These videos are of poor quality because I don’t have a video camera, I just have a four year old digital camera.  Hey, its the thought that counts right?  This’ll be short ’cause the baby is crying as I speak.  Er, type.  Anyway, he’s started learning how to laugh!

And use his teething toys!

Well, one out of two, anyway.  LOL

I’m a first time mom, I just became a stay-at-home-mom, and this blog is a chronicle of my journey from n00b to expert, as it were. So when it comes to sharing what ‘works for me,’ I’m a little shy. Y’all probably already know everything, so what on earth can I teach you? I was wracking my brain to think up a clever WFMW topic when it came to me.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve already discovered it or not. On the off chance you haven’t, here’s my Wednesday tip! Liquid baby powder! I received two bottles of Huggies Extra-Sensitive Liquid Baby Powder. Unlike regular baby powder, this white goo won’t create a huge cloud of cough inducing dust when you apply it to baby’s soft hiney. Its easy to apply, although it will thoroughly coat your fingers as well as baby’s bottom, and soothes and protects baby from diaper rash. I love it! I like to think that Owen does as well.

Also, when he gets a little older and grabs for the powder bottle, I don’t have to worry about him shaking it all out all over the place. It won’t even leak out – the cap is one of those special, no-leak ones that keeps you from getting a gooey mess all over the top under the cap. Anyone who’s had to face down a bottle of ranch dressing when there’s just a tiny bit left in the bottom, and all that crusty, disgusting, half-dried ooze all over the top and inside of the cap knows what I’m talking about. I love this new no-leak invention. (I first encountered it on a bottle of pancake syrup and I was mystified, and then delighted. My pancakes got soaked with syrup while I tested the no-leakiness of the lid!)

So there you have it – Liquid baby powder definitely works for me!

Guess what!  I’ve been busy.  BUSY WATCHING THE OLYMPICS.

I’m going to go lay down and rest my eyes now, thank you very much.

I saw this movie, midnight showing last night (this morning?). I have to be honest, my expectations were not very high, despite being a pretty ‘die hard’ Star Wars fan. I’ve heard very little buzz about the movie, and when we arrived at the movie theatre an hour or so before the showing the ‘line’ consisted of about ten people.

Pretty different from my last Star Wars movie experience, which was eighteen hours in alternating pouring down rain and blistering sun for the chance to see Revenge of the Sith from somewhere near middle middle. (Middle middle or back middle are the prime movie watching spots in the theater. Everyone who is anyone knows this.)

Regardless, the movie was pretty awesome!

As it is put out by Warner Bros. there was no Fox fanfare to start it off, and John Williams did not do the music for the movie. There was no opening scroll of synopsis. There was a narrative voice over in place of the scrolling words, complete with visual aids. It worked really well. I wish they’d done that in all the other movies too. Okay, maybe not, but in this format it was cool.

Despite the lack of John Williams, I did enjoy the soundtrack to the movie. However, if John Williams had composed the score I think it would have felt just a bit more like an authentic Star Wars movie to me.

The voice actors did a decent job. Anakin’s voice was pretty different from Hayden Christensen’s, but the voice actor for Obi-Wan did a really good job mimicking Ewan McGregor’s delivery from the movies. Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, and Anthony Daniels were the only actors from the Star Wars live action movies that did voice work in The Clone Wars. There was a bit of a… weirdness with one of the Hutt characters, which I alternately loved and hated. I can’t explain why without giving away some plot points and looking like a huge nerdy geek, so I’ll keep it to myself for now.

The action… was… awesome! There are several huge battle sequences that are really cool, paticularly one involving storming up a giant cliff which was my favorite.

And lastly, the animation was great. Obviously the guys at Lucasfilm have been animating things in CGI for years and years now, so someone over there knew what they were doing. The ‘look’ of the movie is fairly fresh, although some people may not care for the stylized look of the characters. Its a mix between the Cartoon Network Clone Wars mini-cartoons and life-like. I think it works well, especially with Count Dooku.

Go see The Clone Wars in theaters, especially if you have any little Star Wars fans in the house. There are quite a few clone deaths on screen, however, so if your young kids are sensitive (or you want them to be) to that sort of thing, you may want to hold off. But, on the other hand, its Star Wars!

The Clone Wars is rated PG.

aw mom, really?

Just a little post on Owen’s growth progress.  He’s doing great!  At four months he’s over 13 pounds, and over 24 inches long.

Yeah… I don’t remember exactly what the nurse said.  I was too busy making faces at my adorable child.  That’s right, I’m blaming HIM.

Its getting to be ‘back to school’ time, which means that summer is almost over and pretty soon the elementary schools that bracket our house will be overflowing with eager children. Its a time of sharpened pencils and brand new notebooks that haven’t known the agony of a difficult math problem. Its time for backpacks bigger than the kids are, new shoes, and ‘trendy’ clothes.

Its a time of sales, sunburns, and heat waves. Oh yes. Its the end of August. One more dash to the pool or run through the sprinkler before summer is over.

I was home-schooled from kindergarten until 12th grade. The astute reader will realize that this means I never went to public school. My mother taught me everything I know, literally. Well, until I went to college, of course. My husband was also home-schooled. We have already made the decision that we want to home-school our children.

Now, of course, we actually have a kid, so perhaps its time for second thoughts…

Just kidding. I think that now that Owen is four months old its time to break out the flash cards and start teaching him his letters. Not too soon, right?

Anyway, I think that home-schooling is a great option in these days of overcrowded classrooms and multilingual teaching. I mean… well I’m all for the Spanish speakers getting instruction in their own language, but isn’t that what schools in South America are for? It isn’t fair to confuse English speaking children, or only teach half as much because one must teach the lesson in English and then Spanish. Sigh. I should avoid getting too political with this blog, yes I should.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against teaching kids Spanish, or whatever other language. Hmm, I don’t think I’d be paticularly good at it either. I learned Italian in high school and Hebrew in college. One didn’t stick and the other you use a lexicon for anyway. As a side note, I’ve always wanted to dramatically recite the Magnificat in Hebrew at Christmastime.

Anyway, we were home-schooled and we know how much good it has done for us. We want to pass that on to our children. I’m not worried about ’socializing,’ or lack of, because there are so many extracurricular activities that our child can be involved in, outside of the home. Unless, of course, we have so many kids that we have our own sports team, in which case we’ll keep that in house as well.

Just kidding!

(this is a blog train post)

This post is sponsored by the Movie Madness carnival hosted by Jen at Daily Mish Mash.

Well.

Where do I start?

The Dark Knight stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman.  Famously, and tragically, this is Heath Ledger’s final complete movie performance, as he died of an apparent accidental overdose of some prescription medications earlier this year.  Rumors flew that playing the Joker drove him crazy, made it unable for him to sleep (hence all the sleep aids that had been prescribed), but that is all these are.  Rumors.

His co-workers on the set of The Dark Knight described Heath’s work as inspired, and said he was a work horse… not disturbed in the least.  I was all ready to quote them, but I threw out my Entertainment Weekly with the article in it and so… you’ll just have to take my word for it.  REGARDLESS, lets just set all the Heath Ledger/Joker/untimely death bits aside and just look at the movie.

Wow!

The Dark Knight introduces Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, the enterprising young district attorney who is doing an amazing job of cleaning up Gotham’s very realistic city of its mob problem.  Dent is so good, in fact, that when the mob bosses find themselves caught between the law and the Batman, they turn to a mysterious and dangerous man who promises to rid them of all their problems.

The only problem is that the criminal mastermind they hire to help them is known as the Joker, and he seems to be more interested in anarchy and chaos than in helping a few mob bosses stay out of jail.

The plot is thick and juicy, full of heart-stopping action and great moments that you will never forget.  The Dark Knight is rated PG-13, but I would not recommend it for ANYONE under the age of 13, regardless of what their parents think.  And you should be careful about showing it or seeing it with anyone younger than 15 I think.  Up to you as a parent, of course, but please screen it first so you know what you’re getting your kid into.  YES I know its Batman, but this is not your ordinary comic book movie.

The movie is named appropriately.  This is such a dark movie that at times I felt like I was drowning in it.  The Joker is frightening, and played so realistically by Heath Ledger that he has earned (rightfully so) rave reviews for his performance of Batman’s arch-nemesis.

In contrast to the much compared performance of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, who seems more like a clown among weirdos in Burton’s take of Gotham City, Heath’s Joker is a certified nut-job who is so dangerous and scary that it seems like he could actually exist.  Anarchy for the sake of anarchy is a terrifying concept, and the movie takes all its comic book elements and plays them completely straight, so that Gotham City seems like a place that could be right next door to us.  Unlike Tim Burton’s Batman, director Christopher Nolan has crafted a movie that seems more like a crime drama than a comic book movie, full of regular people just trying to get by.  Did you ever see The Departed?  The Dark Knight is right up that same alley, except darker.

Aaron Eckhart has a great role in the movie as Gotham’s so-called ‘white knight’ who is cleaning up the streets and putting the bad guys in jail.  He is contrasted with Batman, who is of course the titular Dark Knight who does the same work, just on the other side of the law.  Two sides of the same coin, as it were.  Heh heh.  Harvey Dent’s story arc is full and complete, and just a little heart breaking.  I really enjoyed his part of the movie (though it is not for the faint of heart near the end as… well I don’t want to spoil anything).

I could go on and on and on about this movie.  There are glimmers of light amidst the darkness portrayed, and you aren’t left at the bottom of the well when the movie draws to a close.  Go see it, and see it in theatres.  It is completely worth it.  I’ll try not to spoil the movie for you, but the ferry scene left my heart in my throat and I was so happy with the outcome.  One of the glimmers of light that I talked about.

I better stop writing, or I’ll just keep going and it’s starting to get redundant. Haha!  See it!

Sam and his Daddy

I just found out that one of my best friends from high school just had a baby boy, prematurely. Well, in July actually. I ‘keep track’ of him and his family through myspace, but that’s not really accurate as I check myspace approximately five times a year.

Sam was born via c-section on July 16th. He was extremely early (about 9 and a half weeks if my math is correct, so he was born at 30 weeks?) and is still in the NICU, but doing progressively better every day. He is incredibly precious, and his proud papa Frank has put up a blog for Sam – The Sam Experience. It ‘is meant to chronicle the adventures of Sam as he gets better, comes home and grows up.’

My prayers are with them, even if I am soooo late to the party. Thankfully, God has been keeping care of them anyway!

Okay, day six of the challenge is upon me!  Today’s color is ‘Shell.’  It sounds light. BUT IS IT?

Actually its darker than Sweet Nectar was.  And my ‘face on’ picture is AWFUL I hate it, and I wasn’t going to include it, but you can’t really see the lipstick in my profile shot.  *sob* Please don’t make fun of my bald spot either, I am LOSING all my hair.  At least, it seems that way.

I like it!  Maybe the Sweet Nectar is better for an ‘every day’ sort of lipstick.  Which is silly, because I don’t wear makeup and lipstick every day.  Although I have every day this week.  Hmm.

And of course, Owen in yesterday’s Red Salsa.  He does not make this expression all day, I promise.  He only makes this expression when I hold up something silvery and rectangular that flashes lights at him.

He’s going open shirt.  How risque!  I think it makes him look a little like Elvis though, in a teeny leisure suit.  Well, if he’d keep his expression from changing whenever I whip out the camera, I could get a picture of his Elvis face.  He has one.  Its great.  HONEST!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I took some short videos during the recent Red Bull Flugtag here in Portland. They’re interesting. One of them I took sideways, not remembering that you can’t flip video around like you can pictures. Which is a shame, ’cause its the only video of someone actually going off the edge of the runway.

So, apologies for any cricks in your neck that you may receive from watching these!

Red Bull Air Force coming in for a landing…

The Lego guys doing their presentation/show before taking the plunge. I know, the sound is horrible. They were doing a little ’song and dance’ about beer. It was hilarious, you’ll probably just have to take my word for it.

And then… the moment you’ve been waiting breathlessly for (breathe! breathe!)…

I can’t even tell which entry this was. I need a video camera.

I had one other short clip of the World of Warcraft entrants, but the sound is awful and its only about four seconds long and you can’t really see anything. It was too terrible to put into a blog about terrible videos. Thats how bad it was.

I hope you enjoyed them though!