one-bee baby

Peter may love Busy Bee #1, but he punches the lights out of Busy Bee #2 (a.k.a. the Deuce).

Our baby's a monogamous lover, all right.



(note: Peter does enjoy a kiss or two from Monterey, but don't tell the Bee)

porn star

We caught Peter full-on tongue kissing with Busy Bee* yesterday.

Before we filmed this bit of PG-13 video, Peter gave Kevin a long, serious stare-down, as if to say: can't a baby get a moment of privacy in this place?



*Note: After Peter's make-out session, Busy Bee went from being "he" to "she."

hooray for smiles!

da bomb

Apparently, Thursday is National Bomb Pop Day.

I know this because I am on the Blue Bunny Ice Cream email list. Do me a favor: if you live in a state or city that actually sells Blue Bunny Ice Cream, go out and eat some. It's delicious, and, sadly, unavailable here.

Anyway, I plan to eat a few dozen Bomb Pops in celebration of Bomb Pop Day, but even I will halt in the face of these recipes (also supplied by BBIC):

Bomb Pop marinated shrimp;
Bomp Pop fried shrimp;
Bomp Pop marinated sole;
Bomp Pop spicy chicken wings.

Eew. I mean, I guess the salient flavor of a Bomb Pop is "sweet," but still...

shaq-tastic

Disclaimer: I am in love with Shaquille O'Neal - recall my desire to call BDR "Shaquila O'Neala." I love his giantness, I love his attitude, I love the fact that he his bed is 30 feet by 15 feet. I love the fact that he seems like a genuinely good person - getting his BA to please his mother, and then getting an (albeit fake University of Phoenix) MBA, and being a semi-kind-of police officer. I admit I've never seen Kazaam, nor have I ever listened to Shaq Fu: Da Return, but I'm sure even these wouldn't deter my love.

Plus, he's kind of good at basketball.

I don't understand why people don't like Shaq's Big Challenge. It's certainly the best thing I've seen on network TV in the past few months, and, as far as I can tell, the premise is pretty solid: there are lots of fat kids, fat kids are unhealthy and unhappy, and we should do more to make fat kids into skinny kids.

It seems the dissent comes in two forms: first, Shaq's kind of a porker himself. True enough, but he's also a professional athlete who can actually run up and down the court. I'd be more skeptical about the athleticism of fat athletes if I didn't see Charles Barkely tear up the court in a race with Dick Bavetta during last year's All Star game or the 1993 Phillies (who might not be the best example, as they didn't exactly win, but they were fat). All I know is that Shaq can make a basket over some kid's house, while I can't even make any shot from any distance, and that has to count for something. (About $100 million, if I'm not mistaken.)

The second problem people seem to have with the show is...well, that it calls some kids fat. But really, these kids are fat, and to imagine they think otherwise is ridiculous. I'm not entirely sure what the risk is of telling obese children that they need help (that is, they need to go on a diet and exercise), but our country really has a problem doing it. Is the fear that the obesity epidemic will flip to an anorexia epidemic? And is that really a valid fear?

Blame McDonalds and Hostess, not Shaq, for childhood obesity.

Anyway, the show is pretty much awesome. It shows Shaq as both this total dork who uses the same hit-my-hand-on-the-top-of-the-door-frame-and-pretend-I-hit-my-head trick over and over, who uses his fame (and size) to intimidate local bullies into leaving one of his fat kids alone, and who admits to being a sucker Dad to his kids.

In my dream world, there is a show of 8 to 10 minute clips of crazy but charismatic athletes - guys like Shaq or Charles Barkley or George Foreman - just doing normal stuff. Or complaining. My favorite part of any basketball game on TNT is when Charles Barkley starts getting cranky. Oh, well. I just have to hope ABC won't cancel this, because I'm really not sure what else I could possibly watch.

I got knocked up too

While Kevin's parents were here, we took advantage of the free babysitting and saw Knocked Up.

The movie itself was fine - I particularly liked the idea of the little girl Googling "murder" - but not as funny as I'd been led to believe.

Mostly, I found myself surprised by a few things - like, I really miss being pregnant. Specifically, I miss having BDR safely ensconced within the womb. Sure, I didn't really know BDR then, but he was always safe and always with me.

Also, I was very unprepared for my emotional reaction to the birth at the end of the movie. Luckily, there are only a few minutes of movie after the big birth scene, or otherwise I'd have needed to leave the theater early. Seriously: tears, on the verge of sobbing, partly for the memories of birth, mostly for the missing of my child. And I should note that I've not had post-partum crying since the middle of May.

Oh, well. I'm not saying we should have seen Evan Almighty or anything (does anyone else think Steve Carell is the next Jim Carrey? and I mean this in a bad way.), but I do think it might have been a little too soon.

At least the popcorn had real butter.

the crap I read

Does anyone remember this really terrible MTV show The Blame Game? All I really remember about it was that the point of the show was to prove who was responsible for a couple's break-up. In one segment the couple had a chance to air embarrassing dirty laundry about each other, and the accused could either deny the embarrassing facts, or he could admit to it, by hitting a button and saying, "I admit it." Any time I'm about to admit something embarrassing about myself, I often think of this - and, in my head, I'm slapping an imaginary button and proudly admitting something embarrassing...

...like all of the above. See, the thing is, I had a LOT of free time in college.

As much as I like to read the classics, the modern classics, and the should-be modern classics, I read a prodigious amount of crap as well. In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to reading:

All of Jane Green's novels. Well, not the most recent one, but I just bought it at Target. In hardcover.

All of Sophie Kinsella's novels - including Shopaholic and Baby while pregnant.

Lots of crappy YA novels, including the following serials: Gossip Girl, The A List, The Clique, The Au Pairs, The It Girl, Private, The Insiders, Summer Boys, and Seven Deadly Sins. And probably more.

Lots of books with very pink covers, none of which qualify as romance novels, none of which qualify as literature. Books by people like Plum Sykes, Lauren Weisberger, and Emily Giffin. Next up? 24 Karat Kids.

Also, I'm kind of chomping at the bit to get my hands on Dedication, the new novel by the craptastic authors who brought us The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl. I read the book jacket and was very surprised to learn that the authors actually bothered to give their protagonist a NAME this time around.

I'm also really excited for Kristin Gore's sequel to Sammy's Hill; I devoured Sammy's Hill two summers ago while living in exile at the Gray's house, and have been looking forward to more from her ever since.

Jared and Cathy and reptile, too

I've delayed posting about this mostly because I wanted to wait to get the picture for proof.

Last week, Jared and Cathy Silver, friends of mine from college (and, I admit it, high school...kind of) were in San Francisco on vacation, and they drove down to scenic Mountain View for a dinner date. We at at Pasta? on Castro Street, and were rewarded with this:


a dude and his reptile. I'm not sure what it is...an alligator? A Gila monster? Who knows, but it was pretty awesome.

Peter always uses his saftey belt.

spoilage

Since Peter's grandparents and aunt have arrived, he's enjoyed even more than usual time-in-arms. Which makes time-in-carseat that much more unbearable, and this is unfortunate, since we would like to do more than sit around the condo staring at the baby.

Gram and Pop and Peter.

A painful drive home from San Francisco.

Peter's new art

For his Grandparent's visit, and for his first visit to San Francisco, Peter had a little cosmetic upgrade.

The package says these tattoos are "FDA and Mom approved!"

This was also Peter's first trip to a bar.

bonanza

Peter says, "thanks for all the well-wishes and gifts!"

In many ways, having a baby is like winning the lottery. We've been so bombarded by the most thoughtful cards and the most generous presents that the UPS man knows Peter Joseph by name.

Today, though, we received perhaps the most...interesting card, in a gift from Uncle Kari.

On a sheet of white computer paper, a simple message: congrats on l'il Peter Joseph.

On the other side of the computer paper? This story: Woman jailed for testicle attack.

This might be just the inspiration I needed to actually start a baby book.

err...try the $63,000 baby

Our lack of national health care makes our little socialist go cross-eyed.

So it turns out that it was just $17,000 to bring Chompy McChomps into the world, and then another $46,000 to sustain him for three days.

Yowza!

Kevin's concern, once opening our most recent insurance statement, was whether or not we'd have to pay $500 instead of the $250 we'd anticipated, hinting that it might be a "rip-off" should we have to pay the extra $250. He may be kidding. He probably isn't.

I only mention this because it seems that, really, if we didn't have health insurance we probably wouldn't have had a baby. Or, we would follow the increasingly attractive option of moving to Canada.

Required Reading #10 & #11: A Maile Meloy entry

Maile Meloy (yes, Colin Meloy's sister), has written two books (Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter) that were really clever in their ability to reinvent what an author can do with the tale of one family.

Liars and Saints

I devoured the first, Liars and Saints, during the last month of my pregnancy. At this time in my life (and now, really), my measure of a good book was how long I would be willing to stay awake to read it. (Or, similarly, how willing I would be to forgo a nap in order to read it.) For Liars and Saints, I was willing to do both.

It's not a remarkable story - a bit dramatic, a bit tragi-comic, and a bit romantic for my tastes - but it's really well told. It's about a family, and how that family evolves over two generations, and then loops back over on itself as a niece and her uncle fall in love, make love, and make a baby. Luckily, he's not really her uncle, but her cousin, which apparently makes it all that much better.

(For me, I'm not convinced that my personal sense of guilt and weirdness would be assuaged if I found out that I'd been procreating with my cousin and not my uncle, but when I posed the question to Kevin yesterday, he concurred with the characters - it's all that much better to get it on with your cousin rather than your uncle. As Kevin pointed out, "your uncle would be too much like your parents." And, really, it's far to generous to think that these novels have any Oedipal or Electra allusions.)

A Family Daughter

When I started this book a few days ago, I immediately was confused. Same character names, mostly same character characteristics, but some significant differences. For example, one character was tragically childless in Liars and Saints, and had two children in A Family Daughter. Question mark? Yes. I immediately suspected my 8-months-pregnant brain was responsible for my faulty memory of the the first book, even though I'd really just read it.

Then, I realized what was happening: Liars and Saints was a novel written by a character in A Family Daughter. Thus, creative differences between the two. The same insanity and drama
ensues, with some additional drama thrown in - let's hear it for Hungarian orphans purchased by Russians for prostitution who have affairs with French diplomats, who sell illegitimate offspring to wealthy Alzheimer-ailing French heiresses living in obscurity in Argentina, who is told the child is delivered to her via a European princess's interest in Romanian orphans. Whew, indeed. And that's only a small subplot!

It should be noted that in A Family Daughter, the niece and uncle who have an affair are really niece and uncle. Sorry, charlie - no hidden pregnancies which make them cousins in this tale! Luckily, no children either.

Unlike many other creative-types - Monet's million water lilies come to mind, or Pollack's splatter paintings - authors are limited in their ability to reinvent the same material. Without resorting to sequels, how can an author use a creative conceit to its fullest? I enjoyed these books because the offer one clever suggestion.

That, and they were easy to read.

Kevin faces 32 with a grin

the $17,000 baby

Hey, I'm worth almost every penny!

We received our hospital bill yesterday. Thank God for health insurance.

El Corte de Madera Creek OSP, redux

Editor's note: Kevin has pointed out that I'm supposed to be the optimistic one in this relationship, but this post was surprisingly negative. So, to clarify: when I say "diminished our ability to enjoy this hike," I mean "reduced" or "lessened," and not "eliminated" or "removed all enjoyment from." The fact is, though, it was buggier and hotter than when we first visited, suggesting that it's more of an early-spring park than an early-summer park.

Peter and I investigate some redwood stumps.

We revisited ECdMC this weekend, after realizing that the drive to our first choice (Purisima Creek Redwoods OSP) was a bit long and winding for some stomachs to handle. (Plus, we'd thought about a seven-mile hike, which would have been really interesting. And not in a good way.)

You may remember the crazy family, and the tafoni sandstone formation, from previous posts.

We chose this alternate trip after remembering the trail as easy, although as we started Kevin had a change of heart:

Kevin: I thought you had trouble on this trail. Toward the end you were struggling.
Amy: Kevin. (Pause.) I was seven months pregnant. And having contractions.
Kevin: Oh, yeah.

The hike was nice, but two things diminished our ability to enjoy it:
- the hot weather;
- the bugs, including, but not limited to, mosquitoes.

Really, if this is what a Bay Area summer is like, why not move back to NC? Oh, yeah...the humidity.

El Corte de Madera Creek OSP

17 photos

just like sweet tarts

This might be the most singularly delicious food product I've had in the past two months: Acai Pomegranate Wildwood Foods Organic Soyogurt Smoothie.

It tastes so scarily like Sweet Tarts, I even made Kevin try it. Kevin, no fan of the texture of a soy drink, was reluctant to try it. He conceded it was "tasty," but also reminded me that he'd have "texture issues" with drinking any more of it.

sunset

Last night's sunset was pretty nice, especially from 50 feet up.

..

so many ripples

Peter's a bit...er...zaftig.

..

Monte Bello Open Space Preserve

It's like the Bjorn was made for mountain lion attacks!

We returned to the trekking life today, after our recent success with the Bjorn. Our destination? Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, chosen because of its proximity and its promise of some shade.

Well, we could have used more shade, and it is close - though, it requires driving on a queasily-curvy road to get there.

But, a hike we did take! It was a relatively easy 3-mile loop, with just a few hundred feet of elevation gain, but probably exactly what we needed. Let's just say that Peter might be the most in shape of all of us.

In a patch of shade, and very happy to be outside again.

Monte Bello Open Space Preserve

16 photos