In case you were wondering....

Yes, I have been doing a bit of work on my blog template. I found this one at a free site and fell in love with it. I hope you like it, I know I do.

Go on over and check it out

Today's Homemaker is having a carnival. Go on over and check out the Carnival of Modern Home Dwelling. She will be posting the submissions over several days, so keep checking back. My submission is here.

I also want to do a bit of a freak out about the weather. Yesterday it was 95 and today the high is supposed to be 101! This is August weather people! We are in May! Maybe this is California's way of making me long for the cool basements and air conditioners that abound in Kansas.

Blogging stuff

I overhauled my sidebar links adding some new heart blogs along with some more favorites. Have fun browsing!

It is a party!!

There is a party going on over at Growing a Life. Flybaby is turning one and Damselfly wanted to celebrate. Go on over and check it out there are a lot of cute things to win, stuff that everyone can enjoy.

Wheeee!!! I am baaack!!!!

My blog is finally up and running again! In case any of you wondered what was up and did not make it over to my other blog that I set up so that I would have an outlet for my pent up creativity here is the story. Friday afternoon Karen emailed me and asked me what was going on with my blog. It was stuck on an old post from Evan's last heart surgery and she was worried that Evan was in the hospital again until she noticed the date on the post. I freaked out and frantically tried to do anything that I could think of to try and fix it myself, which is my my template is vastly different at the moment. After emailing blogger that evening they finally got to me and fixed my blog. My blog had been flagged as spam earlier in the week, so I have a feeling that my broken blog may have resulted from them fixing that. Any way it is great to be back!!

Sunday cuteness

Guess what? This is my 500th post. Just thought you should know.

Here are some pictures of my blackberry boys. There are a couple of lovely blackberry thickets on a path that we love to walk on. The blackberries are just starting to get nice and ripe so it is fun to have a little snack in the middle of a walk. I do all the dangerous work and the boys enjoy the fruits of my labor. Evan got a lot messier than Harry because he did not have a tray to put the berries on. He just crammed them all in his mouth at once.

Tags: blackberries, messy kids, pictures

Pediatric Grand Rounds 2:6

Pediatric Grand Rounds is up at Shinga's blog Breath Spa for Kids. Go check it out.

You may have noticed that my posting has been a bit sparse of late. My parents are in town for the week and we have been doing things that do not involve the computer. We have been going to the park a lot, a bit of shopping and we went to the beach. I hope that everyone(well all my US readers any way) has an equally enjoyable Fourth of July

Tags: Pediatric Grand Rounds, vacation

Your Blogging Story Carnival

Chilihead wants to know about your blog. She is having a blogging carnival about blogging.

How did I start blogging?

Well I sat down at my computer...... Actually the birth of this blog was not long after the birth of Evan. I was expressing breastmilk for him as he had never had the strength to nurse. That meant a lot of time in front of the computer hooked up the the milking machine (moo!). I had joined a wonderful Yahoo group called PumpMoms where there were women doing the same crazy thing as I was. While there I learned about two members who had these things called blogs. I fell in love with the whole idea. Gretchen and Neno were hilarious (they still are) and were great entertainment while I was hooked up to the milking machine. I then started to check out people from Gretchen's sidebar and then people from those side bars and well you get the point. Eventually I got up the courage to open a blogger account and give it a whirl.

The story behind my blog title is also related to Evan. Shortly before I started my blog we had finally received Evan's home INR test machine. I was super anxious about whether I could do this all on my own or not. I was hugely pregnant and not sure if he would sit still long enough for me to give him a painful poke on his toe. Our first solo test went amazing, I nailed it on the first try. I truly felt awesome! I added the sometimes in because I am a normal person and do not always feel awesome about my mad parenting skilz.

Did you intend to be a blog w/a big following? If so, how did you go about it?

Nope, although I did want to have some people reading be as that is one of the best parts about blogging.

To gain my readership I simply put a link to my blog at the end of my email. I also started commenting on other blogs. That lead kind people like Chichimama (who was my first commenter ever) to my blog. Later on I participated in things like Pediatric Grand Rounds and Change of Shift which exposed my blog to even more readers.


What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

One of the reasons I started my blog was to empty my mind before I went to sleep. Sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep because I have so many thoughts running around in my mind. I had hoped that blogging would help clear the cobwebs. The reality has been the opposite. I find myself writing brilliantly witty blog entires in my mind when I should be sleeping. Sadly I never remember them when I finally wake up the next morning.


Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

I think that my focus has essentially remained the same. I blog a lot about my kids and my life as a mother. I also use it to keep family updated on how the kids are growing and how Evan's health is. I have added in some things like the product reviews but I still want to keep this a fun endeavor. I don't want to feel that I have to blog.

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?

I wish that I had a better grasp on HTML. It would be fun to be able to do more on my own with my blog.

Do you make money with your blog?

Nope. I do get the occasional free thing, but I really do not want to clutter my blog up with ads on a daily basis. This is very much a hobby for me and I do not want to turn it in to a business.

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

My kids are probably aware of the blog but they don't read it since they can't read yet (slackers!).

My husband knows (although I did not tell him right away about it) and reads it while he should be working.

All of my extended family that has even the slightest interest in computers know. It is how they keep updated on the kids (yes I am really that lazy). My mother and one sister eventually started blogs too but my sister seems to have forgotten about her blog.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?

Find your own voice with your writing. Be you and not someone else.

Try and write well. Put paragraphs in. Use complete sentences. Follow the rules of writing as best you can. No one likes reading a blog that is hard to read because it looks like it was written by an ignorant teenager.

Awesome Mom is new and improved!

It was brought to my attention that I did not have a site feed enabled. My lovely web guru Chelle fixed that right up and now you can subscribe to Awesome Mom and find out when new posts are up. This is how I now read blogs and it used to save me a lot of time until I started to subscribing to more and more blogs. Be warned! lol!

On another note, the mystery behind the disappearance of one of my favorite medical bloggers Flea has been solved. It really goes to show that you really have to be careful if you wish to maintain your secret blogging identity and you can't write about sensitive things assuming that no one knows who you are. The ease of discovery is the biggest reason why I hardly mention anything about my husband's work. I would hate to be the one that gets him fired because I can't keep my big mouth shut. Just something to think about. At least we now know that Flea was who he claimed to be on his blog.

Thinking Blogger Award

The lovely Zephra as bestowed upon me the Thinking Blogger award. I am honored to receive this award and it has been tough deciding who to pass it on to.

The rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

Here are the five blogs that I have picked:

First and foremost is The Laundress (Dirty Laundry). She truly makes my brain hurt sometimes with her amazing and sometimes convoluted posts. She keeps me very busy with book recommendations and it seems that there is no topic beneath her notice. We often have very interesting conversations in her comments section which, to me, is what blogging should be all about.

My second pick is Kristi (Here in Idaho). She is a very funny person but she is also very passionate about education. She home schools her own children and has got me thinking that if she can do it I could probably do it too. After all I can sew a quilt much better than her even if I stink at getting enough fabric to finish one.

My third pick is Gina (Just Another Day). Even though sometimes I do not necessarily agree with everything that she writes, she is very good at at least getting me to think about why I feel a specific way about some of the more controversial topics.

My fourth pick is Ami Chopine. She is very great about writing from the religious scientist perspective. She is not one to simply accept things at face value but she is also not one to discount religion and turn it into a fairy tale just because she can't easily explain it.

My fifth pick is Happy Mommy (By small and simple things). I knew her before she started blogging through an LDS forum. She always impressed me with her ability to think through a situation and bring rationality to a conversation. Her blog is not frequently updated but when she writes she gives you rich well though out posts to think on (well the majority of the time any way, she does put in cute pictures of her kids too).

Thinking+Blogger+Award meme

Why I blog

The lovely Fat Doctor has tagged little ol' me for a meme.

The top five reasons why I blog are:

1 I am bad at journaling. I have always wanted to keep a journal of some sort but have never been able to actually keep at it. Blogging is more interactive, so it keeps me more interested in continuing.

2 I want to keep my family and friends updated on how the kids are doing. When Evan was in the hospital for the first time we were constantly repeating the same stuff over and over to all the well wishers. They meant well but it got exhausting to repeat the same thing over and over, especially when there was nothing new to report. This way people can peek in whenever they want.

3 I have a strange need to share the cuteness of my kids. It would be selfish for me to keep Harry's chubby cheeks and oh so pokeable tummy all to myself. Evan's grin could bring world peace if enough people see it.

4 I meet new and amazing people through blogging. The very lovely Karen of PediScribe just sent me a super cool book filled with Thomas the Train cross stitch patterns. If I was not out there blogging we never would have met and Evan and Harry's room would end up not being nearly as cute as it soon will be.

5 I want to share a little bit of what it is like to have a child that has different needs than most. I want people to see that it really is not all that crazy to have a child that has been through several heart surgeries and survived a stroke. In general our life is actually pretty normal, if there really is such a thing as normal.

Lameo tag: if you see this and want to do it just let me know in my comment so I can come read your reasons. Oshee tagged herself after reading my post, go check out her reasons for blogging.


meme blogging

Awesome Mom's new look

A big thank you goes to Chelle for giving my blog a new look. She did an awesome job and I am thrilled with my new look. Her rates are super reasonable so if you are a HTML clutz like me and tired of the same blog template as everyone else go ask her nicely and she may take pity on you.

A real contest

Scroll down for new posts

Zephra, Shinga and Vicky were the winners of my fake contest. They all guessed the quote correctly, before I posted the comments which contained the answer. If you really want I will send out pictures of the kids but you will have to email me your addresses since I may be great at trivia but I can't guess addresses.

My fake contest and the fact that I finally finished my scarf after working on it for over a year (off and on) made me decide to throw a real contest. That is right, the prize is a magenta wool scarf hand knitted by yours truly. I am willing to ship international so all my non US readers feel free to enter. All you will have to do is enter one comment a day on each post that I write for the next week. That will give people plenty of time to get their name in if they so choose. That also means that I will have to come up with a post every day but I think I can handle it. All I ask is that the comment is more than a lame "hi". I would like a tiny bit of substance since I did spend many hours making the scarf. I will randomly draw names.

Bust my buffers!

Apparently I have almost missed delurking week here in the blog world. Luckily it ends tomorrow so I still have a bit of time to try and squeeze a few comments out of my readers. Please leave a comment or question even. You would not want to make Evan or Harry (possibly both) cry. If there is something that you are dying to know about me feel free to make a request, the worst I can do is say no after all.

How to search the web

I, like many other bloggers, have a bit of code in my blog that tracks how people get to my blog. There are a lot of crazy web searchers out there so I thought I would do my part to help the poor misguided people that end up at my blog.

When you are searching for something keep your search simple. Pick out a few key terms and go from there. Less is more in this case. Often i will use only one or two words to find the information that I need. If I get overwhelmed with irrelevant results I will slowly become more and more specific. Example: is normal birth kids are less smarter than cesarean birth kids? This is far too wordy, not to mention that it is grammatically incorrect. Pick out a few words such as "intelligence cesarean" and you will come up with websites like this which has a research study on this very subject.

Next you will want to evaluate the website that you get your information from. Is this website an official website. The article I linked to is in a database of peer reviewed medical studies. It should hold a lot more weight than a personal website like a blog where there is no need for the writer to actually be correct. I can write that the moon is made of cheese but that does not mean anything. I would believe a person that has been to the moon and says that it is made of rock over me who has never even been to the moon.

Scan the blurb where it shows your search terms coming up. If you can't tell if the website has anything to do with what you are searching for then the information is unlikely to be there. Also watch out for sponsored results. The can often have nothing if anything to do with what you are actually looking for.

You also need to see how old the information is. If the article is from 1906 rather than 2006 then you know that things will be out of date. Things change and sometimes even change back so you need to be careful about what you are reading and take it into consideration.

Finally my biggest tip is this: do not go beyond the first two pages of search results. You are wasting your time. The further you go the less relevant the page is to your search. That means quit clicking on my web page hoping to see a picture of Brittany Spear's hooha because it ain't here! I just wrote about a silly dream I had about her.

I am in love!

Awhile back I switched to Firefox as my primary browser. I had heard that it was much better than Internet Explorer but had been too lazy to find out on my own. I now wonder why the heck it took me so long. Firefox is awesome!! It has tons of extensions ready for download so that you can completely customize your browser with tools that are useful to you.

As if that was not cool enough a new version of Firefox came out. It has spell check! So when you are typing a comment on someone's blog it automatically checks your spelling for you! No special spell check program needed. Now you can look like a spelling genius. So if you are still using the ultra lame Internet Explorer you really ought to give Firefox a try. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

A warning!

I am sure that many people already know about this but I am passing on the warning just in case you have not heard. There is a website out there called bitacle that is stealing people's blog content and making money off them with out permission. Dr. A has a great post up about the whole thing and what you can do to stop the theft.

Wow!

I am blog of the week over at InsParenting.com! What a great honor and a huge surprise.

The support a mom contest

Kristen is doing a great contest over at her blog. I think this is a great idea because there are so many mothers out there that deserve a bit of time off to relax.

My nominee is Dream Mommy. She is struggling with infertility but has opened her heart and home to a foster child with special needs. She is choosing to start the process of adoption with a special little boy who as part of his issues has a cleft palette along with some developmental delays. She could have passed baby N by because he was not perfect. She could have figured that he had too much baggage because he is in the foster care system and is not officially up for adoption just yet. Instead she and her husband accepted the challenge that baby N presented and are seeing him through this tough time.

Argh!

I am starting to feel sorry that I switched over to blogger beta. Now I can't comment on any non-beta blogger blog. Frustration abounds. So if I am not comment on your blog you know why.