I’ve been messing around with Myspace lately. Its really interesting for an older gal like myself.

I had my largest group of friends in college pre-personal email, cell phones, IM, and myspace. I rarely remember calling my friends. We’d usually run into each other on campus, at work, or at a favorite bar. I don’t remember needing to get in touch with them all the time.

This generation seems to need to have their friends at beck-and-call in several different ways. Myspace is a clear example of this. “Hey, I have 45 friends on my page and I can mass email them anytime I want.”

And this is perfectly acceptable. A friend of mine sent everyone an email letting them know which bar she and her boyfriend will be partying at tonight. Wow. Talk about one-touch social group management.

Another funny side to it is that people from who-knows-where, all over the place, can find you and get in contact with you. I really don’t have any enemies and am not purposely hiding out from anyone, so I enjoy this aspect. But the other day it took me close to four days to figure out who this chick Novjen was. You see, without the 80’s hair, and 20 years later, I didn’t recongnise this attractive, polished 30-something. I later discovered it was my old neighbor Jen Wood who road the bus with me forever. She was my very first sex ed instructor, via Q and A sessions. Its a long story. We both immidatly commented how cute the other’s hair was now….seriously. As if our hair could ever get worse than it was in the 80’s.

Jen…1988….2007. Ha, ha. The first one reminds me of those Classmate.com ads. Of course, someday I will torture everyone and show you my “electricuted poodle” hairstyle in 1998, along with brace-face, I was one 80’s mutt. I only use Jen as a reference because she was actually cute in 1988.

Anway, I have to admit, Myspace is pretty cool. Of course very few people over 40 are on it. I think it goes back to the fact that most people over 40 don’t have a posse of friends. But then again, who knows what the future holds. Maybe in 10 years all our friends will have electric dog shock colars and you’ll be able shock them whenever we want their attention. Until then, there is Myspace.

Until recently, Zach hasn’t really formed an attachment to many things (besides the bottle, and before that the boob.) He never got into the pacifier and never had a favorite blanket. With the onslaught of daycare, I decided it was time to get him a security attachment, or a so-called “lovie.”

I had tried a few different things but nothing stuck, until my friend bought him a super soft Ty Beanie monkey. We spent about a week making sure he was with it all the time and then the bond was stuck. Mr. Monkey is the lovie. It seemed to be helping ease the transition to daycare. He’d cry and carry it around with him all day while at torture camp daycare. It wasn’t really helping him cry less, but he did carry it around all day. So I figured that must mean something. Then one day, between myself, my in-laws and my husband picking up and dropping off, Mr. Monkey was left at daycare. I called my friend who bought it and asked where I could locate another. While Zach was with me, we purchased Mr. Monkey’s “body double.”Despite being brand new and drool free, Zach eagerly took to Mr. Monkey Body Double and all was well.Until he discovered Mr. Monkey’s dark secret. Upon discovering the body double and Mr. Monkey in the same room, Zach realized that Mr. Monkey, was, in fact, a twin.

When both monkey toys were in the same room his eyes widened in disbelief. He looked from one…to the other…from one….to the other. Finally, he grabbed the one with the most drool on it and held on to it.

But once the monkeys were separated, he’s been none the wiser. They are equal and the double monkey incident has long since been forgotten. Safely, one monkey lives at daycare and one lives at home and seldom the two shall meet, again.

Today I learned that a one-year old learns a lot more from books than baby videos. (If the current studies aren’t enough data for you.)

On the way to work my son started excitedly pointing at the cars ahead of us. I tried to figure out what he was pointing too. Suddenly, I saw the big teddy bear on the back of the Johnson Moving truck. It looked a lot like a bear in one of his favorite books, so I asked him, “What does the bear say?”
“Grrrrrr,” he replied.

I was really surprised. He made an association. Despite the fact that he’s watched the Baby Signs video for six months now, but still refuses to do the very simple sign for “milk.” He choses to cry until we try and read his mind or give up and just assume he’s crying about a bottle. Maybe I should get a cute book on baby sign language to make the break-though.

Another bonus was that he slept in his crib until 6 a.m. today! Whoo hoo! The pain of cry it out was sooo worth it!

Unfortuantly, when we turned on the video monitor to check on him, my husband noticed that his diaper was half off and his bare baby butt was popping out, propped up toward the ceiling. I probably should have cared more that he managed to wiggle out of his diaper, but I was just so excited to have a full-nights sleep. He could have flooded the crib with pee for all I cared, at that moment.

So two no-brainer mommy lessons: books are better than videos and cry it out actually works.

I have a problem.

I’m mindless. I’m a mindless eater and I’m a mindless drinker. And it’s because I can’t convince myself to care enough to watch what I do on a regular basis.

I also can’t convince myself to exercise on a regular basis. I feel I need to do a major work or nothing. Then I emotionally beat myself up for not watching what I eat or exercising. In addition to all that, I’ve got a million excuses for throwing the plans out the window for the smallest reason (I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I’m stressed. I need a break. You get the idea.)

I’ve tried Weight Watchers, which is an amazing program, but I always cheat. I get burned out. I think things should happen much sooner than they do. When I try to take the scenic route and go slow and steady through weight loss, I tend to meander until I’m lost.

Granted, I’ve made some major changes to my diet in the past 10 years since college. I still do not exercise enough or limit my calories. I’m not consistently mindful.

So I’m trying a new program that is FREE and on-line. It’s called www.sparkpeople.com.

It’s all about setting tiny, tiny goals for your self and then meeting them.

In all honesty, I wish I could eat whatever I wanted and never exercise. Like most people I want a magic bullet. But the only magic that may come to my dieting situation is me magically caring more about what I put into my body.

Since I was a smoker who rarely exercised for many years, I already have a track record for not being quiet successful with that. But I finally kicked that nasty-ass habit, so I hope that one day, a healthy steady weight will also be within my reach.

This picture perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling lately. It’s by Isabelle Cardinal.

We thought it was so cute last night when Zach helped himself to a whole ear of corn on the cob. I was thrilled he was finally taking an interest in “big people” food. Unfortuantly, the payback was big.

Zach and the whole family were up last night as he cried through painful gas. He’d yell, fart and be quiet, then yell, fart and be quiet. There was basicly no continuous sleep. Who would have thought that farting would cause so many tears. I was crying too, from utter lack of sleep.

So, today we had crabby baby plus new daycare, week 2. It was a real great morning. >:( I could feel the daycare teachers roll their eyes as he cried and cried and cried before I left. I’m hoping be Wednesday we’ll see some improvement. Otherwise this is just expensive torture, for everyone.

The “drop off” as describe by the witty Casual Perfectionist : Caught on the secret hidden cameras at The Village:

As a family we watched the movie Madagascar, the other day. Well, mostly my husband and I watched it but, Zach did like the big song and dance part. I found that singing this song has proven usefull for getting shoes on in the morning. I also kept hearing it in my head while I was jogging/walking today.

Listen to “Move It” from Madagascar: I like to Move it.

I need a new book on toddlers. This phase is so much different than the baby stage where you started to look for developmental milestones based on the simple things like cooing, laughing, crawling, walking.

This toddler thing is a whole new ballpark. Most of these mental milestones involve them displaying somewhat odd behavior in reaction to normal thoughts and feelings.

For example, Zach’s reaction to daycare. I had no idea that the reason you aren’t suppose to “pop” in on them during the day is that they assume that you are “still in the building” and that crying for you might get you to show up. That’s why you need to say goodbye and let them see you leave. Amazing. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that. I knew they developed some level of object permanence, but they don’t understand that you are literally some place else.

Another thing that surprised me was that the reason my son cries when I come and pick him up is that he remembers how it felt to be left. Okay, so this is starting to make sense.

I did read that it is good that they show stranger anxiety because it shows a healthy bond with his caretakers, all four of us. I thought that because he has four primary caretakers, he might be open to more people. That answer, is “no.”

Also, in many other parts of the world the child is knit to his mother for at least the first year. Western thought encourages all this independence at an early age. So even when you have a village to raise a child, most mothers don’t use it. It’s a one-on-one deal. Maybe it takes a village to raise a child, but it only takes a parent to raise a baby.

Unfortunately, most of the other children in his class have experienced home daycare with other children or daycare centers that provide for babies. My son has had more attention on a daily basis (sometimes more than my husband and I give him) since he was 13 weeks-old, from grandma and grandpa. The teachers say he doesn’t interact with the other kids, constantly wants to be held and acts as if he’s in a little bubble.

Dang it! That means that I’m the one that needs to burst the bubble again. This is tough. In the mean time, we have Mr. Monkey to sort of help him out.

Check out this AMAZING Dove commerical. It makes you think about the reality of the images we see every day.

Wow, today my job became a tiny flash back of my old job. The title was “Administrative Assistant”, the position was “girl who goes everywhere, gets anything, does everything asked.”

My task today was getting a “Get Well” card signed by everyone in the office then dropping it off at Harry and David’s so it could be delivered with a gift basket. Unlike the old job, it only involved two steps. But, it did bring back some memories I’m sure I’ll never forget. Not unlike that dumbass boyfriend I dated in high school for only four months, who left me with emotional scarring is so intense it borders on farce.

One of the weird things I did discover is that incredibly rich, well-known, well-connected people can be very weird. So weird that I would often scratch my head and wonder “How the hell did you actually get this far? Seriously. You can’t even work AOL email.”

I had to judge the fit of mail order pants (front and rear), put braclets on grown men, show how to use the Insert key on the keyboard, file books on recovery from adultry, load personal pictures from a digital camera onto a laptop, find missing Itunes songs, and update a Christmas card list in January,  among many other bizzar tasks. And that wasn’t even for the man that paid my salary. 

That jackass had me lay plastic on his muddy garage floor, use a shovel to pick ice off his front walk,  get his tires changed, book over 50 doctor appointments and transportation (free transportation, no less) for his father, buy beer and wine for his parties, order concert tickets on Saturday mornings, and let his wife tell me to windex her curio cabinets and study windows. All for less than $15 bucks an hour.

I did learn that I was willing and capable of doing whatever was asked and being a “team player.” I also learned that going above and beyond for the wrong person is like trying to get to get to your plane on time while walking backwards on a treadmill. And after that humiliation the jerk fired me and had the nerve to say that administrative work wasn’t up my alley. Seeing that he sold nothing in the time I worked for him, I bit my tounge very hard to not say that maybe sales was not up his.

Thankfully within a week of losing the job, I had two better offers competing for me. And I love my job, so really I should thank him for firing me. Otherwise I’d probably still be there wiping grown men’s butts for one low price.