And one more thing for today

The first part of this article really sounds odd . . . how does ri.ce "esc.ape"?

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/F9E99746BDD0DCE98625736B0077280E?OpenDocument

All of the recent food contamination and toy recalls is starting to make me concerned about what we eat and what J's playing with. I'm toying with the idea of starting our own garden - we don't really have a good space for it, and I tend to kill every plant I've ever had, but my parents were great gardeners and so I'm hoping it's in my genes somewhere and I just have to coax it out.

But rice? I can't grow rice. And hamburgers? I can't butcher my own cows! So even if I do start a garden, it's won't fix everything. And then there's things like this. I don't want to live in fear, but there is so much out there that goes wrong that sometimes I wished we had a little bubble with everything we needed inside.

[I had to go back and edit this to keep the phrase "ric.e es.cape" from showing up on a google search - I made the mistake of telling a "real-life" friend about the article and the phrase r.ice es.cape, and she was going to go look it up! So I didn't want this blog to pop up when she did!]

Elmo

Have your kids discovered Elmo yet? J. received a big, three foot tall Elmo as a shower gift before he was born, and we never realized how much he liked it until we were out shopping one day and he grabbed a stuffed Elmo off the shelf and screamed every time I tried to take it from him. So we bought the Elmo, and he loves both the "mama Elmo" and the "baby Elmo" and will even put his pacifier in baby Elmo's mouth when we tell him to! We've also started watching the Elmo segments on Sesame Street, and for Easter, J. received his first Elmo DVD, which he's fixated on right now.

Unfortunately, in every Elmo segment, Elmo sings a song about whatever he was talking about for that show. And it's not a good song - it's just one word, sung over and over to the same tune. So now I have "ears, ears, ears, ears . . ." stuck in my head.

This isn't quite as bad as the firetruck toy I just got J. - it sings whenever you push down on the fireman, but all it says is "up and down, down and up" over and over. So this is also stuck in my head.

Someone needs to create baby toys that play real songs.