Smoke Alarms

I was watching Canada AM this morning and they were talking about fire hazards for the holidays. I wanted to share my own little story so that maybe it'll motivate people to check their alarms.

Did you know a smoke alarm is only good for 10 years? After that it needs to be replaced.

When we first moved into this house we replaced the batteries in the smoke alarms and pressed the "check" button to see if it made noise - it did.

A little while later Jen and I were cooking or baking or something or other and something spilled on the bottom of the oven. There was smoke - a lot of it - and no alarm. There was so muchs moke we took Colin outside so he wouldn't inhale it. No alarm???

That got me questioning things. Lucky for us my father in law used to run an industrial fire alarm company so he loaned us a bottle of spray smoke which we used to test the alarm more conclusively. It did not work. We had lived for months in a house with no alarm.

We have since changed the alarm and added a few others around the house and now feel more safe. Just a heads up that just because the beep goes when you press the battery button doesn't mean its working. Do an actual check and pay attention when you accidentally smoke out your house ;)

PS. Did you actually read my public service announcement? Good for you! Now you can laugh at me because my arms hurt like crazy from shovelling yesterday's special brick-snow

No

Well he's definitely learned what "no" means. He crawls up to the stairs, looks at me, I say "no", he either starts to cry or really quickly starts climbing. He knows he's not supposed to but the devil on his shoulder is just too strong.

now he just plucked a bunch of hairs out of Kodak. Kodak meowed but didn't leave. Stupid stupid cat.

Quick like a bunny

Colin is sooo fast!

He went into the hall just now and I was watching him but didn't jump up to go get him right away. I took a sip of my coffee and next thing I know he's up 3 stairs. I get up and approach slowly so he doesn't attempt to go down the stairs or something crazy. As I approach he watches me very still then decides to make a last ditch effort at escaping me and boogies up 3 more stairs. Of course I laugh because I just can't help it and he's all smiles making his happy sound.

I brought him back to the livingroom and now he's moved onto pulling books off the book shelf again. I think I'm going to have to move the remaining books of mine upstairs and bring the rest of his books downstairs for him to mess with.

Paper

Colin LOVES paper. He loves to crinkle it, taste it and crawl around holding it.

Last night Kim and I took him to Montanas. It was an incredible night for him. He played with the gigantic paper they put on the tables and eventually managed to rip one giant piece into two smaller pieces. He thought it was the most amazing thing in the world. He's never managed to rip paper before. The look of accomplishment was great.

He's sick with a cold right now an yet isn't slowed down for a moment. He spent the entire dinner bouncing and talking. When we gave him food he shoveled it down with gusto and enjoyed smiling at everyone that looked at him. On the way home he sang us a baby talk song.

This morning he's playing with paper again. I normally take paper away because he plays for a minute then eats it but this morning when I looked at him with it he gave me the biggest smile so I let him keep it for another couple minutes.

JK Rowling

I do love my Harry Potter books. I just read the graduation speech JK Rowling presented to Harvard grads in 2008. Its a great speech. There's also a video if you're interested.

http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

PS. Colin is now 8 months - 15 pounds 11 ounces. He's crawling, standing and walking with assistance and today he climbed 2 stairs before I stopped him.

Google

I just got some new comments on a post about abortion I wrote more than a year ago. I looked it up and if you google "ohip, abortion" my post is the fourth result. Yikes. that's more exposure than I ever figured this little blog would get. And since the days when I used to post opinion pieces on the news I've kinda lapsed into baby talk. I'd rather do the news pieces but I don't have time to watch the news let alone think or write about it.

This google result has got me pondering...

Off to a baby CPR course now.

Etsy has EVERYTHING

LMAO I was looking for finger puppets for Colin because I'm a shopaholic and he's napping and you'll never guess what I found. Rod Blagoyevich finger puppet!!!

I love it. Its just too funny! Had to share

Greenwash

For my dishwasher I buy these dish washer tabs that are supposed to be "green". They're phosphate free and all sorts of other stuff free and I figured they'd be better for us than the other stuff. I never bothered to google it, I just trusted the packaging - ya I know, not the brightest. 

I was just thinking about how silly it is though because the "green" tabs I have are from Costco so they come in a gigantic plastic tub and then are individually wrapped in plastic. Can't see how that's "green".

I have had much better luck with the "green" glass cleaner. It comes in a very thin plastic bottle and you can buy refills for it. I've been pretty lucky. Mr. Incredible wasn't keen on these green things but let me buy them till they didn't work and I haven't so far been proven wrong. He still misses his Windex* but aside from that I think he's happy with the results. 

*Mr. Incredible would clean the entire house with Windex. He has some sort of strange love for that product.