I so blame the Yarn Harlot

Flight of the Hamsters Game

Yeah, you read that right. I found this over at the Yarn Harlot’s site.

I love how the hamsters put down their goggles before they go “flying!”

It’s sickeningly addictive….Fair warning!

Wordless Wednesday 1/30/08

Things you never thought you’d say…the potty training edition

 “Isaac-DO NOT put your foot in the toilet bowl!!”

“You may NOT flush your pull up!!”

“So, do you want to hear my tale of woe?”

That was how my mom answered the phone today…I told her if she could beat the tale I’m about to tell, I’d be all ears.

So, here’s what happened.

I was on the phone with the OT..that’s another post. Don’t ask….when I heard a bang, thud, SCREAM from upstairs. Isaac comes flying down the stairs screaming at the top of his lungs,a nd I hang up the phone with the OT and start to try and console Isaac. He keeps saying “I hurt..I hurt…” and before I could get it out of him, a rush of blood comes out of his mouth.

I try to calm him down, and I get the bleeding stopped, but he WILL NOT let me in his mouth for anything. He tried to suck his fingers, but that was a nogo…he was in too much pain. Since he wouldn’t let me in, and wouldn’t suck his fingers, I got worried and made a phone call to the Dentist. Dr. Nancy (yes, that’s what the kids call her! There’s Dr. Nancy, Dr. Jason and Dr. Jennifer!) has us come right in, so I get Isaac in the car and we drive over. The entire time, I’m pre-setting him with “We’re going to see Dr. Nancy. She’s going to look in your mouth and check it out.”

He was ok..until I had to take him away from a video game (darn child friendly offices!!) for his appointment. Dr. Nancy heard the story and why I did kind of a flip out-hey..I couldn’t get in his mouth and see what in hades was going on! It would have been my luck that he would have knocked out a tooth…blah. But, as always, she’s totally reassuring and wonderful…I controlled his arms, and legs, and she took care of his head. She got in, noticed that ONE TOOTH was a smidge discolored from the trauma and that he had a nasty cut on the inside of his mouth…but everything else was good.

Isaac got a sticker (MATER! He was thrilled) and a prize (he picked  a spider from the prize tower) and high fived Dr.Nancy. He’s all good until April..unless anything goes wrong…

please, nothing go wrong.

Cocoa swap question of the week #4

So, I’m a bit late on the draw with the last one. So late that I’ve got this one to do now…

So, here it is

What is your most memorable vacation? Where did you go? What made it memorable?

I think the most memorable vacation that I’ve had was the scouting trip before DH (then fiancee) and I moved to California. We went for a week, and really had a great time. It went by TOOOO fast. We spent the time scouting apartments, looking at what there was to do, finding our way around, so we could only forget in the month before we finally left. We did Disney (why not?? We were soon to be SoCal residents!) and acted like big kids…and ate and touched and saw things that would become our new life. It was insanely exciting and scary at the same time. We discovered the San Diego zoo, the Queen Mary, the whole place…even Olivera St. Places that would become familliar…and would be places that we’d say “Let’s go!” to for seven hilarious years. It was also the first trip I’d taken really, without my family, to a completely different place. Hey..you want to talk memorable…that was our week in CA.

Cocoa swap question of the week #3

What is the most ‘random’ memory you have from your childhood?

I think the most random memory is one where we were getting a Christmas tree with a few of my uncles, and we almost got lost in the back woods. I was really young..and I think my one uncle who we were with was on his first wife…but my then-aunt and I were so lost in the backwoods, because we had stopped to look at a tree (and I think she was pulling me on a sled) and the rest of the group trapsed off without us. We ended up sitting under the tree drinking some of a thermos of hot chocolate until the rest of the group came back, treeless. We ended up buying our tree off of the lot that year…

yeah, see? random.

How to traumatize a cat…

Just a few minutes ago, as I was sitting here, reading a pattern for my Cocoa swap buddy’s blah buster, Isaac came up to me, with a lanyard around his neck, asking me to take him for a walk…like a dog. Strange, but not completely out of hte ordinary in this house.

WELL, then, he decides that he’s getting no love with the walk thing here, so he goes over to Booger who is silently sitting on the radiator, taking a nap.

He slips the lanyard over her head and says: “I’m going to take her for a walk! Come on, Booger!”

Booger uses her best defense…slip quietly out of the lanyard and then squeak.

Isaac continued to follow her and then finally gave up as she went down the basement steps.

Man..I wonder if Booger has nightmares of Isaac hugging, trying to take her for a walk and all of the mauling he does on her out of love.

Friday fill in #56

1. Sunny days makes me happy.
2. I would like a Starbucks Michael Jackson, please.
3. Peanut butter and bee graham crackers tastes SO good!
4 Saturdayis my favorite day of the week because it’s a perpetual pajama day.
5. everyone says my eyes are my best feature.
6. We could learn so much from just sitting and watching kids. Their dynamics and understanding are amazing.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to hanging out and knitting, tomorrow my plans include going to my uncle’s birthday party as well as doing some dollar store shopping and Sunday, I want to sleep in instead of waking up at the buttcrack of dawn with Isaac!

aaaah…no longer pinky-pink…I swear it looked purple on the monitor…but hey..now we’re blue and you can’t argue blue!

My first attempt at a lace stole-Don’t laugh.

So, I got ambitious and joined the Secret of the stole ii.

Does it matter that I’ve only done some lace socks? Does it matter that I have serious project ADD and these big suckers end up still on the needles later on down the pike?

naah. Let’s just jump in with both feet.  Let’s use the lightest weight yarn I’ve ever use..and let’s get a new circular needle that won’t unkink to go with it.

Oh, did I mention the yarn is Malabrigo lace weight? Mmmm…yummy..and squishy.

Oh, and one more thing-did I mention that I’ve never read a chart before?

All makes sense for me to do this project, doesn’t it?

So, I dive in, learn quasi chart reading, and then reverted to the written directions! I can’t count in the evening when Isaac is awake. Counting charts are not fun.

So, here are the photos of the finished clue 1. Remember, that this is clue 1/9.

the blankie? I made that the other day. there are frogs on the other side, and I figured the serious contrast in colors would make it so that you could really see the lace and all of my screw ups Design features.

So, clue 2 at the end of next week. Remember, no laughing at my design features.

This is the seriously wrong message to send

Child 1: “I got on the honor roll…so I should get a prize!”

Child 2: “No. That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do! I got a gift because I graduated high school. You did what you’re supposed to do. Get good grades!” 

This evening I was doing my nightly check of Yahoo to see if there was any good celebrity dirt world news before I went to bed and I stumbled upon this.

(takes soapbox out)

Since when did good grades equate minimum wage? And since when did studying become a paying job? Try NEVER. How can Newt Gingrich and his daughter think that this is a good idea? I Im’d the angel forever with this article and she agreed with me…and her JL said a serious truism-“so, it’s if you do well in science/math, we won’t reward you.”

That’s exactly it. When are people going to realize that kids listen to money, not grades. If you have your honors student, they will slack off, get bad grades so that they can enroll in the program and pull their grades up. They won’t enroll in the more difficult classes that are there because they risk not getting their pay out.

THEN, what happens when these students GET to college and they have to PAY for classes and no one’s going to pay them for their 4 hours of study time and maintaining a B in their Math and Science classes?  What are they teaching these children?

Then, look at the funding. This is privately funded. What happens when the donors decide to back out? These students could potentially be left out in the cold mid year. Where does this leave them? What does it teach them? It teaches them that it’s just fine to back out of committments.

There are better ways to bridge the achievement gap. There are proven ways that don’t involve monetary rewards. In all of the education classes that you’ll take out there, they tell new teachers to steer clear of tangible rewards, no matter what they are. You can start with them, but attempt at all times to move the student to the intrinsic rewards. You do not want a classroom full of students depending on extrinsics. This whole pay to study system is giving students extrinsic rewards for basically doing nothing.

Another thing they teach in education courses is to monitor your students’ progress. Constantly assess, formally and informally. We know how it will be formally assessed, with standardized tests, which I hate, but that’s another post alltogether. The big question here is how is this going to be monitored on a day to day level? Are parents expected to sign off? How are the students going to be held accountable for their time studying to make sure they did it? So many people are all for accountability, but I’d like to see them report how this is going to work. They probably have no clue.

Strike one more up for the people who think they know what works to motivate students, but are so far out of touch that they often stick their heads up their rears and make fools of themselves.

This is the wrong, wrong, wrong message to send to students. This sends the message that there is not a reward for doing well without being in academic trouble first, and it also sends the message that the almighty dollar trumps everything else, including the basic knowledge that you need to function in the world society today.

Stupid delusional politicians.

Soapbox over