Jill of all trades.

To describe Lauren as a "busy girl," would be an understatement. When I looked down at her the moment she was born and saw her wide open eyes staring up at me as if to say, "That was fun, Mom. What do we do now?" I knew that we were in trouble.

Recently, she has mastered the use of the computer mouse. She especially likes to play games on Nick Jr and PBS Kids. The only problem is that now I have to compete with her for computer time. If I'm anywhere in the vicinity of the computer, she wants to take over. I'd tell her to get her own, but that would mean I'd have to give her an allowance.



Lauren also likes to give us haircuts with her Play-Doh scissors. She's always ordering us to hold still. Because of this, I usually stiff her on the tip.



But BY FAR, her most favorite thing in the whole wide world right now is cleaning with Windex. She has always liked to clean our television stand. We would give her a baby wipe and she'd be occupied for a good twenty minutes, pretending to clean. One day, I thought, what the heck - I'll give her a few paper towels and a bottle of Windex and let her clean for real. Off I went to catch up on some American Idol gossip.

I came back a several minutes later to find that she was still intently spritzing the TV stand and carefully wiping away the residue. Now, even though Windex has some type of "green" seal of approval on its label, I thought that prolonged exposure to glass cleaner probably wasn't a good thing for anyone, a child especially. Mark would kill me if I stunted her growth.

I went over to her and said that she did an excellent job, and that the TV stand has never sparkled more. I then gently requested that she hand over the Windex.

She responded by going COMPLETELY BERZERKER. Seriously - it was like I had told her that Disneyland had burned to the ground, leaving Mickey and Pluto homeless. She threw herself on the ground and screamed, "NOOOOO!! MY CLEANER! MY CLEANER! I NEED MY CLEANER!"

So every now and then she'll come over to me and innocently say, "Mom, that TV stand looks dirty. Can I clean it?" It is then that I try to distract her with a cookie. I know better than to feed an addict's addiction.

Lastly, I know that I said that I was done writing about American Idol for the year, but these videos are worth checking out. I think AI has found someone really special in David Cook. I would not be surprised if he does just as well or even better than Kelly/Carrie/Daughtry.