My kid talks a lot. Much like her father, there is constant chatter coming out of her mouth most of the time she is awake. Some days it drives me up a wall (especially between the two of them, sometimes I long for real and true quiet), but I also really enjoy getting to hear what's in her brain. With every uptick in her verbal skills, we get a ( Read more... )

I've been trying to take Piper berry-picking, but have had no success. I can't find a friggin' place to do it.

If you drive a few miles out from our house, there are lots of fields. There's got to be a damned berry farm in there somewhere. I know I missed strawberries this year - by the time I realized that it's hotter here so the season starts ( Read more... )

Piper has been pretty fun the past few days, which is a relief after WEEKS of bad behavior. We start with a minimum five minute time-out in our house, and arguing with us, defiance, sneaking in toys to play with, or getting up before your time is over will earn you a penalty of +2 minutes. Recently she's been so out of hand, and stacked up so many ( Read more... )

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My kid is so into the Beatles right now.

It started small. As much as I love Hayao Miazaki, I was sick of watching Kiki's Delivery Service* four times a week (she would use up the entirety of her daily TV allotment to watch it first thing every morning), and I needed a break from that wisecracking cat. She had liked Yellow Submarine when she was ( Read more... )

Piper is better, thanks everyone. The fever was gone when she woke up next morning. Just vanished, poof! We didn't take her to the doctor because it would've been our word against their thermometer's that the fever had ever existed. Piper hates going to the doctor so much (she screams herself hoarse, and cries so hard she nearly pukes, even on ( Read more... )

I'll warn you right now: this post is not for the faint of gut. If you have a weak stomach at all, you probably just want to skip this one.

I got puked on last week. Hardcore.

My daughter has only thrown up one other time in her life. Sure there was plenty of spit-up during the infant days, but the only other incident involving actual barf was a ( Read more... )

Tuesday was one of those days, the kind that pop up and make you wish you'd followed your muse in college and now spent time chain-smoking on SoHo balconies, spending lots of naked time with promparticipating in performance art and living in charming Bohemian poverty while writing The Great American Novel, instead of cleaning up cat barf and ( Read more... )

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I hadn't realized, until we were traveling in Michigan, out of our little bubble of home/park/mall play area/Ikea how much we've shielded Piper from most popular culture. It wasn't (entirely) deliberate; we only have network TV (and used to have HBO, but my $@$(@*%^*^ feelings about Time-Warner are irrelevant to the topic). We rarely actively ( Read more... )