A heartwarming story came across my Facebook page this week, about some kids whose dad told them if they got 1 million likes on their Facebook photo they could have a new puppy. They got their likes in about 7 hours and their dad has promised to keep his word and get them a (rescue) puppy.

Adorable kids + puppies = internet gold, right? It takes less than a second to click the little up-thumb and now – thanks to Facebook’s news ticker – all your friends can immediately see and join in. Then we can all pat ourselves on the back for doing something nice today.

Here is the part of the post where I turn into the a Puppy Hating Grinch who probably enjoys seeing kids cry: I think asking for attention on Facebook is a stupid – if not downright dangerous – lesson to teach children.

Why didn’t the father ask his children to save their allowance money to cover the adoption costs of a puppy? Or make a sticker chart for responsible behavior and once they had filled it the dog could be their reward? I’d even have less of a problem with simply waiting for a special occasion – a birthday perhaps – and surprising the kids with a trip to the shelter to bring home a puppy. The lesson learned could be about responsibility and delayed gratification and doing nice things for those we love – all important factors in dog ownership.

Instead, the lesson these kids learned is that the attention of a million strangers is valuable and that being Facebook famous is something to strive for. In a society where “internet famous” is mostly a negative thing – anyone remember when Tila Tequila was just someone with a ton of MySpace friends? – why would you encourage your kids to focus on that kind of popularity? I have no problem with anyone, adult or child, wanting to be well known for a legitimate reason. Fame in itself isn’t negative. It’s the “Look at me! Look at me!” attitude of Facebook fame that I take issue with. Get Facebook likes for being clever or original or an amazing artist or rescuing a three-legged puppy from a shelter and naming him Tripod.

I sincerely hope those kids get a new puppy and love it enormously. I’m sure this is nothing more than a fun anecdote they’ll tell someday when they get together for holidays (“Hey, remember the time we were on Good Morning America??”) I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with being liked. But I do think rewarding kids for the attention of strangers is a mistake. Let’s reward our kids for kindness, responsibility, patience,  wise choices and not running with sharp objects instead.

I don’t know if I’ve ever said this out loud before but we are officially a no-nap household. Neither kid – the 3 and a half year old or the just-turned-2 year old – naps anymore. It a) SUCKS and b) isn’t so bad.

Back in November I took ALL the advice I got on my post about Caroline refusing to sleep if I gave her the iPad, which was the only way to get her upstairs and into nap-time mode without a fight. I tried putting a time limit on it, which was about as effective as just punching myself in the face. I tried just taking it away and letting her cry/play on her own, but she responded by murdering several library books and a stuffed rabbit. I tried lying down with her, which lead to being actually punched in the face.

None of it really helped and fighting about napping is even more exhausting than not napping – so I gave up. I let her win. We went from 3 hour naps to no naps, which also means Evan almost never gets a chance to nap on the couch or floor so there is NO SLEEPING in my house between the hours of 6:30 am and 7:30 pm.

(Well, unless I turn on some Mickey Mouse Club House and leave the snack drawer open and let the kids fend for themselves while I lie on the couch and periodically shout “Stop jumping on your sister! We do not ride Brutus like a small horse! No, markers do not go in your nose!” with my eyes closed. That’s not exactly restful, although it does save me from going totally insane at least once a week.)

Since they’re not napping anymore other than an occasional car nap between errands, bedtime is almost always cake. Delicious, quick, easy cake that involves me sitting on Caroline’s bed playing on my phone for 30 seconds before she passes out. Mornings are also pretty good, unless a certain ginger wakes me up at 5 am by staring at me silently until I jump up mumbling “OMG I’M UP WHO WHAT TACOS”.

I’ll also admit it’s sort of awesome not to schedule our day around naps. Blocking off 3 or 4 hours a day really put a cramp in our activities, especially in the winter when nothing is open until 10 am and it gets dark at 4 pm. OK kids, let’s go have fun for exactly 43 minutes before we have to head home for lunch and Caroline’s nappy nap! I now have the freedom to lounge around in my fleecy pants all morning, take a shower and noon and THEN drag the gingers out to the totally deserted (no seriously, we were the ONLY people there at noon on a Wednesday) Children’s Museum or to run errands or whatever.

On the “SUCKS” side of the no napping is everything else you would expect. Yesterday Evan fell asleep in the car in the 15 minutes between the museum and his super quick second flu shot (NOT EVEN A SHOT just the nose spray) appointment and he turned into a monster. Thrashing, screaming, throwing himself down in the parking lot, trying to kick me, trying to kick the nurse, shouting “I DON’T WANT A POKE!” etc etc someone please bring me a large bottle of wine etc forever. There are meltdowns. Sooooo many meltdowns. Not to mention the amount of TV the kids are watching some days. It’s disgusting. I’m ashamed. But not quite ashamed enough to cancel Disney Junior and declare us a screen-free household. Nope.

To sum up: I love my kids, I love spending time with them, and I am absolutely signing them both up for preschool over the summer.

p.s. New blog header!! I’m going for clean and modern, although I’ll probably go back to copious ginger photos in a few months. I can’t help myself.

Thank you for your texts, phone calls and tweets friends. We’re in the other half of the state from the shooting so we are all OK. A friend on Facebook reposted a status update from a relative who lives in Newtown, Connecticut today, thanking everyone for their thoughts and prayers but asking that we stop tuning in to the 24/7 news coverage so the media will leave them alone. I couldn’t agree more. I have no words for what happened and my children are too young (thank God) to be aware of what’s happened, so I’m trying to prevent it from affecting them by tuning out. Caroline’s birthday party was on Saturday and I am so, so thankful her 2-year-old world is untouched.

Sunday:

Party prep

Awesome parenting 101: don’t be afraid to use your sleeping daughter as a mouse pad.

Mr. Sparkles McBear

Monday:

Stretches during Stroller Strides

Because obviously you need a helicopter when you go shopping.

I have no idea why I owned so many creepy dolls as a child

Tuesday:

I woke up to silence & found them like this in Caroline’s room.

Buying Mormor a Christmas present in Mystic

Sharing hugs and a calculator

Wednesday:

Caroline demanded the huge car cart then refused to ride in in. Oh, 2 year olds.

Apparently they think the grocery store is really cold?

Part prep #2

Thursday:

Solo grocery shopping with a peppermint mocha = dream come true.

We’ve never been in this toy store before. We will DEFINITELY be going back.

I kind of want a monkey riding a bicycle for my front yard.

Friday:

Up before the sun, but at least he has a cat to keep him warm.

Bumpa made a joke about putting the children to work. The children insisted on following through. Note the jammies under her coat and boots. Note to Bumpa: Toddlers don’t understand sarcasm.

The last photo I took on Friday was at preschool drop off. The rest of the day I checked out of my phone.

Saturday:

Checking out the candy selection on the Frost Your Own Tree table

Someone please come over and help me eat leftovers.

A bathtub tea party requires your best necklace

For the rest of the day we’re going to eat leftover cookies and cuddle on the couch and watch Disney and play anything the kids want to without complaining. Actually, that’s pretty much the plan for every day for the rest of the year. We’re boring, but at least we are together.

Did you take iPhone photos of your week? Link up with one or several below! Please consider joining, even if you haven’t done it before – it’s really fun!

My friend Laura posted this on her blog and I found it totally fascinating, in part because even though Laura and I get along really well (in our exclusively interweb interactions) and I think we’re sort of kindred spirits – that’s going creep her out if she TOTALLY doesn’t feel the same way, but Imma risk it – our home/work lives are completely different. COMPLETELY. Reading her responses was sort of like watching a really short reality show where you think “Whoa, who actually lives like that????” Except instead of having drunk orgies in a hot tub or entering their jacked-on-Mountain-Dew toddler in beauty competitions it’s someone just doing their everyday stuff.

Maybe I am grossly overestimating how interesting other people find this sort of thing, in which case I apologize.

Davis Family Division of Labor

Here is a timeline of our weekend.

3 pm Friday: E calls to tell me he might not be able to come with us to Sesame Place for the weekend.

6 pm Friday: E calls to tell me he can PROBABLY come with us but not until 11 am on Saturday.

7 am Saturday: E calls to tell me he probably isn’t going to make it.

9 am Saturday: E calls to tell me he definitely isn’t going to make it so I should just take the kids and go. I make vague “Oh I don’t know…maybe we should just cancel…” noises but decide to go because I already paid for the hotel.

10 am Saturday: We hit the road!

10:10 am Saturday: We come home, because I forgot our season passes!

10:15 am Saturday: We re-hit the road!

10:30 am – 1:00 pm Saturday: The kids sleep almost the whole way, there’s no traffic, I only get a tiny bit lost and we make it to the park right as they open for the afternoon.

1:15 pm – 8:00 pm Saturday – Super good fun time at Sesame Place!

8:10 pm Saturday – Drive across the street to super nice hotel.

9:00 pm Saturday – Everyone is in jammies and in bed, but my migraine is horrible.

9:01 pm – 10:30 pm Saturday – Caroline coughs, I cough, Caroline coughs, I cough, Caroline coughs, I cough, Caroline coughs, I cough, Caroline coughs, etc etc etc. Eventually we both coughed ourselves to sleep.

Midnight – Evan starts coughing so hard he throws up. I clean him up and get him a glass of water. He throws up into the glass of water. I get a new towel to clean him up again. He throws up again and I manage to catch it all on the towel. “Wow, nice catch Mommy!” says Evan.

12:30 am Sunday – Evan falls back asleep.

4:00 am Sunday – I wake up with my migraine pounding.

6:00 am Sunday – Caroline wakes up ready to party.

7:30 am Sunday – I decide I need a shower to relax and help my head. Caroline decides she needs to stand right outside the shower and scream.

7:40 am Sunday – I let Caroline join me in the shower so she’ll stop crying. She screams some more, rubs soap in her eyes, then tries to climb out of the tub and falls RIGHT on her chin.

7:41 – 7:42 am Sunday – Caroline bleeds on every surface in the hotel room while I frantically try to get dressed, stop the bleeding, and text my friend Kim to see if she can help me throw stuff in the car to find an emergency room.

7:45 am Sunday – Kim insists on taking Evan, I head to the nearest ER which amazingly shares a parking lot with our hotel.

8:30 am Sunday – Caroline attempts to give herself a stroke screaming her head off while the doctor gives her 3 stitches in her chin.

8:31 am Sunday – All the blood drains from my head, I start to feel hot and I ask the nurse helping me hold Caroline down if I can sit for a minute. She looks at me and says “OH MY GOD, SIT DOWN.”

8:32 am Sunday – I slump into a chair right as I lose consciousness. I wake up to a cup of water for me, apple juice for Caroline and some concerned looked medical staff.

8:40 am – 9:00 am Sunday – Caroline and I snuggle on the hospital bed until we both feel better, then head back to the hotel.

9:30 am Sunday – Caroline and I get some breakfast while Evan swims in the pool with Kim and her boys.

10:00 am Sunday – I decide we won’t be sticking around to do more Sesame Place and we head home.

2:00 pm Sunday – Home. Mickey Mouse on TV. I take 3 Excedrin and lie on the couch.

3:30 pm Sunday – E gets home and orders pizza. I basically give up on parenting and let the kids run wild.

7:00 pm Sunday – BED.

Basically, it was like a nightmare wrapped in a puke-covered towel, covered in screaming.

Except that really…it wasn’t that bad. The drive to Sesame was nice and easy. We were all dressed warmly and no one was whiny. The park wasn’t very busy and the kids got to ride lots of rides and see plenty of characters. We got to hang out with Kim and her mom and her wonderful boys. Even though we were all cough-y, Evan slept through my coughing and Caroline slept through Evan’s puking. Evan went right back to sleep after he got sick. No one complained to the hotel about our noise levels. Caroline handled her injury really well and didn’t seem to be in a lot of pain. The ER was so close, almost empty and everyone was super nice. The doctor took one look at Caroline, said “Yep, stitches” and immediately got the nurse in to get stuff started. She’ll be better by Friday and have her stitches out before her birthday party. She won’t have a big ugly scar.  I didn’t hurt myself fainting. Thanks to my awesome friend Kim, Evan got to swim and have fun with his friends instead of spend the morning in the ER with me. Our drive home was pleasant and easy and traffic-free. I got pizza for dinner.

So in the end, despite the various…disasters, we had a nice weekend. The kids had fun. Caroline has totally forgotten her chin. I didn’t freak out. It didn’t scare me into never leaving the house again. On Monday, I packed up the kids and drove 45 minutes to a super-awesome kids museum. Then we ate lunch in a sit-down restaurant with friends. We had a lovely day and I already think the whole thing is funny.

It sort of feels like a win, which is something pre-kid Suzanne would NEVER call a weekend that involved cleaning up so many other people’s bodily fluids. Motherhood is crazy.