She's A Rainbow

Harper and I rocked out to this song last night. It's my favorite Rolling Stones song. I think it's her favorite too (especially the Oh, la, la part).



Also, on a somewhat related note... Have you seen the newly released pictures from Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland? Totally awesome. Can't wait to see it.

Earning Her Keep

Rob has to shine his police boots every day for the academy. Harper likes to help.

Work In Progress

I think I got negative parenting points over the last 24 hours:

 

   1. Last night I took Harper with me to the gym (she likes to play in the child care area with the other kids). While she was there, she totally had a poopy diaper blow-out. The child care workers must not have noticed it and I didn't notice it until I was putting her in the car. Totally gross. I put her changing pad thing down in her car seat so that she could sit on it on the way home (yes, I made my child sit in a very poopy diaper until we got home - she didn't seem to mind). I called Rob to get a bath ready for her, because she was going to need it. 

  

   2. After her bath, I let Harper stand on the bath mat while I dried her off. She likes to stomp her feet and dance on it. She took two steps off of the mat and totally wiped out on the tile floor. All while I was standing right there. Nice job, mom. 

  

   3. While driving to baby school this morning, Harper threw up in the car. She's not sick, just puked up the milk that she drank for breakfast. We were almost half way to baby school, so I decided not to turn around and go home to clean her up. I did pull over onto a side street to do a quick clean-up job (which wasn't very effective). When we got to baby school, I took her inside hoping that a little water and some paper towels would salvage her cute outfit. It was not to be. She smelled like sour milk. I took off her cute (but smelly) dress and changed her into her mismatched emergency outfit that we keep at baby school. 

Oh, well. No permanent damage done. I will try to do better tomorrow. 

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?