Good thing I’m on a diet

You know that scene in Caddyshack where a kid throws a Baby Ruth candy bar into the pool and gradually people in the water start to notice it and Jaws music is playing and the people scream and scramble out of the water like they’re fleeing a great white shark? Well, last night the same thing happened except that it was our bathtub, there were two kids in it, and it wasn’t a candy bar. The real thing.

The main lesson to be learned from this psychologically-scarring experience: Always verify the status of the Number 2 situation before attempting a bath. We hadn’t had this happen to us in the 3.3 years that we’ve had children and we (and by “we” I mean not me) were a bit too quick to get the kids away from the dinner table and into the bath. After Jason took them upstairs, I called the babysitter (I was out of the house yesterday when she ended her shift) to find out how the day went. I now realize that just as she was telling me No, the kids didn’t poop all day, one of them was in fact taking care of business in the bathtub. I started heading upstairs, and as I approached the door I heard Jason saying “We need to get out of the tub! We need to get out of the tub! E!!” I entered to find both kids standing on the bathmat and the tub littered with bath toys and at the bottom, a poop.

I couldn’t even move for a good ten seconds… Who did it, and did they still need to go more? Our son upon (urgent yet blame-free) questioning said he did it, so I tried to get him to sit on the potty but that just made him upset. The baby just held onto my leg. Finally Jason got the kids in the shower and washed them each several times. I dealt with the mess, threw out most of the bath toys, the bath mat, and scrubbed the tub repeatedly.

In the end, I’m 95% sure it was the baby, for reasons I won’t get into. Plus while I was putting our son to bed, I asked him again who had pooped in the bathtub, and this time he said his sister did it. We were careful at all times not to sound too agitated — the kids even had fun in the shower — so I don’t think he had any motivation to lie. After the kids went to bed I cleaned and disinfected some more, and the bathroom is now spotless and according to the labels, 99.999% germ free. You could even eat in there, although it will be a long time before I ever look at a candybar again.

Posted by Erin 10.Jan.08 Parenting Read more Comments (2)

Holiday Leftovers

Our freezer runneth over… I always do more Christmas baking than is reasonable for a family of 4 where no one really eats any sweets. But this year my sister and her family were going to be here and the anticipation of having a houseful of people around the holidays messed with my judgment. Now the guests have all left with barely a dent in the stash, and Jason and I are both on diets, to use the term rather loosely. He’s not eating any more cookies, and now that the festive tins on the countertop are empty, I don’t plan on opening up any more. If the kids each get one cookie every other night or so, we should finish them by late spring. Of course, Jason and I could fall off the wagon and pull that date in by a month with little effort.

Call it a Festivus Miracle, but one really nice surprise the past couple of weeks was that December site traffic was up despite the holidays. It’s been a year since we decided to quit our jobs, so seeing the continued growth is encouraging. Anyway, I’ve been pre-occupied with the holidays, the children (no pre-school or nanny for two weeks), and the family visit for the past month, so next week I’m looking forward to getting back to the routine. One change from 2007 is that we’re down to one babysitter again, so until the toddler goes to pre-school I’ll be with her an extra morning a week. But I’ve got a Blackberry now and the kids are at the stage where on occasion they’re able to play|fight together with mildly distracted adult supervision for longer periods of time. They’re united in their love of an afternoon snack, so sitting them down with a bowl of crackers gets me a good 15 minutes, enough for a few emails or calls. And I suppose if I get desperate, there’s always the cookie stash.

Posted by Erin 04.Jan.08 Work-life Read more Comments (0)

Inflationary Incentives

We’ve been potty training our son for several months, an experience that has made us question our parenting skills and inability to outwit a 3-year-old. Initially we started out following an approach that allowed two weeks for practice, then advocated a kind of cold-turkey stance: underwear only (except when sleeping) and no reminders to Go Potty. If he has an accident, very calmly let him stay wet for a bit and then get the child to undress himself. No rewards, no panic ever. What we didn’t expect was that our son had no problem staying wet, and no interest in undressing himself. So what was supposed to remove the control issue over whether or not he has to go potty, turned into major battles over him staying in the bathroom and taking off wet clothes. Nightmarish scenario for two germophobic (yes, urine is sterile but it’s still gross) type-A parents with a 1-year-old toddling around. (I’ll note here that his pre-school does not do diapers, and we’re all happy with the school so switching programs is not an option.)

After several long days of no progress whatsoever (it’s supposed to take 3 accidents before they decide, wait a second, it’s a whole lot easier to just go sit on the potty) and near-flooding of our house with pee, we switched to offering M&M’s as a reward. I wasn’t even sure he would like them since he’d never had one. No worries there. Pretty quickly the price of poop went up to 5 M&M’s, so realistically each time he did a number 2, he’d get 6, as he figured out himself. I was excited that he could do basic math, so I didn’t argue. A couple of months later, however, he would still show very little interest in telling us when he had to go to the bathroom.

I was worried about our seeming lack of progress, so I asked our pediatrician about it, and he reassured me that 3 to 3.5 years old is normal for boys, and once he decides he’s ready, it’ll happen. He advised against any pressure other than encouragement and rewards, and suggested stickers, which for his own child was all the motivation he needed to take over the potty training himself. So I bought stickers, made a chart, and showed it to our son and said when he fills it out, we’d go to the hobby farm and ride a pony. He was excited by this and seemed to understand the idea of having a goal.

I thought for sure this was the tipping point, and now with the incentives properly in place, we would simply respond to our son’s requests to go potty and be on time for all of our outings. I was wrong. There is definitely less drama, thankfully, but we’re still a ways away, and he doesn’t seem that motivated to fill out the chart. I have caught myself offering him an additional M&M for getting off the potty quickly and not requiring a story, and giving in to a request (demand?) for M&M’s in addition to stickers. I’m hoping he’s potty trained before we get to the point where I’m offering the pony itself.

Posted by Erin 08.Nov.07 Parenting Read more Comments (2)

Searching for Esther C.

Today I had coffee with a fellow Yale grad, Joe Ross of Lehman Brothers. We didn’t know each other at the time but he got in touch via Facebook, and so here we were having coffee. We did know and then lost contact with some of the same people, however, one of them being Esther C. She’s now a doctor at Yale Medical Center, so on my list of things to do before the end of the year is to get in touch with her.

Joe’s a busy guy what with the investment banking job (he’s in the internet group), family, and various interests, and I had exactly 50 minutes to have coffee, return a small fortune in birthday party supplies that were purchased in a fit of anxiety and indecision, and get to Nordstroms to pick up jeans from alterations in time to go to the Warriors’ season opener. But we did manage to chat about what we’ve been doing in the decade-plus since we graduated, how Ballhype and ShowHype got off the ground, and what makes investment banking better than practicing law. Good stuff. Incidentally, Joe is organizing a networking group for local Yalie entrepreneurs. I think I may have been the first recruit, but if anyone fits the bill and wants to meet up next time, let me know.

Posted by Erin 30.Oct.07 People I know Read more Comments (0)

ShowHype

Tonight we opened up a site that we’ve been working on for the past couple of months: ShowHype, the web’s best place to find news and video about entertainment. When we considered possible vertical extensions of Ballhype, celebrity gossip and entertainment news made the most sense because

When we launched Ballhype, we had strong ties to some top sports bloggers, and were acquainted with many more. We also had the benefit of two months of closed beta testing to build relationships with a core group of users. There is no doubt that our success has been due in large part to their support. With ShowHype, we don’t have a huge network of entertainment bloggers who are ready to sound the trumpets.

Where Ballhype came flying out of the gate due to a great deal of initial publicity, then found its footing over the next couple of weeks, ultimately growing at an average of 50% each month, I predict ShowHype will have a smaller launch and take a couple of months to get the same level of acceptance among entertainment bloggers.

Of course, one big advantage with this launch is that we have a community of users who are used to voting and commenting on stories. The question is how many of them do we get to follow us to Hollywood?

Posted by Erin 14.Oct.07 Milestones, ShowHype Read more Comment (1)

Stuck at the top

We’re two days away from a big launch, and it feels like it did back in March. Not quite as nerve-wracking, but I’m starting to get butterflies and having trouble not obsessively checking the site and my email every few minutes.

Thankfully, the weekend arrived and forced us to get away from the office for a while to take the kids out. We went to one of those temporary pumpkin patches that pop up on El Camino, the ones that will in two months’ time turn into suburban Christmas tree farms. For us, the attraction wasn’t so much the pumpkins but the bounce houses. Last week we visited one that had 5 different bounce houses, and the price of admission was only $8 for a half hour - plus the baby gets in free. I don’t see how they can make enough money - the energy cost for those bounce houses has to be pretty high, and there never seem to be very many people there. Of course, we don’t go at peak times. This morning we showed up at 10am, and the tarp covering the ground was wet from last night’s rain. The guy who runs the place told us that he had wiped down the bounce houses prior to deflating them last night, but the water seeps in once you blow them back up. Sure enough, if you looked at the seams of the jumpers, there was water bubbling in through every crack.

The water made the younger one kind of nervous, but our son still had a blast running around and jumping. He spent most of his time at the bottom of one of those giant slides, jumping around and watching the older boys climb the stairs and slide down. He would occasionally make an attempt at scaling the steps, then change his mind after 10 feet or so. Finally he plucked up enough courage when there wasn’t anyone else around, and made it all the way to the top. At which point he started calling out for one of us to come up and get him. We waited a while, calling encouragement to him, but he just kept pacing back and forth at the top of the slide. He was so far we couldn’t actually hear what he was saying, but we got the meaning. The pumpkin patch rules prohibit parents from getting on the slide so we had to send the guy manning the checkin to go rescue him. You could see the expression on our son’s face as this friendly stranger made his way up the steps, from wary curiosity to hell no, get away from me! The man did succeed in getting them both down the slide, to the cheers of now a small crowd. On the way home in the car, we just told him how brave he was for climbing up the big slide. Maybe next time he’ll decide to come down on his own.

Posted by Erin 13.Oct.07 Parenting Read more Comments (0)

Nanny search resumes

We’re back to interviewing nannies again. Having been through 2 nannies in the past couple of years and interviewed dozens more, I’m not terribly thrilled about hiring a new one. I know there are great nannies out there — it’s just that they seem to already work for my friends. At least with us working out of the house, I’ll be able to keep close tabs on what’s going on. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled with that.

Hiring a new nanny is kind of like dating. You learn from each breakup more about what you’re looking for, and how to discern the canned answer from the genuine response. I made an offer to a nanny two weeks ago, which she was very pleased to accept until we reached a breaking point in the negotiations. She did not want to work when the kids were sick, and I didn’t see the point in having a nanny if there wasn’t someone to watch them when they’re sick, which is almost every other day from November to March. On top of that, she expected to be paid anyway, and not out of accrued personal time.

This week we had another candidate work three days with us, and I was about to make her an offer when she told me this morning that she doesn’t think she can work for us as much as we need. Now I’m trying to figure out how to patch together enough childcare between two sitters, but worrying about so much disruption to the children’s routines, and feeling extremely frustrated by this process.

When I get to the point where I’m ready to give up, I have to remember that at at least with Ballhype, I have a very flexible schedule which gives me more time with our kids than most working parents get, and that was one of the objectives of this project in the first place.

Posted by Erin 08.Oct.07 Parenting Read more Comments (0)

my journey

This morning the postman delivered a “my journey” box from Pampers, covered with a photo of a pregnant woman at her baby shower. I had signed up at Pampers.com three years ago when I had our first child because I read a tip somewhere that you could get coupons for free diapers, which turned out not to be true.

Contents of this particular promotional gift box:

From the my journey booklet that accompanied these goodies, I gather that Pampers thinks that I’m still pregnant. Or perhaps they think I’m due to get pregnant again. I know Procter & Gamble tests the hell out of everything, so I’m having trouble imagining the focus group of pregnant women who informed the moderator that what would be really helpful to them is a duster, deodorant, and a DVD of some soap opera stars.

Posted by Erin 05.Sep.07 Random stuff that comes in the mail Read more Comments (0)

Add these to our Holiday gift basket list

Today we set another new record for traffic on Ballhype. The fun part about this business is that you never know what the next day’s big story is going to be. We certainly didn’t expect Miss South Carolina’s eloquent response to a question on the sad state of the American education system (solution: more maps) to be the number one story for most of the day. In the sports world today, no single national story grabbed everyone’s attention like a dog fighting or referee scandal, but site activity in general is picking up quite a bit as we head into football season and people return from their summer vacations.

So thank you Miss South Carolina, Nani, Babalu, and Brett Myers. You’ve made our day.

Posted by Erin 27.Aug.07 Milestones Read more Comments (0)

Family Vacation

We just got back from Minnesota, where most of my family lives, and omg was it hot! The 100% humidity was something else too. Great to see the family again, and in particular to see how much fun the kids had playing with their cousins, but we’re relieved to be home, mainly because they didn’t sleep well on this trip. After a couple of nights with constant waking and crying, we decided to cancel our upcoming Tahoe vacation, which is good because the cabin didn’t have internet access so we were going to rely on one of those cell-phone plug-in thingies for your laptop.

Thank god for high-speed wireless, which enabled Jason at least to work while I tried to keep our children from chasing my sister’s dog. Actually we managed to have a lot of fun too - we went to two water parks (why don’t we have these on the peninsula??), the Mall of America amusement park, played baseball in the yard, and ate a lot. Also thanks to SG from the now tragically-named iheartkg, we met a group of local bloggers at a Minneapolis sports bar. Fortunately, Randball brought his camera and captured the moment for posterity.

Posted by Erin 17.Aug.07 Bloggers, Travel Read more Comments (0)

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