Time to squeeze in a quick update for you before your brother’s big milestone steals the show. You turned 21 months old this week which means its just THREE short months until you turn two, and THREE short months until Scott and Ashley’s wedding. Its going to go fast, and while Im very anxious and excited for the wedding, I’d like these baby days to linger. Something about hitting 2 makes you so much less of a baby, but as much as I want you to still be my baaaaaybee, you are a thriving, happy, fiesty little toddler.

Our summer days are filled with everything and nothing. Hands down my favorite word of yours is swimsuit: “swsw” (it makes kind of a whistling sound when you say it). If you see it come out of the wash or hanging on your door you get excited and exclaim “SWSW.” If anyone even suggests swimming you run to your dresser and frantically try and figure out which drawer it might possibly be in, “swsw”-ing the entire time. You like to go around the house asking about going “dide” (outside) and “poo-yaya” (pool water). You love the water. I think you even love the water more than Nathan if that is possible. At just 21 months you already love being on your belly doggy paddling with the least amount of assistance your parents will allow. You are fearless about falling over, getting a mouthful of saltwater, or being sloshed by a wave. You have little interest in playing in the sand. The water is where its at. If we are driving down the road and pass the beach you make sure to let everyone know that the “YAYA” is within spitting distance. When we go to the beach and you see the water the expression on your face is the purest form of toddler joy.

little miss determined

When you aren’t seeking out water you can be found carrying around your basket of barrettes (a girl has to accessorize) and trying on your shoes. Now that you are a sturdy walker you even will tromp around in my heels in addition to all your jillions of pairs of shoes. You have a baby stroller (“doe-woe”) you like to push around, two actually. You will attempt to push them both, like a frazzled little mommy who really just needs a double stroller for those two dolls: Becky (“ba”) and Stella (“Tah”). You like to play in your kitchen and Im impressed how, for quite some time, you’ve gotten the idea of pretend…..drinking from empty plastic cups, serving up bowls of empty, shoveling spoonfuls of delicious nothing into your mouth. Its so cliche, yet true, how girls just gravitate to girl stuff. You love my makeup brushes and in the mornings you are always wandering around upstairs with some little bottle or tube or jar of something. Usually something you’ve raccooned from my nightstand or a drawer in the bathroom. You love chapstick or anything resembling chapstick and smearing it all over your face. On more than one occassion you’ve found a stamp that had a similar tube-like shape and smeared it all over your lips and then some. Green. Its a good color for you.

You love music and you love dancing. Your favorite song is Sugar by Flo Rida. As soon as we get in the car you ask for music. As soon as a good song comes on your little fist starts pumping- you’d fit right in with those crazy kids on Jersey Shore with your pump. You call yourself “dee dee” (Kenzie) and I suppose we should be thankful you call yourself something close to your actual name, considering we still have dozens of names for you, the most popular still being Kiki and Kunu and Little Macky.

You’re a great eater and an even better scavenger. We call you our little raccoon. Im confident you’d survive in the Serengeti because you always know how to find food. If I ever forget to shut the pantry completely I know it because I can her some riffling around in the kitchen and then you emerge with a box of croutons. Or an entire bag of rice crackers. Or a box of granola bars, bringing it to me asking for “naaah, naaah” (snack). You sit like a big girl at the dinner table- [long] gone are the days of using your tray on your booster. You eat off a plate with a fork like you are some kind of little lady. And then remind us that you aren’t because you insist on putting your feet on the table. I would have chosen to ignore this stunt- not because I, in any way, find it ok, but your dad has chosen the opposite reaction and now you look straight at him, sneak a foot up and onto the table and grin waiting for a reaction. Its a game. And we play it more now than we ever did before.

You and Nathan love playing with each other. Its been nice that the older you get the more you can play together. You guys like having a ‘two bath’ as Nathan calls it and the more water that is splashed and consumed (oh yuck) the better the bath. You like to copy each other, and sadly its more 5-yr-old-copy-the-20-month-old than the other way around- this has been especially [un]pleasant when we go out to dinner and everyone around us must wonder if we’re raising chimps or children. You love to play in his room and bounce on his bed. You play with the most mundane things (a patch from his old flight suit, a medicine syringe etc) and I wonder if this is just you or if its some kind of second-child-never-got-anything-to-play-with type thing?

While I was gone you fully discovered the toddler crack that is Baby Einstein (I must document that you call Lions “why-we’s” -love. it.) Your dad took that a step further and had set up his little Acer laptop at the kids table in the family room. You thought you were some kind of high roller over there with a laptop at your disposal. I insisted that be put away before we created a Mac Monster and now you settle for picking up the remote and demanding ‘die die’ (einstein). As soon as those bright colored animal puppets make their appearance you go nutty. DIEEEEE DIEEEEEE/laugh/giggle/squeal/bounce/flail arms around. You love yourself some Einstein and for a little bit each day Im happy to oblige.

I’ve never been one of those mom’s who…..oh….how do you say??? cares? too much about all the stuff some parents get so wound up about. TV? Sure, but not too much. Ruining your appetite with Cheetoes while we’re hanging out outside on a beautiful day, in the pool, with friends? I insist. Your brother using the top of the slide as a launching pad while standing on the swing as I write this– looks like schools-out-summer-fun to me. Being more carefree and not worrying so much is a lesson Im still trying to learn, I get frustrated easily and discouraged and worry too much about things that, in the big scheme of things, really aren’t that important. When you grow up and look back, I want you to remember more of the days that we played in the pool and ate Cheetoes for dinner and less of the ones where Im freaking out about the house being messy and laundry being folded (which is so FUTILE because its never totally picked up and there is always one. more. load. of laundry to fold.)

The closer we get to two the more frequent and more trying your tantrums are. You are so much feistier than your brother. I thought girls we’re supposed to be easy the first 10 years and difficult the second 10? If this is easy Im not sure Im going to survive the teenage years. Your moods just defy all logic. You tell us you want something, we go to get it or open it or turn it on or whatever it is that needs to be done but half the time it ends in an utter, total, meltdown. Something clearly doesn’t go according to plan in your mind and your attitude then is “Screw this. This is not how I wanted it. I wanted it my way on my terms on my time and you can just FORGET IT NOW.” Oh these difficult days of toddlerhood, they are so trying, aren’t they?

those eyes....

The problem is, when you aren’t melting down on the kitchen floor, mopping it with your butt as you shove yourself around in fury, you are such an adorable, lovable, charming little girl. You love attention and will do anything for a laugh or a smile or a high five or sometimes even negative attention is ok. As long as the spotlight is on you. You will still make ’sweet eyes’ for us and come running into our arms- screaming and smiling, for either mama or dadEE. I hope you will always be that happy to see us, that happy to have us around. Promise me you will and I’ll let you have cheetoes for dinner.

love always,
mama

It’s not surprising that some of this would rub off on our children. Both kids have figured out (around the age of 18-24 months) how to work the Apple remote for the TV. Nathan loves perusing the iTunes store always searching for the latest app to suit his needs and knows they have to be free for him to get us to approve it. I made the fatal mistake a couple weeks ago of being too lazy to enter our password for iTunes and just spelling it for him to type in. Big Mistake. He knows how to open safari and type things into the Google bar. I can always tell when he’s been on the computer because I’ll find searches such as: “Trsfrmrs amuzon”, or “arplan toys”, or “trsfrmr game.” I also found a word document open last week that said: “nly kids can com to my pardy.” I asked him how he was going to GET to said party and he told me, “you can take me and just drop me off and leave.” Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you were turning FIFTEEN. My mistake. He later amended his word document to read: “nly kids can com to my pardy and my dad.” Wow, I guess Im the odd man out.

The other day, after PC got the new iPhone, Nathan sort of took that to mean that the old one now belonged to him. While we’re ok with him playing with it, we’d prefer our 5 yr old doesn’t think he has “his own” iPhone. While playing with the old one I told him to get ready to leave and he tells me, “let me get my iPhone…now we all have iPhones, right mom?” Wrong. And then there was the day this week where he thought his dad broke his arm playing a game on the iPhone. And then today while chatting I told him, “you know, when I was 5 they didn’t have computers.”

Blank stare: “So……you mean……..you didn’t have one at your house?”

“No, I mean there just weren’t computers at all when I was five. No one had them in their house or at school.”

Completely bewildered, flaberghasted even: “sooo……..what did you do when you were a kid?”

“Well, we played kick the can with all the neighborhood kids and rode our bikes and walked to the gas station to buy Jolly Ranchers ( the stick kind of course) and Lemonheads and Alexander the Grapes. We played flashlight tag and caught lightening bugs in peanut butter jars and when catching them wasn’t fun anymore we’d smash them on the pavement to see their glowy innards.”

And its funny, it got me to thinking about how different our/my generation is from my kids vice mine and my parents’. I can’t think of any huge technological advances, as profound as what we have today, that separated our generation from theirs. They all had TV’s, cars, refrigerators, telephones, record players and eventually VCRs and cassette players. Cameras were film in the 50’s just as they were in the 80’s and 90’s and even in 2001 when I got married. Were there changes and improvements? Obviously. But the world our kids is growing up in is just mind bogglingly different.

In elementary school our library we had maybe 10 Apple II computers. We got to use a few times a year and  they didn’t really “do” anything. You could play a game by inserting a 5 1/4 floppy (the real floppy disk). It was barely anything more than a large clunky monitor attached to a large clunky keyboard. In jr. high I had to take typing class in 7th grade. I don’t think at that point anyone even saw it as a necessary ‘life skill’. In typing class we typed on typewriters- this was 1991. There were two computers that we all got to rotate using. Two. In high school there was an actual computer lab and this abstract concept of “the internet” was being thrown around. I was floored when we got an encyclopedia on a CD at home. Up until that point I had to use my parents olive green, musty encyclopedias from the 60’s. Even when I started college the ‘computer lab’ was a bunch of Mac Classics (incidentally, this was the same computer my parents sent me to school with- and if that isn’t sad enough, I was the only person in my hallway that even had a computer). They had just begun doling out email addresses but no one really knew what they were or what to do with them. By the time I graduated classes were offered online, syllabuses could be printed, notes downloaded. I even heard that there were websites where you could, get this, buy papers to turn in as your own. Imagine that.

I often wonder what someone living a few hundred years ago would do if we showed them an iPhone….how could you even describe it? “Its a phone, you talk on it, can call anyone in the world. Or you can text on it. And it takes pictures and takes videos and you can post that to your FB page. If you want to see someone while you talk to them, thats called Facetime. You can play games on it and order pizza. If you’re lost it will give you directions. You can send email. You can send money. You can even send flowers. You can buy things and see things and have question’s answered and anything you could possibly think up? There’s probably an app for that.” Crap, maybe someday there will be an app for world peace. And yet- nothing that I just said is even remotely awing to Nathan. He’ll non-chalantly ask me “who’re ya texting mom?” when he hears the click clack of the keys on the iPhone. He knows how to call PC on my phone. He’ll ask me to look for something on Ebay or to send an email to someone about something. If I’m looking for something at the store that I can’t find, he’ll suggest I just look on the internet for it. He’ll come peer over my shoulder and be all, “oh, you’re doing Facebook?” Today, from the bathroom, he requested I find pictures of adenoid surgery on the internet for him. He’ll never know what an encyclopedia is but surely will use Wikipedia. He’ll never know what a card catalog is or a VCR or what a roll of film looks like.

On the one hand I do wonder- how did we ever live without it, this wonderful internet thing. On the other hand, I wonder if we had it better, growing up without all this ’stuff’? I wonder how the technology my 5 year old has at his fingertips will shape him as a person, for better or for worse? I wonder how much scarier and worrisome the turbulent teen years will be for PC and I than it was for our parents? I mean, what if Mackenzie meets someone online and wants to meet him and marry him? So what if thats how PC and I met, that was the mid-90’s before the internet got all skeevy and creepy and porny and pedophile-ish.

Whats the consensus folks….when will you let your kids have FB accounts? Will you require them to add you as a friend? Will they have their own cell phones? Will you make them do their internetting in plain view? Will you read their email? Or am I the only parent with a five year old that is worried about this already? Today more than ever the world is their oyster and Im not sure if this is a good thing, a bad thing, or probably just a little bit of both.

Im trying to be better about writing more often but sometimes there’s just nothing to say. And I figure if I don’t have something good to write about, I shouldn’t bore you with nonsense.

Hmm, so Earth Day is, like….tomorrow? And I had the best of intentions of sewing sewing sewing a bunch of eco-friendly crafty craftsman stuff and putting it in my Etsy store and telling you to go forth, buy and be eco-friendly. Except I half-assed it, largely due to the fact that I got sick and then Nathan sent us on vacay to the hospital. The problem is being a one-man-show, with the amount “free” of time I have to sew I can’t make enough to both take to the gift shop here and list in the Etsy shop. So, I take it to the gift shop because it sells well and once I hand it to them its no longer my prob bob, I just get a check every month.
Can we celebrate Earth Day in May? Maybe we can do that, complete with a giveaway.

I Can’t handle Dumb People.

No really. I cant handle it. Im feeling a little ranty today and based on your [genuinely] nice comments (and thanks for those BTW), it would seem to me you want! to hear! all about it!

More aptly put, Im bothered by uninformed people who think they are informed. Folks….before you spout off something- should we should make sure its factually accurate? “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt,” (Lincoln). Why WHY are we still debating things that are incorrect, factually wrong, not accurate, faulty, not in agreement with the truth, false, erroneous, (do I need to keep going)? There is a distinction between your opinion (which you are entitled to, however misguided it might be) and the factual reality of the situation.

Por ejemplo, from doing a little research on the interwebs, it seems like many of the reasons people are wanting this healthcare reform voted down is based on false pretenses. If you think our broken system is good, you’re happy with it and especially if you’re happy with all the ballooning health care costs of all the overweight people (hey- I just read we’re up from 66% to 68% overweight people–see ya bye TWO THIRDS–we’re shooting for THREE QUARTERS of the population to be overweight– lets keep up the good work!) that’ll be tacked on to your tab of your private insurance and you have a COMPELLING, SOUND, LOGICAL REASON to feel that way- let me hear it. Im interested. I WELCOME intellectual conversations. Im also willing to admit when I don’t know the answer or even if I’m wrong. So really, tell me. But do your homework.

But for the love of ALL THAT IS HOLY. If you are just regurgitating some bull you just heard without having some actual KNOWLEDGE or UNDERSTANDING of what the hell it is you are saying then stop. No, just “shut shut….no just shut your mouth” (Step Brothers).

Because the problem is that in today’s world any individual can have their own platform to spout off non-sense and then even less informed/educated people actually believe it. That is scary.

PC and I decided on that flight that if we ever made it to Singapore, having a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar was going to be at the top of the list. I don’t think at the time we thought we’d be going there with our kids….or that we’d be drinking at 10:30 in the morning….or that we’d pay $100 for four drinks, but- it was so totally worth it.

The hotel itself…its one classy joint. So classy that only “residents” (yes- you are a resident, not a ‘guest’ at the hotel) are allowed free reign-all the rest of us had to use the side door. Its very British colonial (?) style meets the tropics– its beautiful….large verandas, wicker furniture, the old school fans. I loved it.

My drink was all that I’d hoped it would be- maybe more. If you are ever here- you must do this. I realize for me there is some ‘history’ which made the anticipation of actually doing it that much greater but really– this is one of those things you just have to do in life, if for no other reason than to say you’ve done it. And they taste good.

The approach

The 'resident' entrance

I love magnolias....

Nathan loved the peanut cracking part, though he refused to eat them

Oh geez...his didn't have alcohol.

So. Good.

In case you couldn’t tell- this has been the highlight of the trip. More to come….

PC and I have spent the last….2 hours? (ugh) discussing this. He likes to play the devils advocate too much and it kind of makes me want to punch something. He’s being as unreasonable as the “christians”.

I think there is a part one and part two of this problem. Part one- should everyone be entitled to/right to/access to/call it what you want, healthcare? Part two- how or who will do it? Sadly, there are some people who say ‘no’ to part one. If we can’t agree on that, we can’t move on to part two, but it makes me question humanity and our society. Sometimes it seems so ironic that we (I will always say ‘we’ even though yes, I know it is my husband that signed on the dotted line) devote our lives day in and day out defending our country and its freedoms– a country that we disagree with many issues on.

Jessica and Jill – you both brought up the notion of personal responsibility. I hear you, I agree with you. Every time I go home to the United States I am amazed how we are fat and getting fatter. (I don’t know if you all saw the editorial John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods) wrote on the health care debacle) but I dont know how we could possibly legislate something like that (in terms of cost of healthcare vs. risk factors). PC brought up smokers and how they should have to pay more because they have made the *lifestyle choice* to smoke. We know smoking causes all sorts of health related issues. But if you charged them more- they would say that was discrimination. As would fat people. As would (swig) alcoholics. And then what would you do in the gray areas such as being married to a smoker? (PC said that too was a ‘lifestyle choice’). How about being a firefighter and being exposed to smoke? I just don’t think you could (as it relates to insurance) come up with a pricing model/legislation that would ‘fly’. The only thing that is going to ‘fix’ our fat-asses is looking in the mirror.

As far as the medicare not paying and other insurance companies/ self-payors having to make up the difference- I’d like to think the system will self correct. As it stands now we have this hole that keeps getting dug bigger, a vicious cycle if you will with the healthcare/private insurance companies issue. Insurance companies are nothing but a greed machine looking to turn a profit. Note they don’t ‘provide’ the medical care….they have nothing to do with the drs or hospitals or nurses– they are a profit reaping middleman. We all know from econ 101 – you make more money by cutting out the middleman. Right now your insurance premiums are some effed up equation of actual cost/desired profit/how many claims we can deny and not pay/the cost of the 5 lobbyists per senator in Washington/the cost of the health insurance company big-wig’s ‘business dinner’ last night. The government, while not known for its efficiency, would force some of that fat to be trimmed.

Lets for the sake of argument use Melissa’s situation (I hope thats ok.) Her insurance wouldn’t pay for her surgery so her family got stuck with the $100,000 bill. I’d say that the majority of American’s would be forced to declare bankruptcy in this situation. So, that $100,000 bill goes back to the hospital. The insurance company is looking pretty because they didn’t touch that one with a ten-foot-pole. Melissa’s family is relieved of the burden. The hospital/dr’s/nurses are the ones left holding the bill. The only way the hospital/dr’s/nurses can recover that loss is by charging the rest of us more. Charging the individual who pay’s cash, charging the insurance companies a little more who then have ‘no choice’ but to raise your premiums. A lot. Because they have a fatty profit margin to maintain. The cycle continues downward and thats why when you look at your hospital bill and you are being charged $10 for a bandaid and $20 for a tylenol- its the only way the hospital can recoup their $. So the government steps in with their (que superhero music) Insurance Plan.

This time, Melissa has Government Insurance Plan (GIP). She pay’s her monthly premium. There is no ‘pre-existing condition’ back door-easy-way-out so the surgery is approved. The government asks for a detailed *actual* cost invoice. The surgery room, recovery room, the tylenol, all the doctors and nurses, the green jello for lunch, every last item is accounted for. Lets say the *actual* cost was only $60,000. The government pays the bill, Melissa goes home happy and healthy and medical-bill-debt free, the hospital gets its money, the greedy health insurance company is- well who cares.

I know hypothetically this works, but in practice, its not like the hospital gets to start with a clean slate….because they are still trying to recover that last $100,000 they are out. Since the government is not trying to keep any shareholders happy, they only need to charge enough in premiums to cover their costs. I know Im simplifying all of this, and obviously you need to get enough people paying into the system to make this work, and then you have the problem of people not being able to afford insurance but–well, first of all, do we really know what the cost of health insurance would be if it were just charging enough to cover costs? Because we all fret over the cost of private insurance which- we’ll just say based on my numbers alone is around $500 pp/mo. But thats the inflated private insurance cost. So lets say it was a more reasonable $100/mo. The rest of the ‘cost’ would come from the gov’t.

Where would they get the $ you ask? (Let me just say I’m no economist- so this is just me theorizing, feel free to correct me) The private insurance companies would be forced to lower their prices in order to remain even marginally competitive. So lets say instead of $500/mo its now $300/mo. Yes, we’d have to pay the government a little more in taxes, but since it would be spread across every American lets say to make up what they would need for healthcare it would be $100 more/month in taxes*. So if you kept your private insurance you’d be saving about $100 total (your taxes went up $100 and your health insurance premium went down $200). The gov’t has the $ they need to make it work, the health insurance companies get their pee-pees slapped (much deserved), hospitals are no longer taking losses, have I left anyone out?

*I know no one wants their taxes to go up- but it goes back to the “are we willing to pay a little to help the greater good” and also- the only reason your private insurance premium would go down is because of the gov’t plan…..so you can’t have your cake and eat it to. You either save $100 or status quo.

some articles that may be of interest:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_health_insurance_doesnt_work

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-kirsch/the-private-health-insura_b_191770.html

The Marine Corps Birthday Ball is on Tuesday. In the Marine Corps its a big deal. For me its an excuse to get all dolled up. I ordered two dresses from Nordstroms (same dress, two slightly different colors…and one was on sale). As I tried them on tonight PC pointed out that one has a tear in the bottom. Upon closer inspection its clear that the hem of this dress has been dragged across the floor….as in some bi-yotch WORE IT and returned it with the tags still on. Nordstroms unknowingly shipped the USED dress to me where now I don’t have time to order a new one, I fully plan on wearing it but Im sure as heck not paying full price for it. So….do I wear it and return it? That seems sort of wrong. Do I wear it and have them send me a new one in the meantime? I guess thats ok, but I don’t really need a new one after I’ve worn it. Do I just ask for a fatty discount? What would you do?