Please excuse the interruption in our normal schedule of cute Cordy pics and whining about morning sickness for this public service announcement.

We’re less than a month from Election Day here in the US, and I hope everyone is thinking about voting this year. Lots of important local and national issues and government seats are up for consideration, and your vote could change the entire direction of the country.

When I was younger I was a much less regular voter. Who cares about the local school levy and city council seats, I figured. I didn’t think they impacted me at all – after all, I was a renter, so I didn’t pay property tax, and the city council certainly never seemed to do anything that noticeably impacted me. Sure, I’d always show up to the polls on presidential election years, but otherwise it was too big of a hassle.

As a “responsible adult” now (wow, that was hard to even write), I am more concerned with voting. I have a child, I own a house, and I care about the direction my neighborhood and my city is heading. A school levy is now almost as important as making the choice for president.

If you are not a registered voter, make sure you get registered soon. If you are a registered voter, look up where your polling station is, and make decisions about when you plan to go vote. If you know you’ll be busy, make plans to vote absentee.

Here in Ohio, I’m actually a little nervous of voting on Election Day. You see, Ohio has these wonderful electronic machines designed to make voting so much easier for all of us who can’t operate a punch card. They’re made by Diebold (where the president of the company is a die-hard Republican who promised he’d win the election for Bush in 2004), and they are a touch screen system. Simply touch the names of your choices, hit confirm, and voila – your votes are cast into the electronic ether!

Now, anyone who has had a post eaten by Blogger can tell you that electronics can fail. Did your vote really go through? Was it really recorded? There is no paper trail for these machines, so there is no confirmation that your vote was submitted, or recorded properly.

Then there’s the small issue of hackers. Oh sure, we’d like to think that no one out there would want to do anything to forcibly change the outcome of an election, but let’s be honest: lots of people would give their left arm to force an issue their direction, even if it is not what the majority wants. That’s why after reading this report by Princeton University, I’m even more nervous about using these machines. It seems that an amateur hacker, given access to a machine for less than a minute (which is easy to do behind the little curtain), can easily insert malicious code into the system to change the logs and voting outcome. Even worse, that same hacker can nearly as easily install a virus that can silently affect all the machines at once. A simple computer virus could steal votes without detection.

So if you’re in Ohio, or any other state using these machines, I urge you to consider voting absentee. Absentee voting has a paper trail, and has to be hand counted, so you know your vote will count. We also need to tell our state governments that these machines, in their current vulnerable state, are not acceptable voting devices, and demand that they either make the needed security changes to protect the votes, or fall back on another system.

And I’m not trying to say that because the Diebold CEO is a die-hard Republican that Republicans are trying to steal votes. The truth is, anyone can hack these machines.

So get registered, get educated on the issues affecting you, and go vote, one way or another. Maybe this year we can get the national voter turnout higher than 35% to find out what people really do want for this country.

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This PSA was paid for by the “If you don’t vote, you can’t bitch about the government” committee of A Mommy Story.

When it comes to relatively inexpensive good food, Fazoli’s is a must for us. Aaron can always get one of his two staples there – lasagna or pizza – and I can experiment with the variety of pastas available with the create your own pasta bowl. Nothing like a giant plate of carbohydrates to make a person smile.

Cordy has also picked up on her mama’s love of starch, and will now beg for pasta until her next fix.

So it was no surprise that when we took her there for dinner on Sunday night, she was a happy, happy child.

Oh God, send me more pasta please!

Mommy, can we come back tomorrow? And the next day?

Sure, you can say a lot of bad things about Ohio (and who hasn’t?), but one thing I really love about being here is the weather. If you like experiencing all four seasons, Ohio is the place to be. We have all four, fully-defined seasons, although not always occurring in the correct order.

Fall has to be my favorite of the seasons: the crisp air, warm during the day and cool at night, the changing colors of the leaves, the bright blue skies, the bountiful harvest. Ripe, fresh apples, sweet corn, and of course, pumpkins.

So of course when my friend Kristi, from the blog Life with Aveline, invited us to her family’s farm for pumpkin picking, horse-drawn hay rides, corn mazes, and a petting zoo, we couldn’t resist. Today we drove the hour north to Honey Haven Farm to meet up with Kristi, Laura, Jessica and others.

It was also the big debut of Kristi’s newest baby, Scarlett. Seeing that tiny little person asleep in the sling made me remember why I wanted another baby again.

Aaron and I worried about how Cordy would act during the day, since we were arriving right before nap time. Interrupting nap time can lead to, well, a grumpy troll of a child. But the day was perfect – not too warm, a light breeze, and sunny – so it was worth the risk.

When we first arrived, we met up with Kristi, who was attending to the baby, so we wandered around on our own for a bit. Cordy immediately saw Kristi’s dog, Elvis, and ran for him, petting him gently and following him wherever he went.

After that, we found our way to the petting zoo in the barn. Cordy ran back and forth between the animals before settling on the goats, mostly because they were the only ones close enough to pet. She would reach through the fence, pet the goat, then look at me and say “Mooooo!” I tried to explain that these were goats, not cows (there was a calf in the next pen, however), and she then tried again and said, “Baaaaa!” Sigh.

We tried to get her to go see other things, but she was fixated on the goats. I walked over to look at the straw maze for the kids in the barn, hoping Cordy would follow and be interested. Looking back to find her?

Still with the goat.

Finally she did wander over to the maze.

While in the maze, she ran into Aveline, who had just woken up from her nap. The two had never met before, but were quickly plotting in the back of the maze.

Then it was time to ride the wagon out into the field to pick our own pumpkins. Cordy loved petting the horses. Once in the field, Cordy was fascinated with all of the running space. Once her feet touched the ground, she was off, yelling, “running! running!” just in case we weren’t sure what she was doing.

We did have to grab her once to keep her from running right in front of one of the wagons. We walked the field, looking for just the right pumpkins. Cordy’s crazy running led us to a good section of the patch that hadn’t been picked over, and so we found three nice pumpkins.

By the time the day was over, Cordy had learned the word “pumpkin” and was proud of her new toys. We ate a little ice cream while chatting with Kristi, then packed things up to start for home. Cordy was well past her nap time at this point, and the meltdown was nearing. Not even 5 minutes into the drive, she was asleep.

Thanks to Kristi for inviting us up to the farm. We had a fabulous time, and we now have three lovely pumpkins to display outside the house. I love fall!

After the storms of biblical proportion came through last night – seriously, there was baseball sized hail in the area – and the drop of about 20 degrees in temperature overnight, any thoughts of playing outdoors today were quickly forgotten.

So, we had to rely on one of the indoor playgrounds in town. And since this mama loves ice cream, my friend and I took the toddlers to the Graeter’s factory. Graeter’s is a wonderful local ice cream maker, and their factory store has a really cool dessert themed play area. The play area is completely enclosed, so escaping is difficult, unlike the mall play area. Which means this mom can rest and eat ice creame in peace without chasing Cordy back into the play area.

My friend’s 2 year old son ran around introducing himself to everyone in the room. “I Spidemah! I Spidemah! I Petah Pahkah!” He wouldn’t stop until someone would finally acknowledge, “Oh, you’re Spiderman!”

My less-social child, however, preferred to lavish all of her attention on the red balls in the room. She carried them around, rolled them down the slide, hugged them, and generally kept to herself.

The photos of the day:

Uh, mom, you’re blocking the slide.

Meet my lovely red friends.

I Spidemah!

She’s so strong!

I have no idea what she’s thinking here.

No, really. I’m serious.

I remember being tired during my first pregnancy, but I don’t remember being so tired that I’d want to pull off the side of the road on my 20 minute drive to work for a quick snooze. It’s like my entire body feels heavy as if I’m moving around in water, and I have to fight to keep my eyes open. Mid-day is the worst, especially when I’m at work. If I’m home, I nap when Cordy naps, but there is no designated nap time while at the office. When I do finally get the chance to sleep, though, I’m awake every two hours to pee. Sigh.

And then there’s the issue of food. My luck did not hold out, and my ol’ buddy from last time, nausea, has returned. I spend about half of my day in some state of nausea, either from not eating recently or from eating ever-so-slightly too much. I’m really puzzled about the current size of my stomach. I can eat about 2/3 of a normal sized meal now, instead of an entire meal. If I ignore the warning signs and continue eating the entire meal, I spend the next few hours feeling miserable, wishing I could throw up but having no luck. And when I’m hungry, I must. eat. right. now.

Sweet foods upset my stomach, which is different from last time, when I loved anything sweet. I still have my love of spicy foods, although I’m not ready to try anything as adventurous as Indian food yet.

All of this has led to Cordy watching a lot more TV lately. I feel bad about letting her watch so much TV, but sometimes mommy needs to rest on the couch without a 32 lb. toddler trying to practice her latest balancing act on mommy’s stomach. Crayons last a little while, building blocks maybe 15 minutes, but TV can give me a half hour at a time, or even a full hour if she’s watching “Bwue’s Bud-der” (translation: Meet Blue’s Baby Brother).

Cordy, as you can guess, has taken this new change to her schedule in stride:

Sometimes I wonder how I will manage two of them?