh.

Here's a pic of our garden last spring. This was probably about a month after I had a c-section, so I was doing NOTHING outside related, and J didn't have much time to spend on it either. But it still looked good! This year, I am so happy to be in good health and able to get outside.

Praying to the Porcelain God

There's nothing like the stomach flu to make mundane household tasks seem positively exciting. It also gives me a reminder not to take good health for granted.

Time Change

I really hate time change. I'm ready to move to Arizona, or wherever they don't do it, except I don't want to move there. I think it is so unnecessary, and even detrimental to be messing around with everyone's internal clocks twice a year. I think they've even done studies on it, but I don't need to read about a study. All I have to do is observe my children. Tonight, K threw one raging tantrum after another. Really, they blended so seamlessly I'll have to call it one giant tantrum. She was so out of control for so little reason that Jeryl and I couldn't help but laugh. I even took some video of her, but she only had her underwear on, so I don't think I'll post it.

Tetris

I just got to level 20 on Tetris, with 169, 799 points! Level 20! Now I feel a sense of pride mixed with a lot of shame.

Sick of Suess

Took the girls to storytime at the library time. I was disappointed to see that the theme was the tiresome Dr. Suess. I should have known, since the newspaper is full of the annual Dr. Suess birthday celebrations throughout the community and schools. I'm tired of it! He's not the only children's author out there! Why does his birthday get so overcelebrated every year? I mean, come on, EVERY YEAR? It's not reasonable. It's boring. Even if I actually liked his books, it would still be too much. It's kind of like if the Relief Society had a birthday party celebrating its founding every year. Oh, wait, we do . . . and now I'm in charge of it.

Sleep

M took two naps today. They both were at an appropriate time, and were of an acceptable length. For both of these naps, I did NOT have to breastfeed her to sleep, and she did NOT cry. I laid her down and she went right to sleep! Bedtime also went perfectly. None of this should be anything to brag about, since she is ELEVEN months old, but sadly, it is a big deal! I think that this is the first time that it has ever happened! Not counting her first few weeks, when she would not wake up, even to eat, (and wasn't gaining enough weight, and I about died of stress), she has been the biggest stinker about napping! I had my other two on such good schedules, and they went down happily to nap, but M has really tested the limits! It's hard to believe that she is the same baby who wouldn't wake up as an infant. But the last few days, I have seen a gradual trend towards more normal sleep behaviour. Of course, time change (a big pet peeve of mine) is coming this weekend, and will probably ruin all of my efforts.

Now if she would just sleep through the night tonight . . . That's the next big battle.

Fire Restaurant Therapy

A few weeks ago we splurged and took the girls out to eat at a local Japanese restaurant, Massaki, where they cook the food in front of you on a large grill. The chef tosses knives, juggles eggs, and even has flames shoot off the grill five feet high. It's an entertaining show. We thought the kids would enjoy it. Well . . . S liked it, Marina was indifferent, and K was terrified. She was fine with everything but the fire. He only did it twice, but that was two times too many for her. She was crying so hard I had to take her out twice to try to calm her down. Fortunately, the place was almost empty. She ate one shrimp, one bite of rice, and spent the last half of the meal cowering under the table sobbing. I felt kind of bad about it, but we weren't about to leave and waste all that money!

Ever since then, she talks about it a lot, as in, "I don't want to go to the fire restaurant anymore." No worries. We won't be doing that again anytime soon.

Well, right now she's got her toy food and dishes out, and is playing restaurant. She says she is a cooker-man, and is pretending to make fire. I pretended to be a crying child, much to my daughters' amusement.

The Biggest Criers

Just watched The Biggest Loser. I've never seen so much crying from a bunch of men. These guys were sobbing like babies. Pretty impressive, really, especially considering that it's all in front of cameras. I wonder how much flak these guys are going to get when they're back home with their buddies.

Wild Monkey

I took S to the doctor this afternoon. As visits go, it was average. I've had much worse. Had to wait half an hour - most of it in the examining room (the worst place to wait). S and K's behavior was decent. But M is at the worst age! She was dying to get down and crawl around, and so the whole trip was a wrestling match between her and me. It was like holding a wild monkey. I'm not that paranoid about dirt and germs - I don't mind kids crawling outside if they're in old clothes. But I'm not too keen on examining room floors at 4:30 in the afternoon. Who knows how many gross things have been spilt, leaked, or dropped on them in the course of the day? Plus, I didn't have her in old clothes, because I always feel like I have to make an impression of motherly competence on the doctor.

I know when I take her back for her one year check up I'll have to give and let her explore; today was about all I could take. She kept head butting me in the chest. Hard. In case you don't know how that works: baby leans forward, bending at the waist, and then quickly slams her head back on you.

I've seen parents holding babies and toddlers older than M is, who are content to just sit on their parents' laps. It just amazes me. Once I saw my friend Missy hold her little boy, who was over one year at the time, on her lap for over an hour. He hardly even tried to get down. I could hardly believe it. None of mine have been that way.