A Little Frustrated

Ok, so I’m getting a bit frustrated here. For quite a while now I have been using this website, FeedBlitz.com, which basically allows you to subscribe to get any new posts e-mailed to you from your friends’ and family members’ blogs. At first I was happy with this free service – I set it up so that I received one e-mail with new posts from my friends’ blogs and a separate e-mail with new posts from my family’s blogs. Then I had all the new posts right in my inbox, in two neat lists, and I could look at them when it was convenient for me, without having to worry that I might have missed something if I hadn’t had time to check out everyone’s blogs for a while. So, this service is still working well, the only problem is private blogs.

Once a blog goes private, even if I am an invited reader of that blog, FeedBlitz no longer has the ability to send me an e-mail when a private blog is updated. I checked with FeedBlitz to make sure, and they said that it isn’t possible. So, I have been getting these e-mails that have a few new blog posts from friends’ and family members’ blogs, but they have a lot of blank entries that just say, “Blogger login to read,” and then I have to click on the link in the e-mail and go to each private blog and read the post there. It seems that this wouldn’t be too big of a deal, but with so many of my friends deciding to go public lately, I am getting e-mails from FeedBlitz that end up having more links to private blogs than posts. So, there’s not much reason to get those e-mails anymore – I have a list of links right on my blog, so I don’t need those e-mailed to me all the time.

I decided that there must be a better way around this. I mean, I really like the idea of keeping up to date with friends and family who have blogs, and with our stage in life right now we are doing a lot of moving around the country and so our friends and family are spread all over the place. I love to be able to catch up on their lives easily. But with so many blogs to read, if I only took the time to read through the new posts on each blog once a month, it would still take me quite a while to do so, and I would probably miss some posts here and there. That’s why I really liked the option of having all the new posts sent right to me so they were all there, waiting for a time that was convenient for me to read them.

I have several friends who have used Google Reader to keep track of blogs and other websites, so I decided that this would be a nice alternative. I could have a list of all the blog posts in one spot, and it would show me which ones I had read and which ones were new. And I have generally been pleased with Google applications, so I figured this would be a good one to use. I started to enter in all of my family members’ blogs on my Google Reader list, and then when I got pretty far down the list, I had one that wouldn’t work. It said that there was no feed for this blog. I realized that this was the first private blog that I had entered in, and that was the problem. Apparently you can’t even follow private Google blogspot blogs that you have been invited to with Google Reader. So, I’m a little frustrated that I wasted my precious time when all four of my boys were napping entering a list of blogs into Google Reader, only to find out that it’s not going to work any better than the e-mail blog subscriptions that I already have set up.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me on this. At this point I’m thinking that my only two options are to regularly click on the link for every blog and see if it has been updated since I last read it or to just decide not to be so OCD and not care if I miss a post here and there (I could do that, but I wouldn’t like it). Aargh!

Any Suggestions?

Hey, I was thinking I’d bring this up, in case any of you have had similar problems and had any good suggestions for me. Over the last week Kolby has started to wet his pants a few times, and I tried to not make a big deal about it the first few times, but when it continued I figured we had to do something to stop the behavior quickly. (I mean, he has been fully potty trained, day and night, for a long time now, so we definitely know that he can do it). I have heard of kids regressing when they are still in the potty training stages, but I didn’t expect it to happen this late. And I know that I had a problem with wetting my pants when I was even older than Kolby – which my mom hated (rightfully so) and I really wanted to quickly get him past this before he formed any kind of a habit or anything. Anyways, we told him that his special blanket would go on time out for more than 1 day if he did it again, and he did. So we put his blanket away for 2 days – he stayed dry for those 2 days and I gave him his blanket back, and then he did it again that afternoon. We took his blanket back away and said he couldn’t have any toys or books in bed when he went for naps or bedtime. He did it again, and we gave him the same punishments, adding to it that he couldn’t color or read his special magnet books during the day. He stayed dry since yesterday, and we had several talks about how everyone gets the same signals that they need to go to the bathroom and we just need to pay attention to those and go when we need to. I also talked to him about choosing the right and choosing the wrong, and good and bad consequences, and he seemed to understand those ideas, and the fact the wetting his pants was choosing the wrong. And this morning I told reminded him about when we got “big boy underwear” for him and how we told him then that he could only have them if he stayed dry, and I told him that I would have to take away his big boy underwear if he kept choosing to do this. (I am running out of ideas for things and privileges to take away from him, since his blanket is his most special possession and I don’t really want to take away preschool or piano lessons, which are his favorite activities). So, when we were changing clothes after church and his pants were wet, I got pretty mad. I spanked him, put a diaper on him, and put him in bed without lunch. It’s frustrating, because talking to him nicely and explaining why we do things and calmly taking away privileges hasn’t seemed to be having any effect. So, I have been thinking today that we should make sure at his 5-year checkup with the doctor tomorrow that he doesn’t have a bladder infection or anything, but assuming that that is not the case, does anyone have any suggestions for us? Staying dry at night doesn’t seem to be his problem, and he has stayed dry for months at a time in the past so we know he has the ability to do it. And reasoning, punishing, and getting mad have not yet helped. I know that this is one of the things that parents have no control over, but it really doesn’t feel like this is a power struggle – he doesn’t seem like he’s doing it just to be naughty. (I’m kind of hoping that the doctor will say it is a bladder infection – although that would make me feel pretty guilty for getting mad at him today, which I already do a little – but that would be something easily fixable. I’m concerned, though, that that won’t be it and we won’t have a quick fix for this problem. So, any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Help

Does anyone have any good suggestions for switching a baby from a bottle to a sippy cup? I switched Kolby over to a sippy cup when he turned 1 year old, and Eli and Camden each switched at about 10 months old. All of the other boys made an easy switch – I usually gave them their first few drinks in the sippy cup with the valve taken out so they got the idea of drinking from a cup before I put the valve back in and then they didn’t take long to get used to the sippy cup.

With Isaac I tried to switch him to the sippy cup at 10 months, and he wasn’t interested at all. He put it up to his mouth a few times, (and I tried pouring it into his mouth too – so he knew that it had his formula in it), but he never really took any sips on his own. I tried formula and water in the cup. He ended up crying all day long, and I decided I would just wait and try again later, since he wasn’t a year old yet.

So, now that he is going to be 1 year old on Thursday, I want to get him off the bottle. So, I started trying again this morning at breakfast – first giving him with cup without a valve (and having formula run all over the place whenever he lifted the cup up or dropped it on the floor). He didn’t really get much to drink, besides the few sips that I gave him as I held the cup up to his mouth. Around lunchtime he started to fuss a little, so I gave him the sippy cup again (but this time with the valve in it). I saw him put it up to his mouth once, but couldn’t tell if he really got a good drink from it.

Isaac seems pretty attached to his bottle. I just want this to be a quick and easy switch like it was with all the other boys, but I’m thinking he’s not going to let go of his bottle that easily. So, do any of you have any good suggestions that worked for your kids?
Thanks!

Photoshop Problem -- Help!!!

I know of at least a few of my friends who use Photoshop, so I thought I’d throw this out there and see if any of you have any suggestions for me.

I use Photoshop Elements 4.0 and I’ve created a pretty large catalogue (almost 14,000 photos) in the Organizer. I have tried to backup the catalogue a few times, but have always run into a problem with backing up, so never did it, and now I am feeling a little nervous about not having a backup with so many photos – don’t want to loose all those hours of work I put into tagging all the photos. So, here’s the problem. When I click on file> backup> backup the catalog> next> continue, a little window pops up that shows 33%, then it goes to 66%, then sometime after that it freezes up and I have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete to get out of Photoshop.

I have posted this problem to the forum on the Adobe site and to another Photoshop forum, and none of the suggestions people have given me have helped so far. I have tried leaving the computer for a while to see if it might complete the backup if I give it enough time, but this hasn’t helped. So, if anyone has any suggestions for me, I would be willing to try just about anything at this point. Thanks!