When you’re out looking for baby gear for a new baby you need to find high quality stuff. You don’t want to have to go through a new play pen for every child you have (at $100 a pop) so you have to find materials that will last a VERY long time. When it comes to a stroller you need to go the same thing. Look past the cute, hard to follow names like “Baby Jogger City Mini” and focus on the weight and whether or not you can push it on rocks (you’ll be surprised how often that can actually come up in our well paved world). For these things the ability to endure is more important than with clothing. A baby will grow out of clothes every few months and reusing the clothing is easy because the baby has so little time to use them.

Remember that paying more for a high quality product can end up saving you money if you plan on having more than one or two children and reusing the same items.

Finally there are enough blankets on the bed. Three for me and one for my husband. For some reason – even though he never really gets warm in the winter – he never feels cold. But he doesn’t stay warm enough to keep me warm (hence the need for three blankets) But of course it has just spiked to 80 degrees and even I can’t sleep under three blankets in 80 degree weather. It’s a normal catch 22.

One of my poor kids is sooo cute. He hasn’t been allowed to watch TV in about two weeks (did something annoying/wrong and got into a heap of trouble by not stopping after the first 5 punishments). He told me that he was crying because the other kids in the family are addicted to TV and he never gets to see them anymore. He’s resolved to do whatever it takes to get off punishment so he doesn’t have to miss his siblings anymore.

The clever boy almost made me cave! But I already know he can cry whenever he wants because he pulled a joke on me that way once (giving away what could have been a mighty weapon in this battle called child rearing).

My poor four year old daughter gets the voice of an 80 year old smoker when she doesn’t get good sleep. And last night she did NOT get good sleep. My other daughter had been crying a lot and since they share a room the four year old caught quite an earful. My boys also didn’t get sleep for awhile. Since I went to a movie and came home to a silent house well after bedtime, I didn’t know about this until this morning when I asked each of them how they slept. The chorus of “Not very well” was broken only by the voice of the crier who replied in her light fairy voice, “good”.

My son told his classmates today that it takes him 2 and a half hours to fall asleep each night.  I said he was exaggerating to make a point and that technique is called hyperbole.  He said, “Oh, I thought it was called lying.”

Yeah, that too.

When a child is old enough to understand the significance and meaning of communion, they are fully joined with the rest of the community in Holy Communion. Send out the ffirst communion invitations and celebrate the occasion with a party. Invite all of the friends and family. After all, you can only celebrate a few of the sacraments. Make this one of them.

So when I was a kid my parents had certain gifts they gave to each child based on their age. Not everything worked this way – so you didn’t know everything you would be getting ahead of time but there were certain things that followed the pattern. For example, when you turned 9 you got a watch for your birthday and a camera for Christmas.

Now that my oldest is 9 I kept up with this (it being one of the few things I can remember clearly from childhood). He got his watch last birthday and this Christmas I’ll be looking for digital cameras that are 9 year old appropriate and won’t break the bank. Back in my day it was a kodak camera with 110 film. Now I’ll have to consider letting him use the computer to download his pictures.

I tried to explain seasons to my kids the other day. I got out the globe and asked who wanted the role of the sun and no one wanted it (who knew that was the dud role in this play) so I assigned my older daughter who can stay pretty still.

I glossed over (actually I totally omitted) the part about the sun rotating. Just seemed easier. I assigned the role of Earth to one of my sons and the role of the moon to the other. Then I attempted to get one to constantly face the second while the second turned in circles while going around my daughter and leaning slightly askew.

You can imagine how well that worked.

Then I tried to show them how the rays of the sun would be more direct at one time of the year than at another in out part of the world but the awe of knowing WHY winter is colder than summer didn’t light up their little eyes like I thought it would. I can’t imagine why.

They made it home alive and relatively unscathed in the notoriously evil social department.  No one was mean to them and the people in my second boy’s class were directed to fill each others buckets with nice words (actual mini buckets on every desk).

I guess I don’t need to rip them out of school and shelter them yet.  It’s probably for the best since I’d never be able to find a babysitter while I’m at work.

I just dropped my kids off at school for the first day of the year and I got misty as I left.  I even had to wipe a tear from my eye in public.  Ah, to return to those days of yesteryear and relive my youth.

NOT!!

I was actually thinking that it was pretty horrible of me as a human being to put my children through the same torture my parents put me through.  Sure, I was a rotten child, but my kids don’t deserve this. They’re good people and they don’t deserve to find out that the ‘s’ word isn’t ‘stupid’ and that holding up your middle finger means something (according to my sister, holding up any of the fingers means something disgusting – just different disgusting things for each finger).

My kids do not deserve to be put in a place where ‘friend’ is defined as ‘a person who isn’t mean to me’ instead of ‘a person who likes me for me’.

And yet I let them go.  I made them go….

I saw the words “Bob revolution” in  my travels across the internet today and was curious enough to find out what it referred to.  I initially thought it was a reference to that ad campaign from the latest presidential election but then remembered that was the Ron Paul revolution, not the Bob one.

Turns out it’s a stroller.  Bob products are baby products – mostly strollers but some diaper bags too.  They’re the three wheel kind that you can run cross country with or take into the store.

Not at all what I thought it would be.

My child tried to emotionally blackmail me into taking him to see the new Harry Potter movie on the release day.

I usually make them wait a little while until it’s convenient for me to go but he had the nerve to say, “Mom, just so you know, if I don’t see Harry Potter on the 15th I’m going to be very, very sad.” This comes from the same kid who has recently told me that there is a ‘HUGE HOLE’ in his life because no girls like him and he’s not sure if he’s ever going to find someone. (He’s six)

Being someone who doesn’t like to be emotionally blackmailed but who will actually does dabble in the art herself, I told him that I would be very, very angry and not take him at all unless he took it back and convinced me he was happy.

I won. But I feel dirty.

What is this world coming to. The youth of today are so out of touch with anything that is not electric we will all be lost when the bomb (or whatever it is we’re supposed to worry about) goes off.

Not only can they not dial a rotary phone my daughter has shown that they can’t even use the bathroom anymore. We went into a restroom at a restaurant. She waved her hand in front of the toilet to get it to flush but it was manual. She waved her hands in front of the sink to get the water to run (ok, that’s how it was supposed to work but it was broken). She tried to get the soap to activate automatically and when she was done washing her hands, she hopped up and down in front of the paper towel dispenser trying to get it to work when the towels were hanging obviously from underneath.

I don’t know – maybe she thinks that’s how it works in restaurant restrooms because we don’t have those things at home. I refuse to think anything else could be the reason.