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I never followed up on our day care situation. It's all good now.
In the end, I decided to drop a little e-mail to our child care provider about the SpongeBob action, but so it didn't sound all crazy, I couched it in a longer e-mail asking how she was adjusting, is she napping, etc. and also mentioning that I really liked this little craft project that Punk had come home with that day. And I sort of casually mentioned the SpongeBob issue and just said something like, "I know a lot of little kids don't really pay attention to what's on, but you've probably noticed by now that my child is obsessed with television, and I'd rather she didn't mimic anything she heard or saw on SpongeBob." She wrote back right away and said she always puts on PBS or Disney for the kids and that one of her sons (they are something like 7 and 9) probably changed it. And you know, that's really plausible. So I wrote back my thanks and said we were happy with everything and Punk seemed happy and blah blah blah.
She seems quite taken with Punk (who isn't, really?) and Punk is happy when she is picked up, so honestly, it's all good for me. One thing I /do/ like is because this place is really set up for younger kids, they're doing more stereotypical toddler/preschooler crafty things - you know, making trains out of ziti and stuff like that. The old place was awesome because of its creative academics, and Punk ate that stuff up with a spoon, but I think that as a 2 year old she's really entitled to make some macaroni crafts for a while before I send her off to junior college. :)
In other news, she's become 2 and a half all of a sudden and I am ready to sell her to the gypsies some days. She has discovered the fine art of hitting for attention and otherwise being blatantly uncooperative (i.e. I ask her to do something and she makes this "I'm going to be naughty" sound - it's like BOP!! - and then does the opposite... and then says, "Do you like that sound, Mama?"). And has been fighting sleep again. GOOD TIMES.Current Mood:  tired |
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Jude:
for reals
i should be a doctor
i watched et.
umm
er
maybe i shouldn't be a doctorCurrent Mood:  amused |
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I am officially "that mom."
Punk started her new home day care yesterday. After looking at a number of day cares, we didn't find one we LOVED except for the big Montessori school in Springfield but they require 2 year olds to be picked up at 4 and umm, that's not possible. So we looked at a lot of "not our favorite" places and in the end had to kind of choose a lesser of evils thing. Well, none were EVIL. I hate that expression. But anyway.
So we went with this woman who was very nice, very personable, very sweet to Punk, who had a nice house and had a small gaggle of little girls who were not doing anything outrageous. There were a few things I wasn't jazzed about (TV on at drop off until about 9am, seemed to eat more "kid foods" more often, a bit less structure) but overall she seemed like a lady who is a nurturing mom type and would be very present for Punk, and I thought she would like that group of kids - a bunch of girly girls who like "beautiful dresses" and playing "dress up," both very big in our house right now.
Yesterday was her first day and I brought her diapers and wipes and blanket and pillow and all of that and it was fine. She was excited to be there and sat down at the bookshelf with all of the books, picking out her favorites. ("Look, Mama, The Foot Book!" etc.) And I left, and at pick-up Jen said it was a little more chaotic than she liked but Punk seemed to be having fun, and the day care provider was flexible in trying different ways to help Punk nap, etc. Punk said she had chicken nuggets and fries and ketchup for lunch and came home asking for vegetables for dinner, but whatever. You know? I'm not a total psycho hard-ass.
This morning I dropped her off and there were a few other parents dropping off, and Punk was a little freaked by the new parents. I heard C mention that the TV was on (Punk came in and asked for TV) so I tried to kind of move Punk over to that area so she wouldn't be so freaked by the parents. I am not bothered by the TV being on at drop-off for 30 minutes or so before breakfast as Punk watches TV at home. When C told me she has the TV on in the morning, I simply stopped having Punk watch TV at home in the mornings so she would have her morning TV time over there. No big.
But when I brought her over to the couch I saw that SpongeBob was on. I'm not some freak who thinks SpongeBob should be banned or anything but I don't think it's appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers. And I have never let Punk watch SpongeBob. And I don't plan to for quite a while. I don't like the way they act on that show and I don't like the way they talk to each other and I don't really need my kid calling people "stupid" and acting like a nutter. I am actually kind of furious about the SpongeBob.
I sent an e-mail tonight to the day care provider asking how Punk is adjusting and also asking if it's possible not to have SpongeBob on for the toddlers in the morning. I vacillate between worrying about being a psycho-mom and wanting to find a new day care ASAP before she gets attached. And then I worry that I will mess her up for life if I switch her day care a million times, too.
Being a mama is HARD.Current Mood:  annoyed |
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I have my moments when my child is not sleeping because we've changed the clocks or whatever but on a daily basis I am reminded how blessed I am to have the child I have, because she really is amazing and awesome. Blessed, I tell you.
Yesterday afternoon, our pediatrician practice's website announced that they would have an H1N1 vaccine clinic tonight and was opening the vaccine to all children 3 and under. (Previously it was available to chronically ill children and children under 5 with asthma.) The clinic was from 5:30 to 7:30pm and Jen was going to aim to get there around 5:15pm. You can imagine where this is going.
It was a three-ring circus over there. The traffic was backed up waaay past the pediatrician office, the parking lot was full and people were walking from other parking lots down the street, there were kids and parents everywhere, having to wait outside, packing in the place, etc. They gave out numbers and said they would serve up to number 104, and Punk was number 82. When I got there around 6:30pm to give Jen some backup, they were up to number 30.
Punk rocked the house. When I got there, she was in a jam-packed waiting room and was quietly sitting on a chair coloring a magazine with a pencil. Then she rocked on the rocking chair. Then I took her outside and she threw mulch around until I got too cold, and then she willingly came inside again. Then she went back to the magazine and the pencil. By the time they called her number, it was about 7:10pm, and then she got her temperature taken, then waited a few more minutes, then got the nasal mist (which she had never had before). She completely cooperated with the mist, itched her nose a few times, and asked for a sticker. We left at 7:30, and got home at 7:40.
Typically she eats dinner around 6pm, has a bath at 7 and is in bed at 7:30. She did not throw one fit, she did not act out at all, and though she scarfed her dinner we managed to make it without any meltdowns. I am so proud of her and so impressed with her ability to keep it together. She really is amazing. God, I love her.
~//~
At one point this one girl was throwing big pieces of sidewalk chalk into a metal bowl and it was making this awful CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! noise, and Punk is all, "Mama, what is that sound?" and I say, in sort of a passive-aggressive manner, "The girl is throwing the chalk into the bowl and it is making a very LOUD noise," and then added, "And that's probably a no-no." The woman next to me started laughing and said, "I think you're right!" and then told me she was a teacher and ran a tight ship. Aaah, waiting room bonding in a cattle call vaccine clinic.Current Mood:  proud |
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Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there.  Once upon a time, I thought it might be fun to see if—by not shaving for an entire month—I could grow a beard. In homage to National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo), I decided to call my delusional pursuit How Not To Grow A Beard Month, or HoNoToGroABeMo for short; and in deference to the nigh-obsessive desire to inform the world of one’s progress that comes along with endeavours like NaNoWriMo, I decided that I would photograph my “progress” every day and post it—along with some of my typical inane babble—on this very blog.
I was not in the least bit surprised when, thirty days later, my face looked as though it might once have had a proper beard but had since gotten the mange. I was, however, surprised when—a year later—my friend Bob Voegerl announced that not only would he join in my mad beard-not-growing farce, but that he was building a website dedicated to the effort. And thus sprang into being the official HoNoToGroABeMo website.
Eight people—men, we shall call them—from two continents participated in How Not To Grow A Beard Month last year, and there was some talk about possibly trying to raise some money for charity. I didn’t think we would manage to drum up enough interest to make a charitable pursuit worthwhile, so the notion fell into the deepest recesses of my mind.
Then, in May of 2009, Bob’s mother passed away after a short but intense battle with undetected breast cancer that had spread to her brain. In late October, Bob announced that he had added a new feature to the How Not To Grow A Beard Month website: Beards4Boobs, a charity fundraiser for the Ann Voegerl Memorial Breast Cancer Research Fund. The idea is simple: donors can choose to sponsor their favorite beard, and the beard that raises the most money for the fund will receive a fabulous prize.
I’ve been overwhelmed at the response so far. We’re just a few days into November and we’ve received nearly $700 in donations. One of our participants, Dr. John Cmar, has $250 worth of sponsorship for his beard. Last night, our first female participant threw her bare chin into the ring; Mur Lafferty arrived to show us boys that we don’t know jack about not growing beards.
It’s amazing to watch something that was born out of pure silliness turn into something that’s actually worthwhile doing. Please, if you can, go to the site and sponsor one of these folks and their chins (be they growing hair upon them or not).
- Wesley Clifford
- John Cmar
- Gus “The Bearded Goose” Gosselin
- Jeff Greiner
- Michael Harrison
- Adam Johnson
- Kris Johnson
- Mur Lafferty
- Chris Miller
- David Moore
- Jim Van Verth
- Bob Voegerl
To everyone who has already sponsored a beard: thank you for your generosity. I’ll be posting updates throughout the month.
[UPDATE] If you’ve donated and you don’t see the total update immediately, worry not. Bob currently has to update the donation amounts by hand, so there may be a delay before your generosity is reflected on the official page.
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My child no longer wants to go to sleep, ever, and I want to claw my eyes out and scream. It's like she's an infant all over again, where she won't nap unless I am holding her or in some way restraining her. And at bedtime, she's all over the place, doing all kinds of things, often not falling asleep until after 9pm. For a brief period of time, I had a kid that slept. What the heck happened?
I am hoping this is one of those things called "a phase." Because if it's not, there might be "a homicide."Current Mood: aggravated |
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Originally published at KJToo. You can comment here or there. The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things…
—Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and The Carpenter” (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There)
There may not be a whole lot of activity here in my little corner of this here series of tubes, but life does not stop when a person fails to update his blog regularly. To wit:
The Secret Lair
 The podcast is still going strong, with a new episode appearing every few weeks or so, and a new installment of our webcomic appearing only slightly less frequently. In the most recent illustrated adventure, which I shall henceforth refer to as the Irradiated Arachnid Incident, the side effects of a spider-bite are not what you might expect. Meanwhile, Chris and I managed to convince our wives (yes, there was alcohol involved) to join us in a discussion of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, that book they made into that movie with that one guy. We also sat down with Mick Bradley, with whom we have had dealings in the past, to discuss that most mysterious and misunderstood style of roleplaying, the story game.
Recent episodes of the podcast have featured staff reports from some creative (and incredibly generous) folks we are fortunate to call friends, those being Dr. John Cmar, Jay “Kingfish” Lynn, Natalie Metzger and Ken Newquist. These reports speak of schemes of ever-escalating complexity and crackpottedness, with a smattering of bizarre truth thrown in to blur the line between the real and the surreal.
Game Night
Approximately every two weeks, the gamers descend upon the International House of Johnson for one form of interactive entertainment or another. We’re currently in the middle of a Savage Worlds campaign run by Chris Miller, but last night we took a break from polyhedral dice and roleplaying to rock.
 Armed with fake guitars, fake drums and a very real microphone, we took to the virtual stage in Rock Band 2 on the Xbox 360. Four adults and the aforementioned fake instruments do not fit particularly will into the area around our “entertainment center”, but that didn’t dissuade us in the slightest. Some of the songs we rocked out to:
- ”Re: Your Brains” and “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton
- “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
- “Here it Goes Again” by OK Go
- “Take it on the Run” by REO Speedwagon
- “The Best Day Ever” by Spongebob Squarepants (featuring guest vocalist Kyle Abraham Johnson)
- “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull (featuring Chris Miller on vocals and no one on the fake flute)
After the out-rocking concluded, we gathered at the dining room table for Monty Python Fluxx, followed by Fist of Dragonstones, the latter of which I thought was woefully underappreciated.
Olde Fartz
After a bit of a late-summer hiatus, the Olde Fartz Distance Learning Center is back in session. Our favorite game of late has been Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, though we did return to our roots for an evening of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos a few weeks ago. There’s also talk of playing some Team Fortress 2 and Dungeon Siege, and P.G. Holyfiend keeps yammering about Sins of a Solar Empire, too. Yammering, I tell you. Enrollment in the Olde Fartz has increased to the point where we have abandoned Skype voice conferencing in favor of a TeamSpeak server. If you’re interested in joining the fun, drop me a line and I’ll take your application to the admissions committee.
Con on the Cob
 Last year I managed to attend all four days of Con on the Cob, a local gaming, art and general geek convention. This year, Laura and I only attended on Saturday, but we still had a lot of fun. We both bought new dice (practically a con requirement) and I bought Dominion, an excellent card game from Rio Grande Games. We watched a bit of the Iron Artist competition, then briefly fled to a nearby restaurant with Chris Miller and Rachel Ross for dinner, then it was back to the con for a couple of games of Dominion. Next year, I think we’re going to shoot for attending on both Friday and Saturday so we can do a little more gaming and maybe record an episode of The Secret Lair on-site.
Alas, I have no convention photos to share this year, as the battery charger for our Fujifilm Finepix J10 went AWOL right before my sister’s wedding. A new charger has been purchased and will hopefully be delivered in time for Hallowe’en costume photos.
NaNoWriMo vs. NaBloPoMo vs. HoNoToGroABeMo
I have no intention of attempting to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days come November, nor will I make any real effort to post at least one blog entry a day in the same time period. On the other hand, I fully intend to shave off my beard on October 31st and then spend a month failing to grow anything resembling a manly face-mane. That’s right, for the third year running, How Not to Grow A Beard Month will return. Mega-kudos once again to The Cynical Optimist for creating and maintaining the website.
The Great Superhero Movie Project
Despite a general dearth of new reviews, I have been watching and rating various superhero movies over the past few months. There are currently 112 movies on the list (with more to be added soon); I’ve seen about 90 of them, rated about 60 and reviewed a paltry 11. Yeah, I have a bit of catching up to do in the review department.
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