The GOALS and SUCCESS Survey!

Here as promised is the SURVEY I mentioned in today's video! It's really short, so check it out!

Click Here to take survey

I really look forward to reading your responses and sharing with you my next video which covers some Law of Attraction at work happenings in my life recently!

If you haven't seen it already, check it out:

Roasted Eggplant Panini!

Had a wonderful Easter Sunday... As a family, we don't have many traditions in place yet...we decided to take little Mila out for Easter lunch to our favorite Italian bistro right here in Marina Del Rey. If you are around the area, definitely check out Antica Pizzeria. So yummy and they never disappoint us!

I had this amazing panini sandwhich...and found a recipe for something similar online. Roasted eggplants, goat cheese, olives, tomato...o lord...stop I want another right now and might be forced to make myself one at home today!

This recipe sounds different from what I had, but just might have to try it anyways!

Check it out!

Happy Monday and keep watching YouTube for a new video soon!

Exciting News!

I found this article with tips from Maria on how to make your video powerful, effective, and appeal to the masses!

I'm not sure if she wrote the article or if it was a summary of a video Maria did... but regardless, here are her 5 steps for success!

Also, check out the video I just posted on YouTube. "Are you ready for The Social Media Traffic Blueprint?"

The Success Principles

As promised, here are the links to a few different things which will give you a good idea what to expect if you decide to buy Jack Canfield's book, "The Success Principles."

This site has a newsletter sign up for the mentor emails. They are great! I highly recommend signing up for this!

Jack Canfield Website

This is an ebook - it's basically another summary/report from the book. Check it out!

30 Days To Where You Want To Be

I'd love to hear if anyone else is going through the book or is considering the possibility of working with Maria now or in the future!

Take care to everyone reading and Thank You to Maria for getting us all started!!!

Next Part of the Journey

Hey everyone. I know this site has been inactive for awhile. I got somewhat devoured and addicted to updating facebook with pictures of Mila. Plus, I think our move to the new building kind of sidetracked everything as well!

Here's the update on Mila...since some of you may be wondering how she's doing!

Mila turned one at the end of February! She's developing into such a sweetie. I can't even tell you how sweet! She's walking a few steps here and there. It's funny how each week, there are more and more steps to her random walking. The first week it was 1 step. The second there were 2. Then there were 3...and just this week there were 5 steps in a row! Pretty soon she'll be running around here like crazy!

Mila's sleep patterns have somewhat stabilized but I have to say it's me who really stabilized and that changed everything. She still cries if she has a tooth coming in or if she's sick or is somehow disturbed at night, but she goes back to sleep on her own...usually pretty quickly, but I'm sure there will be some exception to that at some point. I've weaned her from nursing before her morning nap and her afternoon nap! Yay! We will only have 1 more nursing to wean and that is before her bedtime. I think she'll be okay, as she really seems ok as long as I give her lots of hugs during the day and especially right before the sleep time.

So, nutshell - Mila's on the right path and such a happy little girl! I'm so happy to be able to spend my days with her!

I will continue to update about Mila here, but really want to focus a little attention on other subjects/projects I'm working on! If anyone has questions about her, please feel free to email me!

-Talk to you soon! Anne

Update

I've been posting all over the place and had to stop. I couldn't maintain 3 different Mila blogs! If you are interested in seeing pics, videos, etc. feel free to msg me and I'll gladly send you the links!

Here's what's up ... in a nutshell:

1. Sleeping was/is a huge issue...I'm doing some wierd version of letting her fuss it out. I'm a maniac about trying to get her to sleep well and nap well.
2. We just returned from a visit to the east coast to see my husband's family. Sleep was about the same as it is here and we were able to maintain the same sort of fuss it out tactics....Mila was a dream on the way there -- she did not sleep on the plane, but she was very content most of the time. On the way home, not so much...
3. Solid food - trying to decide what is next...do we start making our own purees or what?
4. 2 teeth visible
5. I'm still breastfeeding (notice how I put this right after the 2 teeth visible...)
6. She's already doing Pilates...oh my goodness! Plank, control front, and Rolling Like a Ball...You think I'm joking...
7. She won't stop talking...lalalalal,dadadada,mamamam,blahblahblah...
8. Mommy has found a mother's helper...which means, mommy gets to teach pilates again!

Mommy and Mila at the Pool!

We sat by the pool with some friends today. Mila was in the Baby Bjorn facing out and apparently got tired from all the craziness!

She was fast asleep with her big pink hat over her eyes.

Sleep...

This is the first of many posts I'm sure I'll make on sleep. Sleep has become the ever elusive quest that I have started for myself and my 4 month old baby girl. When she gets good sleep, I get good sleep. When I get good sleep, I don't lose my mind at 3am feedings.

Sleep is the one subject all parents can talk about at length. When did your baby sleep through the night? How many naps does she/he take and when? It's like some insane badge of competency that you get if you answer the questions correctly. First of all, finally after reading every book about sleep I could get my hands on -- or at least the most well known ones, I have come to the following realizations....

1. Sleeping through the night means 5-6 hours straight. Ok, so Mila does this a lot. Not all the time, but she can do it. In fact, one night she went almost all through the night for real...and it scared me. I woke up that one night at 3am, clutching my chest in pain and realizing she hadn't fed for several hours - SEVERAL HOURS...not 2 or 3 but like 6 or 7.

2. Bedtime needs to be as soon as Mila shows she's tired -- which we try to hope happens around 7ish so she falls asleep at the same time every night - 7:20pm ish. Sometimes it happens earlier...

3. We can't rock her, shhh her, swaddle her, sing her, nurse her to sleep forever...The rocking her to sleep is starting to become physically impossible. The Shhh-ing her...I'll keep doing, the swaddling I'll do until she breaks free every night and can roll over and back in both directions. The singing I will never stop doing. The nursing...well, I know I'm supposed to lay her down sleepy but who doesn't love a full tummy to induce a food coma? We are working on "putting her down when she's drowsy but not asleep." This amounts to putting her in the crib when her eyes are kinda open...but she probably is already asleep. I don't know how we are going to accomplish this task.

4. Naps are so hard to get, but I keep trying -- even if it's to get a short cat nap. My hope is that even though she's not getting all the sleep she needs, at least she is getting some and hopefully it resets her enough to be able to hang longer in the evening until her real bedtime.

5. Don't think you've got it down and the sleep routine is set ... so far in her 4 months, she has varied her sleep pattern so many times that I can't even tell you... I made the mistake at one point into becoming too comfortable with how she was sleeping...JINX...she changed without a warning and that night I went slightly insane. As long as you expect nothing but constant possible change, you will be so disappointed...and who knows how you will react. I realize that Mila cannot be treated the same as my other life goals I've set for myself...Find out how to achieve them and step by step...you get there...No, you do not get there with a baby. She is hopefully going to get there just fine on her own...All you can do is help her have some sort of routine and even then sometimes that doesn't work!

6. If I had to do this part again, I would have approached the first weeks very differently. We had lots of family around so it was impossible to get any sort of routine in place...even though they were so much help to us. I didn't know how to make it comfy for her in our room, I might have really forced the issue on that and let her stay in there with us for a bit longer.

7. Oh I would have bought a white noise machine right off the bat and a sling...I have neither now but hear so many good things about them and wish I had started them when she was way younger. Now, we use the water/wave sounds from her swing to create a white noise barrier with the rest of the house. She also loves looking up at the AC vent when it is on and it seems to help her fall asleep.

I know this post was all over the place, but you see now what lack of sleep has done to me!

Another fun video

Mila Update!

I'm not going to sugar coat this ... being a mom is the hardest job I have ever attempted...It is a series of experiments all of which feel like a failure most of the time. The one thing I feel like I'm doing right is breastfeeding...she's gaining weight steadily and seems to be happy with the quality of my milk!

Right now, we are constantly talking about the following challenges...sleep, naps, socializing, flying to Canada in September...and just general demeanor. There are so many theories we come up with on how we want to help her sleep, help her be comfortable out in the world and just generally help her feel comfortable with herself....

Last week she started rolling from her back to her belly...but she can't roll back...This means that she starts crying the second she realizes she can neither crawl or roll off her belly. But still...she constantly rolls to the belly! We can't stop her! Here's a video of her rolling to her belly!

Has anyone seen Anne?

It's been awhile since I've updated this blog...I've been trying to think of some catchy name for a blog to feature my new daughter Mila. For now, I'll post updates about her here! If anyone has any cute names for a blog - which would feature Mila, my challenges with being a mom, etc...you know, the typical but not so typical mommy blog....let me know!

Here we are having a little belly time on the boppy pillow!

Which Way To Muscle Beach?

I know this happened...what weeks ago?? Dinner at Thai's - prepared by the lovely Amy - met up with the infamous Mike Kitchen of Meteor Studios fame (he'll hate me for saying that!) and his bro! It was a reunion to end all reunions. We ate lots of homecooked Mexican food, played Wii, and watched the Visualizer on Thai's new iMac.

Mike and his brother were in town shooting a film. Their comic books/convention booth were featured. Check out their site and buy their shiz: Ultraist Studios.

Chuck & Van at the Jiffy Lube

Orangina anyone?

Found this online tonight...always interesting to see different cultures take on effective advertising...

Meow!

You may be wondering where I've been hiding for the past few days...well...sadly, I have been consumed with the installation/ugrade/fiasco of the Leopard OS onto my powerbook. At some point last week, I had the bright idea of upgrading ram and OS onto my pretty much antiquated powerbook system which was purchased in March of 2004. Ok, I might be exaggerating. The computer works, I love it...and I used to have final cut pro on it from a past job. Keywords...used to. After trying to do an upgrade of my system and then spending hours combing apple forums, mac fixit forums, you name it forums...I knew what I would eventually be forced to do.

I tried to be unemotional about the whole thing. Step one - backup as much as possible using Toast - one of the only apps that worked post Leopard upgrade. Step two - find all my install discs for my apps. Step three - call Apple support for one last confirmation that this is what I needed to do. Step four - call Denis to cry one last time about the loss of Photoshop CS and Final Cut Pro. Step five - choose Erase & Install Leopard.

It's sad that I have such an attachment to data and applications. Part of me wondered how elated I could feel if I backed up nothing and proceeded with the erase of my hard drive. A fresh start. A new me! Wow, it's like first day of school again! But I couldn't let the settings, the docs, the pictures, the music - or any of it go! It's disturbing to realize that you are a digital packrat in addition to a RL packrat. Thanks Mom...I blame you! I joke...I kid...I kid...kind of.

Now, that the Leopard install is complete, I do feel a sense of calm. In fact, I might not reinstall some of that data I spent so much time backing up! Or...I'll do it a little bit at a time, so I don't feel my hard drive closing in on me again.

One last note...I believe I did this upgrade for one reason only...I'll admit to it, so I can start dealing with this sickness...So, here goes. I really liked the new iCal and wanted the upgrade. Smack me please.

Vegas Baby Vegas!

My maternal instinct is so strong that I felt a prenatal visit to Sin City would be a learning experience for the growing bean in my tummy. We got to meet up with my mom and both my sisters -- an occasion that happens at about the same frequency as well...well, it doesn't happen very often. Here we are in all of our glory! I'm the one with the M & M bag and the protruding belly.

Feel free to click on the photo and check out other images from our little vacation in Vegas. You'll see what other characters we met up with during the weekend!

Artist Spotlight :)

Strange Dolls
I knew Beth when we were growin' up in rural Vermont. She always had a creative spirit about her and it's not surprising to see that she created these haunting and mesmerizing dolls!

Check them out!

Happy Monday

Up a bit too early but realized I have been meaning to post the 2 following videos (actually there are 3, but the 3rd I'm saving for now)!

A good friend and past co-worker of ours did these 2 short films with his current coworkers!

Great Job Karly!

A whale of a time...

Our friends Miae and Dennis live in Wellington, NZ....This is such a cool video and they were there to see it live! They are the first 2 people you see in the foreground as the camera pans towards the water...in their scuba gear!
Miae and Dennis, we promise to get down to see you sometime soon!

Long time ....

It's been a long year since I posted on this blog and I'm starting to feel that rumbling again to express myself in music. I spent the 2 years really focused on studying, certifying, and teaching pilates. The skill set is so different from anything that I've ever done. For those who know me, they know how obsessed I get with learning certain things...it wasn't enough for me to take pilates. I decided I needed to teach it and work as a pilates instructor. I have now accomplished that and teach at a small studio in Santa Monica named M2 Pilates.

Of course, now that I've certified and am teaching regularly, my passion for performance and production are back -- so watch out!

Upcoming projects include:
1/A complete annemillermusic website overhaul -- anyone with web experience who wants to help, let me know!
2/Bring my offline blog LIVE...I've been playing around with iweb but have yet to post anything! I feel like Creed from the office with my fake blog no one can ever visit!
3/Finish my video resume - translation: hosting/producing reel.
4/Finish reading Getting Things Done!