That is the first impulse online purchase I’ve made in a while.

But in my defense, I just bought an edition at the store the other day and remembered that I do like the magazine and I had some Amazon gift card money from a WordPress code project I did a while back that was burning a hole in my ePocket.

Amazon is selling the magazine for $10 right now and offering $5 off of that. They have a bunch of other magazines that are selling pretty cheaply right now and then they are taking $5 off of that price. Go see if your favorite is on sale.

Pookie and Geetle did a great job all day, enjoyed the parade, and loved the fireworks. Geetle was even interviewed by the local Channel 19 News but I’m not sure if it aired on TV or not.

Pookie had zero trouble with the noise of the parade because of his handy, dandy, noise reducing headphones that the hunters wear. The fireworks are after the parade and we had already moved back into the house. We rushed the kids outside to see the fireworks and Pookie initially resisted until I reminded him that he could put the headphones on as soon as we got outside. Then he rushed out with us and jumped up and down with excitement watching the explosions.

The kids, and the wife, slept most of the way home leaving me to listen to college football and fight to stay awake.

Giggles stayed home with my mom because she was recovering from a cold that she has graciously started spreading to the rest of us. But she had a great day on Saturday, too. She would have had a blast in Peoria, though. One of my cousins has a little boy a couple months older than her that she would have had a great time chasing around. Next year.

The conversation of the day award goes to Geetle and BeAGoodMom who had this one while getting back into the car at a gas station.

Geetle: What’s this?
BAGM: Don’t touch that.
Geetle: BAGM: Now we’re going to have to wash your hands before you can have your snack. What lesson did we just learn.
Geetle: Don’t touch bird poop unless it’s dry.

That’s right folks. Stay away from bird poop until it has sufficiently hardened.

And no toilet paper in the toilet.

Further proof that two wrongs do not make a right.

If you can’t find it in your paper, some of the locations in our city include things like the rec center, fire stations, Salvation Arm, United Way, and several churches. The fire station is closest to our house so that’s where I’ll be dropping off the food.

Here is the list of items that our local pantries are looking for. I’m pretty sure that you could show up at any food pantry with these and make their day.

• Spaghetti
• Spaghetti sauce
• White rice (1 lb. bag or boxes)
• Pinto beans
• Macaroni and cheese
• Canned spaghetti
• Canned ravioli
• Chili
• Beef stew
• Tuna
• Ramen noodles
• Pork and beans
• Canned fruit
• Canned vegetables
• Crackers
• Peanut butter
• Jelly
• Cereal
• Oatmeal
• Powdered milk
• Hand powered can openers

If you just don’t have the time for that, you can also make a cash donation at places like the Northern Illinois Food Bank. I’m sure a quick Google will be able to tell you of the organization in your area.

They both were outside before 8:30am having a snowball fight (which involved throwing snowflakes at each other since there wasn’t enough for real snowballs). They were back inside before 9am and nobody even asked for hot cocoa. They must be losing their touch.

Pookie went outside about 4 different times for about 15 minutes each for a little snow eating and swing set time. He’s already done it again once this morning and it is 8:15. Actually, he just walked back outside again so make that twice.

He’s never home during the week because of school and we’ve been busy and away on a lot of the weekend days recently. I wonder if this is just what he does on days where he gets to stay home.

With Giggles sick yesterday and today, it is nice to have the kids decide to spend some time out in the backyard since we really can’t get in the car and go anywhere. Giggles has been staying awake for about an hour before needing to go back to sleep.

I’m watching Pookie gathering up snow on his gloves and eating it off. Thank you snow for picking a perfect time to visit.

I’m leaning towards adult literacy. We have a local literacy group that is a member of the national ProLiteracy organization.

I am a huge supporter of the benefit of people being able to read. There may be no skill more important. You can’t even fill out a job application or health care form without being able to read. I can’t even imagine trying to navigate and survive in the world without basic reading skills.

So, I’m planning on giving our local branch a call to talk about exactly how the training works and how the volunteer schedule works, etc. It looks like their next intro training session is in early January because of the holidays.

If anybody out their on the intertubes knows something good, bad, or indifferent about the ProLiteracy organization, I would love to hear you thoughts. Thanks.

Also, check this out. Go tell her what to do. Unless of course, you think she needs a new template because that would just be work for me.

Christmas is coming and people are looking for neat ways to get their house decked out without actually chopping down a tree or having a fake one take up floor space.

Relax people. We figured it out for you all last year. You can make your own Christmas tree out of felt.

The trend got popular, of course, and people flooded my inbox with pictures and stories of their own trees, well two people at least.

Here are my nephew and niece and nephew-cat showing off their very own felt Christmas tree, their smiles, and their creepy, shiny eyes.

And here is Angela’s tale of her semi cat, dog, and childproof felt Christmas tree. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Christmas tree.

Also, don’t forget to read my detailed comment to one of those posts describing exactly how the magic of the felt Christmas tree is done.

If you make a felt Christmas tree this year, please send me photos and stories (a blog URLs if you’d like a plug) and I’ll try to share your story in a post.

Also, please feel friend to share this will all of your friends at all of your favorite social sites, or email, or however you bug people online.

I remember when Giggles was cute like that and I used to say nice things to her all the time.

Now, approximately 85% of my conversations go like this:

Me - “No”
Giggles - [turns around to look at me]
Me - “No”
Giggles - [turns around to look at me]
Me - [moves Giggles to a different part of the house while she goes limp and then starts twisting and kicking while screaming]
Me - “No”
Giggles - [turns around to look at me]
Me - “No”
Giggles - [turns around to look at me]
Me - [moves Giggles to a different part of the house while she goes limp and then starts twisting and kicking while screaming]
[repeat until nap, meal, diaper change or bedtime]

Sometimes when she turns to look at me, she will shake her head to confirm that she did hear me but just doesn’t plan on paying attention.

Seriously. One and mobile is way worse the the dreaded terrible twos. I’ve met very few 2 year olds that I didn’t get along with. 1 and 3 are completely different stories, though.

And we only have so many surfaces that are up out of her reach and since her reach is getting higher every day, even those spots are starting to disappear.

This would probably be a great time for a parenting tip on how to survive this phase. I suggest getting a calendar, circling your toddler’s second birthday, and crossing off the days. They are so much nicer when they are 2.

Bad News: Pookie has been waking up somewhere between midnight and 5am almost every other night for a couple weeks. He is then convinced that night is over and it is time to get moving on the day. It takes at least an hour and up to two hours for him to fall asleep. During that time, he is screaming for the bulk of the time.

Whether the night time potty training is really happening or not, I refuse to believe that there is not a fairly strong correlation between these two events. Learning something new is often hard and confusing. Especially for children with autism. And for better or worse, I am usually in charge of things that happen between midnight and 6am with the kids since I just happen to function better during those hours.

So, this is a post for those of you with autistic children who are having trouble falling back asleep in the middle of the night.

Here are a few facts:

• They will fall back to sleep
• This yelling is different than any yelling they might do during the day
• They are probably confused about what is happening and need comforted not taught

I don’t think I could emphasize that last point enough.

During the daytime hours, I hold Pookie very accountable for his emotions. I tell him that his yelling is not acceptable and that he needs to use his words. I will send him away from fun activities if he is misbehaving. I will stay by him and constantly remind him that he needs to stop yelling and start talking. During the day, it frequently does work and at least I’m helping him understand what my expectations are in the house. (For the record, he really doesn’t have trouble during the days nearly as often as this paragraph might make it sound. But when he does, I hold him responsible for his actions).

None of that works at night. Trust me. I’ve tried. Even after 5 1/2 years of raising Pookie, I still do stupid things from time to time (normally daily).

Last night, he woke up at midnight and tried getting dressed. I herded him into the bathroom figuring that he needed to pee. Nope.

Than I herded him back into bed and firmly explained that he needed to stop yelling because everybody else was trying to sleep. This had no positive effect for nearly an hour. Than I shut up, sat on the ground next to the bed and rubbed his back applying less pressure when he was calm and more when he would start yelling. It took a while, but he eventually did calm down and went back to sleep.

I actually left the room while he was still awake but clearly calm. I am a big supporter of leaving the room while kids of all ages are still awake so that in the end they are putting themselves to sleep. I lost two hours of sleep but Pookie did manage to get back to sleep, in his own bed, on his own. I learned that I could have probably saved at least a half hour and probably an hour if I would just quit trying to tell him to be quite between midnight and 5am.

As I walked out of their room at 2am, I was dreading waking up between 3-5am which is when I expected him to have an accident since he didn’t go at midnight. But no. He woke up around 6:30am completely dry.

Did I mention that Pookie is night time potty training himself and doing a great job of it?