what's in a name?

I'm a little surprised no one has asked about the new name for this blog, and I debated keeping quiet, letting all of you (and Google) solve it on your own. Here's a hint: It was my second choice. Somebody beat me to "Zooglobble".

Blame it on Oliver.

what's wrong with this picture

What's wrong is I am in Pittsburgh. I think I hate you all. No, not all of you. Just those of you going to Chicago today. See, I want to go to Chicago today. Instead, I get to welcome CD home from Chicago. And I foolishly taught Oliver the correct answer to "Where Daddy go?" so I have had to listen to him say "Chicago" over and over and over all week. SOMEDAY I really will get to go. Be nice to CD if you run into him at O'Hare. I don't want him arriving home grumpy because he got trampled by tons of incredibly cool women bloggers. I'll be grumpy enough for both of us, thank you.

Yesterday Eleanor was having some trouble falling asleep for a nap. She was unusually fussy and I reached the end of my bag of soothing, nap inducing tricks. Save one. I realized CD's conference sessions were being streamed (audio only) to the 'net. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I fired it up. She settled down as soon as he started yacking (on and on about minutiae -- it's what they do at those thrice-annual geekfests). She was asleep in a few minutes. It was like magic.

More things to complain about:
1. My copy of the new Harry Potter book from amazon.co.uk has not arrived yet. You do know they change the words for American kids, right? British editions are as the author intended. We haven't made it to the movie either.
2. My efforts to remove all the wallpaper from our tiny half bath look meager, despite hours spent on it. Two layers of paper, both with backing, all coming off in tiny. little. pieces. Do not, I repeat, do not EVER put wallpaper on your walls.
3. My house still hasn't sold.
4. I still don't have a job (though things are looking up a bit in that area - more soon, I hope)
5. We still aren't sure if we can go away in a couple of weeks. And JetBlue is raising their fares daily.
6. House is not ready for the British invasion, aka the arrival of CD's brother, his wife, and two teenage daughters. We have mostly figured out where we are going to put everyone but I had hoped to have the basement room cleared and fit for habitation. We'll see if I get all that done by next Friday.
7. Oliver's favorite teacher has decided to leave his school. She's on vacation this week. She comes back for next Tuesday, and that's her last day. She is staying in the area and is willing to babysit, which is nice, but he's going to be very sad when he finds out she isn't going to be one of his teachers anymore. Of course, if I don't get a job and he doesn't get to go to school at all as of August 20, we're all going to be much, much sadder.

most of the time I really like Pittsburgh

Then I read crap like this in Letters to the Editor in the Post-Gazette (July 14, 2007):

Gov. Ed Rendell signed a law making it legal to breast-feed in public ("New Pa. Law Allows Breast-feeding in Public," July 9)?

What about the people who don't want to see this? I, for one, do not want to be walking through a mall only to see mothers breast-feeding their children. One would think the mothers would have enough respect for those around them not to do this in public. Don't they think about how uncomfortable this might make people around them?

These mothers showed with their rally at a mall that they do not care about the rights of those around them, only of their right to do as they please because they have children. I'm not sure what Sen. Connie Williams, D-Montgomery, is referring to when she calls the bill "so commonsensical" -- she must be referring to the common sense parents have that makes them think they are better than the rest of us. It was their choice to have children; it's my choice not to care.

BLAIR STACKHOUSE
Uptown

---

Breastfeeding is disrespectful? If I breastfeed I think I'm better than someone else? Feeding my hungry child is "doing as I please"? Sometimes I just don't understand how their brains work.

this moment brought to you courtesy of Elmo

We had our first successful potty experience tonight. After attempts the last two nights that both ended in pee all over me and the floor, I finally convinced Oliver that the splash guard on his potty seat is not evil after all.

There will no doubt be bumps in the road, but we're on our way.

"You'll do it, you'll use the po-tty!"

they may look cute...

But don't let appearances fool you. I should know by now that if I can't remember the last time Eleanor pooped I should be wearing a poncho made from a garbage bag (the poor man's hazmat suit). And she should probably spend the day in no more than 5 feet from the bathtub. Alas, mommy brain was at work today and I forgot these important directives.

In the middle of dinner Eleanor got very, very fussy. I looked to see what the problem was and I saw poop. In. Her. Armpit. I'm not sure how CD moved her from the carseat to the bouncy seat without noticing that her clothes were poopy, as well as the carseat.... but nevermind. I took her to the bathtub, getting poop all over my shirt and nearly everything else in our path. All aforementioned poopy items, including the bouncy seat cover and carseat liner, went into the wash. After coating everything with copious amounts of my favorite stain remover, I decided to give a detergent sample I got in the mail a chance to work its magic. And magic it seems to be. Tide, I think I love you (even though you used to give me hives).

To cap off a perfect night, Oliver sat on the potty and peed. All over me. If he would let me leave the splash guard on the potty seat, we would have had our first SUCCESSFUL POTTY EXPERIENCE. That made two wardrobe changes in about an hour. At least I managed to get through dinner cleanup unscathed.

In other news, Eleanor had her three-month shots today. She weighed in at over 15 pounds, but that was before the TAE.

we're WAIT-ing!!

Yet again I'm going to date myself but do you remember that old ad for the Kissimmee area of Florida? The one with the annoying little brat that says, "We're waiting" in her most annoying of little brat voices? The one that surprisingly has not shown up on YouTube (at least I couldn't find it) so I can't remind you and annoy you all at once. Well, that's what we're doing. Waiting for news on my niece Jami's baby.

Her water broke yesterday morning but contractions stalled. She went to the hospital a little after midnight but still no baby. Look here, little Braydon, as you will soon discover, we are not a patient lot and we're WAIT-ing!!!!

Update: Braydon Greg arrived at 2:21pm, weighing in at 8 pounds, 12 ounces and measuring 21 inches long. Rumors of weights north of 9 pounds were somewhat exaggerated.

it's the shiniest of the shiny things

When last we met our intrepid blogger was doing a bit of virtual drooling over the iPhone. Virtual no more. I've spent the last not quite three days drooling on it for real. Even though I can't send mail to anyone but CD yet (he is working on that - the perils of having your own mail server) it's still the greatest thing since sliced bread and frankly, it blows sliced bread completely out of the water.

Procurement and setup were dead easy. I walked into my local Apple store Sunday afternoon and walked out with iPhone about 10 minutes later. Once we got home, after a detour to Pottery Barn (white sale! rugs! bathroom light fixtures!), setup took maybe 5 minutes.

A small shortcoming, hopefully short-lived, is that I can't view all of Oliver's favorite videos on YouTube. A small subset of YouTube videos are currently available for iPhone. It drove me crazy for an hour until I saw the report on the Apple support boards. I was doing YouTube searches on my MacBook and on my iPhone and the results were not the same. I thought I was losing my mind. I will be very happy when the full compliment of Thomas the Tank Engine and Sesame Street videos (meaning: those that are on my Oliver's Favorites playlist) are available.

Otherwise, it's dreamy.

We figured out how to sync my Mulberry calendars. It takes a few more steps than I would like but that's a very small price to pay to have my calendar with me. It's going to take me a while to get my contacts list together since I have lots of information in far too many places, but that's a problem I can solve (just as soon as we get about 28 hours in a day). Not iPhone's fault.

Today's mission is to see if my iTrip will work with iPhone. iHope.

Update: No go on the iTrip, at least according to the Griffin website. I may try it anyway. And another small annoyance...ringtones. I can't add any. I've been forced to resort to "barking" for calls from CD. I used to have either the Liberty Bell March, which you will recognize as the Monty Python music, or God Save the Queen. I trust this will be fixed with an update soon.