Tooth update

Joshua has now lost a second tooth -- someone needs to tell this kid to slow down! It's the tooth just adjacent to the one he already lost (bottom left middle tooth), and the one that he lost first has the permanent tooth coming in already! Also, a third bottom tooth is barely starting to be loose, and a back molar is growing in. Yikes!


The tooth came out while he was at preschool, so that was fun for his friends to see. I was co-opping that day and was able to share in the excitement as well. He was so excited for the tooth fairy to come that night (he totally knows the drill by now). Jake was away for a job interview so the pressure was all on me to be the tooth fairy that night and I nearly forgot (it's been a crazy week). Fortunately I remembered just before going to bed, but I forgot to add a note along with the money thanking Joshua for the lovely tooth. Joshua did not let this go unnoticed and I think we both agree that daddy makes a better tooth fairy.


Joshua wanted to take a picture of me after I took the one of him. I thought it was a fun idea so, hi everyone!

Our floors look great!

Well, other than the fact that they are turquoise-colored with purple flecks (graduate student housing standard). But the carpet has never been so consistently clean! We love our Roomba! Lots of people have been asking me about it and I thought I would post a little review for those who may be curious but were too afraid to ask ;).

Roomba really is pretty much as great as I was hoping it would be and any skepticism I may have had turned out to be happily unnecessary. Roomba's maneuverability is impressive and he (yes, ours is male) gets around really well. I think my favorite part about Roomba is how he cleans under our couch, beds and dressers! On his maiden voyage we all watched in disbelief as he boldly ventured under our couch. We held our breath, wondering if he would ever be able to get out from under there (our couch has a heavy flap around the bottom), but we all cheered as he strode out again several seconds later without batting a sensor-lash.


One thing the owners manual makes sure to highlight and I thought would be worth mentioning here is that Roomba's cleaning patterns are different from the way humans clean. Humans of course tend to be fairly methodical, cleaning one area thoroughly before moving on. Roomba appears to clean in a more random pattern, but apparently it's all robotic and on sensors, and he can detect when a particular area is clean. The bottom line is that the floors look fantastic at the end of a cleaning cycle, and that's what's important.

Now that I have a Roomba of my own I have found myself wondering why more people don't have them! I think that two of the biggest barriers are skepticism (which I have already addressed) and cost. Many people, myself included, thought Roombas were terribly expensive and I always day dreamed about getting one "someday." Well, luckily Jake did a little searching and found out that they can actually be very affordable. The one he got for me is a base model from the previous generation of Roombas and fit within our grad student budget (well, as a really special birthday present with a 20% discount, anyway). And even though it's "just" the older base model, it works great! We saw the newest, current model with all the bells and whistles at Costco the other night and it cost less than what you would pay for a new, traditional vacuum. It certainly cost less than what we paid for our vacuum when we first got married.

So there you have my thoughts on Roomba. I don't know if I will ever cease to be amazed that my vacuuming gets done while I'm doing something else.

That's a good question...

Today Joshua asked me, "Why does a unicycle have no handles?" I wasn't sure what to tell him, but I suggested that perhaps it's because there wouldn't be room for handles like a bicycle has. After thinking about it a for a little while though, I now find myself wondering, "why doesn't a unicycle have handles?" I actually think it's a pretty neat idea (and it makes for a pretty funny mental image!). I'm sure if I did even a small amount of research I would find out that the mechanics of it would be impossible. Well, I don't have time to research it out, only time to do a quick little blog post:).

Good things come...

... but the wait has been three or four years! I got this originally to replace the green plants we had that died, but when I came back from the store with an orchid that had a long stalk of bright purple-red flowers, Leslie was less than enthused about my supposedly "green" plant. The orchid went her way, though: it threw up six more stalks and we've never seen it bloom until now, so it ended up being more a green plant than we expected. I'm very glad it finally did put out some flowers, even if they're more purple and less red than the original stalk's. These three are beautiful and make me happier, especially when I glance at them as I do the dishes.