They Say It's Your Birthday

Happy birthday to my mom! She's pretty fantastic and I'm excited to see her this weekend. 

Keep On Rockin' In The Free World

I heard a song on the radio in the car this morning and it made me think about some of the music I used to listen to in high school and college. Like a lot of people, music was very important to me back in the day. I would regularly sit down and listen to an entire cd while reading the lyrics to each song in the liner notes. I also loved making mix tapes. I don't spend near the amount of time listening to music these days. Maybe I should work on that a little. Here are the 3 musicians that influenced me the most back in the day. Leave a comment and tell me your musical influences past or present. 

1. Tori Amos - She's pretty much amazing - the perfect mix of provocative lyrics and beautiful melodies. Sometimes I have dreams that Tori and I are buddies. 

2. Neil Young - I think Neil is an acquired taste. What I like about him is that he embodies the phrase "Keep it simple, Stupid." His lyrics are simple. His melodies are simple. But together, they make up some of the most powerful and beautiful songs that I know of. 

3. Stevie Nicks - I learned guitar so that I could play and sing Landslide. End of story. 

BFF

Harper got a Glow worm last night.

The two of them have been inseparable ever since.

They ate together, they slept together, they watched morning cartoons together...

I knew Harper was awake this morning because I heard the music that the Glow worm plays when you squeeze it's belly.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

To Spank Or Not to Spank?

I might be opening up a can of worms today, but I'm going to do it anyways. My question for you is "Is it ok to spank your kids?" When I was little, my parents spanked me as a form of discipline. I can remember 2 distinct times that I was spanked. It hurt my feelings way more than it hurt me physically. However, it set the precedent that if I did something wrong, spanking was a possible consequence. I have to say that it was an effective discipline technique. All my mom or dad had to do was start counting and I knew that I better stop what ever I was doing or else I might get spanked. On a side note, I never knew what number my parents were counting to (10, 5, 3?) so by the time they got to 2, I made sure I was done being bad. Pretty smart on their part. Because of my experience growing up, I was pretty convinced that it is ok to spank your child.

However, recently I have begun to rethink my position. Harper has started to smack my hand if she doesn't like what I am asking her to do. For instance, if I take the TV remote away from her, she throws a mini temper tantrum and will smack my hand. When she does this, I immediately tell her "No hitting." It has occurred to me that telling her that it is inappropriate to hit is in direct contradiction to the idea of me spanking her (I haven't actually had to spank her yet, just thinking ahead for when the situation presents itself).

What do you guys think? If done in a loving and controlled way, is it ok to occasionally spank?

Bad Guys Beware

So, many of you already know this, but some of you may be wondering why my handsome husband shaved off all of his nice hair. Well, the reason is that he was accepted into the police academy. He's in his his 3rd week (of 22 weeks) of hell academy, and he's doing great. He admits that it's challenging, but he is excelling at the physical training and thinks that he just aced his first written exam. I knew that being a police officer was a good fit for Rob. I'm just really happy that he is excited to go to work every day. Now if I could only get used to his shaved head, we'd be in good shape. 

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Harper went to her first official baseball game on Saturday. The Nashville Sounds are the minor league team affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers. The game was great. The Sounds won in the 10th inning. Harper loved it. Every time the crowd cheered, she thought they were cheering for her. We had great seats - so good, in fact, that James Denton from Desperate Housewives was sitting right in front of us (although I no idea who he was until someone pointed him out to me). Harper was way more interested in the mascot, Ozzie,  than she was in trying to spot celebrities. She was also very interested in the ballpark food - even getting her first (of many to come) taste of a Coke Icee. She also watched her first fireworks display and loved it - not a single flinch. Outings like this remind me that we were blessed with a pretty good kid. It was a long night, but she was really good the whole time. We will definitely have to go to another game soon.

Someone's getting sleepy...

Sound asleep only to wake up clapping when the Sounds made a great catch. I think she's going to be an avid baseball fan. 

Kiwi

I saw this video the other day on one of the blogs I read and I keep thinking about it. I had to watch it a couple times before I understood what was going on. Here is a link to the original post. The author, Steve, has a great commentary on the video that I think is really helpful. Enjoy.