Archive for the ‘Daily Ramblings’ Category

The best gifts are those with meaning; the ones that you can see the thought that went into it. My friend Kim made this gorgeous recipe book for me and I’m in awe of all the little details that went into it. She has proven once again how well she knows me, I do love my wine. I am not known for my cooking skills but this little book has inspired to to learn so I can fill it with recipes. There are so many beautiful details in this book it was so hard to narrow it down to just a few photo’s to share. My pictures do not do it justice. I convinced Kim to start a scrapbooking blog so go visit her at Scrap Fiend and say hello.

The front cover

One of the pages inside

She trying to tell me something?

Recipe tags and cards

Imagine yourself riding along in your car, enjoying some tunes, then seconds later you find yourself lurching for the radio. Where’s the volume control? How do I change the station? Help, quick! That one ear piercing song has come on the radio that makes you want to rip the radio out of the dashboard and send it flying out the window.

The ear piercing song that drives me crazy is Take My Breath Away by Berlin. It never fails, when that one song comes on I become a complete idiot and forget how to work my radio so it usually results in me turning it off. Yesterday after I dropped my husband off at work that song came on and I managed to get the station changed before the chorus “take my breath awaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy”. I’d rather spend an entire day listening to nails on a chalkboard.

I have one high school memory with that song and it has a large part in me despising it. On my friend Angela’s 15th birthday party and she spent the entire night trying to get me to make my boyfriends twin brother dance with her. It took awhile but I finally managed to convince him and she chose to dance to Take My Breath Away. They never dated but I had to listen to her reminisce about dancing with him and endure countless hours with her replaying that song. I also had endless questions, why doesn’t he like me, what did I do wrong. The joys of teenage crushes. I think it had a lot to do with the fact she made us spend four hours listening to New Kids on the Block, Whitney Houston, Starship and Peter Cetera. We were more the INXS, Simply Red, Duran Duran and Van Halen types. I hadn’t thought about Angela in years until I heard one line of Take My Breath Away on the radio yesterday. The power of Google; I just found her on Facebook.

What song makes you cringe? I already know what my friend Kim is going to say. Hey Kim…”pissing the night away, pissing the night awaaaayyyy”

I was really excited a couple of days ago, I started the kids in a new daycare and all seemed well. It seemed as if they enjoyed it and besides being a little cranky from not getting a long enough nap all was well. I had an orthodontist appointment this morning and scheduled the kids into daycare and dropped them off. I was taken back when I picked them up. My daughters face was covered in what I thought was dirt, how could they not clean her face? They were made very well aware that she has allergies and skin issues and I would have thought it would click to wipe her face so she doesn’t get a rash.

I got her out to the car and realized it was a runny nose, great I thought she had managed to catch a cold. We get her home and I was cleaning her up, pushed her hair back and there is a big bruise and knot right on her hairline. Not only that her nose was bloody and had obviously been running because she had hurt her herself. I continued looking her over and she also has huge bruises on her legs.

It is not the fact that she fell that bothers me, its the fact that no one bothered to call me and no mention was made when I picked her up. She obviously hit her head pretty hard and that’s not something to take lightly. When I get my hand close to it she starts crying and saying she has an owie. I have the email address for the owner and I will be emailing her tonight about this; right now I am furious. Look at the picture, wouldn’t you be mad if you picked your child up looking like that.

I’ll start by saying I had a kid free day! This morning I had to get my teeth cleaned, pick up the taxes, meet my husband for lunch so we could sign the taxes, mail them and do my grocery shopping in peace and quiet. It was a full day and I had forgotten exactly how much I could accomplish in one day when I didn’t have the kids in tow.

I got home around 6pm, checked my email and was trying to figure out why I have all these new followers on Twitter all of a sudden. I check my other email account and had tons of email entries for the Craft Giveaway on my daughters blog. I listed it on Prizey last night so that I was expecting. I don’t have my twitter account attached to that blog so it didn’t explain the new followers.

I check the stats on this blog and as far as I can scroll is a long list of Momdot. That’s where “what the?” comes in. I go to Momdot and noticed that I’ve been picked for America’s Next Top Blogger competition! Woo hoo, finally my addiction for reality TV pays off!

Why not to pick me for eviction

Now a plea to the wonderful bloggers that win the first challenges. I am weak; my blog is less than two months old and as for followers I don’t have many yet. I’m sure you’ve all seen Survivor, keep the weak around for when you know you’ll have the votes in the end

My daughter has turned into quite the little mommy lately. She is quick to tell me when Ethan needs a diaper change, she pulls him away from the stairs, tells him no if he is about to do something that isn’t allowed and today she even grabbed a baby wipe and tried to help me change a diaper.

It makes me wonder, why did we have them so close together. Things would have been a lot easier if she had been old enough to understand and be this involved when he was born. I am really enjoying this phase so far. She isn’t fighting him for toys but instead trying to explain them to him. I was in the kitchen today and I could hear her in the next room going over a picture book and trying to teach him to say what the pictures were. She actually taught him to say book! He was a bit bored of it by the time they got to the end and I heard her use her most grown-up voice and say “concentrate sweetie”. I say this to her when we are getting toward the end of her lessons.

I really enjoyed today. It was a lot better than last week when they were pushing each other off the slide and fighting over toys. I just hope this phase lasts longer than a few days.

I was making an appointment for my daughter the other day and when asked her name said Georgia. I was then asked to spell it and when I said just like the state I was asked “and how’s that spelled”. I started thinking back to all the times I have had to spell her name after my standard response of saying to spell it like the state. I find this a bit disturbing and it makes me think that the school systems are failing our kids. Americans are known for their lack of knowledge of geography but has it got to the point that we don’t know our own States?

We’re preparing to travel the US, Canada and Mexico in our RV and while my kids aren’t old enough to remember I will be documenting every city and every state to use to teach them further down the track. I think it’s going to be great for them to have these memories for school projects and to look back on when they are older.

Maybe its our fault for naming our daughter after a state. In our defense we were living in Australia at the time so we weren’t living in a country with a state named Georgia.

I love Crocs, wait I hate Crocs. I love them for being so practical for the summer but I hate how ugly they are. I don’t want to put my kids in ugly shoes but they are too darned practical not to and I hate them for that as well. The kids can wear them in the mud or in the rain, nothing sticks to them, they can be washed by running water over them and they dry in minutes. When I say nothing sticks to them I mean nothing, My daughter drew all over hers with a permanent black Sharpie and I thought they were ruined. Fast forward to today a full month later and I pulled them out and wiped them down with a baby wipe. I was SHOCKED that the Sharpie came off. We have toys with permanent Sharpie all over them but it came off a pair of shoes. I am officially hooked and both my kids will spend their summer in Crocs.

Before and After

What do you think about about Crocs, love ‘em or hate ‘em?

I have given up doing anything when the kids are awake; the moment I turn my back bad things happen. So far this week I have had baby powder spilled on the floor, the goldfish has been fed animal crackers,a roll of toilet paper has been unrolled and an entire box of baby wipes has been pulled out. The only time I can safely do anything is when the kids are napping; or so I thought.

This afternoon I put the kids down for a nap, grabbed a bottle of water and stepped out on the patio to make a phone call and enjoy a beautiful sunny day. I was relaxing and talking to a friend and turned around and noticed a blur of pink running across the living room. I came inside to hear little footsteps running up the stairs and found a can of diet Dr Pepper that I left on the coffee table and been turned over on the couch. In my haste to get a few moments of peace and quiet I forgot to put the bungee cord on the baby gate. My daughter figured out a month ago that she can open the baby gate so we started putting a bungee cord around it to keep the little escape artist in.

I keep thinking that this stage will Georgie will be over soon; just in time for Ethan to hit it. Toddlers are so much fun!

I was looking back over old photo’s of my daughter and they made me think of an article that I read on news.com.au titled Now obesity epidemic has spread to our babies. I was shocked when I read this, the world has become so weight obsessed that infants can now be considered obese? My daughter was a fat baby, she wasn’t overfed, she started solids later than most, she was just a big kid. I personally loved all those little fat rolls and remember all the times I had to pry them apart when giving her a bath. I never considered her obese; to me she was just a happy healthy baby.

My daughter at nine months weighed in at a whopping 32 pounds, at 18 months she still weighed in a 32 pounds. It wasn’t until after she turned two that she started gaining weight again. She has always been a big kid and always been off the charts in height and weight. At two and a half she is skinny as a rail, 39 pounds and the size of an average 5 year old. All kids grow at different rates and it saddens me to think that there are mothers out there with larger than normal infants being told their babies are obese. As mothers we have enough to worry about without being made to think our normal babies are overweight.

Its no wonder that children as young as four think they are fat and need to diet when these types of headlines make the news. I have come across articles about distraught parents with older children that do have weight problems. These parents are stressed because they are not finding answers for their children and also because they are being judged as bad parents. I recently read some comments written about the Chubby Cupcake Boy, a child with a serious medical condition. My heart goes out to this poor kid that spends everyday of his life being judged by people who make assumptions.

I have only been a member at Entrecard for a couple of months. I’m not a huge dropper but I love the half hour I set aside for blog hopping every couple of days. I have found some incredible blogs and have met have met some wonderful mothers.

This past weekend they released their paid advertisements and I have been inundated with ads to approve or reject. I am very picky over what ads I will allow on Internet Toddler and actually take time to look at the site before I will allow it to go on our widget. This morning I decided to start my dropping journey from Internet toddler and was floored when I saw what was on my widget. I won’t name the blog but it is one that has a very narrow minded and to me a personally offensive view on life. I headed over to Entrecard to have a look at what I approved and that advertisement had not been approved. Not only had it not been approved, it was no where to be found on my dashboard. I canceled all paid ads and rejected the rest; despite doing this nearly two hours later my widget still has paid ads on it.

When Entrecard announced they would be doing paid advertisements this was not what I envisioned. I know they have bugs to work out but so far I’m not impressed.