Last week was a pretty good week.  My week started off with an email from a New York Times reporter wanted to interview regarding a post I wrote about Amazon’s frustration free packaging.  Once I picked myself up off the floor, I emailed him back and told him it was okay to call.  I had a great conversation with their technology reporter, and I went on my merry way.  Seriously, my  heart was beating about 400 miles an hour while this was going on.  I asked for him to let me know when it gets printed, and I thought that was the end of it.

On Thursday, I was super surprised to get a call from the New York Times again!  This time they wanted to send a photographer to my house to get pictures of me and my kids!  I ended up with 2 hours to get me and the kids ready and clean the house.  It went well, I think, and I hope to find out soon when the article will get printed.

I feel incredibly blessed right now even though my mom is teasing about when Oprah is going to be calling. 

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My public school drives my absolutely bananas.  I wanted to get Madison’s hearing screened just to make sure that there were no problems.  We thought maybe some of Madison’s attention issues were due to her not hearing.  However, my school being the pain in butt that they are wouldn’t do it unless we scheduled her to be prescreened for preschool through the school (which is a joke but I’ll tell you about that later).  Obviously, there is some sort of federal funding they get for this, because I wanted a five minute screening and got stuck with an hour long screening.  I sucked it up and took her.

I swear that they expect these kids to have a flash memory drive in their heads. I could hear some of the things they were testing her on, and from what I could tell, she was doing well.  When they called me up after the testing was over, I was right.  Except for cutting and catching, she scored everything else in the 6 year old range.  Madison is only 4.  I am seriously wondering if some of the attention issues we are having with her at preschool are due to her being bored. That was the good news.

The bad new was that we failed her hearing screening.  I asked what the school would do for that.  The answer:  nothing.  We would have to pay for additional testing elsewhere.  The other thing that ticked me off to no end was that she couldn’t even get into the school preschool if I wanted to send her.  The only kids who get in are those who are considered “at risk” (which Madison is obviously not) and if we made less than $80,000 a year.  Umm, yeah.  We make more than that.  In Chicago, I am not sure if you can even own a decent house making less than $80,000 a year.  Basically, the only kids who get in are those who don’t speak English (because there were several kids like that there) and low income people.  I guess my question is what about the middle class?  Why do we always get screwed?

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I took this picture of Madison late last night. We had put her bed, and about an hour later, she came screaming out of her room. She was crying so hard that we had no idea what happened.  All I know is that I saw she had a mouth full of blood, and I ran her into the bathroom.  We still couldn’t figure out what had happened, but we had her rinse her mouth out with water and calmed her down a bit.  What we learned was that somehow she took her Pumpkin flashlight, and whacked herself in the face.  You can’t tell from this picture, but she actually somehow cut two little spots below her lip, and her entire lip is swollen.  She also had some black and blue marks show up instantly. After we calmed her down and found out what happened, she says to me “mommy, do you want to take a picture?”.  That’s my blogging girl!  LOL  She knew I was going to write about this.  LOL

The good news is that she is okay today.  The swelling went down, and she just has 2 little cuts below her lip.

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Amazon, if I could, I would seriously make out with you right now.  Yes, I said it.  Whoever came up with frustration free packaging is a genius.  They deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.  I also have to give a shout out to 37 Signals and Remarkable Parents for letting me know about this.

Now, you can see from this picture how the packaging is different.  The one of the right is what it looks like now.  The one on the left is the new packaging.  I find it weird that a lot of bloggers find this wrong.  However, as a mother of a 4 year old and a 1 year old I find this genius.  I remember when Madison turned one.  It took 6, yes I said 6, adults over an hour to open her toys.  Now, that is crazy.  I remember my fingers hurting from the twisty tie things and just the waste and the mess.  How would you like to get just a brown box, and all you have to do is open it?  Sounds much better, doesn’t it?  How many of you have had kids whining “do you have it out yet??!!??”?  I know I have that here.  They don’t have the attention span while you find a screwdriver and everything else you need to get some of these toys out of their packaging.  Heck, I remember cutting my arms on the clamshell packaging when you are trying not to saw the entire top of the packaging off.  Plus, this new packaging is so much better for the enviroment.  I would love to be able to recycle that box (where I live, the more the community recycles the less we pay for our garbage to get picked up).  Now, this packaging is done right at the factory too, and only effects Amazon.  You will still find normal packaging at your favorite brick and mortar store.

The main argument against this is that the kids can’t see what they are getting.  My response to that is what is worse — they have to actually open the box or have the toy stuck in packaging so the kids can see it but can’t play with it because it will take me 20 minutes to get it out?

I am interested — what are your thoughts on this?  If you can’t tell, I give Amazon two thumbs up on this move!

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How was your Halloween? Here is Chicago we had a beautiful day. The last two Halloweens it was so cold that we have to dress the kids in layers of berghaus clothing, and they were still cold after about an hour. Not that they wanted to quit trick or treating or anything, but I was worried about how cold it was. However, this year, we didn’t have that problem. I think it was almost 70 degrees out.  I definitely had the kids and myself overdressed.  I actually found myself sweating at times.  Isn’t that crazy?

We went with my neighbors and their kids and ended up trick or treating for about two hours.  About half way through, we went back to our houses and got a wagon.  Will was getting super heavy a that point.  Bill would have been here to help, but he got stuck in a huge traffic jam trying to come home (obviously, everyone had the same idea to leave early).  After the third house, I quit walking Will to the door.  His 27 pounds gets quite heavy when you have to walk up porch steps several time.  However, Madison made sure he was taken care of.  She asked at almost every house for candy for her little brother.  Then she would run to Will and put it in his pumpkin.  It was cute, but highly embarassing for me.

After two hours, Bill ended up getting home, and we went to his brothers house.  We were suppose to trick or treat over there, but the kids were pretty much done (which was fine with me, because I was beat).  We just ended up ordering pizza, and the kids just played together.

All in all it was a pretty good day.  How about you?  How did you spend your Halloween?

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