Random Thought #4: My beef with cement trucks

I have to preface this post with a few thoughts before I get to the actual incident which spurred it on, so bear with me.

First off, as the mom of a toddler, I am quite protective of my sleep. Unfortunately, I have never been a sound sleeper and usually get woken up at the slightest noise. So when this happens, if I'm not able to role over and return to my slumber reasonably quickly, I usually morph into somewhat of a bear the next morning. Anyone else out there who can relate to this also knows that after kids come along, this problem gets magnified about a thousand times because you can't just take a nap whenever you feel like it. Thus on top of feeling tired to begin with, you become even more run down at the end of day just from trying to keep up with the demands of one or more children. So knowing this weakness I have, I do everything in my power to get a decent night's sleep each night and become easily agitated when I don't meet that goal.

Now switching gears for a minute, the second thing I wanted to mention was that our small group from church met last night and watched one of Rob Bell's NOOMA series videos titled "Luggage", which in a nutshell is about forgiveness and leaving revenge to God. In it Rob mentions this friend of his who used to keep a bucket of golf balls in the car so he could chuck them out the sunroof at people who cut him off in traffic (which reminded me of a certain friend of mine who preferred using milkshakes instead). We all could relate to this message and agreed that while hard to do in practice, that nonetheless we should of course strive to do it.

Ok, so what do these things have in common? Two words: cement trucks. The area behind our subdivision is currently being developed with new houses, which Bob and I knew going into purchasing our house. I fully expected some occasional noise during the day, but we've gotten a little more than we bargained for on a few different occasions now, both of which have happened well after a reasonable hour. We were woken up last night by a herd of cement trucks on the street behind us pouring a slab at 3AM this morning. I mean 3AM? Come on! I can understand an early start of 7AM or maybe even 6AM, but 3 rapidly approaches ridiculous. Bob figured it must have been saving the home builder money somehow to do it at such an odd hour.

I hadn't really paid attention to them before, but cement trucks are pretty noisy, especially multiple trucks in the dead of night. So after about 30 minutes of the racket behind us, it became quite obvious that the commotion was NOT going to settle down anytime soon. I saw my good night's sleep going right out the window and became increasingly annoyed (because of the reasons given above) with each passing minute that the noise continued. Pretty soon that whole revenge thing was put to the test when I began thinking of ways to express my frustration, like chucking some golf balls in the wet cement or leaving a nice big footprint there, which would have solved nothing.

Of course I did none of the above, but that didn't stop my frustration. My husband took the dignified approach of constructively emailing the home builder and letting them know that pouring slabs in the wee hours of the morning to save money wasn't doing their reputation any good in our community, while I took the more immediately satisfying route of calling the constable. I didn't know if he could/would do anything about it, but apparently there is a noise ordinance in place to limit noise from construction projects until after 6AM. He mentioned if we noticed the problem again to let him know and he would ticket the appropriate people. That was a relief to hear!

Sometime around 4:30-5:00AM the noise did subside enough for a brief "nap" until it was time to get up. Through this experience I learned I have some work to do in the revenge department, like not dwelling on ridiculous ways to get back at people over something that in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant. Of course the biggest irony is that both sites where the slabs were poured have been virtually silent since about 7AM this morning because the workers are now smoothing out the concrete. Go figure...

So that's what that switch is for....

Well all of you out there who told me to enjoy my son's fleeting days of immobility were right! Keeping up after a walking toddler is a lot of work, although we've done a pretty good job at trying to eliminate as many "no" items as we can from his path. I've been really surprised at how quickly he's gone from taking just a few steps and collapsing to walking all over the house without a second thought.

Anyway...ever had one of those "Now why in the world would someone do that" moments? My husband and I recently had a huge breakthrough in this question regarding a three switch plate sitting to the left of our sink. The first switch is for the disposal, the second switch is for power to the dishwasher, and the third is for an overhead light. Now why in the world would I need a switch to power my dishwasher on and off?

The breakthrough came a few weeks ago after Jack decided to become BFF with our dishwasher. He absolutely LOVES that contraption and makes a beeline for it every night while we're cleaning up from dinner. Unfortunately, his favorite part about this fun new activity is trying to pull the utensils out of the side bins, including my nice, sharp steak knives. Needless to say, dishes get done very quickly around this place now!

So after we're done loading the dishwasher, Jack likes to help us push the door shut, but it doesn't stop there. He also likes to "help" push the buttons to get the dishwasher started. And those buttons make lots of fun noises and have little green lights that turn on, so why should he stop at one button when he can push all of them? A ha! Enter what I thought was a useless switch to the rescue! At least we can shut the whole thing off when we aren't using it so that he won't be running an empty dishwasher on the speed cycle with an extra heavy rinse.

Forgive me if that seemed a little obvious to everyone out there....I just hadn't seen a need for that switch until now :)

Happy belated Easter!

I hope everyone had a great Easter this past weekend. We took Jack up to our church and did his first Easter Egg hunt on Saturday before worship service. He had a good time, but after he got about four eggs in his basket, he started taking them out of the basket and putting them on the ground. Huh?? He must be the first child in the history of Easter egg hunts to unload his basket of goodies! I'm sure next year things will be very different :)

Sunday evening we had lunch at my parent's house. My sister and her kids came over to play and we snapped a couple pictures of Jack with a toy golf club set (last picture). Perhaps we're looking at the next Tiger Woods in the making?

The new Looney Bin Mobile

A few posts back I mentioned our ongoing discussion about the next car purchase for our family: would it be an SUV or minivan? Well, after much discussion we finally ended up deciding on the minivan and added our new Honda Odyssey as the official Looney Bin Mobile last night. Unfortunately, the trusty 2-door Civic I've had since college was retired (traded) in place of the Odyssey. I'll miss the road trip memories in that car (like putting 1000 miles on it storm chasing out in the boonies of Oklahoma in less than 24 hours), but Bob is happy now that he gets to drive the Accord to work.

So for those of you who may be facing a similar decision in the future, this is how we decided the minivan was the best fit for our situation:

1)Comfortable 3rd row seating-Once we decided this was an important factor for us, everything else seemed to fall into place pretty quickly. We debated for a long time how much we would use the 3rd row with just the three of us, but figured between future children and my parents and sister living here in the area that it would get quite a bit of use. Plus it would be nice for carpooling to various places like the zoo or Children's museum with friends or when my in-laws come in from Virginia. This decision told us we were either going to look at a minivan or larger SUV (as opposed to something smaller like a Ford Escape).

2)Price-Knowing that we were going to go with a minivan or larger SUV, we started shopping price. Without getting into too many specifics, in general we found that the minivans tended to run cheaper than the larger SUV's (Pilots, Tahoes, Suburbans, etc), unless you're buying the Touring trim level on the Odyssey. Actually, the Pilot was quite comparable to the Odyssey at the dealership we bought from in price, we just thought the 3rd row seat in the Pilot was a little too tight to use comfortably for long periods. Otherwise, we might have come home with a Pilot!

3)Reasonable gas mileage-Notice I said "reasonable" here: If you want Prius-level miles per gallon, then buy a Prius. Again, generally speaking, we found the minivans tended to have better gas mileage, especially compared to the large SUV's. The Odyssey EX gets right around 17/23 (The EXL trim level is a little better at 18/25).

4)Extras-I loved, loved, loved the built in window screens on the Odyssey! No more of those frustrating suction cup shades that Jack would pull down day after day. And these shades are nice and wide, filling almost the entire window. Also, we found the van to have plenty of storage compartments, easily maneuverable and collapsable seats, and cupholders gallore! And lastly, we don't have a lot of room in the garage, so having doors that pull back instead of pushing outward makes it easier to get Jack in and out of the car.

The downside is that yes, it's a minivan, or as I've had several friends tell me, a moo-moo van. It's not the coolest car on the block, though I do think Honda has made some nice strides in at least making the Odyssey look a little less like an egg. The pluses for us though outweighed the coolness factor, and the ride is nice and smooth. I'm looking forward to some future Looney Bin road trips in this car!

We're officially vertical now!

Well, ok, maybe not "officially vertical" as in walking all over the place without any help, but now that he's getting about halfway across the living room on his own without falling, I'd say he's as "official" as ever!

This all has happened in just the last week. Now that he's discovered that he can walk all by himself, he gets frustrated when I pick him up to put him in the highchair or stroller. Freedom is liberating, but as parents Bob and I are having to adapt pretty quickly!

The dreaded doctor visits

Jack had his 15 month well-baby check this morning and everything looked pretty good! I will say though that as he gets older and older, I find myself dreading each doctor's visit a little more. We've been blessed with a healthy child so the majority of his visits are just to make sure he's developing as scheduled, thus I write the following the post with truly very little to complain about because I know we could have things MUCH worse with a chronically sick child.

The reason I've come to dread these visits has less and less to do with shots (or anything like that) and more and more to do with my lack of ability to choral an increasingly mobile child. Jack has always done pretty well with shots. Sure, he cries like the next kid, but usually stops within a few minutes and is soon back to his chummy old self again. The real problem is that he's no longer safely confined to a carrier either sleeping or staring at the world around him, so I'm finding myself having to use an array of increasingly crafty techniques to keep him distracted now that he wants to be down pushing his stroller into random parent's legs in the waiting room.

Even the earliest appointments I can sign him up for often mean us waiting a good 30-45 minutes to actually see the doctor (and that gets longer by late morning). It doesn't seem like a lot of time to wait for an adult with magazines to pass the time, but with a toddler it often feels like an eternity, especially when what that child wants to do while waiting (like mowing people down with a stroller) is NOT a preferable activity. I can only imagine how this is compounded with multiple young children!

For the last couple of doctor's appointments I've brought his favorite book and some other relatively quiet toys to play with, but as I found out this morning, those items just aren't going to cut it anymore. I will say the one bona fide option I still have is his treasured goldfish and juice snack, but that only works for so long :) I finally put the brakes down on his stroller, but he managed to push on it hard enough to overcome the friction on the carpet and still make it move anyway. I pray this is not a glimpse of the stubbornness we'll see into his teenage years...

Again, I write this post realizing I have much to be thankful for in terms of good health and healthcare for my child, I just figured most of you moms could relate to this minor frustration we all have to deal with at times!

Preschool/MDO

Now this is what I was really going to write about today before my mind went blank! I need some more advice again, and you moms who have blazed this trail before me seem to have some great ideas, so bring them on!

The church where my MOPS group meets has a great reputation for their Mother's Day Out/preschool program. A lot of the moms in this group currently have one or more of their kids enrolled in the weekday ministries program (their umbrella term for MDO/preschool) and just rave about the teachers and how much their kids enjoy their time there. The church is currently registering kids for next fall.

Jack is 15 months right now, so in September he'll be near the 21 month old mark. They offer a 2 day a week, 9am to 1pm option for kids under 2 years. The way I see it, here are the possible reasons I (or another mom) might come up with for utilizing something like this: I feel I need a break, I feel like Jack needs more "socializing" opportunities since he's currently without siblings, and/or I feel like there is something he'd be missing out on learning-wise if he didn't attend.

If I'm honest in evaluating these reasons for our situation, I just don't see how any of them warrant me putting him into Mother's Day Out at this point. As much as a 4 hour block of time free from changing a diaper, slipping on toys on the kitchen floor, and crying when I leave the room sounds absolutely fantastic, I'd miss my buddy!! I have a hard enough time leaving him up at my church for a 2 hour break for bible study even though I know he's very well looked after. Plus, I do feel like I have other outlets like this bible study and my MOPS group to give him time away from me and around other kids. And, he's only 15 months, how much "socializing" does he really need? Finally, after chatting with my sister who works up at a daycare, there's nothing a 2 year old (or less) can learn for a few hours away from mom that he/she can't learn staying at home with good old mom. I guess I just don't want to get sucked into that my-child-knew-swahili-by-the-time-he-could-walk stuff, but I admit it's hard not too.

Anyway, after thinking about this for a few days, I just don't think it's a good fit for Jack for the above reasons. Maybe we'll evaluate again for the following year.

How about you ladies (or gents)? Did you start your kids early into any kind of scheduled Mother's Day out or preschool program? Why or why not?

A little busy around here...

This week seems to have been a little busier than I had planned on, so forgive my lack of posts over the last few days :)

The good news is that Jack seems to be slowly making some progress on his walking. He's starting to take a little more risk in how far he'll walk between objects as Bob and I found out last night. We got him to take a good 4-5 steps a couple of times between the two of us. And, I did go shoe hunting again the other day. On Kim's advice I tried checking Ross and TJ Maxx, but didn't quite make it to Marshall's. Perhaps I should have started there because Ross and TJ Maxx didn't yield anything (in fact TJ Maxx didn't even sell kids shoes unless I missed them). I did pick up some cute summer sandals for him though at Payless. I'd love to do the Crocs, I just don't think he'll keep them on his feet at this point unless I duct tape them on :) And I'm still on a mission to find less expensive Stride Rite shoes! Glad you had some success there Kami!

A lefty or a righty?

I can't tell you how many times I've seen Jack use his left hand to feed himself and pick up all sorts of objects. That got me wondering if there was a good (or any) chance he'd end up a lefty even though both Bob and I are right handed...

A cursory Google search gave me some insight into the world of hand preference. It seems only about 10% of the population is left handed, and no one is 100% sure what completely influences hand preference. Genetics seem to play a role, but a number of theories (including some that seem a little silly) abound like the one hypothesizing all humans are meant to be right handed, but early brain damage leads to left-handedness. Yeah, nothing like telling 10% of the population their left-handedness is a sign of brain damage...

Apparently most young children use both their left and right hands under the age of two with true hand preference showing up around the 2-3 year mark , so it's still too early to tell with Jack. I saw one pediatrician mention that some kids remain ambidextrous up until 5 or 6 and then choose. The other point of note said that left-handedness tends to show up slightly more frequently in boys than girls, so perhaps I will get a lefty after all!

At least with the proliferation of personal computers, hand preference seems to matter less now in terms of handwriting legibility if kids can just get through kindergarten and elementary school. My husband would be thrilled if Jack (or any future sons) were left handed because of one thing: pitching. Apparently MLB lefty pitchers make lots of moola, so we could retire early :)

What about you, when did you notice hand preference in your kids?

Mad skillz at dinnertime

I've heard (and now experienced firsthand) that parenthood is full of endless surprises, some good, some not so good. Well, tonight we were fortunate to experience one of those pleasant surprises that makes up for all (ok, maybe 2) of the bad ones: Jack demonstrated his surprisingly adept ability at feeding himself!

Now in the back of my head I've known for a while he's at the age where I should start letting him experiment with his spoon if I ever hope to raise a child who can do more than just eat with his fingers (a skill his future wife would greatly appreciate at dinner parties). But until tonight, I hadn't really let him try it on his own yet. While I would like to feign ignorance here that I just didn't know a 14-month-old could feed himself, in reality it's just that I had gotten lazy and found it easier (and less messy) to feed him the applesauce or whatever myself. I admit though that a mother-in-law showing up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a plastic spoon is probably not the best way to bond with my future daughter-in-law.

Anyway, we were amazed at how well he did feeding himself with a utensil for a first try. I loaded up a few bites onto his spoon, handed it to him, and let him do the rest. We did this a good 10-15 times and he really enjoyed it. What surprised me even more was that after I just let him have the spoon to do whatever he wanted with it, he began picking up little bits of rice off of his tray and putting it on the spoon himself. He had watched me do it and then tried to imitate the action himself.

While he wasn't quite as successful with that endeavor, mainly because the food wouldn't stay put, I was more than thrilled he at least had pretty good control over the spoon itself. In the grand scheme of self-feeding, I'm sure there are plenty of toddlers who have mastered this skill earlier that Jack, but hey, it was still a little victory nonetheless. It also showed me how I shouldn't be lazy in my efforts to try new skills with him, because he might just be further along than I think he is. Now, about that walking......

Homeschool, private, or public education?

I was looking for a new topic to write on the last day or so and one finally fell into my lap while checking up on the news this morning: What are your plans for your kids' education? Have you considered homeschooling or do you plan to enroll them in a public or private school?

This topic stemmed from an article talking about how a California appeals court ruled that parents without teaching credentials could no longer homeschool their children. Parents that continue to homeschool their children without proper credentials could be subject to "truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect." Now, why am I not surprised that of all our 50 states, this happened in California?

I hadn't really thought much about it myself until we moved back to Texas and I began talking to a lot of moms in the Spring/Woodlands area who are homeschooling or plan to homeschool their kids for various reasons. That got me to thinking about Jack and what kind of education experience I'd like him to have. Like any other parent I want the best for him in terms of learning what he needs to know to be a productive citizen and the extracurricular opportunities to develop an athletic or musical talent (or underwater basket weaving). It's just all the other junk in public schools that makes me see why so many moms have decided to go the homeschooling route (and private school isn't cheap). That being said, I went to a great public high school and seemed to turn out ok, and Jack's going to have to figure out we're living in a fallen world sometime.

While I do enjoy teaching, I don't think I could homeschool myself because of one subject: history. Please know I have no intention of offending you history buffs out there, it's just that I don't find treaties and wars particularly interesting and would find it tough to teach that subject with any kind of enthusiasm to my child(ren). I much prefer science and math to history, after all we meteorologists live in the future world of weather prediction. Some might argue we don't live very well in that future realm and we'd be well served to live in the past to learn from our mistakes, but that's another (long) topic for a different post. :)

In all seriousness though, have you thought much about what education route you'd like your kids to take (assuming you don't live in CA)?

You want me to spend how much on a pair of kids shoes?

I need some advice in this area from all you moms who have older kids: where did you buy your children's shoes?

Jack has had 2 pairs of shoes since he started pseudo-walking and I think the most I paid for either pair was about $12. The first ones were the soft, slip-on kind that look like little slippers. For the next pair, we moved up to something with a touch more sole support in them and a velcro latch (which I do NOT recommend if your child enjoys his toes seeing the sunshine...way too easy to get off).

In my never-ending state of denial that I can actually do something to jumpstart his solo walking, I thought maybe I should invest in a better quality pair of shoes for him. So my mom and I ran down to Imagination Toys this morning to look at some Stride Rite shoes.

The saleswoman was quite helpful and measured his feet for me, then recommended a pair to try on him that would fit his stage of walking. Apparently with a child that's not quite walking yet, a softer shoe is recommended so they retain some flexibility in their step. As they get better at walking, a sturdier sole can be used for more arch support. Anyway, we tried a cute pair on him that fit really well. I just knew when she told me the price I was going to have a hard time swallowing it, and I was right: $44. My next question to her was how long I could anticipate that pair fitting him before he outgrew them, and she said about 2-3 months.

$44 seems pretty steep for something he'll be wearing for just a few months, not to mention scuffing up outside. I could go buy a pair of Sketchers for myself for that kind of money (and they'd last me a lot longer than 2-3 months)!

So maybe I'm missing something...I know Stride Rite is a quality brand, but how good are they really? Is a $44 pair of shoes for a toddler really that much better than say a $15 or $20 pair? Are there other brands out there worth looking into?

I'm all ears!!

Would you spend $3K on a one-year-old's birthday?

My husband, who enjoys reading up on the subject of personal finance, told me about the Free Money Finance blog about a year ago. I too have become a regular reader and feel like I've learned a tremendous amount about how to be wise with money.

So what does this have to do with my blog? Well, today one of his posts really caught my attention: how much some parents are willing to spend on their kids' birthday parties.
One of the more interesting quotes from the original article that spurred on his blog post came from a mom that spent $3000 on her one-year-old son's first birthday. She said "she knows such a large party for a child so young may sound odd to a lot of people. But she wanted to make it memorable for her first child." Umm, perhaps I missed something, but does anyone out there actually remember your first birthday party?

First birthdays are more for the parents and photo opportunities than anyone or anything else. When else do we encourage our children to make a mess with bright blue or pink icing and then laugh when they proceed to smear it all over everything else? Now of course I want my son to feel honored for his birthday, but not enough to spend $3K on something he won't remember (or even something he would remember for that matter).

This article got me thinking about how I'd like to go forward with celebrating birthday parties for my child(ren) in the future. It's hard in this competitive society NOT to get swept up in the my-child-will-have-the-biggest-party-on-the-block fever, but what does that teach our kids? That mom and dad have to spend a lot of money on a party so the kids feel valued? Seems to me that these huge parties have more to do with the parents' insecurities and not much to do with the kids!

My experiences with birthdays as a kid were generally celebrated with a family dinner and some girlfriends over to spend the night. It was great! How about you, how did you celebrate (or not) your birthday as a kid? How do you (or did you) celebrate your kids birthdays?

All boy and the dog-on-the-head trick

Bob and I really enjoy watching Jack change, and this 14 month mark has definitely brought with it some new quirks. Within the last week or two, it has become blatantly obvious to me that he is rapidly becoming all boy, not just in physical characteristics, but in his personality as well. I mean, I don't think I know any little girls at this age who enjoy picking up a toy baseball boy bat in each hand and hurling them towards the wall (or mommy). He's also become quite the mimic, both with words and noises (think blowing air through your lips). My favorite thing though has to be his infectious laugh, which makes it terribly hard for me to remain frustrated with him.

Now, the dog-on-the-head trick has come about in the last week. I happened to peek back at him in the car seat one day on the way to the grocery store and noticed he had his favorite puppy perched on top of his head. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera at the time, but luckily this weekend he gave me another opportunity to catch his newest quirk while we drove down to Reliant Stadium for the Houston Rodeo chili cookoff.

As a side note, anyone planning to go down to the Houston Rodeo should plan on shelling out some serious dough if you want to park anywhere close to the stadium. We saw parking for $30 and $20 per car that would still put some serious callouses and/or blisters on your feet if you had to walk that far. Needless to say, we went somewhere else and had a nice BBQ dinner instead.

Jack versus the Highchair

Well, we're getting a little closer to walking each day now, but still no jackpot (haha) yet. As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, one of the things we have enjoyed most in Jack's journey toward vertical, self-propelled forward movement has been his fascination with pushing the highchair all over the house. And, if you watch the video, you'll see I'm not kidding when I say all over the place. The video starts out in the living room, but that was after a few minutes of tooling around the kitchen as well. He's even gotten it back in our master bedroom, which involves a sharp 90 degree turn.

Now, please understand that I have tried to get him to push all sorts of OTHER things around, which he happily complies with. The small lawnmower is another favorite, and believe me, we will capitalize on that once he can push the real thing around. He even pushes flattened books around if he can overcome the friction from our carpet. However, the highchair remains his all-time favorite, unfortunately to the detriment of my cabinets, walls, and toes during dinner.

It's the quirks that make our kids so endearing though :)