I Love My Insurance Company

So we are busy getting ready to head to Alabama and Tennessee for 17 days. I need to have the mail stopped (yay, I can do it online and don't have to go to the post office!), and I'm getting the bills squared away so that nothing will go past due while we are away. In addition to bills, today we got a letter from USAA, our insurance company. It usually comes this time of year when funds are always just a tad tighter than we'd like them and expenses are just a bit more. We got the letter notifying us that our account will be CREDITED $56.93 - the dividend from our policy. Every year, we get a bit of money back, and it's usually about this much. Who can't use an extra fifty bucks at Christmas?
I also called USAA last week to get a duplicate copy of my current insurance card. It got a PERSON on the phone quickly. She was, as people always are at USAA, friendly and helpful, and the fax was at the car shop in less than 5 minutes.
When we move, they are always the easiest folks to deal with when I change our contact information. Somehow, they take the information once and apply the changes to all our accounts - auto, renter's, home owner's (back in the day when we were home owners), and investments.
Why can't more companies be this good at what they do?

My Morning From Hades

So, it's that time of year (actually past that time of year) when the car was due for an inspection. Owen and I showed up on time for our 9 o'clock appointment this morning only to figure out that we didn't have a copy of the current insurance information (the one dated 12/20/08-6/20/09 will just not do - even though the printed card says right on there it is not proof of insurance and all our insurance info is the same, they need a new card dated 6/20/09-12/20-09 that says that it is not proof of insurance.) Okay, I can deal with that. Our totally super-duper awesome insurance company faxed one right over. Thanks, USAA! Then I couldn't find the registration card, so I headed over to the office where I could purchase a duplicate. Before heading in, I looked one more time with Owen strapped in his seat and not crawling between me and the glove box, and yay, I found it. So I headed back to the shop to get my inspection and oil change.
Owen ate 2 deviled eggs and 5 pieces of prosciutto for a late breakfast, and then we walked to the Salvation Army next door. As Owen browsed through the toys, I smelled a SMELL. Poop. Hoping it was just gas, we headed to the bathroom where there was NO toilet paper and cleaned him up a very tiny poop as well as we could with the paper towels. I had spare clothes for him, but they were five feet in the air in my car in the shop next door. After browsing a bit more, we headed back to the shop where we were informed that the car had failed inspection because we needed 2 new tires. We also had a nail in a third tire, so it would need repair. Trying to cut my losses, I sprung for 4 new tires, and the pop who owns the shop actually bargained on the phone for 70,000 mile tires instead of 40,000 mile tires for the same price. Cool! It was still an expensive trip.
So, at 11:50 we headed by the post office to mail a few things (hopefully in time for Christmas). I put Owen on my back and walked in to see the line was rather long. I couldn't find the right declaration forms in any of the slots, so I had to stand in line and ask for one. Then I had to step out of line to fill it out, but there weren't any pens in the whole danged post office. Not one. They didn't even have little chains with missing pens. Apparently, you have to take you own pen into the Lancaster PO. So we went back outside where we, thankfully, found a pen in the car. I filled out the form declaring my package worthless - cause you know, much as I love the felt gifts I'm sending, they have no monetary value - and stood in line again to mail my things. By this time Owen had had it (I had too) and he began flailing on my back, alternately laughing maniacally and whining. I tried holding Owen's hand, but he howled that I was, "HURTING HIM!" Really, I don't think I was physically hurting him, but I can guarentee everyone else in that post office thought I was. He threw my hat. And his hat, and I was only slightly cheered by the nice man behind me who gave a knowing smile as I scooted past him to get our hats. Then I saw the angel child who always seems to appear when my child is acting like a wild hooligan. You know, one always turns up to make you feel even more inadequate as a parent when your kid is having a meltdown. I was ready to crawl into a hole. Then Owen showed two fingers to the mother of the angel child. She said, "Oh, are you two? That explains it." I smiled. She proceeded, "Are you being bad for mommy? Did you know Santa is watching you? He won't bring you any presents if your bad like that for mommy." I used my last bit of resolve not to go off on this woman for telling my kid he was bad and wouldn't get any presents. I TRIED to smile (it probably look more like a painful grimmice) and turned back around. How dare she say those things?! I can only hope she was trying to be helpful. I can only wonder if her child ever acts untoward or if he is so utterly scared of being a bad child who won't get any presents that he always acts like a saint.
While we continued to wait in line (we were at the front by this time just waiting to be called up), Owen got riled up again, and started howling that he had to poop and pee! Really the closest bathroom is our home, so I assured him we would leave as soon as we gave them our items. Fourty-five minutes after we arrived at the PO, we drove away.
By the time we got home, Owen was helpful, and encouraged me to run, run, run to the building so he could make it to the potty. He ate really well at lunch, and went right to sleep for a nap. It was SO time for the reset button.

Recent Crafts

Here are some things I have completed recently (as in the last couple of months):

felted wool teething rings
bendy people for Owen's stocking

tetrahedrons (I've made quite a few of these - I'll post a tutorial some time soon - very cool little boxes)
felt puppets - left to right: Violet the purple cow, Scarlet the red dachshund, and Corny the snake
Easy the green frog, Shelly the blue shark, Puff the magic (purple) dragon (Abram thinks she looks more like a fish.), and Henry the hadrosaurus (who starte out as a frog gone very very wrong)
Three flannel baby blankets with crocheted edgings (1 already given and 2 ready to give)
wool spiral blanket (already given to baby Martin)

Tie Dye

Carolyn and Anna recently sent Owen this nifty tie dyed shirt and a pair of overalls to go with it. It was nice and bright and just came out of the wash today as nice and bright as it started. Thanks!

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

It has been snowing most of the day but finally started to stick around 2 pm as Owen went to sleep for a late nap. He was thrilled to wake up to a thin blanket of the white stuff, and immediately asked Abram to take him out to make a snowman. He had big plans and got three carrots from the drawer for noses for a whole family of snowpeople: a daddy snowman, a mama snowman, and a baby snowman.
I was amazed that they made one large snowman before it got dark.

Here are Owen's directions for a snowman:
We put a carrot for a nose.
(Prompted by Abram on different parts, he elaborates. . .)
Pine cones for eyes, pine needles for hair.

Great Minds Think Alike

I also made an advent calendar for Owen this year - without knowing Mom was making this one.
The pockets of this one are sewn into a garland, and each one has a little slip of paper with a fun holiday activity for us to share. It is a way for us to share old holiday traditions and build new ones.

In no particular order, here are the items:
Get Christmas decorations from basement. (and decorate)*
Go and get a Christmas tree. (and decorate)*
Make mulled cider.
Make hot chocolate.
Make warm vanilla.
Take a night walk to look at Christmas lights.
Go ice skating.*
Sing Owen's favorite Christmas carol.
Sing Daddy's favorite Christmas carol.
Make paper snowflakes to decorate windows.
Sing Mama's favorite Christmas carol.
Visit the Hillsboro Christmas lights.
Sing Anne's favorite Christmas carol.
Sing Micah's favorite Christmas carol.
Sing Granddaddy's favorite Christmas carol.
Read the nativity story.
Read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Watch Rudolph.
Wrap Daddy's Christmas present.
Make a paper chain.*
Go to Hershey Park.
Tell a story about Mama at Christmas.
Tell a story about Daddy at Christmas.
Tell a story about Owen at Christmas.
*indicates ones we have already done

Our paper chain was made from junk mail - so essentially free. Owen liked cutting with the paper cutter and taking the chain apart. He did a little putting together and stapling too.


It reached around 1 1/2 walls in our living room.
This was Owen's first time ice skating. It was hard work. He made it around the rink once with a lot of help,
took a break to watch some girls practicing jumps. Watching the big girls fall and practice seemed to re-energize him, and he made two more rounds. A lot of the last one was on his own.

Advent Calendar

Owen has been enjoying an advent calendar Anne and Granddaddy sent him in the mail. Starting Tuesday, each day he gets to take a treat from a little pocket. As you can see, the first three are empty now. Owen is still coming to terms with the fact that he can't take all the treats at once and that a bath bomb (that is in the pocket for Christmas Eve) in not edible.
So far he has started growing a magic mistletoe (one of those expanding in water thingies), taken a bath with soap shaped like a Christmas tree, and blown bubbles. I guess sometime before Christmas he will either eat that bath bomb or let it fizz in the tub - hopefully he can leave it in the 24th pocket until then. We'll see.

X-Rated Santa

Last night, Owen wanted "a furry red suit to dress up as Santa." I told him we didn't have one, but he thought we should look anyway. I assured him that we did not own a "furry red suit" and no amount of looking would help. I suggested he think of something we did have. After his bath, he hopped out of the tub and ran to the living room where he found a couple of stockings that are his new "Santa outfit" - a very chilly one, but he is supremely pleased with it. This evening, he wanted to wear it to the grocery store. He, of course, had to wear real pants and a shirt along with the stocking portions of the outfit, but he got not one but two compliments on his hat!

Wordsmith Wednesday: Discipline Without Distress

This is another book that came up multiple times when I asked for recommended gentle discipline reading. Abram went to the trouble of getting it for me ILL. I took it on our car trip to TN, and I was disappointed to find that my precious book-on-a-car-trip space had been taken up by a book I didn't even finish the first chapter of (yup, ended with a preposition -whatcha gonna do?).
Discipline Without Distress (Judy Arnall, 2007) reads like a bad high school term paper (you know - no original ideas, lots of poorly organized cataloging, and no real direction or point). Arnall has a prescriptive approach, and spends lots of time telling the reader what you should do and think. She spends countless pages describing in painful detail things that any resonable adult should be expected to know (half a page on what might make a parent feel angry - Really? You think I don't have any idea what might make me angry?) and what anyone with internet access or a basic child development book (including many a mainstream parenting self-help book) could easily find.
I have limited time, and I need real tools that can be applied in a varitey of situations. This book just didn't cut it for me. There might be some gems in it, but having read a bit and scanned the rest, I am not willing to mine for them. If you are looking for a good GD book, I'd pass on this one and see my Wordsmith Wednesday post from last week instead.

Wordsmith Wednesday: How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

Parenting has never been *easy* for me, but I have recently realized that we are moving into a stage where Abram and I really need more tools in our tool box. Owen is precocious, very energetic, and wildly impulsive, and these make for colorful days. On the most colorful of days I sometimes wish he was a bit duller - but not really, just a passing fancy.

I asked for some recommended reading on gentle discipline (GD)and got a few recommendations. How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, 1980 came up again and again from friends and on the Mothering.com message boards. There were a few caveats that it was a bit dated but was still worth reading.
After reading it and doing the exercises in the book, I have also asked Abram to read it. I think it should have been called How To Talk So People Will Listen & Listen So People Will Talk. It is very much a guide on effective communication. It is well organized (which I can't say about other recommended GD books I've started) and in addition to explanations of techniques, it includes cartoons (gotta love a book with pictures), exercises for reflection and practice of the new techniques, real life examples from the authors and from their workshop participants, and crib sheet of techniques in each chapter. I really like the crib sheets. I think it is helpful to have something to look back at and indicative of proper organization that the authors could include a very short summary of each chapter's key points.
Here is an outline of the book (for my own personal reference as well as your interest):

• Helping Children Deal With Their Feelings

Listen quietly and attentively
Acknowledge their feelings with a word (oh, mmm, I see)
Give the feeling a name
Give the child wishes in fantasy (I wish we could always stay up late and have fun.)

• Engaging Cooperation

Describe what you see or the problem
Give information
Say it with a word
Describe what you feel
Write a note

• Alternatives To Punishment

Express you feelings strongly - without attacking character.
State your expectation
Show the child how to make ammends
Give the child a choice
Take action
Problem-solve (with your child)

• Encouraging Autonomy

Let children make choices
Show respect for a child's struggle
Don't ask too many questions
Don't rush to answer questions
Encourage children to use sources outside the home
Don't take away hope

• Praise (I think what they describe should be called acknowledgment.)
  

Describe what you see
Describe what you feel
Sum up the child's praiseworthy behavior with a word

• Freeing Children From Playing Roles

Look for opportunities to show the child a new picture of himself or herself
Put children in situations where they can see themselves differently
Let children overhear you say something positive about them
Model behavior you'd like to see
Be a storehouse for your child's special moments
When the child acts according to the old label, state your feelings and/or your
expectations

• Putting It All Together

As far as I can tell, the only thing dated about this books is the occasional reference to record players. I really appreciate the authors' descriptive approach; the prescriptive approach of other books I've have been reading is a big turn-off for me. I can take what I think is useful and leave what I don't think is helpful. Their rather simple approaches (in principal) can be applied with Owen now and with Abram too ;o) - seriously, these are basic communication techniques. Thanks to those of you you recommended this book, and to those of you who haven't read it, I'd strongly recommend getting hold of a copy.