This post is from from my other blog here

“Uh Oh. Ball!

Where ball go?

Ball please!

Uh Oh. Ball!”

That’s what my kid keeps saying as he pulls down my shirt to see what the two big bumps are, and then proceeds to try to pull them off to play with.

This post is from from my other blog here

Remember when I reviewed The Dangerous Book for Boys? Well, I’m currently working on a review of The Daring Book For Girls and loving it!

You’ll have to wait until Nov. 23 for my review but in the meantime I recommend that you check out the vid and the book’s website.

Have a daughter? A niece? A girl you think is cool?
Buy it. Don’t wait for my review. It’s that good.

This post is from from my other blog here

Some of this may not be a surprise to any of you. After blogging for over three years there isn’t too much I haven’t told you at one time or another. However, Tsoniki tagged me for the oldie but goodie 7 things meme and in the name of good manners I’m going to try. And since much of my archives were deleted when the freaks were stalking y’all, maybe you don’t know some of this?

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Seven Things You Might Not Know About Me

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1. We do not have a boy name chosen for this baby. If it’s a girl we’re all set because it will have the girl name from last time. We’re struggling. Suggestions? (It can’t start with B, we’d prefer two syllables and it can’t be stupid.)

2. I can do a back bridge from standing and I couldn’t when I was a kid. Or maybe I never tried? Either way, it’s probably pretty freaky to see a big pregnant woman do it but I can! I have to lower to the ground to get up though. How badly do you want to see a video?

3. I love camping but there has to be a shower nearby because I have to shave my legs and pits every day without fail. I can’t stand to stink either.

4. I am paranoid about chemicals and my kids. It might have something to do with my dad having cancer or maybe I’m just a freak but the boy doesn’t eat pesticide covered or processed foods and neither will the baby for a few years. It’s just not worth the risk to me. Organic is the way to go. I actually have stress when I have to give the boy something non-organic or processed at restaurants or people’s houses who don’t eat like we do so we often bring his food. Thank goodness he’s young enough to not care. (When he does care, I do give him a bite or more of what he wants. Everything in moderation and all that crap.) It also stresses me out to see other people feeding their kids potentially carcinogenic stuff. I wonder if they don’t know the risks or just don’t care? Maybe it’s worth the risk to them? I don’t get it. To each their own, but I’d like my kids digestive systems to be a lot more mature before they have to digest that type of thing and I also don’t want them to develop a taste for crap.

5. I have fallen arches and wear orthotics. It hurts my feet to go without them.

6. I sleep with a “princess mask” on (in the words of my husband) because I can’t stand any light when I’m trying to go to sleep. I used to use earplugs every night but now only need them occasionally. Probably because I’m so exhausted all the time from the damn teething.

7. My house is often rather gross even though I’m a type-A personality and prefer it to be spotless and organized. I’m too busy and tired to meet my own standards.

Anything surprises there?

This post is from from my other blog here

It’s a four-fer-one deal! (#4 added while my kid was screaming and I needed a break.)

1) SquidSoap.

We use only organic/natural soaps in our house so I took this soap to my classroom where the kids wash their hands multiple times each day. I explained that they had to pump the soap themselves in order to get “inked” by the squid (I usually squirt it into their hands) and that they had to wash until the ink spot was gone. Most of them were very excited to try it, but one cried because he didn’t want ink on his hand. At least half of them had a hard time pushing the pump hard enough to get the soap out so they needed me to push down on their hand. By the sixth child, the rubber ring surrounding the ink pad had fallen off. I didn’t notice any difference when we were pumping it with dry hands, but when used wet the ink began to run all over everything. It came off easily, but the pump still needs some kind of a redesign. The whole concept behind SquidSoap is that the kids need to wash for 20 seconds in order to get the ink off and I love the concept. It really bothered some of my students that “the ink wouldn’t come off!” Obviously they didn’t get the point. They had both used water that was too cold and rinsed off the soap too early. Once we talked about it some more they did seem to understand that the reason it hadn’t come off was because their hands weren’t actually clean. All in all, a great concept with mediocre to good execution.

2) Disapproving Rabbits by Sharon Stiteler

This is a book full of adorable pictures of very disapproving bunnies accompanied by entertaining captions. It’s based on the blog of the same name. It’s certainly not my cup of tea but the pictures are cute (the boy though so too, and learned the word “bunny” this week) and if you’re a rabbit person it just might be up your alley!

3) Dry Cleaner’s Secret

This product is intended to greatly extend the time between visits to the dry cleaner and therefore save you a ton of money. From the site…Dry Cleaner’s Secret cleaning cloths freshen your clothing and remove small spots at a fraction of the cost of professional dry cleaning. Save money by safely cleaning all your clothes in your dryer in just 20 minutes with our at-home dry cleaning kit. Your clothes will be left with a nice , fresh scent and ready to wear, we guarantee it! I won’t buy clothing that needs to be dry cleaned so it wasn’t much use to me. I gave it to a friend whose husband wears suits regularly so they could tryit. Her comments…It’s easy to use. You just spot clean with the little wipe-y thing and then toss it all into the dryer. As long as the stain was fairly fresh and not major it worked just fine and did save us money. Well, actually, we would have just used water or a commercial stain remover in between trips to the cleaner but this was a little better than that. I’d still rather they make suits washable. Why don’t they? You can get a free sample from their site if you’d like to try if out.

4) The Hair Colour Mix Book

This is just a plain cool book! It’s hard cover and only $16 which is a steal of a deal if this is something you’d use. It’s jam packed with recipes to mix your own hair colour using drugstore colours just like the pros would in the salon and comes with great pictures of real people (instead of tufts of fake hair, which is nice) so that you can see what the colour looks like “on.” Being pregnant, I didn’t actually try out the colours but I have marked a few I’d like to try in the future when I’m no longer pregnant or nursing.

NOT A REVIEW: How long is it supposed to take for these F****ing molars to come in? Seriously - enough is enough. Even the highest doses of drugs don’t do a thing for him. And, to make things even better, he hasn’t really eaten in almost a week and had the shits for two days. I need a vacation.

Updated to add: What kind of kid functions on 4 hours of sleep? Mine! He’s happily eating breakfast and I feel like I’m going to keel over at any second. What do you do when your kid just will not sleep? (And you know it’s due to pain and he’s as doped up as he’s going to get.)

This post is from from my other blog here

For three days I was wondering where you all went…and then I realized this post was tagged as ‘private.’ Oops!

Dear (best little boy in the world),

You’re 18 months old and your daddy and I can hardly even believe it! It’s been 6 months since my last formal letter to you and now that I’m trying to remember everything to record it here I realize what a bad idea “just twice a year after the first birthday” was. Quarterly letters would be a better idea and I’ll try to remember that from now on. (Don’t hold me to it, but I promise to do my best.)

In the last 6 months…

-You’ve gone from taking your first independent steps the night before you turned one to running everywhere and only stopping to sleep.
-You’ve cut your 15 month molars on top & bottom and have been working on both eye teeth and 2 year molars - neither of which will show their damn faces already so you continue to suffer intermittently.
-We moved into your second home and you handled it like the champ that you are. I think you actually enjoyed the moving process because you loved the boxes, and you loved coming to the empty new house to run around. You slept fine in your new room right from the first nap on moving day (until the teeth, of course) and it’s like you’ve always lived here. We’ll miss the big back yard at the old place, but not the yard work and we live right on a park now so it’s like a huge yard to run in that we never have to mow. The best of both worlds.
-Eight days after your birthday we found out that we have another baby on the way. We’re so excited to give you a built in friend and support system and to grow our family.
-You’ve gone from saying “Mama” and “Dada” to well over 75 words and word combinations that actually make sense. You also combine words and signs which is really very cool. You say “More” and sign “Please” at the same time very often. You also say “On” and sign “Please” when you want to turn the light on.
-On that topic…you have a fascination with switches and could turn lights on and off all day if we had nowhere else to be.
-You have developed an insane love for dancing. You point to the stereo and say “Dance!” and shake your booty like nobody’s business. When you hear any kind of music anywhere you are, you immediately start to bop and you are usually right on the beat. (I assure you that you do NOT get that from your dad.)
-You started to go to a wonderful day home at 13.5 months and you love it so much that you want to go on the weekends. We were so incredibly lucky to find such wonderful care for you! (Honestly, I’d have lived in a box and given up my career completely before I’d have left you at some of the places we checked out.) You wake up and eat a few bites of breakfast before declaring that you’re “All done,” and telling me “Keys. Go play.” You giggle as we pull into the driveway and smile as your friends yell your name to welcome you. You nap better there than you ever have at home (probably from exhaustion). You rarely are happy to leave with me when I come to pick you up as you’d rather stay and play with your friends. I dreaded leaving you there (anywhere really - nothing to do with the actual place we chose) and now am so glad that you’ve had this opportunity because you’ve grown so much, learned so much and loved it so much. I feel guilty making you stay home with me for a year now so you’ll be going to visit your friends on a drop in basis when I have appointments for me or the baby or you just get sick of being at home and need some action.
-You have learned many body parts (the first of which was “penis” of course) and you love to point them out on Mommy and Daddy too. You love our noses and eyes most of all, and you can also identify mouth, ears, hair, bum, toes and feet.
-You have peed on the potty once and on the floor several times. We aren’t trying to potty train you but you love your potty and love the big toilet even more. You especially love to flush it and wave bye-bye to whatever is going down the drain. You like to sit on it and tell us when you’re “All done.” (Though all you’re done doing is sitting there.) One time you sat on the little potty in your bathroom and actually peed! It landed all over your clothes which were on the floor in preparation for your bath, but you were sitting on the potty so that was cool. You said “Pee pee. Uh oh.” and I laughed my head off. I don’t think you know yet when you’re peeing so potty regularity is still a ways off, but you do know when you poop. You tell me because you like to have your diaper changed after. You think a fart is also poop, though, and sometimes ask for a diaper change then too.
-Your favourite things to eat are fruit and yogurt. You are still primarily a vegetarian but every so often have one bite of meat before you remember that you hate it. That’s totally okay with us since it’s much healthier not to eat saturated fat. You eat healthier than anyone else I know so I’d never complain.
-We spend much of our summer playing outside. You LOVED the west side water park so we went there several times a week. Even once I had you all dressed to go home you often managed to sneak back into the sprays! You also loved your small pool in the back yard and went in there absolutely every day. Mavi often joined you for a little drink and you thought that was just the best! (Thai stayed far away and thought you were both insane.) You loved your sandbox too and would toss handfuls of sand onto the grass and laugh hysterically when Mavi pounced on them. Your other favourite thing was our big apple tree. You picked apples every day and would eat many of them. Usually you’d have one in each hand and liked to give Thai a bite off of the one you were eating.

It’s been a super fun and very active six months since your birthday. You give the best kisses and hugs in the world and your daddy and I take full advantage of every one you’re willing to give us since we know our supply might slow down eventually. I love when you wake up and call “Mommy!” instead of crying and when I come in to your room you immediately ask me to take you to Daddy. Watching you and your daddy together is one of the highlights of my life. You’re very lucky to have such a great man for a father (…and I’m lucky to have him for a husband. I hope you grow up to be a lot like him.)

I love you right up to the moon and back, Baby.

Love, Mummeeeeeee
xoxo

This post is from from my other blog here

I’m the first to admit that I don’t use cookbooks. I copy recipes that I like at restaurants, see on tv or taste elsewhere by making them up myself and they’re often better than the original. Not because I’m a great cook but because they contain things that I like! If I really need a recipe, I get it from the internet. I use recipe books so rarely that I recently gave away 30 when I moved because I couldn’t foresee using one any time soon. However, I was an easy convert when I received Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. (Yes, she’s married to Jerry.)

It’s a book full of simple ways to sneak vegetables into your kids’ food. Like pureed cauliflower in scrambled eggs. Who’da thunk? I consider myself very creative in the kitchen and I’d never have thought of that one. My son is a fruit & veggie kid, but I know there will come a day when I need to perform these sneaky maneuvers so I’m grateful to have some great ideas from this book to add to my bag of tricks. The instructions on how to puree food are, well, duh…but I can see how someone who has never really cooked would benefit from that. I did love the idea of making a bunch and freezing them to throw into recipes when you need something quickly. That would also be a great way to use cases of fresh produce that’s on sale before it goes bad.

I tried a couple of the recipes and plan to try many more. My faves so far are the french toast (with pumpkin puree in the eggs), scrambled eggs (with pureed cauliflower that you totally can’t taste) and pita pizzas (which we make all the time but now will be spreading spinach puree on) and macaroni and cheese (with butternut squash). The four recipes I had time to try all took just a few minutes and hardly any work. And yes - they were delicious! When I have some more time, I can hardly wait to try the coffee cake and some of the muffins!

I can tell I’m going to love this book!

You can head over to T.O.P to enter to win a copy I only received one extra so you can’t enter at this site.

Here’s a contest from Harper Collins where you can also enter to win your own copy!

This post is from from my other blog here

Shamelessly stolen from That Chick Over There…

1. What kind of SOAP is in your bathtub right now?

Kiss My Face Organics - green tea and lime I think.

2. Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator?

Yes, and I think it’s getting old.

3. What would you change about your living room?

I’d tear out the carpet and put in bamboo.

4. Are the dishes in your dishwasher clean or dirty?

Clean, thanks to the BG. The counter is covered in dirty ones though.

5. What is in your fridge?

Leftover Indian food, subs for lunch tomorrow, lots of yogurt & milk, condiments…you know the deal.

6. White or wheat bread?

Whole wheat with lots of seedy goodness.

7. What is on top of your refrigerator?

Three lunch boxes.

8. What color or design is on your shower curtain?

Ours is a frosted glass door in our ensuite. The boy’s bathroom has a white one and the downstairs bath doesn’t have one yet.

9. How many plants are in your home?

Exactly zero. I killed them all. I’ll buy more when my kids stop eating dirt, but I’ll kill those too.

10. Is your bed made right now?

Does tossing the bedding back in place count? We do that to keep the cat hair off the sheets. The duvet’s covered in it though.

11. Comet or Soft Scrub?

Neither. Vinegar and baking soda.

12. Is your closet organized?

Yes, but until we get a new dresser it won’t look like it.

13. Can you describe your flashlight?

It’s yellow and it used to be my dad’s so it has his initials on it.

14. Do you drink out of glass or plastic most of the time at home?

Plastic. The BG doesn’t let me us breakables when I’m pregnant because I broke at least 5 glasses in the month before we moved. I use stainless steel most of the time, actually. Because plastic causes cancer and cancer sucks.

15. Do you have iced tea made in a pitcher right now?

Nope. Make it your damn self.

16. If you have a garage, is it cluttered?

It is right now because our basement is being reno’d so it has all out basement furniture in it.

17. Curtains or blinds?

Blinds. Curtains are too dusty.

18. How many pillows do you sleep with?

three. One for my head, one between or under my knees and a belly pillow.

19. Do you sleep with any lights on at night?

Nope.

20. How often do you vacuum?

Once or twice a week-ish.

21. Standard toothbrush or electric?

Standard.

22. What color is your toothbrush?

Pink and white.

23. Do you have a welcome mat on your front porch?

I sure do.

24. What is in your oven right now?

Nada. We had Subway subs for supper because I was craving them.

25. Is there anything under your bed?

Chewed up kleenexes and probably some underwear courtesy of the resident pooches.

26. Chore you hate doing the most?

Things that smell. Particularly garbage and toilets.

27. What retro items are in your home?

I have a retro-looking kitchen stool but it’s only a year old.

28. Do you have a separate room that you use as an office?

Yes, and we call it “the office.” Go figure.

29. How many mirrors are in your home?

Two. There will be three when the downstairs bath is finished.

30. Do you have any hidden emergency money around your home?

A few bucks, but not on purpose. I just put it down and forget about it.

31. What color are your walls?

A gross grey-ish pinky purple colour. Yes, I need to paint.

32. Do you keep any kind of protection weapons in your home?

Yep. A baseball bat! (Come on, I’m Canadian!)

33. What does your home smell like right now?

Sub sauce.

34. Favorite candle scent?

I hate candles. They can burn your house down.

35. What kind of pickles (if any) are in your refrigerator right now?

Baby garlic dills.

36. What color is your favorite Bible?

Do people usually have a selection?

37. Ever been on your roof?

Not in this house, but the inspector took pictures and that’s good enough for me.

38. Do you own a stereo?

Yes. One up, one down and one in each vehicle.

39. How many TVs do you have?

None. Will have one as soon as the basement is done.

40. How many house phones?

Three, but one doesn’t work.

41. Do you have a housekeeper?

Unfortunately, no.

42. What style do you decorate in?

Cheap.

43. Do you like solid colors in furniture or prints?

Solids

44. Is there a smoke detector in your home?

Several, and one wired into our alarm system too.

45. In case of fire, what are the items in your house which you’d grab if you only could make one quick trip?

Other than the boy, the BG and three animals, I’d try to get the server to save all of our pictures.

This post is from from my other blog here

Weekend Review

I recently read The Little Black Book of Style and it was something completely different than what I’d usually read. It’s for people who care about being “fashionable” as opposed to “comfortable” and that’s just not me, but it was still an interesting read. For a young person going in to the world of fashion design or advertising, it would likely be a big hit. For me, it was okay. The “How to dress when…” section was interesting, but one part really pissed me off. The “How To Dress When Pregnant” section seemed like it was written by and/or for a fourteen year old who didn’t want anyone to know she was pregnant. It instructs women to wear lots of jewelery (which, of course, the guy needs to buy for you…barf) to detract attention from the belly. That part really ruined the book for me, but I can certainly see a population that would enjoy it. Want my copy? Leave a comment and let me know.

Weekend Recap

It was a busy one! I had a conference to attend and lots of shopping to do with my parents in another city on Saturday. The boy hasn’t really slept well all week because of the damn teeth again so we were excited to be able to get him to sleep via rocking last night before 7:30. (He usually falls asleep on his own between 6:30 and 7:00 and has needed rocking until 11:00 to pass out this week.) He woke up at 6:30 this morning with a fever so I gave him some medicine and brought him to bed with us where he snuggled and slathered us both with kisses. It was awesome! Now it’s 8:15 and he’s still screaming so it might be another rough one. Cross your fingers for at least 6 hours for the big fat 29 weeks pregnant chick or I’ll be too cranky for words.

If you’re swapping, you should have received the email with your partner’s info. If you didn’t then please let me know asap!

Our basement is getting emptied and drywalled this week so our servers will be shut down and I may or may not have internet access. I can’t blog from work because anything fun is blocked so if you don’t hear from me for a week you’ll know why!

This post is from from my other blog here

Alright Swappers… I need your addresses asap so we can get going on this craziness! I’ll bold the participants as I receive addresses so you know that I got your email…

Rebecca at http://trenting.blogspot.com/
Deb at http://justacountrygirl.dakotablogs.com
Laura at http://lauralohr.com
Jacquie at http://dealwithitgirlsrule.blogspot.com/
Chelle at http://soodz.com/blog
You da Mom at http://youdamom.com/
Amy W at http://ashleyandaudrey.blogspot.com/
Janice at http://www.justjanice.ca/cosmogrrl
Angela at http://cpamomva.blogspot.com/
Damselfly at http://growingalife.blogspot.com
Gwen at http://leftcoastmama.net
Michelle at http://mdbeau.blogspot.com
Emily at http://www.fenicle.com/
Bitsy Parker at http://www.valuewit.com/
Tsoniki at http://mebeingcrafty.com
Me at http://www.muchmorethanamom.com/

Update: DONE! Thanks everyone! You should have received your email with your parther’s info. Have fun shopping!

Dad update: The cancer is back on his liver. Chemo starts again Monday. Suckage.

This post is from from my other blog here

This is cross-posted from The Opinionated Parent.

Looking for things to do with a toddler? Often, so are we! We’ve been looking for great sites full of activity ideas for kids between the ages of 1-3 and we think we’ve found some that aren’t too shabby. Some are blatantly obvious and others are rather creative. Many are great variations of things that I do in my classroom and have been simplified for the younger set. The boy is 17 months old and has yet to watch TV so we’re often looking for creative ways to entertain him and the internet is an ever growing resource.

I define “baby/infant” as newborn to 1, “toddler” as 1-3 years old, “preschooler” as 3-5 and 5 & up as “school aged.” However, it seems many “toddler” ideas are completely inappropriate for kids under 3. Use these ideas with your parental instinct at hand. Obviously you aren’t going to play with marbles with an 18 month old child. Unless you’ve always wanted to try the Heimlich maneuver.

Enjoy!

1. Toddler themed preschool activities from Preschool Rainbow. I love this page for the slightly older preschool set.

3. Thirteen toddler activity ideas from LilDuckDuck and more ideas from the same site.

4. Just ten but wonderful ideas from Associated Content.

5. 70 Toddler Games and Activities from Abel Cheng at Parent Wonder. This is a neat site. I’m not sure where they’re blogging from but the grammar tells me they may be an ESL site. Good content though, and just ignore the plethora of ads.

6. Some fun ideas from loveyourbaby.com.

7. Ideas from Ann Douglas at sheknows.com.

8. Thirteen bath time activity ideas from Baby-Patch.com

9. A whopping 134 ideas compiled from a chat board of parents. Many for preschoolers but some would work for toddlers too!

10. Check out this ‘best answer‘ from yahoo!answers about entertaining an 18 month old at home.

11. If your kids are 2.5 or older, Enchanted Learning is one of my favourite sites. I use it for ideas for school all the time.

12. Read to your kids! Okay, that’s not a site but you need to know how incredibly important this one is. For book ideas, search “read aloud books.”

13. Have the computer read to your kids for you! Try Starfall, a very popular site with early childhood teachers such as myself. Or hear one of my favourite children’s authors read aloud and then learn how she does it so well and how you can too.

14. There are lots of other sites that will read to your kids for you. Not that it’s a substitute for YOU reading to them, but it’s pretty fun. Try BookPALS Storyline Online. All of the others that I use are via subscription. Anyone know of other free ones?

There must be more! To have your favourite activity websites for kids aged 1-4 added, email them to theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with “toddler activity sites” in the subject line or leave a comment here and I’ll move them over.

This post is from from my other blog here

It’s Canadian Turkey Day aka Thanksgiving today and we’re rolling around on the floor with stomach cramps from overdoing it on delicious goodies.

We had a meal with the BG’s dad last night and with my whole family at the BG’s mom’s place tonight. Last night was ham, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables and DQ blizzard cake, and it was fantastic. Tonight was the traditional meal we have on every holiday and my absolute favourite. Turkey, stuffing, gravy, ham, mashed potatoes, cabbage rolls, salads, sweet potato casserole (a la my mom), carrot turnip casserole (a la my mom), buns, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, fresh fruit…and that’s after a huge lunch at my parents place of french toast with blueberry sauce & back bacon.

Now you know why my stomach hurts! Good thing I’ve got this baby to make the fat look nice and hard for another couple of months.

I’m 28 weeks pregnant all of a sudden and I have no idea how that happened. We’re really sucking at pictures this time, but I’m hoping to get a good one this week. I just got (finally!) my new SLR camera and have been having a blast with it. I’ve saved for 2 years to get it and I’m SO excited! I researched for 2 years as well and ended up going with a Pentax k100d (over the Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40x, which were the other two I seriously considered) for two main reasons. First of all, 10 megapixels is a complete waste if you’re not printing huge posters. Many people think megapixels equals quality but it’s only printing size. Six megapixels will easily print 8×10 images and that’s a conservative estimate. They’ll actually print much larger and you wouldn’t know the difference between it and a 10 megapixel image with the naked eye. The other reason was the image stabilization feature. On the Canon, that feature is in the lenses and the lenses are very expensive. On the Pentax, the image stabilization is built right into the processor and works amazingly well. I can actually shake my camera like jello while shooting and get clear images. It’s rather amazing. Oh, and the $200 saved was nice too. I found the Canon and Nikon products to be very proprietary (as in, you have to use their accessories and you pay heavily just for the name) whereas my Pentax has great Pentax accessories but also has things like an AA battery backup option that isn’t available for the other brands. I’m sure I would love both of the other cameras as well, but I’m extremely happy with mine and it’s cheaper. I have some images uploaded to share but since my laptop’s dead I have to install the BG has to install some software on this one so I can shrink them to blog size.

This post is from from my other blog here

I’ve been reading a review copy of When Parents Hurt that I received from the publisher. Actually, I’ve been trying to read it for at least a month and finally decided to blog about it without finishing it. Hormonal and pregnant do not mix with a book about dealing with kids who don’t want any contact with you no matter how hard you tried. I couldn’t read it without bawling and worrying about the boy turning into a crack-head despite our best intentions.

That said, if you have a teen or adult child who is pulling away from you (whether you beat them, were the perfect parent or anything in between) and you need healing, this seems like it would be a great book. But my God please do not attempt to read it if you’re pregnant or aren’t in that type of situation. It’s damn near impossible.

I have tons of adorable pics to share but my laptop died a slow and painful death so I’m on a borrowed one right now and we haven’t had time to install my FTP program to get the pics up. I’ll try to do it convince the BG to do it this week. I’ll also get the swap partners drawn and email you about that soon-ish. I’m aiming to do it on the long weekend (it’s Thanksgiving in Canada this coming weekend) and will email y’all by Monday. Sound good? We’ve got one “special circumstance” who will need her package mailed early due to an international move so please let me know if you’re NOT okay with that. Otherwise I’ll just let random.org match the pairs.