ditl 4/20/08

40+ pictures... We started the day at MB's house, and Charles wound up in FL. :)

Stupid

Stupid me shouldn't have checked the stupid weather before bed. We have a stupid tornado watch until stupid 1am.

Gah.

The other night, Adia pretended she was pouring water on my head with stuff from her pretend kitchen.  Guess who just wandered over to me and "poured" on my head.

Monkey see, monkey do.  And they certainly are a pair of monkeys!

Beating my head against the wall

My groupmate has blown off getting online twice this week. He said he'd be on last night, but from looking at the "views" to my post asking what time he'd be on, he never even looked at it. Charles and I are having a date Saturday night (whaaa?), the paper is due on Monday, and I still have to have time in there to do Bio homework.

The funny thing was that he was all gung-ho about getting it done last Thursday. Because he thought it was due that night. Once I told him it wasn't, he said we could work on it Tuesday. And then didn't show up for that. Then said we could work on it Thursday. Again with the no-show.

I'm sure it's possible he had something come up. But a 2 second phone call would tell me that, and I could devote 100% of my time to the other stuff I have due. (I still probably devoted about 80% of my time to writing my L. acidophilus paper, but I still had to spend time (a) watching to see if he got online and (b) getting annoyed when he didn't.)

Whatever, I'm all but finished with my Bio papers, and they are also due Monday. :) I've turned in two of them, and I just need to proof the last one and add a few links to videos, etc.

Vagina

This study is just fascinating to me.

As a summary, they were studying the oral flora of newborns compared to the vaginal-rectal flora of their mothers, specifically looking at lactobacilli transmission through birth. Granted, it's an older study (1975) but still really freaking cool as far as I'm concerned! (Just in case you're wondering, there does seem to be a correlation at birth, but it's pretty much gone in the infant after 6 days.)

And when your choices for a paper are basically botulism, diptheria, tuberculosis, anthrax, tetanus, leprosy, listeria, or lactobacilli... the vaginal flora wins. If I have to read about something, at least let it not be deadly. (I already did that with oomycota and fish kills and plant blights and such.)

Success!

She made it to the potty all by herself! This is after we went through about 10 pairs of undies yesterday with no successes.

I'm a cool parent! who knew? :P

You Will Be a Cool Parent

You seem to naturally know a lot about parenting, and you know what kids need. You can tell when it's time to let kids off the hook, and when it's time to lay down the law. While your parenting is modern and hip, it's not over the top. You know that there's nothing cool about a parent who acts like a teenager... or a drill sergeant!

Would You Be a Cool Parent?

Sick

Don't read this if you're eating. Or plan to soon.

Poor Adia now has the tummy bug that Francesca had last week. We heard her coughing, so Charles went back and found her covered in puke. It's not so bad with the under 2 crowd, since it's mostly breastmilk. And I thought the picture of partially digested ham sandwich in a stomach at the Science Museum last week was pretty cool. Partially digested turkey sandwich in a four year old's bed? Nowhere near as cool. She's laying on the couch right now going between the lands of asleep and awake. In an annoying twist, her striped sheets are dirty. Luckily, I just cannot get rid of the sheets that were on the bed when Francesca was born, so we had clean sheets for her. The flower sheets are in the wash, and we're up until at least that load goes into the dryer.

She was fine all day. They spent a good chunk of it outside, because it was nice and warm.

5 lbs.

of honey. That's what is sitting in jars in my sink right now. 5 lbs (or a half gallon) of honey from the county next door. I figured we had to do something about allergies, and C recommended local honey. In the miracle that is the internet, I found a beekeeper's association and they hooked me up with someone who had some honey from last year. (They don't harvest until summer.)

Yummmmmm!

In related news, we got an email that our fruit/veg co-op starts May 13. I am SO excited. I feel good when I get locally-grown food. :)

Me: You asshole! Beating up on that pokemon. 
Charles: I'm a little ball of fluff 
Me: You're a little ball of asshole!


This was intended for, and goes far better in Twitter.  Unfortunately Twidget does not want to work for me.  Just like YIM didn't want to work for me in the beta version.  Argh.  But I got it all worked out. :)  And the Blogger widget works, so I can't complain too much.

Just testing this out... just downloaded the Blogger widget to post without going to the website.  :)

I need to upload pictures of a few things (namely dinner the other night, my misadventures in mineral makeup, and our trip to the Science Museum yesterday.)

Children's Museum

Another picture-heavy posting. :)

Charles had to go to Long Island overnight for a business trip, so we hung out all day at C's house on Wednesday (after a LLL meeting). Most of the good pictures of my kids include her kids, so I'm not posting sans permission. The girls had an amazing time (and the mamas/mama-aged persons did too.) We didn't leave until 7, so I had to order dinner (pizza) on the drive home.

This morning, we got up and headed to Richmond to go to the Children's Museum. We stopped at Sheetz, home to the infamous "sprinkled doughnuts" and got second breakfast. The route was pretty straightforward, so I didn't print it, and instead relied on memory. HAHAHAHA. I hung a left when I should've gone right to get on Boulevard. I tried calling Dad, because he used to live in Richmond, but the phones were on hold since he was home with a bad cold. I wound up pulling off as soon as I got B on the phone (as that was the first spot I found) and getting my GPS out of the trunk. It was an easy trip back in the right direction, and Adia got to see a canoe on top of the SUV beside us at a stoplight. (We'd been talking about canoes on the trip down, because I had read that there was a "James River Playground" at the museum.)

We got to the museum, and it was a little overcast. There's a big echo thing (I'm sure Charles will be along soon to tell me a technical term for it) out front. Francesca seemed a little unsure, but Adia thought it was awesome to make really big echoes. We headed inside and paid, and then we went to the main part of the museum. It was a lot smaller than I remembered (funny how that works. :) The girls were first attracted to the big play area mentioned above. I didn't get any good pictures of them up in the treetops, but they were a little unsure about that at first anyway. The little logs they are climbing over are the end of the "riverbed." It's a translucent plastic, so you can see the pebbles and frogs and stuff underneath. My kids walk on water! ;P


Having fun in the dino area. :) There was a stegosaurus slide that both girls climbed up to. Adia shoved Francesca down it, but then decided she didn't want to go down it herself. Sisterly love, that.

We have a picture of Adia, aged <2 months at a science museum being held up to a measuring thing like this.
Next was a model of the digestive system. Adia crawled all the way through, but I had to back out after Francesca found a way out and I didn't want to get stuck Pooh-style in the tunnel. Speaking of poo, I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it smelled of dirty disposable diaper. (Not knocking the throwaways, but they have a different smell than cloth, seriously.)
A kid-sized Ukrop's. Adia was in heaven. This was one that had self-checkout and everything. ;P Francesca, however, was willing to leave her basket of groceries in the middle of the store and take off.
Praise whoever decided to put the gated baby area in there. It's recommended for ages 0-3, and Adia did get bored pretty quickly, but it was soooo nice not to worry about anyone falling or escaping for a few minutes. (And by "anyone" I mean Francesca. The store area had signs asking kids to put away their groceries when they were done, so I helped Adia get everything back on their proper shelves. While I was doing this, Francesca had wandered around the side of the store and was leaning up against a pretend truck beside it. She was fairly well trapped and I was in a good position to (a) watch her and (b) chase if necessary. The kid stood there for at least 5 minutes before she tried to go anywhere, and she never once looked around for me. So have my work cut out for me there.)Adia serves up something to eat in the kitchen.

She had a blast in here with two little boys who were a year or two older than her. They were making "Everything", which entails putting "healthy stuff" into a bowl and stirring it. This is a mom-to-a-toddler's nightmare, as it's a bunch of pretend food that lots of of other kids have either (a) handled, (b) put in their mouths, or (c) both! Strengthens their immune systems, right? Also, who says there isn't a gang problem in Richmond? (Yes, I'm making fun of something drawn by a little kid. I also have been known to mock talent show performances by kids the same age as my own. I'm bad, what can I say?)

The water tables. They smelled like a swimming pool, but the kids didn't seem to care. They both loooooved them. I'm not sure if more time was spent here or in the treetops, but it would have to be close. There were working-ish levees in both of them. (I'm sure it was "ish" only because of people like me who want to make the levees overflow. :) Both girls got in on making the blocks go down the spiral tube.


We didn't really spend THAT much time in dino-land, it just afforded the best photo ops. :)

And finally, we spent a very small amount of time in the theater. There were like three moms with their kids in there when I took the girls in. I sat down to nurse Francesca and the room was cleared out in about 2 minutes. Seriously. Oh well, not my problem. Adia wanted to dance onstage, so when Francesca was done, I put on her tutu. She picked out Francesca's outfit. (She wasn't exactly grateful for Adia's choice either, but I'm not totally sure I can blame her.) They danced for a little bit, and then they played in the puppet theater for a few minutes. I tried out the light board and was sorely disappointed that it didn't work. :P Then we hit up the art studio, where the girls drew with markers and played with gluesticks for a few. I think I've figured out Adia's issue with the library last week -- she does not transition well from crafts. Once we got out of there and she had a few minutes to play in the trees again, she was totally fine to leave. We tried to take pictures in the photo booth (and I'll scan them later) but Francesca wanted nothing to do with it. So they're hilarious pictures. Then we headed home in the rain and cold. Now they're in my bed sleeping, and I'm waiting for Charles to get home in just a little bit. He got an earlier flight but then ran into traffic, so hopefully he'll get in soon. (Also, I'm beat! The museum did its job of wearing them out, but I hadn't counted on my feeling like this.)