The Top Ten Toddler Toys

Here they are, in no particular order. Toys ‘R Us, take notice.

These are (from personal experience) the top 10 Toddler Toys

10. Sheer drapes to play peekaboo in. :coffee2:
9. A remote control that powers any electronic device, preferably a television.
8. A set of eyeglasses. Prescription glasses worth over $100 are the best kind.
7. Power cords. Especially when you can gnaw on them and scare Mom within an inch of her life.
6. Trash cans. You can take everything out and strew it around the room. Entertainment!
5. A roll of toilet paper to spin and fling gleefully around the bathroom.
4. Spices. It’s such fun to shake them and leave the paprika and garlic under the living room cushions.
3. Toilets. You can flush any object down them and it’s really great when you flood the bathroom. Puddles for splashing! :headspin:
2. Magazines and newspapers. They’re great to tear up, especially Mommy’s parenting magazines.
1. Mom’s purse. The best part is taking everything out and presenting family guests with special objects like lipstick and tampons.

What would you add to the list?

Birthday parties for kids

Is it me, or have birthday parties nowadays gotten out of hand? My next door neighbor rented a giant inflatable castle that filled his backyard when his daughter turned four. Another neighbor rented ponies for his child’s party. When I was four, we had a pinata, bobbed for apples, played outside, and ate cake. Very simple.

Maybe I’m traditional, but I wonder when this became a case of “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Whatever happened to Pin the Tail on the Donkey? Why are we now suddenly having to rent clowns, ponies, and circuses?

Can you tell I’m protesting the whole movement? :batman:

My son is three and he hasn’t had a birthday party yet. I might do one for him next year, but it will only involve a few friends and it will probably be food and games–that’s it.

What are your thoughts about birthday parties for kids?

Stick a fork in me!

In spite of the lovely food poisoning that swept over our household, I did manage to finish the new Irish proposal. Woo hoo! :crazyjumping:

Now all I have to do is figure out the synopsis and I’ll be ready to go if an editor asks me for the book.

Tonight I was listening to an old conference CD, and I listened to Chat with Nora Roberts again. It really struck me how disciplined she is. She has earned every penny of her bestseller $$ because of how hard she works. 6-8 hours of writing a day? :confused: I would love to have that kind of time to write. Maybe someday I will.

Do Subliminal Messages Really Work?

I don’t know that I really believe in subliminal messages. (Go out and look for The Beast Within by Suzanne McMinn) They say that advertisers can flash a one-second ad on a movie screen and it will secretly convince audience members to go buy a Coke or more popcorn. (It has a sexy werewolf in it.) :hungry: Or other people believe that if you listen to a tape just as you’re falling asleep, you can learn a secret language or something. (You know you want to!):headspin: It just seems silly to me. (Run, don’t walk! Go buy it now, now, NOW!) But who knows how the human brain works?

My Husband was a Slave Driver

Many people who know me understand that my husband is into gardening. Engineering-style, if you will. He actually reads every label, determining the optimal location for each plant, adding exactly the right amount of fertilizer. He even made a spreadsheet for each plant, its location, its growth patterns, and the amount of water it needs. :confused2: I was of the old school of thought where you just find a nice plant and slap ‘em in the ground. Once I married my husband, I was introduced to his world of gardening.

What this meant was, my weekends would involve being dragged to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and McDonald’s Garden Center. We would peruse the plants, determining whether this corner of the yard would be better suited to arbor vitae or Leland Cypress. Lilies or roses? Hostas or juniper? Oh, the endless hours of debate. My husband loves to argue, and I could always tell when he had something in mind because he’d ask, “Honey, what if we transplant all the shasta daisies from the center of the yard to the side, rip out the sod on the back fence, and make a new mulch area where we can plant dwarf Alberta spruces?”

Now what he meant was, “Honey, how about if you spend three hours outside in ninety degree weather with a hoe and pickaxe, and we’ll sweat like pigs while we argue about where you’re going to plant flowers?” :whistle:

To my credit, I resisted the urge to smack him and run screaming. :hissyfit: I’d reply, “Um…I kind of like them where they are.” (Translation: Noooooo! Save me!)

And he’d argue about how much BETTER they’d look along the fence. I learned quickly that it was easier to just let him do his thing. The results were usually worth it. Here’s a picture of one corner of the yard that he landscaped.

On the bright side, there isn’t room for many more changes. Yay for that! :hello2:

Who’s Your Idol?

Many writers have authors who were heavy influences upon their work. Their “idol,” if you will.

For me, I’d say I have several influences, but hands down the greatest is LaVryle Spencer. I have every book she ever wrote and I’ve read most of them 5-6 times. What makes her such a compelling author to me is the characters she created. I felt like I got to know each of them intimately, and when I reread old favorites, I think about which “couple” I want to experience again.

Jude Deveraux is another influence on my work. I discovered her in the late 1980s, through a medieval she wrote The Maiden. I went on to devour her work and I loved the fast-paced, fun reading.

Johanna Lindsey I’ll always remember as an author who wrote sexy historicals, with bad boy heroes who made me swoon. :hungry:

And more recently, I like Julia Quinn and Susan Elizabeth Phillips for the humor they use. Both have influenced me in the tone of my work.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Star Wars and Not Enough Conflict

To George Lucas:

Georgie, dear, stop trying to write romance. You don’t get it. True romance means conflict, fun dialogue, and heroes and heroines who are feisty. They don’t go mooning over each other–”You’re so beautiful.”
“Only because I’m in love with you.”
Gag me with a blender. :ick:

True romance involves real life. You were dead-on with Han Solo and Leia. “I love you.”
“I know.”
See, now that’s funny and believable. That’s real. Episodes II and III weren’t real. They were forced. I would love to get my hands on your scripts and rewrite them. Anakin Skywalker would NOT be running to embrace his 9-months-pregnant wife when she goes across a galaxy to see him. He’d be demanding, “What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? What if you’d gone into labor?” Then he’d have hugged her, etc. etc.

And the whole hair-brushing scene where he’s mooning and fawning over her beauty? :blahblah: Come on. Any man with a brain cell would have grinning and telling her to come and see his big light saber. :whistle:

George, George, George. You just don’t get it, do you?

Aside from the romance, the rest of the movie was great and I enjoyed it. :starwars:

As for me, I hit a screeching halt on my book yesterday. Not enough conflict. Is there a little conflict shop where I could go pick some up? Must work on the synopsis today and figure this out. I only wrote three pages yesterday. :loser:

Stupid People Shouldn’t Go to Movies

Today I’m going on a date with my husband. Woo hoo! :crazyjumping: The last time we went out was to see Spiderman II, does that say something? We’re going to take shameless advantage of daycare and go at lunchtime to see Revenge of the Sith. :starwars: Can’t wait. Although if people start yacking on their cell phones, I may have to hurt them. :mallet: Do they not KNOW how long it’s been since I’ve seen a movie? Personally, I would be happy to pay an extra $2 to watch a movie in an adults-only venue where stupid people were not allowed. Can’t you just envision it? “We’re sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to watch your movie in theater 12. Theater 13 is for people who are quiet and actually want to watch the movie instead of screaming at their two-year-old not to cry at an R-rated movie.” :angry:

In other news, I made excellent progress on the new proposal yesterday and have one chapter left to write. I worked on the synopsis last night. It’s always a challenge to make the conflicts real and yet make the characters not seem whiny because of all their **gasp** conflicts! I’m trying for a 1-2 page single-spaced synopsis this time around. (Translation: I can leave a lot of stuff out. I haven’t got a clue how these characters get from point A to point B. I know what the points are, but how they get there is half the fun of writing it). I don’t know how you outlining people do it. My hat goes off to you.

10 pages of progress yesterday and 8 the day before. Goal is to get another 10 today.

Color swatches never match

I decided to repaint my daughter’s room. Right now it’s toothpaste green because it was originally the nursery for both kids. Green=okay for both genders. So, I went to the paint store and stared at all the color samples until I narrowed it down to a few choices. My goal was a soft buttercream. In my head I had visions of Laura Ashley prints, a soft feminine room straight out of a catalogue.

The fellow mixed up the paint, which mysteriously looked chalk white to me, but I figured–it dries darker, so it’ll work.

I prep her room, taping the molding, and I spread the first layer of paint. It does nothing to cover the toothpaste green. Crest green blazes through in all its glory. So I finish one coat on the wall (I want to see how it goes before I do the whole room) and then start on the second. Visions of buttercream dance through my head. :dance:

Nope. Still green.

I paint a THIRD coat on top of that. Guess what? Still green. I swear the guy mixed up a batch of toothpaste green without telling me because you CANNOT TELL I PAINTED. It looks exactly the same.

Two hours worth of work and $25 on paint supplies and it doesn’t look like I did a thing. :hissyfit:

Furious and vowing I’ll never buy that brand of paint again, I stalk into my son’s room….only to find that he colored a gigantic letter H on his wall. :angry: You know how Crayola boasts that their crayons are washable? Yeah, not so much. With SANDPAPER maybe. But that crayon is NOT coming off. Not without acid and flames.

Maybe I’ll just paint it toothpaste green.

Going Commando

Thanks to all for the title suggestions. I’ll see what combination I can come up with.

Yesterday morning I was cleaning my son’s bathroom, putting away pajamas and so on, when I found a pair of underwear stashed behind the toilet. I’m thinking, ah well, he must have forgotten to put those in the dirty clothes last night.

Wait. He’s three. I am the one who put away all clothes last night. That’s the pair of underwear I laid out for him to wear this morning. So if he’s not wearing those, then what is he wearing?? :confused2: I try to rationalize. Maybe he didn’t want to wear the tighty-whities. Maybe he really wanted Spiderman underwear. But the maternal instinct lurking tells me that my first suspicion is the right one.

That’s right. My firstborn is going Commando. Not wearing underpants. Free-balling it, as my husband calls it. :confused:

So then I think–My God! What will the daycare workers think? I will definitely win Bad Mother of the Year! I get on the phone to dial his teacher and ask if he’s wearing underwear. She promises to check and remarks, “He wasn’t wearing underwear on Friday either. We were wondering about that.”

::thunk:: (Michelle passes out in horror) No one told me this!! And worse, there’s a pattern here? He’s done this before??

That’s it. No more unsupervised dressing. Underwear inspection Every Morning, by God. :angry:

P.S.–10 pages yesterday on the new wip!