I think I’m getting a little more comfortable over here.
Sure, I had to call in my web developer husband to rescue me from CSS a few times, but HEY, I’m making progress.
At some point, I might need to add some color all up in this joint, but I’m actually kind of enjoying the pretty simplicity right now. Call me crazy, but it’s actually quite calming. With that said, if anyone has any suggestions to spruce things up a little, by all means, let me know.
I’m still adding and subtracting features and widgets and plugins as I go, but I’m figuring it out. You may notice that things are already looking a bit different around here. Allow me to point out a few new features over here on good ol’ WordPress:
- You can now subscribe to the blog via e-mail, if you feel so inclined. For those who don’t use a reader, this is a good option if you want to be notified when a new post is submitted. I know from experience reading other WordPress blogs via e-mail that it’s not as glamorous–you can’t see photos unless you click through–but it sure is convenient, especially with a smartphone. The subscription form/button is in the sidebar (you have to scroll down a bit).
- I can reply to you, IN ORDER, in the comments! Threaded comments are a beautiful thing. You’ll notice that if you leave a comment and I want to reply to that comment (which I WILL more often now!), my response will be tucked in right underneath your original. LOVE THAT. For those who used to comment by signing in through Blogger, I’ll have to get used to your new names now. Weird!
- Speaking of comments, don’t be pissed at me if you see that your comment is held for moderation before it shows up. One thing about WordPress that I’ve noticed so far is that there are a lot more spam comments trying to get through. Moderation seems like a good option to deal with them. Your first comment posted here at the new Heather Drive will be moderated, but after you are an “approved” commenter once, WordPress should remember you and your comments won’t be held for moderation anymore.
- I’m trying to add fun things like Instagram and Flickr thumbnail feeds into my sidebar and footer, but am having trouble finding just the right plugins. Stay tuned for those.
- I actually have a blogroll! Yes, I read other blogs. No, it’s not as many as I used to. I have a really hard time keeping up these days. And I do read more than 10–hopefully I’ll be adding more blog links in the future.
- The format of the “bullets” feature over here doesn’t make me want to hurt someone, so yeah, I’m using them in my post two days in a row. I might be just a *little* excited about that. But carry on as you were.
That’s it for now, because well, that’s all I’ve accomplished so far. Ha!
Please let me know if you guys are still experiencing any 404 errors (page not found). I got a couple of them when testing the site this morning, but have been good for the rest of the day. I’m hoping that the errors were just bugs from the transition, which were supposed to be worked out within the first 48 hours… and we’re officially past that point, so fingers crossed.
If all goes well, I’ll be back to regular blogging tomorrow. And hopefully more frequently than as of late! :) Thanks for sticking with me through the move, and for your patience with any technical difficulties.
So Blogger finally pushed me over the edge.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve been wanting to jump ship to WordPress for a while now. I think I’ve posted about it and/or mentioned it several times over the last year or two. In my mind, there are so many advantages to WordPress over Blogger–like threaded comments, yippee!!–but the real kicker was Blogger’s new user interface.
Because hello, it’s infuriating.
In the past, I was always able to revert back to the old Blogger interface and continue on my merry way. But then they made the switch the new interface permanent and irreversible. I wrote two posts using it and I was ready to throw my computer through a window (and it’s not even its fault–I love you MacBook, I’m sorry).
Anyway, so things are looking a little rough around here. I am trying to figure out how this new thing works, and it is not as easy as I’d hoped it would be. There seem to be a lot of little things about WordPress that I don’t quite understand yet (as far as themes, plugins, layout, etc. are concerned) so truthfully, this transition might take a while.
BUT hopefully none of you will experience any problems accessing the site. I have experienced several random 404 errors (Page not found) when trying to access heatherdriveblog.com from my cell phone, so I’m trying to figure out the cause of that. If you are experiencing the same thing, please let me know.
I’ve done some work in the code so that if you try to go to an old heatherdriveblog.com link (like from Pinterest, or wherever), it should lead you right here to my new home. If you still happen to have bookmarked my REALLY old URL–heatherdrive.blogspot.com, that is–it’ll even bring you here, though the redirect might take an extra few seconds. So you may just want to take a minute to update your bookmark!
If you subscribe to my blog feed through Google Reader or some other reader, double check to make sure new posts are showing up for you there. I did my best to ensure that everyone’s feeds are updated to direct them here but I am not an expert at this stuff, so I just want to make sure I don’t lose any of you in the shuffle.
And, just so no one is fooled into thinking that WordPress is perfect or something, here are some things that are aggravating me thus far:
- When I make changes to my layout/theme, they don’t immediately show up on my blog, despite doing a “hard refresh” in my browser. Annoying.
- I can’t figure out how to add a photo to my “gravatar” for my profile.
- Post thumbnails–Why can’t I figure this out? Mine won’t appear. Is it because my images are all hosted on Flickr, and not within WordPress?
- Speaking of themes, it’s really hard for me to pick one and stick with it since it seems like they all have different functionalities–and that’s something that is definitely different from Blogger. I pick something based on how it looks in the example and then when it is installed it looks a lot different and I can’t seem to figure out how to make it look like I want.
I just hope I can manage to get myself through this sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I hope that you’ll bear with me?
If you have a minute and can leave a quick comment with any issues you are experiencing (linking, feeds, accessing the blog from your phone, or whatever it may be), I would greatly appreciate it. I’ll try to do everything I can to address any problems!
Oh, and in general, what does everyone think of the “preview” type layouts (like this one is set up right now) on the homepage as opposed to having the full posts available for reviewing right away? I think it looks less cluttered and obviously involves less scrolling to get to the last few posts. If I could get the thumbnails to work, I think it would look really nice! But are the “continue reading” links irritating?
If anyone has been through this Blogger => WordPress transition before, or has successfully set up a WordPress.org blog with the themes and all, and wants to drop me a line with some tips or helpful links? Greatly appreciated.
While I’m sifting through code and working with plugins, I hope that you all have fantastic weeks. :)
In the late morning on Friday, we received confirmation that my brother, Trevor–who has been deployed for eight months–would be coming HOME that night. We were all so excited and anxious to see him again. All day, any time I thought about what the moment would be like, I’d get all misty!
We had known for a few days that he was coming home (he had been back in the U.S. for almost two weeks already), but didn’t know exactly WHEN. Thankfully, we were all prepared with homemade signs and ready to drag ourselves out to make the trek to the airport to give him a big hero’s welcome home.
Unfortunately, Michael had to stay back at home with a sleeping Nora, so I rode with my mom and grandma to the airport, where Hunter found us and led us to the waiting area.
While we waited, Hunter posed with his flag and the sign we made for him. So cute, and he was SO EXCITED!
Bryce was really pumped, too. :)
Soon, we saw that the flight had landed (early!) and got all prepared as we watched for him to come walking toward us.
Hunter’s first glimpse of Daddy…
…he took off running and leaped right into his arms. Best.moment.ever.
It is so wonderful to have him home again.
We are all so proud, so relieved, and so thankful.
Welcome home, Trevor.
P.S. Sorry for the obnoxious spacing. Blogger forced me over to its “new” interface again, and this time it’s permanent. I think changes will be coming soon… as in Heather Drive’s move to WordPress. I just need to work up the energy, time, and guts to make the leap. If anyone out there has experience, tutorials, or tips to share, please let me know!
We’ve had a challenging week around these parts. It seems that with a 2-year-old, we have good weeks and bad. There are weeks that she is an easy-going, fun-loving, delightful little girl. And then there are weeks when she is a meltdown-having, screaming, uncooperative banshee.
This week, we had the latter. Nearly everything was a battle.
Nora really seemed to be trying to assert her independence this week. She started fighting us on things that are completely routine. Getting in her chair to eat. Washing her hands. Leaving the house. Taking a bath. But the one that was consistently a problem–EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.–was getting her out of bed in the morning.
Yeah. I didn’t think we’d be dealing with this until she is in middle school.
But it wasn’t that Nora still wanted to sleep. She was awake, and was given the usual amount of time to “wind up” to getting out of her crib to start the day. She just literally did not want to get OUT.
Every morning, we’ve tried handfuls of different tactics. Distraction. Incentives. Praise. Reverse psychology. Force. None of them were particularly successful. On the days that we removed her from her crib without her consent (so, every morning…after other tricks didn’t work), we were faced with a tantrum-throwing mess. One (two?) of the mornings, she stood outside the crib and screamed for 15 minutes.
After another “episode” this morning, I started to really try to think this through. What’s her problem all of a sudden? I started thinking about how we managed to solve many of the other freakouts this week. And it was by putting some control in her hands. Or, at least letting her THINK she had some control in her hands.
Fighting us to go into her seat to eat? OK then. We didn’t force it. We put her food on the table, and simply said, “OK, Nora. It’s OK if you’re not hungry. But here’s your food on the table. You let us know if you want to get up in your chair and eat it.” Sure enough, within two minutes, she would “ask” (nonverbally) to get into her chair. She ate breakfast/dinner without incident. She just needed to feel like it was on her terms.
Thankfully, we had Nora’s 2-year pediatrician appointment last week (she weighs 26 lbs. now, by the way!) and our doctor spent the majority of the appointment talking to us about behavior and how best to handle the typical toddler challenges. The way we’ve been handling our problems this week have been right in line with her advice, and hey… it’s worked.
EXCEPT FOR GETTING OUT OF THE CRIB IN THE MORNING. Ugh.
What makes this different? And then something struck me. Maybe she’s freaking out because she literally cannot do it herself. Nora cannot get out of bed without us. It sounds kind of ridiculous–and maybe it is, I could be off-base here–but I started to wonder if maybe this is a sign of readiness to make the transition to a toddler bed.
*cue music of DOOM*
I don’t know; this is not something I’ve been in a hurry to do. We don’t have another baby on the way, so we don’t need the crib. She’s not climbing out like a monkey, putting herself in danger. And really, those are the only two reasons I’ve ever heard someone give for moving their kid to a toddler and/or big kid bed.
Michael and I have talked about it. I’ve asked some mom friends for opinions. And I don’t know… we’re tempted to give it a try. I figure it can either go really well, or it can go very badly. And there’s only one way to find out. We have a convertible crib, so it seems like the transition would be as easy as it CAN be… it’s the same bed, but with a different front on it. Worst case scenario, she FREAKS THE HECK OUT and we can just convert it back to a crib.
But man, I’m scared. Right now, she’s contained. When we put her in there, she can’t get out. There are no bedtime or naptime battles. When we’re being a little lazy on the weekends, she hangs out happily in her crib while we doze a few extra minutes. And in the meantime, we know exactly where she is.
Do we really want to uncage the beast??
The more I think about it, though, the more I see the pros and cons. Nora’s just two. She hasn’t fully grasped the art of being a complete pain in the ass. :) In other words, she doesn’t “stall” bedtime. She’s unlikely to get out of bed a million times just because she can (knock on wood). She can’t use stalling tactics like asking for a drink of water, saying she wants one more kiss, or one more story. In some ways, it seems like it just *might* be easier to make this transition with a 2-year-old instead of a 2.5- or almost-3-year-old.
Still, I worry about messing with a good thing. But then again, she can’t stay in a crib until she’s 5. At some point, we have to rip off this band-aid.
Moms, what do you think? How old were your kids when you made this transition? How did you know it was time, or why did you do it? How did it go? Any tips or tricks before we give this a whirl?
After I posted our family photos the other day, I got an e-mail from a woman named Jamie (Hi Jamie!) asking me how we care for Nora’s curls. I thought it was a good question, because well, I still wonder on almost a daily basis whether I am actually doing it right.
I never really expected Nora to have curly hair. Remember when it looked like this?
{Baby-pattern baldness, 4.5 months old}
Poor kid. But once it started growing back in and evening out, things were looking better. And during Nora’s first summer–especially on the humid days–we started noticing a single curl that would form on one side of her head.
{An Instagram pic from earlier this summer}
{You can sort of see it here, on the left (her right) side}
But even last December, things had only progressed to here:
It was mostly straight, with just a few soft curls on some of the ends.
My mom has naturally curly hair (VERY curly), so maybe I should’ve seen it coming. But somehow, this year, as it grew and grew… we ended up here:
{An Instagram pic from earlier this summer}
It doesn’t always look that nice, of course.
When she goes to bed every night, it looks like this:
And then EVERY.SINGLE.MORNING when she wakes up, it looks like this:
Bedhead is a powerful thing.
Anyway, so here’s what I actually do. We shampoo every night (with Burt’s Bee’s Baby Bee Shampoo). After bath, I towel dry her hair. I use the Target hair detangler spray (found in the baby aisle), spray it over her still wet/damp hair, and then I comb it out.
Now, all of you curly-headed people out there are probably ready to pounce on me about combing it, right? I’ve heard that you are NEVER really supposed to COMB curly hair. But I’ll tell you what: Nora gets some nasty knots in her hair. If I didn’t comb it, and simply used a pick, I’m convinced she would end up with a rat’s nest. Or dreads.
Once it’s combed, I usually “scrunch” it with my hands quickly, and off to her room she goes for the rest of her bedtime routine.
In the mornings, I don’t fully brush or comb it again unless I’m putting it in a ponytail or full pigtails. Otherwise, I just gather some hair at the top of her head and will sometimes comb that piece out if I need to smooth it out, then put a ponytail holder in it. I’ve mostly been using these miniature no-slip rubberbands (but the ones I buy are by Scunci), but now that she has more hair and doesn’t need as much “grip,” I’ve been experimenting with others, since the Scunci ones almost always rip out some of her hair when we remove them at night. Her hair is still ALWAYS in her face if we leave it down, so I put it up every day. I just don’t know what else to do with it right now.
So, what do you say, fellow moms of curly-haired kids? Or those who have curly hair themselves? Is there something I could/should be doing differently?
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to her curls as she grows. Her hair tends to be sort of straight/wavy at the beginning of the day, but gets curlier as the day goes on. I don’t know if the curly hair is here to stay, or if it’s just for her childhood. If they’re temporary, I will sure miss them when they go. :(
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
