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A few months back I came away from TicketMaster.com with a really bad taste in my mouth, and 2 really expensive tickets in my pocket.

Unlike a traditional e-commerce site where you have time to evaluate your purchase before checking out, TicketMaster.com has unrealistic time limits on each step of the checkout. After searching for tickets, here's what they give you:

Confirm seating selection: 2 minutes
Log in or sign up for a new account: 1 minute

Complete purchase: 2 minutes

In the first step, it took nearly 2 minutes just to pull up the web site of the venue, find their seating chart, load their ridiculously slow Seating Chart Java applet, enter the section and row of the seats that TicketMaster was holding for me, and wait another 20 seconds for the 360-degree panorama to load. So by the time I did that and saw that they were really good seats I had just enough time to go back and click Continue. I had already been burned once by the time limit, so it felt like a pretty high-presure sale situation the second time around.

Next screen: sign up for an account in 1 minute. 7 fields (one of which is hidden until the end), 1 minute total, 8.5 seconds per field. That's crazy.

Last step: Checkout, 2 minutes, including billing and shipping info. Have you ever been rushed trying to enter a credit card #? You are guaranteed to make a mistake.

The girls have both been sick for a couple of days: feverish, head colds, congestion. You know, the really oozy kind of sick. Hopefully we've just hit the zenith in the cycle with the barf, splat! that just happened on the couch and in the bathroom. The smell of vomit is now competing with the smell of Febreeze.

We were going to go into Boston tomorrow for the NE Boat Show and to the aquarium or children's museum, but I think that's going to have to be post poned. I have to go wash the vomit off of my socks now...  

Day 3

Mental note - When Raya looks like she wants to get out of the shower/tub minutes after getting in it's a good idea to listen to her.

This morning was a long one - 1st, Mom left early to open a store and I think it was one of the first mornings that Raya has ever had when Mom wasn't there when she woke up. She was not happy about that when she woke up at 7:00, but she managed to calm down with some soft music and a lot of head-rubbing. She didn't fall back asleep like I hoped, though.

So we got up and got in the shower, which turned into a bath with Maelin when she came in. I was cleaning the bathroom when Malin says, "It smells like poop in here. Oh, Raya pooped in the tub!". Yuck!

"Doodie!"

An hour worth of draining, scrubbing, rinsing, and re-bathing later and we were finally ready to start the day. We're finishing up a late breakfast now (the girls are actually coloring together) and we'll head to the library in a bit.

In other news, Raya is getting really good with her signs. She's still mixing some up, but in general she signs for food, water, help, please and more.

Day 2

We spent the majority of the morning at the doctors office. They were running an entire hour behind schedule due to a new computer program that they were trying to get used to using. So I didn't actually see the doctor for my 10:30 appointment until nearly 11:30. The girls were great though - they are really good at entertaining themselves. We spent the time playing with lego and people watching. However, poor Raya was exhausted by the time the doctor came in and promptly fell asleep in my arms, and stayed that way back to the car and all the way home. We had to go back tot he clinic though because as soon as we pulled in the driveway I realized we left Raya's new doll there. So, back and forth we went, Raya sleeping the whole time.

You might be wondering where the whole "Sleepless" bit in the title comes from then? Well, Raya really could have slept more but woke up when we finally got in the house and I spent the rest of the afternoon and wel into the evening trying to get her to go back to sleep but had no luck until nearly 8:30 that night. Wow, was she cranky...

Other than that we had a pretty laid-back afternoon. Maelin has started asking me to tell her about "that man with the boat," a.k.a. Charles Darwin. I'm reading his first four books and I've been telling her about his voyagearound the world to observe all the different animals. She's really curious about that. Chalk that up with "the thing with a lot of words," a.k.a. gravity, all her questions about the moon, the fact that she knew how to say "echolocation" and what animals used it when she was 2, and that she asks about Sir Isaac Newton regularly, and I'm pretty sure we have a scientist on our hands. (Woot!!!)

Today marks the first day of my new career as a stay-at-home-day. There have been sporadic posts to this Kids blog, but I'm hoping to now keep a regular cadence of posts now that I'll be home. I must say that I was a bit apprehensive about today and kept wondering if I was going to be able to pull this off. I was most worried that I would just be falling asleep on the kids as neither Mom nor I have gotten much sleep in the last few weeks/months/years.

Day 1

The day officially started at 9:30 when Mom left for work. We saw her off from the window, then had a late breakfast. Afterwards we made a blanket fort in the living room out of the couch cussions, played nights & dragons, made some noise with our intruments and read some books. In just an hour and a half the living had gone from clean to this:

The mess by 11:00 (Click for panorama)

Not to worry though, I'm a neat freak so it was clean soon after. I took Raya upstairs for her morning nap just afterwards, and by the time I came back down Maelin had gotten out some watercolor paints and a coloring book and was entertaining herself with them at the Kitchen table. We did some more crafts for a while, then she played in the living room with her dolls while I cooked lunch. Raya woke up just as lunch was ready so she got to eat with us. We went downstairs and played in our cellar after lunch. It quickly became obvious that Maelin needed a nap as she was starting to have melt-downs over little things. I had to practically drag her up to her bedroom where she reluctantly got into bed, but it was only a matter of minutes before she was sleeping. I tried to get Raya down for another nap, figuring it would be great to have an hour or so to myself in the afternoon, but it was not to be - I think I dozed off for a few minutes but Raya was just not having it. So we got up and played by ourselves for a while. I figured she'd be ready for an early bed time since she didn;t nap, so I started an early supper. Maelin woke up a little while later and we read and sang some songs as I finished cooking dinner. They both chowed down (Tofu and Pineapple in terriaki sauce, with a side of spelt with dried cranberries and cherries) and were rewarded with "Scooby Snacks" as Maelin calls them, really sherbert pops with Scooby Doo on them.? Then it was bath time, brushing teeth, and a story while we waited for Mom to get home.

So, pretty easy really. I've had longer days at work (8-hour meetings be damned!) and we had a really good time listening to Christmas tunes on the radio and singing along. I have a Dr.'s appointment tomorrow morning, so we'll be up and out of the house pretty early. I hope it's not as icy as it was today.