2002-11-08 - 2:39 p.m.
Last weekend Sonny and I went to see Bowling for Columbine - a must-see. What a great question for a documentary to probe--why is there such a disproportionate amount of gun violence in the United States? I love Michael Moore. Some of his evidence is a bit anecdotal, but overall, it's very compelling stuff. My favorite point? Why is governmental influence looked at so little? We have an extremely violent government and an extremely violent society. People look at Arnold Schwarzenegger shooting some bad guy in the face and then see a kid shoot a classmate in the face and jump to make a connection--it seems so cut and dry. But, what about our government's insistence on controlling other countries through violence? Isn't the government teaching kids to handle fear and disagreement through violence? I'm ranting and not even doing the movie justice. You really should go see it.
Between that documentary and the election results, Sonny and I have started packing our bags. We're moving to Canada.
Baby Lou Update
This week for Lou can be summed up in three words: Testing The Limits. She is at the point of her development where she is figuring out what is okay and what is not. Apparently she makes this determination by repeating the action over and over and over and over and over and making sure it remains "not okay." This week she's testing getting on the couch and jumping like a hysterical and drunken maniac. We're consistent. We tell her it's "not okay." We do Not laugh, people. We make very serious faces at her and remove her immediately from the couch. We use our stern voices. What are we doing wrong? Please, if you come upon this and you know the answer, drop me a note. I beg you. Do we really just have to repeatedly remove the child from the couch for 20 minutes at a stretch several times a day? Sure, we could go into another room, but can't we hang out in our living room With the baby? I'm thinking about making a little exercise routine out of it since I never have time to get to the gym anymore. Maybe I could bench press her a couple times before I place her back on the floor. I've looked in the books, but I don't know what words to search for in the index. "Discipline?" She's only one year old. It's not under "pissing Mama off" or "making Papa cry."
Hope you're happy and healthy. Start heating up the milk. It's hot chocolate time.
