September 4, 2007
This 
Labor Day weekend, after going to a birthday party for our son’s twin friends at Brushy Creek Water park and while our daughter was taking
a nap, I roped my husband and son into helping me create a new Avatar. The one I had been using was taken on May 21, 2003 less than a year after our son was born. Since I started blogging around May 2007, I figured I probably should get around to taking a more up-to-date picture of myself.
I was born with board straight, brown/black hair…not a curl or wave in sight. When I hit 8th grade I hated having straight hair and started perming it (a la the 80′s hairdo) until a short reprieve between 1997 and 2002. I got a few more perms until I became pregnant with our daughter in 2004.
After she was born, my hair experienced a miracle (or shall we say a hormonal shift) and I had naturally wavy hair. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised. I have to say in my 37 years of living, I have not been more happy with the state of my hair than I am now. Well most days that is…like everyone else, I still have bad hair days! It also helps that I found a new hairdresser who happens to charge less than 1/2 the price of the salon I used to go to.
Erin told me I should get a professional to take my headshot. I told him I didn’t have time and we didn’t have the money to do that and insisted that he help me. Plus I knew he would end up doing a better job than most professionals I could find…and he is much cheaper. 
He worked a little of his Photoshop magic on it: played with the lighting and covered up some of the ravages of time. And voila, a new Avatar was born. The background is our off-white walls in our hallway. I am still going to leave the 2003 headshot on some of my older posts but going forward until the next major hair change, I’ll be using the new one. I also just noticed that the old one made me look a bit bright orange…
My mom and sister also had their favorites (i.e. the top two below). The bottom two our 5 year old took so of course I love those! The following have not been modified in Photoshop (i.e., no nice highlighted background plus all of the ravages of time and shiny spots are present). I thought twice about putting these up, but I believe it’s important to mix in a little reality from time to time…
August 17, 2007
Our son recently turned the big 5. Crazy! He’s very into transformers (if you click this link be ready to be startled by a boom – I was!) despite never having seen the movie. You just can’t escape them…they are everywhere you look! We had his birthday party at the same place he takes swimming lessons: Emler Swim School. We were fortunate enough to WIN a swim party! All I had to do was put a sticker on the back windshield of my car that said i swim emler and give them my license plate number. I was totally surprised to discover that they picked my license plate…it made choosing where to hold his party very easy since at a cost of $350, we would have looked around for other alternatives. I think they got a couple of new customers, so I think it worked out well for Emler. If you decide to enroll your kid in Emler after seeing this post, please give them my name (Aruni Gunasegaram) as I think we will get $5 off our next swim class registration!
It was so much fun! Plus they have an indoor pool which is perfect for the hot August weather here in Texas.
The lifeguards were great. After swim time was over, they helped us stuff and hang the pinata. Our son has been wanting a pinata for the last 3 years but we had his past parties at places that wouldn’t allow them or there was no room to hang them so he was thrilled!
I really enjoy planning their parties, getting the party stuff, sending out the evite (no paper invites — except for his school friends), and seeing everyone at the party. I spent at least a full days worth of time the week before getting ready…which is why I’m glad I work from home and have a flexible schedule. When I came home with some of the transformer stuff one day, my son saw it and said with such joy and happiness “thank you mommy. these are so cool.” When he said thank you three or four times, I knew he was in awe. I figure it’s as much a celebration of him being 5 as us surviving the 5 years! I told my husband that I should also get a party because I gave birth to him and my husband just kind of rolled his eyes…but I was serious!
The one thing that I don’t like doing is writing all the thank you cards. He really does appreciate all of the gifts, and I know I like to get a card just to make sure the birthday kid got our gift (because sometimes cards get separated from the presents, but it takes time. For our daughter’s party last time I used the thank you e-cards from evite but even that took time to individualize. This time I hand wrote them again but I still have to address and mail them off.
Is it just me? Because I don’t remember my mom sending out thank you notes for gifts we received at birthday parties growing up. I also don’t remember getting party favors at every birthday party I went to or giving them out at our birthday parties growing up. Maybe next time I’ll just send out a generic thank you e-card and let everyone know if they are wondering whether we got their particular gift, they can email me and ask. 
August 10, 2007
It’s close…it’s close! So close I can taste it! We will soon be launching our new photo album/family tree application that integrates with Baby Manager called Baby Say Cheese (version 1.0).
We were lucky enough to obtain the domain www.babysaycheese.com using the GoDaddy discount at eMomsatHome. Anyone who purchases a subscription (for themselves or as a gift) from now until August 20, 2007 will have access to this new feature for their subscription period for Free! So even if you want to buy a gift for a baby shower you are going to next month or for a co-worker, a customer, a vendor who you know will be having a baby even 4 to 6 months out if you purchase now the subscription will automatically include access to Baby Say Cheese because the subscription period does not start until they activate it! Please check out our coupon page for any additional employer negotiated discounts.
After launch, anyone signing up for a FREE account will also have access to Baby Say Cheese. We have also made a few updates to Baby Manager which include:
- Inserted hyperlinks from home page summary boxes and Mom & Baby summary pages to the appropriate entry pages
- Added a copy down feature for the Add 10 pages for our users who don’t have a mobile device and use our custom forms for breastfeeding, pumping, bottle feeding, medicine, and diapers…this makes entering info MUCH easier if you have to do it all at once!
- some minor bug fixes
Unfortunately Safari 3.0.2 has presented some UI challenges for us because it is different enough from all the other browsers out there. Although the applications work on prior Safari versions without a problem. I think this all has to do with the iPhone.
We also plan to update our Babble Soft web site but given everything going on, I think that might take a bit more time to fit into the schedule.
Now for some pre-release screen shots of Baby Say Cheese. The final version will have a few cosmetic changes.
Family Tree
Album
Slideshow (all information noted below ’Age: 4 weeks’ is optional)
Email to a Friend (all information noted below ’Age: 4 weeks’ is optional)
Labor Day weekend, after going to a birthday party for our son’s twin friends at Brushy Creek Water park and while our daughter was taking
a nap, I roped my husband and son into helping me create a new Avatar. The one I had been using was taken on May 21, 2003 less than a year after our son was born. Since I started blogging around May 2007, I figured I probably should get around to taking a more up-to-date picture of myself.
