What Happened?

I turned the TV on at prime time tonight for a little vegetation... and here were my choices:

So You Think You Can Dance
America's Next Top Model
American Heiress
American Masters
Next Best Thing (Celebrity Impersonators)

Is there anything being put out on TV anymore out that isn't just about celebrities or talent contests?

Geez.

Guess I'll go play my guitar for a while... (actually I started watching "American Masters", which was a documentary about Les Paul, and his invention of the solid-body electric guitar and multi-track recording, which reminded me my guitar is sitting next to me, and my Les Paul imitation is downstairs right next to my multi-track recorder)

...woops, never mind, Laina woke up.

The Top Ten Things Nobody Told Us

So we were talking to some friends today about what having a baby is like, and I was inspired to do this post of the top 10 things nobody told us (or maybe they told us but we didn't really understand) about newborns/infants:

This is going to go Letterman style, where you go backwards, and the number one answer is always a big letdown since its the least funny of the 10...

10. Diaper Blowouts - Mere diapers, no matter the type, can't always contain the glorious creations of a baby

9. The quivering lip - Simultaneously the cutest and saddest thing you can see a little helpless baby do...

8. Lack of sleep is for real - You really don't get enough sleep for weeks - I always joked about this and thought it was funny that new parents don't get sleep... But you really don't - and it isn't funny. This one belongs in the "I heard you, but I didn't really understand". Now I know why the first question anyone asks a new parent is "Getting any sleep?". The scary part is that I even had it way better than Jenna.

7. Staring contests- Babies seem to be into staring for long periods of time. You can try to beat them, but you will lose.

6. Cuteness overload - Your baby is the cutest thing in the world. I never thought babies were cute until Laina was born, now everthing she does is absolutely the most adorable thing I've ever seen.

5. Baby Acrobatics - Babies like to try to dive out of your hands. Maybe this is just Laina, but it seems like she knows when I've got her one-handed, because that's when she decides to pull a Greg Louganis. It completely freaks me out every time, but I guess it keeps me on my toes...

4. Emotional Rollercoasters - Emotions can turn on a dime. She can go from full-on baby smile to red-faced scream in nanoseconds... Usually its when you're trying to grab the camera - as evidenced by this photo:



3. The Sleep Conspiracy - Babies like to do all their sleeping when your out and about, and other people can see them. That way, it appears to the outside world that they just sleep all the time. I think this is a widespread baby conspiracy to convince would-be-parents that babies are "low maintenance", thus ensuring the continued production of their kind.

2. Boringness - Newborns don't really like to play much. All those toys you got at the baby shower don't really do anything for her until shes a couple months old. You can put on the best puppet show that ever was, and get nothing but a blank stare, or worse, one of those red-faced cries...

1. Onesie Aversion - Infants (or at least ours) don't like getting dressed, and you have to change them multiple times a day. My theory is this has to do with the similarity of the sensation of having a onesie pulled over one's head to the all-too recent and traumatic journey from womb to gloved hand...

So there you have it. Maybe that wasn't the "Top" 10, but more like "Ten Things I Could think of as I typed".

If you veterans have some more, feel free to post them in the comments section...

Ahoy, Scallywags!

We got outte thee harse far tha farst time without the wee wench yest-aarrrgh-day and saw "Pirates of Ye Carrrrghibean At Thee Waaarrrlds End"

I know it not be Talk Like a Pirate Day (That be the 19th of Septembarrrrgh), so I'll be talking proper-like farrrghh the rest of ye post.

It was a big moment for us... we actually both left the house without Laina, a friend from church offered to babysit, and we took her up on it. It went pretty well. About halfway through the movie I forgot about the Pearl and the pirate's code and starting wondering how Laina was doing and wondering how much longer the movie was going to be... I found out afterwards that Jenna was thinking that the whole time... (so she wins the parental paranoia award)

But we made it the whole time without checking in once... Big feat, even if the movie's been out for over a month, we were happy to go see it. That was actually only the second movie (not counting the one visit to the dollar theater when we first got here) we've seen since living in Colorado... and let me tell you, California folks, 5 BUCKS for a matinee! That's right. That may have been the best part. I figured movies would be up to like $15 by now...

Anyway, that's pretty much the whole story. I was going to write like a pirate the whole time, but, not only did I decide after the first couple sentences that its too hard, but it also would be really annoying to try to read...

Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho....

Summertime beauty

A while back my friend Tara posted a blog with all the cool flowers that just started springing up out of the ground in their yard. Well we have the same phenomenon! Here is what has appeared in our yard this summer...

this one above is about ready to bloom - it will be cool to see what the flowers look like!

There are tons of these growing in a little garden area in a corner of the yard, some purple and some white. There are usually some small bumble bees gathering pollen around these flowers, but none were out when I was taking pictures. They are really cute though and have red butts.

There are also tons of these daisy things growing in the garden area. Someone told me all the bulbs multiply, so there will keep being more every year - crazy!

I think this one is my favorite -
it's a reed growing up by our little pond/fountain, and it made a cool cat-tail!

And these are some herbs that I was inspired by my friend Jill to grow. I had herbs back in California, and it was easy to grow them there. I wasn't so sure about doing it here where it freezes in the winter. I think I'll just have to bring them inside. (I know the one with a flower is not an herb, it just happens to be on the same table so it got in the picure.) I have sweet basil (what Italian wouldn't have basil?), Italian parsley, and chives. The parsley isn't growing too well - I hope it starts to do better!

Father's Day #1

My first father's day has been great so far... I got up this morning and hung out with Laina, then had a lip smacking good breakfast (no, Tony the Tiger wasn't involved). Then I opened my gifts... Laina got me some books to read to her - called "Daddy Cuddles" and "Daddy Kisses".

Then Jenna brought me down to the basement where she had secretly hidden my other gift - a hammock chair. Funny I mentioned just last week that we should get a hammock for the backyard, and she had already ordered this badboy. I put it all together after church, set up some shade - under the umbrella that was thought dead after a windstorm last week (I managed to breathe new life into it on Saturday morning with some duct tape, a leftover metal bar from some unknown ikea item, and a philips-head. I figure I'm a regular MacGyver)



Then, after taking a "father's day nap" (soon to be an annual tradition I think) we walked over to our community pool to take Laina for her first swim. Unfortunately, the moment we walked out the door, the 90 degree sunny weather turned into a thunderstorm, and we started seeing lighting. We walked over anyway and waited for the storm to pass (which usually doesn't take long). They wait 20 minutes from the last sound of thunder to reopen the pool, so we had to wait about 40 minutes.



Finally we got the all-clear from the lifeguards, and we hopped in. Laina didn't like the wet sensation at first (probably worse since they don't make infant swimmer-diapers, so we had to put her in a regular disposable - which immediately soaked up a couple gallons of pool water). But she got used to it after a minute or so, and I got her floating on her back a little bit, and dipped her up to her shoulders. Mom started getting concerned that she'd get cold (which didn't even occur to me - shows you why moms are key), so we got her out after about 3-4 minutes of pool time. It was a pretty cool experience, though to take her to the pool for the first time. I taught "mommy and me" sort of classes back in my days as a lifeguard/swim instructor, but I didn't really have a clue what it was like to take a baby in the pool for the first time (who would at 18 years old?)



We took her home and got all the chlorine off of her in the bath, and bundled her up in her towel-hoodie, when she started striking poses like this one below



We ordered pizza for dinner, and wrapped up the night with "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny"...

Pretty much the perfect Father's Day

Behold the cuteness

Memorial Day Weekend

The Saturday before Memorial Day Jay's friend from California and his Girlfriend were out here in Colorado visiting her parents, and we were invited over to hang out. This was up north from where we are, though I can't remember the city off hand. It was an awesome neighborhood, with views of the Rockies to the west and the "Devil's Backbone" to the east, practically right in their backyard.


Then on Monday our neighbors had a bbq and we got to hang out and get to know many of our neighbors better. It sounds like the culdesac we live on does neighborhood bbqs often during the summer which is really awesome and we're looking forward to getting to know everyone even better.