Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock, Dawn, Desitin, Baby Tay

If you don’t get the title reference, sorry. It’s part “Big Bang Theory” and part my life.

Desitin vs. Baby Tay

 

Yeah, it totally beats her

 

Don’t be fooled by the eyes – this one’s devious

 

I think it was just an elaborate plan to get a bubble bath

 

Yeah, the diaper cream is definitely winning. This is post-bath. Three different types of cleaners/soaps and 5 washes.

 

Dawn dish soap vs. Desitin

 

Dawn dish soap FOR THE WIN!

From beginning to end, this took 3 1/2 hours including a trip to the store to buy Dawn. Palmolive just didn’t cut it. Kid got a bubble bath and a lunchable, and I got a blog post. Good thing I didn’t have anything else planned that day.

Her hair feels weird and smells a little funky, but at least I can’t see any more diaper cream.

Tags: Big Bang, Bubble bath, Dishwashing liquid, good mom, kids, parenting fail

Is 15 Years on eBay a Good Thing?

I opened up eBay today and saw this:

I’ve bought and sold all manner of crapola off eBay, but it all started with Beanie Babies. Remember them? They were born back in 1993, the same year as some of this year’s graduating seniors. In 1997, I got caught up in the BB craze, but I promised Hubs I would only buy the cats. I knew if I got super involved in the gray market Beanie Baby trade, there would be no turning back. I knew that a grad student’s salary couldn’t support a full-fledged stuffy habit, so I was just a recreational buyer, nowhere near as serious as the hardcore collectors. Some of those people needed interventions.

I watched calendars for release dates, I spent hours online looking for shops that sold the critters through their websites, and I signed up for eBay. This was 1997 and the internet was still figuring itself out. Pre-Google online buying consisted of spending hours and hours searching for something you wanted, then calling the store and giving them your credit card. But not eBay. Granted, in those days you had to mail a money order to the seller, but I didn’t care. It was for my little fur babies: Chip, Flip, Snip, Zip, Limp, Pimp…oh wait. Disregard those last two.

In the last 15 years, I’ve bought bunk beds, electronics, power tools, clothes, shoes, baby gear, a vacuum cleaner, books, CDs, video games, and about a billion other things I can’t remember from the “worldwide garage sale.” Maybe one day I’ll buy a car. It’s not out of the realm of the possible. I’ve sold fewer items, mainly because it’s a pain in the rear.

I’m passing on my mad eBay skilz to my two older kids now. #1 just bought himself a used iPod touch with his own money. It was a good deal and I’m proud of my prodigy. They know how to save things to my watch list and fear bidding on stuff without permission. I already read them the riot act on that, even though neither one had done it yet – an ounce of prevention is worth avoiding a £350 Cure album.

So in honor of my eBayversary, here’s a song for all of my fellow eBayers.

Just in case you care, my kids now play with my “Mint With Tags Never Been Handled From Smoke-Free Home” Beanie Baby cats. The tags are long gone and I’m pretty sure a couple of the kitties are missing. Poor Zip has been puked on and washed a couple of times, even. Well worth the investment, I think.

Tags: Beanie Babies, Beanie Baby, cat, eBay, kids, obsession

Good Mom Eclipses Race Mom – Redeux

This was actually yesterday’s post. I wrote and published it, but while I was writing a post for tomorrow, something went pear-shaped (a British expression used to indicate that something has gone horribly wrong with a person’s plans). I lost the post. I don’t save my posts anywhere but here, so I thought it was gone for good until I mentioned it to a friend (ollo, Shannon!) and she said, “Oh – I read that on my e-mail this morning.”

What? There’s a copy out there? Hooray! She forwarded it to me and here it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week I decided to try my hand at good parenting so I got all science-y and made plans to view the annular solar eclipse with the fam. I went on Amazon and found some cheap solar viewing glasses and had great intentions of ordering some, but I forgot. Our local bookstore/science store ordered some but they sold out before the glasses even arrived. Bummer. I learned that a local environmental education organization (PEEC) was hosting a viewing event at a local park and would have 100 pairs of free glasses.

I didn’t have high hopes for getting any of the free glasses, so on Sunday afternoon, we made pinhole viewers for each of the kids. I don’t understand how the viewers work, other than they keep you from burning the eyeballs right out of your skull by trying to look directly at the sun during the eclipse. My big girls are such girly girls that they both decorated their viewers with paper and markers. My son just wrote weird words on his Cheez-Its box. We also made a long-range pinhole viewer. I had no idea if any of these things would work, but at least we made an effort.

 

Pinhole viewers

 

Getting ready

 

Viewer humor

A friend knew we needed some glasses, so she gave us 2 extra pair from the 5-pack she had the foresight to order in time from Amazon, so I knew if we didn’t get the other freebies, at least we had these two pairs.

We got to the park half an hour before they were supposed to start giving out glasses and I was disheartened to see that there were already at least 100 people in line. I got in line anyway, though. Hope springs eternal, right?

Thankfully, the PEEC people were only giving out one pair per family, so we scored another pair of glasses. I figured 3 pair for the 6 of us would be great.

Kid #1 spent most of his time running around, spazzing out. #2 was the most interested in watching the progress of the moon across the sun, so she would switch from her pinhole viewer to glasses to the long-range viewer often. #3 declared the whole thing boring, and #4 made a friend on a neighboring blanket, toddling around with her until my kid whacked the other kid on the head with her cup of Kool-Aid. Apparently #4 has enough charisma to overcome her violent tendencies and the little girl came back and played after her tears had dried.

I’ve never seen an eclipse, so I didn’t know what to expect. At the peak of it, the sky didn’t go all black or anything, but the light did weird things. The sky wasn’t the soft light of dusk, but it was sort of orangey. Shadows lost their sharp edges and had ghosts – lighter shadows surrounding the darker ones.

A friend held her glasses up in front of her camera and took some pictures, so I did the same and got some interesting shots.

 

My attempt at solar eclipse photography with the camera phone

 

Blurry, but still cool. It’s dark because of the glasses. The sky wasn’t black.

 

Long-range pinhole viewer image

I think I’ve redeemed myself from the whole 5K thing.