Judy Apicella is an idiot. She directed a documentary on childhood vaccinations, entitled, “Shoot ‘em Up, The Truth About Vaccines”. I saw her speak at a meeting last night, run by the local Holistic Mom’s Network, that aimed to give information on vaccination to parents. After sitting through 2 tortuous hours of the most unscientific information, I came to the conclusion that Judy Apicella should definitely not be a speaker for the anti-vaccine lobby. I’d imagine that if parents had attended who were sitting on the fence about childhood vaccination, they might have actually been swayed to vaccinate if they were listening to this woman. Which is incredibly sad. It was the biggest waste of two hours that I have spent in a long time. Read more »
Before we left for Costa Rica, we were playing Uno and Yahtzee pretty often at home. Sometimes M was really happy and complimentary when he lost and other times he was a REALLY sore loser. Unfortunately, losing happened more frequently, and he seemed to get really worked up about winning and would often change or attempt to change the rules to aid his cause. I sometimes lost on purpose and did my best to model good behavior. Games can be fun, they can exercise the mind, they can be social - there are lots of good reasons to play games. I’m not keen on promoting the fact that the sole purpose of a game is for one person to be the winner and to lord it over everyone else.
But he he seemed to get competitive about drawing or building with Lego and other activities. At the last Unschoolers Support Group another parent pointed out that younger kids may need the finite, black and white resolution. That makes sense, but I wondered if there was anything different. I was, for most of my life, hypercompetitive, and I do hope that he doesn’t follow that path. Not being judged and compared to others based on grades for years on end should help, but I needed to find something that expanded the horizons and started searching online. I thought I could find a game whose object wasn’t to win, but to my pleasant surprise, I discovered a game genre called Co-Operative games, where the goal is to work together. This was better than I could have imagined. Read more »
I’ve always been respectful of M’s hair choices. Well, he’s only 4, so I really haven’t had to be that respectful yet. But I plan to be. I’m actually kind of lazy about hair. When M’s hair gets so long that it gets in his eyes and he starts to get a nervous tick going with his hand swiping his face, I know it’s time I get off my butt to cut it. Sometimes I trim it myself, but every so often I take him to a hairdresser to get it cut. So far, we’ve mostly always asked for the “mushroom cut” and he’s never complained. Arp and I have talked about what might happen when the day comes and he decides to shave his head or dye it crazy colors. I plan on saying, ” Go for it, kid!” Maybe I’ll dye mine too. Or shave it. Sometimes I’m so sick of having hair.
But yesterday M told me that he wanted his hair short in the front and on the sides, but really long (all the way to his butt) in the back. You should have seen the look on my face. I couldn’t conceal my look of horror that M would want a mullet. Before I knew what I was saying, I told him that he could get his hair short all over, or long all over, but not both. After I told Arp, his solution was that we should suggest that he get a mohawk. Sounds good to me. Anything is better than a mullet. Do kids have some kind of radar that allows them to pick the one hairstyle that will horrify their parents? And I think the mullet is pretty much the only hairstyle that does that to me.
Speaking of mohawks, check that wiki page. I had no idea there were so many varieties of mohawk! I’m thinking my favorite would be a dread-glo-hawk. That’s my own combo of a dreadhawk and a glo-hawk. Do you have to dye the hair first, before you dread it, or dread then dye? Should I do it? Let me know what you think.
For the last year or two, I’ve been watching movies that are entirely different from the movies I used to watch before I had kids. There was once a time, seemingly long ago, when I watched movies of all genres. Serious movies, violent movies, war, action, crime, you-name-it. One of my favorite movies of all time was Reservoir Dogs (along with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Sound of Music). I had diverse interests.
I’ve been noticing a lot lately that things have changed. Now I basically only watch 2 genres - really really stupid comedies, and action/suspense films with not very much violence. It’s almost embarrassing when I tell people some of the movies I’ve watched lately. One example is “My Super Ex-Girlfriend“. I can’t even believe I watched that one, but I did. (I thought it was kind of funny, too, but I don’t admit that one readily.) And there are plenty of movies that I know are probably great, I even own a copy of them, but I just can’t watch them. One example is The Notebook. That one has been sitting next to the TV for quite a few months, but I just can’t seem to put it on. Seems like such a shame, but…whatever.
Why can’t I watch serious movies? Well, I watch most movies at night, after the kids are in bed. And frankly, after a full day of cooking, cleaning, playing, and nursing two kids, my brain is too exhausted for anything more than really really stupid laughter. The days are tough enough for me. By the time I sit down to watch a movie, I just can’t put a single bit of effort into the experience.  Not a bit.
Actually, I’ve also been watching Californication these last few weeks. There is some serious stuff in that series. But the raunchy innuendo, hot sex, and cuteness of David Duchovny makes the overall experience a joy. I can highly recommend that one without a trace of embarrassment.
So J helps feed the cats their dry food, with M nicely supervising. However, she seemed to have reserved a small handful herself and was found 2 minutes later sitting on the couch and munching.
‘Me eat cat food.’
on 
