Ann Douglas: Parenting Expert, Author du Jour, Wonderwoman!
August 31, 2006
Having had two pregnancies almost back-to-back (my kids are just less than a year apart), I read a lot of books on the subject. My favorite pregnancy book was The Mother of All Pregnancy Books by Ann Douglas. It’s written in a conversational style and is probably the most thorough of all the pregnancy books I read (or started to read and then put down because they just didn’t measure up to this one!) Since then, I’ve picked up another of Ann Douglas’ titles, The Mother of All Toddler Books, and am about 90% through that one and just as impressed (and thankful!) as I was with her pregnancy book.
Not long ago, I became a lensmaster at Squidoo and much to my surprise, Ann happened upon my lens, What to Exclude When You’re Expecting (born from the article of the same name that I published here) and contacted me. To say I was honored that she enjoyed my silly little lens is an understatement!
Mrs. Douglas has penned 28 books - 28 books, people! - and has co-authored 2 books with John R. Sussman, M.D. She also writes children’s books and parenting articles, is a columnist, and has been featured in such high-profile publications as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Parents magazine. She has speaking engagements, teaches parenting courses and appears in radio, TV and live chat sessions regularly. Did I mention she is a mother of four children?
Okay, it’s official: ANN DOUGLAS IS A SUPERHERO!
If you’re pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or already a parent, I highly recommend that you add some of Ann’s work to your arsenal of parenting books:
- The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
- The Mother of All Pregnancy Organizers
- The Mother of All Toddler Books
- The Mother of All Baby Books
- The Mother of All Parenting Books
- Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler
- Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler
- The Unofficial Guide to Having a Baby
- The Unofficial Guide to Childcare
- Choosing Childcare for Dummies
- Trying Again: A Guide to Pregnancy After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss
You can read more about Ann Douglas at her website.
Here’s a massive list of articles - written by, contributed to, or written about Ann.
Check out Ann’s lenses at Squidoo for more great advice and parenting resources.
Ann also has an author profile page at Amazon, and a great blog!
Shop-Vac® 6 Gallon, 3 Peak HP Wet/Dry Vac
August 30, 2006
So what I want to know is… when did the Shop-Vac get so sexy? Look at it, all blue and silver and shapely!
Okay, I’ll stop and be serious. The Shop-Vac Wet/Dry vac is, after all, a serious piece of equipment. It’s small, portable and lightweight, so you can easily tote it around the house (or the shop, as the name implies) for quick pick-ups. It’s powerful enough to tackle bigger cleanup jobs. It’s versatile - again, as the name itself says - you can use it for wet or dry cleanup. It converts to a powerful blower when you attach the hose to a blower port on the rear.
Yes it does all of that, has a 6 gallon capacity (plenty for me, but you should note that there are many different capacities to choose from), is affordable, and did I mention it’s sexy?
So far I’ve used the Shop-Vac, which I’ve affectionately named R2 since it reminds me of R2D2, for dry cleanups, one of them fairly major. It’s super easy to move around with, thanks to the 6 foot power cord and smooth-rolling casters. The included attachments have proved to be sufficient for me thus far, though I may add additional attachments later (like a small round brush, crevice tool, and “claw” for auto vacuuming.) I was impressed with the quickness and ease of cleaning up a ton of sawdust, paint particles and other gunk. R2 even snagged some things I’d missed when picking up after a
toolbox tip-over - some straggling nails and screws. I’m glad the Shop-Vac caught them before one of my toddlers did!
To sum up, the Shop-Vac wet/dry vac looks great and works even better. As a dear old friend of mine would say, “that thing could suck the butt right out of a cat.”
Not the most professional observation, but you get the idea.
Price: $39.94
More info is available at Shop-Vac’s website
Purchased at Lowe’s
The Fix Chicks’ product reviews
August 30, 2006
The Fix Chicks are currently testing various DIY/home improvement products and are posting/will be posting detailed reviews on them here at our site.
I’m personally doing a major makeover this weekend with one of the products (can’t say any more than that right now) that I’m rather excited about, and I’ll be documenting the project and hopefully sharing it here next week.
If you’re a manufacturer, distributor or inventor of the next-big-thing in DIY and want The Fix Chicks to test and review your product before the eyes of our many readers, click here.
You’ll notice a new tab in the menu to the right (sidebar) for Product Reviews, or you can click here to check out the reviews we’ve already added.
ilo 1GB MP3 Player
August 18, 2006
Cool gadget alert!
If you’re looking to get into the world of MP3 players (I was late to the game, I admit), I can now personally recommend this nifty little ilo MP3 player from Wal-Mart.
So here are the product details with my commentary (because I love to make commentary!) in bold italic - which is quite ugly, I might add, but I think you can at least see what the marketing people wrote vs. what I wrote.
- Slim, compact digital audio MP3 player - it’s cute too!
- 1 GB storage capacity - mmm a yummy gigabyte
- Stores up to 480 songs - I will never have time to add that many
- Perfect companion for working out or sports activities with sport design with rubber grip - working out? yeah, or just listening while vacuuming, ’cause ya can
- Includes case and armband for protection and accessibility - case! armband!
- Solid state memory for skip free playback - no skips here
- Simple and intuitive menus for navigation and customizing your player - yeah the menus rock
- FM tuner with 20 presets and recording capability to record your favorite radio programs - if you’re into FM, ok
- Easy to use Voice Recording feature - i recorded. it worked.
- Up to 16 hours of battery life on one AAA alkaline battery - haven’t timed it, but this does seem about right
- Supports easy drag and drop song transfer from your PC - there is a learning curve if you’re new to players in general, but it’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it
- SD/MMC memory expansion slot (up to 1GB)
- USB 2.0 connection for hi-speed music transfers
- Screen display is black LCD with white lettering and a white backlight - again, cute! woo!
- Comes with 12 pre-loaded tracks - ugh, they SUCK! delete immediately!
The price is decent, and the player comes with 10 free music downloads from walmart.com, which is a nice little bonus.
One word of caution: THIS PLAYER IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ITUNES! I repeat, THIS PLAYER IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ITUNES! Once more, for the record: THIS PLAYER IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ITUNES!
So don’t go buy one and then yell at me, k?
No iTunes was no biggie for me, as I use Wal-Mart for music downloads anyway.
Did I mention they come in purdy colors?
And you can check out the great selection of tunes available for download right here:
Price: $69.84
Available (in multiple colors) from Wal-Mart.com
Who Squidoo? I do! Do you?
August 18, 2006
Squidoo is a newish online community where anyone can easily build a page - called a lens - on any topic, idea, product, or cause that he or she is passionate about. Lenses help their finders get a perspective they cannot get from computer-selected (and often irrelevant) search results.
People who create and maintain lenses at Squidoo are called lensmasters. Lensmasters share their knowledge and expertise, gain recognition for doing so, and can build traffic for their other online ventures as well.
The folks who founded Squidoo believe that when you go online, you don’t search, or find. You’re on a quest to make sense. You poke around here and there until you’re informed and ready to take some sort of action. The thing is, this takes a long time.
Squidoo harnesses the power of personal recommendation, so that you can easily find (or share!), in one place, what matters to you.
When I have an interest in a new subject, I obsessively research it to learn as much as I can about it, as fast as I can. It can get scary. 
Because I am quite resourceful and have a lot of interests, this means I have acquired a substantial amount of information and knowledge about many things. A lot of it is useless information, but what’s useless to me might be gold to someone else. So finding Squidoo is exciting to me, and I’m already obsessing over it.
My published lenses (so far):
- Art Cards: The ABCs of ATCs and ACEOs
- What to Exclude When You’re Expecting (sound familiar?)
- Tiki Art & Culture
- Tiki Music: Exotica
More Squidoo Goo - Help for Beginners
Here are some handy links to help get started and get the most out of your experience with Squidoo:
SquidBlog
Group blog maintained by the Squidoo Team
Lens of the Day Blog
Where Squidoo shows off what lensmasters do
Under the Sea: A (Budget) Baby/Toddler Room Makeover
August 18, 2006
We recently turned my son Kaleb’s room into a world of aquatic goodness. Poor Kaleb spent his first six months or so in what was previously my home office. We finally moved the boxes, desk, and computers out to give him his own space. But he was left with shoddy red walls (leftover from a very inexperienced paint job from when we first bought our home six years ago,) and a room that didn’t fit him or his personality.
While the Zanzibar decor we originally bought for his nursery was certainly cute, it began to feel unfitting and a little too “babyish” for a spunky toddler who thinks he’s one-going-on-four.
So with both toddlers at their grandparents’ for the weekend (thanks, Mom and Dad!), we embarked on an adventure that resulted in quite a transformation.
[Read more]
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