They're remaking Swiss Family Robinson!

Not really much in the way of details yet, but as long as they either 1) get rid of Roberta's character altogether or 2) at least write her as far less insipid and for pity's sake cut out the brothers acting like she's a fragile delicate twee thing as soon as they discover she's a girl, I will be the happiest camper in the world. ((yes, I know it was made a while back and I try to make some concessions for that, but when it's that obvious? Bleh))

Which reminds me, I need to find a copy of the book for Kaylee and the May Baby.

So I run into the rental store to pick something out. Get back out to the car, and there's this:

Chris: "So what'd you find?"
Me: "It's called How to Be a Serial Killer."
Chris: "You do know we're on a watch list now."
Kaylee: *cackles maniacally*
Chris: "And that was your influence."
Me: "Guilty."

Am sick. Caught it from Chris, who caught it at the 4th of July party from one of his nephews. Fortunately it seems to be one of those 24-hour things, but still. *debates spritzing Kaylee with Lysol*

Which means I've spent a lot of time over at mom and dad's watching TV; namely, the TV Guide channel as we tried to figure out if there was anything good on (answer was no) and of course they were in the middle of their nonstop Michael Jackson coverage, including something about a helicopter of press people assigned to try and get footage of his kids on their way to his funeral. I wish to thank them for making my oft-used vultures metaphor even more apt. Now, where are clouds of radioactive wasps when you need them??

I should do something useful today. And I will if I can figure out something that involves little to no movement.

Went across the Royal Gorge bridge. Beautiful view, even though I was hyperventilating half the time (dumb fear of heights).

Got to talk with my cousin Jenny again! She is awesome, and I got her hooked on the Dresden Files. Yays.

Kaylee got to play with her cousin Brandon, who is so completely adorable I wanted to take him home.

Went up the cog railway to the top of Pike's Peak.

One of the favorite parts of the trip: going to the Aquarium.

One of the least favorite parts: having our car motor decide it hated us and was going to die. On the Interstate. We had to rent a U-Haul truck and car dolly to get the dumb thing home. There was $500 I wasn't expecting to spend. . .

Got home and found out the cats had acquired fleas in our absence. Cue me washing everything in the house.

Saw the Friday the 13th remake last night. Wasn't half bad. (of course, my love for Jared Padalecki could be influencing my opinion)

Off to write some story notes.

No sooner did I get up from typing that last entry than I go into the kitchen to start a load of laundry. I tossed our comforter onto the floor in there late last night, since one of our cats decided to show their affection for us by puking on it. I reach down to pick it up--

Monster. Brown. Spider.

When the camera is hooked up again, I will post pictures. Unfortunately, taking pictures was the third thing I did. First was to scream, which of course scared Kaylee, and second was to calm her down.

I trapped the thing in a plastic container, and once the lid was on tight I showed it to Kaylee so she could see it's nothing to be scared of. She was fascinated and tried to take the container from me, but I wasn't willing to go that far. I let the thing go a very good distance away from the house.

I'm going to have that 'something's crawling on me' feeling for the rest of the day; I just know it.

So Kaylee needed to be changed, and I told her to go get me a diaper. She picks one up from where she scattered them all last night, holds it out to me--

And I see, about three inches away from her hand, a good-sized brown spider crouching inside the fold of the diaper.

I snatched it away from her and headed for the front door, which the spider apparently took as a threat. It scurried out to the top of the diaper and reared up. I unlocked the front door in one hell of a hurry before it could decide to try a Flying Squirrel Tackle and shook it out into the grass.

Not even noon, and I've already had one heart attack. Yay.

The rough first draft of something I'm working on for Kaylee. . .





Right now I wake up at 4 a.m. to the very uncomfortable knowledge that my water just broke.

Your dad is telling me to not worry about feeding the cats, he'll come back to do it later, just get in the car so we can go to the hospital now please.

I'm biting down on a washcloth to get through the contractions.

Your dad is silently considering yelling at the lady giving the epidural because this is the fourth time she's tried to get the needle in.

I'm very, very mellow and tipsy and can barely feel a thing below the waist.

I see you for the first time-- just your foot, looking so purple-- and then I hear that the cord's wrapped around your neck and I'm as freaked out as the drugs will let me be until I know you're okay.

They bring you to me and I can't decide whether I'm thrilled to finally hold you or terrified that I'll drop you or just flat-out exhausted.

My younger brother holds you for the first time, in the same hospital where I first held him.

Your grandma and your Aunt Ashley stay with me for a few days since your dad has to go right back to work at his new job.

I'm calling mom, crying, because you're crying and I've tried everything and don't know what else to do.

I curl up with you on the couch, and the cats curl up with us, watching you warily.

You don't come close to fitting into the peace-sign onesie your Aunt Kathy sent you yet, but we put you in it anyway and take pictures.

I'm getting some help to calm down the chaos in my head, because even though the idea of talking to other people about it terrifies me, you're more important.

You're a month old, and we've taken about 30,000 pictures of you so far.

Even when you're in the middle of a temper tantrum, I can turn on Casino Royale and you calm right down.

You get frustrated when you can't roll over.

You need to play with someone's hair as you're falling asleep.

I think you've inherited my complexion-- the instant you start to cry, or laugh, your face goes from pale to beet red.

You're pulling yourself up and trying to walk before you even get crawling fully mastered.

As we're shopping, you spot the fish tanks and start grinning and clapping.

We take you to an Aquarium, and you're in heaven.

You have an entire bookshelf full of books and you can't even read yet.

You have not yet learned self-preservation: you jump off chairs and couches and climb coffee tables and generally terrify me.

You flail and smile and point whenever you see a dog.

You toddle up to where Zot is lounging on the floor, crouch next to him and rest your head on his stomach, and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Playing with hair has morphed into pulling hair.

I'm cutting my hair shorter than it's ever been to help you break the habit.

You love toddling around in the backyard and trying to catch up to the stray cats.

At almost sixteen months, you spend the whole night in your room without one of us having to get up and go to you.

Right now, as I start this project, you're asleep and I really should be.

Kaylee is addicted to Pocky.

Slacktivist is at it again (if you haven't read his essays about the Left Behind series, do so!), this time with a piece about a recent poll showing that 60% of Americans don't believe in evolution.

((I also really like this one.))

When I was growing up, this was something I talked about with mom and dad, but it was never any big controversy as far as either of them was concerned. I remember dad telling me that he believed the whole '7 days' thing was parable-speak, and that God created us and evolution is just the mechanism He used to do it.

Chris and I were both raised as Christians . . . he's still with it, while I'm agnostic. We've had several discussions about how to raise Kaylee with regards to religion. So far we're going with the 'attend church sometimes, have discussions afterwards, and if she doesn't show much interest don't force the issue'.

But the main attitude around here can be summed up by a former college classmate of mine. We were in science class, the book got to its section on evolution, and she says (ostensibly to me, but loudly enough for the teacher to hear), "I don't know why we even have to talk about this. I know I didn't come from any chimp!" and then she elbowed me and grinned like I was going to agree with her. I told her that wasn't how it worked, anyway. And the poor teacher; from the look on her face she'd just gotten an instant headache.

So, yeah. Lot of misinformation going on. Also, have I mentioned, Kansas?

Therefore, my trust in the school system is basically nil. And while I understand the very general basics, I'm far from an expert, so I'm getting to work on gathering information from people who're smarter than me. ;-) I've got those essays above, and we've got a couple of DVDs with various scientists discussing the issue, but I'm just wondering if any of you happen to have any books/movies/articles on evolution that you found particularly good? (bonus points if they're kid-friendly)

Thanks!!

From a little trail we walked around on yesterday:

So I'm sitting at the computer, reading through a scary stories website. Just Kaylee and me in the house. And all of a sudden I hear a door creak open behind me, and a zombie groaning sound.

Me = cat with fur bushed out.

I whirl around, and see that Kaylee has somehow managed to turn on both the TV and DVD player, which cued up an ad for Shaun of the Dead. And she's sitting there grinning at me.

I will not survive her adolescence.

Earlier, about the only attention Kaylee would pay to the TV was when we were watching That 70s Show and the theme song came on-- she'd crawl right over to the TV, wave her arms around and squeak, and then as soon as the song was over head right back over to her toys. But now if something loud happens she'll pay attention for a few minutes, and whenever a commercial comes on with a dog or a cat, she won't take her eyes off the TV. She's really starting to take those things in, which translates into one thing:

Time to go through our movies.

Chris and I went through our shelves of movies last night and divided them into "things it's okay to watch while Kaylee is awake" and "not unless we want to traumatize her for life".

We'll be adding and taking away things soon based on how she reacts to things once she starts talking. Right now all we have to go on is whether she starts crying or something in response to what's on the TV (which so far she hasn't done). So since she can't give us many cues yet, our criteria is pretty simple: no violence, and not much language. Things like Stand By Me will be added once she's learned the "do not repeat this word" rule. ;-)

Scrubs is okay (the show rarely takes a serious turn, and for a medical show there's very little blood) while M*A*S*H is not (that one deals with some pretty heavy stuff, especially in the later seasons).

RENT is okay (some language, but not nearly as much as the stage show, and what little violence there is happens off-screen) while Man of La Mancha is not (off-screen or not, anything with a rape scene is on the To Wait list).

And after a discussion, we decided that anything with vampires and demons and whatnot would wait until she's older, even with something campy like Lost Boys, just so we can be sure of what she's able to handle/what she's interested in.

Because I'm nosy curious, for those of you who are parents, how did you handle this one? What are some things that you thought your kid would handle just fine that caused a freakout, or that you thought would cause a freakout but they just brushed it off?

My first act of celebration in the new year was to get rid of some crap that really needed gotten rid of and help my kid make a clean start.

Which, of course, is just a more elaborate way of saying that I spent the minutes just after midnight changing a diaper.

This has been another segment of my wild and crazy life. Happy new year, everybody. :-)

Kaylee turned one yesterday! :-)

She got a small piece of cake, which she was actually fairly neat with (though I think that had more to do with not wanting to waste any sugar than any desire to keep herself clean).

We had a couple of mini-celebrations for her-- one last weekend that Chris's family could attend, and one on her actual birthday that her Aunt Ashley came down for. She made Kaylee a little rubber ducky cake; cutest thing ever. I will upload pictures, hopefully next week. My poor computer is sick. :-P At first it was just really slow and wouldn't run my spyware programs, and now Firefox is closing down at inopportune moments, such as whenever I try to send an email. Kath, if you don't have anything from me, that would be why. So we're going to work on getting it fixed this weekend.

The window also shuts down when I try to use Paypal, I just discovered, which is why I haven't donated anything here just yet:



It's a neat idea; fans are helping organize this donation drive for the Brittany Foundation, which is a no-kill shelter that works with dogs that might have a harder time getting adopted. Helping puppies! There is no downside to this. ;-)

Me: *reading Dr. Seuss to Kaylee*

Chris: "Hey, I get paid tomorrow and we have a little bit extra in the checkbook-- want to go get lunch?"

Me: "Sure!"

We head out, order food. I remember that today's Monday, which means a new episode of My Own Worst Enemy. Life = good. And then:

Migraine: HI!

Me: *whimper*

So mom came over after work to deal with Kaylee while I hid under blankets and prayed for death. It faded off after a couple of hours (yay drugs!) and I rented Kabluey so mom could see it. Suppose it all evens out. :-)

About time I put some new ones up. First, one of Kaylee in front of the jellyfish when we went to the Oklahoma Aquarium. :-)



Couple more behind the cut:

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Since Chris is working, I'm over at mom and dad's and we're ordering pizza. :-)

Also, one of Kaylee's top teeth came in. Just one, making this little point. I have now nicknamed her Fang.

-- Kaylee's figuring out how to use a sippy cup. Right now she's standing at her baby gate, amazingly enough holding the cup the right way instead of trying to drink from it upside-down again. She's also gnawing on the spout just as much as she's trying to drink (can't blame her, really, her top two teeth are starting to come in). The front of her shirt is soaked. I'm debating about whether it would be ethically right to just take her out to the backyard and spritz her down with the hose.

-- Probably not, since when I woke up the house was at 50 degrees. I try not to turn on the heater at all until November, but made an exception for that one. Gah.

-- The house is a complete mess. I'm trying not to concentrate on it, but it's difficult. Especially when Kaylee's figured out how to pull DVDs off the shelf and scatters them around the living room. We need a cabinet with doors. Maybe next paycheck.

-- Chris is working from 4 in the afternoon to 2 a.m. all this week. Considering that Kaylee doesn't usually fall asleep until 12:00 or 1 a.m., it makes for some long nights. It's quite possible that I'm turning into a zombie.

-- My brother just got this cool SAS Survival Handbook. I'm going to go through it for story notes sometime. Possibly at the aforementioned 1 a.m. ;-)

Chris just finally got some vacation time, so we've been busy setting up a garage sale (made $60! Yay) and catching up with the Laundry Piles of Doom and whatnot.

Kaylee sortof took some steps . . . we had her stroller in the kitchen and she clung to the back of it and walked it across the floor. I got video of it on my camera, now if I can just figure out how to upload it to Youtube, I'll be set.

And, My Own Worst Enemy premieres tonight!! *waves from Cloud Nine*

It's 1:26 and Kaylee will not go to sleep.

Show me the way to go home
I'm tired and I wanna go to bed. . .