Thursday

My guilty pleasure is my parent magazines. I don't necessarily find the articles to be helpful or pertain to my situation, but occasionally I'm surprised. Tonight, however, I found myself drawn to an article called, "Mad at Dad," and it was phenomenal and true to life for me. The one part of the article that I zoomed in on had a great quote and I could have written it! "We love our husbands-but we're mad that we spend more mental energy on the details of parenting. We're mad that having children has turned our lives upside down much more than theirs. We're mad that these guys, who can manage businesses OR KEEP TRACK OF THOUSANDS OF PIECES OF (ARBITRARY) SPORTS TRIVIA, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating..." My other favorite quote? "He gets to focus on one thing at a time. Meanwhile, I'm trying to cook with human leg warmers clinging to my shins."

Ladies and gentleman, that is my life! I'm so thankful that I'm not the only woman/wife/mother out there who can relate.

"As mothers, we think nothing of stirring a pot of noodles while setting up a refrigerator-repair appointment, sorting mail, and helping a child with his weekly spelling words. And it annoys us when our husbands act put-upon or overwhelmed when we want them to handle a couple of things at once."

A few fun finds in the magazines this month that I may have to actually purchase or think of purchasing...

Animal Scramble
"Animal Scramble features an electronic hand-held tagger shaped like a giraffe and four fist-sized friends (a monkey, parrot, tiger and elephant). The giraffe calls out which animals kids should run to and tag and tracks the amount of time taken to complete each course."

I've been a freecycle fan since my neighbors introduced me. I hate the idea of throwing things away. I go to craigslist or my husband's work intranet, first, to try and sell stuff. If that is not successful, I've been setting things aside for a yard sale that will probably never happen. But, a few sites recently caught my attention...

Zwaggle.com is a kid-focused flea market where you pay with points that are earned by signing up and unloading old gear.

Swaptree.com is a site where you can post books, DVDs or games and will help you find other items that you can trade for.

Freepeats.org is a site where you can post or find baby and kid gear locally.

My neighbor recently came to me to ask what kind of sippy cups we're using because she's not had any luck with the stuff they've tried. Everything, as we all know, seems to spill. The soft spouts were not an option in our home as the kids immediately learned to bend the plastic and finger paint with their milk on the glass table tops. So, the cups we've come to love and that I recommended were the Gerber Graduates Sip & Smile Spill Proof Cups. As with anything toddler related, they are not fool-proof. There are the occasional spot spills and the kids can both tap the cup upside down on the glass to finger paint. But, they both also tend to carry their sippy around the living room upside down and the liquid doesn't spill that way.

The other share I wanted to pass on tonight was a tangle-free spray. Figgy has my hair. Fine and snarly. Just like my hair, we can't condition it all the time because it weighs it down and she ends up looking like she stuck her head in a grease pit. I was looking for something, anything, that would help us after baths with her long, curly, fine hair. This stuff is a miracle for us! It doesn't weigh her hair down and it leaves it feeling soft the rest of the week.

Hmmm...I had more I wanted to talk about tonight but I'm drawing a blank. CSI is on and my attention seems to be wandering back to that. Hubby is out for a rare night with the guys, rocking out to Metallica at the Verizon Center. (Blech! I'm not a heavy metal fan.)

The kids had a particularly rough day today and I'm afraid that will dictate a particularly rough night. Figgy was up and screaming by 6:15, which is considerably earlier than she normally wakes. Both were out of control all day long and very fussy/whiny/argumentative. This usually carries into the middle of the night when they wake up screaming for no apparent reason. *sigh*