Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Check out my guest blogging appearance at my favorite "Go Green" website, Practically Green!

And don't forget to enter my special Mouse Ears giveaway on My Year With The Mouse! Tell your friends!

ha, this is hilarious. So for the past week or so, every morning around 10:00 I've been hearing this beeping sound. It sounds like an alarm someone forgot to turn off and it lasted for about a minute. At first I thought it was an alarm on Kevin's side of the bed. Nope. Then one on my side of the bed. Nope. Then I thought it was one of the painter's, like a cell phone or something. The the painters were gone but I thought it must be our next-door neighbor. One time I was in the living room and I asked Kevin was that sound was and he told me he couldn't hear it. Well, I don't even know exactly how long this has been going on, but seriously, it just occurred to me this mroning that it happens every day right at 10:00 and my ICD low-battery alarm is also set to go off at 10:00. Also, the sound seemed to be coming from me. Sure enough, it's me! I called the doctor and they fit me right in in the afternoon and I'm due for replacement. Should not be a big deal at all, though I'll likely have stitches or tape after the incision, so I'm hoping to wait for the week after Kevin goes to San Jose. Hahahaha.

Don't forget to read My Year WIth The Mouse!

So the painters have been doing an awesome job on the house! Even though it's driving Digory to the brink. It looks great though. I love the colors Kevin picked out. They match his office, of course, and the house looks like a whole new house. Good thing, since we were dinged on that for our Mills Act inspection this year, although it's not like we wouldn't have done it anyway. Now we need a new porch rail and some new siding where the idiot former owners directed the rain spout right onto the porch railing rather than, you know, the ground or something.

It's been such an exciting week here, ever since my big debut on Wait Wait. I still had people looking up My Year With The Mouse up to Friday from the Wait Wait podcast. Plus I got one particularly awesome comment, that I hope something comes from it but even if it doesn't, it was still very cool to get recognized by this person.

My Year With The Mouse

I've been busy as heck on my Disneyland blog. Go check it out! http://myyearwiththemouse.com/

Even though I'm blocked out for another week, I've got a few more posts in the pipeline, so that helps.

Gifts for Mom

I have to say, becoming a mom has completely changed my view of what I'd like to receive for gifts. I can remember my first birthday after Theo was born. He'd almost outgrown the baby car seat and we were getting ready to transition him into the convertible seat in my car. When Kevin asked what I wanted for my birthday, all I could think of was "another car seat for your car." And indeed, that's what I got.

Nowadays I love anything involving my son. Really. 10 years ago if you'd said "hey, would you like a blank notebook with your kid's picture on it?" I would have given some kind of answer like no, I'm an independent woman, blah blah blah whatever. Now I look at the Mother's Day photo gift options at Shutterfly and think "Oh, I hope someone gets me one!"

It's also getting to be time to plan Theo's half-birthday. With a Christmas Eve birthday, we've been celebrating a half-birthday in June and it's worked out really well. I loved our Shutterfly Christmas cards so I'm planning to do Shutterfly half-birthday invitations this June. I'm thinking about a "Where the Wild Things Are" theme. What do you think?

And my mom always made us write thank you notes. ALWAYS. I think the hand-written thank you note is a dying art, as is the RSVP. Well, I can't do anything about the RSVP, but I love getting personalized thank you notes for the occasion. Theo is will be 2 and a half--it's about time he started pulling his weight in thanking people!

Bloggers can get 50 free cards from Shutterfly just by writing a post about moms! Click here for your chance to participate.

Exciting Weekend

Wow, so I won on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! and will have Carl Kasell's voice on our answering machine, which I have totally wanted for a really long time. And I got a bunch of hits on my Disneyland blog, which was totally cool! Looks like a lot of people want to know what's going on at Disneyland. Too bad I'm blocked out for the next 2 weeks.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me

OMG, I'm giong to be on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! It will tape on Thursday and air over the weekend, and I'll be playing the "Bluff the Listener" game. I can't wait! Please keep your fingers crossed that I will win!

Packet is done!

Being a mom and full-time student is a serious challenge. Even though my low-residency program at Vermont College of Fine Arts gives me the flexability to do my work when I want, it's still a massive amount of work. This last packet I only had 3 weeks to complete. I read 10 books but forgot to annotate one of them (oops) and completely re-worked the short story I've been re-working since January. It's a humorous story so I'm entering it into a scholarship contest for humor stories. Cross your fingers for me to win!

Still, it can be hard to juggle the amount of work required and motherhood. Luckily Theo still takes his nap, and it's a nice long one too, and I'm a night owl by nature so I can get work done late, but this packet was due at 9am this morning and I stayed up, shall we say, much longer than I should have getting it done.

Anyway, done it is, and what a relief!!

Revising

In writing, the revising process is brutal, brutal, brutal. I really like to revise on paper so I often print things out and then mark them up. However, when I use my own red pen, it can get ugly.

But I didn't hate this whole story. I really liked this whole page:

Go me!

Crib escape

Theo escaped the crib again, this time WITH the sleep sack. Our crib is too fancy schmancy to fit a crib tent, so he was hiking a leg up and pulling himself over. We solved the problem, or so we thought, by zipping him back into a sleep sack so he couldn't separate his legs enough.

HA! Theo was not so easily dissuaded.

Kevin went in to find him happily playing on the floor with his toys, wearing his sleep sack. He's not ready for a toddler bed, so it's time for sleep sack modification #2. We use a diaper pin to pin down the zipper so he can't unzip it, and now we fold a corner over and pin that too so he has less room to spread his legs apart. That seems to be working so far. We'll see.

I love this picture

I love everything about this picture.

Disneyland in the "rain"

Headed over to Disneyland today for some more fodder for My Year With The Mouse. It was supposed to rain. Now quite frankly, Disneyland is awesome in the rain. Okay, it's raining and that kind of sucks, but the park is so much less crowded. And in Southern California, it's just not that common to get rain all day long.

True to that, we probably got about 10 raindrops total for the whole time I was there. And even though it's still spring break (ugh), the crowds were much lighter. We went on the Jungle Cruise and visited both Mickey and Minnie's house. Theo was a fan. Plus I got to meet up with my friend Melissa AND my cousin Tracy, so that was a great time.

Grapefruit success

Well, apparently Theo doesn't taste what I taste in grapefruit, as he seemed to like it. In fact, he liked it so much he tried feeding it to "Noomy" (Snoopy). Now Snoopy is covered in sugar and grapefruit juice. I think someone is in for a bath for sure.

Poor Theo was traumatized by a Snoopy cartoon though. We set him up with an old Snoopy DVD and he got very concerned every time he thought Snoopy was in danger. At one point, Snoopy was thrown into a washing machine and tumbled around, and Theo said, "Oh no! OH NO! Noomy! NOOMY!" I think he thought he was witnessing poor Nommy's demise. It was kind of funny and kind of that "wow, I feel terrible as a parent" thing.

What's the deal with grapefruit?

I know some people taste it and some people don't, but grapefruit (and grapefruit juice) tastes like bile to me. Seriously. I just took a small bite of a grapefruit and my mouth has this foul flavor stuck in it. But other people love it. What's the deal?

Plus, grapefruit interferes with one of my medications. I mean, what is that about? How on earth does grapefruit have some kind of secret power or something to jack up some medication? Kevin can't eat it either for the same reason.

So poor Theo is a guinea pig. We got some grapefruits in our CSA basket and I've cut one up and covered it with sugar and am about to give it to him. Does adding sugar negate the nutrition of fresh fruit? Probably, but that's just the kind of mom I am.

Using Tide with cloth diapers

Okay seriously, we use cloth diapers. I know, I know, but actually they're fun and cute these days! The thought of laundering them totally grossed me out pre-baby, so we started with a diaper service. That was fine until Theo outgrew the size of diapers they had and was too heavy of a wetter for them. We would have had to change him about every 20 minutes--forget it. So I set out to find good cloth diapers with massive absorbancy, and I did.

The problem with massive absorbancy is that they're hard to clean. Because they soak up the water. Especially in a front-loader machine with low water levels. Also, cloth diaper people warn against using regular detergent, especially with brighteners, fragrance, and so on. I was convinced that my diapers would disintegrate if I used the wrong detergent. So I bought all of this expensive "rinse-free" detergent and guess what? My diapers stank to high heaven.

In fact, they stunk so badly I almost gave up on the whole deal. Finally, somone suggested I use Tide. I tried the liquid Tide for a while and that was better, but not perfect. Then I read that you should use original Tide powder.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Seriously, I have never had a stink (other than the stink that occurs from Theo) in my diapers since I started using Tide. Plus I've never had any ill-effects from those brighteners and blah blah blah.

Powdered Tide is the way to go, my friends.

Farewell, Gen X Moms Blog

Unfortunately, the Gen X Moms Blog had to come to an end. Things got too crowded and busy and as a group we just weren't able to keep up the blog. It was really disappointing, but that's kind of the way things go. I will still be blogging here, of course, and don't miss my Disneyland blog, My Year With The Mouse!