The Phamily Times

I thought to myself last week, how clever it would be if I managed to leave a post every day for the next 12 days. Then, I wouldn’t feel so guilty about not taking the time to mail out a Christmas card this year. I was apparently also oblivious to the fact that I’ve yet to bang out more than two or three posts in a week. Nevertheless, I still thought I could manage 12 columns in 12 days. Then, I’d roll into the New Year on a high note!

So, I woke up early Sunday morning and, because it happens to be a day that I don’t need to get up, I couldn’t go back to bed. I wasn’t intending to be up early but I couldn’t get back to sleep and I laid in bed for almost an hour before deciding to get up. After all that time, I thought, “Well, I will just sneak into the other room and write something on the computer.” For one thing, writing is very relaxing to me. And also, Cara and Delton were asleep so it seemed highly opportune!

You know how this is going to end, don’t you? Delton began to fuss right about that same time. I’m pretty sure he was laying in his bed thinking, “As soon as I hear someone, I’ll start pouting. Otherwise, I’m cool with just chillin’ dirty in my crib.” So, I got up to hang out with him, wipe his butt cheeks for him and give him a bottle. And, I would not have it any other way.

Because, he might be frustrating but when I see him smile or grunt when he sees his bottle, all the hardships are worth it. I think we become closer to our parents as we age because we begin to understand more of how much really was sacrificed for us as children. But I do regret how hard it is for me to accomplish the minor tasks these days.

I used to spend 30-45 minutes every week compiling a To Do list and it helped me get things done. Tragically though, that does not happen in our house anymore because Mister D consumes all of my time at home. If I am home, I am holding, feeding, rocking or just hanging out with a baby. Then I have maybe 15 minutes to do something that needs to be done, like type things on a blog, because that’s important.

An additional complication of having a baby in the house is that my brain is altogether fried. And, I am not even the mommy in this situation. I have the infuriating predicament of never being able to remember ANYTHING, exponentially compounded by my inability to meter out time to write anything down which might be important. Furthermore, the times that I do actually recall things which I deem important, I can never get it written down and I forget by the time I do get a chance to save it for posterity.

As you probably guessed, the Jott link the other day really was a good deal for me because now I can simply pick up the phone and leave myself a message. Unfortunately, since I have the uncanny ability to remember small things while in the shower, I haven’t mastered a process that will allow me to call from in the shower. The only alternative is to get out of the shower and pick up the phone to call in with all the things I just remembered. Now, that wouldn’t be weird at all, would it? I imagine that conversation might go like this:

Cara: “Who were you talking to?”

Warner: “Myself” (that’s a normal occurrence)

Cara: “On the phone?”

Warner: “Yes.”

Cara: “So, you got out of the shower and called yourself on the phone?”

Warner: “Yes. Big Whoop, You wanna fight about it?”

Cara: “Are you feeling alright?”

 So, in the last week, thanks to Jott.com, I have had a running to do list and every day I pick one or two items that need to be “checked off”. I have had some small success with it but now I have an additional frustration: The list is never complete. So, I have determined that it’s better to NOT remember everything I haven’t done than to be constantly reminded, via emails, that I have big list of things to take care of that are simply not getting done. I would rather rest lazily in front of the TV, hanging with the boy, thinking I’ve got nothing to do, than have an allegedly convenient to do list that really just shows me all the things I am forgetting to do. Interesting predicament, eh?

Mommy Cara, Cousin HayHay and Chubbs!

On the first day of Christmas, Mister Delton “Chubbito” Phelps gave to me: A blog post with a few links!
Since today is officially Day one of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I have several things to share, including at least one more of the 927 Things I Love about Delton, the altogether exhaustive concordance.  

Delton progressed to a Level 2 nipple on his bottle in the past week. That’s pretty cool, right? It reminds me of this lady I once knew that was a professor at a TWO year college. I don’t even remember the lady’s name but it was so funny because she always made a point to emphasize the TWO as though it was something to behold.  Like never did she say, “I work at a community college” or “I work at the local college” it was always, “At the TWO year college,  we do this and that” Oh, I didn’t know TWO year colleges were that kind of party but from now on we will say Delton uses a level TWO nipple and emphasize how he’s such a grown man because he drinks from a slightly bigger nipple than those infantile Level One-ers!

Also, I have noticed that I have gotten away from even mentioning the Great Mister D, who is using a level TWO nipple these days. Delton had a 2 month check up about two weeks ago. You’ll understand if we were slightly preoccupied in that time. (If you don’t know to what I refer, please read the post, “These Dark Days”) Delton weighed 12 lbs at his check up which puts him somewhere in between the 10^th and 90^th percentile. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

I have never really understood those rankings. I understand what it is intended for but what use do I have knowing that 50% of 2 months old are smaller than my baby or 25% of 2 month olds are longer than my baby. Especially more so when they repeatedly emphasize that “every baby is different.” So, in other words, there is no reason to compare Delton’s progress to another baby’s but we better do it anyway. We don’t want someone to think we are weird because we didn’t gauge Delton’s progress against other 2 month olds. I’m pretty sure he’ll be scarred for life if we don’t. The only thing I can determine is that we would want to know if he was in the 95^th percentile in BOTH categories so that we can begin interviewing agents to represent him in major league sports. Because at 2 months old, you should probably already know if your kid is going to be the next Tiger, LeBron, or Danny Tartabull.. Also, for the record, Delton thinks the Astros gave up too much to get Miguel Tejada and I concur with that opinion.

Some of you may have noticed, if you are using the Feedburner service, that you received several emails this week. I don’t have an answer as to why the Three Weeks old post was sent again but I do have an answer to those who might question what happened to, “I was thinking the other…” This is in conjunction with a new service that I am offering, so pay close attention.

I have decided that I should occasionally post links that I find useful or enlightening, while I do my daily internet tomfoolery.

Link #1 is for Jott.com. This service allows you to call a 1-800 number from your cell phone and leave messages for yourself that you can either have emailed to you or texted to you. It will even allow you to call and link to a blog, which is what I did the other day. The reason it was not on the blog is because I deleted it. It does not give you a chance to edit anything and automatically posts it. I know that none of you will use it in this matter but it is a good way to remind yourself of things while you’re driving or whatever. It is similar to leaving yourself messages on your home phone but without the awkward circumstance of having to listen to your own voice. Creepy.

Link #2 is something called Fat Finger Search. Have you ever looked for something on Ebay and noticed that many sellers don’t know how to spell? This guy has taken this into consideration and all you do is type in what you are looking for and this “bot” will generate several common misspellings and search on eBay for them. Pretty cool. I looked up Camera and found several items for sale at a good price and few people knew about it. So, naturally, I bought all of those cameras at a low price and now I will re-sell them on Ebay for the highest price. I just hope that I don’t end up like what must be hundreds of thousands of others, and be unable to sell my Ebay garbage. I guess I can store it all in Delton’s room and make him live in the garage. He doesn’t care, he’s a baby.

 Link #3 is our new friend in blogospheretonfieldville. Our friends Hayley and Casey recently had twins and have a little blog going about it. Just check it out and send best wishes to a poor little woman who is about to endure the tough task of twins and a not yet 2 year old at home!

Link #4 is my favorite. If you don’t know about Woot.com or several others like it, you might not care, but a new phenomenon of the internet is “deal of the day”. Basically you have a limited opportunity to get random items at a good price. Woot.com has a new item every day, but Amazon has improved that by offering several items at random times during the day. The deals are usually pretty good but the trick is that you have to wait for the deal to show up and reload the Amazon page 500 times during the day. Thankfully, this webmaster has something that shows you what is available on Amazon that day. All you have to do is check it first thing in the morning to see if there is going to be a good sale on something you might actually want, and if so, hop on it when it goes on sale, otherwise, you can be done and don’t have to relentlessly reload Amazon.com just hoping to get a good video game for cheap. Then you can devote time to photoshopping pictures of cats or other animals saying stupid things like, “Basikelly, I am yer boss” 

Last link: Google makes a run at Wikipedia. All you peeps out there might not care about the technological improvements but when Google talks, I listen. Period.

I liked this picture, Hagan looks so surprised. If I didn’t have a son, Hagan would be my favorite boy on the planet!