Yes! Sometimes they get it!

Sometimes I worry about some of the things my kids are picking up from me.

Tonight Amelia said something that let me know we are on the right track in some areas. After finishing Math homework she asked, "Well, I have reading, but it's not due until Thursday. Should I do it tonight?" I said, "Well, let's look at it and see how long you think it will take".

With no further prompting from me she looked at it and said, "I think I should do these two pages tonight, and then I can do the last page tomorrow."

Yay! I think she's getting it!

How time flies!

How did this happen? Count the candles. And this is my baby! The older will be 10 in February. Wow.

Please don't say five minutes...

Yesterday my daughter asked me, "Mom, how long until supper is ready? And please DON'T say 5 minutes." (She was really hungry).

Methinks I use the term "5 minutes" a bit too liberally around her, and she has figured out that 5 minutes is not 5 minutes.

Reminds me of the discussion between her and Margaret about the answer "maybe".

"When mom says "maybe" that means yes. When dad says "maybe" that means no."

Our kids know us better than we know ourselves sometimes.

Now where did Linda put that?

I have been blessed to be able to afford and to find a house cleaner. We do try to pick up before she comes so she can focus on cleaning and not neatening. But she obviously does need to move some stuff around.

As a result of this, we have a new tagline in the house. That line is "Now where did Linda put that?" Instead of blaming our own laziness, memory, or messiness when we can't find something, we just "blame" the housecleaner.

Of course none of this is actually due to her (and I remind the kids of that), but it's kind of funny to say so. (We did have one thing the first week we couldn't find that I had to call her up to find it. That was the ONLY time, but I guess they remember that time.) And that item was part of my daughter's Halloween costume. That she LOST when she went trick or treating. How ironic.

Parenting Chicken

I have coined what I think is a new term... "Parenting Chicken". I discovered it because my husband has been out of town a few times this fall. I have discovered I seem to have evenings that are in more control when he is gone. I think I have discovered the reason.

I think we play parenting chicken sometimes. You know, you have done it I'm sure. You hear the kids do something they shouldn't. Or you see toys that have been left out. When home alone, you know YOU have to deal with it. So you do.

When the spouse is home? Hmmm. Maybe he'll deal with it. I'll just ignore that for now. Of course, he is dong the same thing. And things spiral out of control.

Yep. Chicken. I usually lose.

(Oh, and if you don't have kids, you can do the same with household chores. I always lose the bathroom battle on that one.)

My computer knows more about me than I do

Sunday I had a bit of a mishap with my computer. I'm not sure who pushed which buttons when or in what order, but my computer decided to "restore" itself to the factory shipped state. Which is thankfully different than having the hard drive re-formatted. But a pain nonetheless.

I am having to re-install most of the programs I installed since getting my computer. And I have had to un-install most of the crap and trial programs that came with the computer.

For many software packages, this means checking your account on their website, or checking your e-mail for some key, since there are very few install CDs sent out anymore.

Do you know how many different passwords you have? I don't. I have had to request so many new passwords, and change so many passwords, and rifle through papers for information to restore everything to its previous state (which wasn't perfect, but at least I knew where everything was).

When I think about that too much, I worry. How many websites know how many things about me that I don't even remember anymore? It's mind boggling.

I'm lucky that at work we have single-use sign-on (or whatever it's called). I sign into my account and every program that is web-based uses that same password. It works nicely at work because of firewalls and security and all that. I hope the outside world never comes to that, because then surely my computer would know more about me than I do.

Which I fear may already be the case.