Contest update

So here's the update on the contest...

Christian ended up being #111. That’s not bad considering there were 3,875 kids! He was in the top 2.8%! We also found out about the contest really late, so he was in it for only like 2 weeks even though it started sometime in February. Maybe next time...

I’d like to thank those of you that voted for him and especially those that went the extra mile for us (you know who you are!). I know it's annoying to have someone asking you to vote all the time (especially since I love these types of contests), trust me, it's annoying to have to be asking for votes too. I feel like I'm bothering you all, then again, if you can't bother your friends, then who can you bother? Oh that's right, perfect strangers that come upon my blog...ha ha.

Thanks for putting up with my endless emails, texts, tweets, and facebook updates!

On a positive note, we are currently in the process of filming a Hooked on Phonics infomercial (I’ll post a link to that when it comes out) and signing him with a pretty snazzy agency, so wish us luck!

Blogging will return shortly...I've got lots to post about.

Momentary Revival

This blog is experiencing a momentary revival so I can beg, plead, grovel ask you to vote for my son on a daily basis (ok, now you're pushing it woman). Read on...

I've entered Christian in the Next Direct Model Competition. The winner gets a modeling contract and a $100,000 scholarship. Sure the modeling gig would be fun, but I'm thinking that scholarship will come in super handy.

I hate entering contests where there's like a million children entering and there are a couple of children at the very top with parents who are the presidents of companies and they make all their employees vote, so the kid ends up with a million votes and they are impossible to beat.

Here's the part where I actually think this is doable. In this contest, the TOP 50 children fly to LA to compete for the prize with photo shoots and interviews and all that. This makes it more fair and more attainable...I think.

Now the trick comes in getting into the top 50. Sorted from highest to lowest votes, we started on page 47 (25 kids per page) and Chris is now on page 12 (the goal is to get to page 1 or 2). This means we've moved up 35 pages in like a week and are now 10 pages away! Call me crazy (CRAZY!), but I think it's totally doable (with your help of course).

So, that being said...can you please help me out? Please vote every day through Facebook (if you're on there) and then log out and vote again with your emails (click on the VOTE FOR ME button under his picture). If you'd really like to help, but just don't have the time to be fiddling around with all this contest nonsense, then please send me your email address and I'll find someone to vote for you.

I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to start taking clothes off offering goodies in return for votes...come on people...help a girl out! What will it take? Hershey's kisses? real kisses? a body rub? a home cooked meal (ha ha...as if)?

Anyway, the last day to vote is Thursday, March 18 at 7am. If you do not have Facebook, you can vote with just your email (with as many as you have; you have to wait 24 hours from the last time you voted though). OK ...on your mark...get set...GO!...ok, stop reading this and click here.

P.S. Feel free to pimp this out to your friends so they can help too.

Fame and Glory in the New Year

Happy New Year!

Alright peeps, now that I got that out of the way, it's time to get the New Year started off right. How do I do that? With a contest of course. Not a contest I'm hosting, but one that I was entered into.

Gotta love a good contest right? (and God knows I love em'). Anyway, yes, it's voting time again. Fortunately for those of you on my email list (and on FB), I think you can only vote once, so you won't be getting daily pestering emails from me. Hurrah! Ok well, you might. ha ha.

Ok, so here's the scoop. Jady Images is having their yearly cover shot contest for their website. These are the friendly people that photograph my children once in a while and also kindly donated their time and effort to my little Thrill The World project, so basically I love them and you should too.

Youse lovely peoples kindly voted for me and Jordan last year which is why we are currently already on their webpage, but my family and I are attention whores would love to be on the website again, so what do you say? Just pop on over to their blog and vote for image #33 (yes, they saved the best for last, what can I say?) where you will find my hubby and two children, one of which will be upside down.

The family with the most votes will get a fabulous 11x14 canvas and the top 6 will be on the website for all of 2010. Woohoo! Fame and Glory!

Please vote before Jan 15th and share it with your friends!

Thanks ya'll. I'll be back to post soon about my Christmas Va-kay to El Salvador.

Mama needs a money tree

My son Christian has reached that age where he asks for everything...and I mean everything he sees. I'm almost scared to turn the TV on these days. Catalogs that come in the paper are also dangerous. I guess it's my fault because the other day I gave him the Toysrus catalog and pen to circle a couple (key word: couple) of things that he liked. Bad idea. Now he wants to go around with a pen circling everything he sees everywhere. I've created a monster.

The sad thing is that I want to buy him all the things he likes, but I know I can't (and shouldn't).

And now, an example of how bad the "mommyIwant monster" has become....

Yesterday we were watching TV and they were playing a commercial for a Nerf Wii game which looked pretty cool:

Chris: Mommy, buy me that!
Me: What is that?
Chris: It's a nerf gun game
Me: Oh that looks cool, we'll see (bonus: no darts to poke Jordan's eyes out)

The next commercial comes on

Chris: Mommy, buy me that!
Me: I don't think you want that.
Chris: Yes I do. Why not?
Me: It's a carpet cleaning product.

Yeah. It's gotten way out of hand.

On that vein, time for a shameless plug. If you'd like to help me win $500 (so I can get Chris that oh-so-desired carpet foam), head on over to ivillage on Facebook and help Jordan win the Cutest Kids Costume Contest! The child with the most votes wins $500 (Hello!) so please vote and pass this on to your friends so they can vote too!

Jordan is dressed as a baby Michael Jackson (from Thriller of course), so check it out! Voting runs from: Monday, Nov 9 - Sunday Nov 15.

Please click on this link or this link.
You have to have a Facebook account to be able to vote.

I'm not sure if you can vote every day, but please give it a try!

Thanks

Help me decide

I got the proofs from Jady Images from our most recent session (9 months). I have to pick one for my 8x10, but, as usual, I'm having a difficult time of it. Please vote and help me decide which one I should get:










Amy from Jady Images was kind enough to give me some referral cards, so if you love her pictures as much as I do and would like a free session (and are in Miami), leave me a comment! I have a handful to give away. As usual, if I get more comments than what I have available, I will raffle them off. If you still want to vote, but don't want a referral card (because you're not in Miami, have bad taste, are allergic to pictures, or what have you) just let me know and I'll take you out of the running.

Voting ends on Friday this week.

Thanks guys!

Just think, you can say you know someone that won!

You know I'm a sucker for baby contests, so here's another one that you, my blog friends, can help me out with. I entered Jordan in Elvis Duran's Battle of the Babies. It's supposedly for the cutest baby in America, but we all know it's really a popularity contest. Since I am not very popular, I need all the help I can get. Please go to this page and vote for Jordan once a day every day until May 18th. The winner for week 2 will be announced on May 20th. The prize? $5000. Nice huh?


If you're on Facebook, I've created a Facebook group here. Please repost and share share share!

If the voting page doesn't work, you can try this link too. Just click on the letter J. He's on the 14th page, third row, in the middle.



Thanks a bunch!

Nebulizer City

It's been Nebulizer and Antibiotic City at my house for the past 10 days. Christian was diagnosed with left upper lobe pneumonia and a double ear infection and JJ had a runny nose, a cough, and icky ears, so both were given nebulizer treatments. Do you know how hard it is to give an 8 month old nebulizer treatments? I don't recommend it that's for sure. It involves lots of flailing and screaming...and that's just me.

Yesterday was the last day of Christian's antibiotic and an Xray done earlier this week revealed that the pneumonia was all gone. Thank God. That was a little scary for a moment there because Chris got really weak (he wanted to be carried) and he refused to eat for a couple of days. He said no to happy meal, pizza, macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets, so you know something wasn't right.

Fortunately, he's all better now. JJ on the other hand still has a runny nose and a cough, so we've had to hold off on the things that the G.I. doctor wanted us to do. I refuse to do a cry it out when he is sick. I did stop on the pumping though (on Cinco de Mayo). It was starting to get a little tedious. Why is it that I always choose to stop pumping around a holiday? For Chris I stopped on St. Patty's Day. I just noticed those are both drinking holidays too...ha ha. That totally makes me look like a lush.

The weaning has gone smoothly because JJ is taking formula like a champ now (still hates food though). I still nurse him at night to go to bed and in the wee hours of the morning when he's in my bed (4am-7am) so I'm not completely done, but it's very minimal. I think because of the fact that I'm weaning is why I've recently gained 3 pounds all of a sudden. This totally sucks because I haven't finished my 20/20 plan (it's more like 7/11 at this point) but oh well, I guess it will have to be extended. 20/30 perhaps?

Speaking of 20/20, I'll be doing another 5K in about 2 weeks. I enjoyed the first one so much that I'm ready to do it again. Hopefully this time I can take a picture...you know to have proof that I was there and that I did it. Ha ha.

Last but not least, I've entered Jordan in a baby picture contest, so please vote for him (once daily until May 18) so we can win $5000. It would really help us to get his college fund going. Pass it on to your friends too! I will do a more thorough post about this tomorrow. Thanks y'all.

Or not.

The movies on Tuesday were a total bust. We got there too late. All 500 seats had been filled and we, along with about 20 people in front of us (as well as those behind us), didn't get in. Manders and I were completely bummed because the kids had been so excited about going and we hated to let them down. Disappointing children is the worst thing ever.

Fortunately, since Cman had never been to the movies, he didn't know what he was missing. Unfortunately, Brandon did.

Instead, Manders and I headed to Barnes & Noble where the boys promptly forgot about the missed movie (which we will be taking them to see another day).

Let's go to the movies

I was the lucky winner of four passes to a special advanced screening of Monsters vs Aliens tonight, so Manders and I will be headed over there after work with our oldest boys. I won the passes on Momsmiami.com (these are the same peeps that featured my boys in the newspaper a couple of times too, so I'm totally loving them at this point).

I'm super excited because this will be Christian's first time going to a movie theater. I've never taken him because I imagined that he would not sit through a whole movie. I had visions of him jumping all over the seats and dumping popcorn on the floor and racing up and down the theater seats (actually, I'm the one that did that once) while I cower in shame and embarrassment. OK, fine that probably won't happen, but I do hope he doesn't start talking loudly and proclaiming that he wants to go home. The good thing is, if he does want to leave, at least it didn't cost me anything.

In my next life I will be a psychic meteorologist

I won! I won!

Thanks to Hurricane Dean (and to SOTP of course), I'm the winner of the Blowin' in the Wind Contest.

All I had to do was guess the formation date of this season's first Atlantic hurricane . I guessed Aug 13th and Dean became a hurricane this morning, so I was the closest.

For my hard labor and immense psychic talent, I will be awarded a $50 Amazon gift card. Woohoo!

Ok, remind me never to do THAT again.

Yesterday, Ren, Chris and I headed out to Sawgrass Mills Mall to check out the baby photo contest that was going on. It seemed like a fun idea to enter Chris in the contest since the proceeds were going to a charity that would help one of our local hospitals (and not lining someone's pockets).

Well, let's just say that there are ALOT of people in South Florida that consider their child to be Miami's Most Photogenic Baby! Hee hee...of course I should have known that going in to it. Since I had never been to or participated in any contest of the sort, I really had no idea how crazy it was going to be (or how LONG it was going to take).

We got to the mall at 11:30 am, had lunch, fed Christian, and changed his diaper (all WISE choices). He had slept in the car on his way over, so he was in a great mood. We walked around a bit and did a little bit of shopping since we didn't know exactly where the contest was being held and Sawgrass is a BIG mall. At around 12:30 we realized that we had found the location based on the swarms of dolled up children, impatient parents, crying babies, flashing cameras, and parked strollers. The registration had just started at noon, so we got there right at the beginning of all the hoopla.

Even though they had just begun, the line was already long since some people had been there since 10 am. You had to stand in one line to get registered (only one person registering) and I think this is what took the longest of the whole process. Ren and I took turns making the line and entertaining Christian. Once you were registered, you were given a number. You had to wait around until your number was called to take the pictures. I felt like I was waiting for my pastrami sandwich at the deli. They had one photographer (poor guy didn't go to the bathroom or have lunch) , one lady helping to call out the numbers and hundreds of parents and babies.

Something that made an impression on Ren and myself is how well trained some of the kids were. You could tell that this wasn't their first (or last) photo contest. They would strike their poses standing up, sitting down, kneeling and then they would lay down for some floor shots while their coaches, agents, drill sergeants mothers gave instructions from the sidelines. Some parents even came equipped with multiple props and outfits to enhance their baby's pictures. Others made sure to enter their babies in all four categories (at $35 a pop). With only the shirt on his back and no props, Chris was definitely a novice in the baby photo contest rodeo.

As the numbers being called inched closer to ours, Chris started to get sleepy. After all, we had been there about 2+ hours and it was getting close to his nap time. I tried my best to keep him up and keep him entertained, but I feared that once we reached the camera he would become a crying, screaming, bumbling mess (I had seen it happen already). I was hoping against all odds that he wouldn't cry, run away from the camera, have a serious face, scream, bite or hit me (or the photographer for that matter).

Fortunately for all involved, he "performed" wonderfully! He sat down and did all the tricks that my family taught him in El Salvador (tortillitas, la jarana, los ojitos, como lo tiene el amor, besito) and smiled for the camera. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures because Ren (who was on photo duty) was too busy trying to get Chris to smile as well, so no pictures for my scrapbook.

It was an interesting experience to say the least and it was fun and exciting, but I don't know that I'll do it again. I don't really have the time or energy for props and outfit changes and things of the sort, but it's definitely something to write about in his baby book.

Now we wait until Feb 23 & 24th which is when they will post the pictures up in the mall for voting. There are two ways to win: Judge's choice and Voter's choice. For the Judge's choice, well, we'll just have to get lucky (because let's face it, there was alot of stiff competition), but for the Voter's choice we may actually stand a chance (hee hee). So, this is the part where I beg, plead, grovel, supplicate, beseech ask you to please go to Sawgrass Mall on the above dates and vote for Chris (this is what he was wearing). If we get 200 votes we get a copy of the CD with all the pictures of him on it (there's hope for the scrapbook after all). Don't worry, I will remind you (repeatedly) as the day gets near. If you will be out of town, don't live in the area or have an unhealthy fear of large malls, go here to submit your vote through me.

Thanks for all your help guys!