One small dream fulfilled

In the midst of all the crappy stuff that's happened this past week, I got to do something with Ainslie that I've always visualized doing with my children--we baked! It helps (in this particular instance) that she is very much into "Help Me" (which in her mind is turned around--she is saying, "Me Help.") right now and wants to do whatever I'm doing. She stood nicely on a kitchen chair and ate a snack in between helping me stir. We sampled our frosting along the way to see when we had used enough powdered sugar.

As much as it always irks me a bit to see myself slowly turning into my mother, I have such great memories of doing the exact same thing as a child. Sitting on the yellow folding stool, cutting out cookies, then slowly transitioning from being the helper to being the supervised baker.

It's not that I'm a fabulous chef (the cake was from a mix, but we made our own frosting AND pudding to use the yolks--again, just like Mom!), but there is something comforting to the soul about repeating traditions with your children. Sure, my car may be near death's door and we had a purely HORRIBLE weekend to recoup from, but for that 30 minutes or so, my little girl and I made dessert and it was sweet.

Lord Help Us, We're Getting Dumber

Forget about all those reports that say American schoolchildren know less than their foreign counterparts—you don’t need a report to see that people in this country are losing brain power by the second. This is probably going to be an Everybody Should Be More Like Me entry, so if you read on, at least you were warned.

First of all-- television. It would be hypocritical of me to say that we shouldn’t watch tv, because I personally love the dang thing, but really, over the past few years, 8 out of 10 new shows is a reality show. How creative is that? Fear Factor? Come on! For the few moments I’ve ever spent watching that, I could feel myself becoming dumber. Trading Spouses? You have GOT to be kidding. Do we really need to watch more people make fools of themselves trying to find love on a glorified game show? Meanwhile, Arrested Development, one of the funniest shows ever written, is apparently over the heads of many Americans. The scripts are tight and full of double and even triple entendre, and nobody watches. Why? Is Fear Factor Blind Date Edition on at the same time? Arrested Development runs away with an Emmy and can’t stay on the air, but Fox’s new, post-Arrested lineup includes both Skating and Dancing with minor celebrities.

Then there is public school, or rather, the people who pay taxes to support them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of a public education system. I would like to use one, but because I love my child, I can’t send her to a Chicago Public School. If we lived somewhere where the children actually learned, and didn’t have to wear bulletproof vests, I’d send her to a public school without a problem. What kills me, is that in cities that support public schools, there are people complaining that they shouldn’t have to pay taxes toward schools because they don’t have children using them. SO YOU WANT TO CREATE MORE STUPID THUGS????? Do you want these uneducated people to grow up to live on welfare and have the house next door to you converted to Section 8 housing? Does this somehow SAVE you money?

Hmmm. Well, we’ve backed ourselves into a bit of a corner with the whole Iraq deal. Gas prices are up to stay (a situation the rest of the world has been enjoying for a decade.) So, wait, by Jove, we’ve got it! Don’t worry about being more fuel-effiecient, let’s just drill in Alaska, in one of the last pristine places on earth! The best part is, it’s already ours!

I s’pose this close to New Year’s, I should still be feeling more optimistic, huh?

Potty chair 0, Alphabet 2

All the way home from K-Mart, we talked about the Potty Chair and how we were going to use it. We talked about the Dora underpants we would consider buying next time we went to the store, we even called Grammie from the car to tell her about Boppy Chair. When it comes to toilet training, Ainslie seems to be more about theory than action. We’ll keep trying. She likes to sit on it, on the floor (we got the 3-in-1 thing), fully clothed. Maybe in a few days we’ll work up to sitting on it with her pants off.

Meanwhile, this past week I resolved to teach her 2 letters and their sounds each week. She has completely mastered A and B! Yay! Ask her what A is for and she will tell you it is for Neenee and bapple! B is for Baby, bubbles and bath! She will pick them out of her Letter Factory magnets (best toy ever) and…ok, this was a TOTAL fluke, but she asked me to draw a B on her magnadoodle, so I did, distractedly, and upside down, then I told her to draw one (I was folding laundry and not really totally engaged) LOOK AT THIS:

Mine is the big one (remember I was doing it upside down, my penmanship is somewhat better usually ;-) ) but HOLY COW—she drew the one inside it! Of course I kept asking her to draw more Bs and of course this was a fluke, but I am still so amazed.

So, I figure, at least when she does learn to potty, she can read to herself.