"Childproof"

The new washer and dryer are frontloaders, which means that all their controls are right above Jack's head, within easy reach.  Buttons!  All the bright, light up, candy-like buttons that make SONGS when you push them!!!

It took him less than 24 hours to figure out the childproof control lock and turn it off.  Less.  Than.  24.  Hours.  I don't know whether to sign him up for speech therapy or enroll him at Purdue.  Seriously.

I told BJ this morning, "He is your son, and anything short of 'up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-A-B-A-B-select-start' is just too easy for him."

Never Forget
(hackedgadgets.com)

So I'm back to putting a gate in the laundry room door to keep him away from the BUTTONS! which is troublesome.  There's no door there.  Happily, the downstairs bathroom is on the other side of the laundry room, so one gate keeps him out of both areas.

There is no way to keep him away from the dishwasher, though, and he knows how to turn it off (whether the childproof control is activated or not) by opening the door.  This stops the cycle.  We just run it at night or while he's napping, because otherwise we find a half-run dishwasher full of dishes sitting open and not running about 72 times per cycle.

The girls really lulled me into a false sense of parenting security.  They got into stuff occasionally, but Jack takes it to a new level.  Maybe I'm just older and more tired this time around.

A basement!  My kingdom for a basement!

See?

New Trick

I can't tell you how delighted I am that Jack has discovered his ability to climb into the bathtub.  De-freaking-lighted.

This morning I got in the shower.  Of course he followed me into the bathroom.  Generally I can shower quickly enough and watch him through the sliding shower doors well enough that he doesn't have time to dump the entire contents of the cabinet below the sink into the toilet, poison himself, or otherwise cause disaster.

Today while I was rinsing off my face, he got really quiet.  I thought, "Uh oh," and opened my still-soapy eyes and the sliding door to look for him.

He wasn't in the bathroom.

"Oh great," I thought.  He'll probably be dangling out the upstairs window by the time I get out of here.

Then I felt a little SMACK on my behind.

Startled, I turned around, and found my son, fully clothed, standing in the back of the bathtub.

He was thrilled.  I did my best not to drench him while I rinsed out my hair and turned off the water.  I got dry and got out.  He refused so I let him splash around in what was left of the water while I put my face on and brushed my teeth and hair.  "Water!  WATER!" he yelled.  Add that to the list.  Thankfully he didn't turn the (hot) water on himself.

I finally got him out and left the bathroom, closing the door carefully behind me and thinking about how I might install a hook and eye that would prevent him from getting in there, but not interfere with the girls' ability to get into the bathroom.

I quickly got dressed and chose clothes for him.  "JACK!  Come get dressed," I called into the toy room.  "NO!"  Well, ok then.  Natural consequences.  His soggy little butt can just stay there and shiver while I finish posting this.

Great Moments In Parenting

The girls were just talking to Uncle Chuck on the phone, and I noticed that Jack and Penny were conspicuously absent from the vicinity.  I got suspicious, and walked toward the bathroom.

The first thing I noticed was that Penny was standing in the bathroom staring at the bathtub.  The second thing I noticed was that both the shower doors were shut.

I opened the shower doors to find Jack, sitting alone in the bathtub in the dark, holding the toy that we had just filled up with Beggin' Strips.  The baby was hiding out in the bathtub eating dog treats.  DOG TREATS.

We win at parenting!

The Voice

I've consulted one of our neighbors, who happens to be a speech therapist, about Jack's lack of talking.  His little girlfriends are speaking in full and complete understandable sentences...  Evana (2 weeks younger than Jack) says, "Amy loves you too!" and Meghan (4 months older than Jack) says things like, "Thank you for having us over, Mrs. Austin," (they're both so stinkin' cute I can't stand it!).  But Jack has been stuck on "na na" and "mama" and "dada" for what feels like forever.

I had hoped that when the girls were in school all day he would start speaking more out of necessity.  The process has still been a lot slower than I had hoped, but we're finally starting to see progress.

Our neighbor suggested that I talk to him all the time, so I've been making more of an effort to talk to him constantly the way I did with MG when she was a baby.  This morning we were getting ready to go, and I said, "Jack, where's your cup?"

"I don't know," he replied.

I looked at him, startled, and he had his hands his hands up, palms toward the ceiling, in that universal "Beats me" gesture.  I could have died laughing.  It was so cute.  I'll try to get it on video tomorrow.

This brings the Lexicon of Jack up to the following words and phrases:

Mama

Dada

Papa

Dog

Kitty

Tweet/Tree (these sound the same)

Moo

Woof

Oink (this one's actually a snort)

Up

Off

Go

No

That (which is more like "dat")

Cheese

Apple

Ice (which sounds like "ein")

Num

Nana

Choo choo

Vroom Vroom

Bad dog.

I don't know.

Today he actually said, "Choo choo.  Off," when he wanted me to uncouple his trains.  So he's starting to put phrases together into simple sentences.  I think the problem is that the words and phrases above really manage to convey everything he cares about right now.  He just isn't motivated to say much more.  I mean, all of the vowel sounds are represented up there...  Most of the consonants.  There's no reason why he can't put them together...  He just doesn't need to yet, I guess.

In other news, I broke the washing machine this afternoon.  It made a bad grinding noise, so I fast forwarded it to the end of a different cycle and walked away (mistake).  I walked past the laundry room on the hallway carpet and went SQUISH.  At first I thought the dog had an accident, and I was getting ready to beat her, when I noticed that the liquid was an inch deep and 10 feet across - much too big of a puddle for even the heartiest bladder.  I unplugged everything, covered the floor with every towel we have, and called BJ for help.

He came home and took it apart.  At first I thought that the seal had gone bad between the tub and the top, but when he took it apart we realized that there's no seal there.  We did some other stuff to try to figure out what was going on, and long story short the pump has gone bad.

Guess who got a new washer and dryer for Christmas?  Thanks again, Santa!

I think I'm going to put the old dryer, which still works even though it's really inefficient, on Craigslist for $100, or $75 if the same person takes the dryer too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This exceptionally stylish Native American and I would like to wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for you!  Thanks for spending a bit of your life with me and my family.  

No Good Deed

I woke up with a migraine yesterday and then Jack came down with a tummy bug after his nap (he threw up all over our poor neighbor, Cami).  He was violently sick to his stomach for about six hours, and had a slight fever.  He seems to have moved to the lower GI portion of the virus today, thank goodness, but we're laying low.  You would not believe the pile of laundry I have to do, even after sending the comforter out for cleaning (my machine just isn't big enough to clean it properly).

Sweet Monica sent me a text a few minutes ago and said, "Are you home?" and when I replied in the affirmative she dropped a treat from Starbucks on my porch (some amazing cranberry and white chocolate - OMG).

I waved and sent a thank you text, and a moment later got a text back that said:

I am not kidding.  We hit (the main road a couple blocks away) and Evana started throwing up.  You are Typhoid Mary.

It would be funny if it weren't tragic.  No good deed goes unpunished.  Sorry Monica!  Sorry Evana!  Hope you feel better.  If not, I'll do a drive by Starbucksing for you tomorrow!

Facebook and Elections

I've seen a lot of stuff lately that says,

And while that may be true for the big national elections, at least two of my votes were directly influenced by information that I learned on Ye Ol' Facebook.

#1 - I voted for Glenda Ritz for Grand Poobah of Public Instruction because every single teacher I know on FB in Indiana told me to.  And I figure if all my rocket scientist friends were telling me to vote for Dr. Soandso for head of NASA (not that that's an elected position, but stay with me), they know what they're talking about better than I do, and I should listen to them.  Same with teachers and public school policy.  So that's what I did.  And she won.  And I'll bet my vote was not the only one influenced by Facebook in this case, because the teachers of Indiana were all over Facebook in the days leading up to the election saying, "For real, y'all, vote for Glenda Ritz."

#2 - I voted not to retain some judge with two first names (Steven David) because he is the guy that legislated from the bench that the police can basically come in your house whenever they want without a warrant or probable cause.  (Thankful for Wikipedia - "A majority opinion in 'Barnes vs. Indiana', justice David is infamous for writing the controversial majority opinion stating: 'We hold that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers.'")  And while I cheerfully invite police officers into my home all the time and have nothing to hide, I don't think that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.") is something that we should just go mucking around with.

So while Facebook posts may not have enough sway with most of us to change our political party, in some more local elections where word of mouth is critical, and where we may not be getting as much info from the traditional media as we may like, I think Facebook can be very influential.  And those local elections results often have more of an impact on our day to day lives than who is sitting in the White House a thousand miles away.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A Toy For Girls That Made Me Cry

The line that did me in was, "Your daughter is so much more than a princess."

You MUST watch this right now.


How freaking amazing is Debbie?  I love her.

I pre-ordered a set of GoldieBlox for my girls because I want to support this company and what they're trying to accomplish.

I would love to see an entire aisle of toys like this at Toys R Us or Target!

If you want to support girls getting involved in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, if you want to support a company that is going to change the world one girl at a time, if you want to do something good and healthy for the mind of a girl you love, click here and visit their website.

(Nobody paid me to write this or gave me anything, I'm just all fired up about this idea and I wanted to share it with you!)

Thursday

I love getting the text message that says BJ is safe on the ground when he's on a business flight.

We had breakfast for dinner tonight - which is becoming our thing when Daddy is out of town.  The girls asked, "Why does Daddy hate breakfast for dinner?" and the best I could do was, "It offends his sense of order."  We had pancakes, bacon, eggs, and juice.  I used a different recipe from my usual that called for twice as much baking powder as I usually use.  They were super-fluffed pancakes.

The crazy up-and-down fall weather is causing lots of sickness, and a lot of our plans have gotten scrapped this week because of sick friends.  My kids have coughs, but no fevers.  I kind of wish the weather would make up its mind, but on the other hand, we're hoping to finish the porch this weekend so it can wait until Monday to make up its mind.

We had Claire's Girl Scouts meeting today.  I forgot to call our speaker and remind her, so she forgot, and I had to improvise.  We earned our "courageous and strong" petal by talking about things that scare us, and techniques for managing our fears (deep breathing, asking an adult for help, working together, singing a special "I am brave" song...).  Then we talked about how we're stronger when we work together than we are separately.

I had them lift each other up with two fingers - the old "light as a feather, stiff as a board" trick, which was totally brand new and amazing to them because they're five and they've never been to a sleepover.  (I was describing the meeting to my dad later, and he was like, "The what trick?" - I guess boys don't do that at sleepovers.  He said they do trust falls, instead, and then forget to catch each other.  Ha!)  It turned out pretty well!  I was proud of my ability to improvise.

We have some pretty shy kiddos in my troop, so I'm hoping that they'll learn that they can be "courageous and strong" when they're with their fellow scouts...  and maybe that will help them in other areas of their lives, too.

Opportunities to go camping, snow boarding, skiing, etc. keep coming up, and it sounds like so much fun, but then I remember that some of them can barely get through an hour long meeting without tears - they are NOT ready for extreme sports adventures at this time.  It's hard not to rush.

Can you see me skiing with a bunch of 5 year olds?  Oh my word.  There is not enough Zoloft.

I'd better get the kids bathed and in bed.

Facetime

I totally got lit tonight with my mom and my sister, even though they're in Denver at a conference and I'm here.  There's got to be a way for Apple to make that into a Facetime commercial, for reals.

I try not to blog drunk but they went out for dinner and we lost our connection, so I'm all alone with 1/4 bottle of wine left.  And what else is a girl to do?  If I drink alone I have a problem, but if I drink with you, it's all good.

BJ is out with his friends, tonight.  He never knows what he's going to come home to, poor guy.  Tonight he gets happy-drunk wife.  I wonder if Aldi's Cheetos taste any better drunk.  Probably not.  Sometimes it's worth it to pay the extra fifty cents, you know?  Lesson learned: generic Cheetos are not worthwhile.

When I was in college, Amanda and I would play cards, drinking bad percolated coffee and eating actual Cheetos until the cards turned orange from our fingers.  Do you ever have a memory so clear you can smell it?  I miss you, Manders.  We should Facetime, too.  Get an iThing!

But this blog is not called Drunken Mommies, it is called Pretty Babies, and so I should update you on the status of the babies.

Mary Grace told me tonight that a boy is bothering her at school, because he said he would tell on her if she didn't stop chasing him.  My sage advice was to stop chasing him.  Sometimes this parenting stuff is too easy, and I wonder if it's a trick question.  She is delighted by the riddles I put in her lunch box - today's was "What do you call an alligator who is wearing a vest?"  Answer - an INVESTIGATOR.  It doesn't take much to impress a 7 year old.

Claire's lunch notes are harder to write because her reading skills are just emerging.  Today I drew a dachshund (which is virtually impossible to spell after 3/4 of a bottle of wine - thanks spell check!) and wrote "I can draw a little dog.  Love, Mom."  All words that she can read.  It's going to be lots more fun when she can read more words.  Watching a child learn to read is like watching a flower bloom.  That's some deep shit, right there.  Yo.

Jack is still (perpetually) in the psychotic squirrel phase of development.  I'm still cleaning up mess #1, when he's completed mess #2 and is moving on to mess #3.  But he's so damn cute.  He said the word "apple" today for the first time for Erin and then for me.  He totally stepped on the dog yesterday and the Penny grumped, but didn't bite.  Good dog.

I should really drink some water and take some ibuprofen.  Oh my.  I just finished my third glass of wine.  I am a cheap date.  It is taking a great deal of effort to avoid spelling and grammatical errors.  I should probably eat something before bed.  I am currently into plums.  I have some, but I'm afraid that I'd sever an artery if I tried to cut one up.  I don't think they taste as good if you eat them whole.  Is that weird?

I miss my brother.

Oh crap, I'm turning into a sad sappy drunk.  I'd better stop now, before this gets maudlin.

(Bonus points for correctly spelling a $10 word while inebriated).

(Inebriated is also a $10 word! - Double points!)

Yawn

I've neglected to write for almost a week.  Nothing in particular has been going on.  We spent a great deal of time on Saturday trying to make progress on the front porch.  We have the old siding removed, the house wrap/insulation/waterproofing stuff that says Lowe's all over it put on and taped.  We need to haul away the old aluminum (but we need a truck for that, and some time, both of which we lack at this moment).  BJ is nervous about cutting the new stuff that we're putting up, even though we had to order 10 sheets of it so we have lots of practice material.

On Sunday we made sushi and Buffalo chicken dip for a party that he was going to.  I don't like sushi, but he was running late, so I helped.  I tasted a piece.  Nope, don't like it when I make it, either.  Nori, the seaweed stuff that holds sushi together, tastes like the part of fish's taste that I don't like.  The texture is off-putting, too.  It's like a fish-flavored Fruit Roll Up.  Why would anyone eat that deliberately??

I've done a little Christmas shopping.  Both of the girls really want American Girl dolls.  So even though I swore I wouldn't drink that KoolAid, that's what they're getting from "Santa" this year.  Stupid Santa gets all the credit for the awesome gifts, the big jolly jerk.  Next year Santa's going to bring them socks and underwear, and Mommy is going to get them a pony.

I swear, kids came up with this Santa thing.  Because when Mary Grace (very prematurely) wrote her letter to Santa, and said, "I've been good, please bring me the Marie-Grace American Girl Doll," I thought, "If we don't get it for her, she's going to think that she's BAD."  How could I possibly do that to her?

We also went to see the play "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" on Sunday afternoon at Purdue,  but it was a disaster and I don't want to talk about it.  Let's just say that Jack won't be enjoying the theater again, children's play or otherwise, for a very, very long time.

One of us is about to be VERY bad.

Penny and Mommy agree that it's a good thing he's so cute.

That's about all.  Just the usual.  Nothing terribly noteworthy or hilarious these days.  

Election Results

BJ has been watching the election results on CNN since before the polls closed in Indiana.

People are going to be shouting random numbers at me in my dreams.  All of the numbers will add up to 100.  But they won't make sense, because I'm trying not to listen, so it'll be things like, "52 percent of churchgoers think you should clean out a cabinet, while 48 percent of mothers and people who watch NASCAR think you should clean the bathroom."

(Clearly I have guilt about the state of my house right now).

In completely different news, I've had a LifeProof iPhone case ever since I got my iPhone 4S, and it has done an amazing job of protecting my phone from me and from the kids.  I noticed this weekend, though, that the plastic was starting to tear, so I took the case off today, and it's like having a whole new phone!  The touch screen is more responsive, it's smaller and lighter and cleaner.  It's easier to use.  I crack myself up.  It's like there has been a great phone inside of my good phone all this time, just waiting to break free...

(49 percent of people who put their left socks on first think I should get a new case, while 51 percent of people who eat their dinner one item at a time, rather than a bite of this and then a bite of that and then a bite of the other think that I should keep my phone naked).

When I am queen of the world, the "campaign season" will be from August 1 - November.  Four months is PLENTY.  Also, it will be illegal for the news channels to do this math thing.  They will be fined significantly for saying anything that adds up to 100 before the morning after the election.  (46 percent of people who have ever played beer pong think I should be the queen of the world.  54 percent of the people who have never eaten at a restaurant that starts with a vowel point out that if I were the queen of the world there would be no need for elections, or coverage.)

Mary Grace's Daisy troop meets at a church that's about a 15 minute drive from the school, so once every two weeks the leader and I load the girls up in the car and drive them across town.  Today they were singing Firework by Katy Perry, so I put it on my phone and played it when we got to a stoplight.  Once I was sure they were all singing along, I would randomly turn the volume down so that I could hear them all signing enthusiastically offkey.  It was hilarious.

Mary Grace was cracking up.  I looked at her and said, "When you're a teenager and you think I'm a huge dork, I want you to think back and remember how cool I was today," and she said, "Ok, Mommy!"

(42 percent of daughters of people with blogs think I'm a huge dork already.  58 percent stopped reading three paragraphs ago.)

CNN just projected Pennsylvania for Obama.  I just projected hot apple cider and spiced rum for myself to celebrate.

Phew

English lacks a word for the feeling of relief and gratitude that you get when you finally see that everyone is ok after something bad has happened.

I've been "what-iffing" all day after a family I love as much as my own was involved in a hit and run car accident this morning. Small town - I actually drove past the bad guy's car on my way to the grocery store. He broke down on the ramp between the main road that goes past my subdivision and the nearest state road, and I drove by on the shoulder wondering what he had hit, because the guardrail was undamaged but his front end was destroyed.  Little did I know that he had just tried to drive through my friend's minivan.

Friend's husband just posted this picture of the car on Facebook.  Yikes.

He was on drugs and driving on a suspended license.

After a brief visit to the hospital everyone was released - including her kids who were in the car with her.

We move through the world every day imagining that we're safe, and that if we make good choices and follow the rules, we will be ok. But sometimes things just happen, like a bolt out of the blue, just because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we allowed ourselves to think about it, we would never leave our houses.

The bystanders were kind and helped my friend and her kids. They got them out of the mangled van and called for help. Everyone will be ok. The friends I was with when I got the news calmed me down, then kept Jack for me so I could go to my friend and offer what help I could after the fact.  Everyone is ok.

But those what-ifs...  They're just too scary sometimes.

(I'm not using any names, because I don't know that my friend wants her adventures publicized, or that she has had a chance to tell her extended family yet...  If she wants to, she can reveal herself in the comments so we can all tell her how relieved we are that she's ok.)

Aunt Kathryn Wins. Also, Christmas Stuff

Aunt Kathryn wins the prize for emailing me a thank you note from Red Stamp as instructed.  I laughed out loud!  Riley is such a ham.

I spent a good deal of time today planning our holiday activities.  Already.  We're going to ride the Polar Express, and Jack is going to flip his curly lid.  I also got Mom's annual Christmas open house on the calendar, and several other parties and special events.  It's crazy how fast December fills up with activities.  Our favorite for the past couple of years has been the Dinner with Santa at Lafayette Brewing Company.  I've checked, though, and it's not up on their online calendar yet.  We'll have to go for lunch sometime in the next few weeks to get the info.  It's funny - we just kind of stumbled onto that one several years ago, and we've been going ever since.  It's a lot of fun, and the kids really love it.

Imagine these filled with Brach's pick-a-mix,
hanging on the doorknob.

When I was a kid we used to go to Marshall Field's and have cocoa in the Walnut Room and see the tree.  I'm not sure that we did it every year, but when we did it was really special.  We also went to the Kiwanis Lunch with Santa when I was very little.  One of my few real memories of my Papa (he died when I was 6) is going to that event with him and my uncles when I had the flu, and getting sick in my salad bowl!  Of course he took me home right away.  They used to hand out those red mesh stockings full of candy, and my mom hung it on my bedroom doorknob (we lived in the house my sister lives in now, so I must have been between 3 and 5).  I couldn't have any, of course, because in the 1980s when you threw up your mom starved you for at least 24 hours minimum, and it was torture to have to look at it.  I still remember feeling so frustrated and disappointed, 30 years later!

I really like candy.

So far I've managed not to get all grumpy and stressed about Christmas like I normally do.  We'll see how long I can keep that up.  It's just so much pressure being the mom, and feeling like everyone's Precious and Important Holiday Experience is in your hands.  (Ok, that's b.s., I got stressed about the holidays before I had kids - it just got harder after the kids were born).

I know it's early to think about Christmas, but I'd love to hear about your family's holiday traditions.  Do you get grumpy and stressed, too?

Red Stamp

No one is paying me anything or giving me anything to write this post.  I just like to share the cool stuff I find with you all from time to time.

I suck at thank you notes.  I mean, really, really suck.  It's not that I'm ungrateful, I'm just really busy, and for some reason finding a stamp is as hard in this house as finding tape or a pair of scissors that is still suitable for cutting fabric (seriously, family, lay off Mommy's scissors!).  Excuses, excuses, it's one of the things on the short list of things I wish I could change about myself (we don't need to get into the rest of that list, it's depressing...  But I'd like to be in a single digit size between now and when I die, and also I really would like to cure my chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome).

And then I found out about Red Stamp, and everything changed.

Red Stamp is an iOS app.  You download it free from the app store, then you give it permission to muck around with your photos and your contacts, and BAM!  Instant thank you notes.

Seriously, look at the one I made from our Halloween picture in like 33 seconds:

Or this one that I sent to my mother-in-law after our trip to Chicago:

Or this one I sent to Uncle Doug and Aunt Kathy:

Once you've designed your card, you can email it, text it, save it to your camera roll, post it to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or you can pay $1.99 to have Red Stamp print it and send it to your recipient in the actual mail!

I am using the heck out of this thing.  Sure, the same functionality is available from a variety of websites (I've used Shutterfly for the past several years to do our Christmas cards, for example), but this app is so quick and so slick, and it makes sending personalized thank you notes so easy, that I have officially run out of excuses.  I don't have to plug in my camera, upload to my computer, walk uphill both ways to the post office...  I just choose the cute layout (and they have a lot of cute ones!), choose the picture, change the text, choose the recipient, and hit "MAIL IT!"

The other thing that I love is that they're something that the recipient will actually keep and enjoy, rather than just reading and saying, "Oh, that's nice," and tossing away.  (Actually, I keep every single personal piece of mail I get, from letters to thank you notes to Christmas cards, but I'm crazy like that.  Most people don't.)  I wish I had found the app before we left the Jack Hanna show, because I would've taken a picture of the kids.  I found it later that same day.  I just happened to have taken a picture of the logo on the wall and the screen to blog about it. 

So, there you go.  I just made your holidays a LOT easier if you have an iOS device.  You can just email me the thank you note. 

November 1

Dear Mrs. O. and Mrs. W.,

I am so, so sorry for inflicting my children on you today.  They are hungover from sugar and too much excitement.  You should get hazard pay.

When I told Claire that she could have "two pieces of candy" I failed to tell her that I meant fun sized pieces, and when I wasn't watching she ate a fun sized piece of something and then 3/4 of a king sized Reese's PB cup package that Grandpa Bob gave her.  I only know this because I found the wrappers on the counter and Claire on the ceiling.  She'll probably come down from the sugar high around 11 am today.

Mary Grace has a pretty serious sugar addiction to start with, so her blood sugar level isn't too far above her normal pre-diabetic level.  However, she IS reacting to her sister's hyperness, and so she's unusually grumpy and short tempered.

In addition to the sugar, they were also both up about an hour and a half later than usual last night.  Sorry.

Most of all, I'm sorry for being very, very relieved when it was time for them to go wait for the bus.

Sincerely,
Amy