There are 3 ways everyone will probably read this post: 1) Jeanine has gone insane, 2) Jeanine is already insane, and this is her way of dealing with it, and 3) Wow! That's cool! Where can I do that?

A while back, Beau found Trixie Tracker. I believe the exact text he IM'ed me was "Man, you are going to love this." I was fascinated by it and got even more excited when they were willing to let a group beta test the program for public release. I started off doing it when Silas was 3 days old, but things were a little crazy with Silas, as you know, and I bowed out for a while. Now I'm back doing it, and I love being able to keep track of the boys like this. It's a nice and easy way to collect data and logically figure out sleep trends, number of diapers (and the general decline!), etc. Basically, it's all the stuff I tried to collect but never really had the time for. Anyone who was over at my house in the past 9 months probably saw the charts/graphs on my counter that I had been filling out throughout the day to try to figure out how to get Silas to sleep better. This is so, so much easier.

And bonus for friends and family: you can figure out how good of a day I'm having based on when Silas got up in the morning! ;) Beau loves checking in online from work during the day to see how things are shaping up at home. I've gotten more than one call that starts with, "So...both boys are down, huh?" Maybe this is just my way of bringing the enjoyment of my industrial engineering background home, but this is FUN stuff. Enjoy!

Posted by Jeanine at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but it seemed to overlap a bit with the Quote of the Moment. But since this requires the most explanation of any QotM ever, it gets its own post. Here it is...

One night at dinner, we were having a perfectly lovely time when Luke points his fork at Beau and says "You die." I whip my head around so fast I was practically seeing stars. "Where did you hear that? Who said that? Wait, what did you say?" "You die." Luke's smile is more confused now since he realizes that I'm not the least bit happy. It's hard to get crucial information out of a 2-year-old, and he degenerates into confused silence.

While tucking him into bed a week later, it comes up again. "You die" he points at me, laughing. I try a different approach this time. I smile back at him and say, "Where did you hear that, sweetie?" "I don't know." "You day? You jay?" "No, Mommy, you die." I try all sorts of ways to say it , and finally I ask the question that elicits a seemingly helpful response. "Do you know what that means?" He smiles and perks up: "Means 'hello' in Spanish!" I laughed, a little relieved that he at least had no ill intent, but the seed had already been planted. Sesame Street was teaching my child.

I mentally went through all the Sesame Streets and Wiggleses he'd watched in the past and vowed that he wouldn't watch another one until I had watched every second of it myself to see where he got this horrible phrase from. I calculated up all the time I would be spending watching kids shows over the next 16 years and wondered if there was a site somewhere that collected this kind of information for me.

Some days went by before it happened a third time. Beau had just gotten home from work, and as soon as he walks through the door, Luke says it: "You die." And finally, something clicks in our heads. "Wait, Luke are you saying 'you're daddy'?" "Yes!" He says it so fast that all you hear are the first and last parts of the words. "You d-y". That's why he thought it was so funny when he said it to me. (Though now we hear "You m-y" every once in a while, too.) Ahhhhhh....the relief. Thank goodness Sesame Street is back in our good graces. I don't know how Luke would fare without Super Grover.

Posted by Jeanine at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)