Andy's 1st Dentist Appt - OMG!

Andy had his very first dentist visit today. I purposely put it off until he was a little after three because, well, Andy is our strong willed child and we need to have buy in before we can really proceed with anything new. We talked about it and we walked through some of the motions, but nothing apparently could prepare him for the real life event. We took him to a Pediatric dentist for the fact they are use to dealing with some children who do not always cooperate and I really didn't know what to expect with Andy. So, like any good mother, I expect the unexpected.

He did not want to get weighed or have have his height taken... so right off the bat we did not start off well. We get through that then onto X-Rays. Yep, was not having it. Wasn't going to participate and definitely would not be bribed into it. Okay, we'll just start the cleaning. Lord have mercy, you would have thought this child was being tortured if not for the sound proof crying room we were in. Aside from the fact the chair could have been made out of snapping alligators because he refused to sit in, he totally lost all composure as soon as they started to "work the chair", yes everyone, they laid it back and raised it up. The horror!! Imagine how the rest this experience went once they actually had to start cleaning his teeth. This is the first time that an appointment was a 2 parent task. Steve had arms and head and I got the feet. We had to restrain him in order to accomplish cleaning his teeth. The only positive is that through all the screaming they were able to clean his teeth successfully.

It was truly an awful experience. Unfortunately, he had the same reaction when first started to get his hair cut. If that tells us anything, it would be that it's going to take a few more rounds at the dentist in order for Andy to fell comfortable. Andy does not new experiences nor does he like any surprises.

Keep track of what's online the easy way!

Hopefully in this post I'll give everybody a good tool to keep up with whatever you find interesting online, like maybe this blog and the Frantz blog. What makes it easy is something called Real Simple Syndication, or RSS for short (if you already know what RSS is you can probably just skip this post). RSS is a way for a web site to alert readers of updates to the site. Using an RSS reader you have one place to see everything that's new.

In order to use RSS you need to start with an RSS reader. The easiest to get started with might be the google rss reader here. Another option, if you use the firefox web browser. It has a feature called live bookmarks that allows it to act as an RSS reader.

Once you find an RSS reader the next step is to subscribe to RSS feeds. The best way I know to find RSS feeds is to use firefox. If you're using firefox as your web browser (which I highly recommend) you'll see this icon on any page that has an RSS feed at the top in the address bar. Clicking on that icon will take you to the feed and give you some options of where to add it (with firefox live bookmarks and google reader being two of those options).

RSS feeds allow you to go one place and see updates for all the things you're interested in. I follow about fifty feeds in my RSS reader between news, comics, blogs, etc...

Hopefully you'll find this useful. Let me know if you have any questions.

You're lucky day - Very Long BLOG!!

Well, let me start off by saying Happy Reading. I meant to blog all weekend, but hurt my wrist like nobody's business and couldn't do much of anything. As technical as Steve is... he doesn't think to get on our little blog website and write a word or two for himself. To date, he only reads what I write. It's like an elaborate calendar entry for him to reference.

Saturday - Jake had his graduation for his Orange belt. The test was last Thursday and he passed with flying colors. Then on Saturday they make all those who pass put on a demonstration for the parents wrapping up everything they learned for the last 3 months. We are very proud. He's got his sight set for that black belt. It'll be a while, but it's a great positive influence and when it comes down to it, he loves it. You can see the yearning in Steve's eyes to get out there too. One day, Steve, one day. Right now, you can live vicariously through your son.
Sunday - Well nobody really wants to know that I spent the morning at the spa (again, while Steve's not writing this he would like me to add his input and say that he got me the spa deal for Xmas) which is great and all until I had an acid peel done to my face. Um, interesting. My face is still sensitive. That's really all I have to say.


Monday - Well, I'm pretty sure we crossed into March. By the looks of it it might as well be December all over again. I guess Mother Nature wasn't done with the pretty white stuff. While we are not expecting anything above 2 in, it's facinating that I still am writing about these, well, at least once a month. It is pretty and I don't get tired of looking at it... while I'm inside the confines of my house. While I was enjoying the beauty of it all, Andy's got really sick with some sort of stomach bug. Got up early this morning and hasn't been able to keep anything down. Thank goodness for hardwood floors!