are you one of the sixty-one?

Last night was a looong night.

I've been in denial for some time that Andrew might have some of the same food sensitivities as Simon, but last night confirmed it. I spent half of the night (until 3am) sleeping (ie. NOT SLEEPING) on the couch with a sweaty bundle of wriggling, writhing, crying-every-fifteen-minutes, hardly-letting-my-boob-out-of-his mouth, baby.

Somewhere around RIDICULOUS O'CLOCK 3am, I woke up (yes, woke up) and realized that I'd been sleeping (yes, sleeping), so I dragged myself up the stairs to bed. I laid Andrew in his crib and crawled into bed, trying not to wake Peter. At some point, Andrew must have started crying again because I woke up to find him in bed with us, although I have NO RECOLLECTION OF GETTING HIM from his crib.

His crying started back up around 6:30am and this time nothing worked. Not patting, rubbing, rocking, hushing, singing. Not laying him on his back, his stomach, my chest, my legs, or in my arms. His soother (pacifier for you Yankees) made him cry harder and even the all-mighty boob was rejected.

This morning I have a bit of a headache and a bit less patience than normal, but Andrew has been slept from 9am til almost 11:30am, and the parents of one of Liam's little girlfriends offered to come pick him up to play for the afternoon (bless them!) so I trust we'll all survive the day.

The one thing that buoyed my cranky self this morning was refreshing my blog and seeing that I now have 61 readers!* Squeee! I don't know who you all are, but THANK YOU! Dooce may have a million followers on Twitter, but I have all of you! So a big "Mwah" to you all!

(That's "mwah" like a kiss, not like an evil "mwahahaha". Don't want to risk any misunderstanding.)

* * * * * * * * * *

*By "readers", I'm talking about those who subscribe to my RSS feed. Those who do subscribe are like, "Yeah, that's me. Feeds are old news." Those who don't subscribe (hi, mom!) are like, "Huh? Subscrib-a what? Feed who??" My current subscribers can go back to their reader and carry on catching up on their other favorite blogs now. The rest of you, this next bit is for YOU (mom, you might want to get a paper and pen and take some notes).

So RSS stands for, among other things, Really Simple Syndication. In Oprah speak, RSS stands for Ready for Some Stories. Basically, it's a way for you get to get updates of all your favorite blogs or websites all in one place.

Say, for example, that you have a daughter and three daughters-in-law who all have blogs (*wink* hi, Craig and Mora!). With RSS, you can "subscribe" to each blog (or other websites) and get "fed" all the new posts in one list. Subscribing to RSS feeds will save you time by bringing all of those blogs together in one place -in your reader- and save you from having to visit each blog each day searching/hoping for new posts. This way you will instantly know which blogs have updates and which do not.

That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Feed Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re just getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with various approaches and features, however a good place to start is with one of the free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines (I use Google Reader). If you currently use any of Google's other services (ie. Gmail or Blogger), then you already have access to Google Reader.

(To find out, go to www.google.com and look in the top right corner. If you see links for iGoogle, Sign In, then you'll need to sign in and/or register. If you see your email address, iGoogle, My Account and Sign Out, then you already have an account with Google.)

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked in bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item, marking the last one as ‘read’.

For a quick tutorial on how to subscribe, here's a quick and visually informative video on subscribing to RSS feeds:

Internet: Useful Tips:
RSS In Plain English

So now that you know why and how to subscribe to your favorite blogs (*cough, cough* Like mine. *cough, cough*), hopefully I'll see my numbers numbers sky rocket. Or at least go up by -let's see... mom and my younger sister, older sister, father/mother-in-law, three sis/brother-in-laws, and a couple friends- six or seven?? Maybe?

I've been meaning to post this for a while now, mostly for the benefit of my family and extended family, especially since my lovely sister-in-law, Susanna, unleashed the monster and got me going on this whole blog thing.

(I'm still working on my own sisters...)