now on my nightstand (and the coffee table, and stacked up on the floor, and in my car:

“Child Sense: From Birth to Age 5, How to Use the 5 Senses” was just released. It was written by Priscilla J. Dunstan (Bantam Books, 2009, $26, 303 pages). According to her press packet, Dunstan “burst onto the parenting scene” when she appeared on the Oprah show to reveal her “revolutionary discovery” that all babies make about five sounds to communicate their needs.

OK. I’ll tell you everything I know about parenting, and it all adds up to five, too:

1) Nurse if you can; don’t nurse if you can’t.
2) It’s not the terrible 2’s, it’s the terrible 10’s. Remember: They’re all different. They’re all the same, but oh my goodness, they are all different.
3) Try to find common ground with your partner, because eventually (if all goes according to plan), the kids will move out and it would be nice if you knew the person you were left living with.
4) First you’re thinking, oh my gosh! First teeth! She’s finally walking! We’re going to give her a pony for her birthday! Then before you know it, they’re screaming for money. My son, honest to Christ, just yelled at me, “We’d spend more money if you’d give us more.”

(Let us just pause for a moment to mull over that statement. “We’d spend more money if you’d give us more.” I am thinking, these are not children who deserve an allowance. Oh, no. Especially since their dad and I are the ones who got stuck cleaning out the frickin’ guinea pig cage last night.) (The class guinea pig is with us for the holidays. She is awfully cute, but the cage gets stinky.)

Where was I? Oh, yes.

5) They break your heart every day because they fill your heart every day. What with the guinea pigs and murderous African dwarf frogs and all.

And one more thing — as a parent, I firmly believe that you should take all of the credit, none of the guilt.

Next? “Sugar Blues,” by William Duffy (Warner Books, 1975, 255 pages). I have been wanting to read this book for years — Steve and others have highly recommended it to me, the lil sugar junkie. So I finally reserved a copy from the library, and it is a shredded paperback with the teensiest, tiniest print you have ever seen. I can’t read this thing. In fact, as I type this, I have to keep taking my glasses off and putting them back on, just to type and edit.

Pathetic, really.

OK. I’ll break down and buy a copy.

Next?

“Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids” was written by Kim John Payne, M.Ed. (Ballantine Books, 2009, $25, 235 pages). Really great book — I’m about halfway through, and have found several of the passages to be moving. I especially liked his comparison between the children of Asian refugee camps and the British children Payne worked with in the early ’90s. He has some insights that I appreciated about issues of control involving sleep, food and play. This one is going out on loan, along with the Dunstan book.

I’m still finishing “Water for Elephants,” it’s awfully good.

Have a great week.

— wm

From Flu.gov:

If your child has any of these signs, seek emergency medical care right
away:

* fast breathing or trouble breathing
* bluish or gray skin color
* not drinking enough fluids
* severe or persistent vomiting
* not urinating or no tears when crying
* not waking up or not interacting
* being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
* flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

WTF? (“why the face?”) (what, you didn’t know that’s what it stands for?) Kid still sick, fever, coughing, asthma. and 2 kids in her class w/ swine flu. allegedly. (confirmed.) Doc’s office says Send her to school! I’m listening to her brilliant teacher and our equally gifted school secretary and keeping her home, thanks.

That is the lousiest advice the doc has ever given me!

Edited at 8:20 p.m. to say — yeah, big surprise. I’ve had a sore throat for a week or longer, now comes the fever. I’ve got whatever Wacky Girl has. My little sweetie is having to use her nebulizer — asthma is kicking our asses again. Fever is coming down with tylenol, but she just is exhausted. Still cannot believe that the “advice nurse” at the clinic told me, “Mom. Mom!” (may I interrupt to say, I’m not your mama, mama. People I gave birth to may call me mom. No one else.) “100 is not a fever, that’s normal. Even 101, 102. It’s when you get to 104.4…” (again, WTF?) “…that’s when there is a problem.”

Funny, see. Because the best advice I’ve ever received on kids and fevers (anyone and fevers, but especially kids, because they’re just so little) was from the same clinic. They told me that it doesn’t matter, so much, what the fever is — it’s how they’re acting that you should be concerned with.

THIS IS NOT HEALTH ADVICE FROM WM. I am no medical professional. Disclaimer: Sorry, I really am just guessing my way through life, asthma, our checking account…

So. If you have a child who has a 103 degree temp, but they’re keeping down food and liquids, they’re racing around the house, eh, you’re probably fine. (Call the doc anyway. They usually have some good tips on keeping hydrated. Because the fevers do sap you that way, as you probably already guessed.) However, if you have a kid whose fever is low — 100, 101 — you have a problem if they’re limp, listless, and/or have that grayish look (with us, it’s blue around mouth and under eyes, from lack of oxygen because of frickin’ asthma).

(Blue. Yes. It’s just so la-la-la over here, when cold n flu season sets in. And yes, we do get the high fevers, unfortunately, as you long-time readers might remember.) The asthma? The pneumonia? We’ve been dealing with that since she was one. The high fevers, with our boy? His entire life.

This is how I, myself, mommy of the year, diagnosed my then-3-year-old with double pneumonia: She had been kind of run down, was running a low-grade fever, was running slowly around the house. Sort of a jog. Not tearing around, like usual.

“I’m going to take a little rest.”

She snuggled down on the couch. Didn’t sleep, just rested, like she said she was going to, for about 15 minutes. Up and jogging again. I just knew. Took her to the doctor, who listened to her lungs. The one sounded a little “rattly”; the other was fine. I just gave her a look. And then insisted on a chest x-ray. Me, the girl who is anti-x-ray.

Both lungs, pneumonia.

The doctor, pointing out the patches, “See, that’s odd. It seems to be worse in the one lung and I didn’t even hear anything on that side.”

I wish my daughter hadn’t inherited the faulty-lung gene from my side of the family.

love you, wacky girl. get well soon.

mama

My girl Karen V. started herself a fancy little blog, what do you know? It’s all about fashion and beauty, coming to you live from Portland, Ore.

It’s called the Neat Sheet and is rilly, rilly super-neat. Lots of tips and contests and insider info. Go stop by and tell her I said, “Hello.”

(PS, Karen here’s a tip — Debi Mazar is coming out with her own line of Italian olive oil beauty products next spring. Nice! Looking forward to those.)

…and I go there? It will be the “Inventors Ball Room” at OMSI. Just sayin’.

Here’s an essay for you, since we’re talking housework. It’s from twelve years ago, it would appear, cuz Steve and I weren’t married yet. Living in sin, woot!

CHORES
by Nancy (more…)

Things my children have stolen from me that I would like back:

1) my scotch tape
2) my purple calculator, the cool smooshy one
3) my heart
4) my sanity
5) my standards for cleanliness

That’s right, it’s time for Cleaning Tips 101. (more…)

Hello, my chickens,

Would you like to know what I’m reading? First up, we have two funny moms — Sara Ellington and Stephanie Triplett — who put their smart little heads together and just published their second book, “The Must-Have Mom Manual: Two Mothers, Two Perspectives, One Book That Tells You Everything You Need to Know” (Ballantine, 2009, $17, 525 pages.) (more…)

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” — Vixen

I am such a follower of Ms. Vixen. She makes me laugh my ass off, she makes me cry, she moves me. She deals with stuff and she moves on. She doesn’t forget, ever, but she is constantly moving forward. I can appreciate that. She and her family have been through some tough times this year, and I send them so much love and a ton of best wishes for this new year.

A number of my friends and family members have gone through some exceptionally awful times this year. They have learned things I wish they had never learned. Never had to learn. I wish them peace, and happiness, in this upcoming Year of the Ox.

Here is what I just found out about our friends, the Oxen:

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Ox people need peace and quiet to work through their ideas, and when they have set their mind on something it is hard for them to be convinced otherwise.

Maybe this means a year of calm? Peace and quiet and lots of good work? I hope so. I hope the American war against Iraq ends soon. I hope we learn to leave the rest of the world be and focus on what we need to do to heal at home.

I wish all of you the best, my readers. Look into your heart, decide what you really want. What you can’t live without. What you need to change. What you can’t change. Find some peace and quiet. Work on what you need to do. Please get going. We don’t have all the time in the world, here. Sometimes I wish we did; other times I’m thankful we don’t. Count your blessings, every day.

I have been wondering a lot lately about where I’m going with my writing, my blog, my career. I like my new job. I more than like it — I have found myself a career and something I want to do until I retire, which (I hope) won’t happen anytime soon. I’m thinking twenty more years, then, after that, I’ll volunteer at a library for as long as I can. Are you hearing me out there? I found something I will be happy with for the rest of my life.

Whew.

All of you who said that English degree would never do anything for me? Nyah nyah nyah. I love books. I love getting kids reading. I love it.

I am satisfied with the work, the students, almost everything about it. But I need to earn my master’s degree, and I need to find a way, like Hermione in “Harry Potter,” to turn back time so I can be two places at once. And (for obvious reasons) I can’t write about work here, so you miss the funny stories and all that. So I am not all yours anymore.

As my kids get older, I do not want to share as much about our private lives. They’ve asked me not to, and I respect that. But this is a domestic blog, at its heart, and so… So, so, so. What next? Recipes and book reviews, hair tips and sex advice. Political stuff and news about the Nekkid Neighbors. (Although their kids are getting older, too, and maybe won’t want their crazy tales told by their wacky neighbor.)

I don’t like some of the strange e-mails and nasty comments that I’ve received. I love the funny comments and sweet e-mails I’ve received. I mostly ignore the rest and delete as needed. I’ve gone back and marked some of my older posts private.

We’ll see where the new year takes us all, eh? I do plan to spend a lot of time studying, playing with my kids and husband, working hard. I take my work seriously and hope you understand why I’m not always over here, or stopping by your blogs as regularly as I used to. I miss my blogworld, but the “real” world is pretty cool, too. (How can you say anything is more “real” than the blogs though? This is raw and pure.)

And, since I let Vixen have the first words, I’ll let her have the last words, too. Happy 2009, y’all.

nancy

“I wish that your every dream for 2009 come true. That you find yourself surrounded by friends, laughter, and good times. I wish that your every cup runneth over financially, romantically, spiritually, and creatively. That good health be your faithful companion, peace your guarded ally, and love your perpetual guide.”

(OK, can’t resist one more song from “White Christmas.” Just watched the movie again this week — Rosemary Clooney’s commentary on the DVD is frickin’ hilarious. What a class act. I love that girl. wm)

We’re at the orthodontist’s yesterday, to get started on Phase I of Project Braces for my daughter with the crookedy teeth and the crazy jaw. (Estimated cost ’til completion of project, as of yesterday when we did a worksheet: $7,000. Insurance will pay: Nothing.)

“So, you’ll be next!” the tech says, perkily, with dollar signs in her eyes, to my son.

I say, “NO! He has my teeth! Straight! She has her father’s teeth.”

“Sorry, sorry, of course, I can see that now,” etc. sez the tech. “Did your husband have braces?”

“No,” I tell her. “My father-in-law has a thing against orthodontists.”

Today, Wacky Girl tells me, perkily, with dollar signs in her eyes, “We can’t eat out anymore. You’re saving for my braces.” Of course. Of course I am, honey. I can see that now.

Not ten minutes later she tells me I need to look into her brother’s mouth.

“There’s something real weird going on in there.”

She’s right, there is something weird going on in there. A great big grown-up tooth, his first, snuggling up right behind his baby tooth. (Which is not wiggling, by the by. Which is firmly holding on to its own real estate, smack up against the big boy tooth.)

She tells him, “You’re like a crocodile! With double teeth!”

He grins a big toothy grin at her.

“Maybe your great-great-great-great grandchildren will have the same problem!” she says, like this is the coolest thing that has ever occurred to her.

At least I won’t be responsible for their dental bills.

We’re seeing the dentist tomorrow.