Month: March 2008

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Contests

March/April Group Writing Project

This writing project has ended. Please view the full list of wonderful entries at the March/April GWP Finale, and subscribe to MamaBlogga to find out about the next group writing project!

I know you’re all excited for spring. I would be too, if it hadn’t snowed on my springtime parade yesterday….

Anyway, in honor of this time of year, the theme for the March/April Group Writing Project is “Savoring the season.” As always, feel free to go in any direction that appeals to you. Even if you don’t choose to participate, you can encourage others to participate!

  • Your post can take any form as long as it reflects this theme—this includes anything from serious to sarcastic, about your children, your future children, your pet, etc.
  • You can participate with a blog post, a podcast, a video, a page on your website, etc., etc. If you don’t have a website, contact me and I’ll be happy to publish your entry here on MamaBlogga.
  • Only NEW posts (i.e., posts have not been published prior to 30 March 2008) are eligible. Posts must be submitted through the submission form before Sunday, 6 April 2008.

Why participate?
There are lots of reasons to participate! All entries that meet the guidelines will be listed and linked to here on MamaBlogga. This an opportunity for you to discover new blogs (and for others to discover yours!). In July, I came up with five ways to get the most out of the GWP.

And, of course, there is one more incentive: one lucky post author, drawn at random, will receive a $30 gift certificate to Amazon.com (to be announced Monday, 7 April 2008).

Finally, we’d appreciate it if you linked to this post or to the guidelines/submission form on your entry post so that others can learn about the project and participate.

Now get writing!

Categories
Kids/Parenting

The guide to Haydenese

Y’know, I always looked a bit askance at the parents who could hear their child say something that didn’t apparently have any consonants and interpret that into a paragraph’s worth of meaning. Until Sunday night.

We had a big family get together this weekend for Easter dinner. Hayden was his usual, babbly self—but oddly enough, I found myself translating from “Haydenese” for his aunts and uncles. I sounded like one of “those” parents: “He said, ‘Sorry,'” and “He means, ‘Brown milk.’ You know, chocolate milk.”

Haydenese. Veiled meanings abound.
Hayden. Veiled child. Veiled meanings.

Strange; doesn’t everyone spend 12 hours a day listening to my son talk?

Many of his words are recognizable, but since the rest of my family is coming to visit this weekend, I figured a guide to Haydenese would be useful, so I’m not the 24/7 on-call interpreter again.

Sour? Did you take a shower?/May I play in the shower?/May I please join you in the shower?
Dape Squeegee from my shower (possibly from ‘scrape’)
Maaaeeewww! Mail! Or newspaper.
Sah-ee Sorry
Hritch or hrits Fridge
Row (rhymes with “wow”) Brown, meaning brown milk/chocolate milk/chocolate syrup
Dates or days Thanks
Be Blanket (crucial to playing Night Night).
P A letter of the alphabet (any letter)
Eetee Itchy
Weedee Reading
Two Any number greater than one, another, both, two blankets
Yipe Wipe
Reet Reach
Cee May mean ceiling, especially if he’s just handed you a ball
Pan Fan (again, especially if he’s just handed you a ball)
Ba’ pa’ Back pack or Mickey Mouse
Morny Marty
A’morny! Good morning!
I habit? May I please have it?
Boose Blue’s Clues
Yuboo I love you.
Derediz There it is
Yuhwekuh or Ahwekuh You’re welcome (a new addition to his vocab!)

Anything I’ve missed?

Categories
MetaBlogging

Making a photo post

Table of contents for Mom Blogging Advice

Sigh. Every so often, I gather up a bunch of pictures of Hayden and post them. Let’s face it: this can be like being caught in an elevator with an overeager parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or other relative, armed with the seven hundred most recent pictures of their beloved child. Mom bloggers do this probably more than most other bloggers.

Maybe the best photo posts are “real” posts with photos that go with them. I always feel like no one will be that interested in my pictures, unless they’re really funny.

So today I’m going to your collaboration in creating a “blogging tutorial.” As a reader, what do you think makes a photo post good? What makes it less like the caught-in-the-elevator scenario I imagined above? As a blogger, what makes them easier for you to do?

Here are some of my thoughts, please add yours!

Put it in context
We’ve all heard it: a picture is worth a thousand words. In high school, I was reading a book about the Vietnam War and was struck by the commentary on a very famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photo. The text read something to the effect that photographs can’t stand alone. You need words to tell you what happened before and after, to put the photo into context. Because out of context, pictures (like words) don’t mean anything.

Your context doesn’t have to detail how everything happened to get to that point—though if the picture isn’t fairly obvious, some explanation of what’s going on (and what we’re supposed to see) could help. Otherwise, your context can be as short as a silly comment about the photo (but try to let us see why you’ve chosen that photo in particular).

Make it funny, cute, or both
We’re moms. We can appreciate cute pictures of cute kids. We can appreciate funny pictures of funny kids. Funny comments can help, too.

Make it unexpected
The pictures I can’t wait to post are the ones of Hayden doing surprising things: wearing his shirt around his waist, wearing Mr. Potato Head’s glasses, etc.

Make it not too long
I’m very guilty of this one: I wait so long to post pictures (because I figure no one’s interested) that I stuff 8 or 10 or more pictures into a photo post. As if forcing more pictures on you would make you happier to look at them all. I still envision most of my readers as the victims in my elevator, backed into a corner, nodding politely and mentally vowing to take the stairs for the rest of forever.

Resize your pictures before uploading them
Figure out how wide your post column is and in a photo editor, resize the image to fit. It looks a lot better than making your browser resize them. And if you make your pictures too wide (post them exactly as they come off your camera, for example), they can break your blog or your readers’ feed readers. We’re probably not going to scroll side-to-side to see pictures of your kids. Sorry.

(Exceptions: if you upload photos to Flickr or Photobucket and they make some good looking, smaller versions, or if you use Blogger. They resize them to look good pretty consistently.)

Maybe the best photo posts are still “real” posts with photos that go with them. What do you think? What makes you enjoy photo posts more? What tips do you have for making them easier to do?

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Categories
Kids/Parenting

Can it get any better?

Most parents of more than one child will tell you that second children tend to be easier. They sleep better (my mother-in-law’s second was sleeping through the night at three weeks!) (!), they sleep anywhere, they eat better, they’re portable, etc.

But I’m very concerned that our second can’t be that much easier than our first. In fact—though I hope I’m wrong—I have a nagging suspicion that our next baby can’t be any easier than Hayden.

easy street = dead end
Photo by gshoe95

Hayden is, in my opinion, a pretty easy-going kid. He’s content to play by himself much of the time—and not just content, but insistent (lately he’s taken to telling me “bye bye” when he wants me to go away and let him play by himself). He sleeps through the night (though that one did take some time). He’s generally pretty good about taking naps. He wakes up happy the vast majority of the time.

Granted, most of this self-sufficiency is age related, but Hayden has always been a pretty easy-to-handle little guy. He never seemed to cry much. He took as many as three good naps on a reasonably good schedule by about 4 or 5 months.

I’m just not seeing a lot of room for “improvement,” you know? What do you think—am I just glossing over all the rough parts of Hayden’s babyhood (and personality), or am I pretty much doomed?

Missing the GWP? The Group Writing Project returns next week!

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Fashion maven

My son makes the most interesting sartorial choices. This doesn’t include earlier this week when he unzipped his pajamas and pulled his legs out of them—quite a sight to see the boy jumping in his crib, pajamas flying, when I walked in his room that day!

Hayden is convinced that this is a hat:
oh, is that a hat now?
They could double as swim trunks. No comment on which is their intended purpose. But Hayden’s expression there reminds me of this guy:
commander keen slug

And today, when he woke up from his nap, Ryan called out for me to see him like this:
hooray for dressing myself
That would be his shirt around his waist.

Categories
Kids/Parenting

Look before you . . . cook

Usually, I’m reasonably good about checking our pockets before running a load of laundry. But today I made a serious miscalculation in my last load of laundry—Hayden’s clothes.

As I was emptying the washing machine, I saw it in the bottom of a drum: a cell phone. I held my breath for a second. But it wasn’t one of our “current” ones; it was an old cell phone that we let Hayden play with. One that, I suddenly remembered, he’d insisted on shoving in the pocket of his jeans.

Not only will I need to be more careful in doing Hayden’s laundry, but I need to get in the habit of checking just about anything before I use it. The last time I made a roast, I removed the stoneware from my slow cooker to find this:

oh dear, melty melty

I was amazed it hadn’t smelled absolutely terrible. It was actually worse than it looks.

And it looks like anything stored below waist-height is pretty much fair game for Hayden’s “storage.”