Oil

Why do people think that drilling for oil offshore will actually reduce the price of gasoline?!?! The fact is that oil is NOT a renewable resource - the oil on the planet is running out. Drilling for it in more places will not stop it from running out. We have to eventually stop using oil - so instead of trying to dig up all the last drops of oil, how about we move forward and start using other forms of fuel - like solar, hydro, wind, etc. All of which are renewable and therefore CANNOT run out.

I don't think that could be more clear. There is only so much oil and it's being depleted - the price of oil isn't going to go down, we just have to start using other fuels. The end.

Hello planet Earth

Soooo, it's been three weeks since the Ferberizing began and, well, it's been wonderful! Sam now goes to sleep when we lay him down at bedtime and, usually, he goes down for his naps without a problem too! Dr. Ferber is a miracle worker! May all the sweet little cherubs in heaven bless Dr. Ferber's heart.

Now the whole family is well rested and much happier all round.

Sam is practically in college now - he loves to eat avocados I mash up with a fork, as well as bananas and pretty much everything we give him, except for the carrots I made. I'm not sure what it is but he does NOT like my carrots. He'll eat Gerber carrots but mine make him get this funny look on his face like I'm trying to poison him or something. I tasted them - they tasted like carrots...I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe Gerber puts magic baby dust in their carrots???

Oh yeah, and Sam loooooves to swim. He's a little fish. He will hang out in the pool at grandma's house for hours as happy as a can be.

Here is Sam right before going swimming:
And here he is all tuckered out after swimming 90 laps:
We've also gone to Turtleback Zoo and the Bronx Zoo now, which also tuckered him out:



I am also now taking my course in manuscript editing - because doing it all day just isn't enough - I just need to spend every waking hour reading and editing manuscripts - ALL DAY EVERY DAY DAMN IT! The course isn't too bad actually, and for a change I get to work on fiction! Woo hoo! The only down side is that I now have homework. How the f' am I supposed to find time to do homework?!? Sometimes I'm pretty sure I have mental problems.

Otherwise life is good - work is good - Sam's new sitter is great - Charlie the cat is usually not fed cause we don't remember but I tell myself she's good too. . . she might disagree.

Oh - but there is one thing...

One really terrible, awful, horrible, nightmarish thing...

It's Elif

AKA Turkey

She... well...

She frigging left me forever and ever to move to Santa Monica California last weekend!!!!!! What a jerk! Seriously. Jerk. Dear Elif, I hope you're reading this blog right now ya big brat, and I hope that you see that I'm calling you a big jerk. And I hope your new apartment is nice and that you make lots of new friends, and blah blah blah. Really I just hope you change your mind and come back!!! New York City is, like, way cooler than LA. I mean, everyone knows that, every 'cept you, apparently. Oh well...

Seriously, I miss her.


The skinny little wench at her last Jersey City bbq.

Ferberizing

OK, tonight we are beginning the ferberizing process. For those of you who aren't familiar with this it's a sleep training method developed by Dr. Richard Ferber. The basis premise is that babies who are rocked to sleep don't know how to put themselves to sleep. So when they wake up in the middle of the night, which is totally normal since even adults wake up, they don't know how to go back to sleep without being rocked - hence the crying in the middle of the night.

So you put baby to bed while he or she is awake, you say goodnight and give kisses and then you leave the room. Usually the baby will start crying. You start off by going in to reassure baby that you're still here after 3 minutes, and if he's still crying you go back in after waiting 5 minutes, and then you wait 10 minutes. On the first night you go in every 10 minutes until he falls asleep. You do the same thing if/when he wakes up in the middle of the night. The second night you start by waiting 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 12 for the rest of the night. And it gets a little longer each night. Most people I've found online say the first two nights are bad but then there's a drastic improvement on nights 3 or 4.

Night 1:
- 8:12, put Sam in his crib. He cried, of course.
- 8:15, I went in to check on him, still crying.
- 8:21, he was still crying and looking at me like I clearly must have lost my mind.
- 8:26, checked in on him, couldn't go right to 10 minutes yet. He was crying and called me a jerk in baby language.
- 8:37, checked in, still crying.
- 8:46 Sam stopped crying!
- 9:01 he's still sleeping!
-11:08, he's up and it's definitely a little bit harder to listen to my guy be sad now.
- 11:15, my little man is yelling and I totally feel bad now, I think it's harder now that I'm on my own and the hubby is asleep. Hopefully he'll go to sleep fairly quickly like he did earlier tonight.
- 11:23, up and yelling, though not as loud as before.
- 11:31, some whimpering.
- 11:43, some more whimpering.
- 12:00, silence...took a little longer this time.
- 3:50, he's up! He hasn't slept 4 hours in a row in 3 weeks. This is already improvement. Oh yeah, and I haven't slept 4 hours in weeks so I feel like a million bucks.
- 3:53, still up and crying.
- 4:00, still up and crying.
- 4:11, some whimpering so I can't go in.
- 4:13 crying.
- 4:15, sleeeeeeeping. But there is that stupid "circle of death" of creaky wood right in front is his door inside his room so I was trapped there. You should see the acrobatics I did in order to escape. Impressive. Only took 25 minutes this time and much less crying, more whimpering.
- 7am awake time!

Here is the brief: It took 30 minutes when he went to sleep, 50 minutes the first time he woke up, and 25 minutes the second time he woke up. The fact that he was only up twice was a small miracle in itself.

Dr. Ferber is getting a batch of cookies from me. We'll see how night #2 goes.