While I was pregnant, my good friend Heather sent me an interesting book called “Diaper Free“, which explains the philosophy of natural infant hygiene, which is essentially beginning potty training from birth. Before my daughter was even born, I bought her a potty and planned on starting potty training my wonderful bundle of joy shortly after she was born…Unfortunately things don’t usually go as planned when you have children and poor Sydney was SO colicky for the first 4 months that I was not about to sit her on a potty and try and teach her anything while she cried her little eyes out.

When Sydney was around 5 1/2 months, I started my own form of potty training. The diaper free philosophy is pretty simple: Whenever your baby is pooping or peeping, use a word or sound that they will eventually associate with doing their business. After a while, when you say the magic word (or sound) they will pee and/or poop on command. For example, ever since Sydney was born, whenever I noticed that she was pooping, I would say “Poopoo”. Now, whenever I take off her diaper for a diaper change, I sit her on her little potty and ask her: “Do you have to go poopoo or peepee?”. I’ll say it a couple of times and if nothing happens after a minute or two, I’ll put her back on the changing table and put a new diaper on her.

Well, guess what happened today?! I put Sydney on her potty, asked the magic question (”Do you have to go poopoo or peepee?”) and she pooped in her potty! Syndey is 7.5 months old. It will be interesting to see if this is a case of impeccable timing, or if she is starting to understand the concept of using the potty. My main goal is to just get her used to sitting on a potty, rather then to just spring it on her when she is 2, but hey, if this leads to early potty training, I’m all for it!

Update (2/26): It wasn’t a fluke! Sydney pooped and peed in her potty again today, immediately after I sat her on it and said the magic words. Cool!

I was in a coffee shop yesterday and Stefan and I were talking to another couple when all of the sudden this guy got a suspicious look on his face and said, “Are you an actress?”. I laughed it off (especially since I had just rolled out of bed and was not wearing any makeup and was totally dressed down), and ask them who they thought I looked like. “Oh, we thought you may have been Diane Kruger!”.

I looked up Diane Kruger when I got home and I was actually surprised…We DO actually look similar. Diane Kruger and I are about the same age and we do have a similar face shape, cheek bones, jawline and facial spacing. Weird!

Well, at least I got mistaken for someone that is pretty. I used to get, “You look like Paris Hilton!” a lot when I was younger and that would just piss me off since I do not think Paris is attractive, at all.

I (used to) love Wired magazine. It is normally filled with excellent, intelligent and interesting articles, but after receiving their November 2009 issue, with the cute baby on the cover with “FEAR” written across it’s body, with the tag line: “Vaccines don’t cause autism. But some panicked parents are skipping their baby’s shots. Why that bad decision endangers us all.”

Since I’ve recently had a baby and had to deal with the serious influence of what EVERYONE else thinks that I should have injected into my baby, I immediately flipped to the Wired vaccine article, expecting to read something important and interesting. Instead I wasted my time reading a bunch of crap about a single man (Paul Offit) that is the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine (so he is a man that has made multi-millions off of it) and how he does not think that vaccines cause autism. Well that’s nice. OH, the guy that made the vaccine and has made millions (billions?) of dollars off of it says that he thinks it is safe for your child. Well, okay. End of story! Off to the vaccination clinic for me!!!

A quote from the Wired vaccine article:

“(counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth)”

“Counterintuitively”?! Oh really? Yeah, well there is a reason why people that choose to educate themselves and actually do a little research are choosing not to vaccinate their children.

I could spend days ranting about vaccines, quoting articles and explaining why I have chosen not to vaccinate my baby, but how about this: Let’s just stick to the facts for now.

Let’s start with the most commonly talked about and most common childhood vaccine. The MMR vaccine. This vaccine is to immunize your child against measles, mumps and rubella (german measles).

The Measles - What happens if you get the measles: You’ll have a rash, fever, red eyes, sore joints. What you should do if you get the measles: Nothing. Most patients with uncomplicated measles will recover with rest and supportive treatment. Cases of measles in the USA in 2009: 70.

The Mumps: What happens if you get the mumps: You’ll have swelling, fever, headache. Could possibly have dry mouth, sore face, temporary loss of voice and/or inflammation of the testicles (in males past puberty). What you should do if you get the measles: Nothing. The disease is self-limiting (the condition would run its course without the need of external influence, especially any medical treatment), and general outcome is good, even if other organs are involved. Cases of mumps in the USA in 2009: 179.

Rubella: What happens if you get rubella: You’ll have a rash, fever, headache, swollen glands and red eyes. What you should do if you get rubella: Nothing. The disease is self-limiting (the condition would run its course without the need of external influence, especially any medical treatment). Rubella infection of children and adults is usually mild, self-limiting and often asymptomatic. Cases of rubella in the USA in 2009: 11.

Okay, so let’s weigh the risk of your child getting the measles, mumps or rubella versus the risk of getting the MMR vaccine. The chances of getting the measles, mumps or rubella is very very very slim. If your child did end up getting one of these diseases, 99% of the time these illnesses require no medical care, as they are self-limiting (the condition would run its course without the need of external influence, especially any medical treatment) and there are no long term effects. So in trying to prevent a child from getting a disease that he/she will most likely not contract and that is easily curable and requires no medical intervention, we are injecting them with a vaccine that admittedly could cause the following:

- Fever
- Panniculitis (tender skin nodules and systemic signs such as weight loss and fatigue)
- Atypical measles
- Malaise (a feeling of general discomfort or uneasiness)
- Syncope (loss of consciousness)
- Vasculitis (a heterogeneous group of disorders that are characterized by inflammatory destruction of blood vessels)
- Irritability
- Dizziness
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Nausea
- Mild rash
- Swelling
- Seizure
- Pain & stiffness in the joints
- Temporary low platelet count, which can cause a bleeding disorder
- Serious allergic reaction
- Deafness
- Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
- Permanent brain damage

Shall I go on? Because there are many more possible side effects of the MMR vaccine. Don’t believe it? Read the insert to the MMR vaccine insert from Merck.

In attempting to prevent your child from the slim to no risk of contacting a mild disease that just simply goes away without treatment, you are injecting them with something that ADMITTEDLY can cause serious debilitating and life threatening side effects. Why? Because Merck (the drug company that makes this vaccine) makes BILLIONS of dollars a year selling it to you. And they spend millions of dollars marketing these drugs/vaccines to you, to make you think that you need them. I can almost guarantee that you have seen a Merck advertisement and you probably had no idea it was an advertisement rather then some important medical announcement. Amazing.

So, okay, the drug companies won’t admit that vaccines can cause autism. But they do admit that they can cause brain damage (I don’t really see the big difference). I really wish people would educate themselves about any drug or vaccine that they give their child (or themselves for that matter) before doing so. Injecting your baby with all of these “recommended” vaccines without researching the possible side effects and weighing the risks is foolish, in my opinion. And if you are so frightened about the possibility that your child could get the measles that you are willing to risk giving them brain damage, then by all means, be my guest.

Well, what do you know…there really was a baby in there! On July 26th at 11:10pm, my daughter decided it was time to be born. Introducing Sydney James Rest!

I gave birth to this little cutie pie in a Puerto Rican hospital with NO pain medication. All I can say is WOW. There were no complications but that whole child birth thing is certainly an experience!! I will write more about that later ;)…

Did you know that men are physically able to breast feed their children (or anyones child, really)? Men and women both have all the right equipment for breast feeding, which are: nipples, milk ducts, mammary tissue and hormones (specifically oxytocin and prolactin). So if a man wants to breast feed his kid, he simply needs to have the child suck on his nipple. The nipple stimulation will trigger the hormones to be releases, and like magic, Daddy is lactating…

Even weirder then the thought of men breast feeding their babies, is the total lack of studies on male lactation. It’s like there is a total cover up of the subject. Most of the information I have been able to find is “Yes, men can produce breast milk, but nothing else is known…” or “…no one knows if mens breast milk has the same nutritional value of womens…”, etc. So you’re telling me that we can grow human ears on the backs of lab rats, successfully transplant animal organs into humans, but we can’t find out the nutritional value of mens breast milk versus women? Come on…

Don’t get me wrong, I would be a little skeeved out if I saw a man breast feeding a child, but that’s just because we’ve all been taught that that is weird and unnatural. Nonetheless, I might have to try and milk Stefan with my breast pump…for the sake of science, of course!

These new energy efficient lightbulbs have really been on my mind lately. And I’m really, really, really annoyed about them!

These bulbs are being marketed as being “green” and “earth friendly” because they save energy, BUT did you know that they contain MERCURY and need to be properly disposed of or else they pollute the plant with toxic mercury? How many times have you properly disposed of one of these curly light bulbs and NOT just tossed it into the trashcan? I ask because, I for one, have just thrown them away, because who the hell reads the fine print on the back of a lightbulb package?!

Stefan and I had no idea that we were supposed to be “properly disposing” of these light bulbs until a friend of ours who is an electrician told us what a crock of sh*t this bulbs really are. We discussed it briefly and I was even skeptical about what our friend was saying, because I couldn’t fathom that that these light bulbs, that have been so highly touted (genius marketing), could be polluting the earth. Well, read the back of your little curly lightbulb box. It’s all there.

So, what is worse? Using slightly more energy or dumping mercury into the earth? Do you really think we are going to run out of energy with the solar, wind and hydro power that is now available? Or is it really just that important to people to save $2 on their electricity bill?

I, for one, am going back to the cheaper, non-toxic light bulbs.

On 3/24 I got a “level 2″ sonogram, which is able to see the baby and its developing organs much clearer. And no, Robin, I didn’t require a level 2 sonogram because of my advanced age…haha…that is just what they do nowadays to check that the fetus is developing normally.

Here are the results:

“There is an intrauterine pregnancy containing a single living fetus in cephalic presentation at the time of examination. The placenta is grade one located anteriorly. The amount of amniotic fluid is normal. AFI = 17cm

Estimate Due Date: 7/22/2009”

I just got an email from the people that do my payroll and it was addressing changes in regards to President Obama’s $787 billion Economic Stimulus plan. At first, I thought, “Woohoo! It’ about time small business owners get a break for creating jobs”. Then I read what the “Making Work Pay” tax credit was really all about:

For 2009 and 2010, the Making Work Pay tax credit is a credit of 6.2% of a taxpayer’s earned income. With a max credit of $400, or $0 if you earn over a certain amount.

WOW! $400 whole dollars off of my taxes? That’s really life changing. Now I’ll have to borrow $400 less to pay my taxes this year! Yay! Happy days are here again! I’m soooo glad I struggled through 2008 to keep all of my employees on payroll by borrowing money to keep them employed. The possibility of this $400 tax credit really makes it all worth while! Oh wait, no it doesn’t it’s actually a huge fucking insult.

So here I am struggling to keep people employed, and the government is using this $787 billion dollars to “bail out” all of these poor, poor little banks. Like AIG for instance. AIG has received $170 billion dollars in taxpayers money to help “bail them out” and they decided to use over $150 million of that bail out money to give their executives bonuses. Nice fucking “bail out”.

And, AIG isn’t the only bank that is living the highlife off of this “relief” funding from the government. Northern Trust (a Chicago-based bank) has received $1.6 billion in bailout money, so they went on to host a series of lavish parties as well as spend millions of that bailout money to sponsor a PGA event:

“Northern Trust flew hundreds of clients and employees to L.A. and put many of them up at some of the fanciest and priciest hotels in the city. We’re told more than a hundred people were put up at the Beverly Wilshire in Bev Hills, and another hundred stayed at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Still more stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Marina Del Rey and others at Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica.”

And fancy hotels for clients and employees were just the beginning:

“Wednesday, Northern Trust hosted a fancy dinner at the Ritz followed by a performance by the group Chicago. Thursday, Northern Trust rented a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport for dinner, followed by a performance by Earth, Wind & Fire. Saturday, Northern Trust had the entire House of Blues in West Hollywood shut down for its private party. Guests dined on seared salmon and petite Angus filet. Dinner was followed by a performance by none other than Sheryl Crow. There was also a fabulous cocktail party at the Loews. And how’s this for a nice touch: Female guests at the Chicago concert all got trinkets from … TIFFANY AND CO.”

Source: TMZ.com

Northern Trust laid off 4% of their workforce (450 employees) in December. I wonder if they were at least invited to the party us taxpayers threw?

And the truly sad part? These are just two examples of banks that got caught using bailout money for total bullshit purposes. You know all of the other banks aren’t eating PB&J and trading in their 7-series BMW’s and Bentley’s for Civics and scooters…

The government can take their $400 “Making Work Pay” tax credit and wire it on over to AIG so someone can get their Jag detailed. I sure as hell don’t want their pathetic attempt at “economic stimulus”. I can’t wait to take my business out the USA entirely.

I just got an email from Google in regards to their new “interest-based advertising” program, and it appears that Google is spying on it’s users…

“Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category.”

From what I’m reading, Google is tracking which websites you visit and using that information to classify you (and your computer) with specials interest categories.

I checked out the Google Privacy Policy and it looks like Google recently made some changes to the policy (it was last updated on 3/11/2009) in order to start collection this information about your web activity:

“…To serve ads that are relevant and tailored to your interests, we may use information about your activity on AdSense partner sites or Google services that use the DoubleClick cookie…We use cookies, web beacons or other technologies to record information about what ads your browser is shown, as well as what ads you click and other actions you take on our sites and services…”

Big Brother is watching!

From the demented creative minds behind such classic songs as “Dick in a Box” and “Jizz in my Pants”, I present to you: “Im on a Boat!”

Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live, actually has a band called “The Lonely Island” that writes and produces these hilarious songs for SnL and they even released an album titled “Incredibad”. Pretty funny stuff!

On a side note…Who knew that T-Pain was actually a human!? I thought he was just a Vocoder…