• adventures in babysitting,  Bug,  movies,  party party

    Rolly Rolly Merbaby

    Pop some popcorn, it’s time for another Baby Bug home movie (4.75 mb quicktime)! Groan, hiss… I know, I know…. Home movies suck. Especially ones with me starring as the high pitched annoying mouse voice. This one is long too. I just couldn’t figure out where to edit it and then I just got lazy and figured I’d put a big disclaimer on the front end saying you don’t have to click on it. It’s your choice and really I mostly made this movie for the grandparents who appreciate these things. Or at least they lead me to believe they do. My mom recently had her phone disconnected. Maybe she got tired of me calling every day with the latest update on baby drool.

    I was going to save this for Baby Bug’s three month movie (that’s my plan, make a movie every month) but I couldn’t wait. It’s just too big of news to wait. She’s rolling over! Sort of. With a little help from mom. Just a little push, it’s hardly cheating.

    She’s so amazing these days. Between the buh-bbb-buh-buh blowing spit bubbles and the pterodactyl shrieks that clearly say “Mom! Rescue me from Dad who doesn’t have a clue!!” I am just overwhelmed with how brilliant she is. My little genius! And cute to boot! What am I going to do with myself? I’m completely and one hundred percent smitten with this little girl.

    She was really good at the birthday party yesterday. Everyone LOVED her mermaid costume. I think I’m going to find someone to manufacture them for me and go into the mer-tail business… or something. I have so many ideas.

    I wish I could be a professional idea popper. It would say that on my business card. Brenda Ponnay, professional idea popper. Then all I would have to do is sit around and think up ideas and maybe sketch them on paper so people could get them better. No worrying about capital or business plans or hiring and firing folks… just pure day dreaming up new stuff every day. That would be my dream job. Next to being a mom of course. Maybe I could do both.

    Enough about me. Baby Bug was a perfect mer-angel-baby yesterday. Except the part where she starting screaming while I was videotaping the birthday girl and now I’m going to have to do some extreme editing or find a really good sound track to mask out the merbaby shrieks. Thankfully I was there as a guest first and a video-girl second so there isn’t as much pressure to create the perfect birthday dvd this time. In fact they said they’d be okay if I took four months to produce it since I have next to no free time to work any more.

    It was really strange but good to be at the birthday party as a mom instead of my usual job as babysitter/photographer/videographer/girl-friday. I don’t think I mentioned it but this party was for Thing One, the little girl I used to babysit all the time. All these years I’ve been wishing I had a little girl like Thing One and now I do. Watching Thing One run around with all her little friends made me so excited for Baby Bug when she gets big enough to run around and play too. They are all going to be pals! There is only five years difference in their ages. That’s not too much. Maybe Thing One will babysit Baby Bug someday…it could happen.

    Thing One loves Baby Bug. She’s so good with her. Even though she was surrounded by friends and relatives, and plenty of fun things to do (like a woman who was hired to make mermaids out of balloons), Thing One spent a lot of time at my side holding Baby Bug’s hand as it hung down limply from Baby Bug’s sleeping perch in the sling. Later I decided to let Thing One hold Baby Bug and it was the cutest thing. Thing One is so gentle. Even with her cast. (She recently fell off her bed and broke her elbow.) She kept asking me if we should get Baby Bug a pillow and if we could put Baby Bug to sleep in her bed. I don’t remember being that interested in babies when I was her age. I guess Baby Bug is like holding a living, breathing doll.

    Kinda like how she is for me.

  • B reviews,  Bug

    the bug in the bugaboo

    Wow! Fifty-some comments on my merbaby post! Toby is going to accuse me of exploiting our child to gain popularity again. Really I’m not. I’m just sharing. It would be wrong to keep all that cuteness to myself, right? I don’t know, this is hard for me. I love blogging so much but I waffle on the subject of privacy. At what point am I exposing my baby to too much. As one friend put it, “it only takes one sicko”. But on the other hand, so much good has come from this website. The friends I’ve met, the gifts I’ve received for Baby Bug, the constant encouragement of all your positive comments… nothing but good has come from this site. Please say a prayer that it stays that way.

    Today I have some more cute pictures of Baby Bug. This time in the Bugaboo-mobile in the seated position. I’ve been itching to change out the bassinet to the seat for months. It just seems like it would be so much more fun for her to see where she’s going instead of laying down looking up at the sky all the time. I read the whole bugaboo manual and they recommend that you wait until your baby is six months old or able to hold their head up. Well, Baby Bug is only two months old but she can hold her head up all day long.

    Turns out maybe I should wait until she’s six months old. She was good for the first ten minutes but then she started crying. I think it was a little scary for her. Just too much stimulus at one time. Usually when we go walking, I put her in the sling facing towards me and she falls asleep. She likes to be constantly entertained but maybe looking at the great big world coming at you is just too much entertainment.

    While I’m talking about the bugaboo, I thought I should mention something that came up recently. As you know, I spent a fortune on this stroller and it should be perfect right? It should be dipped in gold for what I paid for it. Well, it is nearly perfect. I still feel it’s the best stroller out there for me because it’s so versatile BUT… lately my wonder bugaboo had a problem. It veered.

    Veering is not a good thing. Especially if you’re the stereotypical Newport Nancy type mom (like I try not to be but end up being anyway) with my starbucks in one hand and my cell phone in the other and my elbow pushing the stroller. I usually don’t use my elbow to push the stroller but I could. I love it that I can maneuver this thing with my pinky finger if I want to. So when it started veering to the left, I was quite distressed.

    I thought maybe it was my fault because I use this stroller every day. I go over rocks, up and down curbs, through mud and grime and often sideways across driveways that slant at an angle. Maybe it was my fault for driving it so hard. Maybe I tweaked the frame. But really, shouldn’t an $800 stroller be able to handle a little tweaking?

    I was so bummed and embarrassed and disappointed. I was going to just keep it to myself and keep on pushing my stroller that always wanted to go left. I figured I’d just get really buff in one arm for always trying to correct for the veer. But a friend told me I had to take it back. I either had to take it up with Bugaboo Corporate or take it back to the store.

    Resigned, I dug out my warranty card (that I never filled out, surprise surprise) and started filling it out. Then I came to the spot where you are supposed to put in the serial number and I couldn’t find a serial number anywhere. So I called up BabyStyle (the store I bought it at) and asked them. While the sales girl looked the info up for me, I told her about my little veering problem.

    Well, guess what! The sales girl told me to bring it right in for a new chassis! I didn’t have to take it up with Bugaboo. The store handled it, no questions asked. They didn’t care that I had spilled coffee down one side. They didn’t mind the rocks and grime stuck in the tire tread. They just took my left-favoring chassis and gave me a new one right off the sales floor.

    The woman helping me said I was the second person to bring my Bugaboo back for a veering problem. I’m thinking Bugaboo might have a design flaw. So if you’re thinking of purchasing a Bugaboo (and I still strongly recommend it. I love it love it love it.) please check it first. The best way to check it is to give the stroller a little push forward on a level surface and watch it. A good stroller should coast a few feet straight without turning left or right. Mine took an obvious turn to the left and almost knocked a display of stuffed animals over.

    But now I have a new chassis and it works perfectly.


    All’s well that ends well.

    p.s. The hand pushing the stroller is Baby Bug’s grandma’s hand not mine. Just in case you were wondering.