Purse Pounds

I took the dog to get a bath and nail trim at the veterinarian's office today.  While I was waiting to be checked out I looked over at the dog scale.   I'd weighed my dog many times on that scale and I know it has a good level of accuracy for all dogs.   It was about the same time that I decided my purse was heavy...

...so I put it on the dog scale.   Three point three pounds.  That includes the purse, all my junk and my iPad.   Not bad, I thought.  Then I wondered what the average purse weight was so I checked the internet for more information. 

By this time the technician I was working with was interested as well.  It turns out from one study that the average lady's purse in the United States is 6.27 pounds.  So I'm less than half that weight.  I would be happy to me even lower, but I'm not giving up the iPad.

The Big Boy Update:  Look at the fire pipes.  My son saw some fireworks on television today.  He wasn't sure what they were called, but he gave it his best go as he excitedly said, "look at the fire pipes!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My friend Maggie.  We had a friend stay with us today, Maggie.  Maggie is one of the students in school with my children.  We had her come over today and visit with us.  She had a good time and my children loved showing her their toys and swing set and introducing her to their dog.

I Turned Down The Volume...

...and I wasn't even in the room.

That's right, my husband has, "set us up the bomb" as the famous poorly-translated saying goes.  We have the best remote control system in our house that I have ever had the privilege of working with. 

First off, the remote controls all our devices.  That's something we've had for a while, as universal remotes have been around for some time.  Secondly, it does so without having to point in any general direction, and that's something that has been a challenge to easily achieve until recently.  You can be in the kitchen, pointing at the oven, and the channel will change or the Netflix movie will start.

And then thirdly, I can control it all from my smart phone or tablet.  And that has proven useful in several situations.  Just recently, the volume of the show that was being watched by the kids at Movie Night was far too loud.   I was in the bed and I was trying to go to sleep.  (It was late, I promise.  Okay, maybe it was early, I don't remember.  Either way, I was tired and I was trying to sleep.) 

So back to the loud movie...I connected to the remote control system via my iPhone, turned down the volume from the comfort of my bed in the next room and no one ever noticed.   I love technology.

The Big Boy Update:  Calm or loud.  My son had an interesting day today.  He was either very calmly watching television, eating or playing on a tablet or he was running around screaming at the top of his lungs and being aggressive.  The combination must have worn him out because he went to bed early.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Carrots.  She has been asking for carrots several times a day for snack of late.   We have not minded.  Tonight at our neighbors, they gave her a full-sized carrot.  She was so excited she brought it home with her. 

Baby Gate

We never used them.  We have several sets of stairs.  I'm not sure if we were more diligent at watching the children, (I doubt it) or just more accepting of their need to explore while not being inclined to throw their bodies off heights.  They made it to walking and now running stages without plummeting down the stairs on their heads so far.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse the other morning before school.  We don't have the television on on school days and I told him he would have to wait for the weekend.  He tried a second, more thoughtful tactic saying, "I want Mickey the Mouse to watch me eat breakfast."  As much as I admired his creativity, the television remained off until the weekend arrived.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Uncle Jonathan brought my children a stuffed animal, wait, no a plush figure of a character from the video game Doom.  My daughter looked at it and responded when Uncle Jonathan presented her with the gun-laden plush figure, "no, he's a bad guy."

The Placebox Effect

Television commercials about medications seem to have twenty-five percent information about the medication and its benefits and seventy-five percent information about possible side-effects and under what conditions you should call your doctor and lots of other legal-types of information because we live in a highly-litigious country.

I am quite grateful that we have medical companies researching and discovering medications that help to make use comfortable and assist our body in healing, but every now and then, one of the commercials makes me laugh. 

I saw a commercial the other day that talked about the benefits of Botox for preventing chronic headaches.  I have a friend who has had Botox injections multiple times for just this purpose and has said it's made a significant difference in her headache frequency.   What made me laugh about the commercial was one of the disclaimers they had to legally give:

 If you suffer from chronic migraines, Botox may be able to help. Botox prevents 9 headache days per month, opposed to a placebo that prevents 7 headaches days. To see if Botox is right for you and to see who should not take it, visit BotoxChronicMigraines.com.

Wait, what?  All I need is a placebo injected into me and I will likely have over two-thirds of the results of the actual medication?  Sign me up for some saline injections in that case.

All skepticism aside, candidates for the injection, (those suffering more than fifteen headache days per month), are suffering and those two extra days I am sure are a relief.   Still, it made me laugh when I saw the commercial report on the placebo comparative statistics.

The Big Boy Update:  I need my Skeletope.    My son deconstructed a paint roller today.  There were several parts, but the one he had the best time playing with was the handle.  He was looking through it off into the distance of the back yard and telling me he had a, "skeletope".  It took me a while to realize he meant a telescope and he'd seen it on one of the kids pirate shows. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The best little cooker.  She likes to help her daddy cook.  For an hour this afternoon she stood right by him (on her stool) and helped him make his meat sauce for a big dinner with guests for tonight.  She engaged him 

The Diaper Cream Disappearance

As the children grow up and become more independent, we get to move away from things we relied on when they were smaller children.   For over three years now we've had a changing pad and all sorts of changing things on the long dresser in our bedroom.  There are wipes, diapers, more recently pull-ups, diaper cream, lotion, a hair brush, hair bows, steroid cream and other things that come and go, depending on the current health situation of our children.

The time has come to start moving on.  Because both my children are in underpants during the day, we don't have much call for diaper cream or salves any more.  They're also large enough to get them dressed on the bed or standing on the floor.  Soon enough, we're going to have our dresser back in our bedroom.

But I'm going to miss some things, so it won't be all at once.  First off, the variety of uses wipes are put to in our house is significant.  The runny and raw nose is much better addressed with a wet cloth than a dry tissue.   And the ointment we still use for things like eczema and dry skin.  Oh, and there's the hair spray for fly away hair and the hair bows and barrettes and now that I think of it, it's a lot easier for me to put on a "night night" outfit on the changing table (even though my children's legs hand well off the end) given my back issues. 

So okay, it's not all going away today...but it's getting closer to the time when it will.

The Big Boy Update:  Color memory.  You can ask him questions about what color something is and he can think back to that item and tell you that, "daddy's car is brown" or, "my motorcycle is blue" or, "my sister's tricycle is red."  How he can do that and not have any interest in telling us what or with whom he did anything at all during school still intrigues me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Singing along.  My daughter loves to sing.  She knows more songs than I give her credit for.  We have lots of children's music we play in the car and she will jump in and sing along to many of the songs as soon as they start to play.

Fitness Update:  This should be titled, "Backside update" because it's about my complete lack of exercise lately with the break in my sacrum.  The good news is it is much better.  I'm not in that broken bone achy feeling state all the time.  Hopefully next week I'll get back to the gym.  I am sure my trainer is going to laugh at me and all the muscles I've lost.

The Cyto Brush

I had an appointment with my OBGYN today.  I was doing my thing, lying back in the chair, when I saw the doctor pull out this small plastic stick with something on the end that looked a lot like an eyelash curler brush.   After he got whatever sample he needed, I asked him what he just used.

He said, "it's a cyto brush, used for pap smears."  I said, "I was wondering what those were used for, I have some at home."  He looked at me a bit strange so I followed up with, "have you ever heard of The Scrap Exchange?"  That didn't help.  He looked at me more suspiciously, laughed and said, "no, but now I'm curious."

I tried to explain how The Scrap Exchange took donations of all kinds of materials like old records, cloth, paper products, wood, metal tile, as well as medical products (sterile and non-used) and sold them for children and adults to use in up cycling the products into art or crafts or whatever they want to use them for. 

He still wasn't sure so I protested, "they weren't used!"  He laughed again as I explained how great they were for cleaning out straws from reusable water bottles or getting dirt out of a tight spot.  He said, "I never thought of using them for anything else.  I have a Camel Back backpack and I've always had the worst time cleaning out the tubes.  I'm taking some of these home tonight!"

I wonder what my husband will think when he reads this and discovers I've been cleaning out our straws with pap smear sticks though?

The Big Boy Update:  Spiderman.  Blake was coming over to watch the children this afternoon and my son decided it would be helpful if he dressed up as Spiderman for the occasion.  He later decided that being Spiderman wasn't such a good idea as it made it hard for him to go to the bathroom because he couldn't get the costume off himself. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After I left this evening the following conversation happened between my husband and my daughter:  "Where's mommy?"  "Out."  "I want her to come in."   "She's not here."  "I want her to come here."  "She's at girl's night."  "I want to go to girl's night!"

The Gymnastics Consideration

My son has been going to gymnastics class once per week for about six months.  I should note that my son told me several times that it was, "FIVE months", a time-frame which he has no concept of, but he was emphatic about it, so maybe he's right.

The requirement to be in the class is that the child be three-years-old, and what with me being the rule-follower that I am, I was rather messy when I wrote in his birth month because he was two months shy of his third birthday when he started.

He's done well in class, although he has trouble listening and sometimes he can't focus on the activities at hand because he's too excited or tired or who knows what other reason.  I hear from the instructor that this is common for younger children in their first class.

I'd also been wanting to get my daughter into the class, but at only two-and-a-third, she's nowhere close to the three year requirement.  That didn't stop me from asking the teacher though.  One of the advantages on the coincidence side of things is that one of my daughter's teachers happens to be there in the lobby with me during my son's class.  This is because she nanny's one of the students in our class.  One day about two months after we started taking the class she showed up to bring the daughter to take the class.  Ever since then, it's been a great hour to catch up on my children's education with our teacher while my son gets out excess energy in the gym.

But back to the advantage of that coincidence...when I asked about my daughter having a trial class, our teacher looked over and told our gymnastics instructor that, "I'm her teacher and I can tell you she'll most likely be more focused than her brother in class."  With that recommendation, we had the go ahead to bring my daughter to a trial class today.

On the ride there I built up to my son the importance of helping his sister in class because she was coming for the first time.   Bad idea.  My son's idea of, "help" is mostly of the chasing and tackling sort.  My daughter had no anxiety at all (probably because her brother was there) and was very interested in listening to and following the instructor's directions.

I had to pull my son out of the class and have a discussion with him to get him focused on the teacher and not his sister.  I do think he was very excited to have her in class, but he wasn't showing it in a positive way.   When he went back to the class, things changed.  First, the threat of pulling him out of the remaining class if he didn't listen to the teacher got through and he knew it wasn't an empty threat.  Second, it gave my daughter time to orient on the teacher and not her brother and third, the teacher came up with a plan: he changed the lineup of the children so that my two were separated as far apart in the class as possible.

From that point on, it was great.  I was so impressed with my daughter in how well she listened and how easily she managed the tasks set to her in class.  I was given the go ahead to bring her back on a regular basis.  Tuesday afternoons are now going to be fun for both children.

The Big Boy Update and Tiny Girl Chronicles:  As detailed above, both of my children did well in their first gymnastics class together today after an initially rocky start.  I was proud of both of them for doing so well together in such an exciting and physical time.