Photoshoot #2

OK no one wanted the serious post yesterday. How about new baby pictures? Edit: I've been trying to get these images to align and it's not working. Sorry for the sloppiness.

A quick side rant. . .

This is way off my normal subject. . . There was a post on Motherhood Uncensored that got me thinking. At the time I responded with a quote from the movie Dogma. . .

"Mankind got it all wrong by takin' a good idea and building a belief structure out of it."

I work with a woman. Four years ago her younger daughter came home from college pregnant and two weeks later her older daughter came out of the closet. This story is about the later daughter. This mother of two has written books for a Catholic publishing house (where we work), has been a Catholic counselor in mental facilities, and teaches a monthly marriage enrichment course for our archdiocese. Just some background on her.

Last Thanksgiving my coworker and her husband decided to spend Thanksgiving in San Francisco visiting their older daughter who is in art school. The parents had decided to go out to dinner after their daughter had a Thanksgiving dinner with her roommate and friends (the couple didn't want to eat tofu turkey). Once my friend arrived at her daughter's apartment she found herself immersed in a group of homosexual, transsexual, and possible even para-sexual people.

And here, as she told me, she saw Jesus. . . "this is where Jesus would be today." He'd be among the people who needed love the most. And he wouldn't be preaching to them to change their ways, he'd simply be there to love them. (After this she went to a similar group in the kitchen who were they had same make-up but different attitude, she thought this is where Jerry Springer would be, but that's a different story).

Jesus spent his time with prostitutes and (shudder) tax collectors. He lived among the outcasts and loved them. He cared for the people no one cared about. Today conservative Christians shun homosexuals, drug addicts, and women who've had abortions. . . those are the people Jesus would be with today.

Jesus would not be a republican. I'm not sure he'd be a democrat either, but Im 100% sure he would not be a republican.

Happy Birthday. . .

1/2 year old today!

Wow.

Not sure what its called. . .

Video-blog, Vlog, podcast? Not sure what I would call this is I kept doing it. This first one is grainy and dark (I'll figure out more as I go). Still it features the star of my little show here.

Hehe, they said naked. . .

So this morning I set-up the laptop with the built in isight camera and recorded a quick video blog post. I think I may do that once a week. Anyone be interested in that?

One of my favorite bands is putting out a kids CD. Barenaked Ladies: Snack Time is being released May 6th! Unfortunately, the band's site is still featuring their last 2 CDs so there aren't many clips available, however there were 2 songs featured on Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child in the past few weeks, really good songs too. And they released this Sesame Street caliber animated video on YouTube a couple weeks ago.



If you're a fan of the They Might Be Giants' kids CDs I think you'll enjoy this CD (from what I've heard of it).

Good shot buddy. . .

A funny thing happened before we all left this morning.

A little background: Parents as Teachers came to our house last week to do a check on Skippy Jr. One of the things she got out of her bag was a metal, mixing bowl with two balls in it. Skippy Jr. grabbed it right away, dumped out the balls, and chomped down on the rim of the bowl. He really liked holding it and we have bowls just like it so now in the morning I let him sit up on the floor and play with some toys including this bowl.

So we're sitting, playing, waiting for mommy to finish getting ready and he dropped the bowl by his feet. He's starting to get a little braver so he leaned forward to get the bowl and the deep bend made him spit up a lot. . . right into the bowl! He didn't slip a drop. All in the bowl.

The story is funnier when I make the sound effects with it.

On a side note, everybody always talks about babies R us being expensive for basics like formula and diapers. Since we starting to give Skippy Jr. some formula we've been pricing it. Turns out not only is R Us close in price for formula, it's cheaper than Target.

Float like a caterpillar. . .

This may be the most disturbing thing I've seen in a while.

Hehe that tickled. . .

I toyed with the titles "All shook up," "Shaken not stirred," and "Shook me all night long." I decided that would be silly.

Point is yes, last night we felt the earthquake that was centered in Southern Illinois. For those of you fuzzy on geography the epicenter was about 130 miles east of St. Louis and we're about 15 miles south of St. Louis. So it didn't do any damage but we felt it.

First let me say, it was actually pretty cool.

At first I thought is was a strong gust of wind shaking the house, after a few seconds of it not stopping I realized it was probably an earthquake. It's the only real earthquake I remember. I grew up next to a quarry that blasted on a regular basis so I'm used to a house shaking a little every once in awhile. I suppose this is just God/Mother Nature/the earth reminding us who's in charge here.

Second let me say I was pretty scared afterwards. Not because of the earthquake, but because the first thought in my mind was NOT "I must protect my baby." Shouldn't that be my parental instinct? Save the baby? I didn't even think really to check on him after it had happened. Granted it was a little earthquake at 130 miles from ground zero, and it was even enough to wake some people I know up, but what the hell kind of parent am I if I need my wife to tell me to go check on the little slumbering monkey in the next room.

Sure, he was fine, barely even woke him and my guess is he thought we were shaking his crib. "Very funny guys, ha ha. Next time don't forget the Rick Astley music. I'm going back to sleep, sons of bitches." He didn't care.

I hope if the next one is on the New Madrid fault (which runs right under us and is probably due) and really does something I'll run in to him right away. I'm such a shitty father.

No title can do this justice. . .

So I've been reading this web comic for a few years now. Normally this isn't something that would cross over to this blog, but the most recent story arc has the main character babysitting and today's comic was too good to pass up. Click the comic to enlarge.

Please note normally this comic has nothing to do with babies and it rated PG-13 for adult themes. . . or at least thats how I'd rate it.

Better than a garden weasel. . .

Has this ever happened to you? Messy carrots everywhere! try the amazing rice cereal.

I'm either dumb and the last person to think of this or I'm a friggin' genius. Some people will say "duh!" to this others will want to try it. You heard me complain about the runnyness of the carrots, I found the same to be true of the green beans. It makes it really hard to keep any of it in the kid's mouth. So tonight, as the first 2 spoonfuls ran right out of his mouth, I decided to pour some rice cereal into the cup from which I was serving tonight's veggies. It thickened right up to a consistency that he was able to keep in his mouth. He ate it all with very little getting on himself or the high chair.

So either you already know about this (second time mothers are rolling their eyes now) or you've just learned a good trick for getting baby food to stay in a baby's mouth.

Either way.

Whinnie the Pooh and the crabtastic day. . .

I suppose even as an adult I have days like that. Days when I'm just in a crabby mood, but at least I can try and do something to cheer myself up. Eat a bag of Cheetos in one sitting, play video games for hours, burn an effigy. . . the things that make you feel good.

Yesterday the little man probably would have burned an effigy of his parents if he knew how to use his opposable thumbs enough to light a match. He wouldn't lay down, he didn't want to be held, he wanted his pants off and was then cold. . . nothing would make him happy, he just spent the whole day making a moaning sound.

I've heard, and said, that being a baby must be great. Eat, sleep, poop, have someone take care of your every need. I'm changing my vote.

You wake up starving and have to wait for the large hairy creatures to get themselves up and feed you. These giants man handle you all day (think about changing a diaper and imagine someone the same size difference doing it to you). You don't speak the language, they don't know what you want. You have very little control over your own body.

Being a baby must suck.

Update. . .

Since I've been bad lately about updating (busy, busy, busy) I thought I'd do a quick update on things in Parker's world.

• I mentioned wanting something that Skippy Jr. could grab and be OK with the whole getting it into his mouth thing. Well we found something. His old soothie pacifiers. We recently switched to a different type of pacifier because he couldn't keep the soothies in anymore. One day he started crying and we were in a room where we hadn't put a new pacifier but had a soothie, so we tried to use it. He grabbed it and put it back in his mouth different ways and had a great time chewing on it. It was small enough for him to hold and doesn't have a bad side to chew on.


• Soothies are great but the best way to stop a crying baby. . . removing his pants. We've also discovered he likes having his fat folds rubbed. They get sweaty and sometimes smelly but he likes it a lot.


• Peas are thick and easy to feed to a baby. Carrots not so much.


• Our baby really doesn't smile much, and it takes a lot of work to get him to laugh. I don't think there's anything wrong with him I just think he's less of a laugher and more of a studier. . . we used to tease each other that we'd have a kid with no sense of humor. "But mother father, why do you think a monkey wearing pants juggling kittens is funny? I don't understand." Be careful what you joke about I guess.


• For the past couple months Skippy Jr. doesn't like to snuggle anymore. Snuggling means sleeping and "damn it I will not be put to sleep!" This week however, he's had a few really sleepy moments where he's snuggled up on me. . . it was so nice.

Anyway that's it for now. I'll try and be better this week.

Musical interlude. . .

peas peas the musical fruit

the more you eat the more you poop

the more you poop the better you feel

except for grandma who has to clean up the "green cottage cheese" that you got in your diaper. . . and on your clothes. . . and I know that doesn't rhyme and the song should be about beans and I said I wouldn't talk about poop. . . but damn!

All I am saying is give peas a chance?

On second thought maybe don't.