New Website

Well, folks, the time has come...
I'm leaving behind my little blog for an all-new, expanded website!

Drum roll please...

www.wealthyinthecommonwealth.com

Thanks for reading over the past 2 years.
I hope you'll follow me on the new website, too.

Enjoy!

Baby Jacuzzi

We visited family and friends in Virginia a few weeks ago. To lighten our load, we decided to leave Josie's baby tub at home, and just bathed her in the kitchen sink at my parents' house.

She loved it! She propped herself up with her arms resting on the back of the tub, as if she was relaxing in a hot tub on vacation. Grandma gave her some cool bath toys, too - farm animals that squirt water!


Not only did she love it so much, but it was so easy that we don't use the baby tub at home anymore and give her baths in our own kitchen sink. It gets to be a really authentic hot tub experience when we let some of the water out and bubbles rush past her little hiney.

Before Sherlock Holmes...

...Wilkie Collins wrote The Moonstone, which is considered to be the first detective novel written in English. I'm listening to the audiobook, and while it had a slow start, the story's pace has picked up a bit. I have grown to like the first narrator Gabriel Betteredge, too. Other narrators will follow, so I've heard. I'm a member of a "Classics" book club that chose The Moonstone as one of their book picks, along with other notable literary classics. Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, for instance, is one of my favorites on our list because it won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921 - the first time the prize was awarded to a woman. I liked The House of Mirth by Wharton, so I'm looking forward to another of her books. Now... back to The Moonstone!

A Hobby

As if I didn't have enough to do, I've been looking for a hobby. Something to do for fun. So as an early birthday present, Shelby got me a really nice camera! And I'm instantly a photographer. Hobby? Check!

So far...

Josie at 7 months

Determined

Cute as can be

I think I've found the perfect subject to photograph!

Under the Dome

So awhile back, I posted a reading recommendation on Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I made it through 6 of 7 books, and sort of lost interest as I started the 7th. I have every intention of finishing the series, but have had some other books closer to the top of my list to read. One that snuck (why is "snuck" not recognized by spell checker?? Turns out that "sneaked" is the preferred past tense of sneak... Who knew!) to the top of the list was Stephen King's newest novel, Under the Dome. I'm listening to it on audiobook, all 35 hours of it. So far it is reeeeeeally good. I love how the creepiest parts tend to jump out of nowhere to doubly scare you - it's scary enough to read a scary part, but to have the scary parts sneak up on you - yikes!

Parts of the Dark Tower series really seemed to draggg on and on. Not so with Under the Dome - I'm half way through and feel like I just started reading yesterday. It really clips along at a quick pace. Here's hoping the second half is as good as the first!

Recall on... everything!

I received an email this afternoon from Parenting Magazine with news that a massive recall has been issued on ALL roman shades and roll-up window shades. Basically any window treatment that has a cord poses a potentially serious threat. Parenting lays it out for us - by the numbers:

"...millions of kids have grown up safely in homes with these kinds of shades (WCSC reports that roughly five million Roman shades and three million roll-up blinds are sold each year)..."

That's a lot of shades. Moreover, that's a lot of naked windows tonight! Really, how many parents threw privacy to the wind and took down their blinds as soon as they heard about the recall? At first I thought it was all a bit extreme -- but as I sit here at the computer, the only visible window has a loose cord (aka noose) at Josie's current level. So yes, I will agree that these blinds could potentially cause harm, and I will probably tighten this particular loose cord in our house.

But on the lighter side of things, let's examine other household items that might be the next recall:

Door Knobs

Imagine a 7 year old running through the doorway and clipping his head on one of these. You could poke your eye out!

Ovens
These things can get pretty hot...

Stairs

Treacherous!!!

Toilets

What? People are asked all the time if they've fallen in! It could happen.

In other words - be careful around the house!

Caffeine free

About 4 years ago, I decided to give up soda. I was soda free for nearly 3 years, but eventually pregnancy hormones/cravings/craziness won out and I drank a lot of Sprite for about 9 months. Once the artificial sweetener was no longer a concern for my developing fetus (and I made a really good, successful effort to lose those pregnancy pounds), I switched to diet, caffeine-free sodas (sticking with the caffeine-free due to breastfeeding). They just taste too good to give up completely!! I think I am addicted - but to what exactly?

First of all, I think there must be caffeine in there somewhere. Why else am I WIDE AWAKE at 11:52pm after working allllllll daaaaaaaaaay? No kidding, I just stopped working about 30 minutes ago after getting up at 7am to start working this morning. Where do the hours go - and why aren't there more of them?

So is the artificial sweetener addicting? Or maybe I love soda so much because I don't eat any other sweets, ever. Caffeine-free Diet Coke - my one vice. (Sorry, Pepsi, your competing product goes flat way too quickly...)

Maybe it's all that corn I'm addicted to. Everything is made of corn these days, don't you know? Even cucumbers are glazed with corn to give them a shine at the grocery store. Read The Omnivore's Dilemma if you don't believe me.

I think what it comes down to is that I'm addicted to staying up late and doing too much - or too little - all day long. Go go go gogogogogogogogo. CRASH! Then Go go go go gogogogogogo again. Funny how talking about it doesn't even make me tired.

Next question - what would I do with COFFEE?