My 3-year-old is already a teenager

I can see the future and it has me worried.
Since the time change on March 10, I've had to drag my munchkin out of bed each morning to get her to daycare. She screams for us to turn off the lights. This morning she insisted it wasn't morning yet and demanded I leave the room.
On the flip side, after the time change in November she was getting up at 6-630 a.m. even on the weekends. That lasted until the time changed in March. I have been enjoying sleeping in on the weekends until 730, gasp, even 8 a.m. last Sunday, so I feel bad complaining.
So I'm not. If she wants to be grumpy, fine. The best way to get her out of her mood is to say she's wearing her "grumpy pants." Oh my! "Oh the indignity," as Gordon would say. I will get Chloe to do her Gordon imitation and post the video. It's amazing.
So, I'm putting up with the whining and protests but I'm not sure I'm going to be as patient when she's 14.
She has my husband's wake up genes or my sister's.
When the alarm goes off, I get up. I rarely hit snooze. That's because I have my morning set to the minute. The alarm goes off at precisely the time I need to get up, wash and dress.
My husband, on the other hand, used to set the alarm and hour earlier and hit snooze for an hour. This nearly ended our marriage. I was losing an hour of sleep just so my husband could hit the snooze button. Unlike him, once I wake up, I rarely fall back asleep.
So, this morning I told my husband my daughter was all his when we hit the teen years. He protested that I will have to get her up at 5:30 a.m. so she can catch the 6 a.m. bus to high school. (in our town high school starts at 7 a.m. -- crazy -- bad idea.)
I protested and he claimed since I am the "morning person," it will be my duty.
I have 11 years to think of a counter argument.

The Survival Guide for New Parents is going to be exclusive to Amazon for the next three months. It's not about a preference for the service, although createspace made it super easy to publish the book. It has more to do with not getting my butt in gear and making a book cover for the other sales agents.
I should have picked the exclusivity button from the start then I'd already have a month in. Doesn't really matter. This gives me time to get the book cover ready for the next release on B&N, Apple, etc.

I also have one little piece of pride. One person who bought the book also took my recommendation and also bought Baby 411. I'm so happy that someone read the book and took away some of the advice.

I'm just proud that someone listened to me. As the youngest of three, no one ever listens to me.

Don't forget to post a review

I'm really proud of my New Parents Survival Guide. My sales are modest but I'm happy to get it out there and help some other folks who are seeking advice.
I just encourage folks to post reviews on Amazon, even if you didn't like it. I'm OK with honesty.

Vampire Diaries is my new favorite show

I know it's weird that I just started watching a show in its fourth season. Forgive me. I've been busy.
The latest episode wasn't all that surprising. Jeremy appears to really be dead. He's even starting to rot.
Tyler is definitely gone. And Elena burned the house and has gone native.
OK. So we'll see how this plays out. What I found interesting isn't what was in the show.
It's what I read online about a new spinoff series called the Originals starring Klaus, his last surviving brother and now his sister.
The pilot is going to be one of the April episodes of the Vampire Diaries.
I must say, this is intriguing. I love Klaus and even Rebekah, she's so sad with her pathetic vulnerability. I even like Elijah. I'm a little worried about what kind of stories they'll be telling.
The only series that work with the bad guy as the lead are ones where he's actually got a human side like Dexter or the guy in Breaking Bad.
Klaus has rarely shown a vulnerable side. I loved the scene with Caroline when he saved her of course after biting her because he loved her but those moments are few and far between. Also, I don't see Caroline leaving the Vampire Diaries.
The departure of the Originals makes room for Silus though.
So I was wrong on the next person to die. It was Khol, not Rebekah. But it was an original!!! And the real professor, he's dead in the forest and Silus has taken on his appearance.

Toddler Tip #1

This problem has happened to me twice now even though I thought I had self corrected.
It's really hard to predict how fast or slow your kid will grow.
Last spring, my daughter's feet grew like weeds. One day she was wearing a six, the next it was seven and inbetween I had bought her $55 shoes. It was so frustrating.
It was another story with the clothes. My daughter grew out of her tops in March but it was too cold to wear short-sleeves.
I could not find any long-sleeved shirts in any stores. I found a couple of strange tops in the clearance section but other than that the stores were devoid of winter clothes.
It's a good thing we had a warm spring so the need for long-sleeved shirts wasn't needed for too long.
Well, last fall I bought size 3 pants for my girl even though the size 2 pants still fit. The mistake I made was buying three pairs of jeans. My daughter has an addiction to sweat pants and has so far refused to wear the jeans -- it's been six months and I don't think she's going to change her mind.
So, I'm down to four or five pairs of sweat pants and a couple of leggings. She cut a hole in one pair of leggings, so that takes us down to one pair.
So this weekend I set out to find some more pants. My daughter has been having protest potty accidents and she went through three pairs of pants on Saturday.
So, I went to Target, etc. It's only the end of February but no one is selling long pants. Everything in the shops was spring dresses or jeans. They treat kids clothes just like adults; fashion over function.
Today I was in Wal-Mart and did find some sweat pants tucked away in some low shelf. They had no size 4 pairs, only three. It's a good thing they were only $2.50.
So, lesson here is buy everything you need before the season starts and make sure you know what your kid will or will not wear.

Vampire Diaries shocker

I just watched the episode from last week on the weekend while making chili.
That's how I watch TV these days. The kid and hubby are out of the house, I cook and catch up with whatever is on the DVR.
Holy Cow. Vampire Diaries does a good job at killing off its characters. For the first few seasons you always knew those temporary new characters were destined to die by the time they appeared in the fourth or fifth episode.
Then some stuck around and lately they've not been knocking people off.
But since Christmas it's like the show runners want to pare down the cast. Tyler's mom? Drowned.
Jeremy? drained of blood. Tyler? Banished until Klaus kills him.
I feel that Rebeka is next. Or maybe even Klaus because it seems that Silus is the new big bad. You can't have two big bads. It's the Buffy the Vampire Slayer formula. One big bad per season.
While I love Klaus, the originals story line is getting a bit tired. How many times can he threaten to kill everyone?
Catherine's return was a bit of a surprise but I knew that Silus wasn't going to get the cure and it would go to one of our favorite Scoobie gang.
Part of me thinks the show folks who be sick enough to have Rebeka get the cure and Klaus kills her.
I don't think it will go to Elena, too predictable.
All this talk about Silus bringing back the dead, that could be interesting. If he can do it, why wouldn't he bring back Jeremy? The teen who provided him with life?
In the scuffle in the caves, I lost sight of the other hunter. Where was he?

New Parent Survival Guide available at Amazon

Despite reading all about self publishing, the articles in Writer's Digest don't really do the process justice and explain the ordeal you have to go through.

First off, one article said traditional publishing can take as long as it does to incubate an infant, while epublishing takes as long as boiling an egg.
While that is a clever line, it's completely untrue. I think it took three evenings, probably six hours, to upload my book to Create Space and create the book cover. Boiling an egg is 10 minutes.
The book publishing systems, including Amazon, take 12 to 36 hours to approve the copy and cover of a book. None of this is instantaneous. At it shouldn't be.
But I must say, I am very tempted to just sell my New Parent Survival Guide on Amazon alone.
There are a lot of other publishing outfits but none as simple as Amazon has made it through Createspace.com, which Amazon owns. That process created the ability to buy a paperback and ebook version of my book. It also made making a book cover simple and professional.
So right now my book is only available at Amazon. http://amzn.to/XUI3Ag
I am in the process of uploading my book to Smashwords so that I can send it off to all the other ebook retailers but first I have to design a book cover.
This is the biggest hurdle and frankly, where I have felt the most stress in this ebook book publication business. I know a cover is uber important to the success of a book.
But there are no templates available out there. Createspace has a bunch you can use and makes creating a cover super easy.
So, I am resorting to using Gimp to manipulate the photo I have used on Amazon to make a cover. I have found a You Tube video telling me how to use Gimp to make a book cover and I'll be spending a few hours this weekend doing that.
I have to thank the woman who made the video. Otherwise, I'd have to resort to borrowing one of the photographer's laptops at work to use Photoshop.
My husband pointed out to me that if you want instructions for anything, check YouTube first because it's highly likely someone has made a video.
Just tonight my husband used a YouTube video for instructions on how to repair the clock in my car, which required him taking half of the dashboard off.

I have dived back into writing one of my young adult novels and I hope to have that finished in the next couple of months.

Thanks for listening. Read on.