The future is plastics...

So, check the previous post, but after reading about polycarbonate and bottles/sippies I got increasing sick to my stomache. Unfortunately most of our bottles are polycarbonate, and Mr. T is about weaned off the bottle. We have about three Gerber ones (the color ones) that are OK. Luckily, the First Years Take N' Toss cups (checked for recycle code 5) are OK, and we use them the most, and we have several other types that are fine. I am awaiting an email from Gerber (we have several) and Nuby (we had two, now one). Sickening. But what can you do when the evil and all-powerful plastics industry invades? We'll get rid of the bad plastics but we can't undo the damage - if any (it's a study and who knows, but you take precautions when you can).

Out-of-Control Parental Guilt

Oh, the guilt. A friend on my playgroup messageboard clued me in to toxic plastic, discussed here and here.

I'm off to toss some bottles and sippy cups now.

Laura Will Totally Get This

Typewriter Flying the Rebel Flag, originally uploaded by TNEmily.

I think it should be noted that I personally do not see a need to fly the flag of a rebellious state that lost about 150 years ago.

I'm just sayin'.

Allergy Season

Ya'll, the allergies have arrived. Last week was pretty awful; we've been getting outside more since getting the back yard fenced in, and so Thursday I got absolutely HAMMERED (by the allergies) - swimmy head, aches, chills of all things.

Anyway, all this caused me to think about my personal allergy history (I get the seasonal kind, FYI). I was never a sickly child, and allergies didn't pop up until junior high/high school - around the time we moved to Middle Tennessee (Franklin) from Northern Alabama (Decatur). Then I realized that I didn't suffer badly from allergies while in college either - neither in Knoxville nor in Monterrey, Mexico during my study abroad there. I didn't get seasonal allergies again until we moved back to Middle Tennessee several years ago. Which got me to thinking - maybe it's as much Middle Tennessee as it is me! And lo and behold I found this article that supports my theory!

Hope all my fellow allergy-sufferers are making their way through it. It's so beautiful and warm outside - it's a shame that sniffles, drainage, congestion, coughing, itchy eyes and sinus pressure have to ruin it for some of us.

How to Make Your Laundry Smell Like the Elephant Area at the Zoo

I do NOT recommend washing - and then drying - a Huggies Pull-Up.

Blogger ate my Homework

So you're getting a revised post. The nitty gritty - one of our two local newspapers (how we support two is a mystery) published an editorial piece on a bilingual book, Marcos Counts, being distributed FOR FREE as part of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. His feelings were that American children need to learn English first, establishing a good foundation in their native language before learning another one. This feeling, he admitted, is despite the opinions of experts that children soak up languages when exposed to them at an early age. Marcos ended up being sent to Goodwill, per the author of the piece. He's apparently since received a couple of letters that charge him as a racist.

For journalistic integrity (HA) I think it should be noted that I graduated as a Spanish major and studied in Mexico for a year.

We own not one but two copies of Marcos Counts, one purchased used by my mom a couple of years back, and this second received as Dolly's selection for Tucker last month. It's a real simple book; I don't know about it for 6 month olds, but Jackson likes it and kids grow into books and favor different books all the time, just like adults.

I don't think the author of the editorial piece is racist, although I have to wonder if he would feel differently if it was Francois Counts or Hans Counts. I think the Spanish language has a stigma in this country of being associated with illegal immigration.

Here are my problems with what he wrote, from both a mom-view and from that of someone who took the time to learn a foreign language:

1. This is my primary problem with his editorial: I don't understand denying a child any sort of educational opportunity. You've got a free book, a free way to give your child a small head-start on very basic foreign language education. You don't even have to use the book right away - you can wait until your child is a pre-schooler, perhaps.

2. Additionally, this book does not beat someone over the head with Spanish, and doesn't even have to be read in Spanish as the numerals are used in addition to the Spanish words for the numbers. You could totally read this book in English, reinforcing basic math skills as well as vocabulary. So donating to Goodwill for this reason just doesn't make sense to me.

3. I had the same feelings about Baby Signs that he has about young children learning Spanish. I thought the Baby Signs would actually slow down his language development when in fact all the speech therapists and every expert says any type of communication helps foster language development. Sign language is another language much like Spanish, so I would think that this would hold true here.

4. I think he is confusing "language education" with "forcing everyone to speak x language", as he mentions government documents in Spanish.

5. Considering the growth of the Hispanic population, he is really denying his child if he doesn't provide some sort of basic Spanish exposure.

6. Jackson is starting to learn basic Spanish - colors and numbers. I did wait until he knew them in English first, but he's smart enough to understand that it's just a different way to say the word. Red is rojo - they're both the same thing. Just like "small" and "little" - two English words - mean the same thing.

7. He counters in a follow-up article that those already here need to learn how to speak English. I couldn't agree more - they're hurting themselves by not learning to speak English. However, I arrived in Monterrey, Mexico in August 1998 with 4 years of classroom Spanish behind me (and a nice lengthy history of A's in those classes). I was overwhelmed - I could not understand a thing. Language education takes time, even for a student dedicating herself to studying a language. Imagine how it is to attempt to learn another language while working to support yourself or your family.

Have you tried rebooting your computer? @$#$#@$!

I hate calling tech support. I have a general dislike of being talked down to, and it's basically guaranteed that I will be talked down to when I call tech support.

Within the last week I have called tech support for both Dell and Comcast. It's like a tale of two opposites - how to do things halfway, and how to do it right.

First:

I called Dell last week. My monitor decided to go loco on me. It first started one night, and then the next morning it was on for a few hours and then just decided.to. start.blinking. I obviously rebooted (several times) - no luck there. If I turned the monitor off and then back on, I could see things loading briefly before the blink started again. I checked the power connections (I've called tech support before, so I know the drill). So once Tucker was down for a nap and Jackson was watching Dora, I (grudgingly) called tech support.

Of course, she has me boot the computer. I had turned it off so I am waiting for it and reading her all manner of serial numbers while this happens. And what do I see when I look at the monitor?

It's fine. Right down to the National Geographic wallpaper.

Tucker wakes up around the time she wants me to run umpteen million drills to determine the problem (because of course, stupid me cannot possibly be right that it is the monitor, so I need to go through hoops for her amusement). I tell her I can't be doing this now; baby waking up means I can't unplug, plug, restart, put my right leg in, put my right leg out right now. She of course wants me to call her if this happens again. She provides me her name and voicemail number/extension.

Luckily I was concerned that the monitor would go out again and had already arranged a backup via my mom. They brought it that night - lucky thing, since five minutes after setting down to work the blink started again.

The next day when BOTH boys are napping I call the voicemail number she provided. Of course the voicemail is a generic extension; I debate calling the number and trying to get straight to a tech but the chump in me believed that she might actually call me back.

Sucker.

I get a call back the next day at around 10am from a dude. Of course at 10am Jackson and I were in the middle of a little art project; the Dell dude from 10,000 miles away says that he won't take time, that we just need to do a few simple steps.

First I have to plug in the monitor (without it being hooked up to the computer; easy enough since I unplugged that two nights before). It's supposed to show a self test, but of course I get blink.blink.blink. I describe this to him and just a few minutes in the monitor corrects itself and goes into the self test. I tell him this. He then wants me to power off the monitor, plug it into the computer (meaning I have to remove cable for borrowed monitor). It seems I have to do a few pushups too, I don't know.

Might I remind you that I am doing all this mess while my eldest is sitting in the kitchen with crayons?

Anyway, computer starts up and the monitor's fine.

Then the dude starts to say "Well, since your monitor's fine I don't know what we can do...".

Whoa. Wait a sec here dude. An unpredictable monitor is not fine. No way, no how.

His solution for me is to turn off the auto power-off for the monitor. Great, now my screensave will just run all day. Super. Then he tells me that, should this happen again, to call and they'll replace the monitor. At which point I am sure I will be performing feats of computer strength.

And before he ends the call, he tells me to "try to check the power connections when you get a chance". Which I already did. Ridiculous.

Whereas my phone call with Comcast this afternoon (paraphrased):

Me: My internet connection has been the pits for a couple of weeks.
Tech: Yeah. I'm looking here and you've got some problems. It's [I won't bore you with the details, but he actually does not talk down to me]. I'll send a tech out tomorrow; we'll see if the one that came to your house before can come. How 'bout tomorrow?

That's how it's supposed to work, Dell. What's your problem? How can WE fix it.

Freakin' Weirdos

OK, if you notice an absence of photos of the boys - they're gone.

Thanks to statcounter I was able to view the search string of some sicko that's likely to show up on Dateline sometime soon. Popped the sicko straight to my blog. I ain't happy.

So I am working my way through the blog to take the photos off. If you're friends and family, I will make sure to email one out from time to time. I started this blog for friends and family, so they could view photos at their leisure, without me filling up the mailbox. I try to retain our anomynity (sp?) but when you got sickos with sick search strings stopping by your blog for a visit - well, I have to protect the boys.

So, I will still blog, but won't be posting children photos. This might be for the best, as I was thinking about starting a separate blog for photography so I could participate in Photo Friday without drawing a lot of stranger traffic to a family blog - well, now I won't worry about that.

Mommy Wars?

I found this blog at random the other day. It's an interesting blog, and basically her whole premise is, as a working mom, she's sick of stay-at-home moms looking down on her. Unfortunately, as a result, the whole site takes the tone that all stay-at-home moms are a bad breed.

Before I found this blog, I did not realize that the mommy wars could be so extreme. I mean, I knew about breastfeeding vs. bottles (I'll own up, we did formula; will try BF with this next one but will make no guarantees), public vs. private vs. home schools, etc (we plan public)... I guess I was naive and did not realize that the battle between working moms and stay-at-home moms was still raging.

For disclosure, let me explain my position. I think I have a rather unique situation that allows me to straddle the line between both worlds. You see, I've worked for a small publishing company (circulation) for over six years now. I really like the company, and while pregnant with Jack I completely planned to continue in my role as circulation manager for one of the magazines we publish.

Then Jack was born.

After two months of maternity leave, I decided that I would rather stay home with our son than return to work full-time. After some number-crunching, A and I realized that I could work part-time to help make ends meet, allowing me to stay home during the day with Jack. So Jack was in daycare all of three weeks so I could wrap up things at the office (and no horror stories from daycare - they were good folks and I would recommend that daycare to anyone). Since then, for the past two years my wonderful company has allowed me to work from home during the week, and come into the office on Saturdays to take care of some stuff that just must be done there.

So I guess I don't really have a solid position in this particular battle of the Mommy Wars, since I am both a stay-at-home Mom and a working Mom. I guess that's why I find this blog so interesting, and yet disturbing at the same time. I know all types of moms - moms like me (both from the office and playgroup), full-on stay-at-home Moms, and full-time workin' Moms. And I make no judgements about their work situations - maybe because I straddle the line, I don't know. My personal opinion is that each should do as is best for their families, and for themselves.

Thoughts, anyone?

Things that Bug Me....

OK, so today's Jack's birthday, and this evening after dinner and birthday cupcakes we went outside so Jack could try out his new bubble "lawn mower" (practicing for future chores) and play on his playground. To the right is the lawn mower, which drove Annie crazy (I didn't take the best pictures of Jack with the mower, so sorry, and the stain on the floor is just from the bubble stuff - I'm not that bad of a housekeeper)

Anyway, we get outside and are quickly spotted by the neighborhood girls.

Let me preface the rest with saying that A and I don't know the neighbors, adult or children. We don't really care about knowing the neighbors. We just like to be left alone. We're anti-social hermits that way, and we like it. And it's not like our neighbors have truly tried to get to know us either - so we assume that the feeling's mutual. We're not a lovey-dovey, let's all go hang out together kind of neighborhood, and quite frankly that suits us just fine.

Well, in the past weeks the neighbor girls keep wanting to come over to play. A barely gets out of the car and hears "Can we play?" from these girls that we don't even know. Mind you, these girls are 1. Older than Jack (two are in elementary school), so they're likely not going to be buddies; and 2. These girls ask to play when Jack's not even outside - meaning, they're not coming over to play with Jack, but instead they're coming over to play with Jack's stuff, which just really bothers me. Are the parents around when these girls pop by? No, not really. They've yet to introduce themselves, and yet their children are popping by our house almost each and every pleasant day.

So anyway, we'd barely set foot out the door, Jack with his new lawn mower, when these girls come by wanting to play.

And what do you say? Since we planned to stay outside anyway, we have no good reason to say no, so "Sure, you guys can play".

So they're ALL OVER Jack's new playground set, which we quickly figure out is only for 3 kids at a time, so we have to watch out for that and play referee. And they ask 20 bazillion questions, such as:

• Where's his room?
• Can we see his room? (Um, no, we'll forget that this is an obvious ploy to get to my kid's toys and focus on the fact that we don't know you or your parents).
• Can we play in the sandbox? (Not opening that up right now). But she wants to play in it! (It makes a mess, so no).
• Is there fabric under this mulch? (Not sure, I didn't do the mulch, A did). Later - "look there is fabric under here" (she dug to find it) (Um, A worked really hard on that, so could you cover that hole back up?).
• When's his birthday? So he's 2? So he was 1 last time we "played" with him?
• And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on....

And they want to "make" Jack do stuff because he's younger than them, not understanding or caring that he has his own mind, and will decide to do what he wants to do, thank you very much. He's not stupid - he's actually very bright - he just doesn't speak.

So anyway, these girls crawl all around Jack's stuff - on his birthday, but he didn't seem to be bothered by it - for at least an hour before the neighbor calls all the girls home. Apparently one girl came back while A was still outside, getting something we'd left, and upon finding out that we were going in, said "That's OK, I don't like that playground anyway; it's too small", while A's thinking "Fine. We didn't buy it for you anyway. It wasn't built for a first-grader, and you weren't invited over here in the first place".

I know at least someone out in Blogland, or perhaps even one of my friends or family, is reading this and thinking we're just awful people to complain about these kids, but here's the deal - they aren't our kids, and we don't even know them. Where are the parents? Why are these kids roaming around (one is as young as 3, from what the girls told me)? If these kids are coming around all the time, don't the parents want to know what adults are going to be around? And why do we have to babysit children that we don't even know?

Things

1. For the past two weeks, Jack refuses to sleep in his bed. He'd rather sleep in the floor beside his bed. It started the night it stormed and hailed fairly bad. He also napped in the floor yesterday. I really hope this is a phase.
2. I'm going to a baby shower Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some old friends there. Can't reveal the baby gift - she reads the blog, at least sometimes - but it's baby boy stuff, and very cute.
3. StatCounter is addictive. I've discovered that my Photo Friday participation results in visits from all around the world. Someone fairly local found me via their Yahoo email - I'm wildly curious about that - and two visitors have come via searches for other things - love that someone found me through a Mark Slaughter search and found my first meme!
4. Bridgermama started a great discussion on the topic of playgroups. Apparently a lot of women have had terrible experiences with playgroups; I've had the reverse. It's interesting reading. I'd recommend finding a playgroup to anyone, but it's obviously not for everyone, and every playgroup is different. Our playgroup is just as much for the moms as for the kids - we meet weekly for playtime, at a local place, local parks, a mom's home, etc...but we also maintain a messageboard and meet monthly for a Mom's Night Out. Jack and I did not know any other moms/kids before joining the playgroup - I'm the first of my friends to have any children, and Jack has no relatives close in age. I'm really glad that we joined the playgroup - it's good to be able to chat about "Mom Stuff" to other moms. Plus, I think moms need other moms to know we're not all going insane!
5. Dr. Phil is on right now in the background. I do not watch Dr. Phil, I swear (it's stormy today and I'm keeping an eye on the weather), but these guys are trying to say that a man's fatherly responsibilities end if he just chooses not to be a dad. Wow, what an upstanding and responsible guy (in case sarcasm doesn't translate well into blog, that's sarcasm).