If you can't say anything nice...

I'm not sure where this quote falls out.

We had just picked up Chinese food from Egg Roll Express.  Now before you roll your eyes, let me tell you, this place is solid, and they nail all the Chinese-food basics that every American family needs.  Chow mein, cashew chicken, egg drop soup, bing, bing bing.  All solid.

So when we asked Peapod and The Edge, who had had Egg Roll Express many times before and gobbled it up like frat boys, "Who wants noodles?" (which was the vegetable chow mein), we expected an enthusiastic response.

We got it from Peapod, who jumped out of her chair and thrust her hand in the air.

From The Edge, however, we got something much more rude, yet somehow more priceless and indelible.

We got a catch-phrase.

"Blah.  No way!  Mee!"

Blah.

No way.

Me.

What that could possibly mean, coming from a 22 month old human being is mind boggling.  It's almost deep, I think.

All I know, is that we will be quoting those three words, in that order for years to come.

Then someday, when he decides he wants to marry some lucky fool, and asks if he can bring them home so we can meet this person, I will look up from my book, peer over my reading glasses and calmly reply:

"Blah.  No way.  Me!"

Jet Packs: Now at Target

I was futzing with the radio when an interesting question floated up from the backseat.

Peapod:  "Mom, do they sell jet packs at Target?"

Me: "What?"

Peapod: "Do they sell jet packs?  At Target?"

I have turned off the radio, as this demands my full attention.

Me:  "No, I don't think so, Sweet Pea."

Peapod:  "How do you know?"

Me:  "Well, uh... Jet packs are for, um, scientists.  NASA people.  Astronauts! You really can't just buy a jet pack."

Peapod:  "But Daddy saw one at the Rose Parade.  Where did that guy get one?"

Me:  "Um.  Not at Target, that's for sure." I have begun to lose composure at this point.

The Edge: "JePaaak!  JePaaak!"

Peapod: "Well if you see a jet pack at Target and it's a good price, will you get it for me?"

Me:  "You got it, Boo."

Fake Cats Re-Arranged My Tupperware Drawer

People who write books about raising kids:

1. No longer have toddlers or babies and therefore have time to write actual books.
2. Are smug.

Anyway, I listened to these people and put all my tupperware-like plastic food storage containers into one low drawer that I let Peapod and The Edge have access to. The idea, according to these books, is that you arrange a few drawers in your kitchen to have only "safe" items in them, and then let your kids do as they please. The theory is that these fussy small people won't go caveman on you, because you've put the rest of your far more interesting kitchen stuff behind toddler locks and electrified cow fence.

What these book authors don't talk about is how this little arrangement will drive you slowly insane.

Let me explain.

The Edge loves cats. Not only does he know every cat in the neighborhood, he can point out where every cat has been in the neighborhood, for roughly the past 6 days. He also likes to imitate cats, which has inspired his sister to do the same.

So now I have two fake cats, meowing and re-arranging my tupperware drawer. Let me assure you, it sounds much cuter than it actually is, especially when you are trying to unload the dishwasher.

Well THAT Was Easy.

There are "Bottle Fairies."

These are apparently fairies who come in the night and take bottles away from toddlers who are otherwise occupied.

There are also parents who snip the nipples of bottles lower and lower until there is no more nipple to be had.

There are chapters in parenting books about how to wean your toddler off the bottle. There are pages and pages on the internet on this subject.

So as The Edge approached his second birthday, which is in April, I figured maybe I ought to pay attention to all this noise.  We did not go through any of this with Peapod because at the age when she was to be weaned from the bottle, she was in the hospital, recovering from her boo boo finger injury where she was strapped down and plugged into feeding tubes.  When we returned home a month later, she had completely forgotten about her bottle.

We hoped to avoid a similar bottle weaning plan for The Edge.

One day, about three weeks ago, Super Nanny burst into the kitchen with the following apology "So sorry -- I dropped The Edge's botella!"  She genuinely felt bad because we only had two left -- I was too cheap to buy any more, and it was clear that these were on their last legs.  It had slipped from Super Nanny's fingers in the driveway -- probably while she was hoisting The Edge, his diaper bag, the Plasma Car, his jacket, nine of his toys, and a bucket of sidewalk chalk, which I have seen her do.  She is Strong Like Bull, this woman.

"Don't worry about it."  I waved her off. "I think it's a sign."

It was time to wean The Edge off the bottle.  So I went to Target and bought him two of those sippy cups with the flimsy nipple-like tops and let Super Nanny know we'd start using those at bedtime to see how it goes.  We figured he's so tired by then maybe he wouldn't care.

He didn't care.

We did this for a few nights, just to be sure.

He didn't care.

So we ushered it in during nap time.

He didn't care.

Mind you, this is a kid who makes every diaper change difficult.  85% of the time I put him in a car seat, he screams, kicks his feet and arches his back.  For 7 weeks straight, right around the time he was 18 months old, he refused to nap in his crib. He is not the Happiest Baby on the Block. He is The Edge.

But man, that was easy.

FinancialRx "Soft Launch"

With the new year comes some new news:  the "soft launch" of my website, FinancialRx.com.

As some of you may know, I am the founder and Editor-in-Chief of a new business venture with The Esposo and his business partner, who will heretofore be known in this blog as, simply, "Money."

Turns out that building a business, and designing a website from scratch is, like, hard!  The Esposo, Money, a talented German code writer who lives in Dallas (who I will name Das Boot because they're the only German words I know.  Sort of.) and I have been working on FinancialRx since the summer, designing the font end, building the back end, and writing and uploading the content.

So why is this a "soft launch?"  Because if you look at the site, you'll see that even though it has a fair amount of content and live ads, the subscription function is not live.  And this will be a key part of our revenue model and our public relations push. Also, the front page is not yet where we need it to be for the hard launch.  It's a bit messy right now, but we have plans in the works to change it.

So why are we even bothering with any type of launch now? Because we need to start building up some juice with Google, which you've heard me yammer on about before with The Esposo's website for finding health insurance, Medicoverage.com. To do so, I need to execute a link strategy by creating external locations around the internet that have links back into various urls in the FinancialRx site, like the ones I'll gratuitously insert below.

When we execute our hard launch in a few months, I'll really be tapping into the talents of my network (that's you) to help get this thing off the ground. But in the mean time, there are actually two things you can do to help, if you have a minute or two to spare. You can visit the various pages on the site, read a few articles, and leave a comment or two and click the little "recommend" button with the thumbs up icon below the articles you like. Comments and recommendations also help to elevate the site in the eyes of Google.  This will help more than you may realize.

Now with that in mind, here are some suggestions of pages where you can start looking:

This is an article I wrote about buying a first house

And here's one that answers the question "what is a living trust?"

There are also a bunch of articles on much lighter financial topics. For example, here's one about saving money on kid's birthday parties.

And an idea for having free fun with toddlers at the train station.


We're creating FinancialRx.com to be a finance website for women, who are becoming the Chief Financial Officers of many American households. These women are busy and pressed for time, but they perceive themselves to lack competence in the area of finance, whether this perception reflects reality or not. At FinancialRx.com, we skip the tickers and and speak in plain English, not finance gobbely gook. We provide the information these women need, quickly and painlessly, so they can make a good decision and get back to their bustling households. Sometimes we even have a little fun.

We hope you'll join us on our journey toward a happy, healthy financial life.

Toddler for Sale: Cute.

Male.  Blue eyes, curly light brown hair, square feet.

Eats: everything but tomatoes and peas.

Likes: slides, the laundry bin, cats, a small brown dinosaur named Shmitty (replaceable for about $3.50), throwing legos and used cell phones down the stairs, the hose, Kidspace Children's Museum, his sister, dirt.

Dislikes: car seats, strollers, Raggedy Ann.

Knows approximately 3 dozen words; uses them to demand fish crackers, lit candles and video chats with grandparents.

Warning:  does not nap.

Rant: The Target Cafe

Why are the people who eat at the Pasadena Target cafe so unbelievably tweaky?

I mean really.

The people who shop at the Pasadena Target are not tweaky.  They appear to have regular jobs and regular families and regular lives and things to do.  I see them buy shampoo and Advil and diapers and Tostitos and apple juice, just like regular people.  Then they flip their sunglasses back down, steer their carts through the parking lot and stack their regular bags into their regular cars, just like the regular rest of us, and drive away.

But God Forbid you step past the cash registers and into the Target Cafe because I promise you, all the regular people will disappear and you will be surrounded by total creepiness.

This happened to me today.  I had to run into Target over lunch time and I was starving, so I slipped into the cafe for a quick sandwich.

Oh my God.

There were masses of unshaven men.  There were ladies with obvious wigs and darker-than-their-skin-color stockings that ended above their shins but below their dress hems.  There was a man (also unshaven) rocking back and forth and spinning something metal and shiny.  There was a man talking on an invisible cell phone (no ear bud) who would not stop bouncing his knee.  There was another man with very few teeth who was leaning over his lunch and eating with such fervor that it appeared as if he was afraid that one of us might steal if from him any minute. There was a woman walking around asking for change.  There was another woman who would not take her angry daughter out of the back of the shopping cart.  Amid all this, there was a pair of normal people trying to conduct an interview for a job at Target.  And me, snarfing down my sandwich and becoming nauseated.

When I had finished, I flipped down my sunglasses, slipped into the parking lot and back into the sunshine with my regular cart full of regular Target goodies.  And I smiled at the rest of the regular Target shoppers.  Until somebody gave me the stink eye because she wanted my parking spot.