Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews

Contest: Mia Reading: The Bugaboo Bugs

Mia is a little mouse who lives in a big, Victorian house.  This software interactive reading game follows Mia around as she tries to save her house from being visited by exterminators after a group of hard-partying bugs shows up.  Mia has to collect a bunch of stuff, and to get the stuff, she plays reading games. 

The software is geared at 5-9 year-olds, but the little angel at four could handle part of it.  For example, one game showed a picture and a three-letter word missing the first letter.  You had to guess what the missing letter was.  The little angel doesn't know how to read, but since she knows the sounds of letters and what they look like, she thought the game was really fun.

I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity of the graphics and the hunting elements of the game.  We actually didn't have time to do the full adventure last night, and it was to much protest that I shut off the computer for bath time. I can tell I may have created a Mia monster.

If you'd like to create your own, the good people of Kutoka Interactive sent me an extra copy to give away.  Comment with your favorite children's book between now and next Monday, and a random winner will be selected from the commenters by the little angel.

Mama Rock's Rules

Who doesn't remember Chris Rock's comedy routine in which he says as a father, his only goal was to keep his daughter off the pole?  He had to get that mentality from somewhere, and in his mother Rose Rock's book, Mama Rock's Rules:  Ten Lessons for Raising a Household of Successful Children, I see clearly where he got it:  his mama.

Rose Rock writes a frank book filled with excerpts from her kids and her friends.  She covers everything from sex to the family dinner, and her common-sense style is very appealing.  I'd drink her Kool-Aid any day. 

Some of my favorite excerpts:

• "My mother's overall message was a good one; I finally understand it: being a parent is not about being right, it's about doing right. It's about serving as a steadfast role model for your children, no matter what."
• "If no one comes forward to discuss a mess, wait a day or two.  Then, let your children think you already know what's going on. Sit down with the suspected culprit over a bowl of ice cream or some cookies together -- nice and casual.  Phrase your question like this: 'When you did this (broke the lamp or the piece of china) were you bouncing a ball or did you throw it around the room with someone else?'"
• "Calmly remind your children that you will only be let down for a short time if they lie.  Emphasize that it is always better to tell the truth no matter what the consequences.  Share with them your confidence that you can work out any problem or situation within the family."

Don't you love her?  She creates this safe place where the parent is always the parent, but the parent is a loving leader, full of confidence and certain of the right path.  That's exactly the kind of parent I want to be.  God love you, Rose Rock.

Were You Raised by Wolves?

Let me begin by saying Christie Mellor had me at Three-Martini Playdate.  Her book was one that inspired me to begin working on my mommyblogging anthology.  She rocks.

Were You Raised by Wolves? Clues to the Mysteries of Adulthood is Mellor's first foray out of the parenting space in print form, a book for twenty-somethings who've just left the nest.  It was sent to me by the always-fabulous Parent Blogger Network. It is hilarious, and a tad too familiar at times.

With sections on cooking, how to clean your toilet, starting your first job, what not to do while drunk and many other helpful topics, Mellor doesn't fail us.  I'll just quote a few choice areas.

On your new job:

Listen, you just started three days ago, and no one wants to tell you this, but somebody has to:  quit sidling up to our cubicles and getting all chummy with us.  We don't know you. We might have wanted to get to know you, but within an hour of your arrival you started swaggering around like you've had this job for fifteen years and you're everybody's best buddy. No, you giant ass.  I've been working here for fifteen years.  You are the new guy.

On Old Spice deodorant:

No good can come from having your deodorant stick double as your cologne.  Perhaps you like the retro-kitch cachet, but do not partake of the Old Spice, as it will cause anyone within a fifteen-yard radius to immediately experience flu-like symptoms and upper-eye numbness.  It actually burns the inner nostrils. It is the napalm of man-scent.

These are just a few of the delightful tidbits of knowledge to be had in Mellor's latest book. Run, don't walk, to your local bookseller and order 80 copies for all of the young people you know now or will know in the future.

Seriously.

Billy Brown and the Frog Tunnel

A chap from Germany sent me Billy Brown and the Frog Tunnel, an audio CD from Kiddio Adventures. 

Kiddio makes CDs of stories you can listen to in the car, or whenever you feel like sharing a story with your child and don't want them to watch television.  Or maybe you don't want to read the book.  Maybe your throat hurts.

I was very enthused about the idea, because I had a love affair with Bullfrogs and Butterflies and those books that came with tapes and made a chiming sound when it was time to turn the page as a child.

We started out strong. We were driving to see my friend E's new baby girl.  E lives on the complete opposite side of Kansas City, near Colorado (not really), and there was plenty of time for a half-hour CD.  The little angel loved the intro song so much she requested it be repeated three times, until I put my foot down. 

She was not as enthused about the story.  The age range is from 3-7, but the story was very "civic duty" in nature, a story about a bear and a child who persuaded some construction workers to build a tunnel under the new road so the frogs could pass safely without getting hit by cars, since of course frogs do not know enough to look both ways.  A charming idea.

We didn't make it through the story.  She got bored.

It wasn't a bad story. The all-actor cast was good, although the construction workers did sound like something out of The Sopranos. I think the whole "mayor won't listen to us and now we have to defend the frogs ourselves" theme might have shot a little over a four-year-old's head.

However, I think it's a great idea, and we'll give it another listen in six months. I'll let you know if the outcome is then different. 

Winner of the Land's End $100 Gift Card Contest

Hoo, boy.  This was a hard one.  I'm torn between the tampon incident and the swimsuit splitting up the butt.  But really, anything with a tampon sort of goes beyond the nightmare of public exposure to the nightmare of public bleeding gore.  I'm going to have to give this contest to Angie, who wins the $100 Land's End gift card, and hopefully never has to publicly dispose of a feminine hygiene product again.

Angie, please send me your name, address, and phone number, and I'll get Land's End to send you your gift card, stat!

Thanks everyone for participating!  Thank God swimmingsuits hold themselves on a little better now than they did in our youth.

Land's End Swimming Suit

There's nothing like swimsuit season to put a girl in a tizzy.  I HATE buying swimming suits.  The combination of my thighs and my nonexistent chest has me in fits.  I look perfectly normal in clothes, but throw me in swimwear and my Midwestern whiteness will blind you, only not enough to stop you from noticing my saddlebags.

At least that's the way I feel.

Land's End recently offered me the chance to review their swimwear.  I'd heard good things from Cagey, who recently purchased a suit there, so I headed over to take a look.

After 45 minutes with my virtual model, I chose this suit:

Only I look more like this:

And this:

The swimsuit virtual model would unfortunately not make my chest SMALL ENOUGH.  That's fun.  But I thought it didn't look so bad, so I ordered it.

When it arrived, I swallowed hard and went upstairs to try it on. 

Pros: 

• I could feel my stomach being sucked in and compressed the minute I put the suit on. I'm not sure how they got chain mail into a swimming suit, but this stuff works WELL.  So well that when I leaned over, there was no bulge.  And I've given birth.
• The colors were very rich. I really don't think they'll fade.
• The construction was VERY solid. For someone who's been buying her swimming suits at Target, I was impressed.
• The criss-cross back was extremely flattering, as was the rear view enclosed by the suit.  Perhaps I should've opted for the little skirt, though, as what was sticking out of the swimming suit was maybe not so flattering.

Cons:

• Alas, small-chested women, I'm not sure Land's End is for us.  The cups of the suit were pretty big.  As in I could stick my fists in there WITH MY CHEST and only then did it look totally normal. You see, there are some odd darts in this suit that I didn't notice in the picture.  I have no need for darts in my life, and the result is a puff underneath my chest that makes me look like I'm hanging low, if you know what I mean.

Not a problem if you have, oh, boobs.

However, when all is said and done, I think these suits are pretty great, especially if your goal is more to minimize than to enhance.  If you want your belly flattened and your breasts contained, this is your suit.

AND!  You can have your very own!  Land's End will give a $100 gift card to the lucky winner of this contest.  This is the contest:  You must leave in the comments your most embarrassing swimming suit story. Let it all hang out.  ha ha

I will choose the winner next Monday.  Go for it!

Rockabye

When Kristen from Parent Bloggers Network asked who wanted to review Rockabye, by Rebecca Woolf, I admit I did not recognize the name.  I was woefully unaware of Girls Gone Child. ADDED TO BLOGLINES.

Rebecca Woolf is one amazing writer. 

Rockabye is the tale of Rebecca's unexpected pregnancy in her early twenties. It's the tale of her marriage to Hal, her motherhood of Archer, and a million other little details written so eloquently I can't believe she's now like 25 years old.  The book reminded me most of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, and that, my friends, is a high compliment.

I'm not sure what else I can say about this book except that I'm writing Rebecca a fangirl letter RIGHT NOW.

Buy it.  BUY IT.

LiceMD

Thankfully, I haven't had to REALLY review LiceMD, a lice-and-egg treatment program that consists of some goo and a nit comb. 

As I can't tell you about my experience using this product (yet), I'll tell you about my mother's experience.  She'll appreciate that.  My mother is fastidious, a hard cleaner, the type of person who gets down on her hands and knees with a toothbrush for certain cleaning activities.  She also worked for many years as a teacher's aide in an elementary school.  And had long hair.  Inevitably, one day she fell victim to that which is creepy.

According to the LiceMD insert, you need to bag up stuffed animals for two weeks, wash all clothing, bedding and towels used by the "infested persons" in hot water and dry them at high heat for at least 20 minutes; disinfect hair products by soaking in hot soapy water for 5 to 10 minutes, and vaccum rus, carpets, mattresses and car seats thoroughly.  This sounds like a lot of work, but a lot LESS work than my mother did.  She did all of those steps every day for about two weeks.  I live in fear of having to go to that sort of effort.

The other lice story I remember well is the one behind Lisa Stone's haircut.  When I first met Lisa, she had long, blond hair.  Now her hair is around shoulder length. She has the sort of thick, luxurious hair I can only dream of (and a natural blonde, so unfair).  I remember being shocked when she cut it to her chin, even though it still looked really cute that way.  Then a few months later, she revealed the reason:  LICE. 

GAH GAH GAH GAH

Of course, there's really not much you can do.  Kids get lice.  Kids bring them home.  Kids share dress-up clothes, hats, combs, you name it. I recall clearly sharing lip gloss with my girlfriends up through college, will still willingly hand it over if asked by one of my college roommates.  Ick, I know, but what are you going to do?  So despite my total and complete fear of lice (akin to my total and complete fear of fire), I'm going to have to accept that lice will probably encroach upon my household at least once during the little angel's stay in our home. 

And now, I'm armed.  (shiver)

How Not to Look Old

Don't you just love the title?

(note pink lip gloss -- will be discussed later)

How Not to Look Old, by Charla Krupp, is a very yummy, photo-laden book divided into various chapters, such as "Learn to Love Shapewear" and "Show Some Leg."  I dug in with interest, as I, at 34, am starting to get the definite feeling that what used to look "unironed" now just looks "frumpy and dated." 

Yes, indeed, when you are young, you can get away with grocery shopping in your flannel pants without people peering at you over the salad dressing thinking perhaps you live in a cardboard box.  Drag a child along to boot, and not only are you "old," you're an "old, unfashionable mother."

Oh, for shame.

I was relieved as I inhaled this book (it took about three hours to get through it) to find that I'm already privy to most of the advice.  There were a few nuggets, though, one of which was something called "primer" of which I was unaware.  Apparently it goes on under one's foundation and fills in all those pesky crevices and cracks.  I also learned that I should be wearing pink lip gloss instead of darker lipsticks.  Interestingly, I'd just noticed about a week before I read this book that the lipstick that once garnered me so many compliments now looks much BROWNER than it ever did in the past.  Good to know I'm not going crazy -- perhaps I'm just old, instead.

Kidding aside, this book was pretty good. It divided tactics in each category into "low-maintenance," "medium-maintenance" and "high-maintenance."  High-maintenance folks would be the type to tattoo eyeliner or undergo plastic surgery.  People like me might slap on some self-tanner and maybe exfoliate once in a while.  I'm firmly in the "low-maintenance" category, though I'm sure you can hear my sister laughing from your monitor.  She, I'm sure, thinks I'm high-maintenance, but then again, she doesn't see the beauty routines of my best friend, Steph. (cough)

I like this book, though. I'll keep it around and check back in when I'm 44, see if the rules have changed.  For now, it will look nice in the reference section of my soon-to-be-finished library, right next to my Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate.  HA.

Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione

Tsultrim Allione, author of Feeding Your Demons, was an ordained Buddhist nun before she decided to get married and move to the U.S., bringing with her the teachings of Machig Labdron.

Essentially this book is about personifying your "demons," things like addiction, low self-esteem, guilt (and on and on) so they take on a tangible shape for you.  After they are personified, you then "feed" them the things they need in order to be satified (and therefore stop bothering you).  Ignoring them (my favorite way of dealing) doesn't work.

There are a lot of examples of people going through the process of personifying demons in the book, complete with graphic physical descriptions of people's guilt or shame.  I had a really hard time getting into that part. I didn't have any problem with the idea of visualization, or even in the Buddhist undertones (I'm Christian), but I found it hard to take the idea of feeding myself to an imaginary being seriously.

At the end of the book, however, there was a really helpful chapter explaining that the idea of creating a visible demon is helpful so the reader can focus. I get that, totally.  I would probably use something else, but I really wish that explanation had been at the BEGINNING of the book, instead of the end.   I think many people like me who aren't Buddhists might give up a lot earlier without that explanation.

That said, I found the descriptions of different sorts of demons, including those of egocentricity and elation, fascinating.  Apparently there IS too much of a good thing, and getting full of yourself will hurt your ability to self-actualize as much as addiction.  Something to think about: 

"Worldly demons of elation are connected to an inflated sense of pride around success, work, family, or possessions.  Think about times when you have felt puffed up about your clothes, your home, your appearance, your car, or your wealth.  This demon is also connected to any profession that is held with respect and in which you might have power over others ... If we are in the grip of this demon, we stop examining our own motives and actions.  Our behavior may become sloppy and careless.  If demons like this appear and we fail to recognize them, we will be taken over.

I also really related to what Allione said about cultural demons.  She used the example of dragon-slaying in Western culture.  We're always trying to seek out an enemy and destroy it, rather than find out what it wants and satisfy it in some more productive way. (The war in Iraq comes to mind.)  Here's a quote:

Our state of polarization is not only in the outer world; within ourselves we fight demons of addiction, stress, trauma, anger, and self-hatred, just to name a few.  We try to dominate everything, inside ourselves and without, including Mother Nature herself.  But rather than ever achieving final victory, we become engulfed in the struggle, which holds us captive. As we seek to kill the dragon, we find ourselves in danger of destroying the natural world, making human life on this planet untenable.

Sounds freakily familiar, doesn't it?

Definitely worth a read, though the techniques can (and maybe should) be customized if this approach seems a little surreal to you, as it did to me.  I can see how I could incorporate my own God into this model, and I do think it's a good one.  I also really like the Buddhist philosophy, don't get me wrong, but I'm not all-or-nothing when it comes to religion -- I can clearly see how the two philosophies could work together in a setting most comfortable to the practitioner.