Day 2 - Another Post!

I just started blogging yesterday and I have one follower! Wow, thank you! Yesterday was the first annual (I hope!) Mom's Nite Out, started by a woman of whom I am a fan, Maria Bailey.

{Whoops, my 2 year old just escaped from the crib. I replaced him in there and I'm back!}

Anyway, Maria has several websites, including www.bluesuitmom.com, www.momtalkradio.com, and one that just launched, www.momtv.com. I haven't checked out the latest one yet but will soon and report back.

I did not find any local events for MNO, but I did attend the Twitter party - which really was more fun than one might think! A topic can be set up on Twitter, although I'm not sure how to do that yet, and given a hash-tag. I believe that is the right term. So, the hash-tag for this event was #MNO-09, so if you make a post on twitter, and include that code in your post, it appears on that topic page. Then you can track all the posts regarding that topic. I found that there are so many great women and moms out there in cyberspace! Actually, I knew this already, but this really drove it home!

So, while Dominic (the 2 year old escape artist) is supposedly napping behind me, I took a few minutes to do some "how to start blogging" searching. I remembered from my virtual assistance days, there was someone who was huge in blogging, Andy Wibbels, www.andywibbels.com. How I remembered that, I have no idea. But, he's still out there! So on his site, I see a course called www.sixfigureblogging.com. Love the name, sounds good to me! I will check that out and see what the price is. Also, I saw a link to a site called www.freebloggingcourse.com. This makes me immediately skeptical, but I'm a very skeptical person. I will check that out too and let you know what I find.

{Ack, I had to zip D. into the crib tent! A little back story: Dominic is my 3rd child, and I never used a crib tent with the older two. However, my cousin who has twin boys 3 months older than him, really saves her sanity with her crib tents. Well, D. has never been a great sleeper, and had been jumping out of the crib, sometimes getting hurt, plus coming in and waking us up. So, around February, I ordered the crib tent. My cousin had sent me the link https://www.totsinmind.com/products/crib2.html This is funny too - I had envisioned the crib tent as being solid, that is, not see through, so I was thinking this would probably freak a child out. So when I saw the picture, I had a "duh" moment - it is mesh, and of course it is see-through! So, I waited until I had a coupon for Babies R Us and went and got it. I had read numerous online reviews of it, and the comments ranged from "totally easy to set up" to "I don't know what everyone else it talking about, but I can't put this thing together!" I was determined to do it myself, so I did, reading the directions very carefully. My experience was somewhere in between the two comments above, but leaning toward the latter! The tent consists of two rods that make a curved X through the netting. These rods are about 8 feet long when you start, so I'm knocking things over, trying not to poke my child, or inflict harm on myself. They have to be bent so they fit inside the netting. The first one - hey, no problem - the second one - OMG, was I frustrated! The rod bruised my thigh...then it occurred to me I could use a wall for leverage rather than my own body part. What do you know, it worked! Then you have to put this inside your crib, put the mattress down on top of it (meaning, you had to remove it first), which again, is not that easy unless you have 4 feet of free space in every direction around your crib. Ok, got it in there, and after a few days, my son is used to it - he sleeps all night - life is good. One day, around 5am, he wakes up, calling for us. I go in to get him and find...the zipper is stuck. I try it for a few minutes to no avail. I get my husband out of bed, he can't budge it either. He gets a pair of pliers, I suggest WD40...nothing happening. There is no fabric stuck in the zipper, it just won't budge. It has now been 30 minutes and guess what? Dominic fell back to sleep. Finally, my husband cuts the mesh and we get him out. I am ready to write a ripping email to the crib tent company. I do a little research and find that, if I send them back the "damaged" mesh, they will send me a new one at no charge. I do this, and to give them credit, everything went as they said it would. Now, again, I get to have the joy of installing the thing! After waiting several days for my husband to help with this (hm, never seemed to be time!) I install it again by myself. This time, I use the wall first, and although I had trouble with the second rod again, I would say it took half the time. Voila, we are back in business! It really does seem to help in that, D. knows, he has to stay in there!}

Wow, that was a long aside. While he's zipped in and snoring, I'm going to go check out those blogging links I mentioned.

Thanks for reading!