And I wanna be a cowboy too, but given my crazy self-inflicted schedule of two, three, four, five (yes each kid, the husband, and the house are also job-like at times), I can’t seem to find the time to get all those deep and meaningful posts written. So, I’ll have to settle for a haiku and hope I win a MacBook Air. Copyblogger is running a contest where the person who writes the winning Haiku on twitter will win a MacBook Air. The second and third prizes look interesting too, but winning the MacBook Air will impress my husband more than the Epson printer I just wrote about.
Not being one who writes haiku’s often (i.e., probably not since 5th grade), I had to rely on these examples from the Copyblogger post:
“Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of 17 syllables broken up into three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.
Here are two quick examples found on Twitter Search with the tag #haiku:
Been up way too long / Need about a week’s more sleep / Might not be enough
Got it? Obviously, the more clever, comedic, or compelling your haiku, the better your chances of winning.”
So here’s my haiku:
Working day and night / To change the world for parents / One diaper a day
I was going to write at the end ‘one diaper an hour’ but since it’s late and my brain isn’t at 100%, I wasn’t sure if ‘hour’ would be read as one syllable or two depending on what city/state/country the judges were from. So I changed it to ‘a day’ to avoid any controversy. Plus it can be a stinky (wish you could change that diaper more often) experience in a a start-up/small business/Internet endeavor so I figured if the diaper shoe fits…
We’re just a week away from Halloween and last weekend we got around to thinking about costumes. Our son has been telling us for months he wants to be Luke Skywalker but when he walked into a Party City store last Saturday, he decided he wanted to be a Stormtrooper. I think he might have mentioned it once before and I think I said ‘aren’t those the bad buys?‘ and he said ‘Mom, there are good stormtroopers and bad ones and the one I want to be is a good one.‘ I said ‘Really? Well I guess that’s OK then.’
So it was chaos at Party City and they were out of his costume. Our daughter decided she wants to be a princess. Where she gets that I don’t know because I’m pretty far from the princess type (or shall I say dress-up-like-a-princess type ). I was a tomboy. I never had any interest in Barbie Dolls growing up so I’m guessing she’s probably going to go all sugar and spice and everything nice on me! They had a costume she liked, but the bag was broken and I asked the gal who worked there if it had everything and she said it did…well of course it didn’t. It was missing the tiara. She gave me another one which had a tiara but it was taped (yes scotch taped!) together because it was broken. I was annoyed they would actually try to sell that to some unsuspecting soul, and we left.
We came home and did a search on Amazon but couldn’t find what we liked at the price we thought reasonable. So much to the dismay of our kids, we had to put off the costume finding one more day. They did have some cute stuff on Amazon and if you are still looking, you can shop for costumes (linked to Amazon) or Halloween music (linked to Amazon). If you use those links to buy something, a few cents (literally) will go into my Amazon account and some time in the next decade there will be enough in there for them to actually pay me for promoting their Halloween stuff for them!
So my husband took our son to another Party City while I stayed home with our daughter who decided to throw up a few times after going to Maker Faire last Sunday, and they found a Star Wars Clone Trooper costume he liked and a different princess costume for our daughter. She liked the costume. So all was well in the household for at least a few hours and she didn’t throw up again.
We are visiting family in Mexico which means posting has been and will be light for the next week or so. I’ve seen some interesting things during our visit to do posts about later ranging from tamale stands to gorgeous flowers to street peddlers to laughing kids. Our flight was thankfully uneventful and so far our trip has been really nice.
We took our first overnight trip away from the kids since they were born! My wonderful sister-in-law and brother-in-law were kind enough to watch them while we took a two day escape to San Miguel de Allende for the weekend! It’s so great to have family with older kids who like to play and watch our kids.
So in the meantime, here’s a picture from San Miguel for your viewing pleasure:
Photo by Sandy Blanchard Yes, the title of this post is yet another fortune cookie fortune that I got at lunch at P. F. Chang’s yesterday. And yes that means my brain is too tired from working two jobs, taking care of kids, and pretending to be a being a good wife to come up with my own titles.
I will eventually get around to my next post on the painful great lessons learned about Search Engine Optimization, but in the meantime you can go back and read my What They Don’t Tell You About SEO posts Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to get you primed and ready for Part 4!
So back to the fortune cookie title ‘A dream you have will come true.’ I’m wondering what dream it might be referring to? Does it mean night dreams or day dreams? Does it mean it will come true if I play the Lucky Numbers 3, 56, 32, 38, 25, and 42 that appear under the fortune? Or does it imply that if I learn how to properly say the word “Peach” (i.e., tao-zi) noted on the back of the cookie in Chinese that it will come true?
Then I started wondering if I even have dreams that I want to come true? Being an avid dreamer at night, I often wish for dreamless, deep sleeps since I dream about work, life, kids, etc. while I sleep. I don’t have scary dreams, just boring, mundane, every day life dreams where sometimes I happen to come up with some solutions to problems but that mostly leave me wishing for more sleep when I wake up!
So if a dream is a wish and a wish is a dream, I wish for some nights of dreamless, uninterrupted-by-kids sleep. Oh and I also dream that I will be able to change the world by helping others discover their potential to change the world!
Now for a fabulous movie-related guest post by Film.com’s mom blogger, Sue Harvey!
Movie Fun for the Whole Family: Trust Mom on Film, and Your Instincts
Mary Poppins photo from film.com credit to Walt Disney The best piece of advice my husband and I received before the birth of our first child was fairly simple; trust your instincts. Now, this advice was given in the context of when to pick up a crying baby, but we have found it to be just as effective and useful in many other aspects of parenting as well. While plenty of studies, guidelines and groups exist that are ready and willing to tell parents how to raise their children, I believe nothing trumps parental responsibility, engagement and instinct. That said, I’d like to offer a little more advice - advice about movies suitable for families with small children.
I have been a movie lover far longer than I have been a parent, and many of the films my Mom shared with me when I was a child are the same films my children and I enjoy watching together today. The movies that never fail to entertain us all are musicals. The range of topics within the genre is practically limitless, and some of the musicals that have been hits with my children from the time they were about three years old thru the present (they are now aged 12, 10 and six) include Mary Poppins (it’s “practically perfect in every way!”), Singin’ in the Rain (it’s funny, has great dancing, fun songs and memorable characters), An American in Paris (remarkable choreography, amazing music, visually arresting, ’s wonderful!), Brigadoon (mysterious, magical, beautiful), The Pirates of Penzance (silly story with catchy, quick lyrics, Kevin Kline as the Pirate King and Linda Ronstadt as Mabel), Annie Get Your Gun (delightful, fun, and featuring Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (funny, good music, great choreography), and On the Town (what better way to introduce your kids to Frank Sinatra?).
I quickly realized that even they didn’t understand the story upon the first viewing, they generally enjoyed the songs, costumes, dancing and characters enough to want to watch them again, and again, and again. Each of these pictures provides not only good clean fun, exposure to remarkable talent and craftsmanship, but also a cultural education from which they can only benefit.
Possibly a more obvious choice for family films would be animated features, particularly those produced by Walt Disney’s Studios and, increasingly, Pixar. I own copies of and have seen many of these films more times than I care to recall, as have my children. They, too, are part of our cultural heritage and I would argue that a childhood devoid of The Aristocats, 101 Dalmations, the Disney Princess lineup, Fantasia,Fantasia 2000(personal favorites of my tribe), Finding Nemo, among others, would leave a gaping hole in one’s cultural education.
However, I would also suggest that allowing a child to watch any of these films unsupervised, particularly for the first time, would be a mistake. In case you haven’t seen them yourselves or have forgotten, most of these features involve at least one dead parent and mortal danger for the heroine or hero. This is the stuff of nightmares and phobias - not to mention many tears. These may be classics, but they can also be scary.
If you seek the kind of video fare I fondly refer to as the Electronic Babysitterthe pickings are rich. PBS produces numerous shows, many of which are available on video in addition to their daily programming, which are not only educational and suitable for even the youngest viewers; they are often tolerable for adults, as well.
We are our children’s first and primary teachers. I firmly believe that if we introduce our children to the best we have to offer, be it films, books, food, music or personal habits, they will naturally develop a taste for quality. Deciding what “high quality” means to your family is where instinct, judgment and responsibility come into play. While it can be helpful to consider movies ratings, the only one really qualified to decide what is right for your children and your family is you. So, if you don’t have time to pre-screen a film, talk to the clerk at your local video store or your friends or family, or check out a title on line. But remember, just because the company marketing a film declares it to be “fun for the whole family”, doesn’t make it so anymore than a picture without a rating (as most of the above mentioned musical are) is “inappropriate”; trust me. Or better yet, trust your instincts.
Sue “Mom on Film” Harvey is a mother of three who shares her passion for film with family-friendly movie recommendations on Film.com, a free online entertainment service on Movies, TV, DVDs, celebrity news and more.
Now that I took a day job, I’ve been wondering what I should post about. Should I post about my new job or other stuff? It also takes time to write meaningful posts and time is harder to come by now. My new job has a lot to do with helping entrepreneurs or I should say it will once I get past the administrative day-to-day stuff of getting up to speed.
So in the meantime until I figure it all out, I’ve thought about posting about the fortune cookies I get when I go to Chinese restaurants or other restaurants who for some reason hand out fortune cookies.
So, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch with one of my business advisors at a Chinese restaurant in this place in Austin called Davenport village, and I got the following fortune:
“You can’t ride in all directions at one time.”
We both thought it was appropriate considering what was going on in my life. Of course, I then thought to myself ‘well all directions isn’t the same as two three directions’ and ‘there’s no point in going no direction.’
So here I go (the multi-tasker that I am) attempting to go one direction with a few detours here and there along the way…
We took our kids to see Kung Fu Panda today and it was a lot of fun. Our son enjoyed it more than our daughter. Because it wasn’t Dora the Explorer or Go-Diego-Go on the big screen, she just wanted to walk around but overall she did a good job of sitting on our laps.
We saw it over lunch at the Alamo Drafthouse. We love the Alamo Drafthouse because you can order food and eat it while watching the movie. It’s sort of like an indoor drive-in theatre!
It’s a cute movie about a Kung-Fu loving Panda who by a sequence of events gets the chance to be the Kung Fu champion he’s always dreamed of being. He’s not very good so the master has to get creative on ways to teach him how to learn his innate kung fu talents naturally.
I guess in the real world you could think of a very out of shape, clumsy guy who dreams of being a world famous boxer and then all of a sudden gets the chance to be the heavy weight champion of the world. The coach only has a few days to get him trained and into shape to fight the biggest, meanest boxer in the world.
Both feats are unlikely to happen but when you put it in a cartoon, everything becomes much more plausible.
I was just tagged by Carole at Alias Tex for a meme called Summer Memories. I was going to work on a longer post today but a sick kid took up most of our time this evening. She’s sleeping now so hopefully she’ll feel better in the morning.
This is a light and fun meme that was pretty quick for me to write-up. A few of Carole’s memories were some of my favorites too.
What are your top five summer favorites? It can be memories, places to go, things to do, sights, smells, whatever. . . . What says “summer” to you?
Here are 5 nice things I think of when I think of summer:
visiting my cousins in Ohio
visiting my grandparents in Sri Lanka
lightening bugs and the sounds of crickets and cicadas during a clear star-filled night
swimming at a beach or a pool
sleeping in late in the morning knowing I had no big responsibilities. Of course sleeping in with no cares in the world disappeared after graduating from college and became the stuff of fairy tales after the kids arrived.
Now being in Texas there are also a couple of downsides to summer:
the often unbearable heat! Hot days and hot/sticky/humid nights
mosquitos that want to eat you (well me) alive and other weird bugs like June bugs
I’m not going to tag anyone specifically for this meme, but if you feel like playing along, leave your top summer fancies in the comments below or in a blog post of your own!
I mentioned before that my blog is listed on Alltop Moms. Well now thanks to Guy Kawasaki, I’m listed in Alltop Startups and for a brief time I was listed in Alltop Twitterati. I guess I took too long to write this blog post, because I’m no longer listed in Twitterati. Maybe I can earn my way back into Guy’s good graces (unless they changed the criteria for being listed there) and find another spot on Alltop in exchange for another blog post about the amazing and ever so ubiquitous Alltop concept!
He also added an Alltop Adoption page so for those of you interested in people who write about adoption, adopting kids, their adopted kids, and other people’s adopted kids, check it out!
Our 5 ½ year old son just lost his first tooth yesterday and the tooth fairy paid a visit to our house last night for the very first time. He lost it at school and had it haphazardly carefully wrapped up in a paper napkin when I picked him up.
He was so excited to tell me about it! He held the mangled paper napkin and kept fussing with it in the car. We came inside and I opened the napkin and it wasn’t there! I was probably more upset than him and asked him if he thought he dropped it at school and he assured me he hadn’t. I kept asking him a million questions and he said it was probably in the car. I was nervous that it wouldn’t be there and I would have to deal with a very upset 5 year old (and huge feelings of mom-guilt), but he climbed into the door and he looked around his booster seat and he found it. Talk about breathing a million sighs of relief!
He didn’t want to tell his dad (who was out of town) about it until we picked him up at the airport last night. And even then he wanted to keep the tooth at the house until we got back from the airport.
It was a very exciting milestone in our house! Not being sure what the going rate for the tooth fairy was, I put the question out on twitter and got some great replies:
We ended up giving him 4 quarters which he seemed very happy with. He put them in his piggy bank right away. I asked him if he wanted to buy something with it or save it and he said ‘save it’ which made me happy. I’m not sure what he’s saving it for though.
His other bottom tooth is loose, so I’m guessing it will fall out soon. I’m not sure how long it takes for all the baby teeth to fall out, but he could make quite a bit from the tooth fairy by then.
Today is our 7 year wedding anniversary. It’s been 7 years full of great memories, can’t-stand-you tender moments, tears, laughs, sleep deprivation, two wonderful kids, career changes, life changes, great travels, fights, hugs, great conversation, and love.
Happy Anniversary dear hubby! Here’s to 7 more years of good luck, interesting adventures, good health, surviving parenthood, and happiness as we travel this journey of life together!
Given that I’ve been busy fundraising (i.e., pulling my hair out!) and haven’t had much time to come up with any interesting new blog posts, I thought I’d do a post on Leap Day. February 29 only comes around every 4 years so here’s an off the cuff poem about Leap Day to brighten your day, make you smile, or at least make you scrunch your forehead…
Leap Day, Leap Day where did you come from?
Leap Day, Leap Day where is your home?
You arrive every 4 years and soon you are gone.
You remind some of us of lizards or frogs
And others of leaping antelopes, hogs or dogs
But some of us wonder why the heck don’t we have the day off! Aruni Gunasegaram, February 29, 2008 11:45 a.m. CST
Happy Leap Day everyone! May the extra day bring you one special day closer to achieving your 2008 goals.
Those of us who live in Austin, Texas love talking about how great it is here. On top of the perfect ‘winter’ weather (it’s 7o degrees in February), great people, and great tech community, we have a top ranking state university (The University of Texas at Austin) and awesome Twitter members.
Yesterday, we took the kids to see the UT Austin Longhorn football team practice in the morning. Hook ‘Em Horns! The weather was around 6o degrees and because it was a morning practice there weren’t nearly the amount of people there that my husband said were there at the one evening practice he went to before. Our son loved getting close to the players and our daughter had fun rolling down the hills. Our son held his hand out as some of the players were moving from one practice field to the next and they touched his outstretched palm which made his day! He gets his love of college football from his dad. I’ve been known to watch a game from time to time. We then went to Shady Grove for lunch which is near Lady Bird Lake and enjoyed the sunny day by eating outside.
For dinner we met up with some Austin tweeters who I had never met before except of course for Connie Reece who got me started with blogging and probably first told me about twitter! Oh and Thom Singer who we have known for several years…well before I forayed into blogging. We met at Waterloo Ice House on Loop 360 and at 7:00 pm and it was still 70 degrees! The kids had a blast playing on the playscape and in the sandbox.
The Austin Tweet-Up was organized by Kim Haynes for Susan Reynolds and Bryan Person who were in town visiting from DC and Boston. It was great fun meeting several people I’ve gotten to know via tweets on twitter and meeting new people in Austin. What is it about those magical 140 character tweets?
For some other write-ups on the Austin Tweetup check out Kim Haynes’ and Thom Singer’s posts, here and here.
My sister-in-law, who lives in Mexico, forwarded me this email from Luis Molinar who she knows. I thought it was simple, powerful and compelling enough to share on this Valentine’s Day 2008.
Photo by Sandy Blanchard. Bulbs by Michelle Campion
Hello Dear One’s,
Knowing that for us to grow and heal from old wounds that keep us repeating our limited patterns that may say no to the universe, we some times need to take risks. I’d like to share this writing about taking risks in one’s life, to see if you’re living in fear and not taking risks, but stuck in your old patterns and consequently not living a happy and content life.
Risk
To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To express feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk ridicule.
To Love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure
And at the same time risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He/she may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he/she cannot LOVE, LEARN, FEEL, CHANGE, GROW and LIVE.
Chained by his/her attitudes he/she is a slave.
He/she has forfeited his/her freedom.
Only the person who RISKS is truly FREE.
*********************
So Dear One’s, how Free are you???
Luis Molinar
HeartWorks, Inc. ToltecHeartWisdom.com
I’m so excited to say that the first official video of Babble Soft Applications went live today on DadLabs - Gear Daddy. I have wanted to do a video demonstration of our applications for a long time now but I was cycling through my entrepreneurial hats so fast, that I didn’t have the time or money to do a really nice one. So now thanks to all the cool dads at DadLabs we have our very first one and it cost me some beers was relatively free!
Go to their site and please Digg/Stumble the post if you like it. They are fellow entrepreneurs and the more hits/visits they get to their site the more loved they feel and more importantly the more cool advertisers they can attract. Sitter City is their sponsor this week. Plus they always make me laugh which is one of my 2008 goals! If you for some reason you need even more incentive to go to their site, I’ve embedded the video below:
I also just found out that it’s on YouTube also. So you can check it out there too:
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