In the spirit of Hrokay‘s comment about spider legs and Segway mounted guns, here is a list of 7 military weapons you won’t believe they actually built. I think #1 is especially relevant: if you can mount a cannon on a scooter, you can mount a gun on a Segway! Of course this also has a reference to the Big Dog robot from Boston Dynamics (you may remember him for being especially creepy).
When it rains, it pours…Zombies
For some reason things come together in a perfect storm such that I get a bunch of links pertaining to the same subject all at the same time. And in this case, the subject is zombies.
First things first, I we have a possible zombie attack on our hands, and thanks to technology we have been given advance warning. In this case it is the twitter account of the Boston PD:
INJURED OFFICER: Officer from district 4 transported to Beth Israel Hospital, human bite to arm, suspect in custody.
Twitter user willcady used the opportunity to ask the police a burning question:
@Boston_Police if that was a zombie bite, would you tell us?
The police, setting the gold standard for government transparency, answered him:
@willcady Yes, absolutely
Suuuuuure they will. Be aware! Link courtesy NBH.
Second off was the zombie movie news that was all over the place last week. Apparently someone threw together a zombie movie for $70 and it is getting rave reviews. Now, to be fair, the $70 thing is kind of a white lie. Sure, maybe he only spent $70, but (for example) they had special effects leftovers from the set of Wolverine donated. It’s not like I could go out and make the same movie with only $70. Nevertheless, it was a very, very cheap movie. What did they spend the $70 on?
“We bought a crowbar and a couple of tapes, and I think we got some tea and coffee as well — not the expensive stuff either, the very basic kind,” Price told CNN. “Just to keep the zombies happy.”
Always a good idea.
Finally, I will leave you with two zombie related games.
The first, Plants vs. Zombies, combines two of my favorite things, zombies and tower defense. I saw a review of this pop up in several places, so it seems to be somewhat popular. The only problem is, it costs $20. But they do have a free trial you can download and install that lets you play the regular game for 60 minutes. And it was a lot of fun! I was extremely disappointed when my trial was up.
If you don’t feel like actually playing the game, you can watch a preview instead:
Finally, I leave you with a free game, Zombie Hooker Nightmare. The title should give you a clue about this one. Basically, you play a ::ahem:: lady of the night who is just trying to make an honest living if only these dang zombies would leave her alone! I find it kind of ironic, since she doesn’t seem to have a lot of brains to tempt them.
Link courtesy Tony Vegas.
Bacon Vodka
Have you ever thought to yourself, self, eating bacon is good, but I’m just not getting that bacon into my gullet fast enough! And also if I could get drunk while I’m doing it too. Enter Bacon Vodka which is apparently floating around Washington state.
For my part, I’m a little skeptical, but I would absolutely give it a shot. Just because something is good and bacon is good, combining them doesn’t automatically mean they are good. Let’s just say I’ve been burned before: after the picklerita, my hopes aren’t super high.
She has the concepts down, the rest is details
Evie has been using numbers and concepts lately that are sort of surprising. She doesn’t use them correctly, but she uses them and that’s something:
“And what did you buy at the rummage sale?”
“Uncle Nathan!”
“Oh yeah, how much did he cost?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“Did you have a good night’s sleep last night?”
“Yes, thirty hours.”
“How old are you?”
“Two months of five. And E starts with Evie.”
“What’s the opposite of up?”
“Down!”
“What’s the opposite of left?”
“Right!”
“What’s the opposite of sleeping?”
“…”
“If you’re not asleep, you’re a…”
“An Owl!”
She also said probably the most heartbreaking thing ever:
“Mommy loves me and Nala loves me.”
“And Daddy loves you.”
“No, Mommy is the only one. Daddy works.”
Just to show how things change as you get used to parenting, I forgot to mention on the blog that Evie fell down the stairs at my grandma’s last weekend! When she was little and she fell over, it was a big, big deal. Now she falls down like 10 stairs and I don’t even remember about it! She was fine, she just had some marks from where her sun glasses smashed into her face. But we knew she was okay because when Sara took off Evie’s glasses to see if she was alright, Evie was more upset about not wearing her glasses than she was about the fall. So I had forgotten all about this until Evie reminded me that it was “scary” to fall down the stairs. I asked her what else she was afraid of and she said, “Crocodiles.”
In totally other news, we got some beautiful lettuce from the garden, and it was delicious!
Potty Training
Let me just start by saying WHAT a weekend. I had no idea that potty training was so exhausting!
A lot of parenting books talk about potty training when your child is “ready”. These days a lot of kids don’t potty train until they are 3 or even 4. Obviously every kid is different, but it was very clear that Evie was ready, even though she’s not even 2. We bought a potty ages ago and encouraged her to sit on it whenever she wanted to. She went a few times by coincidence right away, but it had been a long time since she has done anything. Mostly she just sits and has us read books to her. However, she recently went on the potty intentionally, so that was one indicator. She also began telling us when she went or was going poo poo in her diaper so we could change her right away, which was another pretty clear sign. So, we decided not to make any plans for the long weekend and just see how it went.
We approached it the same way we’ve approached every aspect of parenting; like hardcore researchers. Sara read everything she could find on the subject including webpages, discussion groups, books from the library, etc. She can tell you the pros and cons of any potty video, type of potty seat, books about potties as well as the various methods of potty training. After reading extensively, she gives me maybe the top 5 or 6 books and webpages and then I read those. This system works well for us because I think there are all kinds of viewpoints on this stuff, some of them conflicting, and I think you need to have all the information available so that you can pick and choose what makes sense for you and your family. If you just pick one method and stick with it, you never know A) if there is a better system out there and B) if it is going poorly, you have nothing else to try, no plan B.
So, Sara was home with her on Thursday, but the plan was that I would start it on Friday so that we would have one of us (me) that was with her continuously the entire time, Friday through Monday, for consistency’s sake. So we began talking it up to her, saying things like, “On Friday, we won’t be wearing diapers anymore!” and “On Friday you can wear your new Elmo underwear!” etc. However, all the talk must have sunk in because on Thursday evening she demanded to go on the potty. I guess we were right about her being ready, because she had 4 pee pees and 1 poo poo vs. only 1 accident! Most of our success was due to Evie’s instant love of M&Ms which were reward enough to make her do *anything* including pee pee on command. When we went to bed on Thursday we were really riding high! We never expected so much success and we just couldn’t believe how easy everything had gone.
Never count your chickens before they’re hatched.
On Friday, we began in earnest the plan we had worked out. Evie would wear her “big girl” Elmo underwear all day except for her nap. In addition to lots of praise and excitement, Evie could pick prize from the prize bucket every time she went on the potty. Concurrently, we would set a timer for 15 minutes. If she was dry when the timer went off, she could have an M&M. If not, no biggie, but she would have to wait another 15 minutes for an M&M. I thought this last piece was especially brilliant because, yes you want her to go in the potty, but you also want to teach her about keeping herself dry and holding it in.
The plan looked great on paper, but it quickly went south. She wouldn’t sit on the potty for anything. You read these different methods for potty training and people say, “Oh I sit her on the potty every 20 minutes until he goes.” Sounds good, but this is not an infant, if she doesn’t want to sit somewhere she ain’t sitting. It’s like trying to hold a weasel in a sweater. And because she wouldn’t sit, the whole reward system we worked out was nullified. I wasn’t going to force her down on the potty with her screaming bloody murder because I didn’t want to give her toilet issues or something. (Side note, do you think there was ever a point in history when it was common for people to yell, “Bloody murder! Bloody murder!” The phrase has to come from somewhere.) The 15 minute timer went okay except that she wanted those M&Ms so bad that she would demand them before the timer was up. When I didn’t give them to her, she would have an absolute tantrum. There was also an incident where the timer went off and when I got the bowl down she snatched two M&Ms and stuffed them in her mouth instead of just one. I made her give one back and that was the fit to end all fits. So, by the time Sara got home we had many screaming fits and about 6 consecutive accidents on the floor, vs. zero pee pees in the potty. I was not only worn out from fighting with her all day (and the fact that she gets up at 5:30 every morning) but also, it takes a surprising amount of energy to shadow her all day long and watch for signs that she has to go. Evie was worn out too. The only part that could be considered a success about the whole day is that none of her accidents were on the carpet!
Now the interesting thing is that, once Sara came home Evie had a couple of successful potty runs. This was quite perplexing, not to mention deeply depressing in terms of my parenting skills! We’ve rehashed the disastrous Friday a couple of times and we have a number of theories. First off, there are a lot of things she will do for Sara that she just won’t do for me. She is a definite mama’s girl. Second off, it could be that Friday was just an adjustment period and it had to happen like that no matter who was home with her; it just happened to be me. Third, many of the things we tried that day we ended up ditching going forward, such as the timer and M&Ms. It just seemed to cause trouble and not really gain us much. So it could be that the techniques we tried on Friday didn’t work well for her. In other words, it was a learning day for us as much as for her. Or Fourth, maybe I just wasn’t very good at it. Who knows.
Not that it mattered very much, because on Saturday we turned it all around. I’d say she went in the potty about 30 times vs. about 3 accidents (really only 1 that went on the floor). Maybe it was because Sara was there, maybe it wasn’t, but I was just so happy that it didn’t turn out like Friday that I didn’t care! It was a huge rousing success, even if she was going the teeny tiniest amounts about every 45 minutes.
Like I said, we dropped the timer and M&Ms and we focused more on, “What is your body telling you?” We still had to follow her around and watch her like a hawk and throw in a couple of, “are you still dry?”‘s now and again. Also, we sort of let her take the lead on what kind of reward she wanted the next time she went. Sometimes it was an M&M, sometimes it was a sticker, sometimes it was to water the plants. Whatever works! It seemed more motivating to her when she got to pick.
Sunday went even better. We still had a lot of success, but she was going every couple of hours instead of every 45 minutes. We even made a couple of ventures out of the house, to the garden and the close park, and she was okay. Sara wanted to try her nap without a diaper, but that didn’t go so well, so we’ll stick with the diaper for her nap for a while. I think she went something like 26 hours in between accidents.
Today we ventured even further out of the house. She had an accident at the garden, but she went 3 times on the regular potty at the museum! We were pretty worried about that, but it actually worked out okay. She was really excited about it and is looking forward to more potties to try.
::Whew:: This is a long post, but believe me, the actual experience seemed longer still. I have to say though, it went relatively smoothly and it could have been a lot, lot worse. I’m knocking on wood, but I think at this point we have this one in the bag!
Shane Halbach 