Balancing the Canine

Tonight, we had an incident at our house that is a first--White Dragon bit someone.

I'd ordered pizza as one kid had a recital, I had a parent dinner to attend, the husband had a late afternoon meeting that concerned important matters, and the other two kids had an appointment with the babysitter. Sometimes pizza delivery is the best plan for an evening like this.

My eldest, 7, saw the pizza guy through out cut glass door. She opened the door. White Dragon, barking and ready to bolt out the door, stood beside her. Before I could get the word STOP from my mouth, the girl opened the door. The STOP managed its way to White Dragon's ears, but not before she gave a good nip to the posterior of the pizza guy.

At least White Dragon respects my authority enough that she dropped to the ground at my command, although her hackles remained aloft. I ordered her into the house. She followed them.

I paid the pizza man, apologized, and told him to call me if he was hurt. He wasn't. She didn't bite with aggression. I know that as I saw it happen.

This incident angered me for many reasons, the first being that my daughter should not have opened the door without my permission. The second reason I am needed a calming bath is that my dog bit someone. I expected it with The Brute. He had issues. This one, this dog that lets children lay on her and barely moves when a crowd of children come near her? I'm hot, and I'm still shaking.

On one hand, I live in a city that isn't a utopia. I don't mind that people are afraid of my dog. Yet, I have to do something about her behavior. White Dragon cannot charge people in my yard. I will need to use the Dog Whisperer's tactics with her.

I suspect my husband will disagree with me. I will stand firm on this. I am the one here most of the time. I am the one that invites repairmen into the house. I am the one that wants to get packages and mail without fear of the dog attacking the deliverers.

I'm not at ease with taking out the small aggression White Dragon possesses. I like a dog with spunk. I'm going to do it. I will train her out of this barking at visitors and at dogs passing by the fence.

Let's just add this to the other lists of goals that Sarabeth has to reach. Crikey! Why do I do this to myself?

Review: DreamBox Learning

Over the past few months, my daughters have had the chance to play DreamBox Learning, an interactive math web-based game. The very quick, in a nutshell, review is that this is thumbs up. Go now if you care about your children mastering math concepts. Go even quicker if you have daugthers, since by the age of 12, girls begin to believe that math isn't interesting. Address that early. Keep those doors to math and science careers open.

You can read how it works on the website. What impressed me was the testing of the kids' mouse skills in the beginning. That's incredibly important so that the tasks required aren't physically difficult. My five-year-old can out think her seven-year-old sister in some areas, but lacks the fine motor skills of her older sibling.

By playing an adventure, my girls willingly perform addition, subtraction, and other concepts necessary for math competency. It also matches well with the topics they see in school. Plus, there are games to play, pictures to color, and friends that they gain along the way. Kids need those perks and breaks. My middle daughter won't tell her older sister how she got to the coloring place. Guess what? My eldest now wants to explore every part of the adventure so she can find it. That leads to more math skills. Very cool.

I get to see their progress through the Parent Dashboard and occasional emails with updates. Of course, I'm usually in the room with them, so I know what they've done. However, if you aren't always around, you can still see what your kid has accomplished. Plus, I can show my husband.

Get on over there. Get a free trial. Then, sign up. If you sign up in the month of April, you get this remarkable learning tool for just $6.48 a month. No software to download. All you need is an internet connection. Think of those summer months coming up. You will be glad that you helped your youngster master these math skills (up to 2nd grade skills).

You say it's my birthday

I can't point to the year it happened. Maybe it was the sleepover birthday when I was 10 that didn't go as well as I expected that turned me sour on celebrating the day of my birth. It could have been much later, college, because so much more goes on then. Just celebrating making it to the next day is enough. Forget the birthday! (We can discuss that all important 21st birthday another time.)

Despite the fact that I danced on stage, played basketball, and gave lavish science presentations to auditoriums full of children, I do not like attention given to me. I especially don't like attention for just being born. C'mon, we all did that.

So, yeah, today is the day that my mother gave birth to me. It's the day that my father flew his plane in loops in celebration of me. It's three days before my sister held me for the first time 38 years ago.

Like so many years since I turned 29, I am not excited about this day. It is like all the others. I have not accomplished all that I wanted. I have nothing special to do. I don't want anything. I don't need anything except to reach those goals I have set. I am quickly reaching the time when I hate my birthday. It isn't the age. It's all the people no longer here. It's all the things I failed to do. It's a hurdle I must cross, not my day of celebration.

Forget your words of cheer. Use them on someone who desires the attention. I have work to do. There are too many goals yet unreached.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

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Crazy Busy

I'm crazy busy, but in a way that focuses me. I've taken on too much, more than I should, but sometimes the word no is bad. And, this week, well, no would have been very bad.

Saturday, we leave for a family vacation. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say after the vacation, but during, not so much. Plus, I'm writing, writing, writing and preparing for a conference after the vacation. These are good things.

Also, it's Carnival, or Mardi Gras as most of you know it. We'll miss four days of it (oh the horror!). Seriously, I'm conflicted as we live where the revelry can only be beat by the Quarter. There's next year, right?

Here's something that I wrote last year. http://nothpnowmommy.blogspot.com/2008/01/stings-connect-us.html

Mom Central's Valentine's Day Gift Guide

Go look on the sidebar for a Holiday Gift Guide from Mom Central.

Because, if you are anything like me, you've bought nothing.

A Review of Reviews

Over the past year (and a little bit more), I've reviewed toys, games, cleaning products, foods, drinks, and computer programs. Oh, one movie. As I looked at what I reviewed, I thought about the products that we kept using. So, here they are:

Jump Start World: Not only did we enjoy the game, we purchased the rest of the 1st grade series and the entire Kindergarten program. We did run into a glitch that the company fixed for the Kindergarten game but was unable to fix for the 1st grade game. My daughter didn't care that she had to begin the game again. If I had reached level 10, I would have been steamed. Not her. She's happy to explore the world again. That's one good game.

Cranium Bloom: We don't play the cooking game, but we still use the puzzle.

My Fruit Roll-Ups: I'm thinking we'll do these again for Valentine's Day or for the end of the school year. It is a unique gift that the kids adore.

Yoplait for Kids: We are all about the drinkable yogurt for my youngest.

Green Works: This is perhaps the most successful product of the year for our family. I use these products, so much so that I brought an empty bottle to the grocery store to ask the manager to order some. He did. I'm now reviewing the wipes. Give me a few days and I'll let you know what I think.

Kutoka: We've played two of this company's games, and the animation and interaction is wonderful. We find time to play these games.

Littlest Pet Shop: We adore the figurines. The electronic toys haven't kept my kids' interest beyond a month. As with other online toys (Webkinz and the like), we just don't play this way.

Clorox Wipes: These are always around our house. I like them for a quick kitchen cleanup.

Suave: I still use the shampoos and the styling products. Good stuff, great price.

Spot Shot: My notes say "OMG, YES!" I'm pretty sure I was yelling happily at the time. No more splats of chocolate milk. OMG, YES!

Barbie and the Diamond Castle: This movie is a favorite of my girls for the music and the friendship theme. They get it. I still like the rakish twins.

Clorox 2: A staple in the laundry room.

The ones that didn't make the "We kept using and purchasing these" were:

• Froose Juice--after several tries, my kids didn't like the flavors.
  
• Breakfast Breaks--We walk to school. These would be best for those that drive to school.
• Wild Animal Crunch
• Norton 360--With a good product included from my internet service provider, I couldn't see paying for another product.
• Preserve--I sent the toothbrushes out for recycling, but I don't shop at stores that carry them as inventory. I'm not driving further to get toothbrushes.
• Noodleboro--my girls have gotten into Sorry and Labyrinth. The pizza parlor game was fun for two weeks. My three year old sort of still plays it, but he mainly uses it to make his own pizza creations.
• Littlest Pet Shop Digital Planner--She likes my cell phone better.
  
• Woogi World--our lives don't work with this. The computer is a tool for learning and email and editing photos. The lessons of this online world are quite spectacular. My eldest really got them and still practices them. I thought long about putting Woogi World on this list as the value to kids on how to use the internet and balance it with family time is there. If you have a kid that can be compulsive/obsessive about the internet/computer, check it out. I think you'll be amazed at how easily a kid gets the moral of the stories, so to speak.

If I ever get around to it, I will review Dreambox Learning, an online math site for K-2 (oh, maybe higher, I can't find the email with the description). My daughters enjoy it, and it adds in nicely with the tiny bit of homework they have.

Infintesimal Pricks

Tender.

That's the word that came to mind as I navigated my evening. The events of the day led me to think of a passage in the book Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, underlined by a dear friend when were 21. It is this:

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. Today, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten . . .

Should I feel youthful that my day delivered those little cowardices to me?

Reveiw: GreenWorks Wipes

Upfront, I need to admit that I am a convert to the Green Works line of cleaners. I use nearly all of the products offered. The only exception is the dilutable cleaner. That isn't because I don't like it. It's because I have someone else do the deep cleaning of my house. I stink at the real cleaning. I'm good at surface cleaning, though.

I have a new friend in the Green Works Cleaning Wipes. With three kids and one dog who thinks she's a kid, we have lots of little messes in the house. The wipes have been great for those. I needed to give a guest bathroom a quick wipe down. The room smelled great (wonderful lemony scent) and everything glistened. No dust of un-use on any surface.

If you haven't tried the very afforadable line of natural cleaners from Clorox, go out and try them. For those of you who don't like scents, the dishwashing liquid has an unscented version. I do recommend the lemon scent. It makes me smile and think of summer.

A big thanks to Mom Central for the sample product to review. These will be on my permanent shopping list.

Hypothermia as a Medical Treatment

http://www.wwltv.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=324406

The link above will take you a local TV station's site where Phill is on the report.