My DS is going to be two in two weeks...and I'm going on 90 I think. He's a very inquisitive child, and given that his dad is an engineer, I think he's picked up the "let's explore it" bug from him. (I'm in community relations...I hope he gets "nice" from me heh heh) He loves any appliance with knobs and buttons, and especially the ones that make noise! And any parent with small kids knows, he also loves to "help" (his version is much different from mine). That being said, I've now purchased three dishwashers in the last couple of months for our homes, and I didn't bother with a child lock. The only thing I wanted was a DW with a flat panel (no controls out front...I might be using the wrong name for it). That's been enough to take most of the issues out of the game plan for us. I worried about function more than him grabbing a fork :) (and I don't wash knifes in the DW either). Bosch DW's tend not to have a mascerator in the bottom and have a reputation for smelling. I'd much rather say NO than smell dead food in the bottom of the food line on a dishwasher. Keep that in mind as you shop, because they'll outgrow the "fork" danger far earlier than the DW will outgrow you (hopefully). By the time they are four or five they should know that forks aren't for play. Our range has knobs (nice shiny gold ones with perfect handles for kids to play with). I imagine I'm going to be doing a lot of NO'ing for a bit when we get into the new kitchen (although at this pace he'll be 20 before that happens). But, again function won over a smooth panel ugly range :) My girlfriend was worried about the safty issue with her oven (at child height...and it's hot so I wouldn't have done that...but I digress) so she installed the simple guards you can get from child safty catalogs on her appliances. They're made for ovens and also work well on DW's. They're not terribly gorgeous, but it's temporary. I'd probably do that before I forced myself to buy a bosch.

You need to sit down with your in-laws and have a non-confrontational, non-accusatory, non-threatening discussion. Is your son fighting them when they try and put him in the car seat, is it too difficult to buckle him in or get him out? Do they feel it's not necessary on short trips. Find out what's going on and then work together to find a solution for all of you. Do they have their own car seat and is it installed in their car? If not, get them a car seat and make sure it's correctly installed and they are comfortable using it. I bought one and keep it in my car, and know how to put my grandson in it, but it took some time to get comfortable with it. It's not something to take out and reinstall at each visit. When my children were born, in the mid '70's child safety seats were just starting to be used, I had one of the first ones, and they were nothing like the ones now. Don't expect them to install your seat. If you expect them to use yours, you must install it in their car when your son is visiting with them. A cab is a whole other issue, and expecting them to carry and use a child safety seat is not reasonable, but he should have had the seatbelt on. Maybe they didn't know they could do that. My daughter had to take a cab recently, with her son, when they moved, and she buckled him into the middle of the back seat next to her. He loved it. Installing the car seat was out of the question. Good luck.

Times for Farmers in the 1940s were tough for the ones who had not recovered from the Great Depression. My Dad was one of those. The only good time we had were the three to four years he spent in the oilfields as replacement worker for draftees. The war ended and Dad was anxious to go back to farming, an occupation he was ill suited for. Times were tough again for our family as out economic condition wilted while others around us were advancing. One year when I was about 10 yr old, my parents decided to gift a new calf to me as a reward for the labor I was preforming on the farm plus keeping my school work on par. The plan was for me to raise this calf to veal stage and then sell it to collect the sale price. All seemed well for a couple of months until one morning during planting season, I came upon my parents having a hushed conversation while glancing at me; I sensed a problem, and then, Mom sheepishly addressed me to explain they did not have enough money to complete corn planting this year. They needed a couple hundred dollars more and asked to have my calf back. They needed to sell it. I felt a loss and disappointment of loosing a promised gift, and yet strangely, I felt that I was doing a duty to contribute to my family for future gains. I manned up and replied, "Yeah, Mom and Dad, take the calf. I understand.", while secretly thinking: Somehow, I knew from day one this was not to be. That's the way it was on the farm in those days.

How fun is that! I'll keep in mind . . . DS just moved from 5 rooms, 3 closets besides the bedroom closets, (2 roommates) to a studio with one closet. No room for a unicorn lol. It will be challenging to give him gifts this year: gift cards, public transit cards, theater tix will be in order, I guess.