Christopher has determined that most of the time it should be spelled ‘bored meeting’ rather than ‘board meeting.’

My dad was just here for a quick visit and I swear, the baby CRACKED UP the entire time.  I have video of him squealing in the car till his face turned red, giggling up a storm on the floor, and laughing all through lunch.  It’s the funniest thing.  He doesn’t laugh for me or Christopher very often, but he will go into absolute hysterics for strangers or folks he doesn’t see that much.  It’s great fun taking him out.  The store clerks coo over him and he just starts giggling which makes them coo more, which makes him laugh more . . . anyhow, you get the picture.  Warms my heart.

Forgive the first few seconds of shaky camera work, and see for yourself:

Dad Cracks Him Up from Sherean Malekzadeh on Vimeo.

Ah, the multi-functional, multi-purpose exercise ball. You know the one they told you at birthing class you could bring to the hospital and use as a birthing ball if you wanted to? (Like that was going to fit in the back with the car seat and the serious over-packing we did!) Well, that’s one use for it. I use mine as a chair to wheel around my baby’s gear. I can roll around his activity center, hang out and play, without having to get up and down from the floor (I’ve got old knees). Ditto for his jumperoo. I just plop my big ‘ol butt on the ball and jump along with him. He loves it! And I love that I can just roll around from one of his activity areas to the other.

Of course, he thinks it’s just one giant new ball for him to play with. Some day, I’ll show him how I used to use it for stomach crunches, “BB” (Before Baby).

This post is part of the Works for Me Wednesday series, hosted at WeAreThatFamily. Great tips there every Wednesday!

You’ve got a career, a family,  friends . . . you know, a life. You can’t find time to read all your emails, much less keep up with the news you want to read.

One of the most helpful things I’ve done is set up an RSS reader. What’s an RSS reader? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Your favorite websites and blogs (like this one) have an RSS feed that you can subscribe to. This will let you know when there is a new post and give you a quick summary of it (you can then decide to click thru to the full post).

You need to subscribe to these feeds in some sort of a reader. It’s like the personalized My Yahoo or iGoogle pages, both of which use RSS feeds to populate your selected content. But the one I like and use is Google’s Reader. It has a list of my feeds down the left hand side. I click on one and get summaries of stories (or blog posts) in a reading pane — just like email. I scroll through and scan and click if I want to read more. To add a site to your reader, just look for the RSS or Atom XML button on a site. (Sometimes, I do a CTRL+F which is a “find” shortcut and type in “RSS” to find the feed button.) Once you click on that, it’ll ask you where you want to put the feed, and there is almost always an option to add it to your Google Reader.

It’s simple once you get the hang of it. If you try it and need help, just shoot me a note and I’ll help you out.

One more thing: I often read news on my phone when I’m in waiting rooms or standing in lines. You can pull up your Google reader on most mobile phones and it optimizes the content for mobile viewing. That’s another tool I use to keep up with what’s going on and maximize my time a bit.

Subscribe to RandomNeuralFirings in a reader here.

One of my friends wrote and scolded me:  “Enough with the baby gifts already! I need a gift for a friend over 2′ tall.” All righty then, how about making them a customized Go Green set? Package up a reusable grocery tote or two with an aluminum water bottle. But not just any old tote and bottle, personalize them.

Start by hopping on over to Zazzle and browsing all the groovy products and unique designs. My friend, Kemba, has a beautiful shop there featuring international-flavored designs. Find a design you like, pick the bag style you want, and customize it by adding your gift recipient’s name or other text. You can change the font and color, move the design around, and really make it your own. Here I made a bag for Cara at repurposeful (great eco blogger) using Kemba’s Flourish design. Cost of the customized bag? A mere $10.55 for this style.

Then, check out Sigg’s custom water bottles ($27.99/ea). Sigg is the aluminum bottle you see the celebrities toting around. Much better for the environment than using plastic bottles. My hubby and I both have Siggs and love them. (We always think it’s so funny when we’re headed out the door and call out: “Did you remember your Sigg?”)

What I didn’t know when I bought ours was that I could have bought personalized versions with our names on it. They have about six customizable designs (and a whole lot more non-customizable ones). You can also create a custom skin for your bottle by uploading a favorite photo. I might do this to update my Sigg!

Pop the water bottle in the tote bag for instant “wrapping” and top it all off with a plantable card ($4.95 for the one shown below) from Botanical Paperworks. Yep, you heard me. You can plant these greeting cards in the ground and they will sprout flowers.

Now that’s a groovy green gift! Grown up enough for you, V?

Just shot these last night of my son in his new “Treble Maker” onesie from Hatley, with the Cheeritoes Socks from Trumpette. Love how the socks are one foot stripes, one foot spots. They come in a set of six and match up great with his clothes. Alas, he’s already wearing their largest size (12-24 months) and his foot’s getting too big for them. Don’t know what I’ll do next! I’m not ready for plain, boring, solid color <gasp!> socks. Oh wait, Zutano‘s also sells cute socks in bigger sizes. Whew!