Computer troubles

My laptop broke on me some time last week! I have a Sony Vaio that I bought at the end of 2009, had it for a little less than 1 yr and 2 months and it just died on me!  I was so bummed because I'm no longer covered by warranty and come on~ it's only been a year since I've had this!  The problem with it was that it just would not turn on at all even with the charger plugged in.  It wouldn't even detect that the charger was plugged in, a little light usually comes on when you plug in the charger.  My husband took out the battery and tried to turn the computer on again with just the charger powering the laptop, but still nothing.  Since all of my son's pictures are on my laptop, NOT backed up (stupid stupid!), I totally panicked but my husband told me it's not the harddrive, it's the motherboard that's dead.  So he took my harddrive out (don't worry, he knows what he's doing ^^) and backed up all of my data, put the laptop back together, and we found a place that does motherboard repairs, dropped it off, only to find out that they don't know what the heck they are doing.  THey just kept telling us that my harddrive is about to fail (WRONG!) and that it's $180 to get a new harddrive and $230 including harddrive data backup. So anyway, even I could tell that they had no idea what the heck is wrong with my computer, so I just picked it up, wasted $20 on their diagnostic fee, brought it home, and my friend told me to try replacing my CMOS battery because maybe the little batter that powers the motherboard died.  And he was SOOOOOOOOOOo right!!!  As soon as we replaced the CMOS battery, my computer came back to life!! yay!!

Anyway,  now that my computer is back up and running, I'll hopefully get to post about my DIY projects I'm working on.  ;)

As for the damn photobooks, I'm DONE!!!!!! ^___^  You don't know how happy this makes me!  I was so stressed about having to make 4 books in such a short amount of time, but I finally got it done!  I already received 3 of the books, placing the order tonight for the last one and once that comes in, I'll do a review on blurb photo books.  I know I did one way back in 2007 when I made a small wedding album thing for my bridal party with all of their pictures in it, but I think I have more of an experience now to write a better review.  Plus, I ordered them with premium paper and want to touch upon the difference between their "matte" and "lustre" finish and which I prefer. 

Hope everyone is well! :)

10-months

I know I am really bad about doing monthly updates to the point where they are pretty much non-existent LOL but I thought I'd do a 10-month update since it just popped up in my head! :)

I just can't believe how much J's grown.  I really miss having a baby around and at times I even miss the days when J wasn't mobile because I had more freedom back then!  If I put him down somewhere, I knew he'd be there when I came back from a pee break, but now, often times I find myself going from room to room looking for him. 

He's been standing on his own for a couple of weeks now, he stands every chance he gets!  His stance is still quite wobbly, he usually can't last in the standing position for more than 10-15 seconds unsupported, but it's so fun to see him try to last longer.

Some of the things he does often are... flash a goofy grin at complete strangers who take notice of him, get cranky only when he's hungry (that's how I know it's time for a feeding!), eat up a storm!!, whine when he finishes he meal because he wants more, bite EVERYTHING (including me!! he bites me EVERYWHERE!!!).

He can also say "umma" (mom) and we think he knows what it means because he'll say it when he sees me and he'll repeat it over and over again as he whines and crawls, following me around when he's hungry. 

He's also quite a girl-group fan LOL!!  At the end of the Korean shows, they play music videos and everytime a girl's voice comes on, he is totally zoned out watching the girls sing and dance.  He doesn't always watch when a male singer's music video comes on, but he always watches the female artists'. 

J's finally actually started watching Pororo.  Before he didn't care for it and I was the one watching it all the time, but now if I turn it on, he'll sit there and watch it.  He probably doesn't know what's going on, though.

J's definitely becoming more and more independent everyday.  He plays soooo well by himself for hours!!  He loves exploring the house, opening and closing doors, pulling DVDs off the bookshelf, and generally just playing with his toys in his play yard.  He goes from one toy to the next and won't even look at me if I try to play with him or do something a little more interactive with him. 

He's growing up so fast, it makes me a little sad!! But I know he's becoming a more wonderful version of himself every day; I'm definitely looking forward to his next milestones.

Toys @ 9+ months

I don't buy jaden a lot of toys because I always try to minimize clutter as much as possible and babies usually only play with toys for a short period of time before they tire of them.  Here are some toys that J always plays with and some of these he's been playing with them for months!  

  Fisher Price Animals Animals Spinning Around Musical Zoo (What a freakishly long name! lol)

We received this as a xmas gift from one of our neighbors.  I didn't think J would like it because it's really a simple toy and he's more into pressing a lot of buttons and picking things up and dropping them.  To my surprise, he is always playing with this thing!  He's not too fascinated with the spinning action, but he loves chew/suck on the penguin's head and also play with the other animals.  Sometimes he'll try to touch the birds, but it seems like the tiger and alligator are invisible to my son.  He also loves pressing the red buttons to get the music to go again. 

Yookidoo Crawl and Go

I paid $30 for this and it's $17something right now on Amazon so I totally feel like I got ripped off.  meh.  I bought this when J was 7 months old out of frustration that he wasn't crawling, I thought maybe this will motivate him.  It didn't.  He had no interest in this thing until he was actually able to crawl on his own at 8 months.  He loves pressing the snail's tail to make it go, then he watches the wheels like a hawk because the black things that look like eyes amuse him.  The round thing on top of the snail comes off and also unscrews from the top with the orange guy peeking out.  The orange guy squeaks if you press his head and each thing below the head are invidual toys/parts that the baby can play with and one of them is a rattle.  Jaden loves playing with everything on this toy, even chomps on the snail's feelers and I really like that the music is not annoying like other toys, it's actually a really cute snail-like music. 

Fisher Price Musical Table (green only sold @ Toys R Us)

I have mixed feelings about this one.  Jaden LOVES it, he's always playing with it throughout the day.  However, I think it's poorly made because they break SO easily!  The first one broke after 3 weeks.  The second one broke after only 2 weeks.  And now we're on our 3rd musical table, it's been only a few days (like 4?) and earlier tonight when I turned it on for J on the highest volume I heard it get stuck again and make static noises.. so bummed!  I guess I'll have to return it for a new one again. If they're charging $45 or whatever for it, I expect it to last a lot longer than 4days-3weeks.  The only reason I bother getting them again and again is because J loves it so much.

Green Toys Stacker

Another one of J's favorite toys.  He's had this since he was 4 months old and he still loves playing with it at 10 months!  Maybe I shouldn't say "play"... He can't stack them or anything and doesn't find a lot of interest in knocking it down when I stack them for him, but he does love chomping on them ^^

Sophie the Giraffe

She's been a favorite since the day we got her.

I'm thinking of getting J a few more toys, maybe something from Melissa&Doug and a bath tub toy (Yookidoo has a bunch of really cute ones!) but he loves playing with everyday items a lot more.  He LOVE LOVE LOVES my laptop, I think he totally tries to mimick me because he'll stand in front of the laptop and start pressing the keys with both of his hands like how I type on my laptop.  He also has a thing for closing doors.  He'll go to any open door in the house and spend 10-20 minutes just sitting there opening and closing (not all the way so that he can still open the door again) the door.  He also loves pulling DVDs off of the shelf, pulling kleenex out of its box, and playing with the remote that controls the ceiling fan speeds and lights, he'll turn on the lights and stare at the light in awe, then if he presses the ceiling fan button, he'll stare at the ceiling fan spin round and round for a while.  His absolute fave thing to do lately is open and close cabinet doors in the kitchen.  ^^

Oh, I almost forgot... J's absolute favorite toy:
Vtech Preschool Learning Alphabet Apple

I bought him this 2  months ago because he developed some kind of an obsession with pressing the keys on my laptop.  I think this toy is for like ages 3 and up or something, but I wanted to get J a toy that had a lot buttons he could press just like my laptop.  I tried having him play with one of those kiddie laptop toys but he didn't care for it but played with this non-stop at the store.  It's pretty loud even if you set it on the lowest volume setting and can get kind of annoying, but it has so many different features and plays tons of different music as well.  J loves to press all the buttons and pick it up by the leaf handle and drop it on the floor over and over again and so far, no malfunctioning!

2011 trips

I've been so sluggish lately.  I'm sleepy throughout the day and have the hardest time getting out of bed in the morning.  It's probably because of the damn photobooks lol I'm getting about 4-5 hours of sleep each night and it doesn't help that hubby irritates me in the morning!  I've been asking him to watch J in the morning while I get an extra hour of sleep (J wakes up at 7:30ish) and I could totally tell he doesn't want to do it because he wants to go to the golf range and practice, so he'll wake me up for the dumbest things, like this morning he woke me up because he couldn't find any clean nipples for J's bottles.  SO WASH THEM!!! then he says he doesn't know how to sterilize them.  Are you kidding me?  You did this for the first 6 weeks of J's life when I was recovering from the birth/c-section, you've seen me sterilize his nipples in the steam bag for the past 8+ months.  ugh.  Not to mention that I had told him numerous times that J does not take a bottle in the morning, he eats a bottle of solids, which he even jotted down on his memo pad just 2 days ago when I had to repeat it to him over and over again.  *sigh*

Anyway,  last night hubby and I sat down to make some travel plans for this year.  We hardly traveled in 2010 since J joined the family, I think we took a few road trips and went to D.C. and LA and that was it.  We miss traveling and we figured that once baby #2 is conceived&born, we really won't be able to travel much until the kids are old enough to go to Disneyworld which is just a short road trip away anyway... so this year we are going to try to take a few more trips before all freedom is taken away from us with baby #2 LOL

So far we've come up with a few close destinations- Cancun, Chicago, Canada, & Boston.  We're also considering a spa weekend in Arizona and I'm secretly hoping we can go to Paris.  Surprisingly, Trip Advisor picked Paris as the #6 destination in the world for family-friendly vacations (Orlando is #1, no surprise there hehe).  I'd love to see the sights of Paris and maybe even venture into Italy as well, but the things that are holding me back are the fact that i don't enjoy french cuisine much, and i don't speak a lick of French HAHA!  But most likely we'll hit up Cancun first before the weather gets too hot. 

Exposed & lately...

I think I'm just so used to being on friends lock on xanga that now that I'm using blogger, I feel so EXPOSED~ I know blogspot has a friends lock type of privacy setting but I know like... 2 people who are on blogspot LOL!!

Anyway...

lately I've been feeling like I'm just all over the place, and I probably really am >.<  It took me over 2 weeks to unpack from our LA trip (and we only had one suitcase!), and as soon as I started to take a dab at finishing up the dohl plans and working on my first DIY project, I realized that my groupons for blurb.com are going to expire in the beginning of February.  I purchased 4 groupons thinking I could probably combine all of them in one order but then found out that I could only use one coupon per order, so in the end in order for me to utilize all of my groupons, I would need to make 4 books and pay for each book separately in a single order.  (Am I making any sense?)  So anyway, that left me a little over 3 weeks to make 4 photobooks, and if you've ever made one of these books before, it takes a lot of time to pick the photos and work on the layouts.  Hubby thought it was funny and a blessing in disguise because I'd been putting off making these photo books for like 3 yrs now LOL!! I'm such a procrastinator and he knows that had I not had this deadline with the groupon discount, I'd never make the books.  This is resulting in a lot of sleepless nights, staying up til 3am, 4am, 5am (depending on the day) to work on these books.  So far I completed 2006-2007, 2008, and working on 2009... I just have to add the pics from our babymoon but my goodness it's taking me DAYS to pick the pictures because I probably took 3 million pictures on 3 different cameras!! Our friends who met up with us in Barcelona also have a ton of pictures of all of us together, pics of just me and hubby, etc but I am not even going to bother asking them for copies.. I've already got so many pictures to deal with, I think we're okay ;)

J's dohl is coming up in less than 2 months and I still only have the venue and photographer set.  It's really tough trying to plan such a big party remotely.. After considering my budget, time, and my limitations on executing everything since we land in LA just 2 days before the party, I've narrowed down the elements of the party- the DIY projects, but it's tough getting started.  I have to rely heavily on the internet for my research and buying my supplies.. this is especially tough when I want to buy things for the party by only seeing the product picture on websites and honestly, I won't be all that surprised come party day and none of the items I bought and shipped to my in-law's house are not to scale with one another.  So before I buy ANYTHING I just keep going back and forth about it in my mind over and over again because I wouldn't be able to check the product upon receiving it and/or have ample time to return/exchange things since I'm getting everything shipped to my in-law's house. 

Other moms have also said to get a head start on DIY projects or you will be up all night making them the last month before the party... I totally know what they mean!! But I also think that regardless of getting a head start, you're going to have to stay up in the night making everything anyway.  I've tried making flag banners (super simple, right?) in the daytime and J was ALL UP IN MY FACE and in all of my papers, scraps, etc.  It was just impossible and I ended up having to finish it after he was down for the night.

Health-wise, I started walking at night after I put J down.  Last month when we signed up for life insurance we had blood work done and overall we are healthy and fine, but I really want to get my cholesterol down.  It's still in the normal range, but it's higher up than I'd like, so I'm on a mission to get it down and up my good cholesterol along with it by doing my cardio.  I've walked for 3 days now and every time I realize how much I hate cardio LOL!! It's just so boring!  Aside from it being boring, though, I sort of do enjoy having that time all to myself.. no baby, no hubby, no dogs. 

Okay now.. back to the photobooks!!!

29

I'm not one for celebrating my own birthday or trying to get other people to acknowledge it and do something for me on my birthday.  My family never made that big of a deal about birthdays so I've just gotten used to not making any kind of a fuss about it either.  It wasn't until I met my husband that we started to really celebrate my birthday and he always goes above and beyond to make me feel special. 
Hubs and my goal in life is to live a very NORMAL life... no roller coaster rides for us, please... to just live a normal, low-key, happy life, and most importantly to provide such an environment for J to grow up in and be showered with lots of love.  It sounds easy, but if you think about it, it's actually quite difficult to achieve. 

More than anything, I tend to think of all the things I'm thankful for on my birthday (which is weird because I never really think about things I am thankful of on Thanksgiving haha) and I'm really thankful for having such a happy and loving family, health, for J coming into our lives, having a roof over our heads and financial stability in this depressing economy, and for having such wonderful in-laws (esp the BESTESTEST brother-in-law in the world). 

In the coming year (wow this is starting to sound more like a new year's post haha but I can't help it, my birthday falls in January!) I look forward to: many family trips and making memories to last us a lifetime, to J's first birthday, making new friends, and maybe even be blessed with another addition our family. 

Here's to the best year in my 20s! (last year will be pretty tough to beat, though! ^^)

Car Wash

Am I the only person who didn't know about this service?  Where they come to your house and wash your cars?  Apparently, many of our neighbors do this, yet it's the first time I've actually seen them in action!  (Pic is of my neighbors across the street getting their cars washed).  I never wash my car anyway so I probably won't be using this service anytime soon LOL I only get my car washed when I take it into the dealership for an oil change.  But anywho I was really amused by this for some reason.