Last Friday afternoon, Oscar got into his first confrontation.
I picked him up from nursery at 3.00 p.m. as usual. Then we wandered round to the school to pick up the girls.
Mole was in the playground, and he and Oscar zoomed off to play some elaborate game with some cones that the teacher had left out after P.E.
It was all going swimmingly until a bigger boy, who should still have been in class, wandered over. He has a reputation as a trouble maker, and Mole’s mother and I kept a weather eye out, unsure as to what the boy was doing. He started to pick up the cones. We relaxed a little, assuming that the teacher had sent him to pack up.
Then I noticed that Oscar was right up in the child’s face, talking very earnestly. I paid closer attention, but nothing else happened except that the bigger boy looked faintly bemused.
Children started pouring out of classrooms and I called Oscar to walk round to pick up Tallulah. As we were going round the corner I tuned in to what Oscar was saying. I thought he had been singing, but no. He was hollering:
Buggerhead!
Bugger HEAD
You are a BUGGERHEAD!
I asked him to stop swearing and reminded him that swearing was not allowed.
He looked at me very earnestly and said:
But mama. That boy was being horrible to Mole. So I just had to stand up and say to him: YOU ARE A BUGGERHEAD! Because he was hurting my friend.
I never realised before what a peculiarly aching sensation the mixture of pride, shame and amusement was.
The buggerhead thing made me laugh, because it is his entirely new invention. It reminded me so much of that sketch in Alan Partridge where he has the political debate. If you forward it to about eight minutes you’ll find it:
Jennifer and Mrs Toni brought Hayleigh for her 2 year old photography session. Oh, I did say she was 2, yes of course, a lot of playing, running around, picking flowers, giving mom all kinda love and just having fun. Thank you Jennifer we so loved photographing Hayleigh, she is a beautiful child and it was just a picture perfect day!! Happy Birthday Hayleigh!!!
From the car park at Peak Hill, walk out to the cliff top at Peak Hill and then along the coast to High Peak. Remember to look back for superb views over Sidmouth and beyond to the white cliffs at Beer Head. As you descend steeply from Peak Hill, take in the ruggedly beautiful Ladram stacks. These pinnacles provide homes for cormorants, terns and various species of gull.
From Ladram the route is more level but still offers superb views of the coast and inland. Pass beyond Brandy Head – its name hinting of previous smuggling activity – and Danger Point, before reaching the mouth of the Otter. Before following the estuary inland, you’ll pass a Second World War Pill Box that has been converted to a bat hibernaculum. The estuary is good for bird watching, and there is a bird hide nestling in the woods above the river. You may wish to stop at Otterton Mill to have a late cheese platter or a soup.
After reaching White Bridge, follow the Otter upstream through open farmland with the striking river cliffs to your right hand side topped with natural woodland. Leave the river at a footbridge near the village of Colaton Raleigh and join a narrow road at Burnthouse Farm. Follow it for a few hundred yards northwards before turning right on to Passaford Lane. This ancient sunken Devon track way, climbs steeply eventually passing through woodland and up onto Mutters Moor, an area of ancient lowland heath.
You may be lucky enough to spot a Dartford Warbler here. The moor was named after Sam Mutter, a celebrated smuggler who sailed out of Sidmouth. He is reputed to have taken his contraband into Exeter by wagon hidden under turfs and faggots cut from the heath. The walk from here is level and returns you to the car park at Peak Hill.
In case of emergency, call Dee on 07970 814568
Peak Hill, Sidmouth (Postcode for Sat Nav:EX10 0NW), Lime Kiln Budleigh Salterton (Postcode for Sat Navs: EX9 6JD). Toilets Ladram Bay & Otterton
5 Orange Potatoes has made a habit of exploring this wonderful natural world and in the Nest Making post, has photos of the various nests they have found. They also encourage young ones (and us!) to make our own nests to hang in the trees. How perfect for this Spring!
photo, 5 Orange Potatoes
P.S. 5 Orange Potatoes are now on Etsy! Come see the shop of handmade felties inspired by nature’s fauna and flora
I forgot to mention, as I said thank you in person, that my mum donated to the EveryChild fund
Please keep the donations and squares coming in! I have almost finished sewing the new squares onto the blanket and then I will post pictures.
Remember you can follow Planet Blanket on here by subscribing, on Facebook, Twitter and Ravelry. All the links can be found on the right hand side of the page! Thankyou!!!
I wrote this a long time ago, in another place… The 25 Skills Every Mother Needs: 1) Lying convincingly: An absolute MUST, this skill has multiple applications, from protecting your child’s innocence ( “Mummy was helping Daddy to mend the zip on his trousers”) to just getting your own way without a fuss (“All toy shops close at two o’clock, it’s the law”).
2) Doing homework in a way that sounds like a really clever child: God bless computers, now at least you don’t have to do the handwriting to match.
3) Changing a pooey nappy (diaper) anywhere: On a bus, at the opera, in a supermarket …Always carry the equipment and an absolute conviction that you are allowed to “do that here”. Develop speed.
4) Psychiatry: It’s really important to listen to your child and to help them to see that most worries have a practical solution. Don’t blow off their concerns but don’t make the child a wuss either… For instance, a bullied child doesn’t need lessons in self-esteem as much as they need lessons in boxing. Or running.
5) Medical Diagnosis/Care: This takes experience (it helps if you are a hypochondriac, or a medical professional). Actually, asking your own Mother for help/advice is good. It might be her one chance to be something other than an interfering old bag.
6) Making home-made Play-Doh: Google the recipe.
7) Having a silent orgasm: Nobody wants the kids to wake up in time to damage themselves mentally forever AND to watch the clean-up operation that nobody does in films. Convey your pleasure by pulling a series of grateful faces and grabbing the sheets with your fists.
Opening your bowels, wiping your bottom, washing your hands and being out of the bathroom in 30 seconds: Another “must learn” skill…Unless you want your child to watch you crapping, or to be out there setting fire to the cat.
9) Effective bribery: Know what they want and use this skill sparingly for best effect.
10) Talking in riddles (to other adults): Nothing is more fun than talking “over your child’s head”. Make eye contact with the other adult and use the most surreal method of telling them stuff you don’t want your kid to know.
11) Reading stories whilst secretly leaving out half the pages: Bedtimes would be so much later without it but bright kids do tend to catch on. “There once was a very hungry caterpillar, who turned into a beautiful butterfly. The end.”.
12) Checking the history of your child’s internet usage: Someone has to do it but be prepared to be shocked. My child had been watching a short art movie called “Hardcore Detention” for instance. Hmmm.
13) Teaching the facts of life, whilst not spoiling your child’s image of you as being a virgin: “How did you get ME then? By doing THAT with Daddy?!”…”No darling, I bought you in a shop and frankly I wish I gone for a more expensive baby now.” Is what I said.
14) Eating half chewed/sucked sweets (candy): Men can’t do it. Thing is, toddlers decide they don’t want to finish whatever is in their mouths at the most inopportune moments and you don’t always have a tissue.
15) Making vegetables seem like a treat: “Leave those if you like, Mummy wants to eat them anyway”.
16) Reading stories in various accents and voices: Kids don’t know your accents are crap and never be afraid to change what they say either. I’ve almost made my kids VOMIT with laughter by making lovely little characters, um, less polite than normal.
17) Not laughing when your child is being naughty in a really funny way: I can’t do this.
18) Humiliating your child in front of his/her friends: I’m brilliant at this though.
19) Making sure your teenage child has condoms, whilst simultaneously conveying that you don’t want them to have sex: “There are condoms in this drawer for anyone who needs them. I haven’t counted them either” and then FROWN.
20) Giving praise without adding some pressure: DO say “This painting is wonderful!” DON’T add “If you really practice you might be a famous artist! I could have done that but I was TOO LAZY!”.
21) Cleaning your child with spit: And a hankie.
22) Learning about/watching popular kids’ TV shows: Helps you to communicate with your child. Also, you’ll thank yourself if later in life you get a boyfriend 20+ years younger than you, as it means you can chat to him about them too.
23) Choosing, buying and wrapping a present, plus choosing a card AND getting a child to write it, all in transit to another child’s party, located 15 mins from your house: Need I say more. I’m afraid I have had a LOT of practice at this.
24) Being the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas: Awww. It isn’t hard.
25) Dealing with tantrums: Walk away and don’t look back. They’ll soon come running. Or refer to number 9).
I always enjoy reading ‘Lord of the Flies‘, and I’ve read it a good few times now. A lot of people I know really dislike the book because they were forced to read it in school, and dissecting a piece of work under classroom conditions doesn’t always show something in it’s best light. But I think this is one of the first books I ever really fell in love with. I don’t think I got the significance of everything when I first read it, and probably still don’t. Golding’s language is so sparing and poetic, it’s a strange contradiction, like a blunt subtlety.
“A single drop of water that had escaped Piggy’s fingers now flashed on the delicate curve like a star.”
Isn’t that just beautifully written?
Well, it gets me in the guts. The way Golding portrays children just makes perfect sense, it feels so incredibly natural. It doesn’t seem forced. When I read the book for the first time as a teenager, I wasn’t so far away from the age of the protagonists, and I instantly recognised, in a distant way, that hierarchical system children adopt amongst themselves. It has a lot of the subtleties that adult societies house, but it’s far more basic and crass. The whole thing whiffs of Herbert Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest‘ shtick, which Golding communicates so effortlessly.
So yeah, I really adore this little book. Plus I’m a sucker for a talking pig’s head on a stick.
“You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?“
Tomorrow, Mason and his friends will be enjoying green (lime) jello for their lunch time dessert in honor of St. Patty’s Day. This was incredibly simple. I labeled green paper cups with each child’s name and put two ice cream scoops of jello in each cup. I then used plastic wrap to seal the tops and placed them in pretty celephane bags with silver ties.
While we were away in Edinburgh earlier this month, a friend asked me if we’d spoken to William about the “Facts of Life”. I replied in the negative, and she said that we really ought to start thinking about it, particularly erections/wet dreams (eugh!!) and so on. (This particular friend is in the medical profession, and likes to call a spade a spade, so to speak).
After I’d finished choking on my gin and tonic, and protesting ‘but he’s my BABY!’ etc etc and reflected on it a bit further, I decided she was probably right. But how to go about it?
I certainly didn’t fancy the “Right, let’s sit down and talk about the birds and the bees” route, so decided that perhaps the best idea would be to get a book, which he could read in his own time, and tell him that if there was anything in it he’d like to discuss or had any questions about, he could ask either me or his Dad (oh, please let it be his Dad that he goes to – I’m not ready for this yet!)
So, I began to do some research on the internet, on various parenting forums, to try and find a suitable book.
I was pretty horrified by some of the books being recommended by parents as suitable for 10 year old boys: call me old fashioned, but I don’t think my 10 year old really NEEDS to have gay sex, STDs and contraception shoved down his throat quite yet.
Anyway, I eventually settled on the book in the photo above, ordered it, and it arrived yesterday. It is pitched exactly right for William, I think: it’s factual without being frightening, and written in easily accessible language with plenty of cartoon type illustrations. As well as the ‘body’ stuff, it’s got lots of really good info about friendship, school, bullying, personal hygiene, feelings etc.. I was really pleased with it.
I gave it to Will last night, and he took it up to his bedroom and was engrossed for about an hour. The timing was well planned: I had to go out to work at 5.00 pm, so any questions would have to be directed at Dad (mwa hahaha). But none have been forthcoming. Yet.
For Mother’s Day I ordered: A Lie In. A Cup Of Coffee In Bed. A Long Bath. Lunch at the Peacock Playground. And The Man wading in with Son 1 aged 5y 5m and Son 2 aged 2y 6m. He did all right to begin with; after a shaky start when he couldn’t convince them to go downstairs. I was buzzed by each of them separately, but ignored them, and then heard pattering feet and stage-whispers. “You hide there, and I’ll hide here, and then we’ll thrown the cards and shout ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’” Which is what they did, laughing their little heads off. The Man came up with my coffee. The boys gave me a present. The Sunday Times, fresh off the doormat, wrapped in Little Girl Party Paper from the Card Drawer. And I had a Mother’s Day card from The Man, which is also a Good Thing, as in previous years he’d deeply annoyed me with “Why do I need to get a card for you? You’re not my mother.” There was then a bit of a crisis because Son 1 wouldn’t go away. He wanted us all to watch telly together as a family. I wanted to read the paper. He got upset. I compromised. They watched an ancient Fireman Sam video we’d made from CBeebies when Son 1 was about Son 2’s age… I read.
I was in my bath when The Man dumped Son 1 in his bedroom for hitting. Son 1 escaped, and I let him come and sit still on the chair in the bathroom. I heard male voices downstairs. “Daddy’s got a visitor,” I said. “I’ll go and see,” said Son 1. The back door opened and closed. Son 1 bounded upstairs. “You’ve got to come down, there’s a chicken in the kitchen.” “What sort of a chicken?” “A real live one. With feathers.” “What’s it doing there?” “A man’s come to the door because he’s lost a chicken. And we’ve found it.” All right. I was interested. Of course by the time I got downstairs there was no chicken. ”I hope there was a chicken,” I said, “because I have now officially Got Out Of My Mother’s Day Bath.” Yes, said The Man, there had been a chicken. First, there was a card through the door: LOST CHICKEN! IF YOU FIND A HEN IN YOUR BACK YARD PLEASE PHONE XXXXXXXX” Then a Near Neighbout had knocked. One of their chickens was missing. They had put cards round, and then decided as it was supposed to have clipped wings, it really couldn’t have gone very far. Could he please check our yard? Out they went, and there it was, huddled in the back. I didn’t know the Near Neighbours had chickens. And guess what. Now I really, really want some.
The boys weren’t bad at lunch, considering what they’re capable of. The staff were great and brought their hot dogs instantly – this in a self-service place – and cushions for them to sit on. I was instantly worried about Son 2, but I took him for a wee before we ate and he kept everything dry. We’d also been given a table by the sliding doors that open into the Peacock Garden. A beautiful view, good vegetarian food and magnificent service. Only. Every time the doors opened, which was often, one or both boys tried to escape to chase the peacocks. After lunch we went to the Playground. The Man sat at a table with The Big Pram, and I played Hide and Seek. I lifted Son 2 on and off slides, crawled into tunnels, counted and sought and ran and hid. Both boys loved it, giggling, shrieking, squealing. They both had smoothies, and I wanted a pit stop for Son 2, so we tore them away even though they were having a great time. Son 1 and I went off looking for red feathers – the Peacock Playground keeps Golden Pheasants too. Then The Man hissed. Son 2 had done a poo. I cleaned him up and changed him, and we headed on back. Son 2 got through six pairs of trousers and pants today. This isn’t really potty training, it’s more me moving to washables after all this time.
Title of her book, Quick Kids’ Quilts: Easy-To-Do Projects for New-Borns to Older Children.
This might be something for mothers during their maternal leave. Not that the life with a baby wouldn’t be busy enough, but to create something for your child with your own hands will be appreciated very much. Plus, you are the one deciding the look.
I don’t have children yet, but doing a quilt seems like a good idea. What pictures would be on them? rose flowers for girls and yellow cars for a boy? No! But I will see when time comes.
More details on her book:
128 pages, 1999
ISBN-10: 1552093506
ISBN-13: 978-1552093504
You can get it on amazon for example.
Quick Kids’ Quilts: Easy-To-Do Projects for Newborns to Older Children
Today I got the please of taking Aadhya’s pictures. She is just over one week old and she is already a natural in front of the camera. I thank Teena and Dev for letting me into their home for a few hours and sharing their precious little one with me. Congratulations you two!
Now that you know what to do with your child (see previous entry) without forking out insane amounts of money, let’s shift our focus a little. We women always tend to put everyone else before us, but in modern society, I feel that a shift of ideals is slowly happening, to the benefit of us mums!
A couple of generations ago, ‘alone time’ probably didn’t even exist in a diligent mother’s vocabulary and the idea of leaving children behind with a babysitter or, so help me, their fathers, was tantamount to blasphemy. Thankfully, this has changed, but somehow mothers seem to sport guilt as a great big accessory whenever they go out and treat themselves. I’m no exception. However, the idea that in order to be good mum you must take care of yourself first is quickly catching on and who knows, perhaps when this century’s over and our great granddaughters are new mothers, this guilt trip will be but a faint memory of times long past.
So what can you do to treat yourself when money isn’t exactly burning a hole in your pocket, and time is limited as well? This is going to take some creativity.
Number 1
Exercise! I’m serious! Exercising stimulates endorphine-production in the brain and you get plenty of time to think for yourself whilst trotting on the treadmill. If treadmills and pumping iron is really not your thing, yoga classes and pilates classes offer a super alternative for the tired mind. Gyms come in all sizes and price categories and I was lucky enough to find a cheap one with brilliant facilities. It even has a sauna. So get prowling, find a gym that suits you and GO THERE.
Number 2
Read books that are not a part of your curriculum at school. Seriously, if you have time to watch TV for 2 hours a day, you have time to read something you WANT to read. If you don’t want to buy books, there are libraries galore. If you feel stuck and really don’t know what to read, ask your friends about what they’ve found interesting and possibly even borrow their books. If you have a slightly out-of-control imagination like I do, you’ll quickly lose yourself in the imaginary world reading a good book creates in your mind.
Number 3
Stream episodes of your favourite series online. Hey, perhaps not stricly ethical, but they’re out there and they’re free. If you really really feel uncomfortable with streaming, you can wait for your local TV stations to pick up the series and watch diligently every week, with your plate of fruits and veggies, which costs about the same as crisps and soda, and much much healthier. Or just treat yourself to crisps and soda if you feel like it. All for the greater good.
Number 4
Knit! I’m serious! Knitting is the latest fad, it’s calming and you actually have something to show for time passing. Besides, it’s an excellent way to fill the gap in your child’s (or your own) wardrobe. Buying the correct sizes of knitting needles is the most expensive part of this new hobby, but when you’ve got your start kit, you’ll be virtually unstoppable. There are recipes galore online, you just need to look for them. Yarn doesn’t have to be expensive and apart from that, knitwear is just so hot right now.
Number 5
Pamper. Pamper, pamper, pamper. Go to your local chemist’s – shops like Matas aren’t that expensive most of the time – and get some facial cremes, masques, nail varnish, nail files, eye-brow colour or whatever floats your boat. Take a long, hot shower and get that skin glowing. Afterwards, you’ll feel energetic and confident and pretty relaxed and you didn’t have to dish out wheelbarrows of cash for a professional to do the same thing you can at home. Going to a professional salon should be a special thing, right, so only go there sporadically and do what you can at home. I’m telling you, life gets so much brighter when you take care of yourself.
Number 7
Go see a film in the theatre that you wouldn’t see with your boyfriend – or rather, a film that you would feel terribly guilty over making your boyfriend sit through. You can either go with a girlfriend or just on your own! Really, there’s nothing wrong with that. You get to choose the seats, no one is reaching into your bag of popcorn and no one is whispering to you throughout the film. Two hours will just fly by, and add to that, your partner gets to stay at home and spend some quality time with the offsrping, so everybody wins.
Number 8
When I was not mum, I used to love getting into my car and blasting some serious heavy metal music while cruising around. Just because I’m a mum doesn’t mean I can’t do that anymore! Granted, petrol prices are pretty insane right now, and if you don’t feel like wasing fininte resources or if you don’t have a car, charge your mp3 player and get on your bike and just cycle round, listening to your favourite music. It’s so much fun.
Number 9
Find a hobby, like photographing, drawing, painting or writing, and set aside some time during the week to do those things you love. I’ll point out again – if you have time to watch telly for 2 hours a day, you have time to shift your focus to your hobby.
Number 10
Go out with your partner! Find a babysitter that you can pay to take care of your sleeping child every now and again, or ask your friends to babysit for you. Go to a pub, or see a film, or just take a walk, and be a couple for a while. We all know how our relationships seem to suffer with the new adittion of children to the home life, and while those children are welcome and loved to bits, we musn’t forget to nurture the relationship that brought those blessed little pattering feet about to begin with. I know that around this house, everyone’s pretty exhausted during the evening and we tend to just sit there in front of the computer or telly and waste away, but grabbing a deck of cards, a boardgame or just having a conversation is so much better than that and we do feel a difference when we leave technology haning and enjoy each other’s company.
Got anything to add? Let me know! Let your friends know! Let’s take the time to improve our lives, shall we?
Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a WAH parent than one working in a traditional workplace. The flexibility in my schedule is both a blessing and curse. While I have a general schedule that I stick to, it seems my children’s school has decided that it needs a good chunk of my time.
Not that I’m complaining. I love their school. It’s been good for both of them and I am completely satisfied with communication with the administration and teachers.
I don’t like the spring schedule. Not the kids’ individual schedules, but the field trips, pep rallies, and assemblies that come with it. It’s almost baseball season, so the local semi-pro team has already announced a couple of education days – free admission for students who perform well on this next report card. The workaholic in me sees this as just another school day, but the mom in me wants to take the day to hang at the ballpark. Despite the kids’ objections that is. I’m supposed to be spoken of, but not seen by their friends I suppose.
The real problem with the schedule conflict is the guilt. Guilt of missing a trip or event vs. the guilt of putting my work aside. I have put the work aside with every intention of completing it within a few days and miscalculated. I have skipped the event only to discover late that the kids really wanted me there. Guilt overload!
But what do you do? I look at the task at hand to guesstimate how much time it would take to finish. (Yes, I said guesstimate. Sue me.) If it is something that I can tackle successfully by putting in an extra hour or two later in the day, I take the time off to spend with the kids. If it requires more intensive attention, I either keep to my schedule or plan to put in late night hours for a while. Is this the ideal solution? It is for me.
My kids are older and don’t always let me know how much it mans to them to see me and/or hubby there for them. The looks on their faces say it all.
What about you? What do you do when faced with the last-minute schedule change?
So yesterday, I made a biggol dinner for my family to celebrate my husband being done with his tests. I had it all planned out. Go shopping at 9:30, start prepping at half past noon, then start cooking at 3 and be done by 5.
Ya know, I seem to forget a I am a mother of 3 children under 4 years old. I decided to give the children baths early in the morning so I’ll have more time to clean later on that night. That wasn’t done until 9:30. I had to make sure the house was clean before I left the house. That took two hours, and the house still wasn’t up to my standards, but hey I was running on a tight schedule. SO we were out of the house by at least 11:50am. We went to the PX and bought gardening supplies and yummy donuts, then on to the commissary to purchase a couple items I needed to for the night’s dinner. Surprisingly, the trip out was pretty painless. It was cold as hell, but we were done in 2 hrs with only one temper tantrum from the Diva.
I get home, try to hurry up and unpack, as my baby is asleep in his car seat. I think, “Yeah, he’s asleep I can get two dishes prepped and refrigerated in the time he’s asleep!” As I foolishly go with that thought, he wakes up wailing his head off! So I comfort him and feed him hoping he’ll be OK. Naw, he want’s more cuddle time. So I unpack the bags and all the kids are hungry and thirsty again, so I feed them while holding fat baby. I unpack my gardening supplies, but as I open one of the packages, all of mypellets from my mini greenhouse falls all over the floor and I’m on my hands and knees threatening my daughter not to touch any of them. I found them all except one, and I think I searched a good 30 minutes for them! More time away from dindins. I throw my sweet potato in my preheated oven and start my gravy whilst thinking about the missing pellet. In between simmering, I look for the missing pellet. Still lost. I also realizes I am 3 bacon strips short for my Let’s Celebrate with Bacon Day. No way in hell was I gonna go out again and get the missing strips, so I went on cooking. As I am cooking the kids (miostly the baby!) destroys the house. SO I’m cooking and trying to clean now. A lot of my meals needed my direct attention, so I had to leave the housework for later. I also had to stop after wrapping the bacon atound the meatloaf to tend to the baby. He’s thoroughly pissed at me at this point in time, so I devote 30/45minutes to him! I then finish prepping my biscuits. So the main dishes, (biscuits, meatloaf and gravy) are all refigerated ready for the oven. I realise that you NEED mashed potatoes with meatloaf, so I go on and make peel potatoes, then prep my fresh broccoli by cutting them into florets and putting them in a bowl for later. I also grate my cheeses (pepper jack and sharp cheddar) for my macaroni and cheese. At this point chris walks in the door- Thank GOD! I apologise for the mess, and he goes on and clean up and tend to the kids. My husband is super awesome, by the way! I finish the potatoes and place them in a heatproof bowl over simmering water to keep them warm* while I cook the rest of the food. I boil some water my macaroni noodles and more water to blanch my broccoli in. All that is going on with my meatloaf roasting away in the oven. I blanch the broccoli for about 4 minutes then pour cold cold water over them to keep the color and stop the cooking. I put that aside as well as the noodles until the meatload is 20 minutes from cooking. I saute the broccoli with a lil garlic powder and lower sodium soy sauce. I made an easy stove-top macaroni and cheese, as my oven is ridiculously small and there’s no way i hell I could fit both mac n cheese and meatloaf in the same oven! SO what did I do?
Mac n Cheese
2 eggs
12oz can evaporated milk
1 tsp english mustard (such as colemans)
7 oz of sharp cheddar cheese
4 oz pepper jack cheese
salt n pepper
(use whatever good melting cheese you like.)
1/2 lb tubular pasta noodles
4 tablespoons of butter, softened
I mixed eggs, 1 cup of the canned evaporated milk, mustard, and 3/4 of the shredded cheese in a bowl.
Boil noodles until al dente
Drain noodles
Lower heat, then return noodles to pot, then add 4 tablespoons of butter. Add cheese mix until cheese melts. Add remaining milk and cheese. Remove from heat and stir until cheese melts and sauce is thickened.
You can make a topping by frying up panko bread crumbs or any other fresh breadcrumbs in a skillet with olive oil until browned. Add a little fresh thyme, parmasean cheese, and crumbled bacon bits! SERVE IMMEDIATELY
Now back to the story. So I wa
Enjoy! Even my mac n cheese hating husband loves it! Of course my son goes nuts for it!
I cooked the Mac n cheese while the meatloaf rested and I immediatly put the biscuits I prepared earlier (cold cold biscuits makes the flakiest yummiest biscuits! ALWAYS prep in advance) in the oven and cranked the heat up to 220 with the fan on! I sauteed the broccoli as well, and rewarmed the gravy.
Dinner was done by 8:10pm, but totally worth it!!
Here it is:
As I type this, I am eating leftover meatloaf, mac n cheese and biscuits. OMG soooooo good!!!!!!!
Bacon Wrapped Meatlof and Mushroom Bacon gravy recipe came from March 2009 issue of Fine Cooking Magazine. I of course made little changes. Read for yourself for your own tastes!
And buttermilk mashed potatoes, mac n cheese (recipe is above), and broccoli is my own.
Buttermilk Mashed potatoes:
4 medium potatoes
salt
1/2 cup warmed buttermilk
1/4 cup butter, seperated
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Scrub, peel (or leave unpeeled), and chop potatoes in 1 inch cubes. Put potatoes in empty medium saucepan. Add enough water to cover 2 inches. Once boiled over high heat, lower heat to a slow simmer. About 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender when poked with knife or fork.
Drain water, then return potatoes to pot over high heat. vigourously shake pan to dry potatoes. Mash potatoes with 2 tablespoons of butter (I put my potatoes through a food mill for no lumps) to consistency desired. Add warmed buttermilk in batches. Stir vigourously with wooden spoon. Add salt and pepper, then put remaining 2 tablespoons of butter on top of potatoes. Serve immediately.
*if made in advance, bring about an inch of water to a slow simmer in a medium saucepan. Put mashed potatoes in a heatprooflarge bowl, then place bowl ontop od saucepan. Stir every once in a while.
My husband was happy! He’s happily eating a load of leftovers for lunch at work
The Golden Rule: It’s the ultimate, all-encompassing rule of morality, promoted by every religion and ethical system. Today, many anti-bullying organizations are touting the Golden Rule as the solution to bullying. However, as I will be explaining, very few people actually understand what it comes to teach us.
While the term the Golden Rule (I will refer to it as GR for the rest of the article) was coined only a couple of hundred years ago, the rule has been recognized for thousands of years. Its most familiar formulations are: Love your fellow/neighbor as yourself; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; Whatever is hateful to yourself, do not do to others.
2400 years ago Aristotle made a logical proof that the best way to live our lives is the GR. He explained that if everyone lived by the GR, we wouldn’t need government–we would all get along nicely without any human authority over us (according to Mortimer Adler in the book, Aristotle for Everyone). Two thousand years ago, the Jewish sage Hillel, when asked “to explain the Torah [the Jewish body of rules for life based on the Bible] while standing on one leg,” said, “Whatever is hateful to yourself, do not do to others–all the rest is commentary.”
It’s obvious that if people lived by the Golden Rule life would be terrific. Relationships would be ideal. Bullying would cease to be a problem. If the entire world lived by the Golden Rule, there would be Peace on Earth. It’s also obvious that it’s impossible to be living ethically if we are violating the GR. So why don’t the social sciences and the mental health professions teach the practice of the GR? Why is bullying an escalating problem? Why are we still afraid of World War III? Why has the GR failed to accomplish its purpose?
I believe it’s because of two general reasons.
One reason the social sciences and mental health professions don’t teach the practice of the GR is that the GR has become associated with religion, but psychology is science, and science is divorced from religion. So we don’t even consider the GR.
But the GR is not a religious rule. It says absolutely nothing about a god or a higher power. You can be an atheist and still cherish the GR. As I will be explaining shortly, the GR is actually a scientific psychological rule. It is a simple formula for defusing aggression and creating harmony.
The other reason is that very few people understand what the GR is really about. Some people, including intelligent, educated ones, believe it means that we have to do to others exactly what we want for ourselves. For example, let’s say I’m going to buy you a necktie as a gift. If I like red neckties, I should give you a red necktie even though you may prefer blue, because I like red. That is an infantile interpretation of the GR.
Many people believe the GR means that it is important to be nice to people.
But that’s not its purpose. We do not need the GR to inform us that it is important to be nice to people. It is obvious that it is important to be nice. The problem is, What do we do when people aren’t nice to us? Our entire lives we are being taught how important it is to be nice. So when someone is mean to us, how do we respond? My God! They’re not allowed to treat me that way! I am always nice to everyone! How dare they be mean to me?! So we get angry. We want to get them punished. We want revenge.
What the GR really means is, We should be nice to people even when they are mean to us. Read the Sermon on the Mount, the compendium of Jesus’ moral instructions for people. (When I refer to Jesus in this article, I am not talking about him religiously. It is up to you whether you believe he is divine or mortal or even existed. I am strictly talking about his wisdom, his philosophy, as presented in the teachings attributed to him.) He talks about the GR. He says it is not about being nice to people who are nice to us. Anyone can do that. That comes naturally to us. Jesus says that even the tax collectors can do that–and Jesus was not particularly fond of tax collectors. Jesus says it’s about being nice to people even when they are mean to us, and he gives us many examples. He says, love your enemy; turn the other cheek; if someone asks you to carry something for a mile, carry it for two miles; if someone wants your coat, give them your jacket, too. He says, don’t get angry. This means, of course, don’t get angry at people when they are mean to us. (We don’t get angry at people when they are nice to us.) Jesus understood this perfectly, but very few others do.
(The truth is that there are entire cultures that understand the true meaning of the GR, and they live in incredible harmony. One such people are the Ladakhis, who I wrote about in a recent blog entry. The book about them, Ancient Futures, never even mentions the words the Golden Rule, but the description of their way of life matches the GR precisely).
Allow me to explain how the GR works scientifically/psychologically.
We are biologically programmed for what I refer to as the Rule of Nature, or what many social scientists refer to as the Law of Reciprocity. This means that I will treat you the way you treat me. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice back, and if you’re mean to me, I will be mean back.
In nature, if you are nice to me, you are probably my friend, so it is safe for me to be nice in return, and it will benefit both of us. If you are mean to me in nature, you are probably a real enemy trying to injure me or kill me. I had better not be nice to you when you are trying to injure or kill me or I’ll make it even easier for you. In fact, I had better be even meaner to you than you are to me or I’m going to be a big loser!
If you think about it, you’ll realize that we are all biologically programmed for reciprocity. When someone is being genuinely nice to you, do you feel like being mean back? Of course not. You feel like being nice back. And when someone is being mean to you, do you feel like being nice back? No. You feel like being mean back. We can control our responses, but this is what our guts tell us: to be nice to those who are nice to us and mean to those who are mean to us. With the exception of some people who have serious neurological or emotional disturbances, we are all like this. No one had to teach it to us or we wouldn’t all be like this.
But even the Rule of Nature/Law of Reciprocity creates a fair amount of harmony. If you observe creatures living in nature–including humans–you will notice that they spend far more time being nice to members of their own group than they do being mean. That’s because we discover that when we are nice to others, they tend to be nice back, and when we’re mean to others, they tend to be mean back. So we figure out by ourselves that in general it pays to be nice to others.
The GR makes a higher level of harmony possible. It actually takes advantage of our programming for reciprocity. And this is how it works.
If I live by reciprocity, I have very little control of my relationships. If you are nice to me, I will be nice in return and we will be friends. However, if you are mean to me, I will be mean in return and we will be enemies. The GR puts me in control. I will be nice to you even when you are mean to me. Why? Because how long can you continue being mean to me when I am always nice to you? Before long, you are going to start being nice to me because you are biologically programmed to treat me the way I treat you.
The GR is the therefore the ultimate empowerment. It is the solution to being a victim. A victim reacts. A victim’s behavior is therefore controlled by the bully. But in order to not be a victim, we must act independently of the bully’s actions. we treat them like friends even when they treat us like enemies. And that way we end up controlling them.
Treating people like friends does not mean that we must give them everything they want. We can be hurting people by giving them everything they want. We can be spoiling them, enabling them or helping them become bad people. The GR requires us to say “no” to people sometimes, but we are to do it nicely, without anger. Nor does the GR mean that we must let people abuse us, injure us or kill us. We are required to protect ourselves and to stop others from hurting us. The GR even requires us to kill people if there is no other way to stop them from being murderous. But it is not because we hate them. It is because we love them and they give us no choice.
Anti-bully activists have been trying to promote the GR. They have adopted the GR as their motto, and they gets kids to wear rubber bracelets engraved with the GR. However, the activists don’t truly understand the GR. They believe it means, Don’t act like a bully. They are really promoting reciprocity: We will be nice to you if you are nice to us, but if you bully us, we will have no tolerance for you and we will get you punished (“administered consequences,” in current jargon). What the anti-bully activists don’t realize is that the GR really means, Don’t act like a victim!
Someone once showed me a letter written by a school principal to the students of the school. It explained how important it is to live by the GR. The concluding paragraph said (the following are not the exact words, but they’re pretty close): “So you have to live by the GR in school, and if you don’t, we will have no choice but to punish you.” Sorry, Mr. Principal, but that is a violation of the GR. How would you like it if some authority figure went around punishing you whenever they decided you didn’t treat someone the way s/he wanted to be treated?
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says outright that the GR is a rejection of reciprocity:
You have heard that it has been said, You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Matthew 5:43-44)
Loving our enemies is the true purpose of the GR.
We don’t need to be instructed to love our friends because that comes naturally to us. When it comes to enemies, though, our natural instinct is to hate them. However, that only escalates their hatred for us in return. Now, how would you like it if your enemies loved you? Wouldn’t it be terrific? They wouldn’t be your enemies anymore! So just as we would like our enemies to love us, we need to love our enemies.
If we were to replace our zero-tolerance-for-bullying policies with this simple expression of the GR–Love your enemy (bully); be nice to people even when they are mean to you–bullying would disappear. And if we were to teach it on an international level, we might achieve peace on earth.
No other way is possible. We can’t practice intolerance of bullying, hoping that it will lead to a society in which intolerance no longer exists. We can’t conduct war against other countries hoping that it will lead to a world without war. The only way to lead to a world that lives by the GR is by living by the GR now.
Disclaimer: While I teach the meaning of the GR, I don’t claim to be a model of it. There are people who live by the GR much better than I do without ever having been taught the rule. I often forget to apply it, and people who know me can attest to it. So if you wish to accuse me of being a hypocrite, I will be the first to agree!
Written by Izzy Kalman.
For more information on bullying or to follow Izzy Kalman’s blog, “A Psychological Solution to Bullying”, visit PsychologyToday.com.
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of
the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.
- Walt Whitman
Children! Their minds are a source of continuous marvel and wonder! It is up to parents to ensure that their child’s personality is moulded and shaped properly. Parents should see to it that their children get continuous stimulation for their senses as well as their imagination. Children’s room can play an important role and be your ally by helping to rouse your children’s latent talents, enhance their imagination and provide the needed stimulation.
Get a fabulous room for your child with the help of Marshalls Wallpapers’ special range for kids that include myriad choices in the form of wallpapers, wall pictures, customized posters & vinyl flooring. Pink room for girls and blue room for boys are outdated trends now.
Marshalls offers you choices galore like bright colours, fabulous designs in stripes, circular patterns, great floral prints, popular cartoons and Disney characters like Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse etc to choose from for your little ones. Let your child have Mickey for a friend, have fairies grant her wishes and sleep gazing at the stars.
Come check out great options at Marshalls to decorate your kid’s room and enrich his/her childhood. Don’t forget to bring your little ones along and do their own choosing for their room because as our own Tagore has said, “Children are living beings – more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves.”
It seems like months of cold, icy, dreary days… until this weekend! Phew, a much-needed, all day outside, beautiful weekend spent with the fam!
I honestly believe that a little sun goes a long way… man, what a breath of fresh air for a change! Some vitamin D ‘au naturel’ and all is good
Yesterday morning {day one of awesomeness} was spent outdoors {as was day 2 of awesomeness}. First thing in the morning Jolie and I ventured out, just the 2 of us, while we waited for Dad to return home from Ice Fishing.
I took my camera along for our tour. Dad came home at about 10am. The three of us went for a long walk, played at the park, and visited family.
Brain waves, alpha music and productive calmness!!
This type of music, the alpha music, called Silence of Peace by John Levine would work great if you put as a background music in your classroom. It will calm your students down and helps them concentrate on the activity that they are doing. Students enjoy using this music as a study aid, insisting that “Silence of Peace” quiets the mind and makes it easier to focus, absorb and retain information. So i took the CD and put it in my classroom while my students were working on an activity. I noticed a big change in the atmosphere. It was much calmer and the kids were able to focus more. This is the second time I post about this music because it works like magic and every teacher who is suffering from a hyperactive classroom would love this.
This what the alpha music did to the kids. They were quiet and concentrating on their work.
What does Alpha music do:
•Reduces stress and anxiety
•Settles down hyperactive behaviour
•Feelings of panic or being overwhelmed subside
•Background for meditation, physical therapies or gentle exercise
“Silence of Peace” by John levine is the first in the “Silence” series of CDs, all of which demonstrate this philosophy. Children are often especially responsive to “Silence of Peace”. Children as young as 3 often go into a quiet, even entranced state when they listen to it and children of all ages find this music relaxes them and gives them easy access to their imagination.
I had the music on and surprisingly saw my students sitting quietly in the story corner without even telling them to do so! Magic!
“My wish is for everyone to be more calm and healthy, with the help of the wonderful and natural remedy of alpha waves. It is my special wish that my music helps you too!” …..J.B. Levine
Over 250,000 people world-wide use John Levine’s alphamusic to help cope with the symptoms of anxiety.
If you wish to listen to free samples of this music or even order it please visit this website:
www.silenceofmusic.com
I was reading an article in Newsweek again. I know, I should just stop, it always gets me all riled up… Anyway, it was about this family. The mom was Jewish, the dad converted to Judaism when they got married and they agreed to raise their daughter Jewish. Then, the divorce happened. The mom won full custody of the kid and dad got some visitation rights.
Well, dad decided that he never really wanted to be Jewish, that he had in fact converted under duress and therefore the conversion was null and void. He went back to his original Catholic faith. Then one weekend he took his daughter with him to Mass AND had her baptised. She told mom, mom had a fit and the whole thing ended up in court. Now a judge has to decide the faith of this very young girl before she is even old enough to know what that means. Mom is trying to bar dad from seeing the kid unless he agrees to continue raising her as a good little Jewish kid. Dad says that infringes on his personal freedom of religion, and that of his daughter. He called the media and the cable networks went with him and his daughter to Mass and have helped the whole thing into a deranged three-ring circus.
And no one is really thinking about the kid at all. Last time I checked, the Jewish faith doesn’t really have a hell, AND they worship the same God as the Catholics, they just don’t think the messiah has come yet. The Catholics do believe in Hell but dad isn’t saying that he’s doing this for his daughter’s soul. In fact other than spite against his ex, I’m not sure why he’s doing it.
Here’s the thing, if I divorced my husband and he took my kids to church and got them baptised (not likely but I’m trying to make a point here) as an Atheist I’d think it was silly, I might rage a little, I’d certainly want to talk to him about what was going on and what he was teaching our daughters about this stuff. But mostly, I’d use it as a conversation starter with my own children. “Daddy did this thing, do you know what it means? What do you think about this? Did you know that there are lots of other ways of thinking about this?” and so on.
BUT – because both parents are religious, and each one believes that their religion is the only true religion they can’t have that conversation. They each have a sick, vested interest in convincing a mere child that their belief is the only belief. I think this kind of early indoctrination amounts to child abuse.
I remember my best friend in elementary school, Kim, used to cry every day because I was going to Hell and she wouldn’t get to see me there. (Her father was one of the founders of the Promise Keepers.) Later, after we had parted ways, her older brother hit the rebellious teen years and announced at a family dinner that he no longer believed in God. The parent’s response was to put him in a psych ward where he was given electro-shock therapy and who knows what else until he came back into the fold! Water-boarding for Jesus anyone? Seriously, this was a 13 or 14-year-old kid.
That IS child abuse. But they were doing it for his eternal soul, so that’s OK, right?
Today I was cruising Pearl Street Mall and saw a family with 9 kids. Another couple who was handing out cards to people that said “Smile, Jesus Loves You” started talking to them and complimenting them on doing Gods work having so many children. They smiled and said, oh yes, and we’re not done yet! They all talked about the amazing power of prayer and how they just knew that God wanted them to keep breeding. Otherwise, surely he’d stop sending them babies! This woman had one set of twins and ten months later, another baby slipped out!
Lady, God can only do so much, either stop having sex or tell your husband to get a damn vasectomy! Seriously, there are so many kids out there who need good homes, if you just have to surround yourself with gobs of kids, I bet God would want you to help some of the ones already here and already struggling. But wait – God has a plan for those kids. It’s called foster care, a cycle of abuse, and later, a prison sentence. (Not that all kids who get forced into foster care roulette end up in prison, but let’s just say I’d rather gamble on Russian Roulette…) Now that’s what I call a loving God!
So – do what you want, believe what ever helps you and makes you a better person, but PLEASE, keep your God off the children. Let them grow up, let them read books, let them meet different people and form their own ideas and opinions. If God is real, and just and good, then they’ll probably come back into the fold, without the shock treatment, water-boarding, bible thumping, or media circuses. And they certainly won’t need a court order!
I’ve gotten many inquiries regarding the new fad, the Live Dove Hat. I thought an illustrated “How to” and a “How to NOT” would be helpful for all of you that are anxious to know the proper way to wear it!
These ACEOs are available in my eBay Store.
This is the correct way to wear the Live Dove Hat.
This is the incorrect (and dangerous) way to wear the Live Dove Hat.
The Live Dove Hat was all the rage and Susan knew how to wear it and what to wear it with. Sam however, was a little unsure.
by Kahlil Gibran
source
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
(NaturalNews) The Disease Mongering Engine, which I invented a couple of years ago and posted on NaturalNews, was initially created as a joke to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the fictitious diseases that are constantly created by the psychiatric industry. This hilarious online disease generator (http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-…) allows you to instantly create your own fictitious diseases and disorders such as:
• Repetitive Dysmorphic Nose Picking Disorder With Itching (RDNPDWI)
• Oppositional Disorganized Speaking Disorder With Indigestion (ODSDWI)
• Chronic Bipolar Anticipation Dysfunction With Smelly Feet (CBADWSF)
… and so on.
Here’s the bizarre part: All of a sudden, the new psychiatric diagnostic manual (DSM-V) appears to have adopted as medical fact many of the disorders that were created by the Disease Mongering Engine!
This new manual, for example, now says that spending a lot of time thinking about sex is a disorder. (That immediately paints every teenage boy as “diseased.”)
Another new disease is “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD), which includes anyone who disagrees with authority. All those who are skeptical about the safety of vaccines, for example, are about to be diagnosed with ODD.
Now, people who are antisocial aren’t merely antisocial. They’re suffering from “Antisocial Personality Disorder” and require pharmacological treatment. So the prick neighbor isn’t merely a prick anymore; he’s a “sufferer” of a “disorder” who needs “treatment.”
Children are no longer unhappy or throwing a temper tantrum, they are suffering from “Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria.” (I’m not making this up…)
Are you cracking up yet? If George Carlin were still alive today, he’d go berserk over this… Carlin, of course, would have been diagnosed with countless psychiatric disorders just for being different in his own genius way.
Federal law protects jackasses
The examples of ridiculous disorders seems endless. But here’s the real kicker in all this: Thanks to federal laws that were designed to protect people who are physically disabled, people who now “suffer” from these fictitious disorders are now protected under federal law. So the antisocial prick jackass working at your office can’t be fired now because he’s actually suffering from a diagnosed “mental disorder” and he’s being “treated” by psychiatrists.
As columnist George Will described it in a Washington Post article, “If every character blemish or emotional turbulence is a “disorder” akin to a physical disability, legal accommodations are mandatory. Under federal law, “disabilities” include any “mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities”; “mental impairments” include “emotional or mental illness.” So there might be a legal entitlement to be a jerk.”
There might even be legal protections for people who are sexual predators. So the creepy pervert at the office who feels you up in the snack room can’t be fired either — he’s only suffering from “Hypersexual Disorder”, a new disorder now defined as a “mental illness” by the psychiatric manual which describes it, in part, as: “A great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges and by planning for and engaging in sexual behavior.” (Well gee, there goes half the population…)
Let’s make all the children “normal”
There’s another danger in all this psych-tagging of human behavior: What about all the creative, genius children who operate far beyond the intellectual norms of regular, average kids? As George Will explains:
“Childhood eccentricities, sometimes inextricable from creativity, might be labeled “disorders” to be “cured.” If 7-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.”
Based on the new DSM-V, children who don’t fit in as dumbed-down, average kids will be flagged as diseased and could be cognitively castrated by whatever psychiatric drugs are necessary to bring them down to the level of all the other kids. Why have exceptional children when they can fit in better as “average!”
It’s all just pure disease mongering
The point in all this is that psychiatry has gone completely loony. Now even the mainstream media is seeing the stupidity in naming every human emotion or eccentricity a “disorder.” When the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post (among other mainstream papers) start questioning the validity of modern psychiatry, you know a line has been crossed.
As the Wall Street Journal reported just yesterday, “Patients who seek psychiatric help today for mood disorders stand a good chance of being diagnosed with a disease that doesn’t exist and treated with a medication little more effective than a placebo.” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100…)
Three years ago, such a sentence only would have appeared on websites like NaturalNews.com, but now these words are appearing in the mainstream media. Amazing.
It just goes to show you that psychiatry has now lost credibility with even the mainstream media that has long support the industry’s disease mongering schemes. Psychiatry’s greatest achievement over the last decade appears to have been destroying its own integrity, much to the benefit of the world population which would be far better off without psychiatry.
That’s my opinion, at least. Or maybe I’m just suffering from Oppositional Defiance Disorder like everyone else who thinks for themselves.
Don’t forget to generate your own fictitious psychiatric disorders by playing with the Disease Mongering Engine:
http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-…
And while you’re at it, check out www.CCHR.org where you can watch full-length documentary exposing the fraud of the psychiatric industry.
In 20 years conditions and facilities for children in Zimbabwe have gone from being some the best in Africa to some of the worst. The country’s education and health systems in collapse and a generation of parents decimated by HIV / Aids. South African film-maker Xoliswa Sithole travels to Zimbabwe to document the lives of several children…. From BBC News. Full story
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Jennifer and Mrs Toni brought Hayleigh for her 2 year old photography session. Oh, I did say she was 2, yes of course, a lot of playing, running around, picking flowers, giving mom all kinda love and just having fun. Thank you Jennifer we so loved photographing Hayleigh, she is a beautiful child and it was just a picture perfect day!! Happy Birthday Hayleigh!!!
Opening your bowels, wiping your bottom, washing your hands and being out of the bathroom in 30 seconds: Another “must learn” skill…Unless you want your child to watch you crapping, or to be out there setting fire to the cat.
Tomorrow, Mason and his friends will be enjoying green (lime) jello for their lunch time dessert in honor of St. Patty’s Day. This was incredibly simple. I labeled green paper cups with each child’s name and put two ice cream scoops of jello in each cup. I then used plastic wrap to seal the tops and placed them in pretty celephane bags with silver ties.
This is the incorrect (and dangerous) way to wear the Live Dove Hat.
source
Your children are not your children.