coolio

here are some things i think are cool.

1. tonight we're supposed to get some giant blizzard. all day long i've heard people freaking out about it; costco was packed with doomsday-ers stocking up on crap; byu closed down at 3 p.m.; the news broadcasters were talking like it's the apocalypse. so far there's a little snow outside but i definitely don't think it warrants any panic. mormons sure love a good pending disaster. [but it IS supposed to be below 20 degrees for the next few days, so that is just about as terrifying it gets for me, i guess.]

2. last week i took a couponing class with the mba wives. this subject both fascinates and overwhelms me. i started getting a little freaked when i tried it out, so i created a modified semi-couponing routine and so far it's going pretty well. i saved almost $20 on my $60 target trip tonight, including two free boxes of chocolate chip eggo waffles. i'm stocked up! that's how we prepare for blizzards in this house.

3. the past few nights, jack has flipped out when it's bedtime [normally around 730] and stayed awake, happy and playing until 10 p.m. then, today, he decided he didn't want to take naps and barely got 2 hours of sleep in all day. i do not understand this, especially since he's usually a really consistent sleeper AND because he's still in a good mood despite the lack of sleep. then tonight he conked out while he was eating at 645 and was blissfully fast asleep in his crib at 7 p.m. you lose some, you win some, i guess.

4. last night we went to winco for the first time [which BLEW MY MIND...i'm not kidding. okay, not the whole store, just that bulk-item section...wow] and we saw special edition hot pockets in the freezer section! b designed and wrote the packaging for these "feeding america" boxes during his internship! i am so proud. bet you'll never walk past the frozen foods section the same way again :)





5. took jacko to his first art exhibit today -- the carl bloch exhibit at the byu museum of art. he's so cultured. i loved it and felt so inspired & educated. [shout out to laura ;) ]

6. thanksgiving is coming, b doesn't have another trip planned for months [fingers crossed that doesn't change...he's been in 4 states in the past 2 weeks] and christmas is just a month away! i love the holidays.

the end.

my new favorite sound

jack is a pretty tough critic. he smiles a ton, but his laughs are pretty few and far between. we usually have to work reallllly hard to get a giggle out of him, so we get super excited when he does actually laugh.

while b was out of town this week at a job interview, i got jack to crack up for the very first time! this is way more than just a giggle...this was the first time he outright laughed, and then laughed some more. i grabbed the video camera and got it on tape.

i found his giggle-trigger completely by accident. i was killing time, getting him ready for bed, and dropped my necklace onto one of his board books. you can't really see that part in the video, but all i did was drop the necklace over and over to jack's utter delight. the video is below for your viewing pleasure...if it doesn't make you smile, i'm pretty sure you have no heart.



[please also note toward the end when he drools all over himself...yeah, he does that a lot these days.]

i love jack.

jack is cute

the title really pretty much says it all. my mom & sister came to town over the weekend [while b was in south bend, indiana for the notre dame / utah game, which you may have heard turned into a bloodbath...poor b] and we had so much fun. and by fun i mean mostly we sat around and looked at jack and oohed & ahhed at his every move.

case in point:







lest i get carried away in all the bliss of parenthood, let me point out three things that currently suck about having a baby:

1. my hair. it is awful. i've rethought the current hair color more than once the past few months, but that's not even the worst of it. i lose like nine million strands of hair a day and my hairline is receding and the hair that's left is limp and non-volumized. gross. i don't even like seeing pictures of myself these days. i'm already scheduled to see my CA hair lady over xmas break and i'm seriously counting down the days.

2. my life is sort of boring. i don't really realize this until people come to visit and i'm like "oh, no, we can't go to lunch till jack wakes up from his nap" or "jack is getting tired, we better go home" or "jack needs to eat so i'll just stay home and feed him while you get takeout." i'm sort of a homebody. thank goodness for the internet, DVR and a husband who likes to have date nights at home.

3. car seats are freaking heavy and only getting heavier, thanks to my little chubbo. i was leaving an activity at my church last week and missed a step on the way out, while carrying a plate of cookies, a diaper bag and j in his car seat. the cookies went in a bush, the car seat slammed into the ground and i landed hard on both knees. poor jack was briefly freaked out but totally unharmed. my knees on the other hand may never be the same. here's the gory closeup five days later:



don't worry, they've had it worse. in college i suffered a traumatic longboarding accident and my knees actually bled / oozed for days. luckily this time all the damage is internal...but they hurt. guess i should watch my step.

lots of other things are good about being a mommy, though. after my last post j decided to switch it up and sleep for 11 hours in a row. he's also quite adept at pulling my hair, babbling and smiling all the time. love that kid.

moded

last week -- j was sleeping 10 hours + 2 hours every night. i was feeling well-rested and proud of myself.
last night -- j wakes up every 4 hours. now i'm just tired & grumpy.
just when you think you have these babies figured out....you find out you don't.

oh, and there's snow on the forecast for the majority of this week. yep, that's my life right now. awesome.

infomercials.

you ever make a bad decision that comes back to bite you? yeah, me too. and this is the story of my most recent epic bad decision.

back in feb 2008 i filmed a commercial for this little company. yes, it's true. how did this happen, you ask? i was a real p-a customer and in one of my shipments, there was a little note saying if you submitted your "before" pictures to some website they'd give you free product. yes please. so i did, and one of the casting directors latched onto me the very next week and wanted me to shoot a testimonial. i think i was an appealing candidate because i a.) lived in LA [they film in LA & SF, and have to fly in the testimonials if they live elsewhere] and b.) worked in PR [so they figured i could stay on message and put together a coherent story].

she & i were in talks for shooting a testimonial for over a year but things were always held off due to my work schedule, vacations, etc. when i knew we'd be moving soon for MBA school and time was running out, she offered me one last chance to do a shoot. my sched was open and my curiosity overtook me and i agreed. having always worked behind-the-scenes in my career, i was super interested to see how they did everything, even though it meant i'd have to be in FRONT of the camera instead of behind.

they put me up in a hotel in the valley and paid me $50 gas money to drive over. i got up early in the morning, met my fellow testimonial-ers and got schlepped over to a giant house in reseda [fun fact: where they also filmed flava flav's show for vh1]. i had two makeup people and one hair person get me ready and i worked with the wardrobe girls to pick outfits. i spent most of the day scoping out the house & amazing backyard, enjoying the craft service table [which was probably what i was most looking forward to & turned out to be everything i'd ever dreamed of -- new meals & snacks on the hour, every hour!] and hanging out with the other girls. i filmed a few interviews, changed clothes, got touched up, filmed more, ate more. and then we were done and i drove home. oh, and i got to keep a totally awesome dress that i wore for one of my interviews. [i still get free p-a products to this day, btw.]

and that was it. only my mom, b, and like two other people even knew i had done it and i sort of hoped my footage would never see the light of day. then, over the past few weeks, i've been notified by a handful of friends [the first one being an ex-boyfriend, which is sort of awkward] that I'M ON TV. ughhh. so far sightings have been on e! and mtv.

so now i'm outing myself so that you lovely blog readers can keep an eye out too. i can't tell if i'm more embarrassed by the fact that it's ME on tv, or that i'm hawking p-a. but let's be serious, at least i'm in good company with the likes of fellow p-a users katy perry, jessica simpson and justin bieber. right? right. ugh. still embarrassing.

p.s. for funsies, here's some pics from that day that have never been published. me & my fellow testimonialists -- see if you spot any of them on tv too :)



an outtake from my interview...it was freaking bright outside. lol:



the end. moral of the story: free facewash is not worth a lifetime of humiliation.

sick

that's a picture of my planner from last week. it was a really really busy week. what have i done this week? gotten sick...and that's about it. b was sick with a cold over the weekend, j started coughing his tiny little lungs out on monday [but thankfully recovered quickly and is pretty much better now] and lucky ME got hit with the worst of it yesterday.

annnnd it's still here, going strong. plus now i'm too paranoid to take cold meds because the doctor told me the decongestants can affect your milk supply if you're nursing, and this afternoon j had a very un-characteristic freak-out and was starving barely two hours after eating, so no more meds for me.

just because i feel crappy, and b is at school all night, and j is asleep, here's a list of why i hate colds:
- my lips are chapped ALL THE TIME
- my nose is like a fountain of snot [sorry, i know that's gross, but don't act like it's never happened to you]
- i want to stay in bed all day even though i "only" have a runny/stuffy nose, headache & cough
- my head is cloudy, i can't remember anything and i just sit around in a daze breathing though my mouth

i loooove making lists [though not necessarily lists like the one above]. my planner is especially good for this. i made major lists when i worked full time and even kept some of my notebooks as a memento of making lists and crossing things off. now that i'm a sahm my lists consist more of things like "paint nails," "pay hospital bill," "vacuum," etc but whatever, i still get major satisfaction out of crossing them off.

this week "groceries" has been on my list every single day and i just barely crossed it off with a trip to target an hour ago. i'm not feeling incredibly motivated so now i'm off to sit on the couch and catch up on dvr. is that productive enough to be added to my to do list?

JACK-o-lantern

by the looks of my google reader, if you have a cute kid & you dressed him/her up for halloween, today is the day to post pictures. so here you go :)

jack was the cutest in his little costume. and yes, we have jack-related costume ideas for the next 10 years. oh sorry jack, you wanted to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle? sorry, the word "jack" is not included; therefore, it's a no-go.



he did pretty great in his costume, something i was going for by trying to pick a comfy outfit. although every time we put that stem-hat on him he looked at me like i was crazy. my sister & i made that hat for him last month, and the first time we tried it on he made the best faces ever. want to see? of course you do:




b fulfilled childhood dream of becoming peter vankman. his costume was fantastic and even glowed in the dark.





i was mother nature...tried to come up with something that could match my little pumpkin. not sure it really worked out, but i got to wear lots of green eye shadow and glue leaves to my clothes so let's call it a draw.



i think we had a little too much fun this weekend with parties & activities every day. poor little jack-o-lantern is now fighting his very first cold, complete with sniffles, sneezes and coughs [which are surprisingly adorable, until they turn into choking and mom freaks out]. welcome to november everybody!

one more of j? sure, why not.