Blog woes redux – the one where I whine

Ugh! I had no idea there would be so many major and minor complications in the set-up and transfer to my own domain!

It ended up being rather easy to set up the domain and web host, and relatively inexpensive. It took maybe an hour or so, plus a few hours of shopping around.

Designing the new blog banner took up the better part of a Saturday, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a good start, anyway.

Choosing a “theme” for WordPress continues to be an ongoing drama. Unfortunately, I have some vague and some specific ideas of what I want, and I must have looked at 300 or more themes trying to find one that was just right. Relatively minimalistic, single sidebar; how difficult could the choice be? Don’t get me started.

Finally, I downloaded one, and to my great shock, it’s coded in PHP instead of the CSS/HTML combination that my Blogger template is written in. So in order to customize it at all, I’ve been teaching myself PHP. Did I mention ugh???

I got frustrated with that one and downloaded one that has more CSS in it, but I still cannot make that sucker bend to my will. I’m currently picking at it on and off. We’ll see how much longer I have patience for it, but I’m getting dangerously close to going back to trolling themes again for something that works for me out of the box.

The FTP program I was using was making me nuts, so I downloaded a copy of FileZilla. That means in the last five days I’ve learned how to use my new web host’s control panel and file manager, a new FTP program, a new blog interface, and the beginnings of a new programing language. My brain hurts!

To add insult to injury, last night I was mucking about trying to figure out how to import both the Blogger posts and Haloscan comments. I found out that the verion of WordPress installed automatically on my web host was outdated, and I had to upgrade before I could import from new Blogger. So I did – more practice with the FTP software and the web host control panel. Then I found out that the line of code that I need to change in the Blogger import php file doesn’t exist in the latest version of WordPress. Classic Catch 22: can’t import new Blogger into old WordPress; can only import Haloscan comments into old WordPress. Argh!!

I’m not quite $90 into this venture… too late to call the whole thing off?

Edited to add: okay, progress. I just realized that one of my major PHP headaches was resolved by the upgrade to WP 2.2. Widgets! I love me some widgets! Also, I must pause at this point to heap praise on the designer of my new theme, Tom at One Hertz, for actually responding to a question and helping me out. Also, major kudos to the tech support guys at Namespro.ca, with whom I had registered my domain. When I sent them a quick question asking how long it would take to transfer my domain to my the new web host, they took the trouble to go into the web host’s FAQs and give me explicit instructions on how to do it myself. Excellent customer service definitely makes up for much bloggy angst.

And in the time it took me to write this, WordPress has completely hung in trying to import my 949 Blogger posts. Two steps forward, one step back…

Information overload

As usual, I consumed most of the newspaper on the bus on my ride to work this morning, and I have to tell you that the news was not good.

Aside from the fact that I now have a new big boss (holding off judgement on that for the time being) I read that Mattel has announced another massive toy recall for lead paint and dangerous toys. Then I read an article that says out of 250,000 births in Canada every year, as many as 1,700 babies suffer skull fractures or other traumatic injuries during birth. And to completely wreck my morning, a new study confirms that “eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring.”

Sigh. It’s enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and hide there for a day or two, isn’t it?

Since I went looking for it and you might want to do the same, here’s the Mattel recalled toys list. It mostly affects Sarge from Pixar’s Cars for lead paint, and some Batman, Barbie, Polly Pocket and other toys for dangerous magnets. We have a Sarge, but he’s been with us since Christmas and the recall period is for Cars from May through August 2007. But still!

I mean, seriously, when you think of name-brand toys you can trust, don’t you think of Fisher Price, and Barbie, and Mattel, and even Thomas the Tank Engine? These aren’t dollar store junk toys, for goodness sake. I’d rant a little more on this topic, but Ann Douglas has a great article up over on Yahoo Parenting that says it far better than I ever could.

As for the birth injuries article, well, that just makes me feel a little bit better about my decision to go with the midwife. And about my consumption of junk food? I’ll have to pause a moment to wipe the crust of honey cruller sugar from my fingers while I formulate a proper response to that one. In the meanwhile, I blame my mother.

The news isn’t all bad, though. If you’re looking for something a little more lighthearted, field reporter Fryman sends along this link to a photo gallery on the Globe and Mail’s web site of roadside mascots, including the World’s Largest Atlantic Salmon, Perogie, Fly Fishing Rod and – of course – Hockey Stick and Puck. Canadiana at it’s best! How many of them have you seen? Wouldn’t it make a great end-of-summer road trip to tour around and check them all out?

Survey question

So, if this blog were to mysteriously reinvent itself in a new home, would you want all the original posts to move with it? Or would you expect a fresh start in the new location, assuming the old posts will be archived here for eternity and beyond?

And what if it were possible but intimidatingly difficult to shuffle almost 10,000 (!!!) comments from HaloScan to the new location… would the old posts be worth having in the new location, but stripped of their comments? Or would it be worth the extra chunks of pulled-out hair and special favours begged of tech support to get those comments over there, too.

What say ye, bloggy peeps?

(Don’t worry, Mom. I promise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to the new blog location!)

Sonic booms are cool

I first read this story in the newspaper on Sunday morning, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Everyone I’ve spoken to in the last couple of days has been subjected to this story, so fascinated by it am I.

Did you hear about the 62 year old French guy who’s about to be launched to a height of 40 km (25 miles) and do a seven minute free fall on to a Saskatchewan field, exceeding Mach 1 and creating a sonic boom with only his body in the process?

I’m honestly torn between “how wicked cool is that?” and “what kind of suicidal dumbass is he, anyway?”

From the canada.com article:

At 40,000 metres, temperatures are around -100 C and the air is so thin he will have to spend hours beforehand inhaling pure oxygen to remove all traces of nitrogen from his blood. He must nose-dive out of the pop-can-shaped capsule, freefalling for seven minutes before pulling his chute 1,000 metres from landing for an eight-minute descent to the ground. But if he goes into a spin at the start, no one knows if he will survive as he plummets to Earth at speeds reaching 1,500 km/h and in cold dipping to -115 C, breaking the sound barrier at 1,067 km/h and crashing through the ozone layer.

There’s also an article in the Times Online that describes the experience of the previous record-holder for longest freefall: “set by Joe Kittinger, a US air force test pilot who jumped from just under 20 miles in 1960 and told of his four-minute 36-second descent in a 1961 autobiography, The Long Lonely Leap. ‘There is no sound, no movement,’ he wrote. ‘No wind hisses in my ears or billows my clothing.'”

Apparently, if Fournier is successful with his Grand Saut (French for Big Jump), he’ll break four records: the longest freefall, the fastest freefall, the parachute jump from the highest altitude and the highest altitude achieved by a human in a balloon. The part that really fascinates me, though, is the “crashing through the ozone layer” bit, coupled with the breaking of the sound barrier with his body. From the few articles I’ve read on this, they have no idea what the impact of creating a sonic boom will have on his body.

What do you think? Is this guy a hero, or a Darwin Award waiting to happen?

Tristan’s big splash

It’s been such a lovely summer so far, full of sunshine and traveling and beaches and pools and water parks. I know we’ve had a good summer because we’re on our fourth package of swim diapers… that’s a lot of fun in the water!

Over the course of the summer, Tristan has gone from not quite being able to swim the width of the pool with a float to being able to swim very short stretches unassisted in a panicky sort of dog paddle. He’s shown a lot of improvement with all the time we’ve spent in the water lately, and has taken great delight in being able to jump off the side of the pool and “cannonball” into the shallow end.

Yesterday, we spend an unexpected but lovely four hours or so splashing about and lounging on the deck of our friends’ new pool. Despite Tristan’s improvement through the summer, I had serious reservations when my friend UberGeek asked Tristan if he’d like to jump off the diving board and UG would help him get to the ladder. It’s a testament to many, many years of friendship that I would even consider letting Tristan try – that, and the way Tristan’s face lit up when he said, “SURE!” and scrambled up onto the deck before I could even formulate a protest.

The first jump, as soon as Tristan surfaced sputtering and wide-eyed, UberGeek was there to grab him and guide him to the ladder. I took a deep breath of my own and bit back my maternal concerns as Tristan practically ran to the diving board for the next jump – and the next, and the next, and the next. By the end of the afternoon, he was jumping in and able to swim to the ladder completely unassisted, and was also able to swim most of the length of the pool with only minimal assistance. Just like getting up on two wheels, it’s amazing how quickly the little synapses fire in a growing brain to suddenly “get” a new activity and master it.

Simon too was the picture of contentment, splashing around in an unusual swim ring built into a t-shirt, a design I’ve never seen before. While getting him in and out of it was quite reminiscent of shoving him down the birth canal, it seemed a lot safer and sturdier than water wings or a traditional ring float.

In a single afternoon, Tristan went from barely able to swim a foot or two to jumping off the diving board and swimming to the edge, and I went from ensuring neither boy was further than arms’ reach away from a grownup to letting them splash and float contentedly around the deep and shallow ends under their own power. I’m simply gobsmacked. And it served as a good reminder that the boys are likely to be ready to take on new challenges far earlier than I’m going to be ready for them to do so.

I only wish I’d had a camera with me…

The one with the naked princess, of course

The boys have been running around all day, and we all need some quiet time. I ask Simon what he wants to watch. Quelle surprise, he wants to watch Star Wars.

“Which one do you want to watch,” I ask. “The one with the Jawas, the one where Han gets frozen in carbonite, or the one with the Ewoks?”

“No,” clarifies Simon, “I want the one with the naked princess with the gun.”

He’s THREE, for chrissake. THREE!!

(Okay, so I don’t know a single guy born between 1965 and 1985 who didn’t have the same crush, but I had no idea Leia’s Metal Bikini had its own fan site, let alone an episode of Friends.)

(Edited to add: this exists, with more than 7000 threads and 125000 posts, and yet *I’m* the strangest place on the Internet?!?!?)

My Internet Legacy

I never get tired of playing in the referral logs, speculating on the search terms that bring people here. I see some search terms over and over again (gift ideas for two year olds is a perennial favourite, as is cavities in a three year old, and I’m mystified by the sheer number of people – sometimes 10 a day – looking for a variation on lactating or lactation blog.)

Some are a little more obscure. I’m sure I was no help to the guy who wondered “how do i know my piranha is pregnant.” Maybe we should get them together with the guy who asked “why is my sperm bigger.” Bigger than what, I couldn’t help but wonder. And, erm, how exactly did you know?

I’ll have to try a little harder to boost myself up the page on the search return for “canadian child care sucks“, but with the new nanny starting next week, my fingers are crossed for a good outcome at last.

My mother is endlessly tickled about my noteriety as the number one search return for “ottawa slut” but i’m just as happy to be first on a search for “Ottawa + Mommy Blogger.”

Myself, I’m absurdly pleased to be the number one google return for “strange internet places.” No doubt, the Web is full of strangeness, but I had little idea that this little blog was the strangest.

And now, since I’m obviously in danger of taking myself a bit too seriously today, is some more strangeness for you, courtesy of the Goddess of the Quirky Meme, Angry Pregnant Lawyer:

YOU ARE PAPER!

You Are Paper

Crafty and creative, you are able to adapt freely to almost any situation.
People tend to underestimate you, unless they’ve truly seen what you are capable of.
Deep down, you’re always scheming and thinking up new plans. Your mind is constantly active.

You are quite capable of anything you dream of. You can always figure out a way to get what you want.

You can wrap a rock person up in your sheet of trickery.

A scissor person can sneak up and cut you to pieces.

When you fight: No one can anticipate your next move

If someone makes you mad: You’ll attack them mercilessly when they’re unprepared.

Almost 15 weeks update: the midwife question

See, bloggy peeps? I take your advice! I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the midwife, just so I could keep my options open for a little while longer.

First, I have to tell you that I heard the baby’s heartbeat, and all seems fine. What, you haven’t been obsessing over it, thinking of it every two hours half hour six minutes like I’ve been? Heck, it took me until I was on the bus on the way to the appointment to figure out that I wasn’t having heart palpitations and trouble breathing because of any larger fear of the midwife herself, but over knowing she would have a doppler and I was afraid to face the possible silence like last time.

The bad news is, I really liked the midwife and the whole philosophy of midwifery care. I mean, that’s bad news because if I had hated her on sight, it would have been a lot easier to simply go back to my OB and carry on.

There are a handful of concerns that I can’t quite shake, mostly having to do with scenarios when something goes wrong. To her credit, even though my OB has no bedside manner whatsoever, when she couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat with the doppler at my 16 wk appointment last year, all she had to do was walk me over to the ultrasound clinic on the other side of her office, and she did the scan herself to try to find the baby. I know it would never be that easy with the midwife, even though I understand that they do have full referral access for all that stuff.

I think the one thing that most surprised me and most concerned me is that even with a hospital birth, the midwives don’t use the fetal monitoring tools like the heart rate monitor. With Simon, I can still clearly remember after many hours of stalling labour when I finally began to have serious contractions there was one terrifying moment when the baby’s heart decelerated significantly enough (140s to low 60s) for the nurse to demand of Beloved that he push the call button for assistance. There was no real emergency, and in hindsight it was probably just the stress of passing a baby the size of a Toyota through an opening the size of an orange, but the idea of not hearing that reassuring whoosh-whoosh-whoosh throughout the labour seriously freaks me out.

Here are the other niggling concerns I have:

With Simon, I was 10 days late when they finally started induction, and even then he took more than 24 hours to come out. I asked the midwife about induction, and she said they consult with an OB when you are 42 weeks. Ugh. Did I mention Simon was 10 lbs? I know, nothing says the next baby will be that large or that late, but still…

I have every intention of delivering at the hospital and staying at the hospital for as long as they’ll let me. With Tristan, I was terrified to go home because I didn’t want to be solely responsible for the mewling little mass of perfection, and with Simon I left after 24 hours (against the doctor’s and nurses’ objections) because it was the first time I had ever been separated from Tristan. When the midwife said that it’s standard practice after midwife deliveries for the mother and baby to go home after three hours, assuming all is well, I told her that I wanted to take full advantage of the hospital stay and she laughed and said it’s funny how mothers with more than one at home tend to say that.

Of course, there’s the fact that midwives no longer have priviledges at the Ottawa Hospital, so I’ll have to deliver at the Montfort, but the more I talk to people in the community about this, the less this concerns me. But still.

There are many things I like about midwifery care:

* the post-natal care. The first couple of weeks with baby at home have been rough on me both times. The midwife comes to visit you at home at least five times in the first two weeks after baby is born, and I find that incredibly reassuring.

* longer appointments with more holistic care.

* will know the people who are with me when I’m actually delivering the baby, and they’ll know me (as opposed to taking a gamble on the nursing staff, and the 1 in 10 chance that my own OB is on call that day.)

* when I told the midwife about how at Simon’s birth the anesthesiologist said I was his most difficult case in more than 500 epidurals (!) she suggested we could make an appointment for a consulation with an anesthesiologist before the birth to discuss options. (Seriously! Why did my OB not do something like this after I told her how much trouble the anesthesiologist had at Tristan’s birth?)

* office is very conveniently close to where I work for appointments, as opposed to the OB who is two long buses away.

* no traumatic memories attached to the midwife’s office.

* when I couldn’t help myself and cried a few tears of relief when I heard the baby’s heartbeat yesterday, she smiled and rubbed my arm and said, “Everything’s fine!” in a very comforting voice. As opposed to my OB, who didn’t touch me or express any overt sympathy through the entire miscarriage experience last year. In fact, it was the ultrasound tech, following up on what the OB started and confirming that the baby had died, who took a moment to physically touch me and tell me how sorry she was. It’s just a more humanized level of care.

So, I don’t know. Through the course of the afternoon yesterday, I changed my mind five times. If it weren’t for the fetal monitoring part, I’d be comfortable making the switch. Then again, it’s not like I’m lacking anything with the OB’s care, and I know she’s world-class in her field.

Sigh.

I do know that through this most difficult month, as 16 weeks come and go, through a complete fluke of timing in the overlap of care I’ve got an appointment every week this month. Yesterday I saw the midwife, and tomorrow I go for my final IPS blood test. Next week, I go for my scheduled 16 wk appointment with the OB, to hopefully discuss the IPS test results. The week after that is my first clinical appointment with the midwife, should I choose to go that route. And the week after that is the ultrasound. I couldn’t have planned that better if I’d tried!

So, what say ye, bloggy peeps? You’re the board of directors at DaniGirl Inc, and we need to make a decision today on the direction of the company. What do you recommend?

Computer versus TV

The good news is, the boys aren’t watching a lot of TV these days.  I’d say the daily consumption has dropped to less than an hour, and I won’t embarrass myself by letting on exactly how many hours they were consuming before.  Some days when I was on vacation, the TV stayed off all day.

The bad news is, they have a new addiction of choice.  You see, my three year old and my five year old are now bona fide computer game junkies.

Sigh.

Their drug of choice is Star Wars Lego, and I must admit that it baffles me just a little bit that a Star Wars Lego video game even exists.  The boys love it, though, and would play it for hours at a time if I let them.  They also play a few other games, like Pixar’s Cars, and the Lego Island and Curious George paint games I got at the grocery store, and Simon especially likes the games on Nick.com.

So on the one hand, I’m okay with the reduced consumption of TV because at least with the video games, they’re engaged and doing something.  They’re forced to share and to take turns, but they still play collaboratively.  They’re problem solving, thinking, and developing at least some cognitive skills.  Not to mention memory:  Simon, who doesn’t yet clearly identify the letters of the alphabet let alone read, can click through six or seven layers of menu screens based solely on having seen it done a few times.  It’s actually kind of amazing to watch.

It’s also hilarious to hear them integrate the language of the video game into their regular play.  "Let’s play another level," said while leaping forth with lightsaber in hand, means "Let’s keep playing."

And yet, I have to admit that I am not completely at ease with this newfound addiction to video games.  First, at least when the TV is on the boys drift in and out of the room, playing with their toys and each other while the tube drones on.  With the computer, they stand fixed in front of the monitor, fingers thumping on the keyboard, for as long as we’ll leave them to it.  And I’m already becoming rather tired of hearing "But Moooooom, just let me finish this level!" whined at me each time I tell them to move along to something else.

I’m thinking of getting a timer and limiting them, maybe to 20 minutes each per day.  But, true confession time:  it’s so easy to let them play.  They’re engaged, they’re content, and most importantly, they aren’t pestering me or each other.  Computer time is free time for me, and at this stage in my life, I’m willing to trade dilligence for indulgence.  Call me lazy.

What do you think?  Are computer games better than TV?  Is there room for video games in a balanced day, even for a preschooler?  How much is too much?

And most importantly, how on earth can I justify limiting their computer time when I spend countless hours glued to the monitor myself?  Hypocrite, thy name is blogging mother…

Blog woes

I’m feeling a lot of blog angst today.  First, while I was on vacation they unilaterally cut access to blogs from work.  Ugh!  No blogs whatsoever!  You might remember, I’m starting work on a project to integrate social media more fully into how we communicate as an organization; this isn’t a step in the right direction.

Luckily, because of that at least I have an excuse to wave my fists and wail and demand blog access back, and my uber-cool boss has put my name at the top of the list of people who should have immediate access restored.  But this is government and nothing happens quickly.

On a larger scale, though, I think I’m finally ready to make the leap to my own domain.  I’m officially done with Blogger.  I almost jumped ship a year ago, but when they introduced Blogger Beta, they introduced the one feature I had been most coveting:  labels, or categories.  But, I recently realized that each category will display a maximum of 20 posts.  Everything else is lost to the ether, and some of my categories have more than 60 posts in them (hell, you know as well as anybody that if I’m anything, I’m prolific!)

Apparently, I’m restricted to 20 posts per category because I chose to keep my customizable "classic template", the one I understand and can tinker with.  I could move to the newfangled Widget template, but I would lose some flexibility.  I’m finally fed up.  I’m done with Blogger.

Earlier this year, I registered danigirl.ca, so I already have the domain.  I know I ask this question about twice a year, but for those of you who haven’t yet tutored me on this, any tips for inexpensive, reliable hosting in Canada and new blog software?  I’m leaning towards WordPress, because I’ve heard MT is more of a pain than it’s worth.  I’m worried that WordPress won’t let me tinker, though.  Thoughts?