More Summer Fun=Less Blogging

I will likely not be making regular posts to this site for the rest of this summer-there's just too much fun to be had and then there's much downtime needed after it all. Almost every day is booked for something: story time at Wheeler Farm with a wagon ride, splash pads, swimming pools, kids club at the mall, birthday parties, farmer's markets and petting zoos...the list just goes on. In between those I've been trying to make the front of the house more presentable by painting the hideously peeling lattice. I would have liked to just replace it with vinyl but me with a saw, measuring, and hammering just spells the Money Pit disaster and my husband has neither the time nor inclination to do it so I do what women usually do-use paint for a face lift on the worst of things. :)

Anyways, this will be the last post for a while-I plan to resume it in Fall. Happy Summer!

Summer Fun

Although I'm typically an Autum, October, Halloween type of girl, when you have kids there is just no better time than Summer! Before I had kids, I only thought about what it'd be like to have them around the holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. But Summer is truly the best time for my daughter and I. There are just so many things to do and most of them are free and the ones that cost are open earlier during the summer than they are in the cold months when stay-at-home-mom's really need them to be open.

Yesterday the Library threw their Summer Reading Program at West Jordan park, complete with a juggler on stilts, people dressed as The Incredibles (my daughter loves them) and 5 gigantic bouncy houses. Gardner Village has started their Saturday Farmer's Market and also have their petting zoo and pony rides, Wheeler Farm has Sunday Farmer's Market as well as wagon rides and animals. The splash pads are open and my daughter cannot get enough of the water, not to mention the little backyard waterpark we have going and the nice walks down 90th to hit some stores or just peruse all the flowers at Home Depot. Airborne is now open at 10am and Jungle Jim's has $2 Tuesdays, tons of fun.

This week was the last Mommy and Me class at The Little Gym. This week starts her one day a week for six weeks dance class. 60 minutes long instead of 45 and the parents sit in the waiting room and watch through the glass. It'll be interesting to see what Janessa thinks of that as when it comes to dancing she's an absolute fiend...providing I'm dancing with her and swinging, twirling her around.

The potty training is coming along nicely, however. No accidents and even when she's in the middle of playing, inside or outside, she tells me she needs to go and we run into the house. We still have a couple hurdles, however, one of which is that she'll only use her training potty. My husband and I found toilet seats in Home Depot and Lowes that have the toddler training seat built in so you don't have to use a portable one that never seems to fit properly and is more of a threat to her falling in than not. I haven't gotten them yet but I wonder if I do, will we still have a problem getting her to use the restroom anywhere else where that isn't an option? Ugh. Just when you think you've got the whole training mastered you realize you have a lot further to go.

Without Pride

Without Pride is officially e-published and available for Kindle through amazon.com! The paperback version is still pending the arrival of my proof copy. I had taken a picture that I wanted to use for both covers but ahhh Createspace, ever the more difficult of publishing services, needed the picture to be in a PDF file, not a Jpeg-very unusual for a picture. Not having anything but Adobe Reader, I was initially unable to upload the picture because I didn't want to pay $7.95 a month for the full Adobe that would allow me to convert pictures. Praise to Youtube, however, that allowed me to find a free way in which to convert the file. However, Createspace doesn't add the title, author, etc to the cover so I had to spend more time trying to add that and I suspect it will only be on the cover. It is very likely I'll get the copy and see nothing on the spine and nothing on the back but my picture. If that's the case, I'll be forced to use one of their very few, plain cover options-so frustrating since it's a physical book but at least I'll have the proof copy with the picture I chose. Being the author, I don't care how the rest looks on my shelf but I won't have it that way for any other purchases. Such a hassle but there it is.

Scanner

So I was fortunate enough to be one of the people selected to use the Neilson Consumer Panel scanner. I have it as long as I want it and am just required to scan what I purchase and upload it to be awarded points toward rewards and entered into drawings for prizes. The first couple weeks were a pain, remembering to scan, having the receipt handy, knowing what coupons and for how much on some items, etc. But now it's second nature and I've been racking up the points. I'd especially enjoy winning the drawing on having my shopping trip paid for but baby steps till then.

Another note on being cheap is sometimes just being cheap. I really like Smiths and I thought it was so great they had these Psst items that were half the price of the name brands, but ugh. Let's just say that unless you only have a couple bucks and desperately need the item right then, do not bother. My feedback on the following items:

1. Cheese-Yuck. It doesn't taste funky but when you try to use it for a grilled cheese, the cheese doesn't really melt but some of the color comes off on the bread making it look like you have toast with mustard and plastic cheese-do Not bother.
2. Garlic salt-not as strong as the other brands and I LOVE garlic salt, so no on this one.
3. Toilet paper-Yikes! Single ply paper thin like you find in the stalls at the library. You have to use 4 times as much to get the job done.
4. Paper towels-also too thin and less absorbent. If you're using twice the amount for spills or in my case, child potty accidents or cat puke, well you're basically not saving money-spend a couple dollars more to have it go further.
5. Paper plates-again. Less is just less. You use more than one to support your food instead of buying a stronger brand and just using one at a time.

That's all for now-happy Memorial Weekend!

The Original Bipolar Disorder

So I know bipolar disorder is thrown about as much as OCD, but I've come to the conclusion that ALL toddlers are originally bipolar. Only they can go from "I love you. I'll do whatever you ask. I want to be babied, yada yada" to "NO! You're mean and unjust and I can do it-but I won't because you can't make me!"

Sometimes it's almost laughable, watching the transformation happen as fast as you can blink, but then it's somewhat terrifying as well. The potty training on my daughter is going good, for the most part. Diapers and pull ups do NOT work-my daughter knows she can just go in them and she does. Underwear works for the most part and she's excited to announce to the entire house that she's going to the potty-yay! But then she has weird moments, like even when she's in pull ups-where she actually hides-usually because she's going number 2. She will suspiciously disappear from the room and I'll find her hiding in a corner or by the table and when I ask her outright she will lie or say something like, "No thanks." Not sure what that's about. In all the books I've read when you start potty training you pick WHICH training you're doing. In some cases, it's easier to train on the movements because they're more obvious, have more warning, the kid's more aware, etc., but they're less frequent. To get the idea ingrained it's easier to just start with pee training and forget about nighttime training for quite a bit as well.

I wasn't in a hurry to train my daughter. She wasn't going into preschool so no pressure there and well, the toddler's bladder is quite small and they don't develop muscle control for holding it for some time. With me taking her out to do things and socialize, I was content to leave her in diapers so we weren't stopping every 10 minutes to find someplace for her to go. However, now we're getting to the point where in her classes or birthday parties, she's one of the few still wearing them for her age so I'm trying to make a push for it now, but careful not to push against her own will on the matter. THIS is going to be a phase I'll be glad to get past. Not being around kids or having younger siblings I've been playing the whole thing by ear and reading and trying everything but every kid is different and well, looking back, 2 to 2 1/2 would have been an easier time to get her potty trained because the bipolar toddler personality hadn't come fully into fruition. Alas, we'll get there some time. :)

One Chapter Done

So the chapter on my husband's legal trouble is pretty much done. We took the DWI deal which was a lesser fine, no interlock device and no further suspension on his license. He needs to do some community service-of which he gets to choose, which is great and that is it. We were advised that the lawyer could have fought to maybe get it all completely off by suppressing the breathalyzer but it was 50/50 and if we lost, well we'd probably get stuck with that damn interlock device. Did you know that it's used to not only start the car but to keep it running? So you will randomly have to blow into it to keep the car from shutting down? I was appalled at first but then realized it made perfect sense-so you can't have someone else blow into it and start your car. It's sad these kinds of measures are made but then again, in court our lawyer was representing 2 others. One got the DWI class A misdemeanor, where ours was class B-the lesser. And the third guy was just screwed. He'd obviously been in the system a few times and he actually had to wear an ankle monitor that would detect alcohol-ANY alcohol. No mouth wash, cough syrup, hand sanitizer-nothing. I didn't even know they made those!

While we waited for the hearing a man from Spain showed up and was trying to get information-but no one was available to speak or read Spanish-boy I wish I'd kept up on the Spanish I learned from the U-I could have helped him out. I also watch the series Switched At Birth which involves a lot of sign language, I can sign a few basic things and know the alphabet from grade school and every time I watch it I think, "I'd like to learn it but when would I ever use it?" Then, when I went a bought my sewing machine there was a lady there looking to buy one but she was deaf and could only communicate through sign language-of which no one knew. I felt bad watching people start to talk to her then when she signaled she couldn't hear they would immediately be like, "Oh. Ok," then completely back off. So my newest conquest involves some library holds on ASL and Spanish-we'll see how they go. Nothing beats actually taking a class or having a tutor for it but it's better than nothing. If you can communicate in another language at all, you're taking a step in a direction that may benefit someone else later on. At the very least, you're learning and that's something I do enjoy even though I have little time for it.

It's All About The Little Things

So this has been a nice, not anxiety-riddled week. It's been awhile but it really does make you appreciate those little things-those little breaths you get in between stressful-everything-going-wrong kind of times. Considering the way this year has been, I don't consider this the incline to good luck but a plateau of peace which I'm SO grateful for.

I'm grateful for our tax return-before last year we usually had to pay so how nice for once, we're getting money back! I'm grateful that with it, I was able to splurge a little on my daughter and buy new jammies (since she'd outgrown the others) and buy her cute summer clothes. I was able to get my hair done-haven't done that in a year and yay-professional dye jobs keep those stubborn grays covered so much better and longer than box dye jobs.

On my daughter, the potty training has stagnated but I was thrilled that when I took her to Chic-Fil-A she played with every little girl that entered the play area and, more importantly, they played with her. She's often so timid and shy I worry about her being left out or bowled over. She is also extremely polite, saying "Please," "Thank you," "You're welcome," "Bless you," "Sorry". I love that she's so polite, that's something you don't hear enough of these days from kids or adults and it makes me proud.

She can be hard to understand, however, as she has a problem with S words. The S and proceeding consonant typically fall at the end of the word instead of the beginning so spot becomes, "potst", stuck becomes "tuckst"-I know, harder to mimic than just saying the words. I'm planning to get her to a speech pathologist to try and correct it before she goes to school. My husband says she may have gotten it from him as he had a problem with S's when he was kid. I thought, "Well at least I understand what she's saying, I just have to stop and think about it sometimes," however, I was startled yesterday when she said she spit but it came out sounding like, "pist". Hmm. I may need to get that speech impediment addressed very soon so people don't think she's saying, "I pissed", and giving me condemning looks.