One of the first posties that I met on the boards was Doris Chua. She has many blogs, and a lot of interesting tips for people who run their own business. I keep forgetting to RSS feed her business blog.
It was interesting to read on her personal blog that the five second rule is actually false. That’s been a long-standing rule in almost every house I’ve ever lived in. I do enjoy reading posts about her son, there’s an insight into some things I can look forward to as my own son gets older. Seeing the entries about his new room have been a special treat.

was started by Colleen at GeekySpeaky to find out more and become a participant visit Supahstar Saturday.

It’s been a busy few days. There’s been some interesting munchkin moments, and some major munchkin meltdowns too. He’s getting very frustrated lately because he can walk but that just seems to mean there are so many more places he can’t go. He’s taken to hiding under his crib if he doesn’t get his way. He’s also been in pain because of the three teeth coming in. I’m just thankful the pedi said he didn’t catch the cold I’ve been socked with since last weekend.

I’ve been doing a lot of house cleaning still. I purged our bedroom on Friday night, which was the last room of the house that hadn’t been subject to my new energy cleaning spree as it’s the room that the “public” doesn’t go into EVER.

Then Saturday morning I went through the munchkin’s clothes and assembled a big ziploc baggie full of clothes he’s outgrown. I kept all the second generation hand-me-downs in a seperate box in case we have another baby at some point, and all the brand new never worn or barely worn stuff is in the baggie. I’m looking for somewhere to donate them given I’ve decided it’s not right to try and sell them to anyone as we were donated a lot of things which meant a lot as we’ve been struggling financially for some time, so in turn I would like to help someone else out. I’m not wanting to go to Goodwill because they will sell them to people, but it’s looking like that may be my only option.
Nowhere that I’ve found seems to be collecting for the tornado victims any more. We apparently no longer have a local Red Cross which surprised me; my late grandmother used to volunteer for the Red Cross in our area, but the chapter is not here any more and according to the Red Cross website the closest one is almost 50 miles away. My Mum suggested the Salvation Army instead, but I can’t raise the chapter listed in the yellow pages on the phone and the US Salvation Army site is telling me that the closest chapter for them is about 25 miles away. So my charitable efforts have been thwarted for this weekend as with us still only having the one car and my husband being on duty I can’t travel that far because I wouldn’t be back in time for him to go to work.
I may go with my original idea which is to take the things up to the hospital where the munchkin was born. When we were there last year I gave them the outfits we’d brought with us he was too big for being born almost 9 1/2 pounds. We had been given some preemie outfits and a lot of the newborn things he was busting out of. The nurse on duty at the time we were leaving had told me that as there are a lot of babies born who wind up going into care and don’t have anything they would keep them for that possibility as they have a certain style of outfit they use for the newborns while they’re at the hospital itself. Perhaps this will be a viable option as nowhere else seems to be in our area any more.

Other than that I’ve been engaged in a DIY project. Before the munchkin’s birthday I took some of my PPP earnings that I hadn’t put into savings towards our new car and purchased a new desk for the computer.

This was our old one:

Hubbie had that since he was in high school and it just wasn’t functioning so well for us with the new computer. Note that the hard drive is directly on the floor, and especially that there was nowhere to safely put the cords so the munchkin would keep diving under the desk and turning the power strips off or even worse trying to chew on the power cables, hence the big blue box being under the desk to try and stop him.

The new desk of course came in pieces. It advertised that it was ‘easy to assemble’ and required ‘no tools’. It was partially right. I had to get a hammer to help push in some of the dowels, and I still haven’t got the keyboard shelf together as one of the rails just refuses to go on. I’m hoping I can manage it after I’ve finished with my break, as so far I’ve done this project entirely by myself without hubbie’s help. It took me almost an hour, but it’s the first DIY project I’ve done without the help of my Dad, a girlfriend or my husband. Although, if I’m being honest, it probably went better because I didn’t have hubbie’s help. He does freely admit that he is no good at DIY because he has no patience. We almost divorced over the large bookshelf we put together while I was pregnant, and we’re not going to mention that it looks as though it will fold in half at any moment (halo).

Anyway, here is the desk:

The munchkin was exceedingly mad I elected to do this project while he was awake because it meant I had to put him in his playpen so that he wouldn’t eat anything small and deadly or pull any of the wooden planks down on himself. I have to do these things while I have the energy and drive though, or they sit indefinitely. He kept pelting me with his toys when he would realize that he’d been playing happily instead of yelling at me. That made things interesting.

I missed last weeks (and the week before too I think) because we’ve been insanely busy. Last week was the baptism and with everthing else I left things too late to catch up. So, I wanted to make sure I got todays done before I headed off into the real world.
Once again my son decided to invade. It must be something about me wearing this shirt.

In other notes I really need to get that DoFollow installed. I have it downloaded…somewhere.

For more details on Self Portrait Sunday:
. To see the other people who participated this week go to DigiCass.

We just got back from the pediatrician for the munchkin’s year old check-up. He had two shots, and was a trooper. He had a long conversation with our pediatrician while the doctor was writing up for some bloodwork and things. I’m not sure what about, but they were entertaining each other. He’s 32 inches tall and 24lbs 15oz, officially. He’s not gaining weight as much as he was, but he’s so active now racing around the house that this is not an issue.
Our Medicaid/Health Ease insurance expires on Monday, and the doctor was talking to me about that. Medicaid did send me a letter after the expiration notification which made it sound, to me, as though they were still going to insure him after May, but under a different system. Our doc is well versed in Medicaid scenarios and was giving me a lot of really good advice about ways we can go about things if they were not saying what I thought and the munchkin will be without insurance in three days.

I explained to him that if we insured through my husband’s company it would be at least $400 a month out of our paycheck and he agreed that was ridiculous as generally you wouldn’t pay that much out of pocket for check-ups without insurance for as healthy a boy as the munchkin is. He advised for us to put even half of that aside in savings and use it in case there was some kind of hideous medical expense, and if not just put it in an IRA or his college fund if we didn’t have to use it. That they can work with us for his checkups as they do shots for $11 a pop, and the bare minimum of wellness checks per year would only be about $50 each time out of pocket.

That was very comforting, and excellent advice. Since I’ve been out of work we haven’t put anything in the IRA, and I’ve just started putting stuff aside into savings again, which has been hard.

He couldn’t give me definite assurance that we would re-qualify for Medicaid because we’re right on that cusp with my husband’s earnings. As it is I’m wondering if we will actually get WIC on Tuesday, because of that cusp. I have to gather up some recent paychecks of my husband’s and a bunch of other information to take with me.

On the upside I’m not as worried about the possible cancelling of Medicaid as I was. I need to get the letters they sent out of filing and call the number again. We’ve not been home enough over the past few days for me to be able to sit there on hold to hopefully get verbal explanations.

It’s amazing to think where we were this time last year. We’d been in the hospital for fourteen hours because we’d been scheduled for an induction. My water had broken. We were trying to get the epidural. My Mum and husband had gone down to get food from the hospital cafeteria, and we were hoping things would move right along.

I had an epidural top up around 1 p.m. so that we could start pushing and get the munchkin out but by 3:30 p.m. it was apparent he wasn’t leaving so easily. I was exhausted. He’d crowned but wasn’t going any further. Much as we didn’t want to we opted after two more pushes and no headway to go for a C-Section. That half hour of prep was the most agonizing I’ve felt. The epidural was wearing off. My body kept telling me we needed to PUSH PUSH PUSH and everyone was telling me NO NO NO.

They had to move me off one bed into the other. I was cursing up a storm it was so painful, and then I was freezing cold at the same time because they were numbing my lower body even more so that they could perform the section. I remember Dr. B. (the nice man with the epidural) singing along to the radio they had going in the O.R. to keep me distracted while we were waiting for my husband to be cleared to come in, and the nurses talking about trying to get him out for 4:26 so that he could be born at 4:26 on 4/26 2006. They managed 4:29 p.m.

It’s the weirdest thing to feel the pressure but not really be connected to it. It felt as though there were twelve people squashing my stomach area but there was no pain, and then the lightest feeling. He was huge and purple and very angry. The cord was around his shoulders.
I got to kiss him before they whisked him and my husband into the other room so they could clean him up and weigh and measure him, and at the same time put me back together.

My Mum got to take this. The first picture of him ever taken. He was about fifteen minutes old at this time, and still angry as you can see.

By contrast this is him more recently playing with some blocks a friend sent him for his birthday.
He’s about a foot taller and 17lbs heavier now, and a lot more mobile. It’s so strange to think that I spent the first portion of last year wondering when he was going to be out and begging and pleading that he would be born a few weeks early but healthy just so I would stop being uncomfortable, and this whole year seems to be such a blur, and it’s hard to believe that he’s a year old already but at the same time it seems to have taken forever.

We survived the first year though! We actually made it! Yay!! Do we get a prize?

I was tagged by Cecile to write about habits that have made me successful.

My first thought on this was: “What? Me? I’m not successful!” but that is one of my self esteem problems. I’m constantly downgrading myself.

So I would say the first success thing I have to come to is not listening to that little voice of self-doubt. I have to take that little doubting voice aside and give it a good talking to so that I can get on with what I need to do, otherwise I would never do anything. Sometimes it’s easier than others. I like to think that I’m logical but when I’m ripping myself apart it’s not logical at all.

Family Support is a big one. I wouldn’t have been able to do half of what I’ve done if I didn’t have encouragement from my husband. He’s helped me a lot, with my self-confidence, with letting me have time to do what I need to do, backing up my decisions to stop one line of schooling and go on to another. He’s even researched and brought to me several ideas that I’ve implemented.

Saying “No”. There are just some things you can’t do. It used to be very hard for me to say “no” to people, working at the library taught me how to do that. If you didn’t say “no” to certain things you’d never get done the work you had to do. Everyone was constantly trying to get you to work on their projects, or dumping their work on your desk. It’s really beneficial to say “no” to certain things. Sometimes you need to say “no” to work and just have some fun, others you just have to not do certain things so you can get done what you have to do.

I’m so bad at this. I can’t think of anyone to tag.

Firstly because the appropriate props must be given to the cake that was made. I cannot take credit for this at all. This amazing piece of art was kindly made for us by a friend of ours, who is now being dubbed “The Cake Goddess”. we have another friend who is “The Pie Goddess” but Becka is definitely “The Cake Goddess”. Why?
Because she made the cake into a baby dragon!

As soon as the cake came through the door I was speechless. This blows away anything we could have got for him anywhere else. She is so talented! The body of the dragon was chocolate cake and the limbs rice krispie treats so they could be shaped. She claims it’s pretty easy but I know I could never do anything like that. It would wind up looking like the dragon was already slain, or maybe a dragon drawn by Picasso.

Anyway, here’s the munchkin blowing out the candle with my Mum’s help.

He really didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He enjoyed himself chasing after the two other children who were there, and playing with them, and all the hugs and attention he was getting from everyone. The cake he wasn’t so sure about the taste. I’m wondering what happened with that because I’m a chocolate fiend, and his Dad doesn’t mind it, but he doesn’t seem to like it. He ate a bit of cake at my Dad’s birthday but that was marble.

This he seemed more content to play with.

Shortly after that was taken, another friend pointed out we should probably strip him, given while he wasn’t really eating the cake just the frosting. He was playing with it and while the table cloth would save the floor his clothes would still get messy. I won’t post any more pictures from after that because of the almost baby nude (still in diaper) and I just don’t think that’s a good idea to post.

I will recommend the tablecloth on the floor to anyone with small children though. It was really cheap plastic table cloth and after he was done we just rolled it up and threw it away. I’m going to get a few more to put around his chair while he’s eating and those I can shake outside on the grass until they tear up beyond use. It saves the messy clean up and me mopping the floor every day.

I hate colds. They make you feel horrible in a way no other medical ailment can quite manage. I’ve had one of the past three days, and I feel absolutely awful. There’s no other way to describe it. Today at least I can finally breathe a bit better, but I don’t feel a hundred percent, and that’s not great when dealing with a rambunctious munchkin. He can beat me at tug-of-war on good days so let alone now. On the upside I can’t smell his diapers so changing him is a lot easier.

I have a lot of things I need to catch up on still. Hopefully I can track those down today. Yesterday when I wasn’t dealing with the munchkin and rewatching Season 1 of LOST I was playing a game on the playstation, because I really didn’t feel much like being glued to the computer.

The past few days have been so crazy around here. Saturday we had the munchkin’s birthday party, so I’ve spent the few days before that cleaning and reorganizing, back and forth to various stores to make sure I had enough essentials, and then yesterday we had his baptism at my in-laws house. To cap that all off I started coming down with a cold Friday. I could feel my throat starting to itch, Saturday I wasn’t too bad, but by that evening I was very congested. This morning I can’t talk, but at least I can catch up with my blogs because that doesn’t require a voice.

The party was great. One of our friends made an amazing cake for us: a baby red dragon, and the munchkin got some very generous gifts. He had a lot of fun playing with our friend’s two children who are three and six, and got to make a huge mess with his own mini-cake that the dragon had his tail curled around. I can’t post pictures right now because my photo-editing program is on the fritz so I can’t resize anything small enough to post on here right now but I will hopefully be able to share some soon.

He’s having a lot of fun playing with toys and boxes alike. As I write he’s posting the building blocks two of our friends got him into the shapesorter he got for Christmas, or at least trying to, and when we went to my ILs for his baptism yesterday we had to bring the pig and one of his dinosaurs that he got with us.

I was nervous about the baptism because I’m not of that faith and all the information flying back and forth I was afraid things were going to turn into a huge event that we didn’t really want.
My husband and I had talked at length about the idea, and before the munchkin was born we’d not felt that it was something we wanted to do, but as things have gone on, especially with his mother’s failing health and how afraid she was about this we consented to have him baptized as long as her uncle performed the ceremony and would do it at their home rather than us taking him to a church that we did not and would never attend and having them do it.

The day went very well. It was great to finally be able to meet his family who I hear a lot about and have even conversed with over their family blog every once in a while but not been able to meet face to face. The munchkin did us proud by keeping in good spirits the whole time even though he was getting ready for a nap. There were several rounds of “pass the baby” between grandparents and myself, but he didn’t have a meltdown of any sort until after everyone else had left that afternoon when he tripped and hit his head, which is understandable. Considering he’s cutting three teeth right now that was amazing, especially as fussy and cranky as he’s been at home. I’m very glad he’s so well behaved with company. He really took to my MILs uncle and asked for several hugs from him, and was impressing everyone with how well he walks and the fact that he will say “Okay” and “Wow” very clearly.

When I was growing up in England we had a TV show that my family would watch regularly. It was called “Watchdog” and would bring to the public’s attention products and services which were unsafe or scams that hadn’t been recalled and needed to be.
My parents passed along to me as I was growing up the wish always to get the best value for your hard-earned dime but also to be sure that you were going to be purchasing a reliable product. It’s been hard for me in the past to get decent advice especially in the fast-evolving world of technology. I did a ton of research before purchasing my digital camera over a year ago, and still had to send that back twice for repair while it was under warranty. That’s why I’m very pleased to hear about the site TestFreaks.com which is rising up to cover this need. They’ll be reviewing a variety of technology when they launch this spring everything from nokia cell phones to digital cameras. I’m looking forward to the site being fully live before the next time we can make a big purchase, so that we won’t be spending less time with the product than the support people do.