Guess what happened at our house last night?...or, why you shouldn't let your 1 year old play with the telephone.

Last night, as I was putting the laundry away, busy, busy Jeremy reached for one of his favorite non-toy-toys, the telephone on my bedside table. Usually, it's pretty cute as he holds it by his ear and jabbers away before I take it from him and say "no" and distract him with something else. So I hung it up, said "no" and was about to give him something when the phone rang.
"Hello"
"911 operator, we recieved a call from this number"
(OH NO!)"I'm so sorry, my baby was playing with the phone, I had no idea...I will move the phone out of his reach"
"Alright Ma'am, we need your name and address for our records"
And so, I gave the information, finished the call, unplugged that phone and put it way up out of Jeremy's reach. I finished putting away the laundry and headed to the bathroom to run the boy's bath. As I'm undressing Jeremy, the doorbell rings. (Who the heck is that? I think, annoyed as I shut off the running water, pick Jeremy up and head to the door)
"Hello Officer"
"Hi Ma'am, there was a 911 call from this number, we're just checking up to make sure everything is alright"
"Yes, I'm so sorry, my son here was playing with the phone, I had no idea we had the number programmed into the phone, I've now moved the phone, so he can't get it anymore"
He peers in and looks at myself and both boys, assessing that really, there is no emergency and then says, "You know we were knocking at the other door, why was there no answer?"
"I'm running the baby's bath and I didn't hear the door knock, just the doorbell"
"alright, we just needed to check it out"
"of course, I'm so sorry"
I couldn't believe it. Of course, now Elijah is excited because the police came to his house. "Jeremy called the police Mommy?" And now we also had to have a lesson in 911 to make sure the other son doesn't try it out. (I taught a boy once who was fascinated with 911, calling it both at home and at school...his mother was not impressed)
What a night!

Lurking in Facebook

I admit to it. I love to lurk around Facebook groups and read them, but not join them. I used to join groups, but then there were just too many, and what's the point anyway, unless it's something you are really interested in and actually want to comment on. So I did a Facebook cleanout a few months ago, but I still browse groups and have a good read. Tonight I found two interesting topics, that, although I didn't actually want to join the groups, I still wanted to comment on...so here it goes.
1st, One of the parenting sites had a huge discussion going about baby names and I just had to laugh as I was reading it. I have my own guidelines for naming kids and they come from my job...I've taught thousands of kids in the past 10 years. If you are looking for something original, great! But take the time to really look and see if it is original. Why do you think we have a 1001 Michaela/Mikayla/McKayla/Mackaela...'s hanging around? Everyone thought it was this wonderful original name, but just like I was Krissy D. Growing up, now there are McKayla S's etc. Point of note, if a "now" celebrity has a cool name that you like (or a child with a cool name that you like) chances are if you choose that name, someone else (or many someone else's) will be naming their children that too. Because yes, I've taught my share of Mariah's and Shania's and now we're working on the Kira/Keira/Kirah's of the day. And you can be pretty sure that the Shiloh's of the world are coming up. And please, please, please spell you kid's name in a recognizable way...you may think it's cool, but really, think of the hassle you are causing your kid by naming him Xyuler instead of Skylar...is spelling really that important to you? By all means, pick something you like, but it's really easy to check if it's a popular name or not...do a quick google baby name search, there are lists going back years (seriously, you can find the past hundred plus years if you look hard enough). Otherwise you'll end up like one of my collegues who is disappointed that her son Logan is one of 3 Logan's in his kindergarten class...she loved the name and thought it was so orignal when he was born. (another trick, talk to a teacher friend of yours to check out your possibles...she/he will be able to tell you how many kids have that name...and any positive/negative associations that name has among teachers)

2nd...I actually am considering joining this group, but I'm not convinced yet...it's the "People Who Don't Read Anything Are F****** Morons" group. It's no secret that I'm a total bookworm, so I really loved reading the posts in this group. The topic that caught my eye was the "Has a book ever made you cry?"...ummm yes.
I fully admit to crying (and sometimes bawling) through the following books:
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks
A Child Called It by David J. Pelzer
Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazer
Those are the ones that come to mind but I am sure there were others too. Unfortunately for me, the next book that I'm reading from the library was mentioned serveral times in the discussion, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini...it's one of those books that I've been wanting to read but haven't and now I'm getting around to it. Anyways...it made for an interesting thread and I'm curious what books you, my friends have cried though?

Holding out for a Hero

Last night Jonathan and I had a real grown up night...aka no kids, had dinner out and saw a movie. We ended up seeing Iron Man. It was Jonathan's pick, but after hearing that the acting was good, I thought it might be something that I would enjoy too.
When we got there I was surprised that we almost couldn't get 2 seats together, the theatre was packed. Now, this is the 3rd weekend this movie has been out...plus it's running in 2 theatres, this showing being the later starting of the 2. I thought wow! What is the draw to a show like this? It's been #1 at the box office 2 weeks running and it's still pulling them in? Why?
And really, Superhero movies in general have been huge the last number of years. Batman, Superman, X-Men, Spiderman, now Iron Man...we know coming up this summer, the Incredible Hulk makes his return (please let's hope it's better than the last attempt, which was so bad I couldn't watch it all the way through).
But in general, these comic book, superhero movies are really good! And more than just teenage boys are going to these shows. What are we all looking for?
I think it's a case of we want to see that good triumphs over evil. We want to see the really cool special effects, the drama of it...
We live in a world that is chaotic, where we see and hear and know that there is so much bad stuff, we need something to find hope in. And as crazy as it sounds, we can see the triumph in these superheroes.
These men that are both men, and super. Super powers, super gadgets, super abilites. I don't know about you, but it makes me think of my Lord Jesus. I've really got this idea playing around in my head and I want to take a look at each of these superheroes and find the Jesus in them. Sound crazy? Keep checking in and see what I come up with...

Why 1 year olds are so silly

Tonight, I was giving Jeremy his bath. Usually the boys get bathed together, but Jonathan took Elijah out for some QT. Normally, Jeremy is a splash as long as he can kinda guy, so what does he decide to do tonight, now that he has the tub and all of the bath toys to himself??? pull out the plug, repeatly.

Picking up on a theme by Jill

While most of my blogging friends have petered out, Jill remains strong and constant. She both inspires and badgers me to keep writing. Her most recent post introduced me to a new social site created just for bookworms like me, Librarything, which looks promising, but I'm just figuring it out. It also contained a list of books that Jill has marked:

Bold = I've read it for fun
Underline = I read it for school (I'll use a %)
Italics = I started it but didn't finish
Asterisk = I own it, but haven't read it

Well, Jill colour coded hers as she's oh so clever now that she can html
I'm too tired to do that, but I will mark the same list just because I'm a big book nerd and I like stuff like this.

Jonathan Strangelove and Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
% Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
% Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
* Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
% Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
% The Canterbury Tales (okay, I didn't read all of it, just the introduction, that's all we had to read, but I really want to read it)
The Historian: a novel
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
% 1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
% Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
* Treasure Island
David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers