I do NOT believe this!

Nicky went to bed tonight with no problem at about 8pm after a big day and a nice bath. He was in his zippered sleeper. I worked on my knitting project (which is kind of going better, but I think the pattern I picked might be too hard so I'm thinking of frogging it again) while Tom and I watched tv. We were just getting ready to put in a movie when I went to go to the bathroom and check on Nicky. He was sleeping so sweet, all curled up under his Elmo sheet with his binky. I almost walked out, but then I did a double take...was that his sleeper loose next to him? Is that a bare shoulder peeking out?

YES!

Somehow my little booger got OUT of his zippered sleeper AND diaper! He was wet, but no poop (thank goodness). So we picked up our naked slumbering boy and cleaned him up, put a diaper on him, and tucked him into the big bed in his room while we cleaned up the room. He was so sleepy and snuggled right in and fell asleep. Tom changed the crib sheets and I looked for another sleeper, but both zippered ones were dirty now and the one other one he had is probably in the laundry somewhere. So I went to re-sew the crotch shut on the buttondown one that he'd originally ripped open. It only took a little while for me to do it, I'd already had it in the den by my chair as a project to do. When I went in to get him in his newly sewn jammies I found Tom and Nicky snuggled up in the big bed sleeping. Too sweet. We put him in his jammies and I left the two of them to snuggle for a while.

So now he knows how to get the zippered sleepers off. This kid is just too darn smart! We'll see how long it takes for him to figure out the row of buttons on this one, or to rip out the stitches again.

--------------
To shift gears a moment...
Today we took Nicky out to the nature center here. There's an old farm at the center, and we spent all our time there. I remembered to take a photo at the start under a beautiful flowering tree. And I took one movie when Nicky was climbing the steps into the old farmhouse. The rest of the time I was too busy following Nicky around and showing him the animals and making sure he didn't grab a chicken. He had a good time. He got to meet a cow named Penny, several chickens and roosters, pigs, and some sheep. Nothing too close and personal though. We only stayed for about 45 minutes or so. It was hot out there today! We'll have to visit again sometime and also stop by to see the nature center part of the park.

Round and Round

Nicky's final birthday present arrived in the mail today. A good old-fashioned, no batteries required Sit N Spin from Aunt Maryellen and Uncle Scot! I'm so glad they found one that doesn't sing, talk, flash, or otherwise require batteries. With a few minutes of seeing it, Nicky figured out how it basically worked. He then took it and put it upside down to figure out the spinning mechanism. And within I'd say 3-5 minutes he was carrying it around the house to whatever room we were in to practice. I grabbed the camera in my room and shot this video, probably 5-8 minutes after he'd first seen it.



In keeping with the "Circular" theme of this post, I'm finally sitting down to figure out how to use the double pointed knitting needles I bought. I got a killer deal on 14 sets of DPNs in sizes ranging from 1-15 and I've been waiting for my chance to figure them out. I'm trying out this pattern with my Patons Grace sky blue yarn. (Of which I could have sworn I had a few balls, but can only find one!) So far I've gotten as far as casting on, but I haven't figured out how to actually join the round and start knitting. I needed a stitch marker, and of course instead of just using any old thing I had to break out my beads and make two of my own. These are my first stitch markers ever, and they'll only work on small needles, but I thought I'd try them out.



So let's recap:
DPNs...Check
Yarn...Check
Ultra-cute stitchmarker...Check
Knowledge of how to use these tools...Yeah, still looking on the internet for instructions.

But I have all weekend to figure it out.

[Update: Ok, I frogged my first attempt and now I'm trying this pattern with the same yarn and needles. Maybe it'll go better.]

Boogers Boogers Everywhere...

Just a short post to say...
Nicky is boogery and coughing, Tom getting there, and I'm feeling run down and trying to sleep a lot. OJ and fruit, tea and tomato soup are all on the menu while we try to cast out the germ-demons around here. Hopefully this will be a short duration thing, unlike the last one where Tom was down for a week and then I was down for 2.5 weeks. Although at least that time Nicky didn't get it. I hate it when he's sick! We haven't resorted to medicine for him yet, but if needed we do have Children's Triaminic and Dimeatapp, and I'm NOT afraid to use it.

Mission to Ground Control: We have peepee!

We had a wonderful weekend full of lots of company and candy, fun and food.

Tom's mom, Donna, arrived Friday and my Mom and sister, Liz, arrived Saturday right after Tom's sister, Maryellen, and her husband, Scot, came over. By Saturday evening, Tom's dad, Charles, and his wife, JM, arrived and we had a total of 10 people in our little 2 bedroom 1 bath house (if you include Nicky, which I always do). Needless to say, it was a bit crowded. We all had a big cookout dinner of barbecue chicken, potatoes, carrot salad, baked beans and broccoli.

After dinner we hurriedly took turns in the tiny bathroom and everyone got gussied up for Easter Vigil at the church. Tom was getting confirmed and it was happening at the special Easter Vigil service Saturday night. Tom left early to pick up his sponsor, Kris, and get dressed up in his robe for the ceremony. The rest of us fought over the bathroom and two bedrooms for a spot to get dressed in something like a bit of privacy. We were out the door right about 8:05pm, which was pretty close to what we'd hoped. Charles and JM were babysitting Nicky, and I don't think he probably even noticed when I left in all the hustle and bustle. From what I hear, he was a very good boy all evening.

Donna, Maryellen and Scot took one car and I rode with my Mom and Liz. We were just a little ways down the road when I realized I hadn't given anyone in the other car directions to the church, but I was pretty sure at least one of them had been there before and so they'd find it ok. (I hoped!) We didn't have anyone's cell number with us, so it was just going to have to work out anyway. Turns out I shouldn't have worried; by the time we got into the church, they were all sitting in the back row. We ended up sitting separately so that we could sit closer and see better, while Donna wanted to be close to the back to slip out easily if her back started hurting. We knew going in that it was supposed to be a longer than normal mass, but I don't know if we really fully understood what that really meant...

Now, for those of you with no Catholic experience, let me give you the normal rundown. First you have some singing, and then the priest comes in. Then you have the first reading, some singing, the second reading, some singing, the Gospel, the priest's sermon, Communion, and then you're pretty much done after a few news announcements and some more singing. At some point some baskets are handed around and there's a bunch of standing, sitting, kneeling, and praying, but I can't remember where all those come in.

Anyway, THIS mass started at 9pm. There was a LOT of singing, like in two languages sometimes, and there were SEVEN readings, then another reading called an Epistle and then the Gospel. And then the sermon, and THEN the baptisms (they do full immersion at this church) and THEN the confirmations, and THEN the Communion. To give you an idea, Communion came AFTER midnight! I think we probably were done around 1am and got home after 2am. By that time Donna was back at the house (I think they said they made it through the first three readings or so) and Charles, JM, Scot and Maryellen had all long since gone home and Donna was trying to stay awake till we got home. And she was sick! She'd thought it was allergies, but it turns out she'd had a cold or bronchitis starting.

Sunday we woke after only a few hours of sleep to play Easter Bunny for Nicky. It was fun for him to learn about peeps and chocolate, and he did a good job on his basket of treats. Then we had a nice breakfast and Donna worked on decorating Nicky's cake. At about 1pm Maryellen, Scot, Charles and JM came over and Tom picked up Kris. We had a cookout lunch and then Nicky had to lie down for a nap. Later, when he woke up, we had cake and presents. Nicky had a ball playing with his new toys.

Ahh, but wait! What about the title of this post?

Well, on Saturday, right after Tom left for church, Charles called me and said Nicky had pointed to his bellybutton and said "poopoo." I asked Nicky if he had a poopoo but he didn't. So I asked if he wanted to sit on the potty and he said "okay." We went to sit on the potty, and he didn't fidget quite as much as before, but he didn't poopoo, he went peepee in the potty! It was in his little potty, and he at first got a little on the rug, but after we adjusted him on the seat he went right in it. We celebrated with lots of praise and then announced it to everyone in the living room, where he then proceeded to do a pantless break dancing on the living room floor while laughing and so proud of himself while everyone cheered for him.

So that's twice now he's gone in the potty, one poopoo and one peepee. We're getting there!

Poop Poop Here, Snip Snip There..

We've hit a milestone. The first potty use! Skip this post if you're not interested in hearing all about it. Because you know I'm going to go into major detail here...

So last night Tom was at church (this week is the last week before confirmation so he has a lot of church stuff to do this week) and Nicky and I were enjoying some dinner. (He did like his cupcakes by the way, but mostly ate the candy bits on them.) But he was fidgety and not interested in sitting and eating. He was running around the kitchen, stopping to grab a bite and then running around more. Finally I realized he needed to go poop and that's why he was running around like that.

So I asked him if he wanted to go poopoo on the potty and have an M&M. He said "M&M?" And I said I'd let him sit on the big potty. He said "OKAY!"

We went in the bathroom and took off his diaper and shorts and set him on the potty. Mostly he wanted to stand on it, watch the water flush down and try to stick his foot in the potty. So I put him down on his own potty. But then he kept running off into the living room. Well, there's carpet in there and he's running around loaded, so I locked us both in the bathroom. (He can't open the door when it's locked yet.)

I had Mr. Potatohead and some of his parts with me, and tried to keep Nicky sitting onthe potty and engaged with playing Mr. Potatohead. But he kept hopping up, pushing the potty around, picking up the scale, etc. I moved his potty over so that he could face the edge of the tub like a desk and play with Mr. Potatohead there, but after a second Mr. Potatohead fell in the tub and Nicky crawled in after him.

Now Nicky is always running off to hide when he makes a poop, so when he then closed the shower curtain and said bye bye I thought he might just want some privacy. So I put his potty seat IN the tub (on the non-slip mat) and closed the curtain. I told him he could make his poopoo on the potty and I would sit out here and read my book.

He was quietly playing in there when I heard him push. I peeked around the curtain to ask how it was going and he was trying to sit down and stand and poop all at the same time. I helped him sit down and the last bit fell in the potty!

I praised him for getting some poopoo in the potty, but he was looking down at the mat and saying "Uh Oh! I sorry!" over and over. He was upset because some poop had missed. But I just said, "that's ok! Look!" and used some toilet paper to pick up the poop and put it in the potty. I talked about how Elmo (in the Potty Time video we have) said that accidents happen and it's ok, but the awesome thing was that he got some poopoo in the potty!

I made a big deal out of it, and he was feeling very proud. He wanted me to take a picture so I did, but I won't show you that here! (Aren't you glad!) We talked about how great it was while I cleaned up and then gave him his bath and got him ready for bed. I told him that when Daddy came home he would come in to kiss him and then he could tell Daddy that he pooped in the potty.

When Tom came home Nicky was still awake. So I went and got him and we went to see Daddy in the bathroom. I said "tell daddy what you did" and he pointed at his potty and said "potty!" Tom said, Did you poop in the potty?" And Nicky said "Okay!" It was so cute. Tom just gushed about how great that was and how big Nicky was and Nicky was so proud! He was so pleased with himself!

We got him off to bed and then of course I had to tell Tom the whole long story.

So now, we've had some potty success. We're still not full-out potty training in earnest yet, but we'll practice more this weekend. And every poop in the potty is one that we don't have to worry about being on the walls and in the crib. :)

Speaking of which we haven't had another accident since the one time I put him down for a nap without his sleeper last Saturday. Yeah, that was a mistake. I was even IN the room napping with him when I woke to maniacal laughter and poop in the crib. Sigh. So now he's put in his sleeper EVERY single time he goes to sleep.

**********************

Tonight I attempted to give Nicky a haircut. It was miserable. The experience I mean. The haircut might actually be pretty good. I think it's an improvement anyway. He looks a little less like one of the Beatles anyway. He was crying and pushing away the comb and scissors, I was getting frustrated and telling him to stop and put his hands down. It was definitely not my best Mommy Moment.

I hung in there until I at least got his bangs and most of it around his ears. Then I said "I feel FRUSTRATED!" and he just looked at me miserably and nodded. Then I asked if he wanted a bath and he nodded yes. Probably would have agreed to anything that didn't involve me and scissors at that point.

We had a bath and he went to bed with no problem. I think he was just exhausted. I on the other hand went to get the biggest glass of wine I could get and sat down to relax. I'm feeling much better now.

I'll try to get some before and after shots ready for you soon.

In which Tom learns what a prize he has in me

So yesterday was Nicky's actual birth date. I went to work though and so when I got home Nicky and I made cupcakes while daddy cooked dinner. The time change has really thrown Nicky for a loop though and he was exhausted after dinner. So he had a bath and went to bed (in his new Elmo sheets) and I went to ice the cupcakes after he was already in bed.

I only had about 1/3 of a container of frosting (left over from Valentine's day's cupcakes) to work with, and that's not much for 24 cupcakes, but I persevered and spread the icing thin.

Well that wasn't very exciting, and you could totally see the cupcakes (yellow cake by the way) through the icing in spots. Hmm. A quick look through the cupboards and all I could find were red sugar crystal sprinkles (again, left over from Vday). I thought maybe if I had a cookie cutter I could use it to make a sprinkle shape on each cupcake and that would be cute, but alas, no cookie cutters in my house. (Need to remedy that!) So then I was looking all over the kitchen for something, anything to use to make an interesting sprinkle pattern. I found a slotted spatula and thought it might make nice horizontal lines, and then maybe I could do a checkered pattern or something. So I held that over the cupcake (didn't want to set it down on the icing) and sprinkled away.

Result? A cupcake totally covered in red sprinkles. No pattern at all.

Bummer.

Well, I just figure I'll just sprinkle the heck out of the cupcakes and Nicky'll like it anyway. So I get to sprinkling. 24 red cupcakes later I start thinking, "Hmm, you know what else is red? Elmo! These could be little Elmo faces!"

I happen to have a bag (or two) of mini marshmallows on hand (must have for my hot cocoa you know) and Elmo has big white eyes on the top of his head. So I put two marshmallows on each cupcake. We're getting there.

What else? I call to Tom in the den, "What color and shape is Elmo's nose?" At which point he's like WTF? I'm trying to play a game in here and she want's me to research Elmo's nose? But he plays along and tells me it's round and orange. (Just between you and me I don't believe him and so went over to double check Nicky's party plates. Yep, there it is. Round and Orange. Well whaddayaknow.) I realize I have jellybeans I bought for Nicky's Easter basket, so I dump them in a bowl and fish out all the orange ones (my favorites by the way). I pop those in each cupcake for a nose. (Of course after seeing the plates I realized the eyes should have been closer together, but Nicky'll never notice.)

Now I just need a mouth. I don't have any licorice or something to make a smiley mouth, but I do have raisins. So I put one rasin on each cupcake and stand back to look. Hmm, it was totally missing something. You know what? Elmo needs pupils. because without them he just looks blank and kind of scary. See:


Elmo needed some pupils.

Peppercorns? Well they're round and black, but on a cupcake?

Draw it on with a sharpie? Well, that's probably a bit on the toxic side. Not the best idea for my two year old.

Chocolate chips? They're too big really for this, and cutting them into little pieces, well that's a lot of work!

I opened up the fridge to look around in there. Soy sauce, grape juice, red koolaid, grape jelly, chocolate syrup... hey! That's it!

So I grabbed the chocolate syrup and poured some in a bowl. Using a toothpick I painted a dab on each marshmallow. And 48 pupils later I had these:



And they are AWESOME! By this time it was nearing midnight. Of coruse I had to have Tom come and ooh and ahh over them a bit. Cause I mean look! Totally cool Elmo cupcakes when he just got Elmo sheets and is having an Elmo party with an Elmo cake next weekend! And I had started out with NOTHING! I wasn't even sure I had a cake mix at home when we started. I only had a smidgen of icing! Yeah, I amaze me.

You do have to realize that cooking is NOT my forte. I did manage to feed my guests over the weekend, and no one died of food poisoning or starved, but really, I pulled out all my cooking skills to pull off the cheesy scrambled eggs, sausage, toast, PBJ and burritos that made up our Saturday meals.

So anyway, after Tom's appropriate admiration of my 48 masterpieces, I took a slew of photos and then put 16 in the fridge and 6 in the microwave. That left 2 that tom and I had to eat. They were tasty.

And I didn't even hear Elmo scream. Although I admit... he did look pretty scared.

My baby is TWO!

Today, St. Patrick's Day, Nicky turned two years old. We sang Happy Birthday to him several times today. He likes that song very much and called it "Happy Day" at first, but now it's more like "Happy Day Day."

For our present for him today he got his first sheet set, an Elmo bed set, and Tom put it on his bed while I gave Nicky his bath. Tom shot this video of us putting him to bed. Yes, his hair was still a bit wet, but Nicky wanted to lie right down and didn't want to wait. He didn't even want music to go to sleep, just his binkies (notice he has one in his mouth, two in his hands, and there are probably another 2-4 of them right next to his pillow).



He had an actual birthday party on Saturday with his Grandparents from GA and his Aunt Jessie. Tom wasn't there for this one, but we had a nice dinner, a cake, and some presents. I took several videos of the presents, and his Grandpa from GA took video of the candle blowing. Here's that one:




(Hmm, it seems anytime I'm in a video I'm wearing my pj's...guess my secret is out! I only wear pajamas at home!)

Next weekend is his big Elmo party. His Nana, Grandmomma, Grandparents from FL, Aunt Liz, Aunt Jodi, Aunt Maryellen and Uncle Scot will all be here. We'll have his Easter Basket on Sunday morning, then church, then a cookout lunch and cake and presents. Nana's making an Elmo cake for him and we'll have red balloons everywhere. It should be a lot of fun!

And at this rate Nicky will start to wonder if he gets a birthday every day.

Two years old...hard to imagine where the time went, but I do have a WHOLE LOT of photos and movies that remind me of many of the steps along the way. I haven't put together a montage of his second year. I don't know if I will actually. But our screensaver on our computer shows random photos of him all the time, and it's just amazing how much he's grown.

From this on March 17, 2006:


To this on March 16, 2008:

So far so good

Ok, so far the zippered sleeper has held through one night and one nap. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

And here's a video of Nicky getting ready for bed tonight. Singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and saying "I love you." I feel all melty now.

You will not believe this

This is what I was told when Tom picked me up this evening from work. (Nicky was home with his Aunt Jessie.)

So we had Nicky in his new "escape-proof" outfit for his nap this afternoon. It was the same one he wore last night. Buttons down the front and with the snap crotch sewn shut.

He was quiet in his room, supposedly napping. And then talking to himself in his crib.

Tom went in to pick him up and found that Nicky had again managed to get his diaper off and spread around, dance in, and otherwise celebrate the Tao of Poo.

He had ripped out the stitches I used to sew the snap crotch together! My kid is freaking HOUDINI!

Tom scrubbed the heck out of Nicky before coming to pick me up. And then Tom and I spent a good 45 minutes scrubbing the walls, the crib, the mattress, etc.

Tonight I put him in one of the footie pajamas that zips from neck to ankle. I hope this stays on tonight. If not then I'll have to try putting it on backwards.

We will not be defeated!

(Can you sense the TIRED?)

Welcome over to the new blog address!

The only thing that changed was the address you type in to reach my blog.

With all the crazy, scary news out there I thought it was better to work towards a more anonymous blog profile.

Please make sure to change the address in your bookmarks, RSS feeders, etc. You can do it now. I'll wait...

I left a message up at the old address to direct folks here. I'll probably leave that up for quite a while just to make sure folks find me!

As a reward for looking at this message I have a video for you! Nicky was running around holding his Gatorade and runnings so funny. He's silly.

On to the next idea

So remember what I said about duct tape fixing everything? And I even had a cute video of Nicky in his "black belt?"

Well, just forget all that.

The very next morning...diaper off and poop-akimbo! So we thought maybe we just didn't wrap it far enough around.

Nap time I made sure to wrap it nearly all the way around. 30 minutes later...more poop! And the diaper off!

Ok, fine. Now we wrapped the tape around and made sure it was wrapped around and overlapped in the back. FIVE minutes later I'm listening at the door and hear "riiiippp!" I burst through the door and very sternly said "NO! You do NOT take off your diaper!" Then I re-taped it and put a second piece around the opposite way right on top of the first.

He quietly worked on that for a while, but then he started crying in frustration which told me that this double layer was keeping the diaper on, but I couldn't keep taping him in like this!

We're going to have to start seriously working on the potty training. So Sunday I bought training pants. They're kind of like pull-ups, but they don't look like they'd hold a whole lot of poop. It'll mean we'll really have to try to get him on the potty.

Then today we went to two consignment places and found four one-piece PJs that might work. Two are footie PJs in size 2T that I've cut the feet and wrists off of. They're pretty tight, so i might even cut the arms off of one of them.

Then there were two others that are one piece PJs. One has a row of buttons down the front and a snap crotch. But I sewed the crotch shut and I kind of think the buttons might frustrate his efforts. The other has snaps down the back and a snap crotch, but I sewed the crotch closed so it should work well. Those two look like they'll fit a little better.

Luckily his room is always the coldest room in the house. So he shouldn't be too hot for a while. I'll probably have to figure out something else by summer if he's not potty trained soon.

Let's hope these four PJ sets work!

Duct Tape Really WILL Fix Anything

Who knew? Finally Tom and I ran out of ideas and patience and we pulled out the Gorilla Tape. Tom took a 1 inch wide and about 10 inch long piece of tape and put it over the tabs of the diaper and wrapped it back along the sides of the diaper. It doesn't go all the way around because we think that would be too constricting, but through trial and error we found that as long as it's more to the back so that he can't easily reach the ends it keeps the diaper on. We did have one time he got the tape and the diaper off when the tape wasn't long enough. But that was only once. I think we have a temporary solution until we pull off the potty training. We're thinking of trying intently this summer.

So we'll call this his "black belt." In this video you can see us taking off and putting on his black belt right before bedtime. And then daddy gets him good and riled up before night-night, which I'm pretty sure is a daddy's job.

What is that?

I was checking on the weather today because we were under tornado watches and warnings today in Florida, when I noticed what appears to me as a large low pressure system in the eastern Atlantic. You know, kind of like we see when a hurricane is getting ready to come and ruin our day/weekend/week/house/etc. I can't find any information on this system though. Is anyone seeing this? What is it?



It seems a little early in the year for a tropical system, but then again we are having global warming, so who knows.

Warning! Poop-talk ahead!

Nicky has a new hobby. It's called "Naked Naptime." And it's starting to really be a problem.

Case in point: Tonight's discovery when I went to check on him before I went to bed.




Last warning: If you don't want to read about poop, skip this post!

Remember back a LONG time ago there was this one time that Nicky managed to get his own diaper off during his nap and make a big mess and I was so happy to be at work, chuckle chuckle. Well, it's not funny anymore! I certainly got my comeuppance for laughing that time as this weekend after a nap I had a big mess to clean up while Tom bathed Nicky because it was just that messy! Not only had he removed his pants and diaper, but there was a very large, very non-infant poopie that had been well distributed by him stuffing bits of it all around his crib between the crib and the walls. So cleaning the crib, the walls, pulling the crib away from the wall to get at the actual ring of poopies that was around the baseboards. Luckily it was one of those harder, more goat-like poopies. So it pretty much looked like some giant mutant cockroach had been under his crib pooping along the baseboards, but STILL!

So here's the situation: Nicky is removing his pants and diaper during most naps and nighttimes. We go in and check him periodically to replace said pants and diaper, but we're not going in there all the time because we don't want to encourage him to think this behavior warrants a nap-interrupting visit. So far we've tried a variety of strategies, with little or no success:

1. Putting him to bed in onesies. This worked great when he was little after that long ago incident. We thought it would work again so went out and bought 4 new onesies. No dice. He figured out how to get out of them in one nap.

2. Putting him in overalls over a onesie. Ah ha! He'll never get out of this! Nope. Out in one nap. Just shrugged out of the straps easily, even though I crossed them in the front and in the back! They were these overalls by the way.

3. Putting him to bed in pull-ups. Worked for a while, but then he figured out he can just step out of them.

4. Putting his diaper on backwards. Now this really showed promise for a while, and it's still the best way to keep his diaper on. But diapers aren't meant to go on this way and tend to leave little welts on his legs like the diapers are on too tight. So we don't like to do this much.

So now my next idea was duct tape, but Tom didn't think much of that idea. I wasn't suggesting we put it on his skin or anything, you know, just around the diaper, or the onesie, around the waist and through the legs and maybe over the shoulders for good measure. Kind of like this.

But short of duct tape, which face it, there's probably lead and Bisphenol A in that stuff or something, what do you suggest as alternatives? I mean, aside from potty training, because although we're encouraging sitting on the potty already, nothing has happened yet and we're not really holding out hope that it will in the next few weeks. And we'd really like to have less of the "Naked Naptime" while we wait.

Just to make your day

If you've been missing seeing Nicky videos, well guess what! I found the cord to charge the camera AND I found the camera too! I still haven't found the cord that charges the camera from the wall outlet, but I found out that the cord that attaches to the computer's USB port will charge the camera too. Whew! I took a few videos at dinner last night and of Nicky in the bath too. I've already uploaded one and more will come along soon.

Also, a while ago Jessie told me that the movies weren't working for my aunt on her computer. I had the same issue happen to me today on my laptop and found out how to fix it. If you can't get the movie to play, follow these instructions:

Make sure you have the latest version of Flash
1. Uninstall the version you have by going here.
2. Reinstall the most current version by going here.

Make sure that your java platform is up to date
1. Check to see what java version you have here.
2. Just click on the link to "Do I have Java?"
3. If you don't have the most current version download it and install it.

Make sure that you have javascript enabled in your browser
1. Select "Tools" and then "Options" in the menu at the top of your browser window.
2. Click on the "Content" icon.
3. Click on the check box "Enable JavaScript" and Click OK.

Clear your cache and cookies in your browser
1. Click "Tools" in the menu at the top of your browser window.
2. Click "Clear Private Data"
3. Check the boxes for "Cookies" and "Cache"
4. Click the "Clear Private Data Now" button.

Reboot your computer.

That's all. It should work for you after that! Enjoy the movies!

Review of the Neti Pot

I know it's been a few days, but you'll be happy to hear I didn't actually drown. I have however been trying to decide what I think about this whole neti pot business.

I think the first time I'd ever heard of a neti pot was here. I did a google search to see what that was all about and just thought it was pretty much one of those crazy homeopathic remedies, you know for those earth-mother crunchy granola types. Like fiber supplements, evening primrose oil, red raspberry leaf tea, etc.

I suppose the ironic thing is that when I was pregnant and desperate for some heartburn relief I took papaya enzymes (although I don't think it helped). When I was getting close to my due date I went on the search for red raspberry leaf to make some tea, and was downing the evening primrose oil on a regular basis (actually they didn't help either). And ever since my surgery last fall my "fiberfill" and I are good buddies (but this WORKS). I guess we'll try anything when we're desperate for relief and modern medicine doesn't always provide the best, or most affordable, options.

So anyway, now I'm desperate for some sinus relief and have tried the neti pot. I've done it probably about 6 times or so. While I didn't drown, it does feel like getting water up your nose in the swimming pool, kind of a little burn up there, but I didn't panic because you're breathing through your mouth the whole time. (Well, except for this one time when I forgot to open my mount first and poured it down my throat, ack! Didn't drown, but GROSS!)

Anyway, the cool thing is that you definitely get gunk out of there. I had closed the sink drain so that I could see what happened. You know, for the scientific purpose of observation. So I saw there was definitely something happening. Right afterwards I could breathe through my nose really well. That lasted for about 10 minutes at least, but not hours or anything. I did still have to use the Afrin nose spray two nights in order to use my cpap machine. I would think that the salinity would be good for your sinuses, what with osmosis and stuff. I mean, you gargle with salt water for a sore throat so why not pour salt water up your nose? (Hm, that sounded better in my head.)

Anyway, the end result after doing this a few times a day for 3 days is:
I'm still sick.
I still have stuffed up sinuses with grossness in there.
After 2 days of doing this I had the worst earache and thought my eardrum would explode. (Moist heat and 3 asprin helped. Still waiting to see if I need to go to the doctor.)
I think I have finally found the absolutely least attractive thing I can possibly do with my body.

So, not sure on the actual efficacy of the neti pot at this juncture. I might keep doing it because it is nice to have something else to do besides blow my nose. You know, to make me feel like I'm actually taking control and doing something to make myself feel better. But that's just giving the control-freak in me something to feel good about.

Once I'm well I might do it occasionally to see if it works as well or better than Afrin. I have a chronically stuffed nose and I hate having to resort to Afrin since it is so addictive, but I do have to be able to breathe through my nose for my cpap machine at night.

That's my take on the whole neti pot experience. If anything neat happens I'll let you know. Because I know this is riveting stuff.