Well, quarantining may be an exaggeration, but we’re keeping Veronica home for a few days. She caught a cold mid-week last week and last night, the cough turned wet, so we took her to the clinic this morning. Doctor says she has RSV.??So don’t bring small children to our house; we don’t want to spread the germs to others.?

I’m glad I have Monday and Tuesday off still, because I’m not excited about going to work and leaving her while she’s sick, even though she has her daddy to take care of her. But come Wednesday, I head back to the job.

Here’s your somewhat-weekly picture of Veronica: sitting propped up on the couch this evening.

Where does all the time go? Maybe there’s a leak and our minutes are slipping away into an alternate dimension. No, never mind, that’s a book I read. I have been planning for days to rant about bonusgate and various other things, but between laundry, reading (finished HP book 7, Twilight, Cybele’s Secret; am working on Fragile Eternity?and sections of Your Baby’s First Year?and still need to start Wizard’s First Rule because it’s due back to the library next week) and hanging out with V, I haven’t been keeping up on blogging.

I’m splitting my time between this and facebook now. And I am playing with the iPhoto integration, which is completely awesome. Very soon, there will be more pictures of Veronica than anyone really wants to look at. But I’m going to keep posting them anyway. Because she’s adorable. And it’s click-of-the-button easy.

Made a Costco run today with Veronica. Should have done it yesterday, when she was sleeping off her first cold. Today she wanted to play and was very grumpy about being in her bucket instead. Wouldn’t go to sleep. Cried half the way there and half the way back. Needless to say, the trip was at least 50% longer because I kept having to pull off the road at safe spots to calm her down. Next time, I’m taking someone with me to entertain her so that she doesn’t have a melt-down midway to the destination.

Speaking of cranky babies in the car, the first long trip is scheduled: we’re headed to Seattle for Comicon. The spouse is going to hang out with the nerds and V and I are going to hang out with Grandma G. Hope we survive a five-hour car trip twice in the same weekend.?

And tomorrow, I go for the make-me-look-professional-or-at-least-like-I-do-my-hair-occasionally treatment at the salon. The spouse is sad that I never dyed my hair crazy colors during my three months at home, but I think with the number of pictures he’s been taking, it’s better that way.

Now, to try to finish cleaning the house and hang out with the spouse since V is down for the night . . . or at least the next three hours of it. On second thought, this green valkyrie needs sleep badly, too. Good night.

*Extra husband points to the spouse for the catchy title.

We have taken the first step in the V’s money education by setting aside money for her eduction: we opened a Coverdell Educational Savings Account for her a few weeks ago. But I’m also always on the lookout for ideas about how to teach her about handling money responsibly. The best way to teach is by example, which I believe I can do. (I can teach her to save and the spouse can teach her to spend, so she’ll end up fairly well balanced, I hope.)

This article has additional ideas on teaching children about money. It presupposes that I would give my child an allowance, which I’ve heard multiple theories about. Some say that an allowance should be given and used to teach children cash flow and care and that you should have them cut their salary into chunks: 10% offerings/charity, a certain percentage to savings for a specific goal a certain percentage left over for spending.

Then there’s the discussion about whether kids should have an allowance in the first place. (One camp says allowance is payment for chores and another camp says allowance should not be tied to chores; the chores have to be done simply because you’re part of the family unit, but additional tasks may be accomplished for payment either in place of or in addition to allowance.)

One money teaching strategy that isn’t mentioned in the article is to have family money discussions. Instead of just letting your child watch you pay the credit card bill, actively involve your child(ren) in the family budgeting process. (This assumes that you have a budget, which I do and which I love to tweak as often as I can, much to the husband’s chagrin because he does not enjoy family budgeting discussions as much as I do. He finds them tedious. I cannot fathom that talking about budgets could be boring, but he claims it is so.)

If you’ve made it all the way through my slightly incoherent blatherings, I have questions for you. Would you give your child an allowance? Would you involve them in family budget discussions? How did you or would you teach your children about money? (And of course, I mean how would you teach them to save, invest and spend money wisely.)

Since some people (see W.R.C.) refuse to update their blogs, I took the plunge and joined facebook last night. The spouse is now grumpy with me, or facebook, or both. To comfort him, I pointed out that I can now talk about him in a space where he cannot defend himself.

And in other news, I still don’t “get” facebook, even now that I’m using it. The wall-to-wall feature doesn’t seem smart to me. Why do I have to have my email address out there for people to see? Why can’t I just comment on someone’s post to my wall? Why do I have to post on their wall, which removes the whole thread of the discussion and just seems to me to throw random crap up that other people won’t have the context for? Am I missing something here? I consider myself a fairly internet-savvy person, but I just don’t get it.

And how in the world do random people find me within 12 hours of my joining? Is facebook stalking me? And W.R.C., where are you anyway? I cannot find you on facebook.

Note: just because I’ve given in and joined facebook does not mean I will join myspace or twitter. I have my limits. (And I theorize that facebook is twitter, except you have to do all this friending before you can tweet at each other.)

I have decided to stop trying to be useful. While I have still been doing things like keeping up on the laundry (those diapers won’t wash themselves), I have been devoting a large portion of my recent days to sitting in a chair, rocking and holding V, and reading. So, by not being useful, I have soaked up extra time with my daughter (whom I only get to see all day long for another two weeks) and reached page 502 in HP book 7.?

I’ve really missed reading. Other than my baby books, I haven’t read any books since December. I have a stack of books from my book pusher lined up in the library, as well as a few new ones she just brought, and Terry Goodkind, to read. So, the question is, can I squash my need for efficiency and usefulness for the next couple of weeks so that I can maximize my time with baby (multi-tasked, of course with my time for reading). If you come to visit and the dishes are piled across the counter and the bathrooms haven’t been cleaned, I guess you’ll know I’m not feeling useful.

Do not heat pyrex containers on the stove top. Beautiful batch of brownies was sitting on the stove this evening when the front burner got turned on instead of the back burner for tea. Note to self: pyrex shatters when heated on the stove top. No brownies for us this evening.

Took Veronica to the library for the first time today. We checked out a few board books so her daddy has more books to read to her in the evening. V did not find the library nearly as interesting as I do: she fell asleep almost immediately. But that gave me time to track down the Terry Goodkind books. Now, to finish rereading HP book 7 so I can move on to another hugely thick book. Do I really want to start in on another long fantasy series? If V naps as long and as well every day as she is today, I just may have time to do it! She’s been out for 2.5 hours; yesterday she slept off and on from 2 o’clock through the evening. She must need to preserve her energy so she can keep growing, growing, growing.

In other news, my library card expires at the end of May, so after that point, I’m going to start requesting library trips with you, my WW friends.

I am now an afterthought to the spouse. Addressing envelopes for birth announcements (yes, we’re finally getting those sent out, two months later), he put the return address as “Ted, Veronica and Heather.” Apparently, I get third place even though I gave birth to her. Hmph. I think he owes me coffee to make up for this.