our babies

according to makemebabies.com, this is what our kid will look like

1. we can't tell if it's a boy or a girl

2. he/she certainly didn't get MY ears!

3. not to brag or anything, but we made the cutest baby i've seen so far on this website, although he/she does look totally smug and stuck up. crap. 

and then we decided that one of the guys the boy works with looks like the love child between quentin tarentino and jude law. we're waiting to hear back from said guy to see if he'll donate a baby picture for us to compare...

p.s. might i emphasize that our e-baby is WAY cuter than jude and quentin's, because as smug as he/she is, he/she doesn't look 50... or maybe i've just got mommy eyes for my own offspring.jpg 

this leash demeans us both

this is what the ads say your child will look like when you use the kid leash (let's call it the kleash for simplicity) (p.s. i love the lack of logistics in this picture. the kid's at a full, apparently productive stride but the kleash is completely taut and the mom's not even moving... plus either everyone in the background is moving so fast in the opposite direction, they're blurry, or the kid and mom are somehow really booking it. maybe the mom's on rolley shoes and the kid is pulling her):

and his thoughts will be "goly gee, mom! you got me a stuffed animal?! wait, no - a backpack?!? wait, even better a kleash that keeps me within 2 inches of you at all times!!?! aw, you're the greatest."

but this is what your kid will really be like:

and his thoughts will be "fine, you're gonna treat me like an animal, i'm gonna make like a starfish in the middle of airport security. so there"

moments... it's all about moments

(isn't this an awesome picture? it looks like crew is gibson's little guardian angel and he's holding on by actually biting gib's shoulder. p.s. i've accepted the fact that i will probably look like this everyday when i have my own kids... unslept and unshowered... hope you don't mind, bill!)

some of my favorite instances this past week...

1. seeing this at the denver airport. sometimes i wonder if maybe i'm just vegetarian so i can see what kind of weird questions people might ask me. and then it reminded me about this time when i went on a date with this guy and he was so floored that i was vegetarian. he didn't know what to do with me. so he took me to 7-11 for dinner... because "there's plenty of vegetarian food there"... right...

2. helping out at this community college music event where bach's musical offering was being dissected for an hour. of course i, and all of the other summoned musicians, assumed (maybe because we practiced about 40 minutes worth of music) that most of the event would highlight sections of the piece using...get this... actual musicians and instruments... instead, we were cut off after about 3 minutes and replaced with this ENTIRE video. i'm pretty sure this is some creepy fantasy the composer/guy who put this together has. i mean, who wouldn't want a choir of japanese anime babes singing bach to you with electronic voices? needless to say, it was a very informational event

3. watching my darling nephews for a couple of days, which included listening to the indiana jones theme song at least two dozen times over the course of one hour and posing a lot for my aspiring photographer nephew, gibson who LOVED taking pictures on his auntie's cell phone... and then going through the 500 plus pictures he took and getting a kick out of the perspective of a 3 year old and what they view as "kodak moments"

caught in the act, crew! ... don't worry mom, we washed the sippy cup really well after that...

i'm not at all sure how gibson caught this - it's like four completely different pictures in one. way to get experimental, buddy!

of course, what kid doesn't want twenty pictures of his cool sandals? maybe gibson's destiny is in consumer advertising...

and, of course, my personal favorite. 

4. after keeping teddy and milo cooped up in the house for the entire morning and into the afternoon, we decided to treat them with a trip to the park. where teddy immediately b-lined it into the river and milo a) stole some poor little kid's capri sun right out of his hand, and b) rolled around for a good 5 minutes in the remains of a dead mouse. so then it was back to the house for baths and more cooping up. 

i love my life

take that, bunny

after our rockin’ easter eggs last year, we were a little disappointed that the best egg kit we could find this year was star wars. luckily, we also found a build-a-bunny-house kit, so at least there would be some variety during dye time.

we prepared everything just so – perfectly filled glasses of colored water, a pile of stacked bunny-house lumber ready for construction… the one factor we forgot to consider: boys.

bill was over for the easter party and our new friend saxon came over with his art skills. saxon coincidently also came with us on friday night to a flashlight easter egg hunt. what we didn’t know was that everyone there was under the age of 7… okay fine, maybe we did know that…

meghan and i were diligently creating the cutest bunny house known to man (minus the freaky bunny with red eyes and a gun meghan pasted on the roof) while the boys were working away with the star wars stickers. then it started. c3po made his way over to the bunny house to visit. then he climbed on the roof and attacked. he was soon followed by the whole star wars cast in egg version. the horror was unbearable. meghan and i excused ourselves to make dinner (cry). we’d check in every so often to scenes like this:

hard-boiled mice climbing up the roof

c3po, r2d2 and yoda (red eyes added for effect) watching guard from the roof (notice the insane amounts of frosting used to glue things down. that would be the workings of my craftsman boyfriend. yoda’s not going anywhere)

darth vadar decapitating a bunny (it shames me to admit that this was actually my idea)

once again notice the gobs of frosting

and saxon eating a frosting filled hardboiled egg (it also shames me to admit that i dared him to eat it)

we took a break for dinner with some happy stuffed artichokes.

and what’s easter if it doesn’t end with a friendly (?) game of monopoly. it’s very worth noting that meghan kicked bill’s trash, even though monopoly is the “game that defines” him.

easter rocks

hunters and gatherers

while most three year olds have imaginary friends, my nephew has imaginary coins. he holds out his little cupped hand and says “here chelsea, i have a coin for you.” it’s sad to me that i can’t keep the movement of the coin going – you know to help the economy grow and all. people don’t take well to a 25 year old trying to give them an invisible coin though. i wonder at what point people stop thinking imaginary coins are cute and start calling you crazy?

my dog isn’t as much about helping the economy grow. he doesn’t share his wealth so much as he does bury it. anything and everything – treats, toys, dead bodies. (this last item is yet to be confirmed) when you’re an inside dog, your hiding places become a little bit limited. under a blanket, under a pillow, under the carpet after ripping it up. the other morning, meghan woke up with a chicken nugget buried deep down into her hair. it still had bbq sauce on it.

a good way to contribute to the economy is to go see a movie at your local theatre. u23d is a good option. bono is pretty much sitting on your lap. who would complain about that? i told bill i would leave him for bono. i think he was okay with that because he probably would secretly leave me for bono too. anyway, when you buy tickets for a movie and the tickets say 11:30 with no am/pm indication, don’t assume that any theatre would show a family friendly imax movie at 11:30am on a saturday morning. you’d be wrong and then you’d look like a dork as you rush into the theatre at 11:45am (we blame our tardiness on the gps. it led us astray) and hand your tickets proudly to the ticket guy and he says “you realize this is at 11:30pm, right?” yes of course we realized that. that’s why we decided to come 12 hours early to reserve our seats.


happy president’s day!

reasons why i love my great grandma tick tock

grandma tick tock (officially mcclintock, but meghan couldn’t pronounce that when she was younger…and tick tock just fits) is 90 years old. she still works part time, dresses up for halloween (one year, she dressed up as cleopatra and she loved her costume so much she wore it everywhere for weeks before halloween. my aunt had to take the costume away because people kept getting surprise visits from an 80-something year old cleopatra wanting to borrow a stick of butter or whatever.) she’s never missed sending a birthday card and she makes us watergate cookies every year for christmas. i’m not really sure why she calls them that, but i’m pretty sure they’re made out of pistachio pudding. oh and she’s obsessed with dr. phil.

recently grandma’s health started failing, so she decided to pretty much rip up her will and to instead foot the bill for her entire family to go on a disney cruise with her to celebrate her life. how amazing is that? so we spent a week in the carribean with 52 of our relatives – from uncles and aunts to great and second (maybe even third??) cousins. the cruise itself was a blast (i’ll get to that in a second), but the thing that stuck with all of us the most was the realization that we belong to such an amazing legacy. there were people there that i haven’t seen in years, but that didn’t matter. we were all the same family and everyone was treated as such. in the spirit of grandma, who insists on talking to everyone she passes (the entire cruise staff knew her and even other families wanted pictures taken with grandma tick tock), we opened our arms and our hearts to get to know each other and to get to know grandma even better. by the end of the week, kids in the fifth generation were crying because they had to say goodbye to people in the third generation. second cousins hated to leave great uncles. what a great connection. i belong to such a cool legacy. thanks grandma tick tock for helping us all realize what’s really important in life!! and thanks for making me realize that i’m going to have to start saving for my wedding – i always wanted a small one, but now there’s no way i wouldn’t invite all 52 of those people!! love you grams!!

and now…

reasons why the disney cruise rocks

1. because you get to dress up like pirates

2. because you could get proposed to by a member of the cruise staff

3. because your waiter constantly plays practical jokes on you during your formal dinner

4. because where else do they light the christmas tree using pixie dust?

5. because they sell artificial hairpieces with little mickeys in them

6. two words – jack sparrow

7. one word – tarzan (no pic sadly. his abs broke the camera)

8. because all these people are there!

cruel and unusual punishment

here’s why this store hasn’t thought this through enough:

1) i hope the store intends on giving these gifts to the kiddies after their parents retrieve them. what if the employees get too excited to enforce their policy that they give the kid a shot of caffeine right away and then the parents never come back. joke’s on them. this is totally realistic, too. if i accidently left my kid at this store, i would for sure not go back to get him. i don’t need any more puppies – it’s just not worth it.

2) what kid wouldn’t want to run away if there was a promise of a free puppy attached?

3) what kid would actually drink espresso. gross…they’d end up giving it to the puppy and wouldn’t that be fun

p.s. isn’t that a nice full-body shot reflection? so artistic

the kids aren't alright

meghan and i went to my coworker’s house for a bbq a few weeks ago. we sometimes feel funny when we go places like this together because it’s usually a bunch of couples and us…the odd couple as riley likes to call us.

anyway, we always have a good time with food and people. emphasis on people. you know there’s something a little bit odd when you talk to a couple (not married but been dating for over 3 years) for at least 15 minutes about their lives and what they do, etc. and they only once, in very brief passing, mention “our kids” (i’m talking it may as well have been one word “archids”)

meghan and i left both a little curious and a lot intrigued by this little secret family. not intrigued enough to ever think about it again though.

then it happened, my coworker came to work with a sesame street gift bag and mentioned it was for this couple. “oh, for the archids?” was my natural, and once again intrigued, response. nope – not for the kids at all because actual kids did not exist with this couple. fake kids, however, were abundant. for whatever reason, this couple at some point in their relationship (or maybe it’s a yours/mine/ours situation..) decided that instead of having real kids, they would have sesame street stuffed animals (this is real) as their children. this means there are family pictures in the front room with “the kids.” they strap them in car seats. they even avoid fighting in front of the furry guys – elmo can’t handle seeing his parents fight.

we can’t wait until the next bbq. i request it be a family affair.