Life in the slow lane

Maybe it’s just the wet and wintery weather this week, maybe it’s the wind down from the whirlwind of the holidays, but today seemed incredibly slow and boring for a Friday. Don’t get me wrong, spending time with the kids is great & Pallas is getting really interesting with all the new things she’s trying out, but from an adult standpoint, I’m starting to think I should get out more -

Here are some highlights from my day this Friday:

*I spent 20 minutes in the grocery store deciding which type of bird food to put in the outdoor feeder (they burn through about 5lbs. Per week!) and finally decided to buy several bags and mix my own special blend. (In case you’re wondering I settled on pet grade parakeet feed, since we have 6 or 7 wild parakeets out there daily - and it was basically the same as the deluxe songbird food, but with more dried fruits and veggies -I figured they could use a winter treat - and to that I mixed in the black sunflower seeds that all birds seem to enjoy). - I don’t even like birds that much, and here I am mixing my own bird food blend??? How did this happen!?!

*I checked my email - the 2 most interesting things there?- someone sent me the following list (I have no idea why)
57 Things to Do with Socks -

1. roll and toss into drawers

2. Make a puppet

3. have a sock fight

4. put on hand and dust things

5. fill with beans, tie and play catch

6. pretend it is a baby, cat, dog, etc.

7. make dirty with a range of items (dirt, jelly, etc)

8. Wash it

9. make holes in it

10. draw on it

11. put bows on it

12. play catch

13. play football

14. stuff it with different materials and then walk on them

15. build with them

16. do an assembly line of passing them along

17. hang them on trees

18. hang them on drawings as part of the pictures

19. throw them into pools

20. throw them into different piles of dirt

21. go on a treasure hunt for them

22. put them on your hands and then eat

23. make hats out of them

24. Play catch with a sock ball.

25. paint them

26. make a sock rope by tying them together and then tug a war

27. cover them with peanut butter and seeds and hang them on treesas bird feeders

28. use them as shovels when they are on your hands

29. make a tail out of socks

30. Put socks on stuffed animals feet.

31. Buy socks with characters on them and create a sock story.

32. Make a sock book of colors

33. Make a sock dress for a doll

34. make sock ornaments for next years Christmas tree

35. try to put little socks on big feet

36. make a wind-sock

37. wear daddy's socks on little feet
38.cut off the toes and make "sleeves" and play "long sleeve/shortsleeve"
39.fill them up with stuff and play "how many ________'s fit intothis sock" compare things like ping pong balls, tennis balls, marbles,etc.
40.fill them with ice cubes and use for when the kids get hurt as aBOO Buddy.
41.tie a string to them to make a "nose warmer" for cold weather
42.tie them on your head with string--for bunny/dog ears
43.fill them up with different spices--for sachets or just for smelling
44.hide things in them---ala "mystery box"--feel them without looking, and guess what's inside
45.fill up a sock with another sock that is rubbed in menthol ruband give to a family member who has a cold--wear around neck withattached string
46.sock quilt
47.darn sock holes
48.fill them with different liquids to see how fast they drip thru
49.Take tiny baby socks, stuffed them with cat nip, and sew them shut. Give them to all the family pets.
50.Ball them up and have a snow ball fight.
51.Hide smelly things in them and guess what is inside withoutlooking.
52 Hide things with texture inside and guess by feel.

53. wear on wrong body parts

54. Bowling with sock balls

55. Hackey Sack sock ball
56.see how many socks you can put on one foot
57.put them on and slide across the floor

AND This:

Auntie Anne's® celebrates its 20th Birthday with Free Pretzel Day -- February 2nd!
Auntie Anne's is turning 20! To kick-off its 20th birthday celebration, Auntie Anne's is hosting a Free Pretzel Day on February 2nd at stores nationwide! Stop by your local Auntie Anne's on February 2nd between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to try one complimentary Original or Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel -- no strings attached. That's right; enjoy a free delicious, mouth-watering, freshly baked Auntie Anne's Pretzel.

-Granted, this one is actually exciting (I love giant soft pretzels, and I love free!), but the part that concerns me is that I had no idea there was and Auntie Anne’s in our mall - it’s been that long since I’ve been to the mall and looked anywhere but the Build-A-Bear or any store with escalators.

Maybe I need to check out what movies are playing and go have an adult moment, if only I could trust myself not to fall asleep sitting someplace dark for over an hour! -I wonder, is this why old people don't like to go to the movies?

Psst! Hey Tammy...

She's on a roll!

Big exciting day for Pallas - she discovered how to roll from her back to her tummy around 4:30am this morning, and she's been trying out her new trick ever since. Unfortunately, she can't go back the other way yet,so she requires frequent rescues. Its kind of good that she can't roll the other way yet or I'm sure she'd be across the room in a flash, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that - Guess I'd better finish baby proofing the house...

Why Nintendo DS and Babies are awesome...

Granted, when my Christmas present from Tayne and Troy was my very own Nintendo DS, a companion to Tayne's DS, I was skeptical about how much fun I would actually have spending seemingly endless amounts of time pictochatting with Tayne, but it has turned out to be an interesting view into what a 6 year old is thinking versus what he's saying/adults are hearing. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but seeing those words in print can sometimes change everything. For example, today we found out that Pallas doesn't have a pacifier - its a "pass of fire". How much cooler is that? No wonder he thinks babies can't be defeated!

Even when she's asleep - Beware! She's sucking on a pass of fire! - Very brave and indestructable indeed...

A Material Girl

I'm starting to see that raising girls (and understanding their priorities) is a bit different from boys...
Like for instance, how does a 3 month old become bored with all her toys? Bored! I mean, she hasn't even been able to grasp the stuff or even hit it when she swings for more than a month -tops, and what does the future hold if she's that fickle already? For lack of a better fall guy I'm going to blame my infant toy troubles on the new YMCA - darn you and your new high quality facilities!!! Since my first tour I thought I would love our new YMCA, so clean and modern - such fabulous child care facilities, but now that I actually take my 3 month old there - I’m not so sure… Ok, I realize that being around all those other snotty little under 3’s, Pallas is bound to pick up a cold or two (and she’s sick right now as a matter of fact), but what I did not realize is that she would love their fabulous decor -and consequently start to become disillusioned with ours.

Alseep and dreaming of better stuff, sadly this one doesn't quite capture her recently aquired contempt and loathing for the current collection of toys. I knew she was becoming a bit bored with our current setup here recently, but it wasn’t until we were shopping today and we stopped to look at a Fisher Price Rainforest themed booster seat (a little pre-mature granted, but I have to plan ahead for these things) and she was nothing but grins and giggles. Huh! That’s when it struck me, they have the whole baby area over at the YMCA done in Fisher Price Rainforest themed stuff, and apparently that is now what Pallas prefers. Granted, our stuff is a lot more "swamp" than rainforest; we have bugs instead of parrots, and harmless green frogs with big goofy eyes instead of poisonous tree frogs pretending to be harmless and cute (seriously Fisher Price, who decided that would be a good animal for babies to love -one lick on a real tree frog and, well… Ack! Thump! Dead! -then where’s your customer base?!?). When we got home I decided we would try to appease her with the still- to-big-for- her tropical bouncer with its many rainforest like animals. Since it seemed similar enough to what we saw in the store I thought it might be passable enough to fool a 3 month old.

Fisher Price toy we looked at today -
Our "tropics version" -

-WAIT! Is that a gator!?!

I think she's skeptical, but hopefully she'll be willing to humor us by playing with this "off brand" alternative.
If nothing else at least Tayne thinks its cool. Ah, here he's thinking, "So much in love with shiny new toys, why? -This stuff still looks pretty good to me..."
Oh well, I guess I'm just going to have to get used to the idea that they are going to be very different from each other, and the fact that mothers learn something new every day...

Moon Sand...

Moon Sand -The Sand that Tayne loves to shill for!
Normally, Tayne's gushing commentaries about the many merits of Moon Sand
fall on deaf ears, but today Target slashed the price of Christmas castoffs
(down to 75% off normal prices). - Needless to say, we took the afternoon to test their
claims.
Product purchased : Glitter! Moon Sand
colors in kit :
· glitter green (which is more of a teal)
· sparkling silver (ummm, I really don't know why they would choose to call something ‘silver’ when it’s glaringly obvious that it is not silver -the glitter used in all three colors of Moon Sand included in this set is silver colored - if they’d had thought this through they might have been able to call it pewter, but I’m gonna have to say it’s just gray)
· purple twinkle (no comment on this one - purple twinkle is pretty much on the mark)

What is Moon Sand, is it safe?
From the Company website -"Moon Sand is produced in Sweden out of carefully selected raw materials. Moon Sand is absolutely NON-TOXIC. All of the ingredients are inert and cannot be absorbed by the body. It is Gluten Free and Allergy Free." [The first thing to comment on is how glad I am that this stuff does NOT have a weird smell - it doesn’t smell like tempera paint, or play-do, or weird semi-toxic plastic stuff, it’s just "IKEA fresh"; basically what you’d expect something from Sweden designed for kids to play with to smell like. From a science standpoint, this stuff is pretty interesting - it's a super fine particulate material (made of sand or other sand-like materials) which is coated with a binder of synthetic rubber and a polymer so that it can feel dry but stick together with pressure, if you really are interested in the science here's a link to the description of Moon Sand from the European Patent Database http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2006101440&IA=WO2006101440&DISPLAY=DESC

Where is the best area to play with Moon Sand?
From the Company website -"Playing with Moon Sand on a carpeted area is ideal as it makes for an easier clean up by use of a vacuum as opposed to sweeping. Sand that is on hard wood flooring can make the surface slippery." [Does this not give you a huge clue that if your kids are the slightest bit messy that this should not be an indoor activity? - They actually want you to play with it over carpet so that when sand does drop 1.You won’t realize how much sand is getting away from just brushing off your hands between molding things (yeah, glitter probably wasn’t the best thing to add to your product if you didn’t want that secret out…) and 2. Hopefully you’ve purchased a color of Moon Sand that is complimentary to your carpet, because it’s probably got just as much of a chance of working itself down into the fibers as it has being completely vacuumed up. ]

Can Moon Sand get wet?
From the Company website -"Moon Sand repels water, and can actually float! This enables the artist to incorporate water into their sculpture without any damage. Use water in any creative way you want like creating a moat around your castle creations." [When we tested our Moon Sand in water - if it was clumped together at all it seemed to favor sinking rather than floating - maybe they mean in salt water? Or perhaps ‘Moon’ water? Either way - sink or float - it did repel water and return to it’s original state when taken out of the water and squished around a bit. -Pretty cool...]

Check out my Moon Sand castle! -You can see the glitter, and how the separate colors are doomed to slowly mix and mingle until they become a single unattractive shade...

Here Tayne is planning his own castle, he’s thinking -"Which should I do- Squish it? Shape it? Mold it? -that’s pretty much all the options from the ad-copy on the box right???"

What is the life span of Moon Sand?
From the Company website -"The life span of Moon Sand is endless under proper care." [What they really mean is individual grains of Moon Sand will be part of your home forever, as for playable quantities of Moon Sand - those will need to be added to on a regular basis because much Moon Sand will escape with each play session]

I know (because Tayne is fond of telling me) their motto is "Moon Sand never dries out!" but I think they should have gone with something more accurate like, "Moon Sand, the fun never goes away!" Alas, Moon Sand is messy, but so is real sand - and actually, with the fine texture Moon Sand, playing with it indoors is a lot less of a mess than Tayne walking though the house after playing in the outside sandbox . Plus, Tayne loves it , and as the castle test shows - a play-do castle just doesn’t cut it when you are missing the beach and want to perfect your mad sand sculpting skills before summer. So I have to give Moon Sand a thumbs up for indoor beach simulation, but next time I think we’ll skip the glitter…

Sea World Texas

Ugh! Stupid computer just won't work for me today, so these probably aren't in the best order, but here are some pictures from last year (December) when the days were sunny and the water was salty (and cold - what do you expect, it was December...)

Happy faces testing the camera batteries (always important) before we head out for some fun.



Here Tayne is showing us how to use the park maps to maximize our days of fun. (And plot a route that doubled back past his favorite attractions multipule times)


We rode the rides,


Tayne and Troy climbed around and got a view of the park (Tayne's in that net somewhere, just squint and you might see him)

came down long enough to consult the mapand left Pallas to her snoozing in the sun.
We checked out the animals
animals
see ya later, alligator (that joke never gets old when you have a photo!)and more animals!
Sea World really takes the energy right out of a person!

But it was an excellent end to 2007!