But quitting is a bad thing, right?

I'm thinking about quitting writing. Or at least, to quit writing for pay.

It might just be the exhaustion talking. I am on several months now without more than a few hours sleep at a time. It might be the post partum depression, although I've been feeling pretty good lately. It might just be temporary frustration with how much I think my fiction sucks.

Except that I feel rather relieved about this possibility. I keep thinking about Dej's sig line. "The career of a writer is comparable to that of a woman of easy virtue. You write first for pleasure, later for the pleasure of others and finally for money." -- Marcel Achard

I used to write all the time. I couldn't help it. Ever since I first learned to read I'd be thinking of the way I would have told the story, and how much better my version would have been. I have notebooks and three ring binders from my junior high and high school days, stuffed full of short stories, observations, plot ideas.

And then I started doing nonfiction. I found out I was very very good at journalism. I got paid for doing it, I got promotions for doing it. It was all very gratifying. Except that I hated it. I loathe journalism. I loathe writing nonfiction, except for essays, which are a blast. I did it for ego, I did it for money, I did it in spite of the fact that I was bored out of my mind. And I did pretty well for myself. I was content at least, if not happy, and when I worked for About I was proud of my site.

I've been pushing myself to get back into fiction, though, to follow through on my fantasies and get published. And I've been getting more and more unhappy, increasingly constipated in my writing. Instead of a joy, with the words bursting out of me, story making has become a drag on my mind, a chore that I keep putting off.

This isn't me, and it's not a way I'm happy living. I don't want to be like this anymore, and I think the solution is to stop working toward getting published. I need to start writing for my own pleasure again.

I don't know if it's the right decision, or if it's even one I'll stick with, but it's a decision I feel good about, and I haven't felt good about anything to do with writing in a long time.

Now that I'm awake

It horrifies me that the toddler was up and in the living room without my knowing it. There's just so many ways for a little climber like her to get seriously hurt without adult supervision. I don't know what to do about it, though. She'll just climb over a gate, and a closed door will just keep me from hearing her if she needs me in the night. I will have to think about this.

We have now reached the stage of the morning where everyone is crying and refusing to be consoled. Oh brother. This mommy business - pbtttt.

No, no, no. I quit! You can't make me do this. So there.

Ugh. It's way too early to be up.

The wee one woke me up, crying to be fed around 4:30 a.m. Nothing unusual there. The toddler, however, was also awake. I found her curled up in a corner of the couch, wrapped in the blanket I'd left out.

Nursed the baby with the toddler cuddled up next to me, then tried to get the two of them back to bed. Only limited success there. By 5:30 they were both up and ready to play.

So here we are. Two wide awake and very happy little ones, and one very tired and grumpy mommy person. I'm not even going to get to nap today, since the husband has a doctor's appointment an hour away. Maybe I'll be lucky and they'll both go down for a nap at the same time. They certainly should be tired earlier than usual I should think! Not that life could be that easy, of course.

So I've copped out by popping in Cinderella. That'll buy me a little time to veg out and try to shake my brain cells into some degree of alertness.

Recipe: Quick Chicken Creole

An actual low fat recipe that the teenager did not complain about! I got this from the Slim Gourmet column in the local paper. I served it with brown rice and a green salad. We all loved it.

Substitutions: I like to use bottled minced garlic, so I used a teaspoon of that in place of the garlic salt. I also used a chicken bouillion cube and a cup of hot water in place of the consomme.

Makes 4 servings

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 16-ounce can tomatoes
1 cup consomme or tomato juice
1 onion peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 green bell pepper seeded and chopped
1 cup sliced celery
1 or 2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Generous dashes hot pepper sauce (to taste)

Cut the chicken breasts in half. Combine with all remaining ingredients in a covered pot. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to just simmering. Cover and simmer over very lowheat until chicken is tender, about 25 minutes. Uncover and cook over medium heat until the liquid evaporates to a sauce consistency.

Now what?

The teen is, in my admittedly biased opinion, a pretty good looking kid. He has thick brown hair and his father's blue eyes. He's just shy of six feet and is still growing. We think he's going to end up well over six feet tall.

Unfortunately he also weighs nearly 300 pounds.

This has been a problem for years now. He'd come to see us for summer visitation with clothes that were always too small for him. By the end of the summer they'd be too big for him. We didn't make any special effort to help him lose weight, it just happened.

I don't know what things are like at his mom's house, so I can't credit the weight loss to my cooking, or all the time playing with his friends, or because we limited video games. I honestly don't know what went on at his mother's that caused this. But after two months here he'd go back to start school. The next time we saw him, usually at Thanksgiving, all the weight he'd lost over the summer was back with interest.

It was worrisome, but not really a hindrance - until last summer. A friend of the husband's offered to give the teen free flying lessons. He was very excited. This was going to give him major bragging points with his friends come autumn. Unfortunately, when he showed up for his first lesson he couldn't fit into the plane. The seat and the cockpit were just too small for him.

It was heartbreaking. It frightened me half to death.

The husband's family could be poster children for heart disease. He's the first man in three generations on both sides of his biological family to make it past 45. Reasonably fit men, out of shape men - every one of them just fell over dead one day from a heart attack. I'm convinced the only reason the husband is still alive is the years he spent in the military, exercising every day. I obsessively monitor his heart health. He can't miss a single dose of his blood pressure medication without hearing about it. I'm too frightened I'll lose him.

So here we have this kid in his early teens, with a teen's appetite for junk food and a fatal family history. It's imperative we do something, but what? While it used to be easy to encourage good eating decisions, he's pretty resistant to eating anything not high fat/high calorie anymore. (Oh, he'll eat dinner, but he complains the whole time!) Naturally he's also resistant to gentle invitations to go for a walk; it's not exactly easy for him to move around.

We finally have a chance to teach him to have a healthier lifestyle and I don't know how to do it. Weight loss isn't going to happen unless he actively participates. I can't force him to go to a doctor or avoid candy and fast food, and I can't make him get up and moving. But how do we help him want to start on the hard work of losing this weight? How do we help a "don't tell me what to do!" teenager without pushing any buttons?

Things To Remember

The toddler, standing by the side of the tub, waving at the bath water as it swirls down the drain:

"Bye-bye bath. See you later! Bye-bye."

Written while sitting in the dark, holding my infant daughter.

There are times when I am holding the baby that my heart folds in on itself and clenches so tightly with love of her that I can't breathe for the pain. She is so dear, so soft. Her hair, what little there is of it, feels like silk, and she is warm and oh, so tiny lying here against my chest, sleeping as I type.

It's strange to remember that at one time my life felt complete without her. She is no mere addition now, but an essential member of our family. Life without her would be unbearable. Her presence makes colors richer, laughter more vibrant. She gives our family depth and dimension. Our life before she joined us seems so shallow and gray in comparison.

I am so grateful to have my family. It is the greatest thing I have known, loving them and being loved. I cannot imagine how life could ever be better than this moment.

Touché away!

At the teen's urging we rented Pirates of the Caribbean tonight. I haven't seen it before because, well, I thought it looked stupid. So you see, this is all the husband's fault. He wanted to see it, not me.

Wow, oh wow, oh wow. Now I understand why almost every woman I know who has seen this movie has a crush on Johnny Depp. Who would have thought some eye makeup could make a guy look that good?

Of course, the swashbuckling doesn't hurt. After all, we are talking about the woman whose first love was Touche Turtle. With that swoopy plume and his habit of flying through the air, who cared if he hit a few walls? When I grew up, I was going to marry that turtle. I just knew it.

I've still got it bad. Give me a swashbuckler with a big ol' feather in the hat if you want to make my heart speed up; throw in a cape and I'll have to go sit down and remind myself I'm married.

I found a Pirates picture of Depp at IMDB. He's in costume, but no eye makeup. It just doesn't work without the eyeliner. Who would have thought?

Now it's simply getting silly.

In the last week we've had an unexpected custody change of the teenager -- which meant the husband had to make a five day round trip drive to pick him up -- during which he got in an accident -- which totalled our only vehicle -- which meant today we bought a new-to-us car -- which broke down on the way home from the car lot. Luckily we also bought the ridiculously overpriced service agreement, which should now be well on its way toward paying for itself if the husband is right and the problem is indeed in the transmission. We'll find out tomorrow after the dealer tows our new paperweight back to their garage.

This is on top of all the stuff I've blogged about over the last couple of months - a death, a broken dryer, getting laid off and never forgetting the commissary incident, to name a few, not to mention all the stuff I didn't blog about because I thought things were getting too whiny here -- like the gutter that fell off the roof, the broken window in the kitchen door and my dental bridge coming loose.

Sometimes life hits you with so many curve balls that all you can do is sit and laugh. Which is what I'm doing as I sit and wait for the tornado to hit us!

If it's Wednesday, we must be sick.

I woke up with a sore throat again.

I used to be someone who never got sick. Then the toddler turned 18 months old and started our church's Sunday nursery class. Our little one, who had only been sick twice in her life up to that point, immediately got sick, shared it with Mom and Dad, and well, here we are now.

From 18 months to around her second birthday we didn't go to church more than every other week. We'd go to church Sunday, she'd start getting sick Wednesday, I'd start getting sick a few days later, and we'd stay home from church the next Sunday. It got to the point that people at church started coming up to me and asking if someone had offended us. I had the worst time trying to convince everyone that we really weren't angry with anyone!

She's finally tapered off. Going to church no longer means automatic infection. This last week was like old times, though. I can only imagine what it'll be like when she starts school.

Maybe I'll just starting wearing a surgical mask all the time.

Really, I do have more depth to me than that ...

The toddler stripped, early this morning, and pulled on a favorite sleeper instead. Naturally, when a friend stopped by a couple of hours later, she ran out the open door. There she was, running madly back and forth across the lawn, dancing through the dandelions in a footless sleeper, absolutely adorable - and all I'm thinking is, "Everyone's going to think I never dressed her this morning."

Grandchildren are a parent's revenge.

The toddler is sick, consequently not sleeping. She crashed sometime after 6 last night but woke up a few hours later, whereupon I couldn't get her back to bed until after midnight. She woke up again at 3:30 and is still awake, though forcibly confined to her room with the explanation that, "It's the middle of the night and time to sleep. You cannot get up and watch Dragontales. It's not on yet, honey." Only, of course, she keeps climbing the gate.

I try not to tell my mother about nights like this. She laughs too hard.

Cuddlebug

There is something about holding a baby that is uniquely satisfying. Something in the heft and shape of that little figure that makes it feel so good just to hold her against your chest and cuddle her close.

I'm lucky that the baby loves to snuggle. She's just the right size for it right now. She'll hold her arms up to me, then rest her cheek against my upper arm, sucking her fingers and regarding the world from this higher perspective. I'm going to hate it when she grows out of this stage.

Fighting crime, one stink at a time

I was throwing away some old bills today and worrying about not having a paper shredder. Everyone, I read, should have a paper shredder and use it obsessively to thwart identity thieves. They will go through your garbage, evidently, seizing old bills and paycheck stubs that have important pieces of information on them, like your social security number.

I don't want our identities stolen. We have enough problems at the moment, thank you. I can't afford to get even a cheap paper shredder right now, though.

But that's OK, because it occured to me, as I approached the garbage can, that I have something better than a paper shredder with which to foil identity thieves. I have the most malodorous garbage can in the neighborhood.

You just can't fully understand the word fetid until you've changed the diaper of a toddler who's eaten a little too much fruit the day before. Anyone going through our garbage would have to be thoroughly desperate. It'd be easier to just hit the bag next to ours in the dump, I'm sure.

Who would have thought that having two kids in diapers would provide such a big payoff?

The Diary Dilemma

Linda blogged recently about finding her daughter's diary and having to make the decision whether or not to read it. In the end she did and told her daughter so (met, I'm betting, by her daughter's screams of outrage.)

I've been thinking a lot about this, and honestly, I don't see anything wrong with a parent reading a kid's diary. A parent's job is two-fold in my opinion - first, to help your child learn the skills and confidence she needs to be a successful adult and second, to try to keep her alive to reach said adulthood. Which means I reserve the right to read my daughters' diaries if I ever feel either of them is in serious danger.

But I probably wouldn't do that unless I was really worried. If my child knew Mom was in the habit of reading her diary, it would make it pointless for me to read it. She'd start editing herself and the important, controversial, might-make-mom-mad things wouldn't go in there any more. She might even stop keeping the diary entirely, which would be too bad. A diary can be a valuable tool to help a person, especially a teenager, work out confusing situations in her life. (And when you're a teen, isn't everything pretty confusing?)

I feel this way because I had somebody read my diary once when I was about 12. I stopped keeping a diary that day and it was years before I started keeping one on a regular basis again. (Really, not that extreme a response under the circumstances. It was a huge mess - very Harriet the Spy.) I'm still kind of paranoid about having my journal read, which has led me to get creative about finding ways to make my journal not look like a journal. Currently, it's all in the form of letters to myself in a folder in my email program. Since the husband prefers to use another program, it makes this nice and private.

I always emphasize to the teenager that trust is earned. Since he's always been a good kid we have no reason not to trust him, but if he ever violates that trust it'll be snatched away before he can draw another breath. He'll have to earn it back by stages, then. I see diaries as part of that. As long as I trust my child, she doesn't need to worry about her privacy. Prove I can't trust you, though, and you won't have any privacy for a long time to come, kiddo.

New toys are good, but cheap and disposable new toys are better!

The toddler is playing happily with a concoction of cornstarch, food coloring and water. The baby is playing happily with a soda bottle half filled with water (so it can't roll away from her too easily.) I feel like SuperMom! See what you learn when you watch PBS during their funding drives?

Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations

I hate losing my temper. I have a nasty, mean, out of control, no holds barred temper if I don't watch myself. I've been like this as long as I can remember. And I've always hated it.

I have never lost my temper and not immediately regretted it afterward. Words will fly out of my mouth that destroy everything I've struggled to put together in a friendship or relationship. I'll spit them out in the heat of the moment, feeling all justified and self-righteous, even enjoying how beautifully cutting and precise my phrases are, what perfect instruments of my frustration and disdain I have created ...

... and then I'll see the face of my friend or loved one and want to reach out, grab those perfectly hateful words and stuff them back inside me.

I'm much better at controlling myself than I used to be. I still fume inside when I'm upset, but I've learned to go off and rant in silence to myself. The consequences just aren't worth it. Much better to present my arguments when I'm calm and in control. But, every so often I still lose it.

We had a huge fight tonight, or at least I did. The husband just sat there and listened, as he usually does when I'm upset. I lit into him with everything I had, dragging up things from the first weeks we were married even. I was stupid, childish and unforgivably cruel.

All because I broke a light fixture while I was trying to change the bulbs. I might have had a breakthrough regarding my relationship with my father, but I'm still pulling the burrs off my socks. I reacted to the husband just like I'd learned when I was a kid dealing with my dad. Deny everything, make counter-accusations. Drag out the past to confuse the issue at hand. "No, I'm not the bad person, you are. See?"

But, oh, the look on his face.

He is such a good man, my best friend, and the kindest, gentlest husband any woman could hope for. He is going through one of the toughest periods of his life right now (this last week with the teenager has sucked beyond belief) and I do this to him? He needs my support and I react like an immature brat?

I hate losing my temper. It doesn't matter what the breaking point was or if I was justified or not. Either way I've got a stinkin' huge mess to clean up.

Sounds of Silence

A friend of mine has her daycare provider out of town for the week, so I'm watching her toddler for a few days. My toddler has been ecstatic, the baby has been fascinated, and I've been exhausted.

Astonishingly enough I have managed to get all three of them down at the same time. The husband is out of the house on various errands, and silence rests upon us all. It's so great.

I've always appreciated silence. There's just something so weighty and rich about the quiet that comes from having all the electronic noisemakers turned off. The television, the radio, the stereo - I'll turn 'em all off and then turn off the air conditioner, the fans, the washing machine, the dryer, the dishwasher, and just sit there, taking in the wind, the birds, a distant lawnmower, voices from other people's yards and open windows.

Soon, everyone will be awake, and the shrieking, squealing, giggling, yelling and screaming will recommence. Hopefully not too soon. I'm enjoying this.

Note to Self: I'm Happy

The baby is working very hard on learning to crawl. Put her on her tummy and (after she has exhausted the amusement possibilities inherent in the carpet/sheet/blanket/etc. beneath her) she will drop onto her tummy and wave her arms and legs frantically in the air. Naturally, this gets her nowhere, so after repeating this a couple of times she gets increasingly frustrated, until she has to be picked up and calmed down for a while. Then Mean Mommy puts her on the floor to try again. LOL I'm guessing it'll only take her a couple more weeks before she figures out that she needs to keep the tummy off the floor and everything else on the floor, to start moving. Watch out then! I don't know whether to be proud or horrified.

The toddler has memorized two of her favorite books: Are You My Mother? and Old Hat, New Hat. She "reads" them to us every chance she gets, with great pride. Then she'll exclaim, "I did it! I did it!" She'll be all beaming smiles and shining eyes, practically dancing around the room in her delight. I love seeing her this excited and proud of herself. It's the coolest thing, getting to rejoice with her, seeing her feeling so confident and happy. Motherhood can be incredible.

We watched Frequency tonight. (Our third or fourth viewing. The husband absolutely loves that movie.) I was thinking, if I had the chance to talk with my 30-years-from-now self, there are only two words I'd hope to hear. "I'm happy." That would say it all, wouldn't it?

So Weird He's Funny

Dad's surgery has been very life-changing for me. I've always wondered how I would feel when the inevitable came. What would it be like, standing at his graveside? Would I still feel angry? Would I finally feel safe? Would I regret not having had more time?

I've been consciously working on forgiving him for a while now. Not in the sense of "That's OK, it doesn't matter, everything's hunky-dory again!" but as in letting go of the anger, seeing him as just a person and not the bogie man from my childhood. I wanted to be free of the fear and anger, free of the disappointment.

The night I found out about the bypass I was in shock. It was hours before I started to come out it. When I did, I started crying, just a little; I sat at the computer, staring at somebody's blog, sniffling slightly while a trickle of tears ran down my cheeks.

I married a man who's very good at emotions. He invited me to sit beside him on the couch and snuggle a bit, and then let me sob onto his chest until he was soaked (and not a word of complaint, either.)

Some feeling was growing in my chest, welling up from where I'd buried it decades ago. Every tear gave it further strength and definition, until I could haul it into the light and identify it.

"I only ever wanted him to love me," I sobbed to the husband, and it was like iron bands around my heart broke. I drew a breath and it was like walking out of an overly humid room into a dry and brisk outside day.

That light feeling stayed with me throughout the rest of the night and the next day. I called my dad the next evening and I wasn't afraid or stressed. I actually felt affection for him as we talked, and when he started complaining about the dangers involved his youngest daughter driving across the country to live with me I even laughed.

"I don't like this," he told me, his voice more gruff than usual. "She's going to wind up dead in a ditch, raped, with her throat cut. That car of hers isn't up to the trip. It's going to break down halfway there and she's going to have to fly back home and she'll have to borrow money that she won't be able to pay back because she won't have a job."

Usually I'd have been upset, angry that he has so little faith in the judgment of his children. When I decided to go back to college he told me I wasn't smart enough. The first year of my marriage he would ask me, every time he called, if the husband was beating me yet. He's done that to all of us, and it's hurt and angered every one of us. But right then, hearing his concerns, the illogic suddenly seemed hilariously funny.

I laughed so long and hard I could almost hear him bristling in offense. "Dad," I told him lovingly, "that is so you. You find the worst possible scenario and go right to worrying about that."

He gruffed at me, then went back to discussing all the horrific dangers presented to a young and foolish girl traveling cross-country.

It was the first time I hadn't seen this sort of thing as an attack on us, as just one more spoonful heaped on his pile of reasons stating why we were essentially unlovable.

It's one thing to know with my head that my father loves us, even if he's not capable of showing that in any normal way; it's another thing to convince my heart of that. Somehow, though, his illness broke through that fear and that lonely child inside me finally stopped feeling guilty.

I've been feeling so strange since then. Light and happy, but exhausted too. It's a good feeling, like after just the right workout - pleasantly tired.

Wow. Hitting my fifth decade, and only just now getting to this point. I hope I can keep this outlook. It makes me feel a lot better about the second half of my life to finally be free of that pain.

I think it'll stay away, too.

Stepping Stones

My brother called during dinner. Dad is out of surgery and in ICU, hopefully not for long. Everything went very well. He's good for at least another 20 years, I'm told.

This has been such a crazy month. Life always seems to go in cycles. Everything's great, then several avalanches hit you. For awhile there I got to experience the "could things be any more perfect?" side of life. It was great. I loved it. I reveled in it. I spent way too much time worrying about when it was all going to fall on my head!

Hopefully I'll get to feel like that again in the next few years, minus the worrying. But that's OK, because the difficult parts of life have served me well. Not least, they've taught me to appreciate the good when it happens in even small ways, like finding the clover yesterday.

I ran across the poem A Bag of Tools when I was in my late teens. The words, "And each must make -- Ere life is flown -- A stumbling block Or a stepping stone," had a huge impact on me. I realized that I could take everything bad that had happened to me, things that had been making me feel hopeless about my future, and use them to strengthen myself. I had the power to make those experiences my servants, instead of letting them master me.

So, I try to keep that in mind at times like this. Not that I like bad things, any more than anyone else (hence all the whining lately!) but I know that 1) they won't last, and 2) I'm not powerless. It helps. Besides, it could always be worse. Way worse. Thank goodness it's not worse!

Good Luck

We went for a drive today. Stopped at a rest stop to let the toddler run around. I was sitting in the shade under a tree in the middle of a clover patch. Looked down and saw a four leaf clover.

I'm not one for signs, but I thought that was still pretty cool.

Dad's surgery isn't until tomorrow. His doctors consider him an excellent candidate. I'll find out tomorrow night how things went.

I don't know how to react.

My brother just called. My dad is in the hospital. He's been feeling sick to his stomach and dizzy when he was out walking over the last few months and finally went to a doctor about it. Now he's scheduled to have sextuple bypass surgery tomorrow - today actually, since it's after midnight now.

I'm in shock. I don't know how I feel or what to think.

So many things are swirling through my head right now. I could lose my father. Probably not. This isn't exactly experimental surgery, they've been doing it for decades. It's still major surgery, though. Stuff happens; people die sometimes.

Not to mention my own health. I've never considered myself high risk for heart disease, but all at once I have something new to add to my medical history. What does this mean? Do I need to go to the doctor? There've been some weird things happening to me that I just dismissed as life and getting older, but now I'm wondering if it all means something bad.

I can call Dad tomorrow after his surgery. Maybe I'll know what to say to him then.

I've got good genetics. All of my grandparents were in their late 80's when they died. Dad's always sworn he was going to live to be 100. I never seriously considered he might not. I never seriously considered that I might not.

Job Hunting: Not for the faint of heart

Things are getting rather tense around here. Monday marked one month with no job. We're both snapping at each other and the toddler. Even the baby is getting on her parents' nerves.

Making it especially difficult is that it looked like we had a job in the bag. Three weeks ago this job that the husband applied for a couple of months earlier called up. He was interviewed over the phone, twice. They told him he had the job; just fax them a few things about his last job.

And then, nothing. We haven't heard from them since. The husband can't call them to find out what's happening, either, because (long story and one I don't fully understand) the guy handling all this only has phones that call out, not in. (No, really, it is a real job.)

Deep breaths. In, out.

There are other jobs out there. I just need to remind the husband. He's very discouraged right now.

I am going to feel so much better when we finally have this settled.

Tantrums, Tantrums, All Day Long

For some reason I've never yet seen an Anne Heche movie, but we caught her last night on David Letterman and I have to say, the woman can definitely act. She did the rendition of a two year old's temper tantrum that was our little toddler right down to the ground. I was very impressed.

I had to pick her up in the middle of a tantrum last night during dinner, and she let loose with this ear-splitting shriek that still has my left ear ringing. I didn't know a human being could reach that pitch!

About a year ago I was reading some article about toddlers and temper tantrums. It said that you could gauge how many tantrums your baby would throw during the terrible twos by looking at how many tantrums she was throwing in the year before. My daughter pegged at the highest end of the scale, and you know what? They were right.

We get a tantrum about once an hour, maybe once every couple of hours if we're lucky. Today, for instance, she woke up in a happy mood, which lasted about 20 minutes. As soon as Daddy got up, however, she started a tantrum. We never did figure out why. It only stopped when we were able to distract her by turning on Caillou.

I've learned that distraction seems to be the key to turning off the tantrums. Offering to read her a book, let her watch a video, play outside, get her some milk or a piece of fruit - all very good distractions. I try to keep the distractions healthy things, but of course I worry that I'm ruining her life by handling this wrong.

Not that I run to stop a tantrum. Please don't think that! I watch her, keep her safe, and otherwise ignore her, in order to keep from reinforcing the behavior. But then there are those days that it's been nothing but tantrums and I need a break before I go crazy. That's when Cinderella comes out!

Toilet Training Part II

And then there are those days that just make you want to swear in a way that would get you arrested in Michigan.

The other day the toddler walked up to me, holding a wet diaper, with a very badly fastened diaper girded about her little bottom. The husband wasn't home, so I couldn't blame him. No, it was obvious she'd done it herself.

Yes, that's right, she's learned how to change her diaper. It's like a bad joke. "At least you know she'll be trained before she's old enough to change her own diapers!"

I've watched her do it since then. She lies down, puts the diaper carefully under her, and then fastens it up - just like Mommy. I don't know whether to go beat my head against a brick wall a few times, or fall down laughing at how precocious she is.

This is it. If she's old enough to figure this out, she's got to be old enough to figure out the whole toileting process. It's been long enough since the last training attempt. She is so getting potty trained this week.

I hope.

Somebody please tell me I'm not the only mother this has happened to?

Do you know where your strengths lie?

Multiple Intelligences Test

Interesting. My degree is in psychology, I'm a writer, usually self-employed and I recently started exploring an interest in photography. Predictable, me? Nah!

The Seven Intelligence Areas

Linguistic: 9
Logical-Mathematical: 6
Spatial: 8
Bodily-Kinesthetic: 5
Musical: 6
Interpersonal: 7
Intrapersonal: 11

A Short Definition of your Highest Score

Intrapersonal - the ability to assess one's own strengths, weaknesses, talents, and interests and use them to set goals, to understand oneself to be of service to others, to form and develop concepts and theories based on an examination of oneself, and to reflect on one's inner moods, intuitions, and temperament and to use them to create or express a personal view. Possible vocations that use the intrapersonal intelligence include planner, small business owner, psychologist, artist, religious leader, and writer.