When I was a tween, teenager and young woman, my hair was the bane of my existence. It is shallow, I know, but my hair never did what I wanted it to.

My hair was curly, frizzy and funny looking. I wanted sleek straight hair like all the other girls in my class. I use to torture it. Blow dry it.  I ironed it with an actual clothing iron.  I used the curling iron on it. Permed it. Used the flat iron on it.

A couple of years ago I decided to embrace my hair. I was tired of spending 30 minutes or more on my hair when I got ready for work. I read some books on how to care for curly hair (who knew such things existed?) and began to embrace my curl. I wash it.  I put a little product on it.  I let it go.  And I actually liked it. And I got a cut I liked and I kept it.

And my hair began to grow, and grow and grow. Until today it looks like this:

It’s all flat on the top of my head because I’ve been wearing it in a pony tail today.  You can’t really tell from looking at it, but it’s all the same length.  All the way round.  Generally the curl and body are pretty well distributed.

Earlier this spring, I decided I’d wait until my hair got long enough, and then have it cut and donate it to Locks of Love the not for profit place that makes wigs for kids who have lost their hair due to an illness of some variety; usually cancer or a disease called Alopecia.

Your hair has to be at least 10 inches long in order to donate.

Have I mentioned how hot it has gotten here?  It’s like hell on earth these days.  And it’s not even July or August when it gets really hot here.

Did you notice how MUCH hair I have?

I don’t know whether I’m going to make it.

The BoyChild turned seven last Friday.

I can’t remember when, or how he went from this:

to this:

He swims now.   David reports he actually dived off the diving board.  He’s been in swimming lessons every summer since he was little, but this is the first summer he’s actually voluntarily put his head under the water or even THOUGHT about diving off the diving board. I am so proud of him.

He’s made so much progress since the first of the year.

He reads like a fiend; last night I asked him how to get the Nintendos to let us both play the same game at the same time.  He got the re-structions out and read through them aloud to me and then to himself to figure it out.

I don’t know what conclusion he came to.  I think he got distracted by something else he learned he could do in the re-structions.

Last week he went to a sports camp.  They taught him the seven year old basics of vollyball, basketball, tennis and swimming.  Tennis seems to be his favorite and he told me I needed to take tennis lessons so we could play together.  I just might!

His melt downs are less frequent and his regrouping doesn’t seem to take as long.  This is a vast improvement.

We still watch what he eats though we pretty much let him eat most things.  When he starts breaking out in a rash, we try to figure out what he’s eating too much of and cut back on it.  It’s an in exact science but seems to be working.

The BoyChild and I took a trip on the train.  A short trip –  a little more than an hour.  He was most excited that they had electrical outlets to plug in the small fan he decided he “needed” in his bag.  He was most disappointed that they didn’t have Wi-Fi.  It was a successful trip and I hope he’s old enough to remember it fondly when he’s older.

This is also the summer of the movies.  We’ve seen Up!, Star Trek, Monsters vs. Aliens, Night at the Museum and of course the grossly inappropriate Year one.  Transformers comes out this week.  And there are always several more he wants to see coming out each week.

We celebrated his birthday at the local health club with 10 or 12 kids and their families from his school.  We over estimated how much people would want to drink water, soft drinks, beer and wine but we underestimated how much pizza all those people could eat.   Instead of having everyone bring him a gift, we had everyone bring a gender neutral gift and everyone got to go home with a gift.  They did that at a party we went to last spring and he liked it so much he decided he wanted to do that at his party.  I was touched by his generosity.  He also gave away the Presidential dollars to all his party guests as they left.  He got some somewhere and wanted everyone to have one.

I took my camera but typically forgot to take any pictures.

It was his first birthday party.  I thought it was a resounding success.  And since we didn’t have to clean up our house, it was a big score for me.

He has turned into a four foot fifty pound boy.  Not a baby or a toddler or whatever is between two and five.  He’s all boy.  But he will always be my baby.

For Father’s Day we went to see Year One.

It probably wasn’t appropriate for the BoyChild, but it WAS funny.

I think (hope) most of the really trashy stuff went over his head.

I’ve been watching a lot of AMC today.  It’s hot outside.   It’s Father’s Day and my husband wants to watch cheap slap stick with the BoyChild.

They’ve been running a commercial  for this all day.

Today, on the way back from the movie, I stopped at Walgreen’s and picked me up a box.

I am such a lemur.

I have been lusting over the IPhone.

It just seems so kewl.

I have a phone.  It has a touch screen.  I can watch TV on it, surf the web and check my e-mail on it.

But it just isn’t an IPhone.

It doesn’t have all these kewl “apps.”

I went to the Bankruptcy Court the other day.  One of the Marshalls there has one and we talk about it.  Now, every time I go over there, he wants to show me his new apps.  I don’t know how he gets any work done.  I mean every time I’m there he has something new to show me.

I don’t qualify for an upgrade until December.

I don’t think I’m going to make it.

Last fall the BoyChild and I planted pansies in the pots on the porch. They died in the cold and ice but this spring a few came back. I think they are called volunteers when they do that.

They are a little rough looking.  But they are hardy little things.

When you go to the health club.

And you have your car keys, drivers license, cell phone and liter bottle of water.

Where do you put all that stuff when you go to the bathroom?

I mean, am I the only one who struggles with this?

I don’t like to take my purse to the health club.  Because it is a big, honking Mommy sort of purse that is big enough to carry cars, trucks and the spare Nintendo DS and the occasional file to Court for me.  I don’t have a locker cause we have the cheap health club membership which gets me in the place and let’s me use the pool in the summer but doesn’t give me a locker.

None of my work out clothes have pockets.

So tell me dear internets.  Where do you put your stuff when you go to the bathroom at the health club?

I didn’t anticipate that reading The Double Daring Book for Girls would make me sad.

I volunteered to review it.   We have the original, The Daring Book for Girls.  The BoyChild has The Dangerous Book for Boys which he reads religiously and carries around with his other treasurers.

When we got the original Daring Book for Girls, the GirlChild was the intended target.  She oh’d and ah’d over it.  When I brought home The Double-Daring Book for Girls, she shrugged.  But the GirlChild has entered her teen years, just turning fifteen, and falls outside the intended age range of 9-12.

Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz have put out another wonderful book for girls.  It is well written and includes notable women; dancers,  women of math and science.  It also includes one woman I find particularly fascinating; Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Although it is intended for girls, I think there is plenty in it for everyone.  We play word games and are always hunting for two letter words to use.  Whittling is a lost art that girls or boys can enjoy.  And everyone should know how to whistle through a blade of grass.

It explains how to play Charades, how to catch a fish, math tricks as well as practical items like how to sew a hem, sew on a button, plunge a toilet and get ink off your skin.  This book is a perfect combination of facts and fun projects.

The hard backed version I received was beautiful, with red marbled paper on the inside binding and thick creamy pages.   As I read it, I would call out something we could do together, “we could make a decoupage bowl!”  and the GirlChild rolled her eyes at me.  Or when I explained to her where the phrase “Bee In Your Bonnet” came from, she picked up her Seventeen magazine and went to her room.

But luckily, my BoyChild is just hitting the right age.  And he’s interested in it too……

I see a rope ladder in our future.

Overheard from the BoyChild while he’s playing in the bath.

We are waiting for the ships to arrive and then the whole planet will be destroyed.

Good luck, Sir.  We are running out of fuel.

I need the commander of the ship to turn his ship off to save himself.  Actually not to save himself.  To save his people.

Anyone wanna guess what we did for Mother’s Day?

I don’t recommend watching it from the second row.

This happened this weekend.  It was a first for the BoyChild.

Unfortunately,  he must have swallowed it because it is no where to be found.

The tooth fairy gives two dollars if you have the tooth but only one dollar if you loose the tooth.  That rule was thought up on the spur of the moment when a meltdown was getting ready to occur because the tooth fairy wouldn’t come because he’d lost the tooth.

From the looks of that mouth, the tooth fairy is going to be busy coming to my house over the next couple of months.