To all my dear beloved Family and Friends, 

Happy NEW YEAR 2010
That we all my enjoy a good year and good Heath
That our leader in the white house saves our wallet.
That we will have no wars and we all love each other
like our own flesh and Blood

With all the best wishes
Lars and Connie

Lars and me

...that I'm blogging again. I forgot again that I was doing that. So here I am, blogging again. I must turn your attention to the left sidebar, where you will see my illustrious Pandora widget with my recent music activity. Thank you, Pandora, for your Bel Biv DeVoe and Tony Toni Tone stations. I heart you. A lot. And yes, indeedy, I thumb up'ed Color Me Badd (with two d's). What have you all got to say about that? 

This is me mustering all my restraint to keep from discussing my brilliant child's excrement. Just wanted you to know. I have a question regarding such matters, but I am not posting about it. Because that would be wrong. So wrong.

There are countless sites on the IntarWebs run by mommy and daddy bloggers that offer various parenting tips, freebies and general mentoring services for parents. I am proposing a new model for the mommy blog, in which you, dear readers (all two of you), help me. Because I need a lot of help. Yesterday's topic was crib kicking. I'm batting 0 and 1 on the help part of this equation, but today's question is slightly less odd.

Does anyone else's 14-month-old still cry when you put him/her down for naps, even after you've executed the sleep routine with books, singing blah blah blah? Because mine does.

So perhaps this is more of a call for solidarity in failed parenting. I dunno. You decide.

Most of the time, Mr. Precious is a ray of sunshine

Seriously. Almost always.

Then there are the times of day in which he engages in Crib Kicking. This warrants capitalization because it defines our sanity, lack thereof. It's loud, folks. Real loud. Does anyone else's kid do this?

Unrelated, thanks to a new blogger friend/old college friend for giving me a charge to reawaken my blogginess. Thanks, Trisha!

Sometime after moving to the desert and having the kiddo, I began to use Facebook and Twitter and abandoned my blog like a used, smelly one night stand. This saddens me. I believe this happened because I no longer felt I had anything important to say, as opposed to past postings. Or, I no longer had anything to say longer than 140 characters. I'm jealous of people who maintain a rocking blog over a period of years without slacking off. Perhaps I watch entirely too much television but I'm not willing to sacrifice watching an episode of The Vampire Diaries just to record my "drippy thoughts" (as my dad likes to categorize social media) on this blog. By the way, isn't Nina Dobrev just the dreamiest!?

The very same burrito I snack on at 5 AM Sunday morning (because that's a perfectly normal time to rise on Sunday, says Soren) caused some funny faces for the Soren Man yesterday at Baja Fresh...

Please overlook my idiotic narration (Phil!). I couldn't contain myself.

This time last year, I was prego, anxious and virtually (I said VIRTUALLY, Anne!) friendless as a new Phoenix resident. I spent much of my five months of unemployed pregnancy trolling the InterWebs for breastfeeding support and advice. I was lucky to find Breastfeeding Arizona's Babies & Beyond, a blog by Leslie Ott, Certified Lactation Educator here in the AZ. Recently, I met Leslie as part of her documentary project, Formula Fed America. Thanks to the crack staff at Scottsdale Healthcare Shea, Soren and I had a rough time of it with nursing in the beginning. He had his share of formula for the first four months of his life. I don't consider this to be a bad thing, necessarily. But I was disappointed that I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do, which was exclusively nurse him for six months. Now he's eight months old and he's still nursing for most of his meals in addition to two meals a day of solid foods. He hasn't had a formula in months, but as I told Leslie, I was thankful for it in the beginning because my hospital experience scared me into thinking I couldn't feed my baby without it. I hope a lot of people watch Leslie's documentary. Keep an eye on its progress at FormulaFedAmerica.Com.