Trick or cute little useless toy?

I‘ve been debating for a few weeks about the possibility of getting cute little (useless) toys to hand out at Halloween instead of candy. On one hand, not buying candy means not having something very tempting in the house that *I* am very likely to eat (and really need to NOT be eating). As well, I feel guilty handing out food I myself am trying not to eat because it’s unhealthy. (Well, at least in mass quantities anyway) 😉

My one fear is that while I will not be personally contributing to the obesity problem in our country, I’m afraid the neighborhood kids might respond by deciding to contribute to the lack of toilet paper in the area around my house. Heh.

On the other hand, what would I hand out? I could hand out fruit or something – but what?? Or some kind of little prize/toy … which would surely end up in the garbage before too long and then spend the next 100 years in a landfill somewhere…

Maybe I’ll go middle of the road… and get little packages of goldfish crackers or something. It’s not sweets, it’s not THAT bad/unhealthy, and (except for the little package/bag it comes in) it’s mostly biodegradeable…

I know at least for my own kids – the real fun isn’t even the candy they get. It’s going around, showing off their costume, getting something (anything, they don’t even care WHAT) from all the neighbors. Most of the candy gets thrown out because they don’t even like it anyway. Zach usually has one bite of each thing and then spits it out. He’s a lot of fun to hang out with on Halloween! Very appropriate for the holiday: very scary! LOL! At least something like goldfish crackers… I mean, who doesn’t like that??

iGoTo the Jungle – iPhone App

TiGoTo the Jungle: $0.99 (at the time of this writing)

You can see some screenshots of the app on the website here.

Whirlwind week+

Sam’s been gone for over 10 days now on a business trip. The schedule we have now, though, demands that I need help. However, we have, once again, lost another babysitter. (long drama-ridden story! OY!) So, I had to go it completely alone while he was away. In some cases that meant literally needing to be in two places at once, with those two places being a good 40 minutes apart. That was not a good day, let me tell you!

I’ve said it before (on my old, archived blog) and I’ll say it again. You single moms – I don’t know how you guys do this without help. You must be super-woman or something, because I am counting down the minutes until I can catch a break!

But in the end, I survived. I managed to to be in those two places 40 minutes apart – nearly at the same time. Even when the universe kept throwing even more unexpected obstacles in my way. I did it. And even though the house is thoroughly trashed at this moment (and I have 0 interest in picking any of it up), I am much less stressed than I was at the start of this adventure. (Maybe it’s the knowledge that the worst is behind me!! LOL! Who knows!)

We’re in the middle of getting the closet worked on – so my week included having an electrician come and rewire the cable we found that was stapled to the wall of the closet (that was apparently the only source of DSL for the office), and then a painter coming in to strip all the existing hardware out of the closet, including the baseboards, then clean it up and paint it. Zach’s day care was closed on monday, so I couldn’t work that day, then on Tuesday my email died thanks to Postini. My clients contact me via email for projects they want me to work on, so nothing came in until late that evening – and then it came flooding in – so I was desperately trying to play catch up the rest of the week.

Yeah… it’s been fun.

In any case, life returns to normal come monday. Whatever “normal” is…

Let’s play, what would you do…

Your kids have been beating each other up all weekend long. You’re all sitting on the couch watching TV, the kids are fighting with each other (nothing new), you are overcome with tiredness and actually fall asleep on the couch.

When you wake up, the kids are no longer in the room, and the house is quiet. You:

a) Go upstairs and look for the blood trail. It can’t possibly be this quiet in the house without one of them killing the other.

b) Go back to sleep. Whatever the problem is (and you’re SURE there’s a problem somewhere!) you just don’t want to know.

Puppies and babies

I‘ve gotten into a new TV show recently: Dog Whisperer. It’s sort of like Super Nanny, but for dogs. Cesar Millan probably understands dog language better than my own dog does. He walks into a room and the dogs just seem to know he is not someone you mess with. The last episode I saw was on Friday night. This one was about how to raise a puppy the right way. Probably more than really understanding what that right way is, I realized that there are a million wrong ways. My dog is an “old man” now. Lazy and not even vaguely interested in being active (at least not more than for short bursts). When he was a puppy, he was a handful. I think it was at least 4 years of puppy insanity before things finally started to settle down with him. And right around that time, we came home with Rachel. I’m not sure if he just grew up, or having a baby in the house sobered him. Either way, it’s been a long time since we had to deal with the crazy puppiness.

Ironically, you’d think after watching a show about puppies, it would make you want to run out and get one. “To see a puppy is to buy a puppy.” But something about highlighting everything involved in training a dog, especially when it’s a puppy, made me glad to have my older, mellow, old-man of a dog.

There’s a lot of truth in that with kids too. I’m not the kind of parent that cries because my kids are no longer babies. Each age leaves behind one set of challenges and exchanges them for another. I loved when my kids were babies, but I don’t miss all that went along with it. The spitting up, the nights without a good sleep, the diapers, the not-knowing if they were eating enough, etc. etc. They were cute, and I have the pictures, and I love looking at them, but I’m actually pretty happy to not be living in that moment anymore.

Zach especially. He was a somewhat easy baby in the beginning, but things quickly turned around, and he has really become one hell of a challenge. It’s not just because he’s a boy either. Even though most 4 year olds have very little impulse control, I still see other boys his age that seem to be able to control themselves better than Zach can. This is not a phase I’m loving right now. I’m taking pictures, and I’ll look back on how cute he was, but when we get past this crazy phase he’s in, I will not be sorry to be on the other side.