I’ve been babysitting the Things (that’s my nickname for them) for a long time. I think I started when Thing One was two and Thing Two was one. Now they are eight and nine!! I’ve known them for so long I feel like I’m part of their family, which is pretty cool.

The funny thing is, I’ve written about them from time to time here on this blog and over the years I’ve shared my posts with them. At first I was afraid to share with them because I never really got their mother’s permission (which is totally bad) and if you know their mom, you know she’s a feisty red head who could easily kick my butt. It’s not that I wrote bad things about them and I’ve been very careful not to reveal their identity etc… but well, I just didn’t know what she would say. I still don’t really. I’ve brought it up a few times and she’s just shrugged if off. I don’t think my blog is really on her radar.

Anyway, the kids? THEY LOVE THEIR POSTS. I don’t think they have access to the internet regularly so whenever I come over, they beg me to read their posts to them from my laptop. We read them over and over and have a good laugh over all the old memories. (If you have time, make sure you read the picnic one, it’s hilarious.)

Then they beg me to write more stories about them. In fact, Thing Two probably asks me every five minutes if I’m going to write about this or that or the other thing.

“Can you write about how I just jumped my skateboard off this curb? How about this rolly polly bug? It’s really cool! I know! Write about (the bla bla bla pokemon, skoobydoo, dsi something-or-other whatever-he’s-into-thing)…”

I roll my eyes and try to explain that while whatever xyz-thing he wants me to write about is super cool and interesting, it might not actually make a very good post. What really makes a good post is when something goes terribly wrong and I don’t want anything to go terribly wrong when I’m babysitting so lets just forget about the blog posts and have fun, okay? He doesn’t get it though. Maybe one of these days I’ll get him to start his own blog.

So I’m writing this for you, Thing Two. Nothing terribly went wrong this last weekend so I don’t have a very funny story to relate. (Although I could write about that one time I took you to the movies and you ate the ENTIRE box of candy I bought for you when I thought you would only eat half of it and then you got sick…that was a good time. NOT!) But I do want to say that I love you and YOU are very bloggable. I’m so blessed to have you as a character on this page. And you too, Thing One.

Inspired by Ponyo and the fact that I can’t really draw or blog about what is bothering me. Maybe I should channel my feelings this way more often.

The church I sometimes go to has a bounce house sometimes, maybe once a month or so. I’m not sure since I don’t go often enough to know their schedule. I think it’s part of their attempt to attract more children. It’s a great idea. It seemed terribly irreverent to me at first when I was sitting in the service and I heard this horrible loud air-blowing sound but then when Bug begged to go back the next Sunday, I had to agree it was a pretty good idea. Her Sunday school class also put on a little play about creation for the whole congregation and Bug got to stick little felt animals onto a felt board on stage. I thought that was pretty cool.

And more on the pinkness. I think I’ve written enough about that.

Old news! Boo hiss! Bethany has already come and gone. Sob… Oh! Did I tell you about my car transmission going out? I can’t believe I never blogged that story. It was terrible! My car is only four years old and it only has 42,000 miles on it. WAY too young to be having transmission problems already. We knew when we bought a high performance German car we’d be in for trouble in the long run but this is the short run!

I was at a gas station. I had just filled up and was about to put the car in drive and leave the station. When I put the car in gear it went in REVERSE instead of Drive! The gear shift was in drive but the car went into reverse and scared the crap out of me. I looked down at the gear selector and sure enough the lever was on D not R. So I slammed on the brakes (of course), turned the car off and started it again. This time it drove fine but then the gear selector indicator in my dash started blinking. Then my engine warning light went on too.

If I’ve learned anything over the years of being a big sister to an auto mechanic and being married to a car snob, I’ve learned to NEVER ever drive with warning lights on. So I found a parking spot in the shade in a nearby parking lot and parked. Then I called my brother and Toby and a car dealership nearby. (I’m skipping over the part where I freaked out and started crying and couldn’t carry on a conversation with Toby without yelling so I handed the phone to my sister-in-law, CC, and let her handle everything. I love her.)

Toby did some googling and found out that this wrong-gear problem has been happening to a lot of Audi A3 drivers and figured I was probably okay to limp home to my mom’s house (that was my destination) as long as I stayed in the slow lane and was ready to pull off the road if anything funny happened again. Well, I tried that and my car wouldn’t even go into second gear! It was stuck in first and revving like crazy. Of course this happened on the on-ramp of a freeway with several impatient cars and a semi honking behind me.

I pulled off at the next exit and called a tow truck thanks to my brother’s triple-A plan. I’m so thankful to my brother and his family right now. They saved me about a trillion dollars in towing. A tow truck came and drove us all the way back to my home dealership where I left my car for a week and a half. The dealership set me up with a rental car and I was as good as new.

Two weeks later the dealership contacted me and let me know that Audi was paying for the repair (a simple computer program problem) even though my warranty was up in June of this year. Phew!!! That was such a huge relief. We couldn’t even begin to afford to pay for transmission work right now. Toby’s half-tempted to sell this car even though we love it so much and it’s already paid off just because we really can’t afford to be fixing it all the time. But we’ll see. Now that it’s back from the dealership and running great it’s hard to think about offloading it.

I almost forgot the best part of this horrible day! After I got the rental car and was home for dinner etc, I locked the keys in the rental car trunk! Good times!! It took not one tow truck but two to come and unlock it with a funky slim-jim thingy. And because I didn’t want to admit to Toby that I had done such a stupid thing (I have a history) I forced CC and Bug to sit outside in the cold with me while we waited to be rescued by the tow truck. I should have made this its own blog post. I even have photos of our incredibly long horrible day.

But at the end of it all you know what I remember the most? How great Bug behaved and how wonderful my sister-in-law is when you are in the thick of it. You know what they say about people’s true character showing up in times of stress? Her character is golden and mine is a black hole of failure.

Blah blah blah…everyday life.

I’ve been babysitting a lot which is great for the budget. And it’s great for Bug who desperately wants someone to play with all the time. I love it that people will hire me to watch their kids and I can bring my kid along too. It’s a great job for both of us.

And that’s that!

We (meaning the kids I babysit and Bug and I) went to this really cool place called Pretend City yesterday. It’s in Irvine and relatively new. I think they even opened this month. It’s super popular, loud and crowded but I think that might be only because they’ve been written about a lot in the local media lately. It’s geared toward ages 2-5 so if you have a kid that age who is a non-napper, I’d recommend going in the afternoon and avoid the morning rush. It was crazytown in the morning. Crazy but fun though. We loved it.

Basically it’s a pretend city (hence the name) in big office warehouse type building. They’ve got a bank and a grocery store, a farm and a police station… library, etc etc etc. Everything is kid-sized of course and you can play. Pretty much it’s your pretend world with real props. Well, plastic ones of course. You can work on the farm and dig up plastic vegetables, pick plastic apples off the wall and then take them to the market.

I might have to use this idea in a mural someday.

You can put on real rubber boots, a rain coat of sorts and a real fisherman’s hat and go fish in the marina. Bug loved the water works. Once you catch a fish with your net you can even wrap it up in brown paper. I loved that detail.

It’s all handled really well with minimal mess and fuss. I’m surprised that they can allow kids to get so hands on with so many props without chaos breaking out. I really hope this concept sticks.

Of course the water area was very popular.

What is cool about this little town is that kids can get a job so to speak or at least understand how jobs work. You can try on costumes, pretend to work and then punch your time card. They have little paper punch cards that they can stamp at various locations and then take to an ATM that dispenses real paper cash. That was a huge hit.

Of course nothing is super computerized or anything and you can rob the bank quite easily by sticking your punch card into the ATM over and over but that’s besides the point. Though I found it humorous that the seven-year-old boy I’m babysitting spent most of his time in the city swindling other little kids. Not that I think he’s going to grow up to be a con man or anything but I thought it was a bit funny that corruption breaks out no matter what the size of your population. And by size I mean, little kids.

After you get your hard-earned paper money you can go to the grocery store (sponsored by Ralphs, which I thought was cool. Go Ralphs!) and buy stuff! Bug LOVED this part. I think I have a little shopper on my hands. What I really liked about the grocery store area though was how the checkers (little girls in our case) took their job so seriously. There was no adult telling them what to do but they took each item and carefully scanned it. Then they hit a few keys and asked their little customer for whatever dollar amount they made up in their head. It was so real it was creepy. It really makes you realize how play is just preparation for the real world.

There was also a restaurant to work in.

And a theatre. Bug took a liking to the sound controls. The music was preset in one minute tracks but you could push buttons and make funny sounds. That was cool.

The building and construction areas were great. I would have liked to explore them more and take more pictures but they were very very busy with boys, naturally. Let me tell you, it was challenging to take photos in this place without getting everyone and their cousin in the shot too. Not to mention the lighting was unnatural (fluorescent? sodium? both?) and I HATE to use my flash so most of my photos are blurry but I figured you’d forgive me. It’s a place that you really have to see to understand, so blogging with photos seemed important.

We ended our visit in the art studio which made me happy of course. The kids made paper sushi. I thought that was ingenious. It’s basically a section of toilet paper roll wrapped in black construction paper, stuffed with tissue and then decorated with real rice and bits of colored paper. They looked remarkably real for paper and tissue.

Then we posed in the funny shadow area. There were so many things to do. We missed a lot of them because we were hungry for lunch. I could seriously see burning several hours here–which is nice for us because we are in the middle of a heat wave and it is HOT HOT HOT at home when you don’t have air conditioning. Spending some time in this indoor city was a blissful relief for me. I don’t care how many kids I have to wade through.

So that’s that! I’d give this place a thumbs up. And this is NOT a paid review. My trip was sponsored by the mom of the kids I babysit but admission is $10 for anyone older than 12 months and military and seniors get discounts. We say, “Check check check it out!”

Seven days is starting up again and since nobody complained about seeing my ugly mug (and feet and backside) for a week last time, I figured I could post my self-portraits here again. But don’t worry, I’ll try to throw in a few cuties of Bug too. So here I am playing the piano at the kids’ house I babysit. They just bought this house and it is amazing. We spent the whole day outside in the pool.

Which was so very fun until I decided to take my waterproof camera in the pool for some underwater photography. I got some good shots but then my camera leaked and my poor poor dumb waterproof camera died. I’m hoping if it dries out enough it will magically come back, you know like some cellphones do when you accidentally drop them in the toilet. Not that I know anything about that.

Before you agree with me about how dumb my waterproof camera is, I should probably share that a while back I accidentally dropped this camera and busted it on two corners where the battery and memory cards are inserted. So maybe immersing this camera in pool water wasn’t the best idea. I thought the seals were still water-tight but apparently they were not. Woe is me.

I’m hoping that whopping expensive warranty I paid for when I bought it will count for something. I don’t know if it covers user idiocy error though.

But hey aren’t these underwater photos cool?

I had a lot of fun swimming and splashing around today. I would say we had a lot of fun swimming but Bug refused to go in the water. I don’t know what’s up with her. She loves swimming (or splashing around on the steps and scaring the crap out of me by pretending to swim) but today she was suddenly overcome with fear. We cajoled her with water wings and promises of super fun floaty boat rides around the pool and she would have nothing of it. I’m thinking we need to go to the pool more often and get over that fear.

Do you like my neon toes? They don’t really look that bright in this photo but they are. They practically glow in the dark. I can walk down dark paths lead only by the glow from my feet almost. This is what I bought myself for my birthday. Toby gave me $100 bucks to go buy a new outfit for my birthday but a fool and her money are soon parted and I somehow blew $28 at the nail salon instead. Now that I’ve been walking around in this crazy 80′s flashback color for a few days I’m thinking I would have liked a blouse (or at least half of one) better.

I’m sorry I had to drop that last post on you. I know you understand and your comments are so encouraging but I still feel bad about doing it. I really didn’t want to but it had been fermenting in my brain since forever. And you know what happens when posts ferment in your brain. You get a blogging clog and everything you want to say seems irrelevant because you have this big elephant in the room that you can’t talk about. Next thing you know your blog is dying a slow painful death—which would probably be fine with a lot of my family members but unfortunately isn’t fine with me because to me it’s more than just a silly website.

But anyway! Onwards!

The other morning I woke up feeling sick. I just wanted to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling contemplating how much snot was lodged in my head. A pound maybe? A kilo? A liter? Who knows. There is no time for such thoughts when you have a toddler who thinks one must pop up and play the minute she opens her eyes in the morning. Resting is soooooo boring. Either you are awake or you are asleep and if you are awake that means you must be playing.

A long time ago I taught Bug that I wouldn’t get out of bed until I got my morning hug. Of course I invented this stall tactic in hopes that I could sneak in a few more winks while she cuddled with me. It sort of worked. But lately she’s taken to body slamming me and then staring at me wondering why I don’t just hop out of bed. “Get up mom! I hugged you. What’s wrong with you?” she seems to say. As if hugging automatically jump starts my mom brain in the morning. I so wish it did.

The day before I had promised Bug that we would go to the beach. It was hot then, but I put her off because I had some thing that I wanted to get done that seemed more important than building sand castles in the sun. We often battle over this, she and I, and I feel terribly guilty about it because what could possibly be more important than going to the beach when you have the luxury of living only a few blocks away from it? It really is a shame that we don’t go every single day. But we don’t. Why? Because I have to do stuff.

I’m just a stuff-doing sort of person. If I could figure out a way to take my laptop to the beach without ruining it with sand, I totally would. Also the glare is terrible on my screen and I need a power source because my battery is shot. Last time I checked, my extension cord wouldn’t reach.

So, the beach sans laptop it was. Promises are promises even when your head feels like a brick and the weather has suddenly turned cold. It’s not like it was snowing, it was just a little chilly. I tucked my greasy dirty two-days-without-a-shower hair into an ugly hat and headed out the door. Thankfully, there is a doughnut shop on the way to our beach that sells very large coffees for very cheap. A normal person would be embarrassed to show their face at the local doughnut shop looking like this but I’m a mom and I have very little vanity these days.

And that was the flattering shot. Did I mention I was sick? I looked like I felt.

We sat on a lifeguard tower while she ate her chocolate sprinkle doughnut and I sipped my extra-large coffee. I have to admit this isn’t a bad morning routine but of course breakfast on the beach was only part of my promise. I promised sand-castle building and that meant I was delegated to fetching water from the icy cold ocean.

Why do I always get this job? Oh yeah, because I’m deathly afraid she’s going to get washed out to sea. So off I went to fetch a pail of water. Surprisingly, the water was not as cold as it looked. Probably because the air was cold so the water felt warmer. Sometimes that happens.

We played at making sand castles for a bit and then Bug spied some caves. The tide was way out and great big rocks that are usually submerged under water were standing out in the sand just begging to be explored. I really didn’t want to explore them. What I really wanted to do was go home and curl up under a blanket on the couch but I knew that was a pipe dream. I’d probably get stuck watching Noggin all day and rebounding a kid off my back like I was her own personal trampoline.

I remembered exploring these very same caves with my brother when I was a kid so I decided to let her venture into them. They were just as magical and claustrophobic as I remembered. There aren’t any really deep caves here but they are low and the surf is right at your back making you feel like any minute a giant wave could come crashing up under the rocks and smash you to smithereens.

I knew the tide was way out and we’d have hours before we’d have to actually worry about getting wet but that doesn’t stop me from imagining getting stuck there in the rocks under water. I guess it’s just a deep fear that I’ve always had. That, and driving a car off a cliff into water and not being able to undo her carseat buckles in time before she drowns—those are two of my greatest fears. Even though I love the ocean and can’t imagine living far from it, I’m still very afraid of it.

The other day, when I was babysitting the kids that I always babysit at their ocean-front house, I for some reason couldn’t stop worrying about what I would do if suddenly a tsunami occurred. If water was everywhere and slowly leaking into the house, what door or window would I escape from? Would I let the house fill up with water first and then swim out a window? What possible escape route would keep all three kids safe? These are the silly worries that keep me up at night. If anybody has any expertise on this subject, please enlighten me so I can sleep better.

Of course we didn’t drown while we were exploring the caves and Bug thought it was all a great adventure. I survived even while carrying my extra-large coffee in one hand so it can’t be that scary. If you can hike while carrying a coffee cup, I’d say that was a sissy hike. But I will say that I was very happy to be back out of those caves. And even more happy to be hiking back up the hill towards my house and some warm blankets on the couch.

I never really did get my couch time but I did go visit my mom in the sticks and she let me stare at my computer vapidly while she watched Bug. Moms are so good for that. And yes, I am feeling better.

Bug and I are going to be cat-sitting all next week for Bethany. We won’t really sit on the cats. We love Katy and Lily. Who knows what kind of trouble we will get into though. I’m thinking of re-decorating their living room in red velvet and maybe some marble columns. What do you think?

I babysat the kids I always babysit last night and for a change I decided to take over a craft for us to do together. They love crafts. Usually we end up making things with their mother’s office supplies that consist of post-it notes, straws, paper plates, staples and tape. I’m creative but even I have trouble coming up with hours of fun with those meager supplies. Believe me, we’ve pretty much exhausted them.

I decided it would be really fun to make picture frames out of cardboard and seashell bits. They live right on the beach so I thought this would make a perfect gift for them to give to their grandmother. We could make them refrigerator magnets. How sweet, right?

They thought it was a dumb idea. I guess five- and six-year-olds are way too cool for fridge magnets. Phooey. They wanted to make goblins and ghosts out of post-it notes and stick them to all the door handles in the house. That’s fun too but not really what I had in mind. Then the five-year-old started drawing droplets of blood in red marker and posting them down the wall. He was rattling on about how scared his parents were going to be when they came home at 2 o’clock in the morning and saw that someone had been murdered in the hallway via post-it note. Somebody’s been watching too many Scooby-Doo movies, I think.

So I had pull out the big guns. And by big guns I mean my evil friend Mr. GLUE GUN.

A little side note about glue guns: I love glue guns. They are my favorite tool to use for gluing. Quick, fast, dangerous and dirty. We could have used some sort of wood glue or paste but the hold is just so, how do you say…half-assed, you know? When you’re positioning something somewhat heavy onto something that is going to end up vertical, you really need a glue that is going to set fast and well OR you need a lot of time on your hands to let the not-so-sticky glue sit around and dry for days and days. Who’s got time for that? Not me. Not five-, six- and two-year-olds either.

But that’s not really where this story was going. I decided to break out the glue gun because I knew it was something exciting that would capture the imagination of my young post-it note terrorist. He’s a boy. Boys like guns. Sure enough, the minute the glue started to drop, he was there like a fly on a piece of poop. I had no intention of letting him use the glue gun because that would just be irresponsible. What am I going to do next time? Bring a nail gun? Yeah. That wasn’t going to happen. Except he started whining and bouncing off the walls like boys do. He had every argument in the book to prove why he was capable of using a glue gun.

“I’ve used them thousands of times,” he said confidently.

“When? Who let you use a glue gun?”

“Mrs Something-something always lets me use a glue gun to glue the beads onto our something something something at school…”

Hmm…I thought. Could he be telling the truth? Do they let five-year-olds use glue guns at private school? I never went to private school so I figure they do all sorts of fancy stuff there. They have church on Thursdays and I think they ride horses and play tennis and learn how to make martinis too. That’s where all the sophisticated kids learn those things, right?

And then there’s the part of me that isn’t closed-minded about letting kids use tools before they are “old enough.” I learned to paint at six, with oil paint. It worked out for me. I let Baby Bug use scissors and except that time she cut her bangs, she’s been very good at it. Maybe using a glue gun would work out for the post-it-note terrorist. Maybe he’s so crazy and bouncy because he’s not challenged enough or something.

Or maybe I’m just stupid and should probably be fired as a babysitter.

I let him use it.

And…he burned himself.

Right on the inner part of his arm where it bends. You know that tender part that has no callouses? I felt so bad. He was wailing and moaning and bouncing off the walls. (That’s what he does. Ask me about the time I took him to Starbucks and he climbed up on that little shelf where they set the drinks.) We put ice on it, we put a cool towel on it. Nothing really made it feel better. Thankfully it was a very tiny burn and after 30 minutes or so he finally forgot about it.

I didn’t. Lesson learned: kids should not use glue guns until they are able to sustain great amounts of pain without crying. I think I’m barely old enough actually because right after he burned himself, I burned myself on the thumb and it hurt like a bunch of really bad words. It still hurts a day later but it’s slowly turning numb. I guess I could go out and get a cold glue gun but that seems like such a wussy thing to do.

So anyway, this post is sort of supposed to be a craft post as well as a day-in the-life-of-Bug-and-SAJ post so maybe you want to know how to make your own seashell picture frames. It’s easy really. You don’t have to use sea shells. You can make a frame with anything glue-able. Rocks, cheerios, dry alphabet pasta, beads, buttons…pretty much anything you want.

We’ve been collecting small broken pieces of shells for a long time so I thought this would be fun. Toby thought it was a little bit busy for a picture frame but I think he’s just a stuffy old man with no imagination. He does have a point though so I tried to use a photo that was just Bug’s face and not a lot of background detail going on.

All you do is cut two pieces of cardboard the same size. I cut mine three inches by three inches because I’m partial to squares. Then cut a small square (or rectangle if you’re making a rectangle frame) into the top piece. An exacto knife will do the trick. Glue your shells (or beads or whatever) onto that top piece, place your photo between the two, glue them together, glue a magnet to the back and tah-dah! You’re done. Easy-peasy. If you are five, do not use a glue gun. Ask your mom to do it for you. Or use some other kind of glue and take your time.

The next day Bug and I decided to make ooglie-booglie eyeball frames. Because everything is better with ooglie-booglie eyeballs of course! In the spirit of Halloween we painted them black and then Bug had to add green. I think they turned out pretty cool. We’ll give them to my nieces for Halloween.

Ooooooooga Booooooooga!

HI!

Wow! I had no idea so many people had pacifier anecdotes! Sixty-some comments! I should write about pacifiers more often. Just kidding. I think I am finally at peace with the on-going pah saga. I’ll keep you posted if anything new happens.

In the meantime, I better roll that old post off there before you think I’m just leaving it up for weeks just to get more comments. I don’t have any new crafts or adventures to post about. I’ve been baby sitting a lot and while there are plenty of tales on that front, I have to respect their privacy and keep those stories to myself. For now at least. I’m taking my sewing machine and iron-on paper over there tonight so that might be fun. Or a disaster, I don’t know.

Happy Weekend everybody! Wish me luck in figuring out something fun to surprise Toby with on Father’s Day.

Everybody, meet Charcoal. Charcoal, meet everybody.

Charcoal says hi.

Charcoal is the little black kitten that Baby Bug and I are “kitten-sitting” for two weeks or so. I don’t know what I’m thinking…well, I do. I know exactly what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that it would be really fun to have a kitten around but not have the responsibility of FOUR cats. We already have three cats. We cannot have another cat. So how about we just take care of him for a little while and then give him back.

Yeah! That sounds like a great plan!

Toby thinks it’s hard on the kitten to adjust to more than one household in his young life but I think Charcoal is adjusting just fine. Compared to the life he would have had living under a trailer with forty-nine other feral cats, I think his life is great.

What I was really thinking is, a kitten would be super fun for Baby Bug. She plays with Pounce all day long as it is. Maybe Pounce could have a break from getting mauled and chased and being forced to drink pretend tea all the time if there was somebody younger and friskier to play with.

The plan is working pretty well. The kitten LOVES to play. In fact the only hitch in the plan is that the kitten loves to play with everything, including little toddler toes. Baby Bug does not like the kitten biting her toes. It’s a bit of a problem. So far we are solving this by teaching Baby Bug to stomp her feet and then run like mad to safety of the couch. Thankfully the toe-biting usually doesn’t last that long because kittens sleep a lot.

In two weeks or so we will take Charcoal back to my mom’s and she will either find a home for him or get him fixed and release him back into the neighborhood. I’m not really sure on that part. There are a lot of feral cats in her neighborhood and she’s trying to help them but it gets expensive.

What you are supposed to do when feral cats are a problem is: catch them, get them fixed and then release them back into the neighborhood so more feral cats don’t move in. But so far my mom seems to be keeping most of the cats she catches. My mom has a weakness when it comes to cats.

But then so do I. Even though I hate how much the three cats we already have completely destroy our house in three days or less, I’m secretly hoping Toby falls in love with Charcoal and we get to keep him forever.

Pop some popcorn, it’s time for another Baby Bug home movie (4.75 mb quicktime)! Groan, hiss… I know, I know…. Home movies suck. Especially ones with me starring as the high pitched annoying mouse voice. This one is long too. I just couldn’t figure out where to edit it and then I just got lazy and figured I’d put a big disclaimer on the front end saying you don’t have to click on it. It’s your choice and really I mostly made this movie for the grandparents who appreciate these things. Or at least they lead me to believe they do. My mom recently had her phone disconnected. Maybe she got tired of me calling every day with the latest update on baby drool.

I was going to save this for Baby Bug’s three month movie (that’s my plan, make a movie every month) but I couldn’t wait. It’s just too big of news to wait. She’s rolling over! Sort of. With a little help from mom. Just a little push, it’s hardly cheating.

She’s so amazing these days. Between the buh-bbb-buh-buh blowing spit bubbles and the pterodactyl shrieks that clearly say “Mom! Rescue me from Dad who doesn’t have a clue!!” I am just overwhelmed with how brilliant she is. My little genius! And cute to boot! What am I going to do with myself? I’m completely and one hundred percent smitten with this little girl.

She was really good at the birthday party yesterday. Everyone LOVED her mermaid costume. I think I’m going to find someone to manufacture them for me and go into the mer-tail business… or something. I have so many ideas.

I wish I could be a professional idea popper. It would say that on my business card. Brenda Ponnay, professional idea popper. Then all I would have to do is sit around and think up ideas and maybe sketch them on paper so people could get them better. No worrying about capital or business plans or hiring and firing folks… just pure day dreaming up new stuff every day. That would be my dream job. Next to being a mom of course. Maybe I could do both.

Enough about me. Baby Bug was a perfect mer-angel-baby yesterday. Except the part where she starting screaming while I was videotaping the birthday girl and now I’m going to have to do some extreme editing or find a really good sound track to mask out the merbaby shrieks. Thankfully I was there as a guest first and a video-girl second so there isn’t as much pressure to create the perfect birthday dvd this time. In fact they said they’d be okay if I took four months to produce it since I have next to no free time to work any more.

It was really strange but good to be at the birthday party as a mom instead of my usual job as babysitter/photographer/videographer/girl-friday. I don’t think I mentioned it but this party was for Thing One, the little girl I used to babysit all the time. All these years I’ve been wishing I had a little girl like Thing One and now I do. Watching Thing One run around with all her little friends made me so excited for Baby Bug when she gets big enough to run around and play too. They are all going to be pals! There is only five years difference in their ages. That’s not too much. Maybe Thing One will babysit Baby Bug someday…it could happen.

Thing One loves Baby Bug. She’s so good with her. Even though she was surrounded by friends and relatives, and plenty of fun things to do (like a woman who was hired to make mermaids out of balloons), Thing One spent a lot of time at my side holding Baby Bug’s hand as it hung down limply from Baby Bug’s sleeping perch in the sling. Later I decided to let Thing One hold Baby Bug and it was the cutest thing. Thing One is so gentle. Even with her cast. (She recently fell off her bed and broke her elbow.) She kept asking me if we should get Baby Bug a pillow and if we could put Baby Bug to sleep in her bed. I don’t remember being that interested in babies when I was her age. I guess Baby Bug is like holding a living, breathing doll.

Kinda like how she is for me.