Thursday, August 30, 2007

Two more from this afternoon...

Jackson has a placemat that has a picture of the United States on it. Today he pointed to California and said, "You went there." I said, "Yeah what's it called?" Jackson: "Ummmm." Beth: "Come on you know this. It's starts with a C." Jackson, remembering, said as if sounding it out: "In-ter-state." Haha. BTW, if you haven't seen the movie Cars then this makes no sense I'm sure.

Later we were in the car and it started raining. Jackson said, "Where's my umbrella?" I said, "I don't know. I haven't seen it in ages." Jackson said, "Which Asia are you talking about? You mean my umbrella is where Uncle Chad lives?"

Okay that's all. I'll stop now...

New Funny Quotes from Jack-Jack

The other day Jackson said, "Mommy you and me should get married." I said. "Okay but what about Daddy?" He said, "He can be the audience."

You know in Finding Nemo when Marlin says to Nemo, "Hold my fin, hold my fin!" instead of hold my hand? Jackson and I used to always say that to each other when crossing the street. Now he's taken to saying, "Hold my tire, hold my tire!" He also calls his shoes tires, and says he's getting a new paint job when he changes clothes.

Mat taught Jackson the lyrics to this hilarious Flight of the Conchords song, and he's been going around saying, "Baguette! Huh huh huh!" (with a French accent) You kinda have to be there for that one.

Yesterday Jackson came to work with us. We were shooting out in the middle of this soccer field and our grip Chris asked Mat, "Can I get you an apple box to sit on?" (Apple boxes are these wooden boxes that the lighting crew has in different sizes that are used for many things including sitting on when you're in the middle of a field.) Mat said, "No thanks." But a couple of seconds later Jackson goes "I'd like an apple box to sit on pwease" as if we were all there to cater to his every need. haha

Jackson is so into books that he actually talks like a book. For example he peppers his conversations with expressions like "Suddenly, Daddy came downstairs." or "I was so surprised that I bounded out of my chair with a start." I'm not kidding. You really have to be around him all the time to pick up on it. I'm convinced he'll be a great writer someday. This morning I told him that over breakfast, and he reminded me that he was going to be an astronaut. I said that's great, but if it doesn't work out you can always write science fiction novels.

At breakfast the other day Jackson asked me where strangers lived. I said: They could live anywhere. Strangers are just people we don't know. Jackson: So they're not bad? Beth: Welllll...not necessarily. I mean, they might be just like you or me, but we just don't know them. Jackson: So a stranger could be a kid like me? Beth: Sure. Jackson: So they're good? Beth: They might be. Jackson: So strangers used to be bad but now they're good? Beth (getting frustrated): No, I didn't say that. They could be bad. Jackson: But where do they live? In the woods? Beth: Yes, they might live in the woods. Jackson: Behind our house? Beth: No. No one lives behind our house, but if they did they would be strangers. Jackson: So nice people like us might live in the woods behind our house? Beth: No. Just don't talk to strangers, okay? Jackson: Okay.

And Nana he's been talking all day today about coming to your house this weekend and eating sausage and scrambled eggs, going fishing, and riding Big Poppa's tractor.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Private school here we come!

A friend shared this little gem with Mat from the Miss Teen USA pageant, and he just showed it to me. So sad but hilarious. I'm filling out the application for Regents as we speak. Ha just kidding, kind of...

Friday, August 24, 2007

Fun Friday

Jackson and I had a rough day yesterday. By bedtime I was wondering if he was actually trying to get me to put him up for adoption, and he was probably wondering who replaced Mommy with her twin sister Meany. Jackson just needs constant attention. I can't relate to that really, because I've always been the type of person that likes to be alone and spend quiet time by myself. If you try to let Jackson play by himself he will be loud, destructive, disobedient, noncompliant, and argumentative, bordering on demonic.

I was trying to get too much done yesterday - returning work emails, cleaning, cooking, etc - and it didn't help that Mister Baby hasn't slept all week. So after saying a lot of little prayers throughout the day for patience and one big prayer last night that today would be better (especially since Mat is out of town), we started fresh with a clean slate this morning. I realized that I might as well get a babysitter for them on my days off if I'm just going to focus on my own agenda anyway. So today was all about the boys. No work, chores, errands, email, or phone calls while they were awake. Here's what we did...

First stop was Deep Eddy. I was little worried that none of us would like the cold water, but it was actually great. They even played calmly on the towel during rest times.





I can never take a good picture of Luke from the front when we're outside. His eyes are so sensitive to the light that he won't look up at me. Here's proof that he was there too.



After lunch Jackson went down for a nap without making a scene which happens about once a month. I decided to reward the boys afterwards by mowing. I even blew off the deck. This picture is for my Daddy who is always amazed that I do stuff like this now sometimes. We won't be making it a habit, though, don't worry.

(I will admit that the mowing pic was staged. Out of the ten or so attempts that we made at taking it, this was the one where Jackson framed it up with my head in the shot.)



You may think mowing and blowing qualify as chores, but at our house it's entertainment - kinda like going to the movies or something.



I made one of Jackson's favorite meals for dinner which I like to call Brown Food. It's basically taco salad without all those pesky red and green vegetables. Hence the color and the name.



Popsicles and Mary Poppins for dessert.




And then books and bed. It was a much better day today, an answered prayer.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Spitting Image?

Mat's mom has been telling me how amazed she is that Luke looks just like Mat did when he was a baby. I don't know...I don't really see it. What do you think? :-)




Sunday, August 19, 2007

The Ice Cream Festival

It was hot. That's about all I can say. Here are some pics that I've titled accordingly.

I like to call this one "Walking Around on the Surface of the Sun."



A self-portrait entitled: "Couldn't they have put some fans under this tent?"



This one is called: "Like the Hanson's except with no talent, cute pre-teen boys...or air conditioning."



"Thank goodness Daniel showed up. Maybe he has an air conditioner. Oh wait, nevermind, he doesn't."



"Excuse me sir. Do you have an air conditioner, pwease?"



The next three are called "Kids have fun for two minutes before getting kicked off slide by carnie-type person while parent's stand on surface of the sun."







"Why didn't we just go to Austin Scoops?"



"Yeah, why didn't we?"



And this one is my favorite. It's called: "Isn't this fun? I'm not hot. By smiling for the camera like Mommy wants me to, I'm already learning to suppress my true feelings at the age of one."



Okay it wasn't all bad. It was fun to hang out with Daniel and the Bushes. As the video clearly shows I don't think the boys even noticed how hot it was, all the sweaty stinky humanity all around, or that I laid down on the grass for a few minutes willing my heart to stop beating so I wouldn't have to suffer from the heat any longer. Haha No really. It was fun. Really.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Healthy Child Update

So...I keep waiting for the organic foods to kick in and make Jackson obedient. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful. :-) And I just knew that when I stopped heating the baby's bottle in the microwave he would sleep through the night. That hasn't happened yet either. So it must be the cleaning products, right? That's got to be the reason for the non-compliance. Okay well that's easy, I'll just stop cleaning the house altogether and let you know how that goes.

Here's a couple of pics from our shoot we're doing for the project this week in Austin.






Tuesday, August 14, 2007

For the G-parents.

My parents have been in Colorado since May 1st. It's hard to believe that their summer job is winding down and they only have about two and a half weeks to go. We have missed them a lot and are ready to have them back in Texas! These are some recent pics just for my Mom who checks the blog to keep track of the Boys. We can't wait to see you in person and hear all about your adventures in the Rockies!!







Saturday, August 11, 2007

Kansas

This is a story about our road trip to our family reunion this weekend. No, we did not go to Kansas. Mat was listening to music by the band Kansas in the car. (This is what happens when I have to ride in the backseat with the boys.) Anyway. The song was Carry On Wayward Son. Now even if your husband doesn't make you listen to Kansas on road trips, I'm sure you can remember this song if you try.

So Jackson goes, "Is this Cars music?" Of course he was talking about the movie Cars. I guess Mat figured he would have a better chance of getting to continue to listen to Kansas if he could somehow relate it to Cars so he was like, "Yeah this is Cars music. That's Lighting McQueen singing." Jackson: "What's it about?" Mat: "Well, McQueen is old and he's singing this song to his son." Jackson totally buying it: "Oh. I didn't know Lighting could sing." A minute later this trippy 70's keyboard thing happens and Mat goes: "This part is Fillmore." (You know the stoned VW bus?) Right after that is this country-sounding guitar part. Mat: "And that's Mater." Jackson: "Wow, they can play instruments?" Mat: "Oh yeah, cool huh?" On and on it went. So now Mat has successfully ensured that Kansas (or at least that one song) will now be in heavy rotation on the way home tomorrow. Oy.

We're going to the Ringling Bros. circus in Dallas tomorrow afternoon, so I'm going to post pics from the whole weekend when I get home. Here's a little movie of the family playing a large (and sometimes dangerous :-) game of Spoons, though. Watch my cousin Mark in the upper right-hand corner trick everybody else at the table. Pretty funny.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Black Eye - Day Two

This is what it looked like this morning. We may go to the doctor.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

This time there was blood...

We got another black eye folks. Yep. That's some good parenting right there. This is what happens when your head makes impact with the bathtub at a high rate of speed. My goal is for both of these current black eyes heal before he gets another one. You gotta have goals.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Bourne Update

If you love Bourne, you'll enjoy The Bourne Ultimatum. I think I liked the first two better, but this one definitely had some good action, some twists, and a little humor. It picks up right where the second movie leaves off in the middle of a chase, so if you have time go back and watch at least the end of #2 before you see #3.

We also saw a movie last week called "Rescue Dawn" starring Christian Bale. I love just about everything he's in, and this was no exception. It was a great story about a pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and plans an escape from a POW camp. Mat thought some of the editing and directing choices seemed a little low-budget, but I thought the performances were so good that I didn't care.

We still want to see The Simpsons Movie, Oceans 13, Live Free or Die Hard, Sicko, and Harry Potter. Anybody out there have any reviews of these?

Saturday, August 4, 2007

California Kool-Aid

I spent most of the week in LA with Wilson and Anne from our company. The weather was unbelievable. I actually got chilly a couple of times! We spent the week interviewing people for the Healthy Child project. Wilson took an earlier flight on Thursday and got back to the office before Anne and I. Since we're all really cognizant of trying to make this film we're doing appeal to everyone, Mat asked him something along the lines of "please tell me that not everyone you interviewed was a total fanatic" at which point Wilson launched into a lecture about all the environmental toxins that we're surrounded by that are making us all sick. Mat realized that he was in for it because we all drank the Kool-Aid while we were out there.

I'll try not to completely alienate myself from everyone by talking about this stuff too much, but we did learn some things and will definitely be making some changes at our house. The cool thing about Healthy Child, though, is that they aren't trying to scare people or force you to radically change your lifestyle. They just present the information and suggest easy things you can do to keep your family healthy (which also happens to be good for the environment as a whole). You can do as little or as much as you want, and it's actually kind of fun. The bottom line, though, is that it all makes sense and once you have this information it's impossible to ignore it, especially because it's your children who are potentially at risk. Here's a few things I learned, and then I promise I'll shut-up:

- If you bring something into your home that says "POISON, HAZARD, KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN" and then you spray it all over your furniture or floor or grass or bathtub where they are crawling around and putting things into their mouths, you can't possibly think that is good for them. There is a cumulative effect over time of small exposures to chemicals. And chemicals that are in household products aren't tested for their effects on children. If they are tested at all, it's on 150 pound males. Because of their size, children breath in more air, drink more, and eat more per pound than adults. Many disorders like learning diabilities, ADD, asthma, autism, allergies, non-hereditary cancers, etc. have been directly linked to environmental triggers found in household items like herbicides, pesticides, cleaners, plastics, mattresses, lotions, carpet, paint...the list goes on.

- The level of herbicides and pesticides in non-organic food is enough to change your child's behavior at best and at worst cause them to get sick. Studies have been done on hyperactive children who have trace levels of many, many pesticides in their blood. After one week of switching to organic foods the traces are gone and behavior improves. If you're going to switch there are certain foods that are treated more than others that you can focus on; anything made with peanuts, potatoes, and milk to name a few.

- Easy things you can do at home: take off your shoes at the door so you don't track in stuff from the grass, open the windows for 5 minutes a day, choose a few foods and switch to organic, don't heat plastic in the microwave, switch to non-toxic or homemade cleaners, and consider outfitting your nursery with an organic mattress since babies spend so much time on them and they are made from petroleum products and contain uneccessary chemical fire retardents.

A lot of people say things like, "My grandparents lived to be 100 years old and didn't worry about what they were eating or any of this stuff." That's an objection I have even thought of myself. But if you think about it, before WWII we didn't have all these chemicals and plastics and pesticides and hormones, etc in our everyday foods and products. I mean we wonder why breast cancer is so prevalent today but do not consider that you spend decades wiping a product designed to clog your pores and filled with chemicals and aluminum on your lymph nodes everyday. I'm not saying to stop wearing deoderant, but I'm just saying to think about it. A lot of scientists are making the connection between epidemic increases in diseases to exposures that we can control! Okay, enough.

Here are a few pics from the trip...

We shot in this cool Asian inspired hotel in Santa Monica called The Hotel Ambrose. Here's Wilson in the lobby. I think the sand raking was counteracting the stress of the phone call.



Here's Anne. She's happy now because this is before we learned that we are slowly killing ourselves with Pledge and Tilex. :-)



This is the room where we were set-up. We were getting ready to shoot an interview with Christopher from Healthy Child.



Here's a group shot. Bottom row is Anne, Beth, Mandy and Christopher. Top row is Wilson, Adam, and Justin. Adam was our local sound guy and Justin was the grip. These guys were so glad to be working on something for a good cause since they spend most of their time doing reality TV. They just recently got back from The Real World Sydney.



We never made it to the beach while we were there. But we ate at some really great resturants, and Anne and I stopped in Beverly Hills on the way to the airport to shop and eat a cupcake at Sprinkles - yum. I was happy to get home and see the boys on Thursday night. Tonight we're going to see The Bourne Ultimatum with a big group of friends. Review to come...

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