Archive for March, 2008

New Law re Child Booster Seats

0

Granholm signs bill putting more children in safety seats. Here are some other news sources: Grand Rapids Press; Lansing State Journal; USA Today; Sun Herald; and Jackson Citizens Patriot.

ASSOCIATED PRESS • March 27, 2008

LANSING — Starting this summer, more Michigan children will be required to be in booster seats while traveling state roads.
Advertisement

Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed legislation Thursday requiring all children under age 8 and shorter than 4-foot-9 to be fastened into booster seats. The new law takes effect July 1, and violators will face fines of up to $65 per offense.

The new measure expands state law already requiring children under age 4 to ride in an infant or child car seat restraint system. The new law is aimed at protecting older children who are not best protected by seat belts alone.

“We know that deaths related to motor vehicle accidents are the No. 1 cause of deaths for children in Michigan,” Granholm said during a bill signing ceremony at the Capitol. “We want to make sure that our children are safe.”

An organization called Partners for Child Passenger Safety says that the risk of injury for children between the ages of 4 and 8 is reduced by 59 percent when using a car seat or booster seat.

Michigan will become the 39th state to adopt an expanded booster seat law.

Sen. Michelle McManus, a Republican from Lake Leelanau, has been working to pass the legislation for five years. She said older children often are less reluctant to get into booster seats once their role in safety is adequately explained.

Democrats in the state House sponsored similar legislation.

Also today, Granholm called on the Legislature to pass bills she said would allow the state to get federal money to give booster seats away to more low-income families. There already are some programs available in Michigan to provide booster seats to those most in need.

An Idea on Ian’s Room

1

So I’ve been thinking about how we can decorate Ian’s bedroom and I think I may have come upon a good idea. Like I previously said, I really liked the idea that this one house did by painting the walls one color and then doing all the trim in another bright color. I’m thinking of using this idea, but with more than the two colors. Here’s the idea, what does everyone think:

  • The Walls – Paint it white…hold on, it gets better
  • Trim – if we get the house we’re looking at, this should look awesome – there are three windows in what would be Ian’s room. Paint the trim on each window a different color – Red, Blue, and Yellow (or another color).
  • Bookshelf – We have a bookshelf that we’re going to put in his room that I want to paint red and blue, so this would go well with the room.da

I like the idea of using the primary colors for the room. By painting the walls white, it’ll give us a lot of room to redocorate it in the future without a lot of fuss. Plus, we can continually add things, and what ever it ends up being, it’ll still go with the room theme. Jesse wants to get some whiteboard to put in the room as well as maybe some magnetic paint, and all of this would go well with the room.

What does everyone think?

Easter

0

Ian

Courtesy of VP

0

Ian

Four

0

So for the 4th night in a row, Jackie took Ian’s diaper off, got his bath ready, and put him on his little training potty and when she took him off to put him in the tub, he had peed.

Good job Ian. Lets hope you pick up the rest fast.

Spring & Easter

0

Random Pics

0

ian ian

ian ian ian

Blogging & Security

2

Recently, my sister and I were having a conversation about having a blog for a pregnancy and/or a child (aka like Ian’s) and the question of security for a blog came up.

Jesse and I started this blog for Ian when we first decided on his name. I was only 20 weeks along in my pregnancy and I was finding a lot of things that I either wanted to share or remember. As Ian gets older, I’ve come to really love what I’ve managed to do with this site. I’ve been using it, not only as a way to keep family and friends appraised of Ian’s life, but as a journal of raising a child and going through a pregnancy. There was a lot of information that I obtained and I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember it all if we were to ever go through this again. I’m part of several Mom groups/discussion boards and I get so much information from them, that I like to have it all in one place. Plus, we’re still a young couple, so we meet a lot of people who are either just starting their families or have little ones but have questions. When they find out that we have a little one as well, we start trading stories or asking for advice from each other. I’ve given out this site a couple of times and others have found the information useful. That’s why I include it here. Not only will this information be here forever, but it’ll also be here when Ian starts his own family.

That’s the biggest reason why we started this site. We wanted Ian to have a record of his life, where he could find pictures, videos, and even comments from family and friends to all the important events in his life. When he gets older, we fully intend to give Ian access to this site (he’s a little young now). I’m sure he’s going to start contributing a lot sooner than we think, but he’ll have that option. He’ll be able to look back through his site in 10-20-30 years and see what he was doing and how we handled certain things. I personally would have loved something like this. There are a ton of things from my childhood that I have no memories of. I couldn’t tell you what we did for my 8th or 10th birthday, but Ian won’t have that problem. He’ll just have to search for it. I was going to create a scrapbook for Ian, but I don’t find it to be that important. I may do it at some point, but he’ll be able to get more out of his blog/journal than just looking at pictures.

You’re probably asking what this has to do with security and it’s easy….my sister and brother in law don’t want to do something like this because anybody would be able to see it. They want to be able to control who sees their journal and have some security with it. (For a little background information, my sister’s husband has to have a security clearance where he works, so he tends to think a little more about security in his personal life as well.) I’m not paranoid about people viewing this information. I put it up here so people WILL see it. We have friends who keep lookouts for videos, who like to see what Ian is doing without having to go through passwords. I’m not worried that some idiot will try to hunt down Ian for some nefarious purpose. I’m not stupid and I don’t post information that could easily be tracked to us, but nothing on the internet is ever completely secure. If you try to make it secure, you’re just painting a big bullseye on it. Even email isn’t safe. Everything can be hacked and information is always available for anyone who wants to look and have the means to do so.

Happiness

2


big thanks to VP for creating that. I know I feel motivated.

Ian’s First Birthday Party!

3

Today we had Ian’s first birthday party. All the grandparents, Aunt Lori & Uncle Jayson, and Adrian all showed up to help celebrate the day with us. We met for some good food at Eastside Marios, Ian opened up all his presents and then he dug into his cake. And I do mean he literally dug in. He had his own little cake just for the occasion (so he didn’t ruin the one the rest of us ate) and he just had a ball. It was all over his face, shirt, socks, and pants. At one point, he decided he didn’t like all the people laughing at him or taking his pictures (or something), so he had to go to mama who also enjoyed getting cake on herself. It was fun cleaning him up in the restroom. He wasn’t crazy about it, but once he saw himself in the mirror, he started having fun.

Overall, the whole party was a success. All the grandparents had fun with him. He got some really good toys – Thanks Nana & Grandpa Jerry for the shoes, Aunt Lori & Uncle Jay for the nifty flashlight and bath toys, Grandma & Grandpa Morgan for all the books (they play music too), Gramps for the DVD player (so we can watch the Muppets ALL the time), and Adrian for the monkey and bath toys. He also received the Muppet Show season 2 from us a couple of weeks ago and today he got to open up some clothes and a Muppet CD.

After the party and the cake, the three of us went over to the hotel where Aunt Lori & Uncle Jay were staying so Ian could go swimming. He was originally going to take a nap before going over there, but the sugar high kind of prevented that. :) He had a blast swimming in the pool and even had fun dunking with Gramps.

I’ll include some of the pictures from his party here (after I get them all, which might be a couple of days), but for all of them, just out the photo gallery. There are just too many to put up. Oh yeah, don’t forget to check out the video of Ian and his cake.

Go to Top