It's been a great four years, but it's time to move on to a bigger and better space. I've decided to merge my various musings, as it were, in one place, and under one name: Mandy's Motherhood Musings. There's no denying this whole motherhood thing is an unavoidable topic, and keeping up three separate blogs is becoming a headache. So, check out the new and improved musings over at Wordpress: mandysmusings.wordpress.com. I'll still be posting photos and videos on Liam's baby website, and I'll be posting with my sister on our joint blog. But you won't see any further posts at this address, nor on the blog page of Liam's site.

Nothing marks the beginning of spring to me like the sound of birds and neighbors streaming in through the windows. I have my mother to thank for that. To this day she throws open every available window at the first sign of seasonable weather. Liam and I were napping on the couch today, and I heard these comforting sounds, punctuated by the traffic on 495 just about a block away. I grew up near a highway, so I suppose those sounds are nostalgic for me, as well. Normally I have a fight on my hands with this many windows in the house open--James doesn't want any outside getting on him-- but with him in Texas, I spent the entire afternoon vacuuming, scrubbing, and repairing windows and window screens. Before you start imagining I'm some sort of ms-fix-it, I'll have you know I used duct tape. Hey, it's a rental, what else am I gonna use? I did come across something called <a href="http://shop.screenfixer.com/main.sc" target="_blank">Rad's Screen Tape</a>, which you can only order online. I may decide to give that a try if I get sick of looking at this butt ugly silver tape.

There is one downside to James not being here (well, of course there's more than one, but you know what I mean.) After all this work cleaning and opening windows, I'm afraid of few might be hard to close. These windows are old, probably the originals. In our many years together, James has become an expert on <i>closing</i> windows, lol.

Today I ventured to Woodside Deli, a place around the corner that my landlord recommended. The egg salad was ok -- a little heavy on the celery -- but I saw they have their own home-made crab cakes, so I think I'll give it another try next week. It's so close I could almost walk, though it would be a bit of a precarious walk going under the 495 overpass. But on a nice day like today, it would be good to stretch my legs.

The weather has improved so much, I was trying to think of a good outing for Liam and I on Saturday. On my way to the deli, I saw a sign. Literally -- it said Silver Spring Farmer's Market, opening this weekend! Ta-da! I've dreamed of taking my own little baby to the market, and here's my chance. If the weather holds out, Sunday I'm planning a trip with Julie to the Arboretum. She's quite the photographer, so I'm hoping she'll get in some good shots. I'll be bringing my new toy, the Flip. I already posted one video, and it was so fast and easy, I'm sure I'll be posting more.

My lovely sister Jill had a great idea -- let's start a joint blog! I'm not sure what sort of posting she had in mind, but I thought I'd do sort of a "what's on my brain" mostly pertaining to motherhood. Check it out here: http://jillandmandy.livejournal.com/

My entire career has been defined by decline. I graduated from journalism school in 2000 amid a dot-com bubble. People were making money hand over fist, especially in California. In Kansas City, where I made my home, it only took me a couple of months to land a job in the exact field I studied. I was the junior level art director at a bi-monthly publication with an art budget of about $3500 a month. I remember assisting at photo shoots, finding and working with illustrators, and buying up stock art.

Then the proverbial poop hit the fan. I was laid off in 2001, along with countless others in my company and industry. The magazine I worked for folded a year later. It just so happened that another magazine in our company was hiring just as I was laid off, so I was able to move to another staff. And I've been there ever since. I started as the junior art director in charge of one publication. I designed the cover and four feature spreads per month. We didn't have an art budget, so I had to rely on whatever stock art and supplied art I could get for free.

Fast forward eight years. Until just recently I was senior art director of three publications, each of which has one cover and one feature spread. Now two of my magazines have merged, and we're getting ready to launch an entirely new website. The web has changed everything for our industry. When I first started, the company ran our website (which was incredibly ugly), and it just contained re-purposed material from the magazine. Now, in addition to putting up content from the magazine, our staff produces audio and video podcasts, myriad e-newsletters, and other online content, in addition to our print duties. The new site is going to have a social networking component, something that will hopefully enable us to compete in our dwindling market. Ad revenues for online content are severely less than in the print model, and we're expected to do more work for less money. In this climate, those of us in journalism feel lucky that we have a job at all. Gone are the days of hundreds of reporters pounding the pavement, like the days of my grandfather, who was a journalist during its heyday. Sadly, things are only going to get worse. But I have hope -- we're adapting, learning new skills, finding new definitions of our job titles, and finding ways to connect to our readers like never before. With any luck we'll weather this storm.

It's been a busy week. I've got two books shipping this week, and my freelance help stops tomorrow. We're launching a new design for one of my titles, simultaneously a fun challenge and annoyingly stressful. Our company reorg left one in our ranks unemployed, sadly. There were many more let go in our California office, but I didn't know them. The HenchAussie is now my boss -- a little strange as she's five years my junior in age and experience, but she's totally awesome, so I don't mind. As long as I get my company reimbursements approved on time, I'm a happy camper. In the middle of all of this madness I also have to get my Maryland tags (they expire, uhhhh, today, oops), and I have to hire a nanny. We've got a couple of interviews scheduled for this week, and we've got a couple more potentials lined up for the weekend. Tonight's interview bailed -- she drove up from Alexandria and discovered the commute was over an hour. I don't blame her. Working from home has totally spoiled me for commuting.

To top things off, James has to leave for Dallas in the morning, and he'll be gone until Friday. A couple of James's colleagues are having health issues, so he's scrambling to fill in. It's looking likely he'll be gone for another two weeks in mid-April, as well. Thankfully we've been blessed with a fairly easy child. Aside from some fussiness at the bottle, Liam has been easy to calm, and easy to put to bed. He's been sleeping through the night for the most part, too. It's still hard work doing this on my own, but not impossible. There's a hiring freeze right now, so we'll have to sit tight until they start posting new jobs on USAjobs. In the meantime, we're hoping his travel schedule will let up once his co-workers are on the mend.

Last night the final episode of Battlestar Galactica aired, and I have to say, what an amazing series this is! I initially had my doubts -- the name sounds so geeky and 70s -- but the creators of this show spun an old idea into something new, and took sci fi to a whole new level. As they say, everything has happened before, and it will happen again. The whole series makes a complete circle, and it all comes together wonderfully at the end. I'm pretty sure all of my friends who used to watch this show are now waiting for the DVD to see the final season, so I won't spoil anything here. But the minute any of you finishes it, you better email me so we can talk about it. I mean it! And if anyone out there hasn't seen it, rent it. You'll thank me later.

Talk of the Nation inspires another blog post...today they had Mike Berbiglia on talking about sleep walking, and people were calling in with their funny sleep walking stories. Too bad it was a podcast, or I would have called in myself. According to my mom, I started sleep walking when I was just three or four years old, and I did it all the way through college. Now that I'm older, I'm apparently too lazy to walk, but not too lazy to talk. I remember my house mates from college telling me years after i'd moved out that I yelled in my sleep almost every night. I must have been a joy to live with, heh.

When I was a kid I had this bad habit of sleep walking about an hour or two after I'd fallen asleep, so my parents witnessed most of my episodes. One night I marched right past my mom and into the kitchen, where I started rustling around with the bread and peanut butter. Mom asked me what I was doing, to which I replied, "Making lunch." Yeah, clearly I was not awake. Another time I marched right past her to the front door and proceeded to put on my coat. Again, mom asks what I was doing, and i replied, "Going out to wait for the bus." It was winter, so thankfully she was there to stop me.

In high school I got more devious. My dad used to drive me to school in the morning, and one night I frantically woke him up claiming we were late. He got up, started his coffee, and in a bleary daze did a double-take at the clock. It was about 1:30 in the morning! He discovered me fast asleep in my room, none the wiser. He loves telling that story, heh. On a vacation in DC when I was 15, I tried to sleep walk right out of our hotel room. Thankfully my dad heard me and stopped me. He told me to go back to bed, the standard parental reply when I was in that state, so I took my pillow, which for some reason I had in hand, and tried to get into mom and dad's bed. "Wrong bed," he said wryly, so I took my pillow, started toward my bed, and went right past it and into the bathroom. That's when I woke up, my head inches from a mirror. Quite disorienting, to say the least, but this wasn't my first time to wake up standing up, not sure how I got there.

In college the frequency lessened, but hilarity ensued. My first night in the dorm I told my roommate, who I had just met, that I should probably take the bottom bunk because I sleep walk. She was skeptical, but agreed to the arrangement. Thankfully she did -- she woke with a start and saw me crouched over her alarm clock on the desk, hitting it and yelling at it. How Embarrassing.

My days are filled with feeding, burping, changing, and rocking the baby to sleep. Over and over in roughly that order. These tasks would become utterly mundane if I didn't have NPR podcasts and a DVR working overtime. During the night times and early mornings I listen to This American Life, Fresh Air, Movies, and Talk of the Nation. This episode, hosted by author Richard Florida about his recent article in The Atlantic was particularly poignant. While James and I eke out a living amid the rising costs of raising a child, we're faced with an entirely new shift in thinking about The American Dream. Since our marriage in 2004 we've socked away money intended for a down payment on a house. Our intentions at home-ownership thwarted by our recent move from KC to DC, we've been looking for ways to start saving again so we can buy property here. In the meantime we're renting a great house that's within walking distance to the metro, close to our friends, right next to the highway, and surrounded by parks, hiking trails, and a surprising amount of green space. I'm beginning to think, after listening to this podcast and reading the Atlantic article, the "in the meantime" isn't where renting should be relegated. Renting apartments and houses over the past ten years has afforded us the flexibility to move to new cities, live in areas we might not ordinarily be able to afford to buy, and avoid pesky property taxes. When something breaks (or the pipes burst, as they did this winter), we call the landlord, and he foots the bill for the repairs. Sure, we can't renovate, and we're unlikely to paint because we'll just have to paint again when we move. But, honestly, we don't aspire to do either of those things. With the economy and the housing market in shambles, you'd think it would be a good time to buy. But we're better served living close to mass transit and owning only one car -- something I doubt we could do in a house in our price range. We've got a two-year lease on our current house, and something tells me we'll be extending our stay for quite some time.

During the day and evening leading up to Liam's bedtime I'm either working on the computer during his cat naps(lately researching nanny stuff) or watching lots of TV. I'm actually surprised by the number of shows I've been watching. Something that will likely taper off once Liam starts becoming more active. He's still sleeping a lot these days, and he loves to be held. and i love to cuddle him. So we curl up on the couch and watch Big Love, Brothers & Sisters, Lost, Burn Notice, Life on Mars, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, ER, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Battlestar Galactica (sadly, the last season) and Joss Whedon's new offering, Dollhouse. On that note, I have to mention that I'm not sure how much longer I'll be watching that last one. Whedon is responsible for my favorite show of all time, Firefly, and the creativity behind Dr. Horrible (be sure to watch the "Commentary the Musical" on the DVD -- so worth it). But the three episodes of Dollhouse I've seen have been very disappointing. Not only is the timeline confusing, but the plot is kind of hokey. James and I find ourselves looking at each other incredulously as the main character very blandly switches from one character to another. She's supposed to be imprinted with different identities, but so far they've been a slight variation on "hot girl/secret agent". I've discovered a new show on Showtime, United States of Tara (incidentally, set in Overland Park, KS), which stars Toni Collett as a suburban mom with multiple personalities. Now here's some good acting. I would have liked to have seen something on par with Collett's performance in Whedon's new show. But I have a feeling Dollhouse will be short-lived, and unless it picks up in the next couple of episodes, I'm deleting it from my lineup.

Liam and I had a lunchtime adventure today, venturing out to Sunshine, MD, to try the famous Sunshine Burger. Recommended by our nurse during our last hospital stay (Holy Cross really does have the most friendly staff), we took advantage of the unusually warm February day and drove the 30 minutes north to an easily-to-overlook gas station. Thankfully Nurse Emily was very precise with her description of the place, so we knew this had to be it. In the back of this crowded, dusty convenience store stood a small grill, five or so seats at the counter, and a tiny table for patrons. We waited our turn while customers aww'd over Liam. It was definitely worth the drive and wait -- a very tasty burger indeed. Enough to make it to #9 on my Top 10 Burgers list. Thanks, Nurse Emily!