Guessing game

With Black Friday looming close by, I realized I needed to solve the "blaster" mystery and pronto. CMan had mentioned that A (a child in Christian's daycare) owned the "blaster". Aha! At least I had a lead. When I picked CMan up at daycare yesterday, I was hoping that A would still be there so I could interrogate, grill, ask him nicely what the heck a blaster was. Fortunately he was there and the magic moment arrived and I said "hey, A, Chris says that you have a blaster, can you tell me what that is?". Unfortunately, A had no idea what I was talking about. After some discussion though, he and I concluded that Christian's "blaster" is probably this. Let's hope we're right....you know, for Santa's sake.

This year

Things went a whole lot smoother with Santa. Last year CMan was clinging to me like a koala and never even touched his lap, but this time, he actually sat next to the man and even uttered a couple of words to him. Christian asked Santa to bring him a "blaster". Santa said he looked like a good boy and that perhaps he would get his blaster.

Since there was no line, the photographer took lots of shots because my child refused to smile. This was the one and only smile we got from like 15 pictures taken. It's a shame JJ was oblivious to the whole thing and looking off into space. Oh and I was pretty impressed that Santa was bilingual...what can I say, he didn't exactly have that Latin look to him.



When we went to pay for the picture, Christian said..."where's my blaster?". Talk about instant gratification. He was upset that he would have to wait until Christmas for it. By the way, I wish Santa would tell me what a "blaster" is so that I can know what to expect on Christmas morning.

Waaaah

Let's bow our heads for a moment as we reflect sadly on the fact that my vacation maternity leave will be coming to an end shortly. Boohoo. I'm expected back at work on Monday and unlike my leave with Christian, I am not looking forward to it. CMan was not an easy baby...JJ is, so it makes it hard to go back, but alas, if I want to keep up my spa days and silly spending habits, I must go back. The good news is that now the blogging will probably be less sparse.

JJ went to the doc last week for his check up. He's between the 60 and 75 percentile ranges, which for my rugrats is amazing. He weighed 13.3 pounds and measured 24" long. He still spits up a bit, but the Prevacid is making it a little better. Hopefully when he sits up by himself, we can discontinue it. In October we took an infant massage class and it was pretty cool to meet a bunch of new mommies. JJ is a little wiggly when I massage him, so I'm not sure yet if it relaxes him or gets him riled up.



I've been spending my spare moments on Ebay and Facebook alot these past months. The good thing is that I've done alot of my Christmas shopping already, the bad thing is that I've peed the days away in front of the computer. It has been really cool to find old friends on Facebook though. Some people have aged well with time and some...well...mmm...not so much. It's a stalker's paradise!

They've got the right stuff

...and boy do they know how to use it. The five boys men from Beantown were in my town last night and put on one hell of a show! Meg, Jenny, Amanda and I headed up to Sunrise to see the New Kids on the Block sing again after 20 years.

As I squeezed into put on an old NKOTB shirt that Meg lent me (If you look at the picture, it looks like I peed my pants. No, I wasn't that excited...Meg's erratic driving made me spill my soda; that's my story and I'm sticking to it) I was instantly transported back to when I was 13 years old. Back in those days, my room was wallpapered with pictures from TeenBeat magazine and not one inch of wall space was visible underneath the faces of Jon, Donnie, Jordan (and no, my child is not named after him), Danny and Joe. Back then, I was in the nosebleed section when I went to see them in concert. This time? 6th row baby.

Amanda and I were in row F and Meg and Jen were in row L. I gave my camera to Meg to take pictures and Amanda and I took pictures with her camera, so we had several angles covered. We were THISCLOSE and the pictures came out awesome (all 350 of them).

It was one of the best concerts I've ever been to (yes, even better than Pearl Jam...believe it). I was brought to tears as they sang the oldies that I loved and I found myself dancing and bopping my head to their new songs as well. I only wish I had made a sign to hold up that said "JON is my baby-daddy"...that would've gotten his attention, don't you think?

Happy Be-lated Halloween!!!

I haven't really filled you in on the happenings around here this past month, so let's play catch up shall we? First off, landscaping be damned! I was able to put my creepy stuff out among the plants, so THERE! I pulled my tombstones and skulls out of my garage and displayed them in my mini yard. I took some pictures, but I can't find them right now, so I'll post them later.

Christian and I also carved some pumpkins. Unfortunately, I did it too soon and they were long gone by the time Halloween came around. I think I did a mighty good job though considering that I've only done this about once or twice before.

Of course, my spooky village also made an appearance this year. Christian managed to only break one figurine this time.

On Wednesday we headed up to Orlando to go to Halloween Horror Nights once again. Since JJ is breastfeeding, I had to take him with me. I also took my mom with me so she could watch him in the hotel while I went to party with the monsters. I'm crazy, but not insane enough to take my child to that wacky madness. The rest of my party consisted of 8 other friends, some repeats from last year and some new volunteers too. Unfortunately we got a late start, so we didn't get to the park till about 8 or 9. We had an express pass, but unfortunately it wasn't enough and we weren't able to see all the haunted houses. We missed out on Creatures and Interstellar Terror. The scare zones were really fun though and since I had my Vault shirt on, I got quite a bit of attention from the creatures that were roaming the park that night. (Ha ha! I just went to the vault website so I could link to it in this post and I noticed that my picture was on the page!) We had a great time, but it felt a little rushed this year and the houses felt a little empty. Hopefully next year will be better. I was supposed to meet up with my Orlando friend WB, but my mom wanted to leave the next morning asap, so that didn't happen either.

On Halloween night I took CMan trick or treating for the first time ever (my mom took him last year, he didn't go the years before that). He was a little (alot) spooked out by the whole affair and wanted nothing to do with it. Oh sure, he loved wearing the costume (a pirate of course) at home, but going outside with it? in the dark? knocking on strangers doors?...not so much. He endured the torture and was very happy to be home. Hopefully this is not a trend that will be continued...Mama needs her candy! JJ also went trick or treating, I didn't want him to freak out too when he was older, so I figured I'd start him out at a young age...plus hello, more candy for me. After we were done with our neighborhood, I left JJ with Ren and headed to my mom's neighborhood to check out the decorations of the houses. While roaming the streets, I found a guy who built his own haunted house. I was totally floored with excitement...another loony! Like me! Except his house was outside and it was actually a structure that he constructed out of plywood. Awesome! I couldn't take enough pictures. Even though it had no actors, just props, CMan refused to go in...and I didn't force him. We don't want to traumatize him or anything you know.