Postsecret

I don't know if you have ever heard of the blog Postsecret, but I read it every week. The blog owner, Frank, gets sent hundred (thousands?) of secrets from strangers every week and he picks a few to put on his blog every weekend.

Tonight, while reading, I came across one that led me to google about SMA, Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I had never heard of it before and was heartbroken at what I was finding out. SMA is the #1 killer of infants and children under 2 years old.

Please, sign the petition for a cure. You can sign the petition online at www.petitiontocuresma.com. I also joined the twitter feed for the little girl, Gwendolyn, that you see in the picture on the petition page.

It seems like funding for a cure, and a cure itself, is very close. Maybe we can help these babies...

I fiddled while the cookies burned

What a day.

Last night, as I was thinking about how my 7 and 1/2 month old now had a second tooth make a grand entrance (bottom front, next to the first tooth) I became concerned that one of my five cats wasn't eating. So today I wanted to keep a close eye on her. Mid-morning I spied said cat in the living room. Her first foray into the rest of the house from the comfort of my bedroom today and this was highly unusual for her. I watched to see what she would do. Eat? Drink? Be merry? Use the cat litter? Much to my surprise, she did none of these. What she actually did was...pee on my living room rug! AUGH!

Chaos ensued. I jumped up and screamed. Have I mentioned I'm no good in an emergency? If a cat peeing on my rug made me panic, you probably don't want me on your side when bullets start flying or aliens attack us. Anyhoo, I picked up my cat and brought her to the litter box. She sniffed it, then continued her business as if there had been no interruption. I grabbed some white vinegar and a towel. I proceeded to blot the heck out of the cat pee spot whilst my family looked on and the cat walked by me to go back in to my bedroom.

Certain I could still smell cat pee, I crawled around on all fours. I sniffed and I sniffed. The odor was definitely getting more pungent as I made my way across the room. I finally crawled to the opposite corner of the room. Behind the reclinging chair was the infant car seat. There was a wet spot in it. Oh, no...oh, yes. The car seat was soaked in cat urine! AUGH!

I grabbed the car seat and stripped it of its cover and took out all the straps. I the cover in the washer, soaked the straps in Oxiclean (this is not an endorsement), bleached the hard shell of the car seat and cursed the day cat pee was invented.

While I was nose deep in cat pee, I decided to clean the litter. The litter normally gets cleaned everyday. The longest is every other day. I say this so you people will know that these cats do in fact have a clean place to relieve themselves. Back to the litter, I sniffed all the boxes including the one in which I saw the cat pee in. Oddly enough, no odor of cat pee in the boxes. Of course not, because all the pee was in my baby's car seat!

So I curse and wash and curse and wash. I decide I need cookies. After washing my hands three times, my 8 year old son and I proceed to make some slice and dice chocolate chip cookies. I slice, we roll the the slices into balls and use two cookie sheets. The oven is preheated for 350 degrees and I set the time for 8 minutes. Now, the directions say 9-11 minutes, but my oven cooks fast, hence the setting of 8 minutes.

I tried to calm down from all the unscheduled activity. I deodorized the rug with baking soda, I vacuumed every square inch of my living room, I Febrezed every foot (this is not an endorsement) of the room. I got down on the floor and no longer smelled cat pee anywhere. Ahhh...

Though I do smell cookies burning. AUGH! My timer went off and I went into the kitchen. One cookie sheet of cookies was fine, the other cookie sheet was full of burned cookies. What on Earth? There were on the same rack! How did one burn while the other sheet is perfect?

I'm a bit concerned about the cat. She hasn't been back out of my room. If she would like me to carry her from room to room in order to pee, I shall. Though this seems odd. Something can't be right here. She was snuggling with me all night and seemed fine. I put food and water in my room in case she was just lazy and didn't want to leave the comforts of my bedroom.

Sigh...I hope this isn't an omen for my holidays. I love my cats, but have no interest in turning my living room into a litter box.

In conclusion, I only say Merry Christmas and may you all have a pee-free holiday!

Teeth and feet.

Yesterday, as I was taking off bits o' banana and feeding it on my fingertip to the 7 month old Chunky Monkey of mine, I felt something sharp in his mouth. Upon further inspection, I discovered it was a tooth that had just broke through! It's on the botom and in the front. Though his mouth is now officially armed with a weapon, I was excited.

Today, he pulled himself up on the coffee table and finally managed to stand up on both feet!

They grow so fast...

He won't rhumba with me

The other night my significant other (Muffin Top) and I were on our way to pay a bill. Our drive took us past a local dance shop that teaches all styles of dance.

Now, just so you know, I have all the rhythm you would expect out of a middle class white girl from the edge of Boston. In other words, none. I don't dance, have never danced, nor do I ever go anywhere that would require me to dance. So learning to have rhythm of any kind in order to dance, has never been required of me.

Muffin Top, on the other hand, is a talented guitarist. He can play any kind of music after listening to it only once. He has rhythm coming out of his ears. He once claimed to me he loved to dance, but I have never even seen him shake his hips. Shall I mention we have been together ten years?

On a whim, as we drove by the dance studio, I said "Let's learn how to dance!". His reply? "I know how to dance. I got rhythm, I can dance to anything."

Not hearing a yes or no out of him, I pressed on. "I don't know how to dance, I don't have rhythm. Let's take dance classes. It's right by our house and we can learn to salsa and rhumba."

"No."

What? I asked him if he wanted me to go myself and rhumba with a strange man. He said we can't afford it. Whether he meant we couldn't afford to learn to dance or we couldn't afford for me to rhumba with strange man, I'm not sure, but I carried on. I replied, that was not my point. We have been together ten years, have two children and five cats, but we can't learn to dance together?

He said there was no need for us to learn how to dance. Plus, he claimed, he already knew how to dance.

Well, harumph! Harumph, I say! I demanded to know why he didn't want to rhumba with me! He pointed out we didn't go anywhere that required us to dance. So what? That wasn't the point! The point was learning to dance would be fun, perhaps I would learn some rhythm and it would be just the two of us sans children. Nope! He wasn't swayed by my arguments.

So there it is, my significant Muffin Top of ten years will not rhumba with me. I admit, I'm a little peeved about it. At this point, I have made it my mission to get him to a dance studio in order to rhumba and salsa (people like to say "salsa"!) with me! The "we can't afford it" and "we don't anywhere where there's dancing" arguments hold no salt with me!

I...will dance! I will dance with Muffin Top! Not only is this something I feel we should do together as a couple, but the thought of dancing with a strange man just icks me out. Blah! What if he's all sweaty or has bad body odor or worse...what if he's a conservative Republican? I can't believe the love of my life would subject me to those kind of people!

I must go and devise a game plan...

Panda bites idiot.

I was reading this story about a college student, who was so overcome by viewing Yang Yang the panda, he HAD to jump over the barricaded enclosure and hug Yang Yang.

A college student? I immediately thought he was on a drug. What else could make a (let's say) sane adult jump over a 6.5 foot high barricaded enclosure just to hug a panda? According to the article, the college student was "pale" as he was taken away and it's not specifically said that the student was on drugs. Well, I would be pale after being bit by a panda as well so I wouldn't say that's a sign of being high or not. I really wish the student had been tested for drugs. Is the man's impulse control normally so poor? Is anyone who looks cute and cuddly on a Beijing street subject to this man's hugs?

What really bothers me, is if you look at the end of the article, this isn't the first time it has happened to the Panda! Poor Yang Yang has had other adults jump the barricade to hug him. ADULTS! Not little kids who can't read the signs saying "don't cross the fence", not children with stupid parents who encourage the children to ignore the signs, nope! Adults are blatantly ignoring not only the signs, but the barricade as well, just to hug Yang Yang.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is some sort of odd Chinese gang initiation. Here in the United States, the talk shows (my source of gang information) say some gangs beat up their new members as an initiation into the gang. Is hugging a Panda the Chinese version of getting beat up? Or do Chinese males just have poor impulse control when they see a panda? I'm not sure which is more disturbing.

Either way, Yang Yang the panda is, in my opinion, going to have to have a 20 foot tall electric fence just to protect him from the hugging public. Poor Yang Yang...

The Soothie, part two

I wrote about my experience with The Soothie pacifier here. I wanted to update.

I bought the "newborn" size Soothie. At the age of 6 months old, Smiley (the baby) is now able to fit the entire thing in his mouth. Sensing this was a health hazard/choking hazard, I have since taken away the Soothie until I can get the next size up.

Also, Smiley won't take it at night anymore. He wants the real thing, not the "just like mom's nipple!" thing. Sigh. I should have known it was too good to last!

I'm sure if I was more strict I could get Smiley to sleep in a crib (or pack n play, which is what I have) all through the night without eating. I always tend to think that I might be starving him though and I'm of the school of thought that a 6 month old shouldn't starve. It's not like I have a job to get up for in the morning, so I might as well let him these midnight feedings.

I do find it amusing that Smiley slept through the night as a newborn, but now that he's 6 months old, he wants to wake up and eat at least twice night. I thought as they got older they slept through the night? Who am I kidding? I'm 34 and even if Smiley doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night, I wake up on my own and grab a cup of cocoa for myself.

6 months old and crawling!

I wish now I had blogged about the first day I looked over and saw Smiley (what I will now call my baby) take a few crawls. I yelled "HE'S CRAWLING!" to my mother in the other room. She came running in and my 8 year old whipped his head around from the Xbox 360 to watch Smiley...lay there, because he had fallen down since I had sounded the alarm. However a few minutes later he did it again!

That was only, hmm, two weeks ago? If that long. He would take 3 or 4 crawls at different intervals each day. Yesterday, he has started crawling everywhere. I can always tell when he's in the hallway and looking at my 8 year old's room. I hear a "ooh!" sound out of him. That's my cue to jump up or stop what I'm doing and get him back into the living room.

We put a gate up in the living room/kitchen doorway (thank you, Artichokey, for the loan!). This morning, he crawled over to the gate, made some "hmm, interesting, very interesting" sounds and checked out the gate. I can see he's already plotting his way to get past it.

6 and half months old and crawling! Huzzah!