Monday, February 28, 2011

Somebody Sell Me a Van

General Motors has abandoned me. Not only have they discontinued my beloved Pontiacs but now they refuse to manufacture any type of mini-van. And don't talk to me about seven passenger vehicles. I want SLIDING DOORS.

So, seriously, I need somebody to sell me a van. I have only purchased three brand new vehicles in my adult life--all from the same rural GM dealer.

Here's what my car-buying experience has been like to date:
- We arrive at the dealership at speak directly to the guy whose last name is on the big sign out front.
- He asks us what we want and shows us a car in the lot. Then he goes back inside to do paperwork, clearly not concerned about whether we buy anything this trip or not.
- When we ask, he tells us truthfully about whether we need certain options.
- He gives us a decent price on our trade-in.

Starting over with a new car-selling place is not a fun proposition. Frankly, we don't trust car-selling guys to be honest with us and not rush us into a decision. Husband and I have resorted to stopping by dealerships at night when they are closed to take an uninterrupted look at the latest mini-van options.

Car companies, are you listening to me? My biggest problem is not price, it's service.

Can anyone, perhaps someone representing one of those "foreign" companies, help me? I want a van with two sliding doors and a push-button rear hatch. I need an entertainment system for the kids and a GPS system for me. Oh, and leather buckets because I loves, loves heated seats. And yeah, I need an engine that doesn't run on a rubber band, because I have my mother's lead foot.

I need somebody to shake my hand, look me in the eye (because I bring home the bacon, remember) and tell me honestly why I need to consider their van.

I'm not looking for a special deal or to get invited to a mommy blogger event, I just want to know where I can get the level of service I've become accustomed too.

So who out there has a recommendation on a mini-van--and a great person to buy one from?

Sunday, February 20, 2011

My Last Days of Baby Expertise

Kindergarten registration is coming soon. And I'm dreading it. Not only because it means that my last baby will be a school kid, but because Husband must be getting pretty old to have three kids in school (I haven't aged at all, of course.).

Actually, I'm dreading kindergarten registration because at our school it involves more paperwork to place a child in kindergarten than it did to birth them in the first place. I had an organ removed and there was less paperwork than signing my child up for public school. I had to write my phone number 10 times when I registered Justin for kindergarten (I counted).

So with the last days of pre-school motherhood dwindling, I decided it was time to share my parting thoughts on babies, potty training and tantrum handling. Soon I'll be like those poor women who used to approach me in my younger days of motherhood with awww how old is your baby? Mine are 12 and 15 now, sniff. What I didn't realize until recently is that they went home and did the No More Diapers happy dance.

While I'm still a mother of a pre-schooler and allowed to have opinions, here is my advice:

Babies
  • Breastfeed. I know some people who insist that their children get the best of everything but they denied them the best nutrition during their most critical months of life. (Even formula companies acknowledge this.) Plus, free breastmilk is always the right amount and the right temperature--and boobs wash up easily in the shower. Unfortunately, there will always be people like Anita Kelley-Powers
of Fairborn who wrote into the Dayton Daily News this week to compare public breastfeeding to public urination. To Anita Kelley-Powers I say, no one wants to watch you chew with your mouth open but YOU get to eat in public.

  • Remember that expert advice about babies is often based on risk factors and not if you screw this up your baby will die immediately. Since this blog has become all about confessions lately I have another one: I let my babies sleep on their stomachs. And according to a New York Times article I just Googled titled aptly, A Quiet Revolt Against the Rules on SIDS, I'm not alone.

    The dirty little truth is that babies prefer to sleep on their stomachs. I was astonished to visit a friend and discover her back-sleeping baby couldn't stand to be on her stomach for even a moment. How was she going to learn to crawl or take cute little hand-on-chin photos at the mall, I wondered.

    Oh, and the freaky flat heads. From the NYT: Not only do many infants sleep better on their stomachs, they are much less likely to develop plagiocephaly, a deformation of the skull that leaves infants with flattened heads. Dr. Jeffrey H. Wisoff, an associate professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at New York University Medical Center, said that since the Back to Sleep campaign began, the head condition had "become an epidemic."

Toddlers
  • Potty training sucks. My grandmother is over 80 and her youngest baby is nearly 60 but mention potty training and she gets a look like she just hung up her last cloth diaper yesterday--the pain is still fresh. To me, the most frustrating thing about potty training is you have no idea what actually works. Is it the sticker chart, the begging,  the songs, the tears of frustration, the potty Elmo (it was a gift so we thought, what the heck), the brand new Bob the Builder underpants? It just seems like one day they wake up (dry) and decide This is the Day I Shall Stop Soiling Myself. Part of me always wondered if that day was going to come whether I did anything or not to encourage it.

    Remember that pull-ups are both the friend and the enemy of potty training. They help prevent messes but really become the enabler of lazy toddlers who don't want to bother with the potty and their fathers who don't either.

  • Tantrums are preventable. Kids are crazy smart and believe that any publicity (attention) is good publicity.If tantrum becomes an effective way to get what they want, then I don't blame them for using it over and over as a tactic. Give them a quiet place to finish their flailing where no one is paying any attention to them. Act like you never even heard/don't remember their demands. I promise they will try something else.
The best child rearing advice I ever received was never say never. Don't look at someone else with their kid or read a book and declare I will NEVER do that with my kid. Because you will.

I'll conclude my final advice on pre-schoolers with another quote from the New York Times:
The role of the professional is to say 'these are the recommendations and this is why.' The role of the parent is to think critically and apply those recommendations in a way that makes their life manageable.

I'm off to do my No More Diapers happy dance now.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Dahling... We Simply Must Go to the Theatre This Evening

I'm not sure what confession I can make on this blog that's worse than not liking cats but today I have to confess that this red-blooded rural American will NOT be watching Super Bowl XLV. I will be attending the theatre instead.

I'm not joking.

A few months ago my good friend and fellow blogger had a great idea to subscribe to the Broadway Series here in Dayton. How could I resist an opportunity to spend time with fun, smart women who wanted to eat at restaurants that don't serve chicken nuggets, followed by a  Sponge Bob-free evening of entertainment. We bought tickets at the bottom rung of the season ticket ladder--one row in front of the high school field trip seats. So far we've seen the Blue Man Group and a comedian who talks about the Wonder Bread Years. It didn't even dawn on me that tonight's performance of 9 to 5 would conflict with the year's best night of advertising.

Like millions of other Americans, my interest in the Super Bowl is largely tolerating an NFL game while waiting for the  most expensive TV commercials of the season to air. And consuming large quantities of dip.

I imagine the Schuster Center tonight will be full of stuffy, artsy women, many without their men, who wouldn't know a tailback from a tight end. Maybe there will be some empty seats. And there will probably be some men there who dare not disobey the wife this close to Valentine's Day.

I'll be there with a group of Moms who may like football and definitely like commercials and dip, but value their time together even more. And also, all the good commercials will be on YouTube by the time we get home. I'm thinking about smuggling in some dip.

Appointment Pooping

  NOTE: If you do not want to read about my healthy bowel movement, well too late you just did. I recently became you-better-get-a-colonosco...