Olivia at 5 months

"I can't help falling in love with you ..."
They say that motherhood is like having your heart taken out and running around outside you. That is the truest feeling in the world.
Olivia now is 5 months old and here she is, in a photo I took Tuesday, March 9.
She is turning over. She is so observant, at moments so calm but then she is capable of unleashing a fury. She's impatient and continues to pursue things even if they frustrate her. So although she looks like Daddy, she is displaying some of Mommy's personality characteristics.
We love you, sweetheart. You are the ultimate miracle of our lives.

California Star

Love Charlene, who flew in from California to help me with Olivia.
We had so much fun!

Back To Blogging

After several months, I am back to blogging. I have had a great distraction, our little Miss Olivia who now is nearly 5 months old. We have had such fun!

The Dance with my Daughter

Pardon me for not answering the phone. I’m dancing with my daughter.
My journey to motherhood has been riddled with uncertainty, doubts creeping in during the years that have passed. Do I want to sacrifice my career and education? I worked so hard as a business journalist, traveling the continent over and winning awards. Life was easy. My master’s degree is as close as a class or two, a degree that I have worked so hard for, a degree in managerial economics that will open doors for me that I can only imagine. And then life made me push the pause button. She arrived on Oct. 9 after 12 hours of labor and then an emergency c-section. As I’m typing this, she’s sleeping in her Pack N Play, a godsend for these new parents. Who knew that a pack n play could hold so much power? The owls on the mobile above her dance in circulation, mesmerizing her and giving me and her father sweet relief. If only the mobile would stay wound up! When that doesn’t work, we dance, me and her, her body so small I fear I’ll hurt her or damage her in some way. The music now comes from the IPOD stereo. The IPOD is the other form of sweet relief, playing tunes that her father and I have gathered over the years of our marriage. AC DC, Faith Hill, Brandi Carlile, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Elvis. Everything you can imagine. We want, after all, to expose her to a great mix of music. Our steps are awkward at first as we make sense of each other, her body changing so quickly during her first seven weeks and her eyes often locking in on mine as she lays her head on my chest. Trusting, gentle, wonderful eyes. Clear, bright, beautiful. Are they her father’s? I think so. Maybe the shape is mine. What will she look like in a year? As a teenager? What will she look like as an adult? For now, I’ll hold her, cling to her, love her, and take this life day by day. This time, the baby is mine and I can’t send it back with its parents.

Olivia is here!

Our little miracle arrived Oct. 9, 2009, and we couldn't be more thrilled.
She was delivered via an emergency c-section.
I have been recovering from the surgery and getting used to motherhood.
We will post photos soon!

Yes, Magazines Digitally Alter Photos

There are certain things that surprise me in life. Digitally altered photos in magazines is not one of those things. Apparently, there's a great level of surprise that Kelly Clarkson's photo on a recent cover of Self was digitally altered to make her appear slim.
No, say it ain't so.
Any media savvy person will tell you that this is STANDARD. It would be a surprise if a photo was NOT digitally altered. I know it may shock some people, but the images we see every day through magazines, television, etc. represent the power of perception. It's all smoke and mirrors.
This is when I'm most grateful for the time I spent at Matrix Essentials (the company that makes salon products like Biolage, etc.) I worked on the company's in-house magazine. If we wanted a wrinkle, a crooked tooth, anything removed from the photos of the models, it was gone in a New York minute.
It's reality; nothing that you see in media is truth.

Cash for Clunkers Program Goes Clunk

A $2 billion infusion apparently has rescued the much-touted Cash for Clunkers program.
When I heard the program was in trouble because of lack of funds, I admit I blamed the incompetent government. And I still do.
Here's why: Even without the most sophisticated financial prediction software, some finance or business or economically-minded individual or group should have figured out "Best Case Scenario" and "Worst Case Scenario" in a spectrum of possibilities for how much the program would eat up. For example, let's say there are 1 million car owners in the United States (in total). (That's just a figure I pulled out of the air, it comes from no reliable data. It's purely for example purposes).
Of 1 million total car owners, how many own a vehicle that could potentially be traded in under the Clunkers program? Let's say it's 250,000, again, just for argument's sake and pulling the figure out of the air.
That is the potential of the program. So we take 250,000 and multiply that by $4,500 and that gives us the figure of how much we could possibly spend on this program.
I didn't need my degree in economics to figure that out. That's just pure common sense. So at the high end of our "spectrum" anyone in Washington (the Congressional Budget Office, for example) could figure out, "Hey, this could cost us X amount. How will we finance this?"
You just don't give some knee-jerk reaction that "Oh, no! Too many people are taking advantage of this program and we don't have enough to fund it."
It should have been thought through. Trust me, they have the data that shows them the number of car owners in the United States. They also have the data that shows them vehicle age, etc. It won't be a perfect data set (none ever is) but it's better than flailing.
The plan wasn't thought out, and I hope it's obvious that the government is being irresponsible in an economic time when financial irresponsibility can be catastrophic.
Oh, and we're going to trust the government that did this with our healthcare?