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Corbin is at the size where we need to consider moving him to a booster car seat. California Law allows children over 40 pounds to use a booster seat used with lap and shoulder belts. He can’t use just the lap and shoulder belts until he is 60 pounds. At his last appointment, he weighed in at 33 pounds and 37 inches. Now he is currently in the Britax Boulevard which is rated up to 65 pounds and a standing height of 49 inches, so he still has room to grow but Benjamin probably won’t last as long in his car seat.

Benjamin is using Corbin’s [now-discontinued*] Britax Companion infant carrier and while he easily fits, he doesn’t seem to enjoy it the way Corbin did. We’re not sure why, but we suspect he gets too hot because the material doesn’t “breath” enough for him. Corbin loved it when he had it but he was also a winter baby so the extra heat may have been good to him. Corbin also outgrew it around the 6 month mark so never had to use it in the summer heat.

So…
While they both have room to grow, I’m thinking it may be a good idea to move Corbin up to a convertible booster like the Britax Frontier 85 Combination Booster Car Seat now, and move Benjamin into the Britax Boulevard. This should address a couple things;
1) Corbin is big enough to get into his seat by himself, he just has trouble climbing up and over the high-based seat. The Frontier has a lower base and no “wings” on the sides, just armrests.
2) Since we don’t carry Benjamin around in the infant carrier anyway, putting him in and taking him out won’t be much different than it is now, plus he likes to be more upright than the infant carrier allows. But the real benefit is that the car seat’s fabric will be more comfortable (in theory) and thus keep him cool enough to enjoy the ride.

Of course, safety is priority number one (which is why we’re willing to pay a premium), so we won’t make the switch unless everyone is physically ready, including us. Corbin (33 lbs) can already make the switch since the Frontier is rated for 25 to 85 pounds as a 5-point harness and 40 to 120 pounds as a belt-positioning booster seat. The Boulevard is rated 5 to 35 pounds rear-facing and 20 to 65 pounds forward-facing (and 1 year old) so Benjamin should be ready too.

We’ll conduct a couple of usability tests this week and see if it’s practical to make the switch, then we’ll decide if we move forward or rethink our strategy. In the mean time, take a look at the multiple positions of the Frontier 85 below. Oh, and if anyone is feeling extra benevolent, we like the “Canyon” color best.

The spelling of English is one of its most difficult aspect. It’s hard to say how many writers of English, native speakers or not, have at one time or another used one of the pair its/it’s in place of the other. – Education Bug

It’s is a contraction for it is or it has.
Its is a possessive pronoun meaning, more or less, of it or belonging to it.
And there is absolutely, positively, no such word as its’.

This has been the bane of my writing existence. Despite my earnest efforts to keep this rule, I have repeatedly failed to keep them straight. And as I’m sure you’ll notice (if you haven’t already) I typically get them wrong. In fact, I’m so confident that I’ve reversed this rule and almost never use the possessive form, that I could replace all my its with it’s and be 99% accurate – meaning I’m 99% wrong up ’till now. But have no fear I finally have the trick to remember them from now on.

The word “its” signifies possession, and needs no apostrophe, nor do yours, his, hers, theirs, and ours. So there you have it, a quick and easy way to check, if not remember, when to use its vs it’s (or is that it’s vs its). Either way, let me know if you catch me making this mistake so I can quickly cover up my ignorance.

Benjamin enjoys some personal time in the crib, chewing on an inch worm toy.

The Lamaze Musical Inchworm is a plush toy that’s perfect for playing and napping. Developed in conjunction with child development experts from Yale University, the Inchworm promotes mom and baby interaction, encourages tummy time fun, and supports healthy physical and sensory development.

In a strange twist of events, Benjamin later suffers the same fate as the inchworm.

I recently discovered something was wrong with my site. One of my most successful and popular posts was not getting much love. Worse than that, it was no longer on the top of the search engines for it’s keyword/phrase. Turns out the page in question wasn’t displaying correctly. In fact, it was pretty much a blank page. A little trial and error revealed the problem. A plugin I used to embed images into the post was not working right and thus messing up the whole page. Remove the offending image and the page displayed fine (minus the pretty picture). Problem is, I’ve used this plugin for quite some time and the problem exists on quite a few pages. What to do, what to do…

Kill it!

That’s right, I’ve made the hard choice of deactivating the plugin. Couple of reasons. One, it won’t support the next version of Gallery. Two, it doesn’t look like my web host is going to get better at PHP memory limits (I suspect this is the root problem). The issue now is, how to repair all the missing images. I’m not sure how that’s going to work but I’m going to try a couple things. But for now at least, all my pages will show up.

In the mean time, you could help by leaving a comment about the missing pictures when you find them so I can easily and quickly replace them with the built in image gallery. Look for random 4-digit numbers within any post and let me know what you find. Also, if you see any other problems, let me know about those too.

Want to help me get a jump start? Search for <WPG2> and leave a comment with the phrase “Kill It”. Comments will be edited or deleted after each page is fixed. By the way, you can also search for wpg2id (thanks Aylwin)

A little over a year ago, Google released an early preview of Google Voice, the web-based platform for managing your communications. They introduced one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, they finally opened up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required.

If you want to take advantage of this great, free service there’s a couple of things you’ll want to do…

First, get a Google Number. There’s more features this way and you can always start giving it out as your number or keep it secret for special people to use (your best friend, the cute guy/gal you just met or even when entering that radio station contest)

Second, pick a good number. Google lets you pick a number you like but with all the users out there, the good ones are all taken (sorry Jenny). The next best thing is to pick one that’s easy for you to remember. For example, if your number is 123-555-0123 then try and get something in your area code with XXX-0123 or try getting your exact number in a different area code (321-555-0123).

A good friend of ours gave us tickets to the San Diego Fair again and this time it was worth it. Last year, we went with a group of people which turns out not to be a such a good idea when they all have kids. Nobody can come to a consensus so we spend far too much time trying to decide what to do next. Like which animals to see, how long to see them and when and where to eat. Up to four people is a good size group and one of those people has to be the decider – that is, they make the decision when no one else can or will.

Julia and her mom took the boys to the fair on Tuesday with a couple of $3 tickets we picked up. They spent most of their time at the kiddie ride area (separate from the teen/drunk adult rides). Julia got some pictures on her cell phone and sent them to me to show how much fun they were having and how adventurous Corbin was now.

So when we went on Friday, we knew what to expect from Corbin. After passing through some of the animal paddocks and getting some semi-traditional fair food, we made our way to the kiddie rides. First up was the Bumber Boats, then the Safari Train. Other rides included the Whale ride, Nascar track, Handcar track, and these two, too.

Corbin and the Flying Tigers

You may recognize the song from the Flying Tigers ride as The Ballad of Snoopy Vs Red Baron by the Royal Guardsmen.

Corbin and the Caterpillar Coaster

So I’m about to upgrade my WordPress install to 3.0 which is supposed to be a very major release, aka – sure to foul things up, but I’m going ahead with the upgrade none the less. Unfortunately, my site may be down for a few minutes or a few hours (if it really blows up my site). One thing I have to do is disable plugins to make sure there’s enough memory for my massive site to upgrade (on my bargain web hosting). Wish me luck.

Update: Everything went smoothly except WPG2 which may be simply hitting the memory limit. I’ll work on it but I suspect this is the end of the road for WPG2. It’s not going to be updated for Gallery3 so I’ll be looking for another option soon anyways. Let me know if you see any problems or errors as you visit the site.