Posts made in December, 2008

The New Years post

Posted by Michelle on Dec 31, 2008 in Life, Site Admin | 1 comment

What can I say about 2008 other than it has been a year of change? It is the year that I became a parent, a homeowner, a homemaker and a freelance writer. Most everything in my life changed for the better. Though there have been highs and lows, there is no doubt that 2008 was good to our family. I am so forever grateful to have the opportunity to spend every moment with my little girl as she grows and changes, and to do so in the comfort of our beautiful home. I can only hope and pray that 2009 will be just as good for our family.

And now onto the resolutions. New year, new start — isn’t that how it always goes? I’ve got quite a few things that I want to change in 2009 so I’ll be listing them here along with goals. This year, I’m taking a different approach towards my New Years Resolutions. For me, resolutions make fine objectives but aren’t goals. Setting a tangible goal gives me something work toward.

Note: I would like to say that composing this took a good three or four days with massive breaks and writing it in several different formats. One of my resolutions should be “Don’t procrastinate” with “Just press publish already” being another but as usual, I do what I want rather than what I should.

Personal

I resolve to get out of the house more! I will do this by getting out of the house at least twice a week (not including errands)

I’ve never been much of a social butterfly. Now that I’m a SAHM, I am prone to being a downright hermit. There have been weeks when I haven’t left the house at all except for errands. For 2009, I resolve to get out of the house, whether it is to go window shopping or the park with TLE, meet up with The Hubster(tm), my mom or friends for lunch, etc. Much as I love my life at home with TLE, I need to talk to adults every now and then, too. Talking to my dog doesn’t count.

I resolve to put some effort into my appearance. I will do this by not allowing myself to wear “house clothes” out of the house, dedicating 10 ~ 15 minutes to properly style my hair, pick out an outfit, etc.

I’ve never been a fashionista and I sincerely doubt that anything short of winning the lottery and getting plastic surgery will change my mind about this. Fashion forward clothes were not made for my bubble butt. A few weeks ago, I realized that the only difference between my “house clothes” and “going out clothes” was simply whether or not I had a bra on. Not acceptable. So now I’m going to set aside some time to actually make myself look presentable. This isn’t to look good for someone else but to help me feel good about myself. Using my status as a Mommy to explain why I look disheveled is no longer an option.

I resolve to do something creative every day. I will do this by either finding the time to craft whether it is sewing, knitting or digital scrapping or writing a snippet of fiction.

This will be harder to do but I am determined to do it. I haven’t had a significant amount of time to get to know my sewing machine as well as I’d like — just 10 or 15 minute

Health

I resolve to set a good example for my daughter by eating healthier and exercising more. I will do this by cutting down on refined carbohydrates, eating more varied lean proteins and working out on the elliptical/go walking at least 3 times a week.

The quintessential New Years resolution, one I’ve made several times in different ways. Mind you, I can stand to lose about 50lbs. I lost all my baby weight (15lbs) just a few days after TLE was born but the scale hasn’t budged since then. My infatuation with cookies doesn’t help, I’m sure. So I’m back to making simple changes and reverting to a diet that looks more like my diabetic diet. My blood sugars have been excellent but I’ve noticed I feel significantly better when I’m not eating quite so much sugar or refined carbs. Placebo? I don’t know but I do know that those simple changes have already resulted in a slow 2lb weight loss. I’ll take that. Ideally I’d like to be a muscular 125lbs by my 32nd birthday but I’ll take being 10lbs lighter by TLE’s March birthday party.

Writing

I resolve to reach a goal of $X/month income from my writing business by March. I will do this by marketing myself more aggressively, revamping my websites and writing more, more, more.

While I won’t reveal exactly what my dollar income goal is, I’ve said it — I am determined to make my freelance writing business better. While I do have a few steady gigs, I still have the availability for more projects while keeping my quality and being able to spend time with my family.

I am revamping both my portfolio (www.michellemnguyen.com) and this site to better align myself with my goal. (Align? Did I say align?! Argh! My corporate roots are showing again!)

Mommy Misadventures will be getting a face lift and … *gasp* a schedule. I’ll be writing regular articles on food, home life and technology to start and will hopefully expand out to product reviews in later months. The schedule will start on January 5th Mommy Misadventures is, was and will always be a personal blog but there’s no reason that it can’t be an infomative one as well, right?

Quick post

Posted by Michelle on Dec 30, 2008 in Life | 0 comments

It’s the end of the year which means that there’s a lot to do around the house before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow. Among them are cleaning up and buying a new bag of rice. I’m not quite sure why or if this is traditional for other Filipino households but every New Year, my dad instilled in me that we must have a new bag of rice in a spotlessly clean house.

In true-to-me fashion, I’m torn between cleaning the house like a madwoman… and procrastinating by doing other things. Guess which I’m doing now?

In completely unrelated news, we finally got around to watching Dark Knight on DVD last night. I’d like to qualify this by saying that I have been a huge Bat!geek since about 2003 and have a disgusting amount of knowledge about the character of Batman, his history and related characters and storylines. In fact, a good 3/4′s of my comic collection (which is also mindboggling large) are Batman related comic books. Everyone was telling me that Dark Knight was a good movie and they were so effing right. LOVE.

Time to get breakfast, feed the baby and get started on *gulp* the cleaning Sometime between now and tomorrow, I should have my goals and resolutions post up so stay tuned!

A Poem

Posted by Michelle on Dec 28, 2008 in Breastfeeding, Life, Parenting | 0 comments

Given the snide remarks that my sister overheard about my nursing in public yesterday, I find it fitting to have found this today.

DISCLAIMER: As noted, this poem is NOT mine and is reprinted here without permission. Please refer to the original page.

Mom I Am (excerpt)
Written by a poster on the Mom’s Online Breastfeeding Board

I will nurse, in any case,
On the street or in your face.
I will not let my baby cry,
I’ll meet her needs, I’ll always try.
It’s not about what’s good for you,
It’s best for babies, through and through.

I will nurse her in my home,
I will nurse her when I roam.
Leave me be lads, leave me be ma’am.
I will nurse her, mom I am.

“That’s so gross…”

Posted by Michelle on Dec 27, 2008 in Breastfeeding, Media, Parenting | 2 comments

The Hubster, my sister and I went to San Francisco Japantowne today with The Little Empress in tow. (We went last weekend as well but without my sister as she was working.) We did the usual — got lunch at one of our favorite restaurants before walking around to check out the Miyako mall. We came back to the Kinokuniya building to visit our favorite dessert place, Sophie’s Crepes. As usual, the place was packed so I sent my sister in to order the crepes as it would have been too crowded for me to wear TLE on my back safely. TLE was getting fussy in her carrier and so I found I nice place to sit next to Sophie’s while waiting. It soon became obvious that TLE was hungry so I nursed her, using my jacket to partially cover her up. At some point, she got antsy about the cover on her head so I let it slide off.

My sister later told me that a guy in line at Sophie’s noticed that I was breastfeeding. He pointed it out to his girlfriend who commented, “I wouldn’t breastfeed in public. That’s so gross.” My sister was standing at the same angle as the girl who made the comment said it was obvious that I was nursing but it’s not like you could see anything.

I don’t consider myself a hardcore lactivist but I believe that my child has as much of a right to eat in public as anyone else does. If TLE is hungry, I’ll feed her. That would be true whether she was formula or breastfed. It just so happens that TLE is a breastfed baby so instead of being offered a bottle, I offer her my breast. (Or she’ll fuss and throw herself down to boob level, which is what happened while we were waiting.) Nursing covers don’t work for us; she likes looking around at the world and it is too much trouble for me to force her to be covered.

It burns me that people consider breastfeeding to be gross. What is so gross about it? Breasts are for feeding babies! ARGH!!

RAW Christmas memories

Posted by Michelle on Dec 26, 2008 in Photography, Techie Mama | 3 comments

Despite having had my dSLR for over 2 years, it has taken me until now to even begin experimenting with shooting in RAW. I knew the magic of shooting in RAW really lies in the post-processing power but I didn’t really appreciate it until I actually got a trial copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and saw what you could do with RAW. Here is a really good example of what you can save by shooting in RAW

The straight out of camera (SOOC) shot was completely underexposed — my flash was running out of battery and hadn’t recharged when I took this shot. A quick adjustment of the white balance in PSE while opening the original RAW .CR2 file completely saved this photo (as well as some other photos that suffered the same flash malfunction.) I will never go back to shooting in JPG ever again!