A Motivational Tool

I was just wondering if I'm the only cruel mother out there who uses scare tactics to get her kids to clean their rooms. You see, I know first-hand that my kids are scared to death of the vacuum cleaner. Not scared of the noise or of being physically harmed (although an injury has occurred in the past), but scared that I might take the cleaner and suck up a little piece of some cherished toy that they could never do without and send it into a dusty oblivion. That's an absolute nightmare to them! So, knowing how much they detest this possibility, I announce to them that I'm about to go vacuum their room, and you wouldn't believe how quickly they jump up from whatever they are doing and dash to go clean their room. Every little-bitty piece of every toy will be cleaned off the floor before I can lug the vacuum out of the closet and drag it down the hall. It works like a charm!

So, fess up. Anyone else?

1,2,3...JUMP!

Kaitlyn has become quite confident in the water these days. Unfortunately, a little TOO confident. We taught her to "1,2,3..JUMP!" into the water from the side of the pool, and we let her go all the way under before picking her up. She does this at least 100 times during a typical visit to the pool. This is fine and dandy, except sometimes we'll hear a little "un, two, tee" and hear a splash when our backs are turned. Hmm...she's still jumping TO us, but a little scary just the same. Gotta watch that kid!

Interestingly enough, Kaitlyn has also decided to apply this new-found skill under the regular constraints of gravity. A few times we've caught her counting "un, two, tee" and jumping off of rather high furniture to us, expecting us to catch her as we did in the pool! Fortunately, we've managed to brace her fall each time, but I'm waiting for her to try THAT with our backs turned!

I'm Sorry.

Back when I was more serious about journaling, I went through a period of time in which every entry would start with an apology to myself about how long it had been since I'd written. I'm not sure why I felt the need to apologize to myself, but, regardless, I once again feel like apologizing to the great blue yonder (who's out there anyway?) that it has been over a month since I've posted to my blog! So, for all of you out there who go running to your computers hourly to see if by chance I've posted something exciting-- I'm sorry!

I'm also not as motivated to blog, because our digital camera broke! I'm very bummed. (Does anyone out there know of a good-quality, affordable digital camera to recommend?) I'm hoping to find a good deal soon, so any advice would be appreciated.