Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

As for me, I did NOT find a (very clean) unopened ketchup packet while unloading the dishwasher.

I did NOT make a mistake while dialing a business number, and end up calling a very naughty number instead. I did not hang up at lightning speed and sit there blushing like crazy in a room all by myself.

I did NOT scandalize my sister by giving my child – not one – but *two* suckers during her haircut to try and get her to stay in the cute airplane chair long enough for the trim and for pictures. The suckers did not get hairy. (They were probably on the counter to be used as rewards AFTER the haircut, for that very reason?)

I did NOT clean solid drips of yogurt off the outside of the toilet while getting ready for company. I don’t even know what else to say about that.

I have NOT had a melted shot glass on my counter ever since this incident, just waiting to be photographed before moving to the trash, so I could update the above post. I did NOT give my husband a “photography assignment” when he had the good camera out from our hike yesterday. If I had, that would explain why he chose to include the flower bauble to “make it more artistic” for me. But none of that happened, so nevermind.

So how about it, what hasn’t happened in your household? It’s really not fair if only some of us get to benefit from this method of therapy you know. It’s easy to add a comment and get it off your chest! Who’s first?

As for me, do you remember the whipped cream from my key lime pie? I used some on our first strawberries of the season, then threw it away to avoid further temptation. Before tossing it, I did NOT spray some directly into Siena’s mouth just to get her reaction. That would have been childish and unsanitary, not to mention setting a bad example for an impressionable young toddler. Not me!

When playing with bubbles, I’ll admit it was amusing that Siena blew a bubble with her mouth when she said “bubble!” after pressing the bubble wand up to her lips. What I won’t admit to though, is trying to re-create that amusing occurrence with my own lips. I’m sure I would have failed anyway, and tasted some nasty bubble solution in the process. So, I didn’t even try. Not me!

We take bedtime prayers very seriously. There’s no way my husband would have added a loud HONK to the middle of a Hail Mary when Siena poked his nose. Not my husband!

Along those lines, if our family were in the cry room in the back of church (a place we never go, since Siena is an angel during Mass) and she looked particularly cute camped out in a kneeler, there’s no way I’d nudge my husband to grab a picture of her with his phone. Not me! And not my husband, either, for that matter!


We don’t have a Chipotle in our town, and really miss it. So most of the time when I’m headed home from visiting my parents, I’ll stop in at Chipotle and bring a burrito home to HawkInWinter. It can be a difficult stop to take Siena out of her seat so soon after strapping her in, hold her in line, hold her as I walk along the sneeze guard requesting ingredients, hold her as I pay and as I carry her out to the car again. This most recent time, when I snagged a spot right in front of the Chipotle with its big windows, the thought never crossed my mind to leave her in the car. I didn’t leave her there as I walked up to see how long the line was, and then come back to get her. No, as soon as I parked, I got her out of her carseat and took her inside. If I *had* had a moment of hesitation though, I would have been quite thankful my conscience won out once I saw a team of firefighters park right next to my car!

I did not use the word “dependation” when discussing the independent and dependent variables in linear algebra. Even if it was well past bedtime, that strange word would not have come out of my mouth.

Siena did not learn the words “Cheeto” or “candy” this week. Nothing like that ever enters our house. Similarly, she did not learn to say “naughty” because there’s never any occasion to use that word around her. She never hits, and never throws spoons, bowls, or cups off her tray, for example.

She has started saying “diaper” and “stinky”, which makes sense because of the huge number we’ve been changing these last 9 days. While packing some away-from-home food for her babysitter, I did NOT grab the container of strained prunes in a moment of obliviousness, only to realize too late that they were the complete opposite of what I should have been feeding her if I wanted to combat her digestive problems. Sigh.

When sitting on the toilet, Siena is never unsupervised. I never step out to change a load of laundry or put clothes away in her room next to the bathroom. That’s precisely why there’s no way I discovered her, sitting on the toilet, with a pile of unravelled toilet paper almost high enough to touch her dangling feet, proud as punch that she’d unwrapped a hidden “doot-do-doo”, or toilet paper tube. (Named for the sound one makes into it, of course.)

How about you? What have you NOT been up to lately?

Welcome to a slightly different version of Not Me! Monday – it’s Not My Child! Monday instead. Both blog carnivals were started by MckMama over on her blog, My Charming Kids.  Not My Child! Monday is where I tell you all sorts of things my child has certainly NOT done recently. Thing that, if she HAD done them, might be rather therapeutic to share with you, not to mention entertaining.  Because if we can’t laugh at ourselves and our children, life’s just not as fun.

First off, Siena learned early on not to put unapproved objects in her mouth. Her crib rails are not approved objects, so of course she has never chewed on them. If she had started cutting teeth on her crib rails, I probably would have tied the little bumper from her cradle onto the top to protect her crib from unsightly teeth marks her from splinters.  And of course, if the bumpers had been tied on for several months, there’s no way she would have just recently discovered about four unprotected inches of the crib rail and started gnawing away, prompting me to tie a pair of pants on there.  Not my child!

A couple weeks ago I did a quick grocery trip for ingredients to a scrumptious Texas Caviar I was bringing to my friend’s baby shower. (People asked for the recipe when I served it at Siena’s First Birthday, and again at the shower. I found it on this blog post if you want to check it out. ) I was in the checkout line with my little basket, Siena on my back in the Ergo baby carrier, when the checker lady announced that the phone lines were down all throughout town and for about a hundred miles around us, so debit cards wouldn’t work. I didn’t have my purse and checks with me, since I usually just slip my ID and debit card into the pouch of the Ergo when I’m making one quick stop with Siena. I did have some parking cash hidden in my car though, so I left my basket with the checker lady while we ran to get it. On the way back from the car, with cash in hand, Siena still perched on my back, I did NOT discover she was carefully clutching one avocado in each of her hands. Nope, I’m not enabling a petty thief at 16 months old. Not my child!

There is, admittedly, some possibility that  Siena may have exuberantly kicked off her less-than-securely latched high chair tray, causing her snacks to scatter over an alarming radius from her chair.  Had that happened, however, Siena certainly would not have made it a game to eat said snacks off the floor *without the use of her hands* while I ran for the broom. Not my child!

(Look closely to see the fish cracker between her lips above)

(For the record, I wouldn’t have allowed such unsanitary manners to continue as long as I was trying to capture reasonably good images on my cell phone, even if the floor had just been baby-wiped clean the day before.)

My child did not give me the opportunity to teach you all, in case you ever wonder, what happens when you drop a metal hair clip into the center column of a humidifier and let it sit for several days until your Daddy discovers it.  (brown gritty water, rusty pitted clip for the curious) Not my child!

As I lifted her up to wipe her bottom, my child did not toss one of her favorite touch and feel board books into the toilet. The toilet she had just put to good use, and had yet to flush.  Therefore, Siena did not watch me with a confused look as I transfered her book from the toilet to the trash.  Not my child!
(And if you are silently thanking me for grabbing a picture after the transfer rather than before, you are welcome. I’m thoughtful like that.)

No, that didn’t happen because my daughter never throws things.  Especially not out in public.  Like in a Gymboree outlet store. Like if she had been carrying around two butterfly shaped purses  (“fwy! fwy!”) and her adorable attachment to them had convinced me to buy her one to keep her church toys in, and she got angry when I tried to get her to put one back on the shelf so we could buy the other one, but she wanted them both so she threw them both down.  That’s the sort of thing she never does.  My daughter would be so thankful I was going to buy her one purse that she’d be very happy. She would not insist on having all or nothing, ultimately getting nothing. Nope, not my child!

How about you? Have you or your child(ren) NOT done anything lately that might make us smile? Leave a comment or click Read Comments to see what others have shared.

UPDATE: If not all the pictures have loaded, (you see question mark icons instead of pictures) will you please leave a comment to let me know? And try refreshing the page to see if that helps. Thank you!

Are you embarrassed to admit you gave your kids the Bepto-Bismol flavored pink conversation hearts you can’t stand? Feel a twinge of guilt as you select the Repeat Play option as you set your toddler in front of Baby Einstein? Worried what people would think if they knew you change into your workout clothes as you drive from the office to the gym? Not Me! Monday was born out of blogger MckMama’s desire to admit some of her imperfections and reveal a few moments she’d rather forget. You may find it therapeutic to join in and do the same thing! I sure do!

Have you ever tried to save time and effort by spot cleaning your floor with baby wipes rather than giving it a proper mopping?

Have you ever discovered it definitely takes LONGER to crawl around on your knees using a couple dozen baby wipes, than it would have taken to use a broom and mop in the first place, only to have that point driven home when you stood up to find your daughter fast asleep in her high chair?

Have you ever dropped a scoop of ice cream on the counter, then plopped it into your husband’s bowl? Especially on a day meant to celebrate the generosity and self-sacrificing love St. Valentine?

Have you ever had to tell your toddler it is NOT okay to kiss the toilet?

Have you ever heard yourself scold, “Baby Jesus is not for babies!” (If so, it was probably after your baby dropped a figurine and broke off a holy little finger, right?)

Have you ever raised an eyebrow at a dessert concoction made up of half a glazed doughnut, cinnamon, a pineapple ring, ice cream, and red hots? And then helped yourself to a second?

Yeah, me neither. Who would do any of those things? Not me!

Here’s my therapeutic collection of a few things that did and did not happen this past week:

Siena DID work on drinking from a cup this week. She DID use a plastic, hand painted souvenir shot glass her Great Grandma Gee Bee gave her from a trip to Florida decades ago. It did NOT fall off the top shelf of the dishwasher, melt on the element, and stink up the house.

I DID forget my I.D. when I ran to the grocery store for a recipe that called for beer. I did NOT buy non-alcoholic beer and figure neither of us would notice a difference. Not us! We’re trendy people with sophisticated palettes for well brewed beers.

I DID make pudding for Siena to finger paint St. Valentine’s Day cards. The box did NOT have an expiration date of Oct 07.

I DID use pudding that said “5 Minutes To Homemade!” (whatever “homemade” means in this context…) I poured the powder into the bowl…and it was NOT somehow 3 hours later when I stirred in the cold milk to transform it into 5 Minute pudding.

I DID shave my legs in the bathtub this week. I did NOT let Siena in with me. Not me! Just the idea of that would make any good mother cringe, right?

Siena DID take a bath by herself this week, too. It did NOT end when she discovered the drain plug and I found myself scolding, “Uh-uh, yucky! That’s not a pacifier!” Nope, not me!

I DID try Siena’s hair in some perky pigtails this week. One pigtail DID fall out during the course of the day. I did NOT leave it that way for a second round of finger painting (pudding didn’t work so well) since she was hitting the bath right afterwards anyway. Not me! I always keep my daughter looking her best, with perfectly groomed hair and never looking like a shaggy ragamuffin. Especially if I’m going to be taking pictures.

Oh, and that certainly is NOT our clutter on the chair… or table… or floor… or counters in the background.  We were – um – at some other house. I don’t remember whose.

Back at the grocery store again, I DID carry Siena in the Ergo Baby Carrier, on my front, facing inward, the whole time. Siena did NOT have a runny nose at the time, or a terry cloth bib so I could wipe her nose without carrying a garbage bag for tissues. Not me! It is pretty inconsiderate to take a sneezing, slimy baby out in public, even if you do try to keep all the germs aimed at yourself.

HawkInWinter DID set off the smoke detector this week. It was NOT while the oven was still pre-heating, meaning it was really that dirty. Nope, not my oven!

I WAS excited to learn that Hulu would be playing all the Superbowl ads. I did NOT announce to my husband, “Now we don’t have to watch football in between commercials!” No, I’m definitely too much of a Spunky Sporty Spice to say that.

I DID have to change Siena’s jeans after her snack since she’d managed to sit on a chunk of banana. I changed her diaper, changed her jeans, put her down for a nap, cleaned her tray and went on with my afternoon. When it was time for her next snack, she did NOT plop right back down on the same chunk of banana. No way did I neglect to wipe her high chair seat the first time around. Not me!

So, that was my week. How was yours?

I’m back! Who knew that starting a blog would mean adding one more thing to feel guilty about? After nearly seven months without a post, I have a few stored up and hope to get back into the swing of things again. We’re using a different program for posting pictures, so it shouldn’t take me hours of previewing and correcting code for each post.

I’ll start off with a Not Me! Monday story for you. Remember Not Me! Monday? It was started by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

But first, take a look at a series of events that didn’t happen to us a couple weeks ago:

I did not forget to change my daughter’s diaper upon waking from her nap, since I’d been waiting for her to wake up so we could get groceries and prescriptions. I especially did not forget about that diaper until placing her into the shopping cart in the grocery store entrance, deciding to change it at the next stop. While nearly an hour into our shopping trip, I certainly didn’t run out of Baby Mum Mums from home (at least Baby Mum Mums aren’t sold at that particular grocery store, so it wasn’t completely tacky…yet). Because if I HAD run out of snacks from home and still had a hungry daughter, she might have turned around in her grocery cart seat and grabbed the package of freeze dried Yogurt Melts and started biting the photograph on the front of it. But even if she had done such a thing, I NEVER would have opened the bag of yet-to-be-paid-for toddler treats and fed her two at a time to buy myself (and my fellow shoppers) five more minutes without squawking before we checked out.

Once we arrived at the pharmacy, I most definitely DID take the whole diaper bag inside with me rather than just pop a single diaper into the zipper pouch of my Ergo baby carrier. And Siena was, of course, perfectly content to be carried in said baby carrier while we waited in line at the Drop Off counter, with no complaining, squirming, or shrieking to get “dow! dow! dow!” down.

And just because, during all our previous visits to this pharmacy, we’ve had a 30 minute wait between the front of the line at the Drop Off counter and getting in the back of the line at the Pick Up counter, I would NEVER have assumed that to be the case on this particular occasion, planning to change a soggy diaper during some of those 30 minutes. No, no, when I was told our prescriptions were filled and waiting on the shelf, I was pleasantly surprised and strolled my peaceful babywearing self to the back of the Pick Up counter line (during which time, I did NOT allow my daughter to take bottles of cold medicine off the shelves, line them up on the floor, then put them back again. I know medicine should never be confused with playthings).

Of course, once we reached the front of the line (and Siena showed zero interest in pressing all the buttons on the debit card keypad with one hand and holding my debit card in her other hand) and spelled our last name to the pharmacy assistant and waited for her to find all three hanging bags, remove all three containers of medication and side effect inserts and place them into paper pharmacy bags, I did NOT look at the $100+ total and realize we were technically uninsured for another day until the new policy started up and we could order insurance cards with the new company my husband’s employer switched to. (Yeah, and I’ve never written a run-on sentence in my life…)

But if that all HAD happened, I wouldn’t have been so thrown off course that I started to leave the store, forgetting all about the diaper…again. No, I went straight back to the restroom and changed that diaper and put Siena back in the pants she was wearing when I carried her in. There is — absolutely — no way that I was reminded of that diaper halfway to the exit doors when I heard the tinkling sound of urine falling on my boot. No way had I let a diaper get so soggy that it couldn’t hold a drop more, and spilled through her pants and down a few feet to my boot. And no way did I go buy baby wipes and a pair of Valentine’s Day pants, change the diaper, and carry a pair of wet pants out of the store in a shopping bag.

No, I’m way too good of a mother for ANY of that to have happened. I don’t know why you’d possibly think there’s any other reason for my daughter to be dressed in a pink flowery top and pink heart pants.

Oh, and did I mention we are now having all our prescriptions sent to the grocery store?

As for me, remember this cake from last week? I did NOT eat almost the entire thing by myself. And no, I did not cut a chunk to bring to my mom specifically so the spatula would fit in the pan to further enable direct-from-the-pan nibbling. Not me!

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And because I’m such a domestic goddess (note the 50’s apron – they don’t let you wear a 50’s apron unless you are a domestic goddess) my kitchen sink is sparkling clean at all times. I did NOT put so much elbow grease into cleaning the kitchen sink that I made my husband admire it as soon as he walked in the door.

No, my kitchen sink is always ready to try out my mom’s suggestion of bathing a baby in a sink if she’s too big for a baby tub but not steady enough for the bathtub. At the drop of a hat. Or maybe, at the drop of a ring?

~*~

Last weekend we DID have a very nice picnic at a park just across the river. Siena had an incredible diaper blow-out in her car seat, and of COURSE I had a complete (matching!) extra outfit ready and waiting for her in the diaper bag. I did NOT dress her in a too-small onesie and a sweater, then wrap her bare legs in a blanket while we hurried through our picnic. Nope, not me!

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We did not arrive for an overnight stay at my grandparents’ beach house without the mattress to the portable crib, and then proceed to stuff a towel-covered couch cushion in there instead. No, that would be a SIDS deathtrap and completely irresponsible. Besides, if we had done that, she probably would have cried inconsolably about being in a strange bed. If that HAD happened though, we definitely wouldn’t have caved in and let her join us instead. Not us!

~*~

Back in her own crib, Siena has NOT just figured out how to  pull herself into a kneeling position, so of course I did not find her like this after a nap on Friday:

or like this…

or even like this…

…because, of course, she is not manipulative. She does not try everything she can think of – from crying to looking sweet and happy, to whining “mamama”, to crying again – to get us to pick her up.

Nope. Not our Siena.

~*~

And because she’s not yet kneeling up in her crib, Hawk in Winter did NOT spend time on Mother’s Day lowering her crib mattress. He did not, ever so lovingly, finish the job by replacing the bumper. Upside down. And I, in turn, did NOT leave it that way and wait to see if he reads my blog post about it…

How about you? What did you and your family NOT do this week?

See, the idea is that you blog about things that most definitely did NOT happen around your home in the past week (or however long its been since your last Not Me! Monday! post) even if those people who were involved (or not) might say otherwise. Sometimes, even though a certain event did NOT happen, the description might be followed by a photograph that would also say otherwise.  (Remember all photos are clickable so you can view them bigger) It’s tempting to project a facade of perfect parenting, but it’s supposed to be very therapeutic to share about the funny mishaps that, of course, DON’T happen in real life. Are you starting to catch on?  You can head over to MckMama’s blog to read what she and everyone else have not been up to lately.

But first, a few things that have certainly not happened around our always calm, organized household:

Besides, even if we HAD just taken down that tree, it wouldn’t have been a Christmas tree. It would have been an Easter tree, with egg ornaments and a lamb on top.  Not that we had an Easter tree – we didn’t. We only had a Christmas tree, which has been carefully stored in our garage for months now.

[singlepic id=57 w=200 h=240 float=left]

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[singlepic id=55 w=150 h=240 float=left]  One thing that did happen last week is that I finished my temporary work  as an address lister for the 2010 Census. That DID  happen. What most definitely did NOT happen was coming home to find that my husband had strapped a toy to our daughter’s foot. Because that didn’t happen, Siena did NOT scoot in circles trying to reach that toy like a dog chasing its tail.  That would never happen in our home. Ahem. 

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No, we treat our daughter like a baby, not like a dog. And if our baby happened to be on the grass getting her picture taken and a dog came to check her out? Well then I would of course either shoo the dog away or pick my baby up. Never in a million years would I wait and see what happened, just in case it made a cute picture.  Never.

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I would also stop her right away if I saw this about to happen:

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And finally, after a long day of playing, Siena always goes down peacefully for a nap when she’s awake but sleepy – but before she’s cranky – just like the parenting books mandate. She never is allowed to fall asleep nursing, and never is so tired that she’s rubbing her eyes (because that, of course, is a sign that it’s “too late”). Our daughter is never overly tired. When she *first* exhibits any sign of sleepiness, I’m always right there to observe them and respond accordingly. I would never, ever, be in one room while Siena’s in another. And even if I were, I’d never be in that room long enough for anything like this to happen in my absence:

Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest. You know, because none of it would ever happen in my family. ;-D