My Blog’s New Look

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As you can see, I’ve unveiled a new look for my blog!

Around this time last year I posted an ad on Craigslist looking for someone to transition my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress blog.

The move was successful but my blog-guy took the money and ran and offered little to no post-transition support.

Thanks to Google and YouTube I was able to make some minor changes but not before spending many days and nights banging my head against the wall. It was time for me to be realistic. Cracking code wasn’t exactly my thing.  After all, I majored in Journalism, NOT C++!

It was during a recent, nightly head banging that I asked on Twitter how to change the size of the # of comments, you know because I get SOOO many. No really, I don’t, but I do dig how it looks when the number is bigger. I didn’t expect anyone to respond but then Dave Clements of Do It With WordPress Tweeted me down from the ledge.

I never figured out how to change the CSS class even with Dave’s instructions but I did begin talking to Dave about going in a new direction with my blog. We decided to move to a different framework and I chose a theme which would allow me to control the majority of fonts, coloring and sizing.

So now I’ve got a second blog-guy, one who is extremely accessible and reasonable and I’m really hoping he’ll stick around! If you’re ever looking to do something with Worpdress, or well, Do It With WordPress, definitely contact Dave.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give the ultimate shout out to my husband Jason for designing my logo/header. The Brooklyn Bridge has a TON of scaffolding on it right now so Jason actually sat there in Photoshop and removed each iron bar after each iron bar. Tedious and time consuming and not at all easy in this demanding household. Not to mention that I drove him bonkers while trying to decide on just the “right blue” in Photoshop’s vast color palette.

The iconic Brooklyn Bridge is undergoing a bit of restoration.

I look forward to playing around with my new blog. Just bear with me as you see some things change, because as you may or may not know I am a bit decision-phobic and tend to change my mind more than once before settling. (I’m talking about my blog of course, not my husband.)

Failed gDiapers Users

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I wanted so much to love gDiapers. I really, really did.

When I was pregnant, my husband Jason did some research on cloth diapering. The fact that newborn babies soil diapers up to 10 times a day coupled with the fact that Jason does the laundry (I know, aren’t I lucky?!) made him not love the whole tree-hugging cloth diapering thing.

But then he told me about gDiapers. Hybrids. The insides are biodegradable and  disposable. You could either flush them down the toilet or throw them in the trash or garden compost where they would break down in 50 – 150 days. The gDiaper shell gets washed only if and when they get dirty.

We were sold.

We began to stockpile the inserts the way new expectant parents collect Pampers. When I was in my third trimester I even vied for gDiapers’ limited “New Baby Bundle” along with thousands of other pregnant and hormonal, internet-savvy women.

Eventually, I accumulated everything needed to catch our newborn baby’s pee and poop while being kind to the earth at the same time.

Everything that is, but a plunger.

There is a whole procedure to flushing the insert of a gDiaper down a toilet. The decomposable fluff on the inside needs to be peeled away from its lining, dropped in the toilet, swished with the swish stick, flushed and THEN the lining can be disposed in the toilet.

I’ll give you the play-by play as I remember it when our use of gDiapers came to a head. (Erm, no pun intended.)

Mylo was just a couple of weeks old. He woke up for what was probably the third time in the middle of the night. He ate. He pooped. He peed on me while I was changing him. Jason ran to the bathroom with the dirty g in tow. I put a clean one on.

Jason returns and informs me that we have a problem. The toilet is clogged. Very clogged. Beyond plunger clogged. Of course I blame him for not following the flushing procedures. He swears up and down that he did. But it’s 1 in the morning. I’m a zombie. A zombie who now has no place to go potty.

Relief didn’t come until 9:00 Saturday morning. I don’t know what was funnier. The fact that we had to relieve ourselves in the bathtub during this sleep-deprived toilet debacle or Jason explaining to our Hungarian Super that he flushed a diaper down the toilet.

After that experience we had written off gDiaper’s until Mylo was out of the newborn phase. When he began pooping less (about 3 months) we reevaluated and decided we’d wait to give gDiapers a second chance when he was pooping solid (about 7 months).

Things were going pretty well until I flushed a dirty insert down the toilet and sure enough… it clogged! I submitted a repair request through my building’s website and when our Super came up with his snake-a-ma-jiggy-thing I was sure NOT to tell him that the culprit was a diaper. I wish I could have contained the news from my husband but alas, I couldn’t, and so guess who had the last laugh?

While I don’t think gDiapers are practical for newborn babies, now that our son is older, we do use them occasionally. But for all the love gDiapers bring mother earth, it bestows little love on this here mother.

—

Have you used gDiapers, or any other hybrid or cloth diapering? Did you fail like us or are you an earthly success?

Elephant Stomps on GoDaddy CEO

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Well, not exactly, but GoDaddy.com CEO’s recent killing of an African elephant DID stomp on his business.

I’ve always been looking for a reason to jump ship from the web-hosting company where I own eight domain names, including this one. And if their Super Bowl commercials featuring scantily-clad women wasn’t reason enough, then shooting an elephant sure as heck is.

The company’s CEO, Bob Parsons, recently shot an elephant in Zimbabwe and posted the graphic, misspelled subtitled footage in a video for the whole world to see, and then dubbed it a “humanitarian” expedition.

Note that I’m intentionally NOT linking to the video which shows the CEO and other hunters looking over a farmer’s damaged crops, shooting at elephants in the night. The subtitle which was evidently not spell checked reads: “Team waits until the elephant are close then turns on lights duct tapped to their rifles & opens fire.” Parsons is then shown smiling while posing with the dead bull. The video depicts “hungry villagers” the next morning stripping the dead animal of its flesh while donning GoDaddy.com hats. The most boorish part of the video is set to AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” and is nothing more than an unscrupulous, self-promoting plug for the company.

If only this poor elephant could rise from the dead and wipe that grin off Bob Parsons face.

Parsons, who’s second elephant hunt this was, told myFox Phoenix that he is not ashamed of what he did. “All these people that are complaining that this shouldn’t happen, that these people who are starving to death otherwise shouldn’t eat these elephants, you probably see them driving through at McDonald’s or cutting a steak. These people [Zimbabwe villagers] don’t have that option.”

While I don’t condone the killing of any animal for human consumption, whether it be cows at slaughterhouses to hunting elephants, what I think is worth questioning is the need for an American CEO to carry out this gruesome task for the African villagers while shamelessly promoting his company.

After reading that Namecheap.com, a GoDaddy.com competitor, recently ran a promotion to raise money for the endangered elephants in Africa I decided it was time to leave GoDaddy. Coupon code (BYEBYEGD) allowed up to 10 domain transfers at just $4.99 per domain, $1 per domain of which was transferred to Save the Elephants. Namecheap raised $20,433 for the elephants in Africa.

Even though I missed out on Namecheap’s promotion (and boy do I love a good deal), it’s still worth jumping. To join me in transferring your domain from GoDaddy.com to Namecheap.com, click here.

What Parsons does not know is that elephants are extremely intelligent, sensitive animals, and that there are strategies that exist to protect them which combine community and creativity. As Stephanie Feldstein wrote on Change.org last November, conservationists and farmers have devised plenty of clever and harmless methods of keeping elephants away from crops.

For example, draped fences made out of string first dipped in chili-infused grease (because elephants don’t like chili peppers), or elaborate cowbell systems that trigger wires to warn when the intruders arrive, are just two ways to preserve villagers’ crops and preserve an ancient species who is highly social and intelligent.

It’s doubtful, but perhaps next year Parsons will trade in his rifle for a cowbell.

Mylostone – First Swing

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I took my son Mylo down to the Brooklyn Bridge Park at the foot of Atlantic Avenue this morning and pushed him in the swings. We were at the same park this past Friday with five of his best neighborhood buds and their moms but he was napping in the stroller during the majority of the outing. When he woke up I was excited to put him in the swing for the very first time, but he sat there slumped over, on the verge of falling back asleep. I pushed him once and then yanked him out. It didn’t count.

We made up for it this morning though. Turns out he’s still a bit too small for the swings so I took off my sweater and used it to prop him into place. He smiled a bunch but I wouldn’t say he was exactly screaming with delight. He’ll eventually get into it, I’m sure.

Mylo's first non-baby swing.

A Song With My Son

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My husband Jason and my son Mylo have a song. When I saw them dancing around the room to it for the first time I was touched. Moved. And jealous. Mylo’s daddy’s best dance move resembles that of “a hold” on a football field. Mommy on the other hand, well let’s just say that I’ve been known to cut a rug. A damn pretty good one, too!

Because Mylo adores dancing and because I don’t want him to look like Lawrence Taylor on the dance floor, it was imperative that I find a song to dance to with my son.

There is the song that I heard over and over again when I was in labor for 30 hours: “Heartbreak Warfare” by John Mayer. The word “war” in the same sentence as my son? I don’t think so. And let’s face it, John Mayer’s a douche.

There’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but that’s what I sing to him while I’m nursing him before bed at night.  I wasn’t feeling that one either.

I was at my friend’s store the other night in the city and there, over the Pandora radio waves, I heard it: “Starlight” by Muse. It’s upbeat, it’s fun and the words are poignant.

YouTube Preview Image

I hold my son in my arms and twirl around the room while his lips are pursed in a perma-smile. Then there’s our other move where I hold his hands and he shakes his hips while stomping his feet on the ground screaming with delight.

“You electrify my life…” That is for sure.

Dancing to Starlight with my boy.

Jonny Be Good

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This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a year. And today I am finally doing something about it.

It was late summer 2009. I was at Animal Care & Control in Brooklyn playing God for the day. I had just started rescuing and fostering for United Action for Animals, a friend’s New York City-based animal welfare group.

I walked past his cage, we locked eyes and I fell in love. His name was Jonny. He was the victim of an almost-overnight ban on pitbulls in New York City Public Housing Authority buildings (otherwise known as “the projects.”) Jonny was handsome, goofy and VERY strong. My dog Ella had just gotten out of being in casts though, and so it was imperative to pull a pit who would NOT want to rough house with her. Jonny didn’t make the cut.

Shortly after I walked away from being Jonny’s ticket out of a death sentence, I met a young man in my neighborhood who told me he wanted a dog like Ella. I took him to the shelter to meet the pitbull I was so drawn to and they hit it off. Because space and time is of the essence when saving an animal from a high-kill shelter, Jonny was adopted out to this man through my friend’s organization.

I always had a bad feeling about the adoption for many reasons that I can’t detail here. But at the same time, I take full responsibility for adopting Jonny out to the wrong home.

I was almost 5 months pregnant when we got the dreaded phone call from AC&C. Jonny had been picked up as a stray. He was emaciated and throwing up at the shelter. They rushed him to the hospital where he had surgery to remove objects that were obstructing his stomach and keeping him from digesting food.

Emaciated Jonny recovering in our Brooklyn apartment.

A couple of days later we picked Jonny up from the hospital, but we were not in a position at the time to do a long-term foster. Thanks to my amazing mother-in-law, she offered to take Jonny up to her home in Connecticut.

Days later while she was walking with him off leash through her secluded, neighborhood lakeside community, Jonny met the woman who would give him his third and final home.

The couple were from New Jersey and spent weekends at their house on the lake in Connecticut. Their dog had died the previous year and the wife was about to retire. When she saw Jonny and learned from my MIL that he needed a forever home, she called it fate.

I often think back to mine and Jonny’s first-chance meeting. How we locked eyes and something inside of me surged. I think about what his life might have been like with the young man, how he was loved but not properly cared for. I remember how hard I cried when we picked him up from the hospital. I think about how I stroked him and whispered “sorry” into his ears over and over and over again. I think about my petite and serene MIL with this massive pitbull, and how grateful I am that she extended her home to such a powerful dog.

He was the dog I wanted to save but couldn’t, and then ultimately did.

Jonny, now called Sunny, at home in Conneticut.

My Tsunami Dream

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I have always been a dreamer. I dream vividly and wildly when I sleep. Sometimes I remember every detail, other times I don’t.

Sometimes I laugh out loud in my sleep. The first time my husband Jason ever heard this he was convinced I was acting. But I wasn’t. When he finally got me to snap out of it I just rolled over and was deep in REM sleep once again. The next morning I had no recollection of it whatsoever.

Every once in a while I have a nightmare.

Last week Jason and I confided our deepest darkest nightmares in one another. Mine is about airplanes exploding and often feature my brother in them. Sometimes I am with him, sometimes I am not. The exact details of these nightmares are vague and for that I am grateful as they are always troubling and very disturbing.

Jason’s nightmares are based on a tragic tsunami that comes barreling down our street in Brooklyn.  It’s a frantic and heartbreaking race to usher his family, furbabies included, to safety.

Well wouldn’t you know that my husband recently gave me his tsunami dream.

Early last Tuesday I had a very upsetting dream about a tsunami that was heading right for the high rise building we lived in. It was our home but yet we were some place foreign, possibly Australia. Emergency alarms had been sounding in the distance and I frantically began to comb our apartment for things to bring with us although I don’t know where we were going.

I am certain the recent tragedy in Japan and the around-the-clock news coverage of it has played a part in my dream, as did Jason’s neuroses. The high rise building likely signifies the condominium we put money down on in 2008 but have been battling to get out of .

The fact that I contemplated packing jars of baby food in my dream but then realized I didn’t need to because I was nursing could go either way. Either I am grateful I am still nursing or I felt helpless that in the face of tragedy, I had to be a source of comfort and nourishment for my son.

My grandmother’s gold bracelet also had a cameo in my dream. When I went to put it on the latch wouldn’t close, my hands were shaking and it dropped to the floor. And then there’s The Bug, our cat. I cornered her in the bathroom to get her into the carrier but she fled. Gold bracelet. Black cat. Two things i love that I would have to leave behind.

The climax of the dream was when I looked out the window and saw the mother of all waves approaching. I was on the phone with my mom and Jason had his back to the windows and was dressing the baby. I remember screaming “hold the baby, hold the baby,” and then I woke up.

I can actually hear you all unsubscribing me from your readers right now. I promise though, I am not a dark person.

When I was pregnant I felt I was carrying a girl but dreamed it was a boy, three separate times. When I was nearing full-term I dreamed I gave birth to a black cat. See, I’m not the least bit dark I tell ya.

I apologize in advance if any of you have a tsunami dream after reading this. And of course if you dream you’ve given birth to a black cat, I apologize for that, too.

—

Do you have a nightmare of your own you’d care to share?

March 2011 Takeaways

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At the beginning of this year, in an effort to support my resolve to blog more, I started something new: monthly takeaways. Call it a recap, a reflection or a review. The monthly takeaways are one part blog therapy and two parts a measure of the growth and progress I’ve made in my life (or not). After all, a month left behind means my son is one month older, I am one month older and therefore, hopefully, one month wiser.

My hope is that these takeaways will be fun and interactive and that you will join me by posting about your takeaways from this past month, in the comments below.

So, here goes…

My March Takeaways

1. A Cotes Du Rhone in a plastic bottle. Yes, you heard me, wine from the Rhone valley in France in a plastic bottle. Even my French mother-in-law was horrified.

Yep. A French man holding French wine in a plastic bottle.

2. We are STILL failed gDiapers users.

3. The boy discovered the book shelf. I hope this means he’ll be an avid reader.

And there go the books...

4. Contrary to what my husband Jason says, taking a chunk out of Zinn’s A People’s History does NOT mean our son Mylo can’t wait to read it.

5. The iPhone 4= Happy Husband. Used Blackberry Tour= Happy Baby.

6. Meeting for beers with our babies is increasingly more difficult now that the babes’ have become mobile.

Some of the moms at a beers & babies meet-up.

7. Saying good-bye to a family member, even if it’s just an old cat, is never easy.

8. A year and a half out of casts and our dog Ella climbed the ledge to look out at Brooklyn and Manhattan and bathe in the sun, for the very first time.

"What goes up must come down" doesn't apply to this dog.

–

So, what are some of your takeaways from this past month? Please share them with me in the comments, I’d love to hear!

Blackberry for iPhone

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My husband Jason is a happy man but I miss my buttons.

Since the iPhone came out in June 2007 , Jason had been asking to get an iPhone. The answer was always no, though, not because I’m mean, but because we don’t have AT&T.

A self-proclaimed Apple-addict, Jason’s prayers were finally answered with Verizon’s release of the iPhone 4 this past February.

A week ago today we traded in our Blackberries for iPhones. Well, we didn’t exactly trade them, we had to upgrade and pay the hefty upgrade fees of course. Grrr.

I wanted to wait a week before writing a post about my thoughts on the big life change, and so here I am. I’m loving the iPhone but still missing my buttons. I adore the multitude of apps and the clarity of the photos but it’s a struggle to text or email typo-free with speed, something I was a whiz at with my Blackberry.

My new friend.

Perhaps THE BEST thing that has come out of replacing our Blackberries with the iPhones is that my son Mylo has no  interest in our new phones! (My thinking is that he misses the buttons, too.) I wrote in an earlier post here about Mylo’s obsession with my Blackberry.

I actually  bought Mylo a klunky, plastic, Fisher Price Smartphone to sate his appetite for phones. Let’s just say it became yesterday’s news five minutes after buying it. So, because I now have an iPhone, Mylo has inherited my former Blackberry. Which just goes to show that if you gnaw and slobber on something long enough, you can have it!

Swimming With Dolphins

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I decided to write this post after I recently came across a fellow mom blog who had a detailed bucket list of things she would like to do in her life before she kicks it. Swimming with dolphins was one of them.

I’m not linking to this woman’s blog, who happens to be a TV news reporter, as she doesn’t need to be attacked by animal rights activists. But as a fellow parent who’s job it is to teach our children compassion and as a fellow writer and sometimes journalist who’s job requires being a savvy researcher, I was disappointed to see that swimming with dolphins was up there with visiting another country and opening a 401(k).

I don’t think people understand that more harm than good is being done when you swim with dolphins who are in captive environments. So here it is folks…

For starters, the capturing of dolphins is traumatic and stressful and often results in injury and death.

Dolphins are trained to look as if they perform because they like it. This isn’t the case. Tailwalking and playing ball are trained behaviors that do not occur in the wild. Dolphins perform because they have been deprived of food. Hold food in front of me when I am famished and I too would jump through hoops to get to it.

Most captive dolphins are confined in minuscule tanks containing chemically treated artificial seawater. Dolphins in a tank are severely restricted in using their highly developed sonar, which is one of the most damaging aspects of captivity. It is similar to forcing a person to live in a maze of mirrors for the rest of their life – their image always bouncing back with no clear direction in sight.

Perhaps the saddest part of dolphin captivity is how short their lives are. The average life span of a dolphin in the wild is 45 years; yet half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity. The survivors last an average of only five years in captivity.

Wild dolphins can swim 40 to 100 miles per day – in pools they go around in circles.

The truth behind swimming with dolphins could help set them free.

These are simple facts that people and especially parents, should know. If you think it would be cute to get snapshots of your spawn swimming with dolphins during your next vacation to Atlantis in the Bahamas, please, think again.