My love affair with Lost

You may be wondering why I haven't written in awhile. It is mainly because right now I'm a little obsessed with catching up on LOST.

When I was younger, I never really paid much attention to tv shows. The only shows I really watched were on Nickelodeon or I Love Lucy. Nickelodeon had these awesome shows that involved slime, and is there really anything more compelling than slime? I think not.

90210? Never watched. ER? Nope. Friends? Uh uh. Ok, I did watch Tiny Toons and a lot of kid shows. I just never really got into watching shows that were full blown pop culture events. Maybe episodes here and there, but never really sat down to watch a show at a certain time on a certain night of the week. Wonder Years was pretty awesome though.

I think netflix has awoken the latent tv junkie in my soul. It makes it so damn easy to watch hours and hours of television! (and there's Hulu too!) It's like I'm making up for all of that lost time now. I think the fact that we have unlimited instant netflix + small entertainment budget + a little one that makes it difficult to go out on certain occasions makes it really easy for me to become addicted.

Anyway, I started watching Lost last winter and I'm now only 4 episodes behind. I've made it some kind of goal to catch up so I can watch the series finale with everyone else. I want to take a break from it because I'm not especially crazy about where they've taken the story, but I can't "give up" now. I am too emotionally invested in fictional character's lives :) There are some pretty amazing elements to this story, but I confess I'm a little disappointed after investing so much time that things are turning out how they are. I think I've watched at most 7 episodes in one day (at about 45 minutes each)

Sometimes I feel like I'm not being a good mother when I have my face glued to the television. So when this show is done, I am gonna cool it on the tv for awhile. It's been fun while it's lasted though :)

30 Things I Like -- April Edition

1-The smell of a new can of tennis balls
2-A cold soda while taking a hot shower
3-The music of The Mountain Goats
4-Writing lists
5-The music of Jack Johnson
6-Keeping my car clean(er)
7-The music of Mika
8-Afternoon Naps
9-Spring Jackets
10-The music of My Morning Jacket
11-Spiral-ring notebooks
12-Driving with the windows down
13-Perfecting my wii bowling technique
14-New socks
15-My miniature ninja turtle figurines
16-The song "Funeral" by Band of Horses
17-The music of Coconut Records
18-Finding melted crayons on heater vents
19-Mario Kart
20-Get Fuzzy cartoon strips
21-New Age wine
22-Folgers instant coffee
23-Watching Disney movies on VHS with Oliver
24-Drawing with ink
25-Josh
26-Oliver's lavender scented shampoo
27-Peanut Butter and graham crackers
28-Most forms of potatoes
29-Pine trees
30-Alliteration

Ollie's Favorites

Here are some of Oliver's current favorites:

Color: I asked him and he said pink...but I think it depends on when you ask him.
Book: Josh and the Woo Woo, sure to be a literary classic
Show: Caillou. Originally this show didn't bother me...but I think I'm ready for some variety.
Accessory: His trusty Cars hat
Toy: CARS...all kinds of cars. Hot Wheels, dump trucks, fire trucks, basically any kind of automobile. His favorite thing to do right now is "play cars on the bed" So some nights I'll lay down and have a metal car digging into my foot
Food: I'll say apples and bananas because those are the healthy foods he enjoys.


Some things that Ollie likes to do:
*put small items such as toys and my cds out the cat door that leads to the garage
*put his head out the door and beg Coral to come back into the house
*body slam the cat and get sad when she doesn't want to play
*put coins he finds into a piggy bank
*open the refrigerator and pull random things out
*dance to most kinds of music and command that you dance with him
*sleep in his "big boy bed"
*go outside, pretty much anywhere
*give "huggies" (he spelled out the letters on a bag of wipes, and when I told him what it said he started hugging me...and now he gives huggies bahaha)
*spell out letters, but he usually reads them from right to left
*being a scary monster
*having conversations with Josh where Josh is "Dog" and Ollie is "Dragon" Occasionally they involve me and I'm "Puppy"
*saying "oh ok!" after you tell him something remotely factual

My Inner Cutesie

Ok so I bought this baby book when I was pregnant thinking that I would write down every little milestone and first of Oliver's young life. I am so sad to admit that I have slacked a little bit on this. I've taken an insane amount of pictures of my little dude, but haven't really "scrap booked" or even kept on the baby book. I am morally against scrap booking, fyi. Cutting pictures seems sacrilegious to me. And I'm not really into putting pre-made cutesie stickers next to personal memories.

As I've told Josh, I think I'm missing the girl gene that likes cutesie things like baby showers, lyrics from modern country love ballads, and any sort of party where if you're a girl you're expected to attend while someone tries to sell you something (make-up, candles, kitchenware, etc.) If I do attend one of these parties, it means I really like you. If you're into these kinds of things, great for you! I just don't quite understand lots of cutesie things. I gotta be honest, Anne Geddes creeps the crap out of me. She and Celine Dion collaborated for a project, and I'm surprised the Earth didn't implode due to cuteness overload.



Yuck.

Then again I am the girl who played ninja turtles when many were playing barbies. Ninja turtles got to do way cooler things like protect the world from the evil Shredder. What did Barbie do other than max out her credit cards? Maybe I'd be a lot more stylish had I learn to accessorize with Barbie.

However there are some exceptions to this aversion to cuteness. Pretty much I love all animals and cute pictures of them make me smile.



And being a mother has definitely brought this part out of me a lot more.

Spring Fever!

This week's been gorgeous. We took Oliver to a new park yesterday!

Easter Weekend

I think this is the first Easter weekend where I've wanted to give Oliver the idea that it was a special day. I wanted to dye eggs with him, have him do an Easter egg hunt, and give him a basket full of treats (not necessarily of the sugar variety, but maybe little toys and things like that) Well, I guess two out of three isn't bad. It was kind of a peculiar (in a good way!) weekend and the Easter Bunny(s) were low on funds. So no Easter basket from us anyway, but his Grandma did give him a lovely basket with new sandals for the summer. Well I guess it was an Easter bucket. Let's face it, a bucket will be more practical and is just as effective :)

I wanted to have the eggs dyed before Easter morning, but I'm sort of disorganized and a perpetual procrastinator. Plus there was a hide and seek party on Saturday night. How could we pass that up? So when we did sit down to dye the eggs on Sunday morning I realized I'd also forgotten to a) get vinegar to make the eggs vibrant and b) think of what containers we'd use to dunk the eggs in. As you can see there is an assortment of egg dye holder thingies. Small sippy cups, a top to a candle, soup cups, a small tupperware container...so long as they hold dye right? Well mostly except the candle top kept spilling green dye as it was slightly wobbly.

The important thing was that Oliver had a blast dying the eggs. He keeps asking to do it again but I don't think I want that egg smell in our house more than once a year, unless I'm making delicious egg salad with the eggs. It lingers and it smells like stinky farts. You know it, and I know it.



We then had a lovely Easter dinner with most of our family(s). Afterward, Josh and I hid the eggs outside in our backyard. We hid most of them in plain view where Oliver could see them. Josh being Josh, hid one up in our tree. It was pretty cute when he lifted Oliver up to find that one though. When all of the eggs were found, Julie helped Oliver hide the eggs so that Josh and I had to look for them.

Doing Laundry At My Parent's House

Well, it seems that our dryer is on "the fritz" and the unpredictable weather makes it difficult to hang dry our clothes on the clothes line. So I brought three baskets full of dirty laundry over to my parents house with the intent of getting laundry done for the week today. I am not sure when our dryer will be operating again. It's second on the list behind Josh's broken car. Please don't let anything else break in the near future. Maybe I can use this opportunity to be more green, I just like the way my clothes feel after coming out of the dryer.

I figure while I am sitting here waiting for several loads of laundry to be done, I could write a blog entry. I am also armed with A Goofy Movie, Brothers Bloom, Season Two of the Office, and Season Two of Arrested Development. Apparently I think it's going to take 4 days to do three baskets of laundry.

So I was thinking of things that remind me of my very early childhood: Huey Lewis (my mom had the cassette tape!) and other 80s music in my mom's chevy nova but also The Beatles and oldies in my dad's Subaru. An American Tail (was the first movie I remember seeing in a theater). Some kind of stuff animal toy called Popples? Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony. Alvin and the Chipmunks, Smurfs, Pound Puppies, Care Bears, Duck Tales, and old school Disney cartoons(no not the movies, the cartoons with Mickey) E.T., Big Business, and apparently Willow was too scary for me to watch. I still haven't seen it. Little Golden Books and Raffi songs.

Anyway, there's probably tons of other pop culture happenings that I'm forgetting and probably some that I presume were part of my life but actually weren't. It just makes me wonder what Oliver will associate with his early childhood. Will he even remember anything up until now? I don't remember much up until my sister was born when I was four. Maybe because that was such a life changing event that I can't remember anything before it. Or probably something to do with early child brain development. So what do kids take away from their first few years? Hopefully Oliver can just know that he was loved and that we brought him pretty much wherever we went. I think most of my earliest memories were around preschool age. A random mix of my parents interests and popular music/films/television/books of the mid to late 80s.