Before/After

Jack loves apples. Last night he ate one as a snack. Literally. He ate the entire thing.

 Before

 After

He was watching Toy Story (weird) and eating it so I wasn't paying much attention. When I did look over, he only had a small piece of it left. He had already eaten the entire core, seeds and all. I remember being little and my dad telling me that if I ate the apple seeds a tree would start growing inside of me. Then I saw a Weekly World News cover that had a picture of a boy with a tree growing out of his mouth and freaked out. Thankfully all that will happen to Jack is he'll have some weird looking poop.

Rocky

Once again Jack wanted to watch Entourage today and I once again told him he had to wait til Daddy got home. As soon as Josh walked in the door, Jack ran up to Josh like this.

It is a beautiful evening, however, and not meant to be spent indoors so we took a walk to the pond to throw rocks. Fun for Jack and Josh, and photo-op for me!

Quotes That I Can Now Relate To

"She's wearing a pale pink T-shirt, Alice notes- a color Taylor used to make a point of hating. She always had to wear out-spoken things, red, purple, orange, sometimes all at once. Alice realizes something important about her daughter at this moment: that she's genuinely a mother. She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink."
- Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver

"...I'm sorry. I just got overwhelmed. No one tells you how hard this is all gonna be [...] It's the hardest job in the world and nobody prepares you for that. Nobody tells you how much you have to give up [...] I've given up so much of what made me who I am. But I can't say that because I'm a very bad person if I say that. But I feel it. I really do. I feel it sometimes. I just- I just want you to know that.
- Marley and Me

My Blog got a New "Do"

When I first started this I sort of threw a header together without really thinking about what I was putting. Today I decided to actually spend a little time on it and ended up changing the title to something more appropriate. Because lets be honest. There are so many mommy bloggers out there. The concept of this blog is hardly original by any means. Haha.

I'm not the only one with a babby in the family.

Here is heart warming photo of my sister taking her baby out for a walk in her "Baby Björn" (said in a Swedish Chef accent).

Jack's Newest Animals

Jack's animal list is growing. For Monkey's he goes "Ah! Ah!" and tickles his arm pits. For birds he says "Teet! Teet! (he can't say the "w." Actually, what he says sounds more like "Tit! Tit!" lol). If you ask him what a lion does he'll say "Rawr!" and if you ask him what a crab does (yes, a crab) he pinches his fingers together and makes a little cackling noise.

In other news, Josh and I have every season of Entourage on DVD and yesterday we started a marathon of getting through it all. All three of us watched the entire first season while eating pancakes and drinking wine. I know. Classy. Pancakes and wine. At 11am. Five bucks a bottle. That's how we roll. Minus Jack. He didn't have wine, just pancakes. Although he tried when we weren't looking. Fortunately it ended up down the front of his shirt rather than the back of his throat. But he did smell rather fruity for the rest of the day and Josh was worried that his parents were going to notice that he smelled like wine when we went over there later that afternoon.

This afternoon I asked Jack to pick out a movie to watch and he picked out one of the seasons of Entourage. I told him we couldn't watch that one without daddy and to pick out a different one. So he put it back and grabbed a different season of Entourage. Looks like someone is a fan. Or he has a man crush on Adrian Grenier. That's ok. He can have him. Mommy likes Kevin Connolly.

Day Off!

Both Josh and I had the day off so the whole family got to do go to Doozies and to the park. Jack got to run around, and I got to play photographer.

This is my new favorite photo of Jack. I think it capture's his personality perfectly.

 

This was taken with my new fisheye/wide angle lens.

 

Yesterday I made the mistake of leaving the box of Lucky Charms out within Jack's reach. I took my eyes off of him for two minutes and this is what happened (either that, Alexa Picken stopped by for a surprise visit).

 This morning we watched "The Squeakel." I don't know if any of you have seen it, but in the movie the Chipettes sing "Single Ladies." As some of you may know, that is one of Jack's favorite songs. Whenever he hears it he stops what he is doing and does the dance (the wrist flick/wave). I have it on video and I really need to upload it because it's hilarious. Anyway, now Jack connects that song with the chipmunks so now all he has to do is see a picture of them and he'll start doing the dance. With the NFL draft going on right now, I keep talking about how some day we are going to be waiting to see where Jack gets drafted (yes, I totally want to be a football mom) but in actuality, I'm more than likely going to be going to his dance recitals rather than his football games.

Mommy bought herself a new present

Actually, several new camera equipment presents, including a wide-angle lens and a high-speed flash. I was previously very anti-flash. I hated the unnatural color and avoided using it at all costs. This sometimes poses a challenge when taking photos of Jack, however, because Jack does not understand that he has to sit still long enough for the shutter to stay open when I have the shutter speed set at 1/10. Anyway.....
Last night Jack was giving kisses to Josh in his tent. This is a photo that normally would have been challenging for me to take due to Jack being in the shadows of the tent and Josh being in the light. But with my new high-speed flash... voila! Beautiful colors and everything is well lit. This was definitely a great investment. I'm going to love it.

On a completely different note, Jack is more obsessed with Toy Story than ever. He knows all of the characters, but he has a special fondness for Buzz.

Here is a picture he colored. Can you guess where I helped? :)

And my last note of the day...
Every Sunday at the Martin household is "Pancake Sunday." I make Jack's extra special.

The inspiration behind my blog address

I've had a couple of people ask how I came up with the address "thatspellsroygbiv" so here's the answer. It's a magical little number/video. Enjoy!

SATC

This afternoon Jack was really wound up from playing with Cara and did not want to take a nap. Josh suggested that I put on a movie or something to calm him down and just sit with him on the couch until he fell asleep. I wanted to put on something that wouldn't interest him too much so that he wouldn't want to actually watch it. I therefore decided on every male's nightmare: Sex and the City.

This was him by the time Carrie's opening monologue was over with.

Baby, You'll be Famous

Jack always wants to drink my Diet Coke. Today he grabbed my pop from McDonalds and took a sip before I could take it away. The look on his face was priceless. Pure disgust. Like "This is it? Why in the hell do you drink this crap?!"

Due to Jack's love of forts, I decided buy Jack a little indoor tent (like Ian's!) with the money Jack got for Easter from Nana, GG (Great Grandma), and Great Grampa (who we are trying to convince to go by "GG Pop" but he has shown little enthusiasm for it ).

Also, were you aware that Jack is a Rock Star? He even hangs out with Mark Wahlberg.

The paparazzi constantly following him around is becoming a problem. Leave him alone, Lady Gaga! You can chase him down all you want but he's not going to love you. He's only 17 months old for god's sake! And dude, the reason he keeps telephoning you while you are the club is not because he's obsessed with you. It's because he's a baby and doesn't know how to use a phone. And the reason you can't hear him isn't because you have no service in the club, it's because he's not talking. Because I repeat, he's 17 months old! Geez, I know you want a bad romance, but this is ridiculous!

(I got way too enjoyment out of writing that)

Jack's Latest and Greatest

Jack has been recognizing a lot more animals lately. His latest favorites are elephants (thanks to Stephanie!) It's absolutely adorable.


 

Jack also knows his dinosaurs, thanks to his favorite song "I am a Paleontologist" (see earlier post of him dancing). Here he is watching the video to the song and responding appropriately.



And here he is in the car, very enthusiastically responding to the song.




Jack has also developed the habit of saying "Pffftt" whenever one of us farts. But I don't have a video of that because you all don't need to see/hear me fart. I save that for Jack and Josh.

Oh, the things I do to amuse myself.

Dear Diary,
I had thee worst date ever this afternoon! The date started out on an ok note...

I tried to ignore the fact that he had chosen to wear a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" shirt on our first date. "Maybe he's just quirky," I thought to myself as we waited for our food.

"I wonder where that waiter is!" I exclaimed, trying to fill the growing silence. But, things did not get better once our food eventually arrived. He sat there in silence for the most part, staring at each bite I put into my mouth. The only time he spoke was to say, "Oh-Oh!" whenever I dropped some food on the floor. As if pointing this out wasn't embarrassing enough for me, he would then get up from the table and pick up each piece of food I dropped.

However, I was determined to try to make the best of the situation and began to try to make conversation. He was clearly not interested in what I had to say. You could tell that the entire time he was thinking, "Why does she keep talking?!"

Then, he even had the nerve to check out another woman as she passed!

As if things couldn't get any worse, at one point during the meal, he got up and dumped my entire plate of peas out onto the table.

I was so mortified. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at us!

At that point, it was clear that the date was un-salvageable, so I pulled one of the oldest "bad date tricks" in the book. I pretended to receive an important phone call from a friend.

"What?" I gasped. "You're in trouble? I'm sorry to cut our date short," I told him. "But my friend is in trouble."

He didn't seem too phased by the fact that I was leaving. He was probably happy that I was no longer keeping him from playing his video games.

So that, diary, is why I will never go out with Jack Dexter Martin again.

I wonder what weird thing he's up to right now? ....

We survived our first blood bath!

Jack fell down today and bit his lip. Of course it had to happen in public, the CMU music building to be exact. Not to mention that it is Opus this weekend (which is, for those who don't know, like thee event of the year) so the building was filled with people. So I had to rush out of there with a child screaming at the top of his lungs with blood coming out of his mouth. I'm sure I looked like a super awesome mother. Once we were in the car, I gave him a nuk to try to calm him down. When we got home and I took the nuk out, he had a ring of blood around his mouth. In the picture it just looks like chocolate.

The reason we were at the music building today is because I was helping out On the Rox with an arrangement I did for them. Of course, Jack being the ladies man that he is, had all of them swooning when he lifted up his shirt to show them his "button."

Yesterday I made Jack sit through the movie "Evita" with me. As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to watch it, he had to listen to me serenade him throughout the entire thing. Yes. I know every single word to every single song in that musical.

This was his initial reaction:

But then he realized that he loved it.
( I knew he would. Hello! His parents have music and theatre

 degrees!) And he was straining to see around me and the camera:

Toy Story! Toy Story! (I am so one of those Moms)

Because of Jack, we are constantly buying Disney Movies, so I signed us up for the Disney Rewards program (I totally became one of those moms who searches the internet for ways to get more points and for codes from other moms). Anyway, they were offering a special for rewards members that if you owned the Toy Story and/or Toy Story 2 VHS' or DVDs, you could enter in their UPC codes online and receive a $10 off coupon for each of the new blu-rays. Seeing as I have both, I totally jumped on it. Furthermore, Target was having a sale that if you bought both of them, they gave you $10 off. So I essentially got both for the price of one. Furthermore, when I entered my Disney rewards codes for buying the blu-rays, I got two free movie tickets to see Toy Story 3!

I'm really considering having that be the first movie we take Jack to. I know that he'll only be around 20 months old at the time and that seems sort of young, but Jack loves movies. I did some snooping online about when most mothers thought it was appropriate to bring your kid to their first movie and a lot of mothers said it really depends on the kid. Some said their kids wouldn't sit through a movie til they were 4. Others said they brought theirs as young as 18 months. And Jack definitely has the attention span to sit through entire movies. He does it all of the time. Additionally, I think it's a good choice for a movie.  He is familiar with the characters (in addition to the movies, he has a Toy Story couch and Toy Story table and chairs) and we'd be seeing the movie for free, so worse case scenerio he won't sit still and we have to leave. I think it's worth a shot anyway.

So anyway, back to my Disney Rewards story. In addition to the two movie tickets, I also got the standard points that you get every time you buy a Disney product, leaving me with a total of 1,500 points.
So that means I got to redeem them for the best free gift ever...
the Disneyland and Disneyworld Sing-A-Long DVDs!

I know most of you reading this are going, "Great.... what's that?" But my mother and sister know how amazing this is. Jillian and I grew up watching these on VHS and we adored them. I am excited to continue the tradition with Jack.

Jack is currently very intently watching the Toy Story 2 blu-ray on his Toy Story couch. The quality is AMAZING.

This morning Jack put on daddy's shoes. He was apparently very proud of this accomplishment. And look! He's wearing his Toy Story pj's! Man! What a Toy Story Day!

Forts II

Jack decided he wanted to try to crawl on top of his fort again.Of course this is what happened.

He then decided this was pretty comfortable and watched the rest of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse like this.

Jack has also learned how to take pictures with the camera. Here are a couple of his shots.

Nice, huh? Now everyone gets to see how messy our living room is.

Forts

Yesterday we built our first fort for Jack in the living room after discovering how much he liked it when we were all under the blankets on the bed. Now he's all about forts. He's hanging out in one that I just put up for him in the living room.

Last night Jack got up on the couch and tried walking across the blankets on the top of the fort while Josh was underneath. Of course, Jack is no Jesus, so he immediately fell right through on top of Josh. Comedy gold.

The Easter Bunny Came!

When we woke up this morning, we could hear Jack stirring around in his bed. Then we heard the infamous "clunk" of something being thrown out of his bed followed by "Oh-Oh! Da-Da!"

Josh then had to keep Jack from leaving the bedroom once we got up because the Easter Bunny forgot to hide Jack's eggs last night.

 Jack got really excited when he saw his Easter basket. And he did an awesome of job of finding the eggs.

He did an even better job once he realized there were M&M's inside of them.

Afterward I said to him, "Isn't the Easter Bunny AWESOME?!" and this was his response.

Jack getting down to "I am a Paleontologist" by TMBG

He kept spinning throughout the whole song and getting dizzy and falling over.
The second time he falls over is the best. You can even hear me snorting in the background as I try to stifle my laughter.

Jack takes after his mother in some ways

I jump at EVERYTHING in movies. Stupid things people shouldn't jump at, even in movies that aren't scary. It seems as though Jack may take after me.

We were watching "Finding Nemo" tonight and when the pelican flew into the window, Jack literally gasped and jumped so high that I felt him lift off my lap. It scared the crap out of him. So funny.

Throughout the movie I kept trying to get him to say "Nemo." He'd just look at me and put his hands out, shrug his shoulders and say, "Huh?" every time I said it.

Jack and I took our first trip to Doozies today for icecream. He ate his entire vanilla kids cone all by himself.

I went to Menards yesterday and bought some gardening fencing to make a little play area for Jack in our yard. It seems to do the trick to keep him from running out in the parking lot. He doesn't necessarily love being confined to it, but he's going to quickly learn that he either plays in there or he doesn't play outside.
It's a fairly large area... 8'x16' so he has room to run around. The fencing was cheap and it's easily movable for when the lawn crew comes through to cut the grass.


Jack also has his own little matching patio chair that he loves sitting in. I think it makes him feel like a big boy. You can sort of see the new patio furniture I bought us in the background.














Jack was especially photogenic and cooperative with the camera today so I am going to bombard you with photos.

I think Jack looks rather Irish in this one.
Like a little Leprechaun.