Birdie: YOU ARE THE WINNER! I picked you because you used to have a lovebird.

Cameron: You are another winner for writing such a good message. We would like to send you a set of Nerdy Flashcards because you like science and my mama makes science cards and I think you’ll like them.

*****

Now. I know I owe you all a bunch of photos from our trip to Texas of Halloween and of my brother, Messy Jesus. And what else? Oh right my hair cut! Which I’m already pulling back into pigtails every day but ah well. But I accidentally uploaded photos of something completely unrelated instead: a new Nerdy Baby (tm!) item that I hope to start selling in 2009, assuming that the economy doesn’t collapse to the point where people are hanging garbage over their baby’s cribs because that’s all they can afford.

Anyway, I’m expanding the scope of the baby line because there’s more than just science nerds out there. And because the world would be a better place if people learned certain things from birth.

Now this is just a prototype, made with watercolor paper. The real actual mobile will be made out of… well, I don’t know yet. Maybe watercolor paper with glitter on it.

The fourth flower says “It’s does not equal its. It’s means it is.” then the petal underneath says ITS is the possessive form of it.

I’m trying to decide whether I should just sell these as a DYI mobile, with a PDF that includes the shapes and instructions? Or would people rather buy a finished product? Either way, I’m having way too much fun with this stuff.

(First, we are having so much fun reading the entry’s in this week’s giveaway thingy! Keep them coming, you have all day today to enter. Also Jen wanted to offer everyone here a special discount – if you order anything at livingplaying.com this week enter the code EARLYSHOP08 for 10% off)
***

Our lovebird still has a cold. Please concentrate positive bird-healing thoughts in our direction. Nicolaus loves her more than anything, including his own parents. We were only offended the first few times he told us this, then we got over it and welcomed our tiny future daughter in law into the family. In fact he has told us many times that he and Lovie have serious plans to someday marry, which we assume will be legal by the time either of them are old enough thanks to the gays for all their hard work and the resulting slippery slope.

We rearranged the living room furniture so that she is in the warmest place in the house, bought a special birdcage heating pad thing, as well as $40 worth of antibiotics plus a probiotic and an electrolyte replenisher. We are supposed to keep her as warm as possible, so Kevin put a cookie sheet to help reflect the warmth into her cage and put a thermometer inside her cage. We’ve got it to a steady 80 degrees, and now all we can do it wait and hope it all works. At this point it feels like the same superstitious craziness I went through to get pregnant. Take these pills and eat only vegetables and lean meat? Stand on my head and drink bug-flavored tea leaves from Bolivia? Have naked actual sex with my husband? If there’s a chance it could work, however stupid, I gave it a try.

Which no, we aren’t having sex with the bird. That would be horrifying and wrong and I don’t even think it would help and – good God, what is the matter with you?

Anyway. She has to get better. Nicolaus has been cuddling her and making her notes that say FEEL BEDER LUVE. He’s drawn her a million pictures. And today I gave him a present: an embroidery hoop and some needles and thread. So he stitched a little bird and hung it on her cage, and insisted that it is for her and I shouldn’t make a big deal if she like tries to chew it up or poop on it or anything. Because it’s HERS. Where, see, I think it’s okay to get upset with a friend who poops on a gift that you gave her. But maybe that’s the magic of their relationship.

You are my very favorite internet, and I love you. And it’s Christmas time (right? For people who sell stuff, it’s definitely Christmas time) so! Every Monday for the next few weeks I’m going to offer a gift or a giveaway or something nice. Because of all the love.

This week, I am giving you a break from the constant, unending, oh-my-goodness-seriously-this-again? talk about my own artwork. Because see, I have this friend named Jen who owns a toy store. Can you imagine how cool it is to be her kids? My poor kids have a mom who sells things that have the word NERD written right on them. But Jen sells cool shit like tractors and mermaid costumes and stuff.

Last week I was telling Jen about my love for my favorite internet and about this urge I have to give you things to thank you for being the best internet I’ve ever had. Instead of mocking me with derisive laughter like she normally does, she offered to join in the fun with a gift from her online catalog. Woooo! I let Nicolaus pick the prize, and was surprised at how seriously he took the job of Prize Selector. He was careful to pick something that not just HE would like, but something that “the people’s kids will like”. So here’s what you get:

This colorful marble tower is made from environmentally friendly rubberwood. The marbles swirl around each one before dropping down to the next level… fascinating for little ones and/or adult stoners to watch on their own or great fun to use for marble races with friends and/or enemies and/or third party political opponents. Promotes fine motor skills. And more importantly, has the colors of the spectrum in the correct order.

Here’s how to enter:
1. Go check out livingplaying.com
2. Come back here and leave a comment. Your comment should include:
* Your favoritemost item you see on her site
* Your email address (so I can contact the winner)
* Something to persuade Nicolaus to pick you
3. Pace and anxiously wait until Wednesday, when we will choose and announce a winner

That’s right, Nicolaus the Ridiculous will choose the winner. On Wednesday morning we will go through the entries and read them together. I do not know what criteria he plans to use, but it couldn’t hurt for you to mention how much you like birds. Or Star Trek. Or your kids. Or ancient weapons, computers, ice water, Henry Huggins books, funny jokes, and/or fancy dance moves. Basically you can do anything you’d like to impress him except use curse words or tell him that chocolate milk is something that moms can buy at any grocery store whenever they want.

Bummers:

• This one’s only open to USA people. Sorry about that, but don’t cry! There will be another giveaway on Monday, December 1 where I absolutely promise you will be included.
• Entering multiple times won’t help you any since it’s not a drawing. Buying stuff from livingplaying or tiffanyard.com won’t have any impact on your chances of winning.
• Winners must be legally allowed to do this sort of thing. Losers must be okay with themselves if they lose and not take it to mean that they are losers in life, in general.
• If Nicolaus can’t choose for whatever reason, or narrows it down and then freaks out from the pressure, I will then ask Graham to select a winner. I assure you his selection will be random.
• The prize includes marbles and so is not for children under the age of three. Not that you wouldn’t have figured that out – I swear I’m not calling you stupid or a bad parent. But you know. My uncle’s a lawyer and he reads this sometimes.

We didn’t have the car today. I was glad to be free of the ability to run errands or go anywhere, and today was full of hilarity and drama involving everything you’d expect: stickers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spilled milk, our pet lovebird who has a cold, people falling off of chairs, nudity and general weirdness. We read most of Henry and Beezus, which I have started overanalyzing in the greater context of the development of suburbia and how much of child hood in our culture has been focused on acquiring material things since the 50s when these books were written. It’s always about Henry trying to buy a football or a fish or a cat or a bike or get something – and when he gets what he wanted, the very next chapter there’s something new he wants.

I’m an idiot of course; the books are awesome. So today we read a lot. We also spent a crazy amount of time playing with the dreamy sparkly play dough I bought for the boys last week.

This afternoon we pretended to trade eyes and ears until one of us started crying because it was all a little too real. Then we did school work off and on while listening to Tish Hinajosa, in between dealing with the routine business of food going into people and then later — although not as much later as you might expect — it coming back out.

But that’s not what I want to post about. I want to write about little little kids washing their hands, even though now I feel bad because people are going to google “kids hand washing” looking for guidelines or statistics or something and instead they’ll come here. Hi googlers: sorry.

It’s important for kids to wash their hands. But not only because of all the good germ-killing and all. Washing your hands is part of being a functioning adult, and it’s a fairly complicated skill. Most kids learn what they need to do a long time before they’re physically able to do it all:
1. Reach the sink somehow – locate step stool/adult/stilts
2. Turn on the water – every sink works a little differently, so you’ve got to assess it once you’re up there. Then you need to make sure you don’t use the hot water, because grownups are jerks who make things like this needlessly treacherous.
3. Locate soap. Each type of soap has its own challenges, assuming you can reach it. Bars are cumbersome and slippery, pumps require dexterity, and the public restroom soap dispensers are often empty or out of reach.
4. Rub hands together, getting all of the invisible germs which is impossible to know because they are invisible.
5. Rinse all the soap off, even though soap sticks and wants to stay between your fingers and stuff.
6. Play with the beautiful water until someone notices and makes you stop.
7. Turn the water off.
8. Locate and reach a towel. Is it the kind that’s hard to reach? Is it a soft towel? Put it back on the rack when you’re finished. Is it made of paper? Throw it away afterwards. Or just shake your hands dry, smile at yourself in the mirror, and be done.

It’s a lot of work, and around age three a kid starts to really be able to physically pull it off. They still have a dainty sort of toddler clumsiness, but they are taller now, better able to reach and twist and pull and grab and turn and scrub. And they are so very earnest about doing real things that it all comes together. I don’t know, I’m a sappy dork. I love watching little kids wash their hands. Everything about being a child is right there in washing hands. And everything about being a parent is all right there in seeing them do it.

Monday night:
Nicolaus is suddenly this huge creature with all these limbs. He’s in the middle of our bed, stretched out like a great dane. He snores; they all snore in fact, except for me because I am a dainty and delicate flower.

He couldn’t sleep. He says the folders in his brain all have springs in them and if he tries to slam them all shut they all go pop! So he can’t sleep. I can see where that might keep a person awake. That plus continually talking to yourself and playing games where your hands are these little creatures who have adventures, plus asking random stuff like, “Mama? Do you think that we are literally just floating on lava?” and, “You know something that’s been bothering me? Beverly Cleary acts like five year olds are not smart and are all obnoxious. Everyone in those books acts like five year olds are almost worse than nothing. It really upsets me.”

I think he says this because Ramona is hassling Henry and his father tells him “Come on Henry. Surely you are smarter than a five year old.”

Tuesday night:
I should be asleep. Really, this is ignorant behavior – or, as my grandmother says barbaric. We’d do something ridiculous like jump on the furniture or eat with our hands or talk during the evening news and she’d say “WE ARE NOT BARBARIANS.”

In all caps, just like that.

Although technically, none of us are part of the Roman empire and a lot of my family is Dutch and Irish so actually, we sort of are barbarians.

And hey, did you know that the word barbarians comes from the way foreigners sounded to the Romans? When they made fun of the way other people spoke they’d say “Barbarbarbarbar”

It’s my kid’s fault that I know that. And now that he doesn’t wear costumes and make weapons all day he isn’t interested in history anymore, so now he’d say he doesn’t know what you are talking about.

It’s 1:46 and it’s crazy to be awake. I put the boys to bed early tonight. They were both barbarically cranky from staying up too late and waking up too early, and they were being so rude that I just said enough and put them to bed. If I’d been smart I would have gone right to bed, but sometimes it’s so nice just to be alone with my own thoughts that wasting it on sleep seems outrageous. It’s much easier to steal a nap during the day than it is to steal 30 minutes to sit and think and surf the web.

I spent the time working on ideas for Nicolaus’ school work over the next 3 months or so.
There’s also something missing from our daily school work, and I’m not sure what it is exactly. But I’m working on figuring it out. We are definitely following our nose day by day here, but a little planning and goal-making seems like a good idea. Right now we talk about science all day and he’s very interested in reading and being read to, almost to the exclusion of everything else, but I don’t want to get too off track on everything else. Math in particular. Math isn’t his strong area so he avoids it, but will play little mathy games with me or will take over the roll of the teacher if I role-play the part of a person who needs help.

So I did some research and found a few sites that are full of cool ideas. And if you know of any or have any (inexpensive) suggestions on guiding a verbal-visual type of kid through math problems, lay it on me.

Wednesday night
This week, Graham has thrown fits because:
It wasn’t time for his gymnastics class
We were going to his gymnastics class instead of a certain restaurant that isn’t even his favorite
I didn’t let him go tell a man that he met a cockatoo that could talk
I stole his ears and gave them to Kevin
I didn’t know he wanted me to zip up his jacket until we were almost inside, and I am an unreasonable whore who wouldn’t stop in the freezing rain to zip up a jacket when seriously – the door was three steps away
There are two blocks that almost fit perfectly into the back of his toy metal truck, but they weren’t made for it so when you put them in, there is an unsightly gap.
It was bed time
It was time to go to the bathroom
It was story time
It was not story time
He can’t make a perfect star out of playdoh
Or a square
It wasn’t bath time
It was bath time
Of what Arby’s did to his sandwich.
I didn’t hear him say he wanted water.
I didn’t know he was being a Vogon.

Crap, I just remembered I forgot to put the clothes in the dryer and I’m too tired to get up and do that. Now tomorrow they’re going to smell all wrong.