My  husband and I have been mulling over party ideas for our three year old daughter.  She was born after Halloween, but very soon after, so we thought about a Halloween-themed party.  Or we thought about just renting a bounce house, putting it in the front yard and being done.

Silly us, we should be doing this.

My daughter loves swimming.

Now if only we lived in Florida.

Dave Engledow is my kind of Dad.

Look at these adorable pictures he created for his daughter, Alice Bee.  I think his captions are perfect.

Hammer Time

House Cleaning

Just a Little Off the Top

Kitchen Counter 500

Olympic Fever

Pwning the Noob

He has a bunch more on his Facebook page, they are fantastic, go see them!

88% of you were not affected by the Aurora shooting in making your movie-going decisions.  Although from the comments, it just might be because you don’t really attend the movies a lot as a general rule.  8% said you were reluctant to attend a movie, and it made 4% of you hesitant to send your older kids.  I have to say that my  husband and I saw The Dark Knight Rises last Wednesday and I was definitely keeping a closer eye than normal on my fellow audience members.  Side note: babysitting is expensive!

Today I am all about the kerfuffle in New York over a supposedly well-meaning health initiative that treats bottles of baby formula like prescription medicine.

If someone could answer that question for me, I’d be grateful to know when the light will be showing at the end of this long and torturous tunnel.

You see, my beautiful, outgoing, mile-a-minute 2 1/2 year old still does not sleep through the night.

Well, Glinda, that’s fairly normal for her age, you say.  It’s a myth that all toddlers sleep through the night.

You would be right.

However, do most toddlers stay up for HOURS?  When I say hours, I mean that last night she was up from 3am to 4:30am and the night before she was up from 12:30am to 3:30am.  This goes on for usually three to four days a week.

She used to spend most of this time screeching, but she’s gotten a little bit better.  We used to think that it was teething pain, but that is no longer the case as she now has all the teeth she is going to have for a while.  We will give her some water, maybe change her diaper, and we certainly don’t sit there and entertain her. However, she has a horrific time going back to sleep, even though she initially falls asleep fairly quickly.

We co-sleep with her, but have also tried leaving her alone, which hasn’t worked very successfully.  And truly, we just can’t take it anymore.  It is impossible for me to predict if she will nap or what time she should go to bed from day to day, which drives this routine-loving mom crazy.

We tried speaking to our pediatrician about the issue, but he blew us off and said it was probably just teething.

My tired husband (who has to get up at 5am for work) and I, who usually have to take shifts during her awake periods, are at the end of our rope.  We talk daily about leaving the kids with some water and crackers and checking ourselves into a hotel.  Uh, jokingly, of course.  As if! As if I would think of doing that.  For more than five minutes.

I never knew how wonderful a sleeper my son was until my daughter came along.  He was sleeping all night from 9 months on, and can still sleep through almost anything.

Any advice?  Because I will admit that I am far from a perfect parent.

Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure as hell would not be laughing at a lioness attempting to eat my offspring. She isn’t being “cute” or “funny,” she is literally trying to attack that baby. It doesn’t make me giggle, it makes me want to run far, far away from that enclosure.

So there is this little tumblr creatively entitled Walk.

The entire premise of the blog is to show “how funny big kids look in little strollers.” Or at least that is what the (childless, natch) authors claimed when called out on Jezebel for being ah, a bit judgemental about parents who choose to place “big” kids in strollers.

I’m calling foul on this for a couple of reasons.

1) Don’t care if you are childless and having fun, somewhere there is a commandment that says “Judge not, lest ye find yourselves walking miles at Disneyland in their Nikes.”  Or something like that.

2) Did we mention that many of these pictures were taken at Disneyland?  Dude, when it comes to kids and walking around ALL BETS ARE OFF AT ANY DISNEY PROPERTY.  Period.

3) There are kids who look a lot older than they are.  Take my friend’s five year old daughter.  She is almost as tall as my eight year old, and often has people expecting her to act a certain way based solely on her height.  There’s also a commandment relating to books and covers.

4) The authors claim that they carefully “screen” their victims candidates for disabilties, by you, know, looking at them. Because we all know how easy it is to recognize a disability just by looking at someone.

I think what saddens me the most is that they have over a thousand likes on Facebook. 

Hide behind the all in good fun excuse all you like, but I think this is just plain mean.

Because lord knows I’ve got a toddler of my own and I’m well aware of how easy it is to be distracted for a second, but really?  I know this story is a teensy bit old, but I can’t help myself.

When I’m watching the Munchkinette at home, I’m way more relaxed about it than when we are out in public.  I am well aware of danger zones and things she can get into. But when we are somewhere else,  I put hawks to shame.  She doesn’t take a step without me right behind her.

So, I’m thinking that if my toddler is at someone’s place of work, where there are a million things she could get into, not to mention an open TIME-LOCKED SAFE, I would tend to be a little more watchful than normal.

I’m not trying to minimize the obvious distress caused to the toddler and her mom, but for this mother, I’m going to advocate the use of a leash.

And if this family gets money for exclusive story rights or a made-for-television movie, then I will know for sure there is no justice in this world.