Julie and Julia.

I loved this movie. Here's the preview. I vaguely recall Julia Child's cooking show, having only seen it a few times, and not straight through. She was quoted often in my musical training, as a reference for using a nasal head voice, (C'mon, music geeks out there? Send up a cheer!) but unfortunately the underclassmen didn't even know who she was. (Blasphemy, I know.) Anyway, the movie is based on both her life, up to when she became famous, and the life of a blogger, Julie Powell, who cooked her way through Julia Child's first cookbook and blogged about it along the way. 

This movie inspired me to do two things. First of all, to cook regularly again, and second of all, to blog about said cooking. I've been lax, and saying I'd get back to it, continued to put it off.  While I can't predict the future, I can say this: I do so love to cook. This movie reminded me why. Why shouldn't I continue to share that with you?

There are a couple brief sex scenes (that reveal as little as is possible) and mild swearing, but otherwise, this movie is good 'clean' fun. Take a date night, go out with friends, or go by yourself, but GO. You'll love this movie.

The Mood Swings of a Child.

I find myself wishing off and on that Chris and I were Jonathan's babysitters rather than his parents. Don't get me wrong, we love him very much and are extremely grateful to have him. Usually the only time I get this longing is when we actually do leave him with a babysitter. When we come back to pick him up, the answer we always get to 'How was he?' is "Oh, he's a perfect angel! I wish my kids were as calm as him! He slept almost the whole time! He's so sweet! Can I keep him?" or some variation on that. To that final question, Chris and I invariably think 'you can keep him overnight...' but we of course say nothing. 

The reason for all of this? He can be a little terror. (I say this lovingly, of course.) He never screams or cries for no apparent reason in front of other people, even when we visit home or have family visit here. He is really quite a well-mannered child. Until, that is, he is alone with his parents. Then, all bets are off. Then, the sweet well-mannered child sits on the doorstep while our sweet little terror comes inside to play. Not always, mind you, but often enough for him to be just like every other child. I promise. He's a sweetheart, really he is. But he is not above screaming tantrums when I take my phone out of his reach, or unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper and then tearing it to shreds and eating it. Once, he knocked over my 3-year old violet plant and began to eat the dirt off the floor. Then threw a tantrum when I put him in his crib to clean up the mess.

I do love my child. I must stress this. He is frustrating, but I do love him so very very much, and I would not trade him for anything or anyone in this world. His mood swings throw me for a loop sometimes, but secretly, I wouldn't have him any other way.

P.S. As I write this post, Jonathan is sitting on the floor shredding a Quizno's napkin and eating it. It's cheered him up considerably from his tantrums earlier this evening. (And yes, as soon as I realized he was eating it I stopped him.)

10,000 Steps.

Recently, I purchased a pedometer, as my old promotional gift one finally broke. It's a rather nice one, an Omron something or other, which fits in your pocket with a little safety clip, rather than clipping on the hip, which my old one did.  I really do like it, but I've come to realize something. I don't walk very much. I move around our apartment quite a bit, (I'm a stay-at-home mom and piano/voice teacher out of my home...) but I don't get out much for walks. This makes the old '10,000 step' workout rather difficult, as I struggle to reach 5,000 on a busy shopping day out! I realize the point is to add in walks into your routine, but an extra 5,000 seems a lot to pull out of nowhere! Maybe it's just me...anyone else have any success doing the 10,000 step workout?

Birthday Party!!!

My son will be turning one in a few weeks, and to celebrate, family is coming from the far reaches of the globe. (Ok, the far reaches of the midwest, anyway.) We're looking forward to a fun weekend in which we'll be taking in fireworks, possibly a concert, the farmer's market downtown, maybe the children's zoo, and definitely swimming, hopefully in the outdoor pool in our complex.  So much fun, so little time!

Radio Silence and Authorship.

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. My computer isn't smashed into sparkly bits. I am not horribly incapacitated. I simply have not kept up with blogging.

It's my fault, really. (Well, of course it is. That's silly. This is my blog, I am the only one who posts here, of course it was my fault for not blogging. Anyway...) I made blogging into a chore in my mind, and therefore avoided it. I miss the days where I posted random things for the fun of it. So I will bring those days back now. I think.

I've been working on a children's book lately, mainly just for fun. I recently purchased three fairy tale books with the intent to read them to my son in the future (the stories are a bit long for his almost-one-year-old attention span at the moment,) and have been reading through them on my own first.  One thing I noticed that bothered me a bit was that everyone was pretty. Now, I have nothing against beautiful people, but the people in these stories were the heroes and heroines simply because they were beautiful, not always because they were virtuous and heroic, as one would expect. (I'm generalizing here... some stories had legitimately heroic people, with good lessons. I'm simply citing the ones that didn't.) Because of this, I began to contemplate a world in which the heroine of the story was a particularly ugly bookish girl, who kept to herself with her nose in a book. (A fate I have often confined myself to happily, as I do so love a good book...) My plan at the moment is to have her fall in love with 'a perfectly ordinary man'. No transformation into a beauty in the end, no magic prince behind the mask, a simple romance among books. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Smiley Child.

It occured to me that I have yet to share a photo of my son smiling.  He does smile, I promise! To remedy this, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite photos. (Because, you know, it's my blog, and I'm allowed to play proud mommy once in awhile.)  :) Enjoy!

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Yes, that is dirt around his mouth. He ate dirt.

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He likes to play with boxes. Then again, what kid doesn't?

This is in our church nursery. He loves the toy he's standing in front of, because, well, it lets him stand, and he thinks that's just fabulous.

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This is my all-time favorite picture so far! He looks so grown up! (He's now 10 months old.)