by Jen Logan | Jan 12, 2018 | Life, Parenting, Screwing Things Up
Riley explaining technology to Grandpa!
Like all good parents we have password protected our devices, including my daughter’s Kindle, to prevent her from online shopping and/or purchasing apps or games by herself. You wouldn’t think a six year old is able to online shop, but she sees a lot of it going on in our house as well as her grandparents’ house. Quality grandma/granddaughter time consists of searching different legos or barbies and scrolling through pages and pages of product photos. Mini-me can even find where the toy is sold for the best price. I don’t give my Mom a hard time about this because I know that intelligent shopping is in fact a skill that will benefit my child later in life, namely when she needs a pair of knee high black boots that are appropriate for both the office and a night out. It is a skill I acquired from my Mom before there was even such a thing as online shopping!
The password also keeps her from being able to pick up her device and use it without our permission. I am awoken on most weekend mornings by a tiny finger poking me in the middle of the forehead. When I decline to jump out of bed within ten seconds a pink Kindle is shoved in my face with a shake. I type in the four digit password and am left to sleep for an additional half hour.
My husband and I both have the code and we have also shared it with my parents so they can unlock her device when she is with them. This was clearly a mistake. My Mom remembers the code and uses it when needed. My Dad can’t remember the code from one day to the next so he has to consult my Mom for the code every single time my kid asks him for help logging on.
Yesterday, I heard my husband ask my daughter how she was able to get on his phone. She had picked it up on her own and was watching videos. His code is the same as the one we use for her devices. She proceeded to tell us that Grandpa told her the password. I was unclear as to how this would happen since she shakes her Kindle in my face with her password demands when she wants to use it to play a game. I was under the impression that my parents got the same treatment. I was immediately concerned because I thought she had figured out a way to outsmart the Old Man and weasel the password from him. This is not at all what transpired.
My Dad had taken my daughter out to their lake house to do some work. When they were driving home she asked if she could play on her Kindle. I can only assume that she was being persistent or she had worked really hard because he allowed it (which is unusual in the car). Since the four digit password is something that just will not stick in his head, he called my Mom to give it to him yet again. As she recited the digits over the phone he repeated it to my daughter and let her type it in herself. He didn’t pull over and stop the car. Part of me just shakes my head at this but the other part of me completely understands after having witnessed my Dad entering the password on his own. It is similar to watching a monkey use tools, all of the anticipation of wondering if he can do it and all of a sudden he is in!
I would explain to him why this was a bad idea, but he is so bad with technology that he has to have my daughter operate the television when he babysits. I get the impression he may not have been able to enter the password on his own even if he hadn’t been driving at the time. Seriously, he signs his text messages “Dad” on the far right of the text. So I am not surprised when he does something like this. We laugh and change the password. It could be worse, and knowing my Dad, it could really be a lot worse!
by Jen Logan | Jan 7, 2018 | Life, Parenting
“I am on a curiosity voyage and I need my paddles to travel.”
Kids are kind of creepy. Once they finally stop spewing bodily fluids out of every orifice after those toddler years, they start spitting out teeth like an MMA fighter. My six year old lost her top two teeth this week after horrifying her grandparents for the week prior when both teeth were flopping around like a pair of swinging doors. This amused me, mostly because my dad is very rarely squeamish and he was just that every time his favorite little body came running at him with her tongue pushing her teeth in and out of her mouth.
Somehow I remember losing all of my teeth within a short time period. Maybe it was because I was closer to puberty than kindergarten when I finally lost my baby teeth. My daughter lost her bottom two middle teeth a year ago and hasn’t had another wiggler since then. When one of her top teeth started wiggling a few weeks ago I was a little surprised that the other didn’t join in the fun. It took lefty a full week to get on board the getaway train.
The first of the teeth to go was pulled out by a piece of ciabatta when we decided to get a takeout from a local Italian restaurant. She immediately spit out the bread that was in her mouth and shoved it into my hand. So much for the end of wet slimy things in my hands from my kid’s body. We spent the next ten minutes sifting through the pasta, chicken and bread on her plate and even the salad that was a foot away when the tooth came out. We never found the tooth and determined that she must have swallowed it. She immediately asked how we would get it back. It was somehow confusing to her when I said we wouldn’t get it back. She was incredulous that I would not be spending the next morning sifting through her poop for the tooth. I think she may have actually been testing me a few hours later when she stood up in the middle of our Friday night movie and said “I have to poop!” Instead of jumping right up I replied “I hope that tooth doesn’t bite you on the way out.” The poor kid actually looked frightened for a minute. I told her I was just teasing her and she relaxed until her Dad jumped on board and started making jokes. Sometimes he is a little late to the party. After we promised repeatedly that nothing was going to bite her little butt she finally went into the bathroom but not before asking one last time if I was sure I didn’t want to look for her tooth. The kid is nothing if not persistent.
Mini Nanny McPhee!
The stubborn tooth stuck around for a few more days. We spent New Years Eve making jokes about our little Nanny McPhee while I tried to get my hands on the wobbly tooth and give it a good yank. By New Years Day night I was getting worried that she would be swallowing yet another tooth, this time while she slept. As we were getting ready for bed she was playing with the tiny tooth now hanging by a string constantly. I couldn’t clear my head during our nightly meditation, instead I was plotting how to sneak back into her room and yank the tooth without waking her up. Luckily I didn’t have to plan for long. Right before I left her room to let her doze off she jumped up and spit her tooth out into her hand. She said she had sucked on it until it finally came out. The fact that there was no blood at all was proof enough that it was long overdue to make it’s escape.
After getting her tooth ready for the tooth fairy she climbed back into bed and asked if the tooth fairy would know about the other tooth that was swallowed. She wanted to make sure she was going to get paid for both, even if she wasn’t going to turn over both teeth. This kid is going to be a union steward or attorney when she grows up! She went on to say “that tooth can’t defeat all that water and juice and blood in my stomach!” as if to reassure herself that the tooth would not in fact bite her. Or maybe she was emphasizing that her stomach was to blame and not her negligence, just in case the tooth fairy had any doubt. She finished with “It’s like a super storm in there!” Strangely enough, the tooth fairy not only paid her for both teeth, she also left a note saying she was sorry little Nanny McPhee swallowed one of her teeth and assured her it would not harm her in any way. Man, that tooth fairy is even better than Santa Claus – generous and observant!
I wrote most of this post while listening to:
by Jen Logan | Dec 27, 2017 | Life, Parenting
The whole country wants to be famous!
Over the last year my daughter has become intrigued by YouTube. She started watching a woman who bakes and does silly challenges like “not my arms” and a bunch of blindfolded food tasting. Some of the videos are funny, some are stupid and some actually teach my kid how to do something! I became intrigued when I read that this particular YouTube star made $6 million last year. After reading this I jumped right down the rabbit hole and read dozens of articles about people who are YouTube famous. Sadly, the top earner is a guy who makes videos of himself playing video games. People are now so lazy that instead of playing their own video games they watch other people play the games on YouTube.
After seeing the ridiculous amounts of cash being handed over for these videos I, of course, had to poke around to see what kind of videos were popular. I found some pretty disturbing things including grown women playing with toys and talking in strange little girl voices, children opening toys for other children to watch and get jealous about (also known as consumerism at it’s finest) and channel after channel of people dumping food on their heads and/or eating disgusting things. If the content wasn’t bad enough, some of the videos were so shaky and the editing so choppy that I thought I might throw up if I continued to watch. My husband and I immediately subscribed our daughter to the handful of channels we found to be acceptable and told her the rest of YouTube was off limits. YouTube, like most parts of the internet, can be used for good or to slowly melt your brain and turn you into a bag of rocks with hands.
This lasted for about a week and then she wanted to start searching for her own content. She claimed she had already seen every video on the half dozen channels she was subscribed to. I had a short talk with her about what it means to exaggerate and sat down with her to find more videos after she conceded that she had not, in fact, watched every video on the channels she was subscribed to. On a side note, I don’t know where she gets speaking in absolutes from, I never exaggerate!
After watching the first ten seconds of about a hundred videos and declining to allow her to continue watching she came across a video of a little girl, not much older than herself, painting her own face like a Disney character. I was even impressed with this kid’s ability to paint her face evenly and with skill. I was not so impressed with the fact that she couldn’t find the word she was looking for when trying to describe the consistency of a product and ended up saying “texture” instead. I am thinking Mom and Dad might want to buy this kid a book every now and then instead of a bag full of makeup. But who am I to judge? My child was reading at age five but still can’t grasp the concept of an organized sport like soccer. We all teach what we know. After watching a few of these videos I realized that the Mom is also skilled at makeup and face painting so I guess she IS teaching what she knows. If only we could find a million people who wanted to watch a Mom and daughter sitting around reading we would also be YouTube famous!
Since my daughter thinks she can do anything that she sees someone else doing, her newest obsession is face painting. She has a pretty healthy ego. She started by painting my face, her Dad’s and then her Grandparents’. She moved on to painting her own face within a day and started using both face paint and makeup. Luckily I don’t really wear makeup but I own a lot of it “just in case” I ever need it. I have pallets of eye shadow with blues and yellows, silvers and gold. I have brushes and bronzers, eyeliner pencils, pens and liquids and lip glosses in every color. Most of my makeup has been relocated to the little one’s vanity table along with her train cases full of face paints. She even asked for more face paint and an 88 color eyeshadow pallet for Christmas. What she got was the paint, the makeup and a mannequin head to work on. I guess my parents were also sick of being her dummies!
She may have a future in Hollywood or Hot Topic, it could go either way…
For the last two days I have observed my daughter sitting in front of anyone who will listen pretending to be filming a video. She has been performing makeup and face painting tutorials along with inserting product placements explaining what makeup she is using and where it can be purchased. She has actually begun to explain pretty much everything she is doing, whether it be building legos or painting, in great detail as if her entire life is a YouTube video. The kid is a natural.
I have been telling my family for the last year that we should have our own reality television show. Some days it’s hard to believe the conversations my daughter and I are having are actually taking place. Throw in my parents and it would be ratings gold. I guess mini-me feels the same way!
Today’s playlist:
by Jen Logan | Nov 28, 2017 | Being Awesome, Parenting
My husband and I agree on most parenting decisions. One thing we differ on is where we eat meals. I let my kid sit on the family room couch and watch television with a bowl of cereal on most mornings. It is how she eases into her day. I know it is being lazy but I’m not willing to have the battle with her every morning. I am already geared up for the tooth brushing battle, the Mom packs the worst lunches battle and the epic hair battle to which I show up with an arsenal of clips, ties, brushes and two types of detangler. If she has to eat at the table, she will forgo breakfast and go straight to school with no food in her stomach. I pick my battles. We eat dinner at the kitchen table together every night, breakfast isn’t a meal I’m willing to die by my sword over. My husband on the other hand is willing to stand his ground on the all meals should be eaten at the kitchen table rule. So if Dad is home, we eat at the table. (more…)
by Jen Logan | Jun 6, 2017 | Being Awesome, Parenting
My daughter’s last day of kindergarten was last week. After she picked up her prize for “her excellent French skills and for always being an active participant during class”, I picked up her report card. I was happy to see that she had mastered all of the skills expected by the end of kindergarten and had already begun working on her first grade skills. She was actually pretty far ahead in reading, which we were already aware of. She reads “chapter books” to us nightly. One of her teachers had also mentioned to me what a good reader she is. I had inwardly patted myself on the back for reading to her in utero – I take my wins wherever I can!
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