Want to win a sling?

Stephanie over at Adventures in Babywearing is hosting a sling give-away! Go over and enter for yourself.

In case you don't win, you can just go to KimzKreations and buy a sling.

I'm off to shop!

The crap doesn't end when you stop diapering.

I just read Suburban Bliss and then watched this movie. I had no idea. I do not remember asking anyone to come wipe my butt. Am I just blocking out a horrid memory?

Recalls

I've been doing some research on car seats yesterday and today and came across the Consumer Product Safety Commission site. I was happy to find no results when I searched for "Britex" and "Sunshine" within a search for "car seats" -- yay, 2 companies with no car seat recalls. Can't say the same for EvenFlo.

Then I started looking at all the different recalls for children and was disgusted. Apparently kids up to the age of 14 are at risk of death from clothing with drawstrings (the guidelines page is a pdf). I never would have thought that possible, but it has happened. And then there are things like these bicycle helmets sold at Target. The photos plainly show a label with the CPSC letters yet the recall is because the helmets didn't meet their safety standards. So, don't trust labels.

There were a ton of jewelry products that were being recalled because of too high of a lead content. Toys R Us had to recall a crib because the paint had a high lead content. I even saw some boys' jackets that had a high lead content.

You can do an advanced search of their site (including searching within a search like I did) here.

You can also sign up to receive announcements from them on this page. Their explanation of what subscription categories mean actually had some humor on it... and this is a government site. Surprise!

5 Things Meme

I was tagged by my friend, Ellie, from Panjo Kids. Here goes!

1. Good mom, bad housewife.
   

   This is an assessment that my husband and I agree on. I love the mom part of being a SAHM, but I hate cleaning, so I really let it slide. The slightest sign of a kid needing my attention and there is no time for the cleaning. Except the kitchen, because I like to cook. The problem is that I don't think I'm much good, and I'm slow. That's where the housewife that has dinner hot and on the table part comes in -- and falls apart. Our plan is to work on the "throw out the clutter" theory because then cleaning will not be so hard. Too bad the grandmas don't understand why we are resistant to their desire to fill our house with stuff (you NEED another chair in this room so I bought one, he NEEDS a table so I bought one, I know this toy is big but it's a car so he'll LOVE it). We aren't even choosing the crap that our home is being filled with! A good housewife wouldn't let things get to this state because she would have decorated and set up a playroom that her mom & mother-in-law could comprehend (and would be smaller than the living room so that they could see that it's full). Basically, a good housewife would have the house so under control that the grandmas would be able to see the boundary lines. Sigh.
   

   
   
   
2. I'm a Dvorak typist.
   

   Way back in, oh 1991, I got my first computer and soon after borrowed a modem from my aunt and started chatting on local BBS. I spent my work days typing on a computer, adding up numbers on a calculator and dialing a phone. Then I'd go home and chat for hours. I had major pains shooting up from my wrist all the way to my shoulders. I bought a wrist wrest but that didn't help much. One of the guys I chatted with suggested I try the just-released free Dvorak layout driver from Microsoft. It would remap my Qwerty keyboard to the Dvorak layout for free, so I wouldn't have to go buy a new keyboard and I could try it and see if it helped. By the time I had the layout memorized I was pain free, and I've been singing its praises ever since. Don't think that you can't memorize a new layout; you can. And it's easier because you can't cheat as only the "a" and "m" keys are the same. Try it and I bet you'll like it. You can read more about it in the Wikipedia article.
   

   
   
   
3. Daddy, not Dad.
   

   I'm 41 and I still call my dad "Daddy." I can write "Dad" and it sounds fine, but it sounds stupid when I say it.
   

   
   
   
4. Front loading washers need a soak cycle.
   

   While I'm thrilled that we have a front loader like I always wanted, I'm bummed that it has no way of soaking things overnight. How will cloth diapers ever work (assuming I can convince my husband that it's a good idea) when they sometimes need soaking? I wouldn't want an open pail & I wouldn't want to have to dump the water myself. I have looked at gDiapers and I think they sound great. At least they put the waste where our society already expects it to be instead of the landfills.
   

   
   
   
5. I'll freak out when my dentist retires.
   

   The only other dentist I've ever seen was his dad. Apparently his son decided to do something else with his life. Pah.
   

   
   

Now I'm supposed to tag 5 others, but I just looked at my Google Reader list and they've all done it already. Oh, well. That's what happens when you come in at the end of a pyramid scheme. ;-)

Why aren't I Dutch?

Dutch women don't get depressed? No fair. I can be bossy and would love to work part time.

The best part was the ending:

"Luckily," she said, "most men have enough Tarzan in them to like a bit of a jungle."

Will we ever be the same?

Yesterday Kate at Sweet|Salty wrote:

We’re so drained. Our skin still smokes and hisses, fresh from the brand of tragedy, to the point where I wonder if we’ll ever be ourselves again.

No, you won't. No parent is. I was just thinking about this the other day. My husband has a friend who is 1 of 4 sons (he's somewhere in the middle). This guy claims that no one should have more than one kid because you have less love for each child that way. My husband and I maintain it's not a zero-sum game; parents don't have a finite amount of love. Love expands and grows with each new family member, whether from birth, adoption, marriage or some other way I can't think of right now -- but why?

The answer hit me last week. Each new person in the family brings out something different in you. I feel like a different parent now that The Cupcake is here and it is a very good thing. I have to figure out her moods and body language. I have to understand how to soothe her and, sadly, the tricks that worked with The Biscuit do not always work on her. In fact the things that soothed him the best and the fastest make her scream. And while that can be frustrating and frightening, she is changing me into a better parent that has even more tools to work with and better ways of coping.

We felt like we became experts on our son and his heart problems and how to navigate the hospital bureaucracy. Now we are newbies again. We are brand new to the world of a "typical" girl who doesn't have to go to the cardiologist and get echo cardiograms. In fact, the first week home I was taking her temperature all the time. She feels so warm to me despite a totally normal thermometer reading because he was slightly cooler than normal. And yes, it did take me a week to figure that out. It was my first clue that despite it being the second time around, I'm a newbie and have to learn all over again. But I know that I don't know, so that puts me at the second level, right? At least compared to last time when I was so lost that I didn't know what I didn't know.

Maybe it only makes sense from where I sit.

Mr. Rogers

This is great article about Mr. Rogers. I love reading about him and this article had some new info. There is a link at the end to a profile in Esquire Magazine that is quite long, but well written. If you want to read more than the 10 points on Mentalfloss then it's a worthy read.