Freckle Finders

Chuk is covered in freckles and his pale skin has made this trait very prominent. We didn't realize that a person begets freckles as they grow older, as Salem was born dot-free. This summer she started to develop some on her face; at first they were very pale, but now I see the numbers growing exponentially, and we have indicated each find on a daily basis, it's a process and is something we've begun doing each night.


"Hey Sally! Looks like you grew another freckle today!"

her: "Really?!"

me: "yep, maybe even two!"

Today, she had been eyeing my face. Paying close attention to me as I spoke to her, she said,

"Mom? you got a new freckle!"

Me: "I did?"

We went into the bathroom; I pulled her up on the counter with me as we stared into the mirror to note the location of my new freckle.

me: "Uh, no. That's not a freckle, it's just a zit."

I would have preferred a freckle.

Where She Gets It

Her Father, that's where she gets her nuttiness.

That Seatbelt Taste

Salem and I were recently on a trip to Maine to visit my brother and his family, which is one of the many reasons I have been neglecting to post for several days. Oh, that and the fact that I'm l-a-z-y.

During our trip, we had the privilage to ride one of my favorite things, an airplane. Just saying that word sends me into a panic, as I'm a super white-knuckle flyer that can't drive past an airport without reaching for a xanax, never mind what I act like as a passanger. I describe my in-flight attitude much like I would describe how I'd react if I were in a tall building and the shizzle was on fire. Yeah, I'm that person, just ask honeychild, she'll tell ya.

As I was buckling my child's "safety belt" (sorry dude, if a plane goes down, the 'safety belt' aint' gonna save ya.) she grabbed the slack end and shoved it in her pie-hole.

"Salem! Don't put that nasty seatbelt in your mouth! Ick! Do you know how dirty that is!! Never put things in your mouth, hundreds of people have planted their bums in these seats, you don't know what kind of germs you just raked over your toungue!"

"Okay, mom. (pause) Do you think that someone put this seatbelt in their butt?"

"I hope not, Salem, but you never know and thats why we don't put stuff in our mouths."

"Okay mom. You're right, I shouldn't do that... (pause) because it does really taste like butt."

Striking Simliarity

For all of those 90's music fans, here's something that my friend John noticed...

Hair Product

Before I begin, I wanted to just say how much I think the use of the word "product" when referring to hair gel just kills me. Whatever! It's freakin' hair gel, lets not try to make ourselves feel more important while we prepare for the day, shall we?

On that note, Chuk called me at work this morning:

chuk: "Hey, did you notice that Salem's hair had some kind of crap in it yesterday evening?"
me: "When I picked her up from Maureen's, her hair was wet. But she just got back from the pool."
chuk: "That's what I thought too. But this morning it was still "wet". I figured out why."
me: "Alright, what's up?"
chuk: "She has a whole tube of lip gloss smeared all over her head. She told me that she and the other girl's at Maureen's emptied entire tubes of lip gloss on each other's hair. I've washed it 3 times and still can't get it all out. What do I do?"
me: "Put it up in a pony tail and I'll google "lip gloss removal from 4 year old's hair" and take care of it tonight."

Problem solved.

'Like' A New Word Integration

If you go to the mall and listen to teenagers talk to each other you'll find that they have a distinctive dialect. You know, the girl behind the ice cream counter, a young food server, your babysitter--all have something in common; the say 'like' and they say it ALL the time. They use this word in every sentence, sometimes multiple times in the same breath. I find it rather distracting an annoying.

"Um, ma'am, you're daughter is like, super cute. She's got like a cute dress on and stuff..."

Salem has now begun using this word and it's saturating all of her communication.

"Mom, it's like really hot in your car. I can't like stand it or anything...."

Ick! I'm really going to have to work with her on this. If she's already speaking as if she were a teenager at the age of four, what do I have to look forward to down the road? I hope she's not going to be communicating in Klingon! when she's 14.