Dollarshort

Penelope at the Polish Festival

, originally uploaded by mgtrott.

Last weekend -- when the weather was much nicer than today -- we stumbled upon the opening day performance of the Golden Gate Band at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse. We only caught the last big number, a medley of music from South Pacific, but did learn that they'd be playing at the Polish Festival the following weekend.

The only reason we stumbled onto the Concourse was because we were going to the Cal Academy and the only reason we stumbled at that exact time was because I decided not to stop and get a coffee because the line was too long. If it wasn't for those turn of events, I wouldn't have been motivated to make Penelope a traditional Polish costume from scratch (including hand-embroidered vest!) and attend this weekend's festival (celebrating Polish Constitution Day).

 

Everything came together and Pen looked ridiculously cute. While she may only be slightly Polish, she does our Grabowski blood proud.

Welcome Back A.G Bear!

I wrote this post in 2001 about a certain talking (mumbling) Teddy Bear who entered my life in 1985 and has travelled with me as I've moved thirteen different times. He always makes the cut. Even if he's stored in a box, he's been kept around.

As much as I appreciate the joy my stuffed animals bring me (he shares box real estate with an assorted group of teddy bears, puppets, dogs), I have always groaned when it was time to move or do spring cleaning. On one hand, we don't have enough space to keep untouched boxes in storage. On the other over-emotional hand, I could never give away my little friends.

While cleaning out a closet -- the first time I've cleaned it since Penelope was born -- I found the box of stuffed animals and I realized that the sentimental hoarding has paid off! I have now a box of stuffed animals to give to Penelope -- including my friend, A.G Bear. 

This all goes to show that everything old is new again. 

I am reminded of this image I saw the other day. It's artwork from the genre of "emotionally manipulative and sappy pictures that you resent for making you cry."

Pen on Ocean Beach

Penelope and Sand, originally uploaded by mgtrott.

Today was Penelope's first trip to a beach, courtesy of a warm October day in San Francisco.

She's a very generous little person and will pick up things and bring them over to people. Then, she makes a little sound that sort of means "here." She started doing that with grains of sand. She'd pick up a pinch of sand and then bring it to me. What totally delights me is how she would take time to pick just the right grains out of the billions out there.

I'm sure that there is some lesson to be learned from this baby's action and that it would make some great sort of Zen parable.

Cute-O-Matic

Want to see the saddest and/or greatest Halloween costume ever? Penelope models it over at my other blog, Nested.

Happy Birthday, Penelope!

Fifty things that Penelope learned how to do over the course of this last year:

Breathe in air. Cry. Nurse. Hold up her neck. Scratch her head.  Control her arms, hands, legs and feet. Eat. Drink. Feed herself. Hold a cup. Hold a spoon. Feed the dog. Sit up. Roll over. Crawl. Stand. Squat. Walk. Smile. Laugh. Wave. Point to her head. Point to her toes. Pet the dog. Understand words. Call the dog by some sort of name (meeeeh-d for "Maddy.") Understand "no." Say "da-da." Say "ma-ma." Recognize people. Recognize places. Tolerate the bath. Enjoy the bath.  Play with toys. Play with Maddy. Play at parks. Go on swings. Go on slides. Carry things. Carry a purse. Hide things. Reveal hiding places. Cause mischief. Look guilty. Enjoy a book. Turn a page. Request a story. Give hugs. Give kisses. Make people laugh. 

Watching Penelope achieve these milestones has been the most amazing, wonderful and bittersweet moments of my life. With each achievement, we move on to the next and she becomes more and more her own little person.

Of all of these, Penelope's ability to intentionally try to make us laugh leaves me most delighted. This little person who had no personality a year ago has now decided that she loves to see us smile and laugh and will do silly things to accomplish her goal. This is a pure joy generator -- one that is hardly matched by anything else on earth.

Happy Birthday, Fuzz!

First Birthdays, 50 Years Apart

Last weekend, we celebrated Penelope's first birthday with the party theme of "Feliz Cumpleaños, Havana-Style." It was a chance to eat great Cuban food and wear some white clothes. And, of course an opportunity to celebrate the first year of Penelope's life. Cuba is significant to us because Penelope is 1/4 Cuban, I'm 1/2 and, given how ancestry works, my mother a full-blooded Cuban.

Fifty years ago, in 1958, my mother celebrated her first birthday in Cuba. 

Here's a photo of my mom with her two grandmothers:

And here's Penelope with her two grandmothers (my mom is on the right).

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This dollarshort.org post was brought to you by Rafe Colburn who supported the kids by donating to my DonorsChoose.org Nested & Dollarshort Challenge, [read more about it here] Donate to one of my challenge projects and see your name appear here!

Not Throw Up Ugly

On our last trip to New York we visited the Union Square Greenmarket. Within a minute of arriving a reporter and camera from the CBS Evening News asked if we could be interviewed on camera about babies and such. Actually one of them said "there's a cute baby" and ran over to us. Ben was interviewed since this was originally going to air on Father's Day (Tim Russert's death bumped the segment). 

For the record, we saw the original photograph of the reporter's son -- not the edited one -- and George was cute. Yes, sort of average cute, we agreed. But then when Steve Hartman (the reporter) said that George was only two months old, I exclaimed: "Oh, then he really *is* a cute baby. Babies that age are kind of meh. I mean, Penelope has always been cute in our eyes, but looking back at pictures we think 'this is cute?' Not throw-up ugly, but definitely not as cute as now." 

I wonder why that sound bite didn't make it. 

Watch for Pen and Ben right near the start of the video. And here's the story.

Here's also the email I sent to Steve Hartman -- after taping the interview:

Hi Steve,
You interviewed us at the Farmers Market -- we were the ones from San Francisco. As I was saying - the fact that your son is only 2-3 months and looks that cute is a good indicator that he really is cute. Attached are two photos of my daughter, Penelope -- one from 2 months and one from 7 months. She's a good-looking baby now, but at 2 months -- there was room for improvement. :)

Mena Trott

 

Five Facts About Mena Trott

When meeting new people at Blogher, every introduction inevitably starts with the "what's your blog?" question. For the first time in the past seven years, I don't have an easy answer. The answer, for years, has been rote -- I'm dollarshort.org, but I blog at something called Mena's Corner. But that hasn't been true for a while. Then I blogged privately at Vox -- an answer that didn't really excite those who wanted to check my posts out. As I awkwardly explained this answer to one woman, I jokingly said "I need to come up with a better answer for tomorrow."

So if the answer is "dollarshort.org," here's a view into the old Mena and five fun five facts about the new Mena.

I still speak at conferences now and then.

I'll be speaking tomorrow at Blogher about taking back "naked blogging." It's all about pulling back from the blogging spotlight and retreating for various reasons. The past week has caused me to do a lot of thinking about my choice to stop blogging publicly (I've blogged consistently and privately on Vox for the past couple years). For example, not making this list of the "50 Most Influential 'Female' Bloggers (don't know what the awkward quotes around female are all about) gave me a chance to reflect on my role in the blogging world. On one hand I questioned if making myself so forgettable was a good thing. On the other hand, I didn't the same pangs of jilt (I like that phrase), I would have felt if this list had been posted a couple years ago. This makes me feel I made the right decision to pull away. That said, I still want to participate and build back my blog. And I still want to be out there and speak. So I'm taking more speaking engagements lately, including The Start Conference in August.

I've been blogging at another blog -- Nested -- off and on since I was pregnant.

This has been a quite a fun project of mine because I started completely anonymously. I wanted to see the blogging experience from the point of view of someone starting completely fresh and didn't want to rely on any of my connections in the blogging world to build traffic. I'd love to get back to the two to three posts daily schedule, but am still struggling to find the time to do this and take care of my daughter, Penelope. Which brings me to the next fact.

I'm a stay-at-home mom now.

When you are a co-founder of a company and your spouse (and co-founder) still puts in crazy start-up hours, it's impossible to ever really be removed from the day-to-day. I'm part-time now which means I come in once a week (with Penelope in tow) and work from home on a individual project basis. I actually have been putting in almost full-time hours designing a project launching soon and have had a chance to blissfully do some pure design work. I'm a stay-at-home mom that just happens to work-at-home too.

 

Having a child has changed me (in a good way).

I had no idea I was going to be the parent I am right now. Many of the neuroses I carried with me my entire life seemingly vanished overnight. This isn't too say I'm still neurotic, I'm just less neurotic. I like to think of it this way -- I'm like the patient in the mental ward (figuratively) who has gone from self-soothing through rocking to just looking like there's a good song playing somewhere.

Being a mom has forced me to become less self-centered and more aware of the small thing/big thing differences in life. Yes, I still have dreams that I'm being picked on by my seventh-grade classmates but when I wake up I'm able to laugh it off a bit better. Being at Blogher has made me more aware of this change. For example, in 2005, when I attended the first Blogher someone had written a post about how (and I paraphrase) "Mena Trott had the chance to talk to all these fabulous and interesting women at Blogher and instead chose to sit by herself and bury herself in her computer." The person didn't take in account that I'm actually quite shy when it comes to introducing myself. I almost never approach anyone because I'm intimidated, but once we're in a conversation I'll become quite extroverted. Since Penelope has been born, a lot of this fear has disappeared, though I still find it difficult at times to go up to a person and say hello.

I'm so so proud of Six Apart and everyone at the company.

Once again Blogher has been a massive reminder of why we do what we do. I have met women at this conference who have used our products since inception and they're incredibly complimentary and effusive. I've been wanting to say this for a long time: Yes, we seriously messed up when we changed our licensing FOUR years ago. The industry was a bit different then and for a company that (at the time) had only about 500k in funding, we wanted to be sustainable. We may have been stupid with our decisions and execution, but we were always ethical. And, we paid the price by losing a number of our best customers. But to this day, we're a company of bloggers for bloggers who really want to do the best for this industry. Hating Six Apart is so 2004.

Bonus Fact

I'm even more proud of our customers and all bloggers (whether they use our products or not)

Back to Blogher. When I'm talking to these women, I'm amazed how far we all have come. When I go to my dentist or see a relative, I don't have to explain that my job has something to do with "online journals that are often written daily and in reverse chronological order." If someone has internet access, they read a blog (even if they don't know it). It has been a revolution and any tool that can make a person feel less isolated and connected to a greater group is remarkable. I've talked to bloggers who have been saved emotionally (and physically) because of blogging. And that's a really awesome thing.

I'm a Pioneer Woman, Not a Polygamist!

To Ben's dismay, I'm a big fan of those Old Time photo shops that take up real estate at most tourist attractions. Ben hates them, but has, on more than one occasion humored me and taken photos. I know they're pretty tacky and a rip off but I just can't resist the lure of tie-in-back costumes.

So when we were in Old Sacramento this past weekend and I got the urge to take ye old fashioned shot, I let Ben take a pass and instead partnered with my wee buddy who can't yet protest. She had been in a bad mood the entire day, so Ben was worried about a breakdown. But, as soon as she put her little costume on, she started beaming! In fact, with the exception of this photo of the two of us, she was smiling in every shot.

As an aside, in my copious free time, I'd like to start an Old Time Photo business that uses period costumes that are a lot less gimmicky -- like clothing from the 20s or 30s, that is not gangster or flapper-themed, but something that your great-grandparents might have worn in a family photo.

Celebrating a Half-Year with Penelope

Complete with a half-cake and a half-candle.