What gives?

I was on Youtube minding my own business, well sort of. What I was really doing was watching mom vloggers, vlog about their children, so I wasn't minding my own business so to speak because I was actually on the brink of voyuerism (minus the perverted nature of course). But it's welcome because why else would these women put themselves on the interwebs for the world to see?

I can speak for them too, because I do the vlogging now too. So anyway, back to my point. I was sending a purely innocent message to a new YouTube mom vlogger that I found. Her son is one month ahead of mine and I wanted to tell her that I enjoyed her videos. After I wrote that comment, I decided I would go to her personal YouTube page and invite her to be friends. I was just about to press the friend invitation button, when my pupils gravitated towards the bottom of the screen. I saw the image below.

What gives, man? What gives?

Click on the image. You'll see username Ladiesman....

Message from Beyond...

I'm seriously thinking that I'm being sent a message from beyond. I hope this is the last time that I will touch on this tired topic. Last night, my husband, son, and I snuggled on the couch together to watch one of my mailed movies, and just like he annoyingly does every single time, my husband decided to turn on the REGULAR television to see if there was anything good on. And when I say regular, I mean REGULAR. Our TV has been a bad boy lately and will only show us basic channels. We've been living sans cable for over a month now.

That's not the point though. I looked over to my husband and said, "Why do you ALWAYS do this? We get ready to watch a movie that I paid money for, and you would rather watch whatever is on TV, and a movie that WE'VE ALREADY WATCHED to top it off!" In this case, it was the movie "Transformers". It wasn't even the latest one; it was the first one.

As usual, he didn't understand what the big deal was and continued watching the movie. About a quarter way into the movie, Sam Whitwicky is trying to sell his great-grandfather's glasses, which by some miracle have the coordinates to the "All Spark" etched on them, and all the transformers are trying to get a hold of the glasses. They are able to locate the glasses by accessing the "interwebs" and finding Sam Whitwicky's eBay page listing the glasses for sale. Sam's eBay user name just so happens to be: LadiesMan217!

3 times in one week. It has to be a message from beyond. It just has to. That's all I will say.

Open Captioning

I've always had an OK relationship with grammar and punctuation. I know the difference between "then" and "than". I know when to use "it's" and "its". I like to use a serial comma. It bugs me when I see that "you're" and "your" have been misused. I can go on and on here peoples, but don't get me wrong I'm not a snob.

Yet the other day on my last post, I was confused. I used the term "ladies' man" and I would have sworn up and down to you that there is an apostrophe at the end of "ladies". It's a possessive apostrophe. When I think of a ladies' man, I think of a "man of the ladies". Therefore, he belongs to the ladies, hence an apostrophe is required.

However, as I went looking for a picture of the ladies man--made famous by Saturday Night Live-- I was surprised to see the title of the movie contained no apostrophe. I was surprised, yet I couldn't see how writers could let a huge mistake get through like that on the cover of a movie!

'So it must not have an apostrophe then', I thought to myself. And I proceeded to remove all my apostrophes from my post (except I missed one).

Later that day, as I snuggled with my husband and son on the couch to watch "New Moon", by sheer coincidence the term was brought up again. My husband likes to watch movies with the closed captioning turned on. There is a scene where Charlie is trying to convince Bella that Jake is better for her than Edward. Then he says something along the lines of, "But what do I know? I'm just a terminal bachelor. Yup, a real ladies' man."

And there it was. The apostrophe. It just felt so right to see it there. Unfortunately, being well-versed in closed captioning and some of the outlandish mistakes I've seen --sometimes the closed captioning person doesn't even try-- I knew this was not redemption. So I Wikipedia'd the term Ladies' Man and found the entry indeed included an apostrophe. However, there have been 7 Ladies Man films made since 1931, and only 3 contained the apostrophe.

I'm sure no one cares, and the term is probably exempt from the restriction of being written only one way, but for some reason it really bugs me.

-Shirley (Apostrophes' Woman)

4 Month Old Ladies Man

I'm serious--he's a ladies man. I joked about it in a previous post, but it's just so apparent now. He's surrounded by the ladies. He's either going to be a ladies' man or swing the other way, but either way, he's always hanging out with females.

Case in point: his Uncle Will's graduation on Saturday. This party was not intended to be the family party--that was scheduled for Sunday. Instead, it was meant to be the "friend" party where all of Uncle Will's "Boys" would be coming over, eating tacos from a rented taco truck, chugging beer on a beer-ski, and taking shots on a shot-ski.

The party was going to have a 90s theme and DD was ready with his Run DMC shirt and converse shoes. Unfortunately, it got cold and his outfit was "ruined" with an old-man sweater. But that didn't stop the ladies from coming. Little by little the babies came, until the office became a pseudo-day care. In total, 5 children (under 2 years of age) came to the party--and they were ALL girls! DD, as if sensing the number of girls around him, was on his best behavior to my amazement!



My little ladies man turned 4 months recently. He weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs., 15 oz. and measured 26 1/4 -in long! That's more than two feet tall! Tall, dark, and handsome... that's how the ladies' love him...

Hieroglyphics

It wasn't even a whole day since I dropped my parents off at San Francisco International Airport before I noticed that Diego was acting a little different. We (Diego and I) sent-off my parents on Saturday as they began their Footsteps of Moses tour to Egypt, Jerusalem, and Israel. I asked my parents to bring me back a camel -- seriously-- a wooden one. Prior to that, Diego had completed his first week of daycare-- he started off as a crier and miraculously morphed into a calm baby by Friday.

We celebrated my parents' birthdays on Friday, since they will be traveling for their actual birthdays. I spent Friday looking for a pair of diamond stud earrings for my mother. I honestly only wanted to spend around $150, and all the sales ladies were trying to sell me diamonds for $300-600. Don't they know there's a recession going on??? I mean, do people really spend that much money? I guess they do, and I guess I would if we didn't also need to get my father something.

I found some teenie-tiny diamonds --which I will redeem with bigger ones at a later date in the future-- and my mother was very happy when she opened her gift. We bought my father one of those machines that convert tape to DVD format, which he desperately needed. Back when we went to China, he recorded 8 hours of footage which he then asked me to convert on my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately for me, this meant I had to watch the ENTIRE 8 hours, because his camcorder kept freezing up during the transfer process.

I tried to keep Diego busy during the weekend. Saturday mornings are usually spent cleaning and taking Diego and the dogs out for a walk at the dog park. Sundays are reserved for time spent bonding with Daddy. Javier took us (Me, Diego, and Qori) to the Milpitas Humane Society --the humane society near Silicon Valley-- to see what types of things money brings to a shelter.
It was very nice, but I think the San Francisco SPCA still gives it a run for its money.

There was a Members Only dog park there that was fenced in. Apparently, paying for membership gives you access to a well-maintained and safe park. And it's true, it was well maintained. The grass was so perfect, it looked like a golf course lawn. I loved the members only park, until I stuck my hand through the fence and pulled on the grass and found it was faux grass! What's the point of that? I understand the many benefits of faux grass, but seriously, dogs need real grass, period. Why take them "out", if it's just going to be like they're "in"?


We then visited Diego's cousin, Andrew who is 4 years old and his mom and aunt. We met up at Starbucks and hung out for awhile. Throughout the weekend I had noticed that Diego was not finishing his milk and was getting a bit cranky. He got cranky at Starbucks, and Andrew decided to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to him until he fell asleep. Andrew is such an affectionate little boy. It was so sweet to watch him sing a lullaby to Diego. By the time I reached for my camera to film, Diego had fallen asleep, and the singing was over. That scene will always be in my memories though.



When we got home, Diego's crankiness spiraled out of control. He did not sleep through the night for 2 days. Therefore, I was super-tired when I got in to work on Monday. Then by midday I was alarmed when I saw that the sitter was calling me. 'Oh no, this is it--,' I thought as I looked at the phone, 'his first fever.'

But the sitter did not mention a fever. Only that he was crying all day and not eating as much as he usually does. Having spent time with him for the week prior, she knew he had an excellent appetite. I told her that I noticed he was fussy over the weekend and that my thoughts were it was either gas or teething.

I was worried that the sitter called. She had successfully transformed my crying baby to a calm baby in a week; then the weekend came and it seems that I messed it all up. Was it something I had done? I can't help but think that it is.

By the time I picked up Diego, he looked tired and sad. It tugged at my heart strings to think he may be in pain. So, I stopped by the store and bought him a teething ring, Oragel for babies, medicine for gas, and Ibuprofen for babies. Since I didn't know what was wrong, I didn't know what to buy. Don't think I'm going to dope my baby up, because that's not what I was planning. I just thought it couldn't hurt to have our medicine cabinet stocked up in case of emergencies.

He slept through the night this time, so I hope he is better. I will be calling the sitter later to see how he is doing. It figures that all this happens when grandma leaves...

Blog Book = Writer Status?

Writing in a diary is for elementary and high school girls, I know, but I can't help it -- it's what I do; it's what I've done; and I don't see me stopping anytime soon. However, I've slowly graduated from diaries, to journals, to blogging, and now a book? When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be my online diary, which it really has. I knew there were ways to get your online blog on print, and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be so cool if I wrote a blog, and at the end of the year published it as a book? Then I would have an instant journal in my hot little hands!"

Although I find "the internets" a fascinating and alluring place, I guess I'm still considered "old school" because there is nothing better than a physical book vs. a Kindle --though Kindles and the Ipad are definitely super-cool. The thought of having a diary semi-professionally published appealed to me. Imagine all the pictures I could add to my diary as supplemental material! My great-grandchildren would really enjoy getting to know me through the books -- that is, if they will like to read. And it is also my hope that Diego will be curious enough to read it one day when he is older to learn about the things I was up to in the year leading to his birth. I will definitely share it with his future wife too-- if I like her. Their children might even enjoy the next book documenting 2010- their father's first year. So I set forth and started blogging.

Because it's my online diary, I keep hush about it to most friends and family. Yet, I leave it open to the public because I'm an open book, no pun intended. Everything written in this blog, I write for myself. And so it was that the year 2009 came and went, and although I didn't blog as much as I should have -- hey, I was a little busy having a baby and all -- I still had enough material for a shiny new book. I created the book on Blurb.com. It took awhile because I had a lot of formatting to do.





The book ended up being a little over 70 pages long -- the pictures helped give it a boost. As I created my book, I became more excited to see the end product. Wow, a real book! I guess I'm a writer now. Actually, I guess I AM a writer, though I've never stopped to think about it. I was always good at writing in school. Sadly though, when I ran spell-check against the book, I found a lot of stupid mistakes. Although this blog has a spell-check feature, I was too-hot-to-trot and never used it... I should have. I used to be so thorough but now with my job, my son (2nd job), my husband (3rd job), and my dog (4th job), it gets harder for me to focus on these type of things. I think my brain is over-worked, so I declare that I will now be enlisting the use of the spell-check button to save us all from unnecessary and silly mistakes.

-Shirley "The Writer"

Mother's Day Milestones

May 9th was a bittersweet day. It marked my very first Mother's Day ever, and at the same time it was the end of my maternity leave. In the culmination to Mother's day, I have bonded with my little DD so strongly. I live to give him kisses and pinch his cheeks--a habit I had only felt strongly for the furry species in the past. We spent the day running errands that needed to be done prior to Diego going into daycare such as buying extra clothing. Then we walked on the Golden Gate bridge and took some pictures, and topped the day off with a dinner at Grandma's. Javier bought me the Be Delicious perfume that I had always wanted, my sister got me a necklace similar to one I had commented on while watching Cougar Town, and my parent's gave me a gift card for VS, and I know just the zebra-print jumpsuit to buy for the Bahama trip!


In the back of my mind though, I knew this was the last day of leave and the transition would be hard. When the time came to drop him off at the sitter's, I brought him in his car seat with a blanket over so that he would not catch the draft. As I laid the car seat down in her house, I dared not lift the blanket. I would not be able to contain myself if I saw his sweet face and large almond-shaped eyes. The sitter kept consoling me by telling me not to worry, that he was in good hands. I believed her, but it was difficult nonetheless. Somehow, I managed to walk out the door and drive myself to work in one piece.

We both got through the first day--Diego with a lot of crying according to the baby sitter, and me with a lot of thoughts of him and one phone call to the sitter after my lunch break. Today is Day 2, and it's getting a little better.

Next week he will be 4 months, and I have been impatiently waiting for new milestones to develop. There was hope that he could have started laughing and grasping at toys, but so far not much. He's given me a few chuckles, and what I thought was a laugh on Mother's Day, but they were so quick that I was left wondering if they had really happened at all. The best milestone this month is the face recognition. He will look at you and smile, especially if you baby talk. What's more, while smiling he will draw his head inward and try to hide his smiling face with his hands as if he were shy about smiling. He also turned over once from his tummy to his back, and like a pageant show mom I tried to push him to do it again so I could get it on video with no luck.



When propped with a pillow, turning over is a cinch for him, which led to a scare last week. He was sleeping in my mother's room on her bed. I went to check on him and saw that he was sleeping on his side surrounded by pillows. Pillows of any kind are a SIDS enabler, so it's best to keep them away while sleeping. I mentioned the pillows to my mother and the fact that he might turn over since he was on his side. But my mother thought it would be more dangerous when he gets older and more mobile; not now. I would've moved him if I felt true danger, but I felt it was enough if I just left the door open so I could hear him. About 20 minutes later, I heard low crying coming from the room and told my mother. We went to check on him--my mother leading the way. In a few seconds we were in the room and my mother darted for Diego. He was face down in a pillow, crying because he couldn't get away. His cries were muffled by the pillow. Though I know there was absolutely no malicious intent from my mother, I'm kind of glad it happened because from the look on her face, I know she will no longer be putting him to bed with pillows.