make your own baby legwarmers for less than $2/pair. I used these with onesies when Spice was a baby, but now they make great toddler legwarmers under skirts or dresses, or over tights for extra warmth/kneepads. :-)

Photo-reply with your own if you’ve got ‘em!

An old family friend got Spice two books for Christmas, this one and My Daddy & Me. I can’t tell you how much I love this book for the elegant drawings and the sweet, calm storyline.

When we sit down to read it, I don’t read the written words, but tell the story in our own words: “See, Mummy and Baby are talking a walk - look, they’re holding hands”. In the story, the mother and baby mouse play, dance, take a bath, look out at the sunset, and finally curl up adorably together to sleep. I tell their story using the same same words I use for our family routine, as in “it’s bathtime” or “Mummy and Baby say ‘good night, everyone!’”.

Truly a simple classic among all the “modern” toddler books out there today.

BlackBerry Messenger Group for crackberry-toting moms. :-) As seen on twittermoms.

For babies and toddlers freakish about brushing their hair, start off with using a horse face brush. The bristles are super-soft on her head, hair and scalp, and they’re super cheap. Plus, Spice loves to brush her soft toys “hair” in pretend-play.

It’s not at all for tangles, but we keep those down with California Baby’s spray detangler once in a while and just cut the really tough tangles out. I know that may seem a little crazy to the more fashionista parents out there, but my view is that she’s 20 months and I would rather have her be happy with a wild toddler ‘do, than have immaculate locks and tears and bathroom battles every day.

Last night I had yet another mini-breakdown. And again this morning. And again this afternoon.

Each time, I stumble along through this cycle of frustration, anger, blind rage, depression then sheer exhaustion. So fast that by the time I’m at work, or doing stuff at home, I don’t even remember what set it off because there are just too many things that snowballed together to make the whole thing happen. But the general idea is that I’m overwhelmed with juggling home, work, spouse & child: the classic working-mother conundrum.

I’ve considered backing off work, but the sad fact is that I just can’t do it. We have our own business, of sorts, and there just isn’t anyone available to fill the strange little hole that is my job. The spouse-unit and I have talked about hiring a friend as a housekeeper to help get the place organized, be home to get estimates from contractors, and other general household duties, but she’s been flakier than a Pillsbury pie crust. I’m down to scheduling things into the calendar like “6-7pm: Evening walk” and, worse still, a daily repeating task of “Make coffee, sit and breathe for 5 min.” Sadly, the only days I get to sit over my morning coffee for five minutes are the days where I remember to even check my calendar and to-do list before running out of the house, I kid you not.

And the last time we went to our marriage counselor for our quarterly “tune-up”, our topic of business for the session was how get through the next six months of work insanity and still be married at the end of it. Ironically, the best suggestion was to be sure and schedule in time for us to do “couple time” and “family things”.

Grr, and double-grr.

I wish I had answers. I wish YOU had answers for me. :-) In the meantime, I’m scheduling me-time for catching up on blog reading & writing, while the spouse-unit kills off brain cells blows away enemies in Call of Duty 2. Then we’ll each crawl into bed, wake up tomorrow and do it all over again: the fights and crying and work and playing with Spice and cleaning up cat puke and making cookies and doing dishes and picking cat hair off my black clothes and kicking the washer and… you get the idea… all over again.

Suckh is life, no? ;-)