Since I’ve been so slow at posting I thought I’d give a little treat to everyone, and a healthy dose of future embarrasment for my daughter, by showing you a nice picture montage of her toe picking entertainment!

This is going to knock your socks off!!

Can you see the look of concentration on her face? Mouth hanging wide open like a mascara applying woman.

The need to check between each toe thoroughly is great!

“What? Can’t a girl pick in peace around here?”

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“Fine! Watch if you must! But this lint has got…to…go!”

“Ahhh, lets see… I think I just spotted one more little speck…”

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“DONE! Now I can amaze you with my brilliant sock putting on skills!”

“Cuz if you put them on your hands you won’t get lint between your toes!”

“Excuse me… I just got a new text and I have a tweet to reply to.”

As you can see my little one is a busy girl.  So much lint to pick and so little time!

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I finally had to give up and take her to her room for some serious rocking and lulling.  As I walked up the stairs she shivered and grinned at me in excitement, like we were heading to her own personal after party, even though it was already 2 hours past her usual bed time.   Please note, we don’t have a strict bed time since she  will usually start winding down around the same time every night.  However, sometimes it will vary give or take an hour now and then.  But this time is was much much later than normal and that just doesn’t do well for getting her to sleep easily or for Mommy getting to bed to kiss Daddy goodnight.  So here I have a happy, giggling, giddy baby, who should have been asleep eons earlier, grinning at me and excited thinking we are going somewhere special and not up to rock and lull her to sleep.  Or at least that was my goal.  The rocking and lulling.  Instead, as soon as she realized what was happening, my happy, smily baby turned into the screaming  beast of my nightmares.  After a lot of wrestling with her to get her into a good rocking position and getting her to stop trying to kick me in the head we proceeded to rock and lull.  This usually includes me singing but she busted that bubble when I started to sing and she joined the choir.  

Long story short.  My dear little singing princess FINALLY fell asleep after an exceptionally long time of rocking and lulling in dead silence that had me dozing off in the chair before she did.  I’m really not sure how long of a cat nap I took.  I had her tucked up tight in my arms, in effort to still the kicking legs, so I knew I wouldn’t have dropped her and surprisingly, I was still rocking the chair when I reopened my eyes.  But there she was.  Cue heavenly melodious choir. Quiet and asleep.  The beautiful angel that she is.  After all is said and done, and all the lessons are learned, I can’t say I really won the battle last night. I’m not sure who did, since I’m pretty sure I simply bored and dulled (not lulled)  her to sleep.   What ever works I guess. Is it nap time yet?

I saw these today at my local get everything including a haircut, plunger, new tires and gas, grocery store.  What is the world coming to that we had to mess with mother nature in such a way?  This is not natural. This is not they way roses are supposed to look.  They didn’t even smell nice.  They didn’t smell like anything.   

Ladies and Gents, somethings in this world are just wrong!  Wrong I tell you!  Littering is wrong. Spitting on someone’s shoe is wrong.  Stealing change from your local homeless blind man so you can pay your bus fair without breaking a dollar is…well…that’s just theft.  Anyways, folks! What do you see in this picture?  I see poor tormented living genes that were fiddled with and mutilated into something artificial. I see starving cells fed with food coloring and not healthy water.  I see mother nature getting slapped with the ugly stick. Why did the manufacturers (I can’t say cultivators because these things had to be spawned some other way then the pure wholesome way) of this tragedy in rose form feel the need to play with nature like this? For shame!  You should have your green thumbs revoked!  That or just be fed colored food till your toenails start to turn blue, pink, salmon, yellow, green, and purple.  

Oh the horror, the horror!!!!!!!

I know many of my readers are fellow bloggers so I have some questions for you, how many times have you written something and then realized the impact of what you wrote could haunt you, and bring old buried emotions to the surface, for years to come? And then you either store away your post or simply wipe away history by hitting the delete key?  As writers of public/personal blogs there is a certain distance we get to maintain from our readers if we choose.  We can stay anonymous and only write about funny things. We can keep to a theme and not write anything personal.  Or we can choose to open our family vaults and share our lives and histories.  This is where I have questions for you.  As bloggers, do we have a responsibility to censor ourselves as we would when speaking to strangers or  should we write like we would when sharing things with our own families behind closed doors?  Especially when the story written is about our own families? And I’m not talking about the time when you sister’s boyfriend’s mother walked in while they were having sex and released her attack poodle on the poor unsuspecting boyfriend.  I’m talking nitty gritty, skeletons in the closet, family secrets.  ”How much of your dirty laundry do you share with the world or do you keep to a theme in your blog?

Comments are open.  

Please twitter  this too so we can get a good dialog flowing.   I think it might be interesting to see where this goes.

She cuter when she’s smiling and not snarky because Mommy dared to stick her in her crib.  

Had to toss this one in there.  I looked into my kitchen the other day and saw this.  I know it’s just a stuffed dog and a spoon, but it was just odd looking.  The lone doggy and the spoon.  Is doggy going to fetch the spoon?  Anyways, it was cute and I’m smelly and that’s all I can think about.

Smell ya later!

On a lighter note!  EJ ate green beans last night!!!  Whoo hoo!!!!!  Of course I soaked them in chicken broth first but I’m not complaining!

Tonight, as my daughter was stuffing hand full after hand full of pork roast into her greedy little mouth, I was staring at the broccoli on my plate soaking up the juice from my own piece of roast and I thought, why not?  What’s the worst that can happen?  Will she shudder like she’s having a mini seizure because I stuck a piece of “food” in her mouth that tasted like ear wax?   Will she spit it out *raspberries* style all over the place, showering me, and everything within spitting range, with chewed up green goo?  Will she gag like she was poisoned? And will she barf everything she just ate up just because I dared to shove a vegetable in her?  Hmmmmm,  been there done all that, let’s give it a go, duck and cover, and see what happens.  

I decided I had to place the offensive food on her tray in a manor as to not create suspicions. Acting as if I was innocently shoveling more cut up bits of tasty stuff, like the meat I prepared for, on there.  Meanwhile crossing my fingers hoping that she wouldn’t notice the offending color and refuse to even sample it.  We did have a moment when she looked at the mini-tree like broccoli with a look that would match a diplomat’s suspicions about the strange white powder sprinkled on their toast.    But, since my carnivorous little girl is also the bravest little tyke I’ve ever seen, she took a bite of the meat laced veggie.   And yes folks, she did an automatic shutter.  But only a small tremor on the richter scale.  And then…… she took another bite!!!!!!!  And then another!!!!!  ”OMG!  She’s eating it”, Dear Hubby and whispered to each other, too afraid to make a big deal about it risking her turning her nose up at it out of principle.  And then……..Screeching halt to the eating…. Damn! What happened?  Does she know I was trying to give her health food?  Does she really know that it will give her gas?  Does she know I tricked her?  Am I about to take a broccoli bath?

But then I took the chance and forked a small piece and ate it myself.  Making a big animated deal about how yummy it was.  Then I attempted to feed another piece to the child who was staring me down with very vivid veggie suspicions.  And….She ate it.  Then I fed her some more.  Then I fed her the entire serving even scraping the leftovers from the tray.  

Wow!  She did it!  She ate a full serving of green veggies!  And I didn’t have to coat it with cheese or ranch dressing.  Only a slight coating of meat juice.  Who would a thunk it?!?  Tomorrow night we’ll try green beans laced with beef broth.  I’m fairly certain my daughter will never be capable of being a vegetarian unless her veggies are covered in something that used to moo, crow, or snort. Watch out herbivores, baby T-rex is out there waiting to eat you.

Happy Thursday ya’ll!

I like having neighbors. I like not knowing them very well or at least being g able to pick the ones I want to enjoy my time with. In the country your limited to whomever your property line is attached to. That or you can choose driving sometimes very long distances to find a friend. Another suburban bonus is that your friends don’t mind visiting you. The country can get really lonely.  I forgot about that in my urging to be surrounded by land and not people.

I also enjoy the activities that are within a 10 minute drive in any direction.  Who doesn’t love the fact that their ice cream will make it home before it melts and a cab ride home won’t cost such a fortune that it’s just better to sleep it off in a parking lot?  I enjoy waking up in the morning and not having to plan my day around the hour long drive each way to make it somewhere interesting.  I enjoy actually being able to visit the big brand name department stores in person and not just in a catalog.  I enjoy being able to return items to said stores also without hassle or paying for shipping.  I like restaurant options and I like a solid nightlife with live music.  I like pavement.  The dirt road that my house was on growing up tossed so much dust up every day that dusting and keeping surfaces clean was an impossible tasks.  However, it did provide an activity for us kiddos to do when we got bored, which was often.

I’ve always liked the idea of raising my kids on a ranch like I was raised.  I look back fondly on the animals and the chores which was how I earned my allowance, although I despised them at the time.  It really was a great way to learn respect for life and hard work.  But I was also lonely as a kid.  I remember too many times throwing frisbees and balls in the field and having no one to catch them and throw them back.  My loneliness was in a lot of ways part of what molded the person I am today. I had to learn how to entertain myself with my brain.  Do I regret the way I was raised?  Not a bit.  In many ways I will always cherish it.  Would I have changed a few things however, as a kid?  Definitely.  I would have lived a few miles closer to town for starters.  I would have had other kids as neighbors to play with.  I would have had someone to throw my frisbee back.  But I would have missed my horse.

Notice the empty basket.  She’s AWESOME at emptying baskets.  Talent my friends! You can see where she was sitting in the empty space behind the red bear.

And she left as fast as she came….

And found her next victim.  The evil box of baby wipes.

I’m not sure who, what, or where this came from but I had to share the love.  I went to a friend’s house for the first time this weekend and was just tickled with a picture frame she had sitting on the back of her toilet in the guest bathroom. I know, I know.  Of everything I could become absorbed in, like peeking in cabinets and behind the shower curtain, I found the bathroom art the most intriguing of things and of course I HAD to share it with you.  But in my defense some of the worlds best pieces of advice have come in the form of bathroom art.  Take for instance one smart bit of advice found in public men’s rooms across the country:

“Don’t eat the white mint”.  

Makes sense.  I’m mean even the thought… ewwwww.  Or my personal favorite:

“If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie”.  

As a woman of course I love that one.  And just for shock value, because you know I have to,  I’ll add this little gem I found one day on a random car trip where I just couldn’t “wait” and we we’re in west Texas with not a single tree in site:

“Everybody pisses on the floor, be a hero and s**t on the ceiling”.

I was a little afraid to look but my neck curving upwards was involuntary and I was forced to look but, thankfully, the whole room was grimy enough I couldn’t tell if someone took on that challenge. 

So, as you will be able to tell when I read this piece of great advice, I was captivated and inspired:

“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and proclaiming WOW, WHAT A RIDE!”

Lovin’ it people!!!  

Happy Monday ya’ll!