Day 8: Parents brag-plaining

What's brag-plaining, you ask? It's when someone is speaking in a complaining tone but actually bragging at the same time. And anyone can do it, not just parents.

Wired Momma listed 8 pretty hilarious parenting brag-plains (this only a partial list):

1. Why can’t my kids ever sleep until 8AM? 
I would always complain that J only slept until 5:30am or 6:00am, but then I read what Wired Momma wrote, and I felt bad -- there are kids out there that only sleep until 4:30am!? And I'm talking about after a kid is sleeping through the night, like mine at 10 months, not sleeping until 6:00am at 6 months or anything.

The next two aren't really brag-plaining, but still annoying to hear ;).

7. I’d like to think my attentive parenting is the reason Annie never throws a tantrum.
Oh, I'm certainly attentive. At 17 months, I know what sets J off into a tantrum -- don't touch that, don't play with that, don't go there, don't don't don't. You'd be annoyed too, right? If your kid doesn't throw a tantrum, congrats because he/she is just pushing it off until he/she's older *wink*. Psych. I don't know.

8. Little Sarah is just so advanced. Of course, we read to her every night, play puzzles and never let her watch TV.
Sometimes I buy into the whole "TV is bad for kids after 2" research. Sometimes I remember back to my childhood and how much TV I used to watch -- I turned out fine. So I'm going to try not to feel guilty if I let J watch Sesame Street for a few minutes, or if he wants to YouTube his favorite songs again. You should see the size of the smile that comes on his face when we watch Hot Potato or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. You should also see the tantrum/tears that start when we have to pull him away from it!

Alright, so maybe I'm a bit cynical. You can't stop parents from bragging about their kids! I do it. I know!

But sometimes the awesome Facebook posts and the I-love-being-a-new-mom posts in the blogosphere are just reminders of how surprisingly extreme parenting has been for me -- high highs and low lows. Though one wise parent pointed out to me that bragging about the positives of parenting is good for the survival of the species. Imagine if all we ever heard were complaints, we'd certainly stop procreating! I know I was duped *wink* -- nah, just kidding, I wouldn't trade being mom to J for the world!

Though please stop me if I ever start brag-plaining or bragging too much! I'm trying to keep a real picture of parenting here!

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Day 7: Hopefully it's a short-lived stomach virus

For those with a weak stomach, feel free to click-away from this post ;).

J, my 17-month old, threw up twice yesterday -- once on the way to daycare. Great, now we're never going to get that smell out! So I cleaned him up when we got to daycare -- changed his clothes, gave his jacket a rinse in the sink -- meanwhile, one of the teachers whispers to me There's a stomach virus going around. Yesterday, so-and-so had diarrhea...so I'm just telling you...we'll call you if anything happens.  

GREAT! Right after J gets over his sinus infection, another illness comes right along to take its place. I just knew that I'd be receiving a phone call from daycare later that day. I did.

I spent the rest of the day slowly giving J water, which he threw up half hour later. I also gave him yogurt, which he threw up an hour later. And that night, he threw up again. It's a good thing we have a good supply of sheets and SleepSacks.

Luckily, he seems to be doing better this morning. He's keeping down milk, water, Cheerios, rice and potatotes. He's napping right now, and I'm hoping he doesn't throw up and we can all get some rest! I mean, look at this face! I wish I looked this good with a stomach virus. I feel a bit queasy, but I was sure to wash my hands a lot yesterday and today so hopefully I stay well.

via Instagr.am (lisacng)

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Day 6: Life-lessons from Dr. Seuss

The only Dr. Seuss book I've really read is probably Green Eggs and Sam.

I will not eat them in boat. I will not eat them with a goat.
I will not eat them here nor there. I will not eat them anywhere.
I will not eat green eggs and ham. I will not eat them, Sam I am.

Ok, so I may have made up paraphrased…

Anyways, we were at a local church's yard sale and picked up J's first Dr. Seuss book and it wasn't Green Eggs and Ham. Wah wah wa.

Oh, the Places You'll Go! 

Have you read it? I was surprised by the poignant lessons in it...

that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you...

Except when they {referring to good things} don't. Because, sometimes they won't

What a great book! It teaches that yes, the "world is your oyster" but sometimes it won't give you pearls. And that's ok because...

 Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act.

If this book makes it through J's childhood, meaning it's not ripped to shreds, I'm going give it to him for his high school graduation...not that I'm thinking about that day already now or anything.

Any lessons in children's books you were surprised to find?

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Day 5: Work-life balance schmalance

I was in graduate school when "work-life balance" entered my vocabulary. I'm sure I'd heard it before, but it wasn't until I was married (and wanting kids sometime in the future) that I paid attention to the phrase. As such, anytime I was on a panel with other female engineers/researchers speaking to a group of young women, the topic of "work-life balance" always came up. We would say things like:

Work-life balance means not having to do it all. It's ok to ask for help.
Work-life balance means having a helpful and supportive significant other.
Work-life balance means working with your schedule so that you have time for xyz.

Sounds easy, right? Sounds doable...

But then I read a series of posts from A Cup Of Jo. She interviewed a few moms, who work full/part-time from home and have young children, about work-life balance. They all seemed to take the last piece of advice above about rearranging their schedule for xyz. Only one mom, I think (I didn't get a chance to read all of them again), mentioned making sacrifices in her life, which brings me to a fairly recent article about the misnomer, "work-life balance".

Believing that work-life balance is possible promotes one thing: self-flagellation...When asked to self-score themselves as parents, on a scale of 1-10, a mere 28% of full-time working moms gave themselves a score of 9 or 10. 41% of part-time working moms gave themselves a 9 or 10 and 43% of at-home moms gave themselves a 9 or 10.

On the path to raising good, decent, law-abiding and respectful children, why do we perpetuate this expectation of parenting perfection instead of accepting good enough -- and being proud of what we do accomplish?

...there are choices and those choices have consequences...Own your choice, accept that on some days it might not be great for your kids...but you might enjoy your career. And in other weeks, your career might be compromised but your children's needs aren't.

Isn't it not surprising that moms who work full-time (outside the home, presumably) ranked themselves lower as parents than stay-at-home moms? It's also a shame because no matter where you work, or what you do, you are the best parent that your child has!

So for all you moms and dads out there, remember that "work-life balance" is a misnomer. You can't give 100% of your time to both work and family -- you only have 100% of your time, right? Like the article says, you're going to have to make sacrifices in one area or another. One area will hurt today and another area will hurt tomorrow, and that's ok, that's normal. So just go out there, and do your best in "work" and "life". Don't compare yourself to other parents. And above all, enjoy yourself 100% of the time!

As a test, rank yourself as a parent below -- anonymously, of course! Hopefully, we're all 9s or 10s!

Rank yourself as a parent
	1, Who's idea was it to let me be a parent?
	2
	3
	4
	5
	6
	7
	8
	9
	10, I'm the best parent my child has
pollcode.com free polls

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Day 4: Starting a blog

I started this blog because I wanted to document my pregnancy for my family and friends. Then, I wanted to document J's growth from infant to toddler and now beyond. I can't even imagine what I'll be writing a year from now, let alone 5 or 10 years from now! I can't even imagine what J will think of this blog if he ever reads it. Hopefully I haven't blogged anything too embarrassing!

Now that the blog's a little over 2 years old, I thought I'd share some thoughts on blogging, for those of you who may want to start your own or expand on what you've already got. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

What to blog?
This is probably the toughest question that I still am trying to answer for expandng.com. Like I said, the blog was first of all, documentary. But now, I am considering the following questions: 

• What audience do I want to reach, if any?
• Should I consider changing the style of my writing? Funny? Informative? Currently, I'm mostly just blabbering.
• Should I consider narrowing the focus of my content? For instance, I was dabbling in shopping deals for a bit, but then realized that others do it much better, so I stopped.
• Do I want to make money from this blog? Personally, it wouldn't matter since I work outside the home full-time (and I don't have many pageviews). But if you want to monetize your blog, read this post from the Feminine Breeder about her blog's earnings.

Where to blog?

The options are ever-growing! This is Blogger, which is a Google product. I find that the blog templates are easy to customize without any knowledge of html or CSS.

I've also tried the free version of WordPress.com. They also have a self-hosted version over at WordPress.org. I found the free blog templates not as easy to customize. You can certainly customize your template with the self-hosted version (meaning you buy space monthly/yearly from another party such as BlueHost).

What I did like about WordPress was that you could tag your blog/posts so that other WordPress users could find your blog under that particular tag. So if I tagged my blog "momblog", other mom-bloggers could find me and vice versa. tumblr has this feature too.

Other places for your blog are tumblr and TypePad (I haven't tried these) to name two off the top of my head. Here's a list compiled in 2009. You can tell because Xanga is on the list -- oh, I used to have one of those!


Your own domain?
If you use free Blogger or WordPress, your domain will look like yourblogname.blogspot.com or yourblogname.wordpress.com.

There are good reasons to purchase your own domain -- yourblogname.com/org/net/etc. -- like if you're a business and .blogspot or .wordpress may just say to clients that you aren't serious about your business.

My reason for purchasing my own domain was just because I wanted to -- and it wasn't that expensive. I got expandng.com from Register.com for $5 (first year) and capturng.com from Network Solutions also for $5 (first year).

Self-hosted?
Let's say you purchase your own domain name, you can self-host it (i.e., create your blog from scratch -- I couldn’t even imagine doing that!), self-host and use WordPress's software (or similar product for other hosting sites), or continue using Blogger (or tumblr) and just direct your domain name there (my choice).

If you self-host, you have the advantage of choosing the storage limit (for a fee) for whatever files you may want to share via your blog -- pictures, forms, html files. I am limited to the storage capacity of say, Picasa, for the pictures I post on my blogs.

Hope these four questions were helpful to anyone starting or wants to start blogging or has a "new" blog like me! Later this week, I'd also like to share some tools/steps/tips that have helped me publicize this blog.

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Happy 2012!

In this New Year of 2012, I'll be joining L in her adventure of building our virtual home - expandng.com. For those who don't know me, I am L's significant other, commonly referred as "A" (Yes I am just "A", like in the movie Men In Black, just the first letter), and if you have been following L's blog in these past few years, you're in for a treat, because I am officially invading this "woman's cave" and gonna give this place some masculinity. "Muah-hahahahaha"

Silliness aside, coming back to work after the New Year always consist of a bunch of chit-chat with the co-workers about how your holiday went. This great conversation starter always starts with "Hey! How's the holiday, did you have a good break?"

Though this year whenever I get asked this question I actually had a new, mixed feelings. See, before we had J, my response is always "Oh it was fantastic, we got together with the family, saw some friends, ate like a pig and sleep till 10am everyday." And now with the little one, things had dramatically changed. We wake up early for J, and better yet, he's keeping us on our toes for the remainder of the day and we became his entertainment, so it was actually quite stressful. This usually involves reading his favorite Mother Goose book 10 billion times or playing that same music tune from one of his toys.

Then the inevitable question came to mind - Am I a bad parent? Why aren't I "enjoying" this? To be honest, as a new parent I just came to learn about this new feeling (yes, men have feeelings ladies! We just too cool to admit it) It is the fact that being a parent is a bittersweet thing. It has now gives me new insight when people say "I really enjoy watching my son/daughter grow".

See before I was a parent, that statement was simply what it states - watching his/her kid grow and changes. How fascinating, right? Now I am a parent, that statement actually starts to click with me. Watching your son/daughter grow is actually the fruit of the labor. In reality, this fruit actually takes A LOT of hard work and it involves many sleepless nights, stress, tears...etc. Ultimately, you help shape and mold your child and it will take work and dedication.

So, I guess my "enjoyment" for holidays has been redefined. I am thankful that it gave us an opportunity to spend more time with J and caught a glimpse of what our fruit will turn out to be. I should also thank J for helping us learned a lot about our strength and weakness, and teaching us patiences and perseverance.

Anyway, one day when you're able to read this blog J, just know this - Mommy and Daddy loves you, always.

Happy 2012 everyone!

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Day 3: Life lessons from my toddler

Parents.com talks about 8 life lessons we parents can learn from our toddlers. Below are the 5 that resonated with me, and one more I'm learning right now.

1. Have patience -- don't give up!

The most memorable success in the behavior department is stopping J from throwing food on the floor. We repeated, repeated, repeated, and it finally sunk in though he does regress from time to time. We're still having trouble getting him in the carseat though, and I'm (and others are) still open to advice/suggestions from you!

2 and 3. Imperfection is ok & always have perspective.

I've already come to accept that the house won't be perfectly clean or organized though there are some messes that my husband and I just have to clean up!

4. Don't judge other parents.

Come on, confess, wasn't this so easy to do when you didn't have children? I won't do that when I have kids. Check out what Crappy Pictures has to say about this. Well, I don't think I've judged others' parenting styles when it comes to children, but sure have when it comes to dogs! Haha!

5. Always set a good example.

I have to be careful of this one, considering J's going to start imitating everything we do and say pretty soon. Especially not to lose my temper.

And this one I've added...
9. Sometimes Most of the time, my toddler knows what he needs right now.

J's been sick with a sinus infection. His appetite is poor (or is it he's pickier now?!) but he sleeps great -- 3 hrs in the afternoon, sleeps past 7am though he's been waking up in the middle of the night, boo! Naturally, I'm concerned that he's not eating enough and that he's sleeping too much as if any parent should be complaining about this, right? But what I'm learning from J is that he knows what he needs right now and that's more sleep, less eat so you can chill out, Mom!


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Day 2: Recap of NYE in National Harbor, MD

Happy 2012 again!
Thanks to everyone who's been following our family on this blog. 

Hope you'll continue reading & sharing! 

[source: Gaylord Hotels]

On New Year's Eve (NYE), we decided to go down to National Harbor, MD since a few people in our lives have mentioned this place and I always think they're talking about Baltimore's Inner Harbor -- doh! Having only perused their homepage for a few minutes, I came to two conclusions:

1. The National Harbor is what Penn's Landing (Philadelphia, PA) wants to be when it grows up.
2. I figured that we'd check out the National Children's Museum Launch Zone and the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center since the ICE! exhibit was going on.

[source: Gaylord Hotels]

The National Harbor would have been a nice place to walk around in mid-morning on NYE -- what was it, like 50F? Too bad we had to be at home. The blower on our heat pump needed replacing, which was important since the temperature has since dropped outside. Needless to say, I'm eagerly waiting for warmer weather so we can go back!

We only got to go to the Gaylord because the Launch Zone was closed. Upon seeing the crowd inside and the line that wrapped around the entire length of the lobby, I thought to myself, Wow, this Gaylord must be a big deal! 

 [inside the Gaylord, taken by the hubby]

We visited the lower level where the "streets" were decorated with lights and garland. J's favorite part was the water show. We saw kids building gingerbread houses and taking pictures with the gingerbread man from Shrek. Cute, but for $79?! We did not go to the ICE! exhibit because it was $35 for adults! WHAT?! I'm guessing that ice-slide up there also costs extra. Pictures with the Madagascar characters also extra.

  [watching the water show]

 [enjoying the water show with daddy]

Man, really taking those parents' hard-earned dollars, huh, Gaylord?

Later that evening, the hubby and I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes courtesy of Blockbuster Express. I can't believe I stayed up until midnight after all!

How did you and the family spend NYE?

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Day 1: It's Sunday

Happy 2012 EVERYONE!

Today is Sunday, and guess where we went? To church (Journey's Crossing in Germantown, MD), oh yea. Check that off my NYR list for today :). See my progress on left sidebar. Please don't tell me that going to church shouldn't be an item that one checks off her list because that's bordering legalism because you have to start somewhere right? Plan to fail, fail to plan, you know the ol' adage.


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