Brand new day

“

These are not the words you want to hear, half-asleep, 5am in the morning. (Not that those words are ok anytime of the day) And thus began my day of balancing taking care of Zach while lugging my laptop around with me and trying to keep up with emails and whatever little projects I could get done. Fact of the matter was that he ended up being fine. I kept him home for the day, because I didn’t know what that was all about and wanted to keep an eye on him to be sure he was ok. But mostly he just wanted to play all day. Chalk it up to another day I’m thankful for my “work-at-home” life – even if I didn’t get that much work done today. heh.

Silence

Sometimes I want to come on here and apologize for being absent – but I have been purposefully silent. When this blog went public again, it was important for me to step back and not be as open as I had been. There are times that I really miss the ability to pour my soul out somewhere. But pouring your soul out doesn’t always fix things, sometimes it makes things worse. And with a password protected blog, sometimes it felt like it didn’t matter. If I stood in the woods and poured my soul out to the silence, did it really count? No. Kind of like the tree that never fell there too.

I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe that’s because the solution keeps changing on me.

We’re dealing with some family issues that I can’t get into great detail about on this blog. It’s been hammering away at my strength and has made me go from the very worst deep depression, to having hope again. I know I have to talk about it to deal with it, so I’ve been confiding in a few friends. It’s pretty ironic that as much like an outsider that I feel here, I seem to have more friends here than I have had anywhere else that we’ve lived. Talking has lessened the weight of this. But I still have to deal with it. And we’re weeks and weeks away from anything remotely resemebling a solution or help. IF we’ll even get it. I can deal with the problem providing I’m not told again there isn’t a problem. There is. But unless the help you need is going to walk a mile or ten in your shoes, it’s hard to get them to see it, I think.

I’ll just have to wait and see and hold onto that hope my friends gave me.

Dr. Seuss iPhone Apps

Dr. Seuss is one of my all time favorite children’s book authors. I loved the books as a kid, and as an adult, I still love reading the books to my kids. So it should probably come as no surprise that the Dr. Seuss iPhone apps totally thrill me and my kids.

The Cat In the Hat

Love this book. For some reason, I feel like this book relates to my life on so many levels. From the thing one and thing two ransacking the house (=cough= Zach and Rachel =cough=) to suddenly finding yourself in a mess that is “so deep and so tall” you can not pick it up, there is no way at all… except a cat with a magical room cleaning machine never seems to show up at my doorstep. Hmmm… This eBook has it all. The ability to have it read to you or read it yourself. Little animations, little interactions, even a little background sound, music and effects. (There’s settings to turn those off too if you don’t like them) This is the way an eBook should be done.

The Cat in the Hat: $3.99* (NOTE!! See below about a special price on this app for March 2, 2010 only!!)

Dr. Seuss’s ABC

I have to admit – reading this book myself isn’t as much fun as reading The Cat in the Hat – but having the eBook read TO YOU it is actually alot more fun. Somehow the reader on the eBook does a much better job. (Maybe it’s also because I seem to get tongue tied reading this book long before I’m even halfway in) LOL! Either way – this book is great. Sound effects, interaction. If you leave the book in the middle, it will even remember where you left off and give you the option of starting there when you start the book/app again.

Dr. Seuss’s ABC: $3.99* (NOTE!! See below about a special price on this app for March 2, 2010 only!!)

Dr. Seuss Camera – The Cat in the Hat Edition

Ok, this is a lot of fun. My kids LOVE playing with the camera on the phone, so this is a no brainer. You can pick out a “frame” and then take a picture or use one from your photo library or camera roll – usually putting someone’s face inside a cartoon – and then save it, email it. You can add “stickers” to it, etc. My only comment here is that the icons on the bottom are a little ambigous and took a little getting used to understand what they did. But exploring and playing with the app was so much fun, we didn’t mind.

Dr. Seuss Camera – The Cat in the Hat Edition: $2.99* (NOTE!! See below about a special price on this app for March 2, 2010 only!!)

NOTE!: So now here’s something really cool: Oceanhouse Media (the developer of these apps) is celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday and NEA’s Read Across America Day by dropping all Dr. Seuss iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps to $0.99 each for one day only, Tuesday, March 2, 2010. Definitely recommend you scoop these up tomorrow while they’re on sale. That’s a great deal!! You can read more about that here

Click here to learn more, see demos and see more Dr. Seuss apps

*prices at time of this writing.

Another “I’ll never…” bites the dust

L“Mom? Uhm… Think I’m ready to come home now!”

Of course, being 9 years old, there’s all kinds of issues here. One problem is that I’m reasonbly sure this phone is going to get lost. Sooner rather than later, I’ll bet. The other issue is that, I can’t be 100% sure that she’ll forever get the idea that this phone is not to be used to chat it up with her friends. It’s to be used for me to contact her or her to contact me. If she wants to talk to her friends, we do actually have a landline phone she can use to her heart’s content. (Or at least until it’s time to do her homework or go to bed. LOL!)

So, after much debate, we finally got her one of those Tracfones. The particular model we got for her actually does text messaging, (so I can easily send her a text message to come home from her friends house at a specified time, if need be – and it only uses up 1/3 of a minute), it has voicemail, even a little camera. You buy minutes via a card (and actually the model phone we got doubles the minutes you buy for the life of the phone) – and if she uses up the minutes – that’s it – the phone stops working until we add more minutes. There’s no monthly or daily charge. And it’s not tied to our credit card. So no worries about a surprise $500 phone bill because she decided to sneak a few calls to some friends. And the phone itself only cost about $20. So while I really hope she doesn’t lose the phone – it’s only $20. It’s not like $200. And the phone? I mean for $20… that’s a pretty sweet deal – which is why I finally caved. I mean, I think I couldn’t get a decent walkie-talkie for only that much!

So yeah – I’m pretty sure only a few months ago I was saying “I would never buy my kid a cell phone!! Not until they’re at least 13 or something…” Yeah. Funny how circumstance will change things. That and the technology that can put out a $20 cell phone! 😉

Shhh… don’t tell him I’m blogging!

So no sooner do I make this post, my son turns the table on me. Who knows, maybe he can read, AND he reads my blog and figured he confuse me. 😉 Almost since the very moment I hit publish on that post, he’s been a lot better behaved. I won’t even presume to say he’s over his “phase,” I know he’s not. And it’s not like he’s given up tantrums and whining 100% – he’s just turned them down to once/twice a day and turned down the duration from several hours to just a few minutes. I can TOTALLY live with this.

The other thing – and I’m not sure what to make of this – is “manners” has become a game to him. It’s become “fun” to try and come up with as many things to thank me for as possible. This… is really weird. Don’t get me wrong – I am loving the appreciation, but I feel like there’s got to be a catch somewhere.

“Thank you Mommy for making me dinner”
“You’re welcome”
“Thank you Mommy for the spoon”
“You’re welcome”
“Thank you Mommy for the napkin”
“You’re… welcome…”
“Thank you Mommy for the water”
“uh… actually you got yourself a cup of water…”
“Oh… then thank you for the cup so I could get myself some water”
“uh… you’re… welcome..?”

He’s got to be plotting something. Trying to distract me so he can catch me off guard. This just isn’t normal.

Well, still, I guess I’ll be blissfully ignorant (and slightly paranoid) in the meantime. However, I’m sure that clicking the “publish” button on this post is a guarantee this momentary blip will come to an end. It sure was cute while it lasted!