Tradin' up.

My husband loves to fish. He has been dreaming and Craigslist browsing for a boat for about three years now. It is his only want. Well, except for world peace and all that crap. You know.

We cannot afford a boat. And there is no room at the inn for a boat if you know what I mean.

Around Christmas, Hubz came home one day with quite a fish tale. He had found a man he met through his work that wanted to trade Hubz a bass boat for his ATV. Hubz has had an ATV for several years that has taken up a portion of my back porch. This ATV needed to be fixed up and sold. I always wondered why Hubz had been taking his own sweet time getting around to fixing the thing. Evidently, he was a dreamer and had hoped it would be useful for just an occassion as he found presented to him then.

I personally thought the whole thing was a little hokey. Who would trade a boat for an ATV? Well, we met the one person that would, evidently. We now own an old bass boat that, as far as I can tell from the pictures, has absolutely no glitter on it at all. Who would buy a bass boat with no glitter? Listen, I have spent enough hours of my life at a Bass Pro Shop begging Hubz to stop drooling on the boats and take me home. I know a thing or two about some glittery boats. In my opinion, the more glitter, the more a boat costs. I can respect that. I value my glittery things, too.

But I was against this trade from the very beginning. I had my arguing points. I work for attorneys. I know how to argue! This is how it all went down:

1) We can't afford insurance on a boat. = His answer is you don't need insurance on a boat that has no lien against it. That's fair. Just don't run your uninsured boat into someone else's boat and that logic will work out just fine.

2) We can't afford boat registration. - His reply is "it's only 30 bucks or something." We'll see. He might still win this point but I doubt it.

3) We can't afford gas/fuel for a boat. "The guys will help chip in for that when they go fishing with me." Ummhum. I know his friends. Or maybe he is trading friends, too?

4) He will never be home on the weekends now. - His answer is "sure I will". I'm honestly not sure if this is really a point for or against boat ownership but right now I'm using it as a point against. But I've have learned a thing or two from recent political candidates and know I can flip flop on any given point on any given day.

5) He will expect me to go fishing with him. - He just blinked at me and said "don't you want to go fishing?" I just blinked right back at him and say "do you even know who I am?" The last time I went fishing with him I found myself and my child in the middle of a lake tsunami. That's a real thing, right? Trying to outrace a thunderstorm by gunning a boat 45mph, hitting each and every single wave and then being thrown back into the air for the next wave, while being pelted by raindrop daggers while trying to keep my big baby birthweight-leftover butt perched on a slippery 5 inch wide fiberglass seat while holding a freaked out screaming two year old banshee is not my idea of a fun afternoon of fishing. I'll pass.

I think my points are all very valid. But I must have lost this argument because this boat is now parked at my father-in-law's shop being man-oogled by the fellas.

Oh joy. I sure can't wait for warm weather now.

Birthday Sensory Tub

I read a ton of Montessori learning blogs and have read a lot on sensory tubs.  Sensory tubs aren't necessarily a Montessori activity but they seem to go hand in hand with each other.  I've wanted to make Bean one for awhile and thought since her birthday is coming up, I would try a birthday-themed tub. If you aren't familiar with sensory tubs, Counting Coconuts has a great post all about them.

I found a recipe by Two Little Seeds for Rainbow Rice. I used neon food coloring and the colors turned out really bright and festive.

I used balloons, candles, small erasers shaped like cake and ice cream, some Mickey Mouse favors since she will be having a Minnie Mouse themed party, some small butterfly favors, craft sticks and some bouncy balls. I gave her a colorful ice cream spoon to use to dig through the rice. I found all of these items as well as the green tub to hold it all at Dollar Tree. It all cost about $25-30 dollars but these are items that can be used with other themes later on, so the cost wasn't that bad.

Bean loves this activity.  She isn't allowed to take any of the items away from the tub which makes them a little more special since she can only play with them while working on the tub.  She also has done surprisingly well with keeping the rice in the tub.  She "lubs actibities".  She asks to do it daily and she usually spends a half hour on it at a time.

Ice Ice Baby

I borrowed that title line from an email I sent to several friends recently. Yeah, I'm almost out of original ideas. Sorry.

Sooooo...what have you all been up to?

We've just been up to ice. Ice. That's it. Ice should be in a glass. Not all over the ground.

Sunday it snowed here. Snow in the South is usually a fun time. We usually get a day or two off from school and work and we get to make snowmen and snow angels with that 2 or 3 inch white loveliness. It's usually something to look forward to.

Not this time.  This time school has been out for four days and counting.  Today was my first day back at work and after a treacherous 2 hour slide drive in, I wanted a stiff drink - no ice. 

Right after it snowed, the freezing rain came and encapsulated all that white loveliness in a back-braking hard icy shell. This stuff is the worst.

We took Bean out on Monday to see how far we could slide her up and down the front yard. Bean bowling.    She quickly got bored of this game and became infuriated because there was no fluffy white goodness to make Mr. Snowman.

We tried out her Tinkerbelle 4 wheeler on the ice but she didn't get to go very far. Dad even tried to give her a helping foot to get her going. She was not amused.  "Don't do dat!" 

She tried to make a snow angel. She just looked like she was having a fit. She was not amused.

I am hoping the next time Mother Nature sends her beautiful white snow to us, she makes the evil weather stepchild freezing rain stay home.  My baby wants to make snowmen and snow angels, please. 

Should I stay or should I go?

Something a little scary happened last week that has troubled my thoughts and my feelings about this blog. I am a big Facebook game player. Yes, I am one of those people whose Facebook feeds are filled with game posts instead of incredibly interesting links and statuses. Sorry.

So in all of my gaming, I accept a lot of people as game friends. I have gotten to know quite a few really nice people just through playing these games. Sometimes I go to the requesting person’s page and “qualify” them as an actual player before I accept their requests. Sometimes I get too busy and don’t.

There was a man on Facebook that was outed last week as being a pedophile. He was one of my “friends”. I saw another person’s status alerting everyone that this man was a pedophile and he would steal copies of pictures of children on Facebook pages. As soon as I read this status, I went and looked at this man’s page. He evidently had several pages. Some had been flagged by Facebook. The one I looked at showed one picture of a man sitting in front of a webcam with two girls on his lap. At first glance, you would think that this was a dad holding his daughters and having their picture taken. But the more I sat there looking at that one picture, the more the faces of the girls in the picture looked off to me. They looked alarmed or shocked in some way. I can’t describe it any better than that. I guess they looked empty and shocked.

Do I have any proof that this person is a pedophile? No. I don’t. The best proof I can give is that Facebook flagged his pages and the feeling I got from this one picture of him and these girls. That’s all the proof I have.

But as soon as I read that this guy could have at one time been on my page and possibly even this blog and viewed and copied pictures of my daughter, I became scared and enraged. I work for criminal defense attorneys. I have worked there a long time. We have had clients accused of being pedophiles. We don’t take many of those cases. I can count them on one hand. Nobody wants to take these cases. Some have been completely innocent. Some have not. From the cases of the ones that have not been innocent, I know a little bit about how a pedophile thinks and acts. It is very scary. It is especially scary to a mother. You can’t help but think of your own children and you immediately pray that nothing like that ever happens to your sweet child.

But after dwelling on this for a few days I just wonder if what I am doing here is the right thing to do. Is it fair to my daughter to post her picture up all over the internet where they are free game to anyone? You might think that pedophiles only want illicit pictures of children. You would be wrong. They only need to have a child in the picture for a pedophile to want them.

I have always been careful on this blog to not mention my daughter’s real name at all. Bean is how I refer to her because it is a nickname but also to protect her identity a little bit. I’m not stupid or naive though. I know that it takes only moderate computer ability for someone to find all the personal information about anyone on the internet in very little time.

But I still wonder if I should keep posting up her pictures? Should I keep talking about her on here? I know this has been a long standing debate with many on the internet. As my daughter gets older, my thoughts on this subject are changing. I know there will come a time that this blog will be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done to her. I can hear it now. There will be a time when she will probably say “Mom, I swear if this winds up on that blog, I will never speak to you again.” But that’s still a ways away. Right now she enjoys looking at the computer and seeing her picture there. She will point to it and say “Is dat me?”

But am I being careful enough now? Should I keep going? Should I find another focus?

I don’t have the answers to these questions today. Until I know for sure, I have decided to put it in God’s hands and ask him that he keep my child safe from this type of evil. That’s all I can do.

So for now, I will trust and carry on.

Wordless Wednesday - Snoozin' at the store

How?

Down with the goody bag.

The time has come to start planning Bean's 3rd birthday party. Excuse me as I cry a little. Three years! Goodness. She was just born it seems like. Anyhoo...let's continue.

In planning, you, and I mean me, have to come up with a theme. Our theme this year is Minnie Mouse. She beat me out at Halloween and now at birthday time, too. Stupid cute mouse.

Again, anyhoo...so we have a theme. After you, and I mean me, decide on a theme, we set off to the party store. Sidebar - where the heck were these stores when we were kids? I am very upset that I didn't have a chance to run crazy in a store like that when I was little.

Anyhoo times three...back at the party store, we pick out the Minnie Mouse junk that will show off our theme. After we have that stuff loaded into the cart, we venture over to the bane of my existence this week - the goody bag aisle.

Who in the holy cheese came up with the idea of giving out goody bags at childrens birthday parties? I'd like to slap the taste right out of their mouth. Was it Martha? Martha is great and all but sometimes her ideas wind up costing me a whole lotta money.

I feel that giving out goody bags is like bribing people to come to parties. Then why do I do them? Cause I don't want to be the un-cool one that doesn't give them out. Yep, I said it. Peer pressure still gets me. I know I could take a stand and not hand them out. I know I could. But I'm scared. I'm scared of those little kids that now expect a prize for showing up.

Why don't grown-ups give out goody bags at their birthday parties? Some do, I guess. I don't get invited to those parties. Humph. And you can't count weddings and showers cause you have to dress up for those and if I have to wear pantyhose, I deserve a goody bag...and alcohol.

We never got goody bags at any birthday party we went to when we were growing up. You know what our goody bags were? Cake and freaking ice cream. A good time with your friends for an afternoon. Those were our prizes. I never expected a goody bag at a party. I hoped for punch but never a bag filled with crappy plastic toys and candy. You know what that is? That's Halloween, people! Not birthday parties!

I'm fired up now. I'm gonna take a stand against these goody bags. No more will they be the bane of my existence. I will never be a slave again to the goody bag.

I'll start next year.

"I lub Santa"

I should have posted these pictures last week so they would be a little more timely but I decided that I wanted to spend my time last week with my daughter instead of blogging. I hope you all understand and forgive me.

I did want to share some Christmas morning pictures with you all. This Christmas was so much fun because this was the first one that Bean really got into. We didn't get to get out and do all of the Christmasy things I wanted to but we, with the grace of God, will have next Christmas to do that stuff.  This year Bean was always so excited. She "lubbed" Santa all the time. He was the coolest person ever in her eyes.

For Christmas, Bean got a Disney Princess (I forget which Princess) 4-wheeler. She loves to ride it. Although she thinks the way to stop is to drive it right into something. But that's probably hereditary though. We can't all be perfect at everything.

She also got a Hello Kitty camera and some Hello Kitty makeup. Hello Kitty isn't retiring for awhile now that she has been discovered by this kid.

I found a shop on eBay that sold Montessori-type toys.  I, no Santa, got her a set of wooden sorting dolls. I asked Bean to hold one up and smile for the camera.  This is what I got.

Thanks, kid.  I see those smart alec ways are already showing up.

She got a Pillow Pet because every single time one of those danged commercials came on tv, Bean would break out in a whole choreographed song and dance about how only the Pillow Pet would make her life complete.  See how the Pillow Pet is thrown off to the side in this picture.  There it remains - thrown off to the side.  I like it.  It's fluffy soft.

Every time Bean would open a package she would say "I lub Santa".  At one point, I handed her a package and said "this is from Mommy and Daddy".  She looked at me and said "No.  It's from Santa.".  Fat man better appreciate all the props he got from our house that morning.

I hope you all had a great holiday, too.