PT update

Well, I'm officially done.

Eve is in diapers. Yay for diapers!

After her late morning bath so we could both relax, I put her in training pants again. She had a few more accidents, but they were less disturbing sans "procedure." However, it seemed silly to continue to try to make her need to go more if it just meant more accidents, so i stopped pushing the drinks. And, after a few more accidents, and continued struggles to get her to even try the potty every 15 minutes, I kinda dropped that as well. We were down to dry pants checks, and since she didn't seem motivated to actually keep her pants dry, this too seemed pointless. And without all that, why bother with big girl pants? So, I put her in pull-ups. Today, my logical and frugal mind wondered why I would continue the pull-ups when they are more expensive and being used just as diapers. So, again, I dropped that. We're back to the way things have always been. I'm fine with that. I think my dear husband will be trying again next time I'm out of the house for a full day on the weekend. Look for further updates at the end of January.

All that said, since my mother-in-law is "so much better at these kinds of things" than I am, it's possible Eve could be trained tomorrow, as I'm going in to my previous employer to talk about the possibility of returning. If I do, Eve could just move in with Grandma and wear big girl pants every day.

The Harrowing Tales of TOILET TRAINING IN LESS THAN A DAY

The Harrowing Tales of TOILET TRAINING IN LESS THAN A DAY

All I have to say about the title of this book is: HA!

Eve's adventure in potty training began yesterday at 9:30. The book promised the average child who passed the physical and mental readiness tests would be done in an average of 4 hours. Girls even take about 30 minutes less, on average.

Ha!

It's now 11:20 AM on the second DAY of training.

After a few hours, the book said Eve should be progressing from needing to be told directly to go to the potty every 15 minutes, to doing on her own when she needs to pee.

It was about 30 minutes ago that I cleaned up the 7th wet accident since we began (8 accidents in total, the worse of which, blessedly, Tom was here for), steps away from the potty chair. The only self-initiated potty moment occurred when I was putting her to bed, so of course, that must be discounted, since it was mostly a stalling technique.

The really NEAT thing about accidents, is the "accident procedure" in which I must make Eve practice 10 times starting from various points in the house, running FAST to the potty, and pulling her pants down, sitting, quickly standing, pulling her pants back up, and then running to another spot in the house to do it all again. WOW, is that fun or what? I'm going with, "or what" because I had to force every required action, 10 TIMES! She starting crying on time 2. Then, oh, it's not over, I get to make her feel her wet underwear 10 times. Me: "Are your pants dry?" I guide her hand, because she's bawling and not really paying attention, and I have to manually guide everything in this stupid potty training adventure (Let me take a moment to point out that it's my dear, dear Husband who is in a hurry to potty train), and say, "no, your pants are wet. Wet pants are yucky." or some such. And repeat, repeat, repeat. UGH. Then, finally, she's allowed to remove her wet pants and put dry ones on, the only remotely bearable part of the whole thing.

I'm supposed to check her and reward her for dry pants every 5 minutes. That's a LOT of chocolate and sugar. I'm also supposed to fill her up with liquids so we can have lots of success. Or lots of accidents, as the case may be.

I gave up after about 5 hours yesterday, but the patent disapproval for such pansy weakness in my husband's voice (or really, the silence on the phone) proved this was unacceptable. I believe this will continue for days, however I'm resolved to just help her change herself after an accident. I'm too worn out for the rest of the circus.

Months and months worth of Eve pics

http://homepage.mac.com/tomandjenn/Bigger_Eve/PhotoAlbum52.html
http://homepage.mac.com/tomandjenn/Bigger_Eve/PhotoAlbum53.html

Enjoy!

Me and 39 other people

So, yesterday my company laid off 40 employees... leaving them (if my calculations are correct) with around 60 left.

Oh, you noticed I said "them" and maybe you caught the entry heading.

That's right, folks. I'm no longer employed.

Yesterday I was 100% Happy about it, for myself anyway. I feel pretty bad for most of the other people. Quite a few of them are people I hired and trained and promised grand things to in my faith that the CEO would take our company to great heights. I actually lost faith quite a while ago, but I still hoped.

Sadly, it appears to simply be dying a very slow death.

I hope that's not the case, and that instead this will be like cutting away old growth trees in a forest...that new life will immediately spring up and replace that which was lost and more.

Yes, I was quite happy to go. I've wanted to be a full-time stay-at-home mom for nearly 2 years now, and this looked like my ticket.

But then there's reality.

If we could afford for me to not work, I wouldn't have had to wait for a lay-off. We must cut expenses by about a third, and if you are at all familiar with things around here, we were already buckled down really tight. There's not much else to cut. Selling our house would fix us up, but then we'd just have to buy another.

I can't say with 100% certainty, but it is really looking like I'll need to find a new job. I heard on the news last night that Starbucks is opening many a new store. I've never been a barista, but I think I could do it.

So, facing this reality has me feeling a smidge less excited than yesterday. And feeling wistful over nearly six and a half years of memories. I met some wonderful people in that time; nothing like the perky happy co-eds I'll call coworkers at a coffee shop. I had a blast. I don't think I could find a smarter, funnier group anywhere else. I wish I could have parted from them under better circumstances.

I don't know if you'll be hearing from me as often these days. If I don't get a new job, I may not have Internet access. If I do, I obviously won't have time to post from work. Next time I post, I hope it's with really great news instead of this bittersweet kinda stuff.

One thing's for sure, God has a plan, it just doesn't involve my former employer. :)

Breast Cancer Awareness month

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I'd like to take a moment to write about Breastfeeding.

It's no secret that breastfeeding is the very best thing you can do for your baby. For further information on how great it is for babies, mothers, and society, see here, here, and here. It's even great for your pocketbook!

What you may not know is that breastfeeding (along with pregnancy) can have a significant impact on a woman's risk for developing breast cancer. If you'd like to view the details of studies that have shown this to be true, here's a good link for you.

One study showed that your personal risk for breast cancer can be decreased by over 4% for each year of breastfeeding. It's also been shown that each birth can diminish the risk for breast cancer by 7%. Doing the math, if everyone had 14 kids and breastfed them for the 1 year minimum recommended by the FDA and the AAP, breast cancer could be essentially obliterated.

I know, I know... who in their right mind would have 14 kids? How about if we all breastfed each child for the minimum recommendation of the WHO: 2 years. Seven children would do it. Still too much for you? How about 5? The longer you breastfed each child, the less children you'd need for the same amount of risk reduction.

Update: I know, I'm not really be fair with the numbers. Remember, this is statistics, not like making change. I'm sure there would still be some breast cancer occuring even if we all went around having huge litters of children. My point is, there's a real, tangible reduction of risk for you personally if you can and do breastfeed.

All that aside, you don't need to have your own football team, or nurse your only child until he hits legal drinking age to reap the benefits of breastfeedings protective properties against breast cancer. Every little bit helps.

To read a more serious presentation of the impact breastfeeding can have on your breast cancer risks, go here, here, here, and here.

If pregnancy is in your future, please consider all the benefits of breastfeeding, to both your and your child. Reduce your risks of disease as well as your child's in an irreplaceable way that is affordable and fulfilling.

If pregnancy isn't in your future, please consider all the benefits of breastfeeding to the mothers and children around you. Support your friends and loved ones in breastfeeding--it's best for all of us!

Phun with Photos!

I've been doing a terrible job keeping Eve's photo gallery updated. I actually have tons of pictures (I won't start slacking on that until baby #2 (should such a child ever arrive) right?)

So, for those of you craving some recent Eve shots, and for those of you who aren't but don't have a choice, here's some pictures for you! These were all taken the weekend we went camping.

Here's a shot of the Italian Prune tree in our yard. I love this tree for shade, and I even am quite fond of the fruit it produces, but I really can't keep up with the yield, so we end up with literally hundreds of plums on our grass. Here, I experimented with color filters in iPhoto, this was merely a tint change to add a yellow-cast (which is more representative of reality than the picture showed in its raw state)



Here's me practicing with the macro setting for a nice close up of the dew on the plums that have fallen. These were taken before the local gaggle of Canada Geese discovered the bounty of my yard. For each prune they consumed, they left a...present, even more gross than the normal kind. On the plus-side, I don't have to pick up rotting, fermenting prunes this fall.



Here's Eve, looking thoughtful and adorable (as usual). I think I "sharpened" the image, but I can't remember for sure.



Here's Eve with her Daddy climbing my in-laws' RV to retrieve a package in the little treasure hunt Grandma set up for Eve and her little cousins. She was really proud of her accomplishment. This photo was cropped to get closer and then "enhanced" which is a mysterious adjustment. I'm not always happy with the results of "enhance" but in this case, it was nice.



I enhanced this shot of Eve on the swings. We tried and tried to get shots of her swinging, and none of them turned out as impressive as we'd hoped. She's so cute though, I couldn't resist sharing, even if it is a pretty overexposed looking shot.



And last but not least, Eve all prepared to go swimming at the pool. She was strutting around knowing she looked like pretty hot stuff in her sunglasses and suit. She had a blast swimming too. I used the "warmth" filter on this, as well as upping the brightness, since the shadows were even worse in the original photo.

Where is my time spent?

Why am I not blogging regularly? Well, aside from the fact that I frequently am on the computer one-handed, which is a really awful way to type up anything, it's usually because I'm reading other blogs, or posting/reading on Craftster. I'm obsessed. Anyway, this is like cheating, but I promise a better post soon, maybe even today!

To see my latest finished embroidery item, go here.

All this free time!

Yeah. And then I go and spend it playing this! Warning, may be addictive!

Miss me?

Phew. I had quite the long weekend. And I've been so behind that it's now been a week since I last was in control and caught up with my online life. This stuff is hard work!

My in-laws went camping and left Wednesday afternoon, leaving me with no sitter for Thursday or Friday. We were joining them for camping Friday evening, so I knew I couldn't goof around on my days off and leave housework for the weekend. There was a time when catching up after 5 days offline was no big deal. Now? Let's just say I have enough blog entries to keep me busy for a week's worth of naps, and that doesn't begin to touch email and op-eds. Not to mention the fact that being gone all weekend leaves me with just as much catching up to do on craft projects and housework as ever. *And* I started reading a new novel, and added 2 to my long-neglected tbr pile. eek!

Additionally, I've found a very prolific blog that I'm sharing because, well, if I don't have time for anything but blogs, neither should you. Very useful stuff too.

Have fun at LifeHacker.

Need a throw-away email address?

Ooh, I'm thrilled with this little tidbit I just learned from Bloglines. Did I mention you need this?!

"You can create an unlimited number of special Bloglines email addresses that are tied to your Bloglines account. The email addresses show up as subscriptions in your My Blogs page, and email sent to those email addresses appears as new items.

When you create a Bloglines email address, a subscription is added to your account. If you unsubscribe from that subscription, the email address becomes invalid and mail sent to it will bounce.

Email subscriptions are great for announce-only or broadcast mailing lists that don't provide RSS feeds. They are also useful as temporary email addresses."

Go...go sign up.

Argh! Ahoy me maties!

Yes, it is international talk like a pirate day, and I'm entering into the spirit of things quite happily. After all, it seems yesterday's post, admitting defeat to the inevitable change of seasons, resulted in renewed vigor from our Western Washington weather, and this morning I woke not only to clouds but heavy rain fall. I need something to cheer me. Argh!

Actually, I don't really mind the rain all that much. I just don't like walking in it. I suppose a good rain coat might change that, but who can afford that? I always seem to have better things to spend my money on.

Swab the decks ye lubbers!

Sorry. Ahem. Anyway, there are some things I really like about the change of seasons. For instance, television! I really don't watch much TV, although I'm sure I watch more than others. And unfortunately, Tom and I have gone from being down to 2 shows we wouldn't miss, to 4 since Eve was born. But still, it's only 4 hours out of my week, and honestly less than that, since we never watch it live with commercials.

Sadly, the days of Buffy and Angel are gone (Oh James Marsters, how I miss you!), and Friends too has ended, but we still have CSI (Season premiere this Thursday!!) and Survivor. (Actually, I don't love Survivor, but Tom is an addict, so I have learned to appreciate the entertaining aspects of the show--and Jeff is a cutey!) Second episode of Season 13 airs this Thursday. The year Eve was born, we added Lost, a show with some really great actors and a frustrating plot, and some absolutely great episodes and some really crappy ones. It's basically a gamble, so we watch it because we'd hate to miss a good one. If this season is worse than last, this may move to our don't-miss-unless-there's-anything-better-to-do list. ;) Mark you calendars for Wednesday, October 4th if you don't want to miss this one. And last but certainly not least is the newly added Battle Star Galactica. This show actually tops our list of must-see TV this season. As television goes, this is the best, as far as I'm concerned. Well, excepting Firefly, which is off the air. :( Battlestar Glactica has drama, adventure, romance, and robots! It could only be improved with the addition of Steve the Pirate. ;) If you are a TV fan, you really should see this show. Yes, it's scifi, but it's not just scifi, it's great drama. Really. I suggest adding the Miniseries, and the first and second seasons to your Netflix queue now, so you can catch up with things before the season premier on Friday, October 6th.

Okay, that's enough about TV, it is, after all, only less than 4 hours out of my life each week (time in which I can often embroider!)

What else can I console myself with now that I don't get to wear sandals and ignore my lack of good rain gear?

Eve sleeps better when it's not light until 10 PM, and as we've left July behind, night time has become a little better. For those of you who don't know, Eve isn't exactly a great sleeper even at the best of times (I think she has a record of sleeping 7 hours straight, once!) So any improvement is a blessing. Daylight savings time is my mortal enemy.

It's soup season! I like soup, cooking soup, eating soup. It's all good. It never really seems appropriate when it's warm.

More time for crafting? Hmm... maybe, maybe not. TV season was never good for my writing, which is what I used to fill my free time with. But, the nice thing about crafting is that a lot of it can be done while you do other things. I can sit and watch TV (especially bad Lost episodes and every Survivor episode) while I embroider or sew. So, we'll see.

Fires! I don't mean the brush variety, which is more a summer thing, and not really all that good. I mean the fireplace kind that crackle and smell good and look pretty!

Winter squash with dinner.

Politics! Speaking of which, today was the deadline for mailing in my ballot for the primaries, and I forgot! ARGH! I'm not a big fan of mail-only voting. Hopefully I can get it done tonight and take it to the post office this evening...maybe that will work. If not, I guess I'll survive.

What makes Autumn positive for you?

I think that's it for me, me hearties, I'm off to sail the high seas of the blogosphere. Argh!

Summer is definitely over

I don't want to sound dreary, but it's true. As my dad always says, it's summer in the northwest from July 5th to August 31st, or there abouts. He's mostly right. It's been cool and overcast (or partly cloudy for most of the day) or drizzly or breezy since Tuesday (which was a perfect late summer day, just the right mix of hot and cool, and quiet because all the kids are back in school. Yay!) Nearly a week of such weather is more than a cold front, it's a season changing.

A few of the leaves are changing too. And I only have one half-ripe tomato. There will be no harvest from my carefully maintained plant. Bummer! I've got about a dozen green tomatos of various sizes that will remain so, I suppose. Maybe I should try frying them.

We've yet to find a woodburning stove insert for our downstairs fireplace. We can burn wood in the upstairs insert, and the convection circulation does a great job at heating that level, but Eve and I sleep downstairs and our television and Tom's music and computer are downstairs too, so we really need to heat from the bottom up.

We were supposed to put away the boat for the winter this weekend, but it was too cold for such activities.

Eve still has summer clothes we found in August that she hasn't gotten to wear. They'll be too small next summer. I guess that means we'll have to take a vacation this winter to somewhere warm and balmy. Hawaii anyone? (Yes, please!)

All that to say, we aren't really ready for summer to be over. How about you? Are you still enjoying summer weather? What do you want to accomplish before you pull out your scarves and boots?

Blogroll!

Check to the left for my Bloglines generated Blogroll!

P.S. Eve and I are working on our first joint sewing project, check back soon for the glorious results!

A brief time-out from frivolity

I do my best to keep things light here. I don't like to start arguments with friends, and especially when I must conduct the arguments in online text. I have previously mentioned the lost nuance that goes along with such communication.

Be that as it may, I had to share a serious article which I found regarding Plan B contraceptive (a phrase I use rather lightly here.)

I do expect you to go read it, but allow me to summarize. Plan B is going to increase the incidence of STDs, mainly among poor women, and especially among the younger of those women.

I am totally against Plan B, as some of you may have deduced from what you know of me. Then again, I don't really think the vanilla brand contraceptive pill is good either (for various reasons I will not go into in detail at the moment). And of course, I'm entirely against the more accepted definition of abortion. However, my reasons have chiefly been based on the sanctity of human life (even embryonic), and the physical and emotional damage of chemicals and invasive procedures on the mothers who choose these. Lately I've been struck by the fact that abortion works against the ideal that "reproductive freedom" would add to the equality of the sexes.

How's that, you ask? I know proponents of Choice tell us that abortions give women freedom. And to a certain extent they are right. I'll just mention here that I think the cost of such freedom too high, but I digress. Sure, women can avoid the burden of pregnancy, but this also gives men freedom to not worry one whit about possibly becoming a father, giving them little to no reason to keep it in their pants and respect the women around them as people instead of conquests. Men should be held responsible for their actions against women and for any children they father, abortion allows them to get off scott-free. Women (and aborted fetuses, of course) pay the high price of life, health, and emotional well-being of the wide-spread availability of abortion. Grr.

Anyway, that's a tangent. Back to Plan B. This article caused a light bulb moment. Here is yet another reason to be outraged by the development and outrageous over the counter availability of this drug. How dare we subject the most unfortunate of our sex to further danger? How much are we willing to destroy at the feet of "choice"? These women will pay with their lives and flesh for the convenience of a morning-after pill. Our society owes them better.

A little bit bored

So there's not much to do at work today. Not because there's not work to be done, but because one of our major tools is getting updates.

So I've plenty of time, but not much to say.

Let me introduce you to two sites you might find interesting. I'm still not sure what I think of them yet.

First, I may have previously mentioned Next Favorite. It's a really cool concept: rating books, movies, and music all in one place and giving you recommendations all across the board. Think about it, your taste is reflected in music, movies, and books that you like. Yes, you can rate movies in one place, and books in another and music in another, but you can't link up all that information together, until Next Favorite. Sort of.

I'm not really sure how well it works though, as I haven't rated enough yet. Why? It's pretty clunky. Someone else should do it an make it slick and simple, more like Netflix. There's simply too many steps involved for me to want to spend a whole lot of time on it. I keep hoping they'll improve the system. Maybe I should approach Netflix with a similar idea, they have a really cool ratings->recommendation system... just imagine if it were harnessed for more than movies.

On to something actually cool. Have you checked out Wists? It's a cool concept and a cool execution. Visual bookmarking. Like something you see online? Wists it. Then when you go through your wists you can actually see why you "bookmarked" it to begin with. Never puzzle over a bookmark again. But that's not my favorite part, as cool as that is. My favorite part is how pretty it looks! I imagine my wistsing will be aimed mostly at building a beautiful gallery page, and less about the actually bookmarking aspect. :)

Another cool feature is that you can view the galleries of other users. If you find someone whose taste you admire, you can look at all their wists and find other wists to add to your own. I like the word wists even. Yay for Wists!

In other news...

I caved and got a myspace. I know. It's silly. And actually, I'm still not a big fan. It gives me a headache, and it seems to be rife with poor grammar (you know, because I've got perfect grammar myself). But, it's fun to get in touch with people you haven't seen since high school. On the other hand, it's not so great for meeting absolute total strangers who share nothing in common with you (unless you actually want that, in which case, it's like a candy shop). I think it's possible that myspace was responsible for a creepy email I received, but then, I'm all over the place on the Internet these days, so I can't really blame any one place. It kind of makes me want to rethink all the picture posting I do though.

That's all for now. I'm off to find pretty pictures to Wist!

Read the manual

Okay...so I have been taking pictures of my embroidery work for over a year. And I'm always really annoyed that I can't get a really good shot of the details...So a detailed, beautiful piece ends up looking like this:



On Saturday, I helped my mom prepare for some ebay selling of her huge collection of antiques and I needed to be able to take good close ups. So, I got out the manual for the camera. Look what I can do now!





So, the moral of the story is: Read the manual! :) Now all I need is an uber expensive flash and diffusion umbrella thingy, and I'll be set. :)

Crafty goodness

And now the post I wanted to make yesterday. :)

Here's some of my latest embroidery projects, and by latest, I mean back to the very first! :) Go check out my post on Craftster! This one too!

And here is the labor-intensive project Tom and I tackled in June, again a post on Craftster.

I'm such a junkie. :)

Happy and Sad

Morning! I was going to post some links to my latest crafty ventures, but Crafster is down! :( Oh well, lucky for you, I had a backup plan. The other day we got some pics of Eve doing her "cute" face and her "sad" face. It's pretty darn funny when we tell her to do her "sad" face. I'd describe it for you, but take a look yourself.





Of course, she doesn't know that both of those "faces" are cute faces.

And just because, take a look at her struting on the catwalk in her bikini (it's finally getting too small, but we got it for her last summer, so I can't complain.)



In case you forgot what I look like, I was able to find a recent picture of me too! With Eve.



This was at Tom's sister's recently (nearly) finished house. That room behind us is her music room! My music room looks a lot like Tom's computer room/office. Oh wait, it is!

And last but not least, Tom caught a nice shot of a pale sunset the other night. Not exactly the most impressive we've seen, but it was very pretty.

Here's a good, quick read

No, it's not a novel. In fact, for the moment, I'm abstaining from novels. In fact, I'm not doing too much reading these days, period. It's amazing how toddlers suck away all your reading time. :)

But, while I'm pumping at work, I don't let that moment of quiet go by without reading something.


I just finished How Not to Look Fat. What a great book! It's small and short. Danico Lo, the author is funny and frank (and an authority...former plus-sized model). I sound like I'm on her marketing team, but this is just a really cool book.

I picked it up because I have been recently inspired by Crafster to sew some of my own wardrobe. It looks fun and not too tough. But, I don't want to go spending a lot of time and effort making clothes that fit but don't actually flatter. So I started searching for what is flattering, in general and for my body type. This book is just what I was looking for!

So, if you are a gal (sorry guys, it doesn't seem to have any advice for you, but then again, you don't care, do you?) and you would like to look slimmer, without dieting or exercise (or losing weight in any way) check this book out! Now, if you are so thin that looking thinner would cause concern and make people wonder if you're anorexic, don't buy this book. Otherwise, without much effort or money, you could start looking thinner after reading just a few pages! It's pretty cool. :)

So, there you go. Run off and enjoy yourselves.

Beware of Safety

Let me keep you up to date on me. I don't feel like blogging today, despite the fact that I have time. Why? Life is less than perfect right now, and all I ever do is complain, right?

Let me just give it to you in bullet points:

*I have two co-workers in this department-to-which-I-am-still-fairly-new that drive me absolutely crazy. They are like children. *And* they are in a "relationship." Could it get any worse? They check each other's work, and they aren't very critical of each other. The guy basically does most of the gal's job, or at least it seems to be so. And they gossip and badmouth everyone behind their backs. Add this to the guy's penchant for desk-flair larceny, and you have the personnel equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard and the smell of burnt pop-corn all rolled into one.

*My mom and dad are not doing well. I think some people may assume that divorce isn't as traumatic on adult children as it is on children children...and maybe that's true. I certainly don't feel it's my fault, as I might have when a child and still believing the world was entirely all about me. But, I still feel like crap. They both frequently talk about thinking maybe they ought to die, and they both bandy about the word "divorce" like it's an article. I hope they get through this, but it seems like they have both given up, assuming they'd be happier apart. If that's true, the rest of us certainly won't be. It's going to make all future family events much messier than they currently are, to say the least.

*Tom and I are doing okay. We have up and down days. It's now been over a year since we've regularly attended church, and I'm tired of it.

*Eve is awesome. Sure, she still has a biting problem, and yes, this past Sunday when we ventured out to church for once, she refused to stay in nursery, and refused to be quiet in the service, so we had to go home early. *But* she's cute as ever, and talking in almost full sentences. She's really quite the communicator.

So, that's the latest. Now for something fun. My little brother is leaving for college--the only one of us to go to university right out of highschool, and hopefully he'll stay too!--tomorrow. The school is only about an hour's drive away, so we'll still see him often. Anyway, I had him over for dinner last night so we could spend a little time with him before he's gone. I made not-so-great sweet-n-sour chicken, and we got to talking about Engrish...which reminded me of Engrish.com. If you haven't visited in a while, go there now, there's always something fresh. If this is the first you've heard of Engrish.com, you may want to put your drink down. It's all fun and games until someone sprays piping hot coffee through his nose. I highly recommend the cat smack in the Recent Discoveries section.

Finally, take a look at this hot guy with the cutest girl toddler ever on his shoulders.