Top 10 Toddler Quotes - of the moment

My son is only two years old, and he definitely sees the world through two year old eyes. Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth surprise me, make me laugh, or just make me shake my head. Here are my favorite quotes to date.

10. (In response to, "Are you putting your toy in the toilet?")
The dinosaur has to peepee.
9. (In response to a power outage.)
Uh oh. There's no more batteries!
8. (In response to, "Why are you crying?")
I need some cake.
7. (In response to, "Are your toys fighting?")
No! They're playing nicely! *said while repeatedly smashing dinosaurs together*
6. (In response to, "It's time to go to bed.")
I can't take a nap. I need a special treat!
5. (In response to his brother's dirty diaper)
A stinky poop! That's disgusting!
4. (In response to, "No jumping on the sofa!")
But I need exercise!
3. (In response to, "Don't hit the tv with your toys.")
I need to boom the octopus! I'll save you, Mom!
2. (In response to, "Ok, let go of me, please. I need to get up.")
Uh oh! We're stuck together!
1. (In response to, "Ouch! Don't hit me with your toys. That hurts.")
You have owwies? You need to be careful, Mom.

However, this is my absolute favorite.
(In response to his father asking, "What is Mom's name?")
Mom.
("No. She is your mom, but what is her name?")
Lovey Girl!

Top 10 Things I Never Viewed as Luxuries Before Mommyhood

10. Going on a grocery run by myself
9. Savoring a treat (chocolate, a cookie, etc.) without having to hide or give up 4/5 of it
8. Cooking one meal, ONLY one, for everyone
7. Cleaning the table and having it stay clean for longer than 2 hours
6. Making spontaneous plans
5. Leaving the house without the baggage of extra diapers, clothes, snacks, drinks, and toys
4. Going to the bathroom by myself, or without having someone crying outside the door
3. Having any tv show or music station on in the background
2. Having the time and energy to hang out and catch up with friends
1. Sleeping

Generic Christmas Presents on the Cheap

What can I say? I'm not rich, but I like nice stuff. I also believe in giving nice stuff, mostly because I have received not-nice stuff as presents, and we all know how that makes us feel.

Every year, I end up doing a little bit of Christmas shopping for people I don't really know. Usually, it's for someone at work, or someone at my husband's work, or an acquaintance who I just haven't gotten to know well enough to have an idea for a present. So, here are my Top 5 Cheap Christmas Presents which I find acceptable to give, as well as to receive.

5.) Coffee - Unless the person you're giving this to doesn't like coffee, this is a pretty good go-to gift. You can put together a quick present with a little sampler sized bag of coffee (about $2 -$3 dollars), a nice coffee mug (please, they're cheap and available everywhere - usually about $3), and a candy cane or some cinnamon sticks tied with ribbon. Voila! You've got something nice, presentable and useful for under $10.

4.) Music gift cards - I don't care if it's iTunes or just a gift card to Best Buy. I haven't met anyone who doesn't like music of any kind. If you know what kind of music to get them, great. If not, they can go shopping at their leisure.

3.) Food - It won't take up space (for long), it's a nice treat, and it's something they didn't have to get themselves. Think small treats like an individual sized rum cake, a box of special cookies, a tin of sipping chocolate or cocoa, or a nice panetonne. It can be dessert, breakfast, a snack or just an anytime treat. Thanks to places like Trader Joe's, you can pick up a nice foodie gift for $5 or less.

2.) Alcohol - Not the cheapest item on the list, but a great generic sort of present. There's such a great range of products to choose from. You can get a decent bottle of wine for around $8 or $9. Try a six pack of lager from ...some place (try Red Stripe from Jamaica, or maybe Grolsch from the Netherlands). Or stop by a liquor store (BevMo is a good place) and pick up a small assortment of mini bottles (like the kind they have on airplanes). They're usually around $1 to $2 per mini bottle, and you can get a few different kinds of vodkas, or liqueurs, or mix and match them all.

1.) Photo frame - My all time favorite generic gift. You can get a photo frame anywhere. Target, drugstores, even 99cent stores carry them. Pick a nice looking frame, wrap it up, and it's an instant gift. If you're giving it to a friend, you can print a picture at most drugstores, and stick it inside. The entire gift will probably be around $4 or $5 bucks.

Attention Animal Lovers!!!

Hi Animal Lovers.

This is pretty simple. The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of getting free food donated every day to abused and neglected animals.

It takes less than a minute (more like 20 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box "Click Here to Give - it's FREE!" This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned and/or neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here's the website! Pass it along to people you know.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

Nature is Mean and Vindictive

We are renting a house at the moment. There is a mini rose bush in the front yard. (It is a mini-rose bush, not a mini rose-bush. That is, it is a rose bush with small, mini roses. The bush itself is not small in the least.) When we moved in, it was so horribly overgrown that it was growing through the fence, slowly bending and breaking the wooden planks. It hung over the driveway, and we couldn't park near the fence because if we did, we would get a face full of thorns when we opened the car door. The wind would blow off the rose petals which would stick to our cars and ruin the paint. It was a mean, thorny, prickly, woody bush which seemed to scream, "Go Away or I will Pierce You!"

This didn't work for me. I am more social and inviting than the bush. I enjoy the occasional visitors to our home. I also like the option of parking in my driveway with the ability to exit my car without being blinded. At first I tried reasoning with the rose bush, but it was very negative and unwilling to compromise. Then I thought, "This is silly. This is our home. That rose bush needs to comply with our standards of living." So, I pruned it back. Way back. I hacked off everything which hung over and through the fence, and I trimmed it down so that it was level with the fence top. Lovely! No thorns in the face, no petals and leaves everywhere, no broken fence, and no scary thorn bush to intimidate people. Everything nice and neat.

Although it had a thorny, scratch fit at the time of it's pruning, I thought the rose bush had learned it's lesson. However, I now know that it was merely biding it's time and plotting it's revenge. Can you believe it had the audacity to grow? And it didn't grow out into a lush and full flowering lawn ornament. It grew up and over the fence ~ again! I know it was doing this just to spite me. So I kept trimming it so that it stayed level with the fence. Unfortunately, the rose bush got cocky and grew very large, very thick, and very thorny branches which I couldn't snip through. I'm quite certain that it spent much of last fall formulating this strategy, which it put into effect quite quickly once the weather became warm.

Today, I realized that it was already as tall as me, and that it had an arsenal of rose buds ready to burst into bloom above the fence line. This rotten bush had prepared a rose petal ambush for my car! So I decided, "This plant needs to be put in it's place." I picked up the secateurs, and went into battle. Now, anyone who thinks I'm going overboard here, has never had to prune a vicious and recalcitrant thorn bush. (Don't believe me? Read about this poor grandmother who had all her toes amputated because a rose thorn stabbed her.) This mean plant drew blood! At one point, I had half a branch hanging from my arm by the thorn embedded in my flesh. My fingers were stabbed and pierced, and I dripped blood on the secateurs as well as on the plant. I had to retreat briefly, and I went to the house where I washed off my blood, and my husband poured hydrogen peroxide over my wounds.

And now, I have to give thanks to my husband, who saw blood pouring out of my fingers, and decided that no uppity plant was going to treat his wife that way. .....Or possibly it's because he felt sorry that I was being speared and gouged during my pruning activities. (Chivalry is alive, my friends!) Firstly, he denied my request for the large cleaver to hack the bush into submission. Instead, he brought out heavy duty pliers (I didn't know we were allowed to use those tools for gardening activities), and he hacked and trimmed until that mini-rose bush became a mini rose-bush.

The plant has definitely been put in place. It is about 2 feet shorter, and a great deal thinner all over. I can say that it is now a proper lawn ornament, petite and groomed. However, I don't for a moment think that it's spirit has been broken. Even though it looks welcoming, I know that it is sitting there gathering energy for a huge growth spurt. It will sit there and heal, and it will quietly plot it's revenge.

Meanwhile, I am going to put Neosporin on my stab wounds, and I will sharpen the secateurs. I'm not fooled, you vicious rose bush. I've got my eye on you.