Look Back and Laugh: Why Me? Why Now?

For Z's first baby check up I had the GP go ahead and examine me as well just to see if I had a virus of any kind because I had fevers and was feeling terrible. Turns out I just had a baby. Seriously, there wasn't anything going on out of the ordinary, except that postpartum recovery can be a real beating!

At Z's next check up months later, I was fine. Then all of the sudden I started to feel nauseous. I ignored it for as long as I could, but eventually I told the doc how I was feeling and he took one look at me and tossed over the trash can just in the nick of time. So there I am at my SON'S doctors appointment and I am the one puking in the waste can. Then everyone in the office felt inclined to give they're diagnosis, which was that I was pregnant. Then I started to panic. My son wasn't but 4 months old! They gave me a test and as I waited for the results I was praying, dear God, please have mercy on me, I can't handle this. Of course negative and I was feeling better already. I guess my stomach just felt like giving me a dose of unwanted attention.

Icky, sickly, and smelly

This week I am talking about playing the role of Dr. mom. Because who is going to be there most of the time when it comes to wiping the little noses, forcing down the medicine, and kissing the boo boo? It's mom of course.

Z was sick a couple weeks ago, so I really thought we had paid our dues for a while. That was until this morning when I hear a little voice cry "mommy". I squint hard to see the clock and it's still pretty early. As I head toward his room I start smelling this wretched awful scent. The first thing I did was feel Z's pajamas to see if he had a messy diaper. The smell was overwhelming! I finally open my eyes enough to realize that the poor little guy had thrown up some nasty white chunks all over himself and the sheets.

I don't think he is sick, he just had too much pizza last night. Actually, what he had was too much cheese. He devoured the top of the pizza by just smashing it against his face and licking off the topping. This vomit was definitely cheesy. As Dr. Mom I have learned to examine the icky, sickly, smelly, oozes that come out of my child. I am blessed to have a wonderful circuit of other moms to talk to about these things. Poop, snot, rashes, vomit, you name it, nothing is off limits. It can be very helpful sometimes to get advice, or even just to vent.

The problem is not everyone is so interested in openly discussing such matters. Sometimes I forget the company I am around and just ramble on about topics like breast milk and circumcision, as if it is as common as talking about the weather. When someone watches my son I often will inquire about the dirty diapers hoping to get a thorough analysis of the specimen. It's the looks I get from the teenagers that remind me that examining poop is not typical, let alone discussing it. Eventually they will all probably go through the same phase in life too when the parts of the body and the things that it does become more practical and less grotesque or taboo. Until then, I will try not to spoil it for everyone.

Is there a Doctor in the house?

When you become a parent you are all of the sudden responsible for another life. Your role as mother comes with a never ending job description and a whole slew of titles that go along with that. Sometimes it is a teacher, other times it may feel like you are the maid, or a judge even.

For me this past week I took on the role of physician. Not that I am professionally qualified to practice medicine, but when my child gets hurt or sick I AM the Dr. in the house.

Even with the vast expansion of health care options that are available, and the state of the art technology that is used to save millions of lives, it still does not negate the fact that a parent is the person in charge of the overall health and well being of their child. Talk about pressure!

It's kind of like a hierarchy and as the parent I am the CEO. My duty is to hire and pay for a health care professional according to their abilities and services. They are working for me and for some reason I get this backwards a lot. I guess I've just been wounded by a couple of bad experiences, but I feel really intimidated by Doctors. Especially now that I have my son. I feel like Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol,

Bob Cratchit (me): "Please sir, Tiny Tim isn't feeling so well, could you be so kind as to offer us a little help?"
Ebenezer Scrooge (Doctor) "ARE YOU INSURED? IS HE UP TO DATE ON ALL HIS SHOTS? DOES HE SPEND ANY TIME IN DAYCARE? WHAT KIND OF A PARENT ARE YOU!?"

We just recently found out that our family Dr. was no longer in practice and so we went to a new pediatrician, along with being referred to a specialist, and we have been in and out of appointments the past couple weeks. That is probably why these Dr. nightmares are freshly engrained in my imagination. Sometimes I need to be reminded that I am the primary care giver . I care for the needs of my child and I need to feel confident in that. Thank God for medicine, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and while we are on the subject, moms.

My New Look

My hair has been the same style for quite a few years now. I began to feel like I was in a rut and wanted to try and freshen up my look. So, I did some research on the up and coming hair trends of 2009. I took lots of different things into consideration. I knew I wanted to keep it long, but I was also looking for a change. That is why I decided to get bangs. It's fun, it's different, and I don't mind being compared to actress Anne Hathaway.

In all actuality though, the bangs are just too high maintenance for me. I am a go with the flow kind of girl. I like to try and look chic and stylish every now and then, but most days I just let my hair air dry and this cut does not allow for air dry. Believe me I've tried, it HAS to be fixed. There are no other options. So there you have it, that is my new, "now you see it now you don't" modern hair do. It was worth a try.

Now then, before you think I totally abandoned the topic this week (Extreme Blog Makeover) I am going somewhere with this. I wanted to do something different with my blog. So I went for it and if you've read any of my blog posts this week you already know it has been stressful and nothing like I imagined, but it wasn't all bad. At least I faced my fears and I did learn something new about blog design. I even managed to add the About Me Page and About This Blog too. I also have a new template and new profile picture.

With that said, I've got new look all the way around. Both are kind of funky, kind of different, and very temporary. Speaking of temporary, we aren't going to live forever, so if you try something new and you don't get the outcome you expected don't beat yourself up. Take a chance, step out, and enjoy every experience, because life is just too short to be stuck in a rut.



Photos: 1. A silly pic my husband took of me this afternoon
2. Anne Hathaway from the Devil Wears Prada

Does This Layout Make Me Look Fat?

When I first started looking for a background for my blog I was scrolling through and there was a lot of cute, fun stuff to choose from. I felt like I was shopping for new clothes and I got to pick out anything I wanted. Only, much like a trip to the mall my emotions swung from care free to anxiety after too many items just didn’t fit right.

I found a lot of layouts that were really close to what I wanted except for one or two details. I really liked this one, but I am not a big fan of pink, so I figured I would keep looking.



So then I found several more, that were doable, but they had weird messages on them like “RELEASE ME”, “PISCES”, AND “I LOVE MY GIRL”, not exactly the image that I was going for. Then there were some templates that I liked, but they were in other languages so I couldn't even read the instructions to figure out how to download them.

After putting in a quite a bit of time and still turning up short I was getting fed up with the whole idea of a blogger template shopping spree. I switched my layout several times and at one point I accidentally deleted my site altogether. That is why in the end I came full circle back to the pink one. It has splatters and distressed texture that make you think of "messy", but yet it's artistic and trendy, and it allows me to keep my header. After such an exhausting search I can get over the pink.

I really think if I had a choice I would rather go on a shopping spree for clothes. It's a lot less stressful, except at least with blog layouts you don't have to ask, "Does this make me look fat?"

The Great Blog Debate

The word blog was originally a contraction of the words WEB log. If it's not on the web, it's not a blog, and therefor choosing where to post your blog on the web is a pretty big decision. I put a lot of time and research into choosing what platform I would use when I set out to start themessymom.com. Not really, I picked blogger because I wanted to blog and it had the word blog in the name so it sounded like a winner to me.

I have really enjoyed the whole blogging experience thus far and decided I wanted to take things a little further. That is when I realized there is a whole new world to be discovered when it comes to blog platforms! There is actually a war going on between the two major blog hosts, Blogger and Word Press and the opinions on which to use vary as much as the writers that use them.

I liken this dramatic battle to that of the social network giants My Space and Face Book.

While My Space still has more traffic, the tables are turning rapidly as droves of people switch over to Face Book everyday.

My Space has a lots of options for customizing your page, with Face Book on the other hand, there are no skins, no codes, no templates. You get what you get.

My Space is wildly popular with the youth, and Face Book is appreciated among the more "mature" audiences.

If blog hosts were social networks then Blogger would be My Space and Word Press would be Face Book. Of course I have made all of these blanket statements based off of mere observation and some online articles, but there are always exceptions to any of these assessments.

I read one blog after the other comparing Blogger and Word Press in full detail, and I still felt unsure about which one to go with. So I sought help from a Fellow blogger. The Thrifty Mama blog started around the same time as The Messy Mom and her little niche blog about saving money has since then sky rocketed to a new level of success and I knew she would be just the one to talk to about my dilemma. She was emphatic about her choice of blogging platform. Her exact words were "I am not with blogger anymore. I actually transferred to wordpress and I am SOOOOO happy!!"

At this point I was ready to jump ship from Blogger to Word Press after hearing and reading tons of evidence showing it to be superior. Not so fast though, while I have one leg over the fence and I am getting ready to sign on the dotted line, I read this on the Word Press website:

"To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely. You can remove ads from your blog for a low yearly fee. In the future you’ll be able to show your own ads and make money from your blog."

WHAT!? On Blogger not only do I not have to pay "a low yearly fee" to keep unwanted adds off, but I have the option of posting adds that I do want and earning revenue from them without paying a dime.
With Word Press you can have a premium account with self hosting and endless possibilities, but it costs and I am just not ready to pay money to blog at this point. I am also not ready to give up my advertisements either. While my total earnings of $15 may not be much, it's still $15 that I wouldn't have with the free version of Word Press. I do plan on having my own self hosted website someday, but until further notice, I will stick it out here in the blogger world.



For more on the blog war go to pulsed.blogspot.com
or
search for blogging.com

I want static?

I have spent most of my life trying to avoid static. Whether it be my hair, clothes, radio, or TV, static was never a good thing. Yesterday however all that changed. I wanted my blog to be multi paged like a typical website. As it turns out, (warning for techies: I am probably going to totally botch up this information) there are two types of pages: Static and Dynamic. Dynamic web pages deliver custom content to the user based on a request. Static is a more basic informative page that never changes, it's mainly just text. That is all I want, just a few simple static pages.

That is why yesterday I ended up trashing all the previous work we had done, and reverted back to my original blog design. I realized that with the alternate template I had lost a bunch of gadgets including my site meter, and I couldn't get any static pages which is why I changed everything in the first place. I know this may sound like greek to non bloggers and I am sorry this weeks content isn't the most exciting topic. Or maybe there is nothing you love more than talking about gadgets and static, but for those of you that aren't nerds, I hope to have this all wrapped up soon and get things back to normal again, whatever that is.