Happy Superbowl!

I made these peanut butter cookie footballs to celebrate the superbowl... and to lure my choir members into coming to choir practice today after church!!

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures to go along with my last post... one of Rachel (who I noticed after I put the picture on the computer that she has some cereal in her mouth!) and one of Lizzy with her completed potty training chart and the toy she received for going potty each time.

Potty Training and 18 Month Checkup

Hooray! Lizzy is potty trained! We spent 3 days at home doing nothing but potty training, and she is now an independent toileter. I started off with a "Go, Diego, Go" potty chart, some smiley face stickers, and a promise of a new toy if the chart got filled, 16 pairs of "Dora" underwear, and lots of spray cleaner and rags for cleaning up accidents! The first two days, there were many accidents. She made it to the potty only 50% of the time, and the first day she just peed wherever she was sitting half the time. The second day, she tried to make it to the potty ever time, but peed on the way 50% of the time. The third day, she had one accident on the way to the potty in the morning, and then no more accidents the rest of the day, and the fourth day was perfect. The other fun thing we did for the first day, we had my mom and Jason in on it, and they pretended to be Dora and Diego, respectively, and Lizzy got to call one of them after each successful potty venture and tell them what she did. Thanks to both Grandma and Jason for using goofball voices on the phone in front of their co-workers!

In other news, Rachel had her 18 month checkup. She is very healthy! She weighs 19 pounds and is 31 inches long, which puts her at 3rd percentile for weight and 50th for height. She's smaller than Lizzy was at her 18 month, but not by much! The doctor said her language skills were amazing, since she can speak in 2 and 3 word sentences, and she really impressed him by singing the "ABC" song! She still suffers from eczema, but we keep her lathered in Eucerin, which usually controls it really well. That's all for now from the Gale family!

Health Care Crisis?

Below is a letter written by a young physician by the name of Dr. Starner Jones. His short two-paragraph letter to the editor of his newspaper in Jackson , Mississippi accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis". It's worth a quick read:

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.
While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of oneself, or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based on the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want, because someone else will always take care of me".
Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,

STARNER JONES, MD

I saw this exact same thing with the students at the high school where I taught math. They couldn’t afford a calculator and the school bought them breakfast and lunch each day but they still all had cell phones, ipods and bought sodas and candy bars every day.

Hair Curling Video

Here is a video I shot of curling Lizzy's hair with a straight iron. I didn't understand the description of how to do it when I read it on the hair website, and wasn't able to do it myself until the hairdresser showed me how. So, here is the video.