Remember back when ringtones were the cool new way to further announce our individuality to the world? I remember back when even having something like 20 different types of those mechanical ringtones on a cell phone was just all the rage, and with each new generation of cell phone came an exponential rise in the variety of tones available. We went from options like "Chimes low", "Chimes high", "Alert", "Bells", etc to a selection of just about every possible audible sound or collection of sounds a person could dream up. I hesitate to use the word music or musical ringtones here given some of the junk labeled as such...just think "Macarena" and you get my drift.
Anyway, the funny thing with ringtones is that no matter how cool, hip, or cutting-edge they are to their owner, there is nothing more embarrassing/annoying than having the ringer set to high and then having someone call the phone at an inopportune time, like in the middle of a professor's lecture or a group prayer. Or, say when you accidentally forget your phone in your kid's diaper bag and the nursery staff get to enjoy your "music" selection.
No, I was not the mom who left her phone in her child's bag, but I was one of the nursery staff in the 12-18 month class at church this morning that got to listen to what I guess is a popular tune on the radio (?) when one of the diaper bags came to life courtesy of a misplaced cell phone. The four of us adults in the room had finally gotten two very fussy little boys calmed down and all the kids in their seats for snack time. It was pleasantly and unusually quiet as the kids munched on goldfish for a while (a rare feat to manage with 10 of them), when very loudly and clear as day we heard something to the effect of, and this is a woman singing mind you, "I kissed a girl and I liked it", which repeated itself a few times as most ringtones do. Besides the fact it was totally random, I can't quite sum up our surprised reactions to that song blaring in a church nursery. I guess irony comes in there somewhere? I was just very thankful that the kids in our room were not quite to the repeat-everything-they-hear stage, or we would have had some major explaining to do to their parents, especially those of little girls! Yikes!
So just a friendly reminder that your ringtone does say a lot about you, and it might not really be the message you'd like people to get! And remember to consider your child's nursery staff in your selection of ringtones..."Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" works for me :)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Time for a change
The pregnancy hormones must be in full swing...I can't be satisfied with any of the blogger template choices at the moment! At least this one is a little easier to read...hmmm, this is probably going to change again...
The Lynn's have it...
After giving this some more thought, I think the Lynn's have it...Anna Lynn it is! Thanks for the input :)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Little Egg gets a big girl name
I mentioned back when we had our first ultrasound done for baby number two that Bob, true to his logical, software engineer roots, decided to give the baby the obvious but oh-so-bland name of "Little Egg". And no, we didn't really walk around referring to the baby that way, but it was very like Bob to come up with something so silly with a perfectly straight face...
I'm happy to announce that "Little Egg" has now graduated on to the much more appropriate name of Anna. We're still trying to decide on a middle name, probably something along the lines of Lynn, Katherine, or Elizabeth.
The usual question that follows somewhere in the name discussion are what factors did/did not go into the name selection. I admit that our choice of names (both Jack and Anna) aren't based on some noble reason like a family name passed down, though my mom's middle name is Ann. It's been our (ok, really my) attempt at lessening the fodder for the name calling games that will inevitably come during elementary school with the last name Looney.
With Jack I just wanted a simple, short, masculine boy name that wouldn't sound ridiculous at his high school graduation, but would look good on a business card someday. You know, the name Lancelot Looney just doesn't have quite the same ring as Jack Looney.
It's been harder this time with a girl name. I again wanted a nice, short name, preferably with just one syllable. Of course the name I really liked for a girl just happened to be Jill, but no way would I put my kids through Jack and Jill jokes above and beyond what they'll already hear with Looney. Then again, given the Looney moniker, people would probably cut me some slack if I had gone with Jill, right?
After ruling out Jill, I also ruled out a lot of other girl's names with the sound of "ee" on the end, like Riley, Natalie, etc., because I didn't want her first name to rhyme with her last name. I went through that in high school when I went by Katie (with a maiden name of Petree) and didn't like it much, so Katie got shortened to Kate in college. Anyway, eventually it was narrowed down to Anna, Jenna, or Paris (just kidding), and we know too many little Jenna's, so Anna began to slowly grow on us over the last month. And that's how Little Egg got her big girl name...
I'm happy to announce that "Little Egg" has now graduated on to the much more appropriate name of Anna. We're still trying to decide on a middle name, probably something along the lines of Lynn, Katherine, or Elizabeth.
The usual question that follows somewhere in the name discussion are what factors did/did not go into the name selection. I admit that our choice of names (both Jack and Anna) aren't based on some noble reason like a family name passed down, though my mom's middle name is Ann. It's been our (ok, really my) attempt at lessening the fodder for the name calling games that will inevitably come during elementary school with the last name Looney.
With Jack I just wanted a simple, short, masculine boy name that wouldn't sound ridiculous at his high school graduation, but would look good on a business card someday. You know, the name Lancelot Looney just doesn't have quite the same ring as Jack Looney.
It's been harder this time with a girl name. I again wanted a nice, short name, preferably with just one syllable. Of course the name I really liked for a girl just happened to be Jill, but no way would I put my kids through Jack and Jill jokes above and beyond what they'll already hear with Looney. Then again, given the Looney moniker, people would probably cut me some slack if I had gone with Jill, right?
After ruling out Jill, I also ruled out a lot of other girl's names with the sound of "ee" on the end, like Riley, Natalie, etc., because I didn't want her first name to rhyme with her last name. I went through that in high school when I went by Katie (with a maiden name of Petree) and didn't like it much, so Katie got shortened to Kate in college. Anyway, eventually it was narrowed down to Anna, Jenna, or Paris (just kidding), and we know too many little Jenna's, so Anna began to slowly grow on us over the last month. And that's how Little Egg got her big girl name...
Friday, July 11, 2008
Too bad vacations end!
We had a great time relaxing up in the cooler weather of Bristol, VA last week with Bob's mom and dad. Very pretty country out in Tennessee and western Virginia to say the least...I was surprised at how nice northern Alabama was as well once you start to hit the foothills of the Smokies north of Birmingham. My only complaint was the stretch of I-10 just east of Beaumont that was shut down to one lane on a Friday afternoon before a holiday. And when I say one lane, I mean one lane for BOTH directions. We moved only a few miles in an hour as the traffic alternated between west and east bound over that one lane. Pure genius on someone's part...luckily that genius was not the one on duty when we came back through because the traffic flowed smoothly.Jack held up like a trooper. 2 days of 7-9 hour car rides going there and coming back are a lot for anyone, but especially an 18-month old. It helped if one of us sat in the back passenger seat next to him for some entertainment value, as did an occasional viewing of Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and the Incredibles.
We went to Bays Mountain National Park in Tennessee one morning, which was gorgeous. They have some small animal exhibits that were great for Jack. The other highlight was the Bristol 4th of July parade (held on the 5th?). We got there 15 mins before the parade started and still got a great spot up front along the street.
Small town parades are a lot of fun because of the smaller crowds. Jack got a bird's eye view of the floats, fire trucks, and other noisy vehicles coming down the main drag through town. Trying to attend a parade in downtown Houston would be maddening...you'd have to arrive hours in advance and still probably wouldn't get a good view of the street. Plus, for a pregnant woman, it was nice to be able to locate a bathroom quickly after the parade had finished! Jack waved at everything...
Haley, our dachshund, went to the "Pet Hotel and Spa", or my parent's house as Bob likes to call it, for some R&R while we were gone....as if she doesn't get enough R&R napping all day?
The only downside to vacations is that they end and it's catch up time back in the daily grind :)
Friday, June 27, 2008
Leaving on a jet plane...I mean in a minivan....
Well, leaving on a jet plane definitely sounds more glamorous than driving a minivan, but we're taking the minivan out on it's first official roadtrip pretty soon. Plane prices were just too high this time around to fly out to Virginia to see Bob's parents for some vacation, so we've resorted to driving!
We're looking at about a 17 hour drive total, broken up over a few days. This will be a test of our patience (and Jack's!) for sure with an 18 month old in a car seat for that long. A change of scenery is always nice though, so I'm willing to do what it takes for a nice vacation to a cooler climate :) Jack thinks he was helping out in this picture by carrying his diaper pack around after sitting on top of it like a chair.
Will try to update the blog, but it may be sparse for a while until we get back!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
You don't ask, you don't get
I didn't label this a "Random Thought" because it does pertain somewhat to motherhood...at least becoming a mom has caused me to learn more about the health care industry than I ever knew before, and the more I learn the more I shake my head. Of course I'm no expert in this field, preferring instead to watch the weather outside, but when you receive a bill for some medical related expense just about every day in the mail (or so it seems), you're kinda forced to sit up and take notice about why your cash flow suddenly dries up....
Backing up a little bit, when we were in Virginia, my husband worked for a large company with pretty good health insurance options. Our premium per month was reasonable but not cheap, and I had great maternity coverage when I was pregnant with Jack. In fact I think from start to finish, including all the office visits, test, ultrasounds, hospital delivery with epidural, and post-natal checkups, we paid somewhere between $2oo to $300 all thanks to our insurance, even though in some sense we were paying for more of those costs through our premium every month (of which Bob's company paid a pretty good slice).
So fast forward to this baby, and things aren't so rosy for our pocketbook this time around. Bob works for a very small company now that does not offer health insurance. They do help with a Flexible Spending Account and a certain amount per month to help us cover the cost of our own individual insurance plan, but we don't have nearly the coverage with this plan that we did with the prior insurance plan. In fact we have NO maternity coverage at all, and cannot even use maternity expenses to meet our deductible. Bob said apparently most individual insurance plans in TX don't offer maternity coverage...I guess no one figured people in Texas might want to have children without having to shell out thousands to do so?
The one good thing (and in another way not so good) is that since we don't have coverage for all of these maternity bills, we can ask for a cash discount. As our realtor reminded us when we bought our house, "You don't ask, you don't get!" I can't tell you how much we've saved by doing this. For example...if we had maternity coverage, my last ultrasound would have been billed to our insurance company for $500. We were told this was amount we owed out of pocket. Since we asked for the discount, instead of paying $500, it ended up being somewhere closer to $200! Same thing with some of the standard testing I had done at the beginning of my pregnancy...we got 50% knocked off the bill because we were paying in cash.
So the "in another way not so good part" comes in when we started thinking about the discrepancy between what we've paid in cash and what would have been billed to an insurance company. In the case of the ultrasound, about $300! Either way, there was no difference in the level of service performed whether we paid for cash or had insurance, so why is the price jacked up over 100%? If the price for us was around $200, which was probably a better reflection of the true cost of the service anyway, why isn't that the price billed to the insurance company? No wonder insurance premiums are so high! Yeesh!!!
I'd like to say I'll step down off my soapboax now, but since this problem doesn't appear likely to go away anytime soon, I might be up here awhile...
Backing up a little bit, when we were in Virginia, my husband worked for a large company with pretty good health insurance options. Our premium per month was reasonable but not cheap, and I had great maternity coverage when I was pregnant with Jack. In fact I think from start to finish, including all the office visits, test, ultrasounds, hospital delivery with epidural, and post-natal checkups, we paid somewhere between $2oo to $300 all thanks to our insurance, even though in some sense we were paying for more of those costs through our premium every month (of which Bob's company paid a pretty good slice).
So fast forward to this baby, and things aren't so rosy for our pocketbook this time around. Bob works for a very small company now that does not offer health insurance. They do help with a Flexible Spending Account and a certain amount per month to help us cover the cost of our own individual insurance plan, but we don't have nearly the coverage with this plan that we did with the prior insurance plan. In fact we have NO maternity coverage at all, and cannot even use maternity expenses to meet our deductible. Bob said apparently most individual insurance plans in TX don't offer maternity coverage...I guess no one figured people in Texas might want to have children without having to shell out thousands to do so?
The one good thing (and in another way not so good) is that since we don't have coverage for all of these maternity bills, we can ask for a cash discount. As our realtor reminded us when we bought our house, "You don't ask, you don't get!" I can't tell you how much we've saved by doing this. For example...if we had maternity coverage, my last ultrasound would have been billed to our insurance company for $500. We were told this was amount we owed out of pocket. Since we asked for the discount, instead of paying $500, it ended up being somewhere closer to $200! Same thing with some of the standard testing I had done at the beginning of my pregnancy...we got 50% knocked off the bill because we were paying in cash.
So the "in another way not so good part" comes in when we started thinking about the discrepancy between what we've paid in cash and what would have been billed to an insurance company. In the case of the ultrasound, about $300! Either way, there was no difference in the level of service performed whether we paid for cash or had insurance, so why is the price jacked up over 100%? If the price for us was around $200, which was probably a better reflection of the true cost of the service anyway, why isn't that the price billed to the insurance company? No wonder insurance premiums are so high! Yeesh!!!
I'd like to say I'll step down off my soapboax now, but since this problem doesn't appear likely to go away anytime soon, I might be up here awhile...
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