Cold Spaghetti

The scene: me reading a bedtime story to Will, us lying together on his bed. Paul enters with Kate, who is hanging upside in his arms and shouting “MAMA” and something that sounds a lot like “COWABUNGA” over and over again. He puts Kate down on the bed, where she throws herself on top of me in a loud grunt.

“Someone demanded YOU,” he explains. I understand his position. Who is he to argue with her? He is mortal, after all.

Meanwhile, Kate has grabbed my shirt, pulled it up, and planted The Mother of All Zerbers directly on my belly. She looks up at us all and laughs.

I turn to Will. “Will, I think Daddy needs to finish your story. It seems Baby Kate needs me for a few minutes.”

Will (in a voice of experience): “I know. Because Katey is a Wild Animal.”

Abeona held an Open House last Wednesday evening, showcases many of the ongoing projects the kids’ are creating and welcoming old and new friends, teachers, and community members into the school. The school looked fantastic. It is sometimes difficult to see all of the projects and activities occurring during daily pick-ups and drop-offs — this was a great opportunity to really examine how the kids are exploring their world and see the kind of things they create to understand it.Earlier in the week, I chaperoned on a walking trip to the library (where the kids got their very own cards and checked out their own books), and took the opportunity to take “standards” of each child and get a class picture. The teachers hung the pictures in the school’s main hallway to show our “Abeona family” — it was a great display. I loved that the walls of each room were filled with documentation: stories, songs, conversations, projects, and pictures. The space reflected how the kids were encouraged to create expressively and freely. A somewhat related aside. During the few days I spent in Mobile, I took the kids to the Gulf Coast Exploreum. We happened to be playing in The Wharf as a local Mom’s group gathered. Everyone was very nice and we joined the fray, all the kids playing nicely together. After a little while, a staff member read a story about dinosaurs and gave the kids supplies to make dinosaur shapes by painting on foam cut-outs. It was a great project and the older kids were eager to dive in. I sat back and watched Will accept his piece of paper, select a dinosaur, can of paint, and brush and get to work. Although I stayed nearby (mostly guarding the rest of the kids from Kate, who was exploring the area), I didn’t intervene in Will’s project. I was the only parent who didn’t. Further, the other parents were completely directive of their child’s projects: guiding their hands as they painted, showing them where to put the dinosaur so that each press was spread along the paper, helping them push each side of the foam neatly and evenly. I thought, What kind of fun is that? Will was among the younger in the group but he handled it all just fine. I wondered that if I weren’t constantly confronted with evidence of my child’s ability to create on his own, would I hover so? (Honest answer: without a doubt, yes.) Not to be hard on the Moms (I’m sure to some degree they were worried of the kids making messes in public) — but maybe we Moms need a course in how to incorporate Reggio methods at home. I think that sometimes Moms need some help knowing how to help our kids be kids — and get tips from the professionals on how to make it easy from start to clean-up.

Thanks to the talents of my wonderful sister-in-law, I now have these beautiful buttons! I stuck the first one up in the right column but can’t remember how to alter the HTML to center in the column (will research later). Thanks, Emily! These are great!

Technically, Born to be Wild is Kate’s song. But fast-movin’ along on his bike (complete with Lightning McQueen head and knee gear), Will gives her a run for it.
Kate made her own wild woman moves. Chasing Will around… shoeless. (See Paul carrying the first shoe?)
Baby toes on the sidewalk.

1. Emailed Blogger.
2. Read this.
3. Used a free Copyright button. It looks awful. Anyone out there with a copy of Photoshop and some skills to make something that looks better?
4. Do what blogger said I have to do… I guess this will happen instead of sleep, making the kids’ lunches, cleaning the house, or finishing the changes to my third draft and getting informal committee feedback before setting a defense date? Argh.
5. Appeal to thems in the know for advice and guidance.

Apparently, dealing with blog-stealing creeps is more difficult than I assumed. Blogger has adopted a “it’s your problem, do the work” attitude. Their response, below:

Hi there,

Thank you for your note. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged
infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the
text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website:
http://lcWeb.loc.gov/copyright/ ) and other applicable intellectual
property laws, which may include removing or disabling access to material
claimed to be the subject of infringing activity.

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written
communication (by fax or regular mail, not by email) that sets forth the
items specified below. Please note that pursuant to that Act, you may be
liable to the alleged infringer for damages (including costs and
attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that you own an item when
you in fact do not. Indeed, in a recent case (please see
http://www.onlinepolicy.org/action/legpolicy/opg_v_diebold/ for more
information), a company that sent an infringement notification seeking
removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine
was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to
pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material
available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first
contact an attorney.

To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following
format (including section numbers):

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has
been infringed upon. This must include identification of specific posts,
as opposed to entire sites. Posts must be referenced by either the dates
in which they appear or the permalink of the post. For example,
http://example.blogspot.com/archives/2003_01_21_example_archive.html#2104575.

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted
work listed in item #1 above.

YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH POST BY PERMALINK OR DATE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS
INFRINGING MATERIAL. The permalink for a post is usually found by clicking
on the timestamp of the post.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Blogger to contact
you (email address is preferred).

4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use
of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing
web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the
law.”

5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury,
that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the
copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an
exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

6. Sign the paper.

7. Send the written communication to the following address:

Google, Inc.
Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043

OR Fax to:

(650) 618-2680, Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

I feel so violated. Little coldspaghetti has been ripped off. Thanks to a friend’s tip off, I found out that this blog is being translated into German and re-posted on another blogspot site to generate ad revenue for some nefarious folk. Here is my letter to blogger:

Dear Blogger,

Thanks to a friend’s tipoff, I discovered that my blog content and photographs are being copied — translated to German — and posted online. I assume this is for ad revenue as the links at the bottom of the page would suggest. This is the German blog with the stolen content: http://populartravel.blogspot.com/2007/09/kalte-spaghetti-der-ein-strand-von.html

I’ve posted to my own blog about it, am reviewing your steps to prevent content being copied (found in the help section of the blogger site), and am writing you to request that you take down this German copied site since it is hosted through blogspot.com.

I am grateful for your assistance and sincerely appreciate your time and attention in this matter.

Looking forward to your response,
Holly (coldspaghetti.blogspot.com)

Jeez-la-wheeze!

Paul went to Juggling Club on Saturday for the first time in a long, long time. After naptime, we joined him in the park.
Both kids tested my sanity with the fountain. The fountain where dog walkers bring their dogs to take a dip, a drink and whatever else. Kate likes to stick her hand in the water… and then lick that hand. Ugh.

Will was obsessed with the water fountain and determined to use it, again and again, BY HIMSELF. Mostly, I think he just enjoyed the climbing challenge… and the fact that it took all my strength to not see him falling and breaking his head on the cement below.

The met some fun kids who live nearby and had a great time in Audubon Park.

Perhaps in part to the dramatic developmental leap he has taken (more on this later), or perhaps just because his bladder is developing faster than the sensors in his brain, or perhaps just because it’s totally normal… Will is wetting the bed. A lot. Like, every night.

Before you say, “use a Pull-Up!” let me make it clear that each and everyone of these accidents are occurring with a pull-up. We’ve instilled no water before bedtime rules, wake him up in the middle of night to use the potty, and have had detailed discussions about it being okay to get out of bed to use the bathroom anytime. Still, the morning comes and we’re greeted by a very wet bed.

Is it that the pull-ups just can’t handle the fill? We are using “Easy-Ups” — which are actual pull-on diapers. We’ve had the most success with these (versus the feel-n-learn variety which don’t hold much). Maybe it’s the fit? The form? Should we use underwear over the pull-up to hold it closer to his body?

Do any readers have experience with this? Any ideas??? We’re getting really tired of washing his sheets every morning!

They can’t actually be serious.

I wish this had come out earlier, it would have been interesting in the focus groups… to hear what case managers working so hard with so little would say about this. Their phones will probably be ringing off the hooks tomorrow morning. One more thing for which people need help and have no where to turn.

I’m a little baffled by it, too. Mostly by this part:

The IRS decided only late last year that the grants would be taxable.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding things, but isn’t it a bit irresponsible for the IRS to decide to tax something WAY after it’s been paid out? How is it okay to just change the rules after the fact? Particularly when the grant is for home-rebuilding and is going directly towards the costs associated with construction and repair? I don’t know of any folk who put Road Home money into a “rainy day” fund, just in case something else came along. And it wasn’t like the application had a line item for tax overhead. The kind of estimates that went into applications for Road Home money didn’t leave a lot of room for wiggle. Some folks had to get multiple estimates on repairs until one came that was low enough to be acceptable on the application.

Do we really need another layer of red tape in this process? More rules means more labor, more overhead, and more cost to the program that isn’t getting put in rebuilding. Things shouldn’t be this hard. Who is benefiting from all this hassle?