Lucky 7!!
Mood:  vegas lucky
Topic: Lauren
It took forever to get to step 2 (see poop training) and then to step 2B, Lauren's own special step. She hovered back and forth between 2 and 2B for a long time as well. Then two days ago, you will never guess...she jumped right to 7!!! Not only did she jump to 7 on Tuesday, but she did it again on Wednesday! And she did it all on her own with no prompting from mom or dad :-)

Way to go girl - here's your song (arms doing the circle in front of waist and then raising up on the woo)...

Go Lauren, Go Lauren, Woo!
Go Lauren, Go Lauren, Woo!

Get Jiggy With It
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Cool
Pennies from Heaven, Christopher Walken, striptease. If you have not seen Christopher Walken do his striptease in the Pennies from Heaven movie, you have missed a great dance number. I know, I know...Christopher Walken sexy? Who'd want to see him do a striptease? Well, let me tell you, he was much younger then, much better looking, very agile, and what a dancer!!

DH had borrowed Little Shop of Horrors from the library last week and while watching it I asked if it was the one with the striptease by Christopher Walken. Well, we watched it and it wasn't. I was sorely disappointed. I wracked my brain trying to think of the correct movie and then while walking through Target, I saw a two pack DVD set - Fame and Pennies from Heaven - that was it! Pennies from Heaven. Later that evening, DH put the movie in and we waited. Lauren was antsy to watch a kid movie and, as usual, have me watch it with her, so I was off to the other room with a plea to DH to call me when the striptease came on. When it came on, I was there, man. Lauren even came out to see what was going on. We watched and enjoyed. Now, before I get comments on allowing a three year old to watch a striptease, while it is an R-rated movie, he ended up in his underwear - depression era underwear - not much to see. The three year old take on it? "Mom, he can jiggle"

Yes Lauren, he sure can jiggle! :-)

Is It Sinking In Yet?
Mood:  not sure
Speaking of patience...driving home from the indoor playground the other day, I heard "Shut up!" from the backseat. Shocked, I, yet again, began the re-enforcement dialog that we do not talk like that. It's naughty. To which Lauren began the litany of words deemed appropriate. It went something like this:

L: Please and thank you are nice words.

J: Yes they are - they're very polite.

L: Excuse me is a nice word.

J: Yes it is.

L: Being patient is a nice thing to do.

Wait a minute! We've been working so hard to instill some patience in Lauren all the while lamenting the fact that it is just not sinking in and here was my chance!! The moment presented itself and I was going to be all over it :-) So, to make a big deal out of the fact that just that very morning she had made an improvement in her ability to be patient. I replied:

J: Yes it is and I want to say that I appreciate you being so patient while I was on the phone for work this morning. I appreciate it very much. Thank you very much.

Her response? Silence. Not a peep, not an "uh huh", nothing.

J: Lauren, did you hear me?

L: Not now. I'm feeding my dog.

Hmmm...too much, too late???

Kudos To SAHMs Everywhere
Mood:  special
Topic: Yowza!
The flu bug bit DH on the weekend, so for the past 6 days I have done the SAHM thing. I have to say, after day four, I was so ready to go back to work. Don't get me wrong, I love Lauren to death, but I was so worn out at the end of every day, it wasn't funny. It didn't help that she has pretty much given up on her afternoon nap. Oh, she still needs it, but she can get by without one and always wants to. I, on the other hand, needed that afternoon nap. We managed to keep busy all day, every day. It definitely helped to get out of the house every day and our normal weekend routine became our every day routine - Sesame Street (a.k.a. kid TV) in the morning while having breakfast, out to take care of errands, then play time at the park if it wasn't too cold (it actually hit 40 one day!) or at the indoor playground at the mall if it was. This was followed by lunch at the mall and finally off to home to try for the elusive afternoon nap.

It worked well and I found myself telling DH that I was enjoying being home with Lauren - until yesterday, day 6. We would have gone to dance class, but Lauren started coming down with a cold on day 4 and by day 6, I just didn't want to expose the other kids to her germs (unlike other parents who don't think EVEN ONCE about what their kids are passing around - but that's another post altogether that I don't think I'll cover because it would put me over the edge). I don't know if it's because we didn't get out of the house or because I'd reached some kind of limit on kid games, kid TV, and kid movies. I like to think I would have been OK if we'd been able to go out. I could be fooling myself but what the heck, I'm going with it.

Long story short - I'm sending out kudos to all of those SAHMs out there that do this every day of every week of every month. It takes a special person to be able to live a kid's life that many times over and retain their sanity and most of all, their patience.

Keep Your Sick Kids Where They Belong - HOME!
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Rants
I know I said I wasn't going to post about this, but where the hell do people get off taking their kids out in public when they are obviously sick and contagious?! We wash our hands often, so I can cut them some slack if they have no choice but to bring them to the grocery store or the post office or somewhere like that, but to bring their runny-nosed, hacking cougher kids to the indoor playground where they know the chances of it being passed along to other unsuspecting kids are, oh, I'd say about 100%, is totally beyond all reason!!! Do they even stop for one minute to consider that their kid is going to pass it along to someone else's? Thanks to these geniuses, we are about to get no sleep in our house and we're probably going to have to spend $40+ to take our kid to the doctor because she can't breath, is horribly congested, and feverish. Thank you very much you f-ing idiots.

Lauren A.K.A.
Mood:  silly
Topic: Lauren
For quite a while now Lauren has been going by different names depending on how she feels at any given moment. When pretending she is a kitty, she usually opts for "Little Kitty" or "Baby Kitty", but when she exists as a person she actually has a long list of aliases. The ones I can remember include:

Carnation (from the Kevin Henkes book entitled Chrysanthemum)

Calley - this one has been around for a long time and I think has been her favorite because she always goes back to it

Colleen - this came up after we attended a co-worker's wedding...the co-worker's name? Colleen

and within the last week or so, Jasmine - probably from Aladdin.

The most recent aliases, however, appeared Friday night during dinner. She was no longer just Jasmine, she was Hot Jasmine. Then Hot Vegetable Soup, Hot Chicken Breast, and Hot Vegetable Jasmine.

She cracks me up :-)

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Lauren
No offense intended for anyone named Mary, but with all the contrariness going on in our house, I'm beginning to think we should have named Lauren Mary.

Sure, some of it is the normal, obvious stuff where we want her to wear mittens and she won't.

Some of it is probably subconscious to Lauren like when she said she wanted to wear underwear to bed, but I pushed the diaper and now that I want her to wear underwear, she insists on a diaper(I know, I know. I should've gone with the underwear at a time when she really wanted it, but we didn't yet have a waterproof mattress pad).

Then there's the stuff that actually takes some thought on her part. MIL had been over to play with Lauren yesterday and while they were playing I noticed Lauren being rather bossy and mean to her Grandma. I don't know how many times I had to tell her to please be nice. So after MIL left I decided to have a little talk with Lauren. I tried to get across that she should be nice to people she's playing with, that people don't like to be yelled at. Here's our conversation:

Me: You should be nice to Grandma. Don't yell at her when she comes to play with you.

Lauren: She likes when I yell at her.

Me: No she doesn't. People don't like to be yelled at.

Lauren: Yes they do.

Me: I don't think so.

Lauren: You like it when I yell at you.

Me: No, I don't.

Lauren: I like it when you yell at me.

Me: No, you don't.

Lauren: Yes I do.


And she know what she's doing. She knows exactly what she's doing. And I know that she knows because she's grinning through the whole thing. And you know what - this makes me very happy, very happy indeed. It means she's inherited my humor gene - Gotta love that ol' fashioned, good natured teasing!

Huh?
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Blogs
Funny how you can start out a post about one thing and it just morphs into something else. I started today's other post about the need to be opposite, with a definite negative bend, and it ended up about me being happy with Lauren's sense of humor.

I wonder, is that confusing to the reader? Sometimes it gets confusing for me because I set out to make a certain point and then realize I've lost it. I've lost it and moved on to another altogether. Sure the two themes are connected, but still. I'm always tempted to change the post back to its original intent and then post a second with the subsequent idea. This time I decided to leave it, so you tell me - is it confusing?

Man Declared Dead Found Breathing In Morgue
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Yowza!
Here's a link, but I don't think it will remain as long as this post...N.C. Man Incorrectly Declared Dead

Can you believe it? Oh my God - just imagine. That was my first thought, then a dream I had had about my mother a couple years after she had passed away flashed to mind. We were in the hospital and had just experienced her death. They had taken her body away and as we stood around talking, she was brought back in - alive. Not just lying there close to death's door, but alive, much more alive. She sat up, talked to us, got dressed. The doctors were amazed and the family was so grateful and relieved. But the dream continued on. In about a half hour she died again. I remember feeling upset that I had to relive the death, but I had known her being alive wasn't going to last.

Can you believe it though? He's in critical condition. What about the family - first hearing he's dead and then the police showing up saying he's not after all! What if the medical examiner hadn't noticed that subtle breath? I hate to think.

Someone's got some splainin' to do on this one.

It Gets Me Every Time - Part II
Mood:  special
Topic: Lauren
The other day, while Lauren and I were talking, the subject of my mother came up. I mentioned that sometimes I really miss her and wish I could see her. When I made that comment I expected the conversation to move toward where she was and why we couldn't see her. But no, I was "gotten" again (see It Gets Me Every Time). Instead of the expected conversation, Lauren said she could be my mom.