The crazy lady with the costume bin

Wow, this has been the craziest Halloween season yet! This year, ever since mid-September, I've felt like I've been pulled in all directions. It all started with my Adam Lambert concerts and then it was Christian's birthday (he had a little party at school) and then I went on a cruise to Europe for the first two weeks in October (which I STILL have not documented, yes, I know, bad blogger) and then I quickly put together the Thrill The World Miami event for this year at the last moment (I've lost several years of my life stressing over THAT one) and then I went to Halloween Horror Nights and then I went to 3 parties the night before Halloween and then I went trick or treating the actual night of. I AM EXHAUSTED! Hello November! I welcome you with open arms! The only craziness you offer me is Thanksgiving (which I don't cook, so it's not really crazy for me) and Black Friday (which I go to purely for sport).

Anyway, that having been said, back to the Halloween blog. This year, someone commented that they had seen me in 3 different costumes in one season! Oh how true that is. I'm a Halloween nut and I have a costume bin at home. Every year I just pick from there and mix and match to make my costume. I hate the pre-packaged ones, they're just so void of creativity and ingenuity. Christian is starting his own costume drawer as well because this year, he too had on 3 different costumes (Wolverine, Spiderman, Darth Vader). Jordan on the other hand, hates costumes. He clearly got that from his father. I had to struggle with him to get him to wear a superman pajama (not even a real costume, but whatever) to go trick or treating!

On to my costumes, for Thrill The World, I dressed up as a zombie of course.. For Halloween Horror Nights, you can't dress up, otherwise, you know I would've had a 4th costume. No crazy costumes there, just good ole crazy me (in the asylum house no less).

On Saturday night, our Thrill The World group performed again at Hellrotika. This was a fundraiser for Save Dade (which truly deserves its very own blog post for the vast number of outrageous and creative costumes that were in attendance...I LOVED IT!). For that gig, I was dressed up as Alice Cooper in Wonderland. I picked this because later that same night I went down the rabbit hole (not a dirty euphimism I swear) to my friend Melanie's Alice in Wonderland party. She totally went all out with the decorations and her backyard looked awesome. She goes all out with decorations just like I do (even more so I would say).

And last, but certainly not least. On Halloween night I dressed up as Junice Merill. For those of you unfamiliar with Juney, she's a character from SNL. Here's the video of the skit. I was recently introduced to her via a friend's post on Facebook and once I saw it, there was no turning back. I had to be her!

Unfortunately, I didn't really go anywhere with the costume on, I just took the kids trick or treating (and went to Jenny's Halloween campout later on). I don't think that many people would have recognized who I was anyway, so the costume was purely for the self satisfaction of being able to put it together and be a freak for a night...oh wait, I'm a little strange all the time.

Jordan Bieber!

Four seconds of fame

I haven't really blogged about this yet (but I did talk about it on FB) because I was waiting for it to come out, but now that it's here.

Check out my little man in the latest Hooked on Phonics commercial. He comes out at 1:10 and again at 1:32.




We went to Orlando and Venice Beach in March and April to film this and it was a great experience. Everyone was so nice and patient. I'm so proud of him because he was really tired that day (we had gone to the beach earlier because the film crew was running late), but he was a real trooper and did what they asked him to (for the most part).


I found the video last night because Christian wanted to play his Hooked On Phonics games on the computer. I wondered if the commercial was ready, so I looked on their website and found it in their YouTube channel. Christian was pretty excited to see himself on the screen. I hope he sees it on TV though because then he'll really freak out (and he doesn't get excited over things that easily).


As far as the product goes, I think it's wonderful (and I'm not just saying that because we were in the commercial). Christian has really gotten ahead with his reading. He reads three and four letter words now and I often catch him trying to read and pronounce longer words as well. He's half way through the Kindergarten book. Because he is only four though, I don't pressure him to do the workbooks or lessons or anything. That way, it's not something that becomes a chore, but something fun that we do together. It's there on the counter in plain sight, whenever he wants to work on it, he asks me and we do so. The fact that he wants to do it almost every day though speaks volumes for the product and how great it is. I'm really glad I stumbled upon it.


Now, if only I could get Jordan in a commercial too....hmmm....that's next on my to-do list!

Rolling rolling rolling

My little man rolled over on Sunday!

I'd been trying to teach him this weekend, but he would only twist his top half. On Sunday he finally flipped his leg over and the proud mama was there to catch it on video the third time he did it. I love his reaction at the end.

This one's for you Ariel

And now for your viewing enjoyment, some Christmas Carols by Christian. In the first video he uses Jordan's rattle as the accompanying rhythm (we've got rhythm yes we do, we've rhythm how about you). Pay attention to the lyrics on the second one. Sorry for the crappy lighting.

Pfavorite

Ha ha! I just found one of my favorite moments from the Golden Girls TV show:

Exhausted

No more concerts on a work night OK?

Well, the seats weren't too bad. They could've been better, but they also could've been way worse. We were in section 1 (lower level) row Q, but we were off to the side, so the view wasn't all that.

Either way, I still had fun and took lots of pictures (and video, which I am trying to upload as I type can be found below). I got tons of compliments on my shirt. Pearl Jam fans are so very nice and supportive, so many people read my shirt and gave me a thumbs up, congratulatory words and nice comments. There was one other prego there with a similar shirt, but I was never close enough to read what hers said. In the course of the evening I ran into two other prego ladies that wished they had gotten shirts like mine too.

Before the concert started I saw this lady and this little girl come out from the backstage area and pass by our seats (unfortunately I didn't take a picture) and I could have sworn that it was his wife and daughter because they sure looked alot like these people. Later in the concert, they passed by again (headed backstage) as I was headed out to the bathroom. The lady glanced at my shirt and I wondered if it was them...perhaps it was, I'll never know.

Here's the video we took of an oldie but goody, Evenflow:

This weekend post is brought to you by the letter J and the number 8

I'm going to go see Pearl Jam today!!!! I have no idea what seats I'll have though until I get there, so cross your fingers that they are good...very good. If they let cameras in, I shall have many pictures to share.

My baby shower was this past Saturday. Thanks to Lilli, I have a decent photo of myself that I can add to this post because in all the pictures we took with my camera, I look constipated and in pain. I had my baby shower earlier in the pregnancy this time around because last time I was as big as a house (right now I'm only about trailer-size) and I was pooped. Last time I was able to lay down when I got home ; this time, not so much, Christian duty called.

On Sunday, we took Cman to his first live action show. I was hesitant about doing so since he won't even sit in front of the TV for 10 minutes straight. We've yet to take him to the movies for the same reason. I figured that a stage show might capture his attention better since it's live and action packed (and it didn't hurt that we had 4th row seats). Anyway, we went to see Elmo and the other Sesame Street characters. When we got to the place we bought Cman one of those spinning light things (in case he got bored of the show) and then took our seats. I'm pleased to say that all went well and he watched the show, sat still (alternating between our laps every 15 minutes) and didn't try to run away (except for that one time that he wanted to touch the stage lights). It was really cute and we had a great time. The floor seats were great because the characters would come up close and touch Chris once in a while. I don't know if it's the pregnancy hormones, but I just about lost it at the beginning when all the characters came out. Maybe I'm just a sentimental sap. Speaking of sentimental, they played the 12 song on the big screen and had Bert dance disco in a white leisure suit. I guess those were their attempts at entertaining the old folks in the crowd....they worked. At least on me they did.

We've got rhythm, yes we do.

And now a post about Chris. Because you know, I haven't talked about him enough lately...

Anyway, onward.

First some quotes:

Cman: I'm going to the supamahket
Me: Oh you are? What are you going to buy?
Cman: CHEETOS!

Cman: Mommy, you name is Claudia?
Me: Yes, babe. What's your name?
Cman: Kistian
Me: What's the baby's name?
Cman: Baby.

After putting on his yellow iron man sunglasses: "everything is Lellow!"


And now a video of his recent love of drumming to the jingle bell song:



I was actually surprised that he has rhythm and pauses in the correct places. Unfortunately, you can't really tell because he wants to see the video before it's even over. lol. Maybe we've got a future rock band drummer on our hands.

Feverish times and ABC's

I haven't gotten much work done for the past 5 days because CMan had been sporting a runny nose/fever/vomiting spell on and off since Friday. A trip to the doctor on Monday revealed nothing concrete, so she had to order some blood work. Poor baby, I hate it when they order blood work. After the visit we stepped outside and discovered these cute little friends in the grass. They were all over the place and Chris was having a great time picking them up. I just had to make sure he didn't squeeze them too hard.

In other news, CMan surprised me by singing his ABC's in the car the other day. Since then, I've been trying to get him to do it on film, but every time he sees the camera he freaks out and wants to play with it instead of doing whatever he was doing. I finally got a little spy cam action going on, but I got busted at the end...check it out:



Amidst the fever spikes, he also managed to go #1 and #2 in the potty again on his own (before bath time). This time I had stickers on hand. Yay stickers. I bought a grab bag of small toys so I can give him one whenever he goes; hopefully those will be a bit more of an incentive since he's got lots of stickers already anyway.

At daycare they were focusing on colors last week, so he's learned his colors now too. Speaking of daycare, his fevers were gone yesterday and he should be ready to go back to daycare today, but R has the day off, so I think he's going to keep him home one more day just to be sure.

Last but not least, check out the drawing he did by himself the other day.

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In Little Wiggly news, I've got a doctor's apppointment today, so I'll let you know how that goes too.

See, it's not just me

If you saw the Superbowl yesterday then I bet you can guess which was (one of) my favorite commercials. If not, I'm gonna tell you anyway, better yet, I'll show you:



Thrilling the world baby!

and here's a nifty video from London that Amanda sent me this morning:



Which naturally leads me to my little Thrill the World box on the right over there. I wonder if I'll be able to pull my little stunt off this year. What with trying to recoup from a C-section and all...Hmm.

What's between your couch cushions?

Yesterday at my mom's house, I was trying to get Chris to sing some Christmas Carols. Here I am trying to get Christian to sing "We wish you a Merry Christmas". He wasn't cooperating and started looking through the couch cushions.



And here we have Jum-bo-go (Jingle bells):




For the record, he found a button in my mom's couch.

Premature Thrilleration

It turns out that I posted my Thriller tribute prematurely a couple of days ago (#7). I had NO idea that today was the 25th anniversary of the release of that album. My boss told me that Good Morning America had asked people to send in their best Thriller re-enactments and/or parodies. They played some of the best ones on the air yesterday (crap, I missed it).

The reason I even found the video of my high school pep rally was because R was doing a youtube search of his high school and I decided to do the same with mine to see what would come up. Most of the stuff was from recently graduated classes, so I picked the oldest video I could find and oddly enough, it ended up being a Thriller dance. The fact that I found it was a fluke and the fact that it occurred (and that I blogged about it) just days before the anniversary is just wacky. Ha ha...I love it when things turn out that way.

In the process of doing some youtube research for this here blog post (trying to find the GMA clips), I seem to have stumbled upon a Thriller dance phenomenon. I knew there were other wackos like me that liked to dance to the song, but I never knew that there was a whole movement of sorts if you will.

There are several world records that Thrill the World is trying to break for the most simultaneous Thriller performances and largest Thriller dance (they even provide a series of videos where you can learn the moves to said dance). There's marching band Thriller, toddler Thriller, Legos Thriller and there's even Indian Thriller (my personal favorite so far). I guess you could say that I'm thrilled I found it! (ha ha)

Anyway...because today is the 25th anniversary of the release of the album, I found a website that has alot of fun Thriller parodies to share with you. Click on the link and join me as I head over there to get my Thriller fix. Let me know which one is your favorite.

Here is mine: Indian Thriller with phonetic "translation" of the lyrics. Warning, do not click on this if you are consuming food or beverages...it might ruin your computer or cause you to choke.... yes it's that funny.




GIRLY MAN!
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You do realize that now I won't be content until I do MY OWN reenactment of Thriller right? OK. You have been duly warned. I only need 22 more people (I can think of two right now) to qualify to participate in the record-setting event. Anyone care to join me? You've got some time to think about it...let me know. In the meantime, go to youtube and learn the dance!

8 secrets/things I haven't blogged about

I was tagged by Elizasmom a little while back, so it's meme time. I guess mine will be more of a eight things I haven't blogged about theme because obviously if I wrote about my secrets...well, then they wouldn't be secrets. This also means I can squish in a bunch of unrelated things that I've been meaning to blog about (but have been too busy to do so) all in one post. Ha ha I'm tricky like that!

OK, so here we go in a completely random order:

1. This year, when we go to El Salvador for the holidays, I will be flying over there with Christian, all by myself. My mom will be heading over on the 24th, and I will be leaving on the 27th (Ren has to stay and work). This terrorizes me to no end. I am fearful about how I am going to handle luggage, stroller, carryons, tickets, security checks, and toddler all at once. I decided to get one of those little child harnesses so that CMan could walk around if he got sick of the stroller. R was totally against it, but unless you've seen the video of the break dancer that kicks a toddler 5 feet in the air, you cannot fully appreciate the need to have your children next to you at all times (especially in crowded places). The speed at which these children can break away from your hand and run off is quite scary. Anyway, so I got one of those cute little monkey backpacks hoping that he would like it and be excited to wear a backpack. No such luck. I can't even get him to put one arm through it, much less buckle the thing up. I have about 31 days left to convince him, so we'll see how this goes. This past weekend, we saw 3 little boys with the monkey back packs on. I made sure to point out all three of them to Cman.

2. We went to Andrew and Rebeka's pirate party at the Children's museum a couple of weeks back. Cman had a great time playing with his friends on the playground, sitting on a bike, dancing with a hula hoop and exploring the museum. Happy Collective Birthday to the Mejia family (they are all in November)! Oh, and I actually got him to wear the pirate hat on more than one occasion!

3. We went to the harvest two weeks ago and I bought myself a cute quilt with a gingerbread man on it and some yummy dip mixes. We went to the historical village and hung out with some Pirates from the Florida Keys (Pop quiz: do you recognize any of those people from somewhere else?). Cman loved the cannon and I had quite a hard time pulling him away from it when it was time to leave.

4. Later that day we went to Gianna's (CMan's niece) first birthday party. Chris had a great time playing with the "boons". They had a cotton candy machine and face painting, but he didn't want anything to do with either of those activities.

5. I don't believe I've showed you the pictures from his last photo session (and his Halloween costume), so let me share now for a bit:

6. Mr. Cman surprised me in the car the other day. He and I usually count things together so that he can learn his numbers. He's never really counted by himself (he always wants me to do it and he repeats), so the other day we were driving around and he started talking in the backseat saying "one"...."one"...."one"...he kept saying it over because he wanted me to repeat, so I said "one" then he said "two" and I said "two" and we kept going like that until he got to number 10. I was quite impressed thinking wow...he can count to 10...news to me! Then I hear this from the back seat... "eleden"...and I go "eleven"....and he kept counting until 15. That daycare lady sure is teaching him alot because he and I usually don't count more than 10 things. I decided to say "sixteen" to see if he could go further and he did...all the way to 19. I had to say 20 for him; perhaps that's as high as they've taught him. He also knows all of his letters now. He can point to a letter and tell you what letter it is and/or you can ask him for a certain letter and he will give it to you. He also knows what sound most of the letters make.

7. I found this little tidbit online the other day. This was a pep-rally at my high school. Unfortunately it happened 2 or 3 years after I had already graduated. Needless to say I would've loved to have seen this in person:

8. The holiday shopping has begun! Amanda and I went shopping on black Friday and spent way too much money. I got some presents for Chris (aka the most spoiled boy in the universe...aka TMSBIU) and about 60 DVD's (yes, that is not a typo) for about $3.81 each. I've got quite a collection going...pretty soon, I'll have to start renting them out to people.

It appears that I have run out of numbers and I still have more to share, so I'm off to write my next post!

*UPDATED* OY! I forgot to tag someone! Here you go Amanda, I know you had some stuff you needed to blog about. Ha ha.

Since we're on the subject...

..of my family and their media involvment.

Here's a video I found on Youtube of my cousin. It's a commercial she did for a store over in El Sal. She was Miss El Salvador in 1996 (you know, cause I wasn't available...what with being out of the country and all that..ha ha) and was one of the top 10 finalists for Miss Universe that year. You go girl!

Another waxing method

Yesterday Christian discovered that stickers can go on faces too!
Ah...the things I do to entertain you my son (so that you will eat).

Chris loved putting the stickers on my face, but he REALLY loved the part where I had to rip take them off. You know that peach fuzz that people generally have on their face? Yeah? Well, I've got a little less of it on my face today. Can we say sticker waxing?

Below is the video of him cracking up as I rip them off my face. Turn up the volume and listen real close for the surprise at the end (it comes after I say "say bye bye Christian, bye bye"); he says bye bye in his own way.

Swimming

Since we are surrounded by water here in Florida, R and I found it increasingly necessary that Cman learn how to swim as soon as possible (in other words NOW). Seeing as how I have a child that isn't too adventurous and is scared of all things new, I thought, what better activity to schedule him in than swimming lessons every week? That way he can scream and cry and cling on to us and we can pay money for this to go on for 9 weeks in a row...Yippee!! Yes, I don't know what I was thinking either. I should've listened to Meredith is all I can say. Cristy brought Sophie to the classes too, but (unlike me) she's actually getting her money's worth.

Cman has gone to two classes so far. The first one went better than the second one (I guess he knew what he was in for the second time around). It's a mommy-and-me class, but R got in the pool with him both times. For the first class all the toddlers and their parents got in a little circle and played games and sang songs and passed toys around. Then just when they had let their guards down, the underwater diving began (from DAY 1! These people don't mess around). R put Chris underwater and I totally missed the Kodak moment because I was not expecting that to happen (I'm guessing Cman wasn't either). He didn't cry or freak out though (oddly enough); I guess he was too shocked to know what to do. After that, they put the toddlers on the ledge and played the humpty dumpty sat on the wall game where they pull them off the ledge and under the water towards the parent (it's not as bad as it sounds..see video below). Chris didn't like that one too much, but he tolerated it a couple of times. Not bad for the first class!

The second class was last Wednesday and boy was he crabby. It didn't help that he had only had one nap that day, in fact I think that's the reason why the second class didn't go that well. A tired, cranky baby is no fun in the water. For this class they had set up a little table inside the water so that the little kids could walk on it or climb on the rail. All the kids took to it quite quickly except for well...guess who. Did you ever hear that song on Sesame Street that went "one of these things is not like the others" (or something like that)? Well, yeah, these pictures remind me of that song...for some reason.

Oh well, at least Sophie's enjoying the classes (she throws herself underwater as often as possible...whether Cristy's ready for it or not). To hear me tell it, you'd think the class is a total waste of time for Chris, but it really isn't. He goes underwater alot and doesn't complain about it too much. I'm sure he's getting something out of them.

Party animals

This weekend was quite fun. We went to a birthday party and then went to visit Sophie and then on Sunday we did a little rescue of sorts, but I'll have to cut it into several posts as I don't have the stamina to write it all down at once. Nor should anyone have to read that much nonsense in one sitting.

But before I begin my weekend recap, I have to mention that my little man is sick with a fever. He had 102.5 on Monday morning (around 3 am) and it was a bit scary since I had never seen such a high temp on him before. R took him to the pediatrician this morning and she gave him some eye drops (his eyes are watery and a little swollen) and pediacare and stuff for the fever. He's gained a little bit of weight, so hopefully this won't cause him to go back down again.

On Saturday we went to Daniel's 7th birthday party and hotter Otter John was there to teach the kids about animals. We got to see an alligator, a crocodile, two owls, a tortoise, and a big scary cat. I was having a great time checking Otter John out the animals and Cman couldn't care less; he preferred to play with rocks, balls and bubbles. We tried the bounce-house once again, and once again he exhibited great joy at being in there. He liked the slide better, but didn't like it when he went down too quickly. When it was time for the piñata, he got a little more involved this time. I showed him how to pick the candy up from the floor and put it in his little bag. It was cute to watch him pick them up one. by. one.

After the party we went to Sophia's house for a playdate. It consisted mostly of parallel play, but they still had a good time. We put them in the crib together to see what they would do and Chris couldn't make up his mind whether he should hug her or hit her. Here's a cute video of him and Sophie dancing/bouncing in the crib.

A laughing matter

I've got a video treat for you guys today!

This weekend R and I got Chris on video doing this hilarious laugh that he likes to do.

Ren and I like to laugh in a big exaggerated way so that Christian will copy us. Sometimes I cover my mouth when I laugh, so now he does it too.

When Chris is in a laughing mood, Ren asks him things and Chris responds to them by laughing (no matter what he asks him). It is too funny and I can barely hold my laugh as I film him.

In this video you can also tell who the favorite parent is (starts with R and rhymes with en) because when I talk to Christian he puts a serious face and practically ignores me.

Joy.

Can I get a witness

Ha ha! Now I don't need a witness because I managed to capture Cman on film saying "Ba-Ba" (Bye bye). I also managed to figure out the you tube thing (insert collective internet groan), so there will be lotsa fun video postings from now on.

I apologize for the crappy video image though. I took it with my old digital camera since that was the only one available at the time.

I still have to figure out the you tube thing when uploading from my video camera though. Just wait till I figure that one out and then you're all doomed to sit through home video hell. (Insert Dr. Evil laugh here).

Notice he's also trying to feed himself. I was trying to feed him, but he kept nodding his head (no no no), so I just gave up and gave him the spoon. Too bad the picture sucks...otherwise you'd be able to see that he's wearing most of the food.