On Saturday afternoon Sam and I walked over to the Eaton Centre so I could check on the autumn merchandise at Williams Sonoma. I’ve been carrying around a gift card for that store for literally years and it was burning a hole in my wallet.

While we were at the mall, we stopped at the Apple store. My iPad has been acting up; the home button works only intermittently and the power pack no longer functions to charge the device.

We immediately noticed all of the colourful post-it notes on the windows of the store. “Oh, is that for Steve Jobs?” Sam asked. We looked more closely at the notes that people in Toronto had left for him.

RIP

Thanks for making my life easier

That last one touched me…I thought of my friend and her son who is autistic, now able to learn and communicate well through the use of his iPad, and I understood.

Thanks for making my life easier

I’m glad some of those people found a simple, poignant way to express that.

Photo taken during panel on finding inspiration.

I’ve just returned from the Blissdom Canada conference and I have been inspired to return to this space to do a little writing.  I never took the plunge to take this site down because I always thought there might be the possibility that I would return to it, for some unforeseen reason.

I think of this space as a place where I can write about almost anything.  I am not confined to any category or style the way I feel at my new site, where I do the majority of my blogging lately.  This place is much more freestyle.  There is a history here which I hope to rediscover.

My thoughts on Blissdom Canada 2011:

The venue was much improved over last year. The food was exceptionally good and the space was laid out in a very easy-to-navigate way. I especially enjoyed the Philips Spa Café where I had a relaxation chair massage and had my nails done as well as the Chevrolet Charging Station.

The lovely ladies who organize the conference need to place less emphasis on their policies regarding cursing during conference sessions.  Seeing as they have sponsorship agreements which likely affect the language in which speakers communicate, at the very least, they should tell their session leaders not to inform the audience that they’ve been required to monitor or eliminate cursing from the discussion.  Placing this much emphasis on the policy brings more attention to it than would simply allowing it to occur and dealing with it in the editing of the video footage which will follow.  We are all adults; I find it a bit silly that there is some assumption out there that I might be offended by the odd salty word.

The session on finding your inspiration was fabulous.  Tanis, Bonnie and Elan each contributed valuable pieces of advice and insight from their own storied histories in the blogosphere, and Elan found herself choked up when she talked passionately about how each of us is “bigger” than any issue we may write about.  She also made a point that struck a note with me, which is that (and I’m paraphrasing here) we all have the ability to somewhat control who we interact with online.  So take control.  For example, if there is someone who negatively influences your personal energy on Twitter, then you have the ability to remove that person from your daily vision, and you should do so.

The session on branding on Saturday was terrific, too, and not just due to the fact that Gail Vaz-Oxlade chose not to adhere to the policy I discussed above.  Hearing the personal and professional backgrounds of the women whose personal brands were clearly very dear to them was fascinating.  Julie Cole asked some really pointed questions about how professional and professional branding/identity intersect.

And, as is usual when it comes to blogging and social media conferences, I had the privilege of spending time with some of the women I have grown to love online and in person.  I especially enjoyed getting to know Maureen, who posts as Aurelia Cotta, Karen, also known as Agent Ninety 9 and spending time gabbing and shopping with Sam, our very own Tempting Mama.

Unfortunately I missed the Saturday night party, which was fine with me until I learned that I missed out on a surprise appearance by none other than Jordan Knight, my girlhood crush.

I look forward to continuing to post here at Assertagirl.  I guess there is still some of her left inside of me, after all.

My new site is up and running! Please visit Hearts into Home to see where I’ll be posting from now on.

Dear friends and readers,

This site has taken many forms over the years.

It has followed me through the time I lived in Toronto as a single gal.

It has followed me through bad boyfriends.

It has followed me as I met Graham and as we decided to make a go of this life we have together.

It has been here when we decided to renovate our home.

It has been here when we decided to make the two of us into the three of us.

Now that the three of us are a family, it’s time to move on to a new space.

I thank each and every one of you for visiting this website, and for caring about me and my family.

I’m grateful for the friends and opportunities it has brought me.

I hope you’ll join me in my new space when it is finally up and running.

Amy.

Nate, you’re six months old today. For the first time a new month seems to be really significant. I’m the mother of a six month old! I can hardly believe that you’re this big already.

You are trying so hard to crawl, spending as much time as you can every day practicing. Sometimes you are even practicing when you should be sleeping. Speaking of sleeping, over the last week you seem to have turned a corner. I don’t know if it’s because you are so active during the day, or because you’ve started having three servings of solids a day, or because your last bottle of the night around eleven o’clock is an eight ouncer, but you suddenly don’t need that three or four a.m. feeding anymore. I couldn’t be more thrilled or more proud that you’ve managed this without much crying or fuss.

You eat so well, and you eat whatever new foods I give to you. You have yet to turn away from anything.

We’ve been playing outside on nice days, and now that summer is coming I can’t wait to show you the swimming pool at your grampa’s house and the zoo and other fun stuff I know you will love.

You’re laughing almost every day. Your dad can really get you going, laughing really hard. We love hearing that sound!

You’ve pretty much outgrown the bouncy seat and swing, the two pieces of baby gear that enabled me to make it through these six months! You still love the exersaucer and the jolly jumper. Lately you’ve been doing most of your playing on the floor, rolling over, reaching for the toys, touching and feeling everything.

Your hair is growing in now, and this makes your face look more and more like a little boy than a baby. I don’t know what it is, exactly, about your hair, but I love it so much. When we rock together in the rocking chair, I love to stroke your head and your hair to make you relax, and remember how I would touch that soft, downy place behind your ear in the middle of the night when you were newly born and I was so brand new at this job of being your mom.

We are six months in and that means that there are only seven more months until I have to go back to work, until I have to split my time between being your full-time mommy and being a full-time editor. I’m not looking forward to that day. I wish I could just stay home with you all the time, at least until you go to school.

But there I go, looking too far ahead into the future again. I need to keep practicing, too. Practicing just enjoying today, living with you and loving who you are in this very moment. The tomorrows will come soon enough.