Vote today.
Then, make sure your kids know you voted today.
Let them wear red-white & blue so they can feel like they’re taking part. Get a “My mom voted today” sticker they can wear.
I love election day.
Extra love to my Sister and Brother-in-Law (the original blogging Politician) who are both on the ballot today!

My 3 older kids all liked pacifiers for their first few months of life. Then, they discovered their thumbs and abandoned the pacifiers. But Oscar broke the mold. He didn’t like pacifiers and he didn’t suck his thumb.
Until Betty arrived.
A few weeks ago, he started taking her pacifier right from her mouth as a kind of joke. Then he experimented with chewing it for a few days. Then he figured out what it was good for. And now he’s completely addicted and I have to track down 2 pacis all day long. Oscar will be 2 in January — just the age where you want to introduce a highly addictive comfort object.


Remember I mentioned we wanted to sell the Eurovan? Well, we haven’t had the heart to do it — especially now that our awesome road trip reminded me that the VW is actually designed for awesome roadtrips. What in the world are we going to replace it with?
Plus, I think it’s a really good candidate for Pimp My Ride. In the last episode I watched, the Pimp My Ride team installed a snow maker on the car, three different TV screens in the dashboard, and also TV screens on the mudflaps. Awesome. For sure they can handle my requests.
This is what I want done to our Eurovan:
-Replace the 5 rear seats with a curved bench that seats 6 (we always need an extra seatbelt for a guest/playdate). The bench would start where the back, passenger-side bench starts, but then curve around until it meets the driver’s seat. This would be amazing. It would eliminate front row/back row arguments and there would be super easy access from the side door for me to climb in and buckle everyone quickly. We only have one sliding side door, and the bench would block a potential second side door, but I don’t mind. The bench would be so great.
-The curved bench also needs to convert to a bed when needed.
-The curved bench needs to be easily removed so we can have pure, unadulterated cargo space as needed.
-Each seat on the bench should have it’s own cubby/basket attached underneath, but not touching the floor to make for easier vacuuming. The cubbies should be easily removeable for cleaning out.
-In two or three seats on the bench there should be built-in carseats that are safe for 1-year-olds and up (like volvos) that can convert to regular seats. Imagine: no more installing car seats!
-In front of the curved bench there would be a table that stores flush with the floor and sets up with one hand — the kids could eat or play games or do homework here.
-All ashtrays and existing pockets for stuff should be eliminated so that there’s nowhere for apple cores to hide and no hard-to-reach places to clean. Streamline.
-There should be a Dustbuster port that charges as the van runs, so it’s ready anytime.
-I don’t want a fridge in the car, but there should be cupholders in the bench that have a cooling button.
-TV screens installed in the seatbacks of the 2 front seats.
-Some kind of media station that accomodates DVDs, iPods, cds, tapes, GPS — with no visible wires.
-wifi access.
-Surfaces should be easy to maintain. Leather on the seats, maybe rubber flooring.
-A built-in diaper wipes compartment near the bench that’s easy to restock.
-Armorall wipes compartment in the dash (Ben likes to Armorall the car when he’s at red lights.)
-A garbage compartment that fits standard size garbage liners. And has a place to store garbage liners.
-Auto lift gate.
-Auto side door.
-Auto windows in the rear.
-Car kit with first aid, tools, chains, cables, blanket, etc. that stores neatly out of the way.
-TV screens on the mudflaps.
What do you think? Is the Eurovan reality show material?
Last Thursday at 11:00pm we called our hotel in Toronto to let them know we would be getting in at about 1:00am instead of midnight and to ask them to hold the room because we were driving through a surprise snow storm. A half an hour later, at 11:30pm all traffic stopped ahead of us.
We didn’t move another inch until 7:00 the next morning, when one by one, each car dug itself out of two feet of snow that fell during the night, and headed down the freeway.
The storm was so isolated that by the time we came to Niagara — a few minutes away from Buffalo — the only sign of the storm was the snow on our VW.
You can read more about the storm here.
We have a wonderful Halloween tradition we’ve practiced for the last 4 or 5 years: For bedtime stories in October we gather in the living room, light spooky candles and read scary stories in the flickering light. At the end of the stories each child gets to blow out a candle. I can’t believe how much my kids look forward to this ritual. And I do too. Bedtime stories around our house can get a little out of control — sometimes filling an hour or more and eating up that precious evening worktime — and our October tradition helps me reign things in without being a mean mom.
We’ve attempted to do something similar, in November with Thanksgiving stories and in December with Christmas stories, and met with limited success. What is it about October?
Our Halloween story collection is quite small and added to irregularly, so we supplement with library books. Some books we like: Pumpkin Moonshine, Jeb Scarecrow’s Pumpkin Patch, The Spider and the Fly, and In a Dark, Dark Wood.

What to be for Halloween is a year-round topic of conversation at our house. The ideas change week by week. Sometimes hour by hour. I have to enforce a drop dead decision date of October 10th, after which no costume changes are allowed, so that I have time to get everything together.
When they were younger I loved coordinating their costumes. When it was just Ralph and Maude they were Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. When it was Ralph, Maude & Olive it was The 3 Bears (Papa, Mama and Baby). Now that’s a no go. We’re all a little too opinionated around here. Last year it was Frankenstein, A Pumpkin, Belle (as in Beauty & the Beast) and A Lion.
This year Ralph wants to be a candy bar. He’s thinking Butterfinger, but he wants to make it spooky by changing it to Blooderfinger. That, or he wants to be a mad scientist. Maude wants to be a warrior from Mulan. Olive wants to be Ariel (as in the Little Mermaid). Thankfully, Oscar and Betty don’t care yet.
Yesterday Ben dropped home after teaching his first class of the semester. He was just grabbing some lunch before heading off to work at SmartNoise. I was on the phone with my sister Sara and she said, “Tell Ben I’m angry because he hasn’t posted in so long. I check every day.”
I told Ben, and he looked up from his plate of spaghetti to say, “A lot of people are angry.”
And now remembering it makes me happy today.









