Lists and numbers

My 12-week old is named Scarlett. We had this name picked for our 3 year-old as well, but he turned out to be a boy. After going through the whole name selection process again, we decided Scarlett was still our favorite. Here are 13 other girl names we considered:

1. Alice
2. Autumn
3. Devin
4. Dylan
5. Frances
6. Georgia
7. Layla
8. Lily
9. Lucy
10. Natalie
11. Noe
12. Sidney
13. Summer

See more silly and serious lists at thursdaythirteen.com or make your own.

In an era of DVR’s and Netflix and on-demand, who’s sitting around waiting for the new shows to start? Me!!! Here’s why:

13 reasons i can’t wait for the new tv season

1. Heroes — yay! Next week, it’s coming and I can’t wait.
2. Lost — but come on, when’s that gonna start?
3. Sex and the City — tivo is now catching the same old episodes over and over. I recognize them by title!
4. Wonder Pets — Holden and I have seen them all. Sadly, when I got everyone to bed last night and collapsed to watch some TV, it was still paused on WP from the day before. I’m ready for a new flock of animals to save. Anyone with me?
5. More kid shows — tivo is fetching only kid’s shows for us now. How sad are we?
6. The movies all suck now.
7. I’m too lazy to read.
8. My kids still go to bed by 7:30 (fingers crossed that I’m not jinxing myself) so I’m ready to pick up and knock down some new shows.
9. Scrubs. Office. Earl. 30 Rock. Our dessert shows after a hard day. We ration them out throughout the week.
10. Singing Bee — new guilty pleasure.
11. Ugly Betty — old guilty pleasure.
12. Note from the Underbelly - is it coming back? Will I still care?
13. Six Feet Under — we finally finished watching our series on netflix and now have nothing to watch.

See more silly and serious lists at thursdaythirteen.com or make your own.

I was trolling around the Internets and decided to play “Thursday Thirteens” but what to write about? I decided it would be fun to capture some of the mystery and magic surrounding Holden’s first (transitional) week of preschool… some of the stuff that will be so old hat in a couple months.

1. Who will open his lunchbox at lunch? I like to assume he won’t just sit there crying.
2. Will he learn to ride a trike before the bigger kids mow him down on the yard? Does he care or is that just me?
3. Will I learn to change a poopy diaper while he is standing (like the teachers can)? Do I have to do this in order to reinforce all that good (included with the price of admission) potty learning? I feel like I need a headlamp, a hose a can of compressed air, and a box of Q-tips to do it without just flipping him over on a changing table.
4. How can we possibly learn how to get out of the house together in the morning? This is a big concern once I start working and when Milo needs to start eating breakfast.
5. The different age classes are named for animals with no apparent rhyme or reason. How am I going to learn all that preschool lingo in time? Is it “slug” before “sloth”? And, really, I guess it doesn’t matter if Holden knows and I don’t and he has to teach me, right?
6. How can a single adult be responsible for the health and happiness of four to six kids when I struggle with my two? What’s wrong with me?
7. What happens if I forget to sign him out again? How does this whole drop off pick up thing work? It looks so smooth as an outsider. Am I an insider now? When will I feel like an insider?
8. Will he be too hot for nap now that I’ve gotten him the totally wrong kind of sleeping bag? I got him the one for 45+ camping rather than 67+ communal naproom sleeping. And how soon will Alec let me buy a new one?
9. Will his placebo lovey (”new Leonard”) and pacifier do the trick for his debut at public napping? I can’t wait for Holden to master the “sleeping on a mat on the floor” skill but I’m skeptical.
10. Do I really have to label everything? I like labeling on a normal day but now I feel like I need to Sharpie his belly before I send him off in the morning.
11. Is he going to pick up a slew of new and bad habits from the alpha boys and girls in his class?
12. Since I’m sending Milo to the same place (starting next week), will I be able to survive the two-small-person size hole in my heart?
13. Will he still love me best?

Angela White of A Nice Cup of Lizard has tagged me to join in the “8 Random Facts About Me” meme. I asked her for an extension immediately since I have a tiny baby to take care of, but since both my kids are asleep right now, it turns out I have time to write.

First, the Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

And now… my facts:

1) My parents have been divorced since before I can remember. My dad remarried when I was four years old. Everyone is amicable and my mom is quite friendly with both my stepmother’s parents and with my half-sister (on my dad’s side, no relation to my mother).

2) I am co-writing a book, due out in April 2008. Writing with a partner has been surprisingly easy.

3) In 2000, I did the California AIDS ride, traveling by bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles in seven days. This was somewhat of a victory trip for me as I attempted the same trip in 1991 but fell off my bike and broke my elbow within the first hour of the journey.

4) In 1999, my boyfriend, now husband, and I took six weeks off from work and drove my Volvo station wagon around the country in a loop, just for fun. We kept a website documenting our travels, which required us to get our pictures developed along the way and bring a scanner and laptop on the trip.

5) I love mangoes.

6) I went to junior high with Leonardo DiCaprio.

7) I had my first baby via cesarean section and my second via la vagina. For those of you who landed on this web page for the wrong reasons, this event (achievement?) is known as VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).

Number Eight: I can walk on my hands and do cartwheels on both sides.

And I tag you:

Emily from Geeky Girl Sees
Megan from Jumping Monkeys
Karen from MailboxTees
Ainslie from SharonandDoug.com
Alma from Marketing Mommy

I’m doing it. I’m having a go at freecycling. Wheee. Clear out that shed of unwanted baby stuff and random old gifts and weird things that we moved with three years ago but still haven’t used.

Let our trash become someone’s treasure!
It was pretty straightforward to sign up. Just search for your location (in my case, Berkeley) then join a Yahoo group. But how easy will it be to get my stuff moving?

Well, I signed up yesterday and just got rid of my Brita pitcher and 10 filters. Yay!
One thing down and a whole shed to go…

I don’t know if I’m really allowed to check this one off but I’m going to.

I had imagined, buying a revealing little dress and wearing it confidently on a special date with my husband.

Instead, my mom bought me this dress that’s totally not my style (in an effort to hide my lingering postpartum chub) and I wore it to my brother’s wedding on the 28th. Once I ditched the nursing bra and the spanx, I was feeling decidedly free and almost sexy!

Here I am framed by my sister and brother striking a pose. I’ll take more moments like these.

July 2007. Like with other things that are hard to get started, the lesson here is: sometimes you just have to tear off a piece of floss and the rest takes care of itself.

Chew on that one. Deep, huh?

Check. I updated my linkedin profile and just invited hella people to join my network. Do you read this site? Do you want to give me a paying job? What are you waiting for — let’s be linkedin bff’s?!

But seriously, I have been suffering from a major career/identity schism since leaving my full-time job to have Holden over two years ago. When he was five months old, Whitney and I started this site (and I coincidentally also started my random contract part-time career that same week). And let’s just say that those roles — of who I was and who I am — haven’t really been integrated. Until today.

Now, with that emotional baggage properly filed and tagged, who wants to hire me?

Yep, I guess it’s obvious, I finished my list of 101 things. Check.
The funny thing is that now that it’s done, I keep wanting to revise it. For example, I want to kick off caving for berry-picking.

And every time I have a fun idea, I want to change my list around to get credit for it. Oh well.