To this point, I want to make a comment on a recent content about rape. There is a comment that have been deleted regarding this subject that implies the following; rape is a biological urge (the difference between a man and a woman) and that women should not hang out with a group of men that is not family, and lastly that rape happens when there is no available outlet for sex.  I find these statements highly objectionable and dangerous.

Rape is most often a crime of control. Rapist rape to feel powerful and in control. Rape is not a matter of urge. There are men who have neither fantasized of rape or even thought about rape. People are not animals driven by urges. And to imply that women are saver with relatives is outright dangerous. Sexual abuse of children are most often committed by family members or someone very familiar to the family. It is a crime of opportunity. As parents, we have to be equally cautious of males that are our relatives, friends and strangers.

As a parent of 3 small children, it is my duty to make sure they are safe and to teach them to be safe.

There is a story recently in my area about a 5 year old little girl that was found dead dumped on the side of the road. She was prostituted by her mother, and the man who raped her killed. My heart aches for this little girl and many others who have met the same fate.

For Minti articles on sexual abuse : http://www.minti.com/search/?query=sexual+abuse&item_type=advice&x=61&y=16

I have noticed an increase of member reports lately for the reasons of spamming. In resolving this matter, I try to look for evidence. So I would like to remind everyone what spamming isn't.

Advertisement on Minti by way of a member's profile is allowed. We do not want to turn any business oriented people away. As we are all aware of, there are Minti parents who are trying to make ends meet by starting their own business. Advertisement is also allowed within one's own blog or appropriate group blog.

If you see someone abusing their blog and bombarding the activity list with blog posts full of advertising, then they are truly spamming our site. Though I rarely see this happen, you are more than welcome to report members caught doing this.

The only place we want to scrutinize is the advice section. Advice articles containing a parenting related advice and only containing minimum advertisement (about 2 lines) is allowed. Should you see articles with an excessive amount of advertisement, please feel free to report it.

For the reasons I have stated above, I will be resolving to keep some of the members that have been reported.

Regards,
Izzy

It created a lot of discussion and a lot of political back and forth. If you are a parent who believe in the importance of education, I don't know what about this speech you'll find disagreeable. Surely, we put other, less admirable people as role models: actors/actresses, athletes.

I, as a parent, would more than gladly make my children listen to anyone who would give such encouraging speech.

Anyway, if you are curious... here it is.

UNSUBSCRIBE - this means you no longer want to receive Minti emails to your personal email address, but you continue to be a Minti member.

HOW TO:

1. Log on to your Minti account.
2. Click on "Mailbox" on the left orange sidebar found on your homepage.
3. Click on "Settings" (found under "Mailbox" after click on it).
4. Click "Yes" or "No" on each of the options.
5. Click on "Save".

DELETE - this means you want your Minti profile permanently deleted. You will no longer be able to log on and make any posts and your account cannot be re-instated at any time in the future.

HOW TO:

• Contact any of the Minti Admins (claycook, matthew, izzy) with your request of account deletion.
• On your email, include your Minti username AND email address you used to register with your Minti account - this is so that we can verify that you are the owner of the account you are requesting to be deleted.

Thank you all! Please feel free to share this information.

Here are some pictures.

Two days ago, Curious George caught a baby frog. It was very small. He placed it in a spare tank we had. The problem is, we didn't know what to feed it since it was so small. This morning I told him that it was time to set it free because it was getting hungry, but before he does so, he could it play with it. Played with it, he did. After 15-20 minutes, Daddy told me that the frog is dead and that from what he could tell Curious George probably accidentally squeezed it.

I was worried that Curious George would get upset so I told him that it was dead and we needed to bury it. He then looked at me and said, "yeah! In 2 days, it was be alive again!"

"No, Matty. When an animal dies, it doesn't become alive again. It's dead forever, " I explained.

"No, Mommy. When God died, people buried him in a cave and two days after, God was alive again!"

If this is not proof that this boy pays attention in Sunday School, I don't know what is.

Here is Punky, the goldfish Curious George won at a Festival back in May.  I guess CG named in Punky because he looks like a punk with the black spot on the top of it's head, much like a mohawk? We'll never know. Punky has been so at home in his little tank he even plays with Curious George. Though he doesn't seem to be performing very well on this video.

We also now have a Grey tree frog. We've had one for several weeks and now we have a second one. We've been catching fireflies (something CG demands now every every evening!) tonight, when CG found it. Now Cricket (because he eats crickets) has a friend, Hopper. Curious George has a nack for naming his pets. lol

Here is Cricket hunting his cricket meal.

1. josierm  -  The OTHER side of depression

2. janicepovey  -  Built up Anger in Victims of Abuse

3. winja -  FLYING WITH KIDS

These 3 ladies will receive m$10,000 within the next few days.  Thank you for the great articles. Congrats!

There is a minti mail spam about weight loss and I see that some of you have been reporting them. Thanks! I've banned the accounts and working on deleting the accounts but phew, there are a lot of them! Feel free to report them if you see that the member still has not been deleted.

FYI - as I have been deleting the SPAM accounts, I've  chosen the option to remove the SPAM emails from everyone's Minti mail box. This means that you won't see the Minti mail here on Minti, but you may see the email in your personal email box (if you've set up your account to have a copy of your Minti mails in your personal email). THE SPAMMERS HAVE NO ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL.

Thanks!
Izzy

1. Write great articles between now and at the end of Mother's day (May 10, 2009).  The articles do not need to be Mother's Day related, but they do need to be parenting related (See RachelCook's Minti's Editorial Guidelines advice).

2.The articles must recieve at least 10 votes to be considered.
 
(Should there be multiple articles that have the same score, the article with the most votes will win. If the articles have the same scores and the same amount of votes, then the Minti Team will have to chose the winners.)

3. The top 3 rated articles win m$10,000!!!!

4. Write multiple articles to boost your chance of winning.

5. Articles must adhere to the ToS and CoH and free of copyright issues.

Good luck!

-Minti Team

Day 2 was a vast improvement in that they sat on the potty longer, but still no success. Thing 1 was definitely harder to keep on the chair though. On Day 3, I decided to concentrate on Thing 2 instead. I sat her down and she willingly stayed sitted for about longer than 5 minutes but she doesn't do anything. And a few minutes after putting her pull-up back on, she does her pee pee. Oi!

We just need one "hit" and I am confident Thing 2 will be on her way to going back to using big girl undies for the rest of her training.

Minti Conflict Resolution:

1. Keep private via Minti mail or private group.
2. Try to resolve the issue among the parties that are directly involved.
3. If the issue is not laid to rest, or gets out of hand and spills to the public areas of Minti, I will have to intervene. (Please don't let it get to this point as there is only a few things I can do to intervene and they are not pleasant - i.e. warnings, account time-out and account deletion (after repeated warnings).

Regards,
Izzy
Minti Community Admin

Please bear with me. I am very busy so I am not up to date with Minti goings-on and I am behind. We have been living with my in-laws for two weeks. During these two weeks, we are remodeling their family room, which will be ours to use along with the basement which is our current bedroom (it's tough to sleep with all the kids and us in one room!). The remodeling has so far included ripping up the shaggy carpet, washing, sanding the walls, priming the walls and now painting. All these are one mainly by my husband and I at night. My in-laws work and so we can't do work during the day....we're simply too busy watching the kids in a home that is just too interesting with lots of breakables and cabinets full of breakable things. Then on Sunday night I make the 3 1/2 hour drive (which I cut down to 3 hrs by speeding) up to our house and more cleaning there by myself to get it ready to sell, hopefully by the end of April. I stay there for 1 day, 2 nights (to also go to my knee physical therapy) and then I drive back here to the in-laws. It is very tiring.

But 2 days ago, my physical therapist has released me. Yay! Though not completely. I still need to do excercises but I will see if I can do it alone. In about 3 weeks I am seeing the sports medicine to possibly get one more cortisone shots and keep doing strengthening exercises.

Anyway, I see your emails... I just haven't been on the computer as much I usually do.

Regards,
Izzy

I will be making the trip back up to our house ( 3 1/2 hour drive) once a week to keep up with my physical therapy for my knee and stay for a couple of days to clean. It'll be slow, but at least I can do it in peace. But while here at the in-laws, we are helping renovate a family room that will then be our living space. They've been wanting to renovate it but just haven't gotten around to it. Now with a couple more abled bodies, we can get it moving. We've wiped down paneling (it's a 60's house) to prep it for painting (but only after sanding the entire thing). We've ripped up the shaggy carpet (also from the 60's!). It's a lot of work, but it's the least we can do. The in-laws are helping us out and so we're trying to return the favor.

The kids are getting adjusted as best they can and we are of course, having to re-establish our routines. Curious George is excited to be here and would barely nap and get long enough sleep so he is over stimulated by dinner time. It may take a week or so to get him used to things. Then of course, there are times when he asks for toys that are still at our house and when we say we don't have it, he throws a major melt down! Oi. We packed toys that we think he's likely to play with and then of course he asks for something we didn't take with us. There are now a lot of things I have to take back with me from our house!

Hubby is still looking for jobs and applying to everywhere in the U.S. (but we're still avoiding California since it's too expensive to live there!). But since there are a lot of unemployed people in the US applying for the same jobs, it's not so easy.

Until next time! I am utterly and trully exhausted and tomorrow is more work. I am dreading the day when we have to sand paneling because it will generate a lot of dust and I'm worried about the kids.

• You must reply to Minti mails by logging onto Minti first and using the Minti mail. If you reply using your personal email, the email will just go to the Minti system and not the intended recipient. While I don't mind forwarding emails to the appropriate members, sometimes it isn't easy to figure out who the intended recipient is.
• The new email notification feature tells you that someone has commented on your article/blog/etc. But you must log on to Minti to reply to it.

Cheers!

We don't usually get this much snow around my neck of the woods, so we are unprepared to enjoy it, but it doesn't mean we couldn't. Daddy wrapped a boogie board with lawn trash bag and duct tape. It seemed like it was going to work.

Nope, it didn't work.

And then it was the pizza pan's turn. Didn't work either.

There are a few things that worked against Daddy's ingenuity here: the snow was too dry and fluffy and the our hill wasn't much of a hill. Later in the day, we tried Curious George's sandbox cover and of course that only provided a lot of laugh and no success. We had a lot of fun though!

I tried calling stores around the area if they had any sleds left and I got laughed at. They've all been snagged by the less ingenious people in the area who instead opted to get drive out and buy a real sled. lol

This is Thing 2, she was up first. It was hilarious the way she just stood there. But she definitely enjoyed it because she didn't want to come back in.

After a quick exchange of clothes, it was Thing 1's turn. You can hear Thing 2 in the background wailing because she wanted to stay outside. Thing 2 didn't like it when some snow got on her face.

I have videos of Daddy and Curious George's attempt to sled (I say attemp because we didn't have a sled!) that is so hilarious, but I will have to post it another time.

Like most mornings when Curious George wakes up first (which happens 95% of the time), he crawls into our bed and 'wakes' us up. By 7am, Daddy and I finally woke up. We cuddle/wrestle/tickle with Curious George until we all finally make it downstairs for breakfast. The girls sometimes joins us.

This morning, I decided to make up a story and asked what name we'd like our hero to be. Daddy said "Machupichu" (from some of my Filipino relatives' pronunciation of Matthew - ma-chu), and Curious George suggested "Marcaroni".

Macaroni Machupichu is a seemingly normal little boy who goes on wild adventures. Today, he was called on by the fairy people to save their Fairy Princess who was kidnapped by the tribe of Farting Frogs (thanks to Daddy for this villainous frogs who use toxic gas to fight their enemies) in the jungles of Mexico. To make the long story short, Machupichu rescued the Princess, who then granted him one wish as token of appreciation. Thanks to Curious George's contribution to the story, Machupichu happily ate/swam in the giant bowl of orange icecream.

Curious George wanted another story, so it was Daddy's turn to make one up. Daddy brought Macaroni Machupichu in space where he had to rescue his whole family from an evil empire. After braving through bad guys and obstacles, Machupichu Skywalker (as Macaroni was also known in space) was able to free his mother, and his two sisters, Kitty Wan Kinobi and Jojo Binx. But his father was nowhere to be found. In the end, Machupichu battled with Darth Vader (I can't quite remember if this is the evil dude's name that Daddy used) and defeated him. Of course, Darth Vader confessed that he is Machupichu's father. (By this time, Curious George had a very sad face and was about to cry.) But then Daddy turned the story around at the last minute and Darth and Machupichu ended up happily together with the rest of the family.

Oh where will Macaroni Machupichu end up next.