Sad, isn’t it?

Sure my daughter likes to pretend to feed her dolls, build amazingly tall block towers, and terrorize the neighborhood in her Cozy Coupe, but no toy evokes the frenzied response of an addict quite like the Kindle.

It has been quite disconcerting to observe the ease in which she has figured out all of the electronic devices in our home.  She was doing things on my cell phone that I didn’t even know it was capable of doing.  And far too easily she learned how to slide the little arrow over to unlock the Pandora’s box that is our Kindle.

Of course there is nothing bad on it, as it is primarily for our son, but I can’t help but think I am somehow neurologically altering her by exposing her to the Kindle.  That I am betraying thousands of years of evolution just to make my life a little easier.

But it is sometimes the only thing that will keep her sitting in one place for more than five minutes.   And I have to admit, it isn’t a foolproof method either, as I found out at our year end meeting with our homeschool educational advisor.  I don’t normally take her to my son’s educational meetings, but this time I had no choice, and it turned out badly for all involved.  When the advisor turns to you and tells you that she will be praying for you and your strong-willed daughter to get through this difficult period, it definitely gives you pause.

Maybe I am the one who is addicted to the half hour or so of quiet that I get when she sits with the Kindle.

If there’s a 12 Step program for it, I’ll be the first to sign up.

But for some reason, I think I’m not the only parent who cheats a little with the ease of today’s electronics.

Well, if I’m wrong, then just go ahead and lie in the comments to make me feel better.

A good work friend of my husband’s is having his first baby in July.  He and his then-girlfriend were kind enough to send us a gift card when our daughter was born, so of course I am going to get them something.

But what?

I’m torn because I know that as a first-time mom, she will definitely need a bunch of “practical” items, some of them she may or may not even know she needs yet.

I sort of pride myself on being the person who can be counted on to get a useful baby gift, rather than some weird baby book that the person might not even like, or things like thick, wintry socks for a baby born in August.  Trust me, I’ve seen that.

For some reason, this time I keep leaning towards cute.

I love cute things, but I rarely buy them for babies other than my own.

But my head keeps telling me that I’m being selfish, and to get something that can be used many times, rather than a froggy hooded towel.

Persuade me…

The American Academy of Pediatrics has advised that they no longer recommend the use of crib bumpers.

Yes, the ones people have been using for YEARS. Pretty much every single crib bedding set at BabiesRUs has a bumper.

Now, I’m not saying that there is no basis for the new recommendation, I’m sure there is.  It’s just that all of a sudden, bam!  Don’t use them anymore! They can kill! I’d heard various things throughout the years about crib bumpers, and when my daughter (briefly, like, two weeks) slept in a crib we had the breathable ones.

But the whole notion of the crib bumpers is to keep their arms and legs from getting stuck in between the slats, as well as in my daughter’s case, to keep her head/body from bumping against the slats and waking her up.  Which she did constantly, which is why we started co-sleeping.  She also would try to climb up on top of the bumpers, as they had to be stretched fairly tightly to stay on properly, thus resulting in something she could get her feet up on.  Scary stuff, much scarier than the supposed risks of us rolling on top of her or something, which has never even remotely happened.  When I sleep with her I am so hyper-aware of her presence that I barely even move.

Neither of my children did well in the crib, and luckily we had bought the convertible kind, because at least we got to use it as a head and foot board for my son’s big boy bed.  Otherwise, total waste of four hundred bucks.

So if you aren’t supposed to use crib bumpers, I wonder what people are going to do?  Will people pay for them but not use them?  Or will all of these sets suddenly go on sale?

No, no, that isn’t a typo.

I didn’t mean to type Trunk Monkeys and somehow missed by a bunch of letters.

You see, my daughter is a stubborn type of child who likes to go places where she isn’t invited, such as my bathroom or the hallway closet.

Enter the door monkey.

It is the easiest, safest type of child door “lock” I have ever had the pleasure of using. It also works double duty as a pinch guard.

You simply attach the door monkey to the door without any type of adhesive or screws (it takes about, oh,  1 second) and voila! Your doors are childproofed.

Granted, it isn’t perfect for when you desire complete privacy as there is about an inch and a half gap where the door is slightly ajar, but if I need privacy I just enter the preferred room and lock the damn door. Usually I appreciate the gap as it allows for air circulation.

These monkeys have worked flawlessly for about a year now, and the ONLY problem I can see is if your little darling decides to climb up on something and unlatch the door that way, but if you child is doing that, you have much bigger problems.

Besides, I like being able to go around the house asking everyone where the monkeys are.

59% of you feel that schools can only do so much in the face of bullying, which might also mean that in this day and age, school-time bullying is coming in second to online and virtual bullying.  22% think they give it a shot, but it isn’t enough, and 14% say schools don’t do nearly enough to address the problem.

I was never a bully in school, nor was I bullied, but my personal opinion is that bullying starts at home.  By that, I mean the parents of a bully have fostered an environment where a bully feels free to act out onto other people, and there is only so much a school can do to stop that type of behavior other than having a zero-tolerance policy.  Then again, I sort of hate zero tolerance policies, so I’m torn.  When my son attended public school, I cannot tell you how many parents I saw flouting school rules on a daily basis, and I would always think to myself that these parents were teaching their children by example that rules don’t apply to them.  Man, I hated those parents.

But, on to something a bit fluffier, although maybe as controversial.  The LA Times reports on the Vinci, a tablet, Android-based computer marketed specifically to children from 1 week to age 4.

No, not because her infant’s sunglasses probably cost more than my own.

It’s because she was able to actually PUT sunglasses on her offspring without him instantaneously trying to fling them off. Putting sunglasses on my toddlers is (or was, in the case of the Munchkin) like trying to put a bandanna on a cat. Nice in theory, but horrible in practice.  The clawing and yowling effects caused by said accessories are pretty much the same across species.  In my family, anyway.

I did the one thing parents are never supposed to do.

And now I’m paying for it, big time.

Quite a while ago, I made a generalization about parents who use leashes in this post.

Of course, that was before I was pregnant with the Munchkinette and had the smugness of a parent who thinks she is done raising her kids.

I should have known better than to tempt fate like that.

Because I looked at my husband yesterday and said, “If I don’t buy a leash for this child, she is never going to be able to go out in public.”

Stubborn, defiant, and reckless do not even begin to describe her.  When we are out in the front yard playing with big brother and the neighbors, her favorite thing to do is zoom toward the street at full speed, laughing and looking back at my panicked face the entire time.  Thank God we live on a cul de sac that gets little to no traffic.

Never mind that I have told her a bazillion times not to go into the street.  Never mind that I constantly try to hold her hand and she impatiently tries to shake me off every single time. 

And she’s only seventeen months old, so this entire process is only going to get worse. 

I tweaked out my back from having to constantly stoop and chase her around, and that was just for an hour and a half in our own yard.

So after I write this, I am pretty sure I’ll be going online and searching for a kids leash that she hopefully won’t try to pull off.

Now, where’s my fork?

If you haven’t heard already, the internets is abuzz over the photos of Suri Cruise, aged 5, sucking on a pacifier.  Simply Google “Suri Cruise pacifier” and pages and pages of commentary will pop up.

Because it is perfectly fine for the foibles of a five year old, presumably the most fashionable one on the planet, to be subject to the judgement of the world!

Listen, anyone who has had a kid, and I wonder about some of the people doing all of the pearl-clutching and their experience with children, knows that kids have quirks.  Neither of my children had any interest in a pacifier whatsoever, so I’ve never had to wean them off of one.  But all children have their comfort objects, and as long as it isn’t hurting them, I’m not going to say anything about it.

And I sure as hell know that I am beyond glad that there aren’t a million paparazzi chasing after my daughter every second she is out in public.  Because man, I would probably be proclaimed the world’s second-worst mother, right behind this woman.

But who knows what Suri does with her pacifier?  Maybe it was a one-day deal.  Maybe she found it between the cushions of the car seat and decided to haul it out for old time’s sake.  Maybe the photographers constantly following and shouting at her and her mother stress her out and she needs a binky.  This actually distresses me just thinking about it.

Or maybe, just maybe, the all-knowing internet could just lay off a five year old that they don’t even know.

Ya think?

Because goodness knows that if anyone has the money to pay for any dental bills, it is Tom Cruise.