Getting Gage referred for his CT scan for his scaphocephaly isn’t as easy at it would normally be. We are right in the middle of changing insurance plans and pediatricians. His current pediatrician is a 30-45 minute drive from us, depending on traffic. My husband’s insurance from his new job is kicking in on April 1 (no, really!), so we are changing to a closer pediatrician at the same time. This means the referral to get his CT scan has to wait until we see the new pediatrician.

Thank goodness the surgery, if necessary, wouldn’t be for a month or two anyhow!

All this has made for a lot of extra stress, but I feel very encouraged by the fact that the new pediatrician was able to get us an appointment for Monday, April 4. I was afraid I would have to push to get an appointment that fast, but they made it easy. I filled out the form to get Gage’s records to them also, so hopefully the pediatrician will have all the info he needs right at the start.

In the meantime, I am spending as much time as I reasonably can (with two kids) working on my business. I’m focusing harder on getting good links with the right keywords, adding content and just generally finding more ways to get visitors to my sites. Hopefully this will be enough so that I can quit medical transcription in the next few months. That has been a goal for a while, but with everything that has been going on, I would love to only have the home business and not the work at home job. I’m close to the goal I set for when I will allow myself to quit, but it has to sustain itself for a few months to, so I don’t get caught by a seasonal fluctuation that didn’t actually mean anything.

With everything going on, it was so nice to just take a day and have fun with family. We went to my mother’s in the morning and the kids had an egg hunt. Lots of time to visit with my sisters and mom. Then off to my husband’s parents’ house for dinner and visiting with more relatives.

It was so nice to not have to think about everything that’s been going on… much. We had to answer the usual questions, of course, but for the most part we were able to have a regular relaxing day.

Of course, today reality is back. I just got a call from Gage’s pediatrician, and I need to get an appointment with the new pediatrician as soon as possible so that Gage can get his referral for the CT scan. That’s the trouble with changing insurance – lots of little complications. Gage is due for a regular appointment and immunizations anyhow, so now I just have more reasons. He also told me to go in and fill out a form to get Gage’s records sent to the new pediatrician, since they need the request in writing, and once again, the sooner the better.

We’ve been making lots of plans for Ariel’s care for when we’re busy coping with Gage’s surgery. She’ll get to visit with her cousins a lot more, so that hopefully she won’t feel too jealous of all the extra care Gage is likely to need. Ariel knows very little right now about what is wrong with Gage – I don’t want to worry a toddler, but she will have to know a bit more when the surgery comes up so that she is used to the idea that she will have to be extra careful with her baby brother for a long time.

This is definitely not the easiest time for me. I spend a lot of time thinking about what is going on and wondering how things will go. It’s going to make working at home much more challenging, and and I so grateful that I do work at home, so that everything I need to do is much more possible. It is really one of the greatest benefits of working at home that I don’t need to wonder how I will manage all of this and keep a job.

It’s one of those moments I am so glad to be a work at home mom. Gage just turned one month old yesterday, and we found out that he will probably have to have surgery to fix his scaphocephaly. Some of the sutures in his skull closed prematurely, which is making his head grow long and narrow. It’s a pretty scary thought that my tiny baby might have to have surgery on his head, but both the pediatric neurosurgeon and the websites I’ve visited have been very reassuring. That’s a rare treat, getting reassurance online. It seems like so many medical sites make fears worse.

This surgery is probably going to make life difficult for a year. Gage will probably have to wear a helmet for a year after, with weekly adjustments. Thank goodness I don’t have to schedule appointments around my work schedule!

Am I scared or nervous? You bet! But I’m doing my best to be calm around Gage and Ariel. I particularly don’t want Ariel worried, as she’s young enough to get excessively worried. Gage is young enough he probably wouldn’t notice anything.

We’ll be going in for a CT scan in the next couple weeks, and once that confirms the diagnosis, we’ll be looking at surgery dates, I think.

Sometimes I don’t know how I’m going to cope with everything, but I know I will. The flexibility working at home gives me makes things much more possible. It’s of course also more motivation to build my business now so that I need to do medical transcription less.

As you probably know, link exchanges are very tiresome to do. They take time and you have to watch your link partners for dirty tricks.

I’ve been neglecting my link exchanges lately because I was tired of that. However, I found out about a resource that should help make link exchanges more pleasant. It’s Duncan Carver’s Link Management Assistant, and it is free. You have to love the price.

I took some time to go through my current links, checking for reciprocal links and whether or not the website was still around. Lost quite a few that way. The remainder I added to the new directory, adding categories as appropriate to improve usability.

I really hope this makes link exchanges more pleasant for me. There are a few features I would like to see, such as the ability to edit the submission form, but on the whole I am quite pleased. It took a little extra work for me to get things going the way I felt they should, as I use CSS and the template given were in tables, but I think the results are quite satisfactory.

I haven’t done it here, but this program even allows you to import categories from DMOZ. I didn’t want to clutter the directory on this website, however, so I have left those out. Besides, there are a lot of sites using DMOZ for their directories, so there would probably be more duplicate content than I would like to deal with.

With any luck, I’ll be able to use this tool to start building more links to my website. It certainly will be nice to not have to manually add every link. I do, however, have it set to require my approval for all links and for email addresses to be confirmed. I want to run a clean directory.

Just a small update there for now. I removed some expired offers and added some nice fresh ones. Keeping up with the freebies and free trials can be time consuming, but I think it will be worth it.

I can be kind of picky about the offers I put up there. I don’t like to add every free offer I find. I do, however, accept free offers from visitors, although I have yet to have that happen. But there is a form for webmasters to fill out if they have an offer for me to consider.

I went and checked my stats last night. I hadn’t realized until then that this blog was not archiving or sending its feed correctly. I made the changes to correct some things in how it showed, but didn’t check everything. That explains a lot, however, such as why traffic had dropped.

It definitely pays to pay attention to your website’s statistics. There were a few other errors I saw that I had already fixed, plus a few more I had not been aware of. It didn’t take long to fix any of the problems, and it should be a great help overall to my visitors.

Now it’s time to get back to adding more content. I’m one of those people who works harder on content than on search engine optimization, although both do have their place. But on the whole, I’d rather design for people than spiders, and trust that over time my work will pay off.

It’s been a while since I managed this one, but I decided to take advantage of the kids’ naps and add new coupons and discounts to it. It takes a lot of time to research the coupons, and I make sure to add the expiration dates, both for my own tracking and in case I miss one and a coupon stays up past the expiration date.

Getting everything done I would like to do isn’t easy. I have a goal of going back to medical transcription on Monday, so I don’t have much time left to finish the things I would like to. But it is fun.

They’re rather difficult to mix in some ways, but very much worth it. I’m having to get used to working more slowly now that I have a baby again, and find more ways to spend extra time with my daughter so that she doesn’t feel left out.

How do I do it? It’s not uncommon now for me to type with one hand… slow, more difficult, but it lets me keep going even while nursing. I don’t work on the computer during all feedings, but it’s one thing I can do relatively easily.

On days like today things get even more difficult. Both kids have colds, so I have to deal with children who really need me. This cuts down quite a bit on what I can do. Fortunately, Ariel’s cold was at its worst yesterday, so she’s relatively content to play. It’s a cool, cloudy day, so I’m not letting her play outside while she’s still sick, but there are still things she and I can do. I pulled out a little radio with earphones for her, which she enjoys quite a bit.

I’ve also taken quite a bit of advantage of Ariel’s computer, encouraging her to work beside me. She’d rather play the few games she has on this computer, but the other one suffices most of the time. It was cheap – just $15 or so at Target. Much cheaper than the $50 or so that many cost, although I see Amazon has a Disney Princess Laptop on a pretty good sale right now.

I also tell Ariel a lot about what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter that she isn’t 3 years old yet, she likes to know what kind of work I am doing. She is fascinated by my medical transcription, which I have not started back up yet, and is curious about my websites. I hope that by involving her from a young age that she will be encouraged to be something of an entrepreneur herself someday.

I made some changes on my ebook review page. I added a bunch of books to be reviewed on parenting and kids. It will take me a long time to get all the books reviewed, but it’s a nice start to have them available for visitors to consider.

There’s so much I want to get done, and I really need to push right now to get it done before I utterly have to go back to medical transcription. I want to have more content so I can increase my revenue and finally only need to work on my websites. Some of this does cost money, such as buying the ebooks, but it should be worth it in the long run.

Gage actually makes this easier than I expected. Aside from very long nursing sessions, he’s a very easy baby. My brother-in-law just dropped off what I had hoped would include the bassinet to my Pack ‘n Play, but it had all the extra parts except that. Guess we’ll have to go look for it tomorrow.

Get your Craigslist posting transmitted into outer space!

Yes, really. They won an eBay auction to send postings into outer space. This happens May 15, 2005. It’s free, and just looks like a fun thing to do.

Let’s face it, you’ll most likely never find out that some other civilization received your ad, and it certainly won’t help your home business, but it’s also an intriguing thing to participate in. Yes, I put in an ad for one of my sites, just for the fun of it.