Happy Memorial Day!

We had a great weekend of doing not much at all, which was a nice deviation from the past 3 or 4 weekends. Last Wednesday was Darrick's last day teaching. Thursday was a day for grading and cleaning up his stuff at work. That night's graduation was met with downpours of rain and 60 degree weather, which was insanely unusual, but the show went on!

Saturday was supposed to be picture day for Luca, but the rain was coming down still in our part of town, so we postponed a few days. That morning I had coffee with Linds, who was in town on her way back to the SLC from La Mehico. We had a blast, and Luca and I got to see her cute kids and hubby, and crash in on her brother, sister in law, and neice. Such great people! We love seeing Linds and Jeff and crew SO much that we're hoping to make a long weekend of it and visit them sometime very soon. :)

By early afternoon, the skies were clearing and the weather was still amazingly cool, so we took my mom with us to the zoo and Pita Jungle. It was a great day, and much different this time because Luca was able to enjoy the animals a bit more than she was last time we went. I took a few pictures but I think my camera ate them :( Anyhow, we wrapped up Saturday by watching UFC. And, Tito Ortiz lost, which was the highlight of the night!

Sunday was low key early in the day, with just grocery shopping and breakfast out in the morning. That afternoon, Brandon and Sydni came over and barbecued for us, which was SO nice of them! Luca had a blast playing with them and showing them all her new tricks, and we had fun just hanging out. Unfortunately, my camera ate those pictures as well. :(

Today we did some housecleaning and had Luca's photoshoot. The pictures were done by a friend of a friend who's starting a business, and we are SO excited to see the final product! Her blog is here:

You can see why we chose to have her do the pictures...she really seems to capture such amazing moments! After Luca's photoshoot, we decided to make use of the little wading pool we bought. Turns out that even though it's small, all 3 of us can get in at once!!! Luca LOVES the pool. She was crawling around, sticking her little chin in the water, biting the sides, and figuring out how to slide over the top to play in the grass. She was SO cute!!! Luckily, I do have most of those pictures, so here are a few:













Happy Memorial Day! We hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

Operation Stop With The Bop, Part 3

Outcome: More Fabulous than Fair to Middlin'

Yesterday was a fun day, and a pretty successful one in terms of Bop weaning. We started the morning out with breakfast and grocery shopping (a weekend ritual of sorts). Little Lu made it through all that driving and eating and cart pushing without so much as a tantrum...and no Bop! When we got home from shopping, she was half asleep, so I took her to her crib, and there she was reunited with the love of her life, and the two slept together quite well. Someday that Bop will come OUT of the crib, but for now we're willing to compromise.

Early in the afternoon, Luca's Uncle and Aunt came over to BBQ and hang out with us (in other words, to see Luca), and she made it through the entire afternoon of playing and showing off her Baby Tricks without any assistance of The Bop. Naptime found them reunited once more, but post-nap we left it in the crib again and she did fabulously. So, it would seem we're at a point now where it's getting easier to only give The Bop in bed, which works for us. Truth be told, most of the time the stupid thing falls out of her mouth as soon as she falls asleep, so I figure there's not a lot of harm in her having one in there for now.

It wasn't ALL fun and games, though. It should be noted that I learned a little lesson about discretion in the morning, when I took her out of the crib and just sort of tossed The Bop back in while she watched. Yeah.....that threw her over the edge, and she spent the next 30 minutes or so whining and fussing and just generally being pissed at me. Lesson Learned: be a bit more sneaky about dropping The Bop.

Operation Stop With The Bop, Part 2

Outcome: More success than failure.

Yesterday we decided to soldier on in the attempt to break Luca's Bop addiction. Mornings are usually ok for her as long as she can keep The Bop through the morning diaper change. So we brought her downstairs and let her Bop away until it was time to go visit our friend Lindsey. I even let her keep The Bop in the car, but as soon as we got to Lindsey's brother's house, she got distracted by all the people and other kids, and I was able to steal it from her mouth and hide it. Linds and I took Luca with us to get coffee, and aside from the fact that she tossed enough pastry and scone crumbs on the sidewalk to feed a family of birds for a week, I saw no sign of Bop withdrawl. By the time we girls were done there, Luca passed out in the car, and then woke again when we got back to Linds's brother's house. She did fine still without The Bop, as there were 3 other (absolutely gorgeous) little girls for her to watch attentively. And she continued to do fine through the drive home and her morning nap. She did have The Bop with her in the crib, but we're taking baby steps here.

When she woke from her nap, we packed her up and went to get my mom so we could go to the zoo. It was unseasonably pleasant outside yesterday, since we'd had 2 days of 75 degree weather and rain in a row (I wouldn't have believed that was POSSIBLE in the end of May in AZ!), so we decided some time outdoors was in order. Luca made the trip to the zoo without assistance of The Bop, and managed to ride around in her red wagon for almost 3 hours without it as well. On our way home, we stopped at Pita Jungle, and she still did fine. In the car between the zoo and dinner, she was smacking her lips to my mom (who sat in back next to her). We're pretty sure she was trying to send my mom a message that she wanted The Bop, but at least it was through cuteness and not tears.

So, here we were at the end of the day, and Luca had done pretty well with her limited Bop time. But then....well...then came bedtime. She was sleepy and rubbing her eyes, so I carried her up to her crib. It was my intention to lay her down without a Bop and see if she would just fall asleep. No such luck. Her body hit the crib matress, she started making little fish faces in frantic search for her Bop, and then she let out a screech to end all screeches. I may have been able to stay strong, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed a Bop at the far end of the crib. Without thinking, I grabbed it, plopped it into her mouth, she sighed and rolled over, and she was out for the count.

Operation Stop With The Bop, Part 1

Outcome: Failure

We've been saying for months now that we need to wean Luca from her Bop (aka pacifier, nuk, paci, binkie....for us it's The Bop), but we keep putting it off. We decided to wait until she was 1, but once she hit that landmark, we concentrated on getting her off the bottle first. She's now off the bottle - - - which was nowhere NEAR as bad as we thought it would be - - - so we decided to bite the bullet and start weaning.

We've slowly been getting her accustomed to only having The Bop when in the car, at naps, or at bedtime. Most of the time she does ok, but any parent who has a baby addicted to a pacifier will tell you it's not that easy. You other parents of Bop lovers will know all too well what happens when your baby is little and the Bop is the buffer between sanity and pulling your hair out. Baby cries...in goes the Bop. Mad at sitting in her carseat? It's Bop Time!!!

And then, you go to put your sweet darling to bed one night, and Where in the hell is the Bop???! You panic. You frantically rummage through every basket, toy bin, diaper bag, purse, and compartment of your car in the mad search for a Bop to stick in that sweet baby mouth before the soft baby whimper becomes an inconsolable baby wail. With no Bop to be found, you throw your shoes on and run to Target in your jammies, dashing through the doors at 9:55, hair and eyes wild, and grab 3 packages of your baby's favorite Bop. You COULD just buy one package, which would leave you with one Bop for your surely now-frantic baby at home and one extra to stash somewhere safe, but you know better than that! Bops are magical...they seem to disappear faster than you can purchase them. You have 6 Bops now, but give it a week and you'll be making another Target run because you can't find a SINGLE Bop in the house!

So, with all this spontaneous Bop disappearance going on, you'd think that weaning would be easy enough. At some point, in theory, you should just be able to stop BUYING the damn things and then the baby will run out. But then you discover that Bops have a tendency to magically re-appear just when you least want them to. So even though we gave a good attempt at slowly weaning her from it by only giving her one at certain times, there have been many occasions where she suddenly comes out from behind the recliner, Bop in mouth, and you say to yourself Where the HELL did that come from....and how much dog hair did she just ingest?!?!?

Since our attempt at passive weaning wasn't working, we decided yesterday to just try cold turkey. Except, admittedly, it was bad planning on our part given that she had her 12 month appointment (meaning 4 shots) and is getting her second top tooth. The result: a stunning failure. She woke from her evening nap, and we took the Bop away and put it in the little table next to our couch. And then we spent the next one hour and 12 minutes listening to her cry inconsolable tears. We're talking red faced, please remember to breathe, real life tears. So we caved. We gave her the Bop, and 13 seconds later she was playing happily.

Failure.

We'll try again. A friend suggested we tell her Bops are 'icky' or 'for babies' and have her help us throw them away. Her mom did this with her younger sister and it worked like a charm. I would love to try it, but our little addict needs something more like 12 steps. If we threw her Bop away, I have not a single doubt in my in my mind that she would cry like we'd kicked a puppy, knock the trash can over, climb in, scrounge around like a wild raccoon, and dig The Bop out of the pile of coffee grounds and banana peels...VICTORIOUS over us once again!!!

So, we carry on. We'll wait a few days and try again. Wish us luck with Phase 2 of Operation Stop With The Bop.

Celebrity Look-Alikes.

I think everyone has a celebrity twin (or more!), so I want to dedicate a post to these doppelgangers. Here's the scoop: simply send me a picture of you and tell me who your twins are, and I'll add them here. I encourage you to share one 'good' twin and one 'evil' twin, as we all know the 'evil' one is funnier anyhow. We'll start with mine:

Hurley from Lost (according to me), Liv Tyler (according to Rachel, who I now love forever and ever amen), and Khloe Kardashian (Suuuuzie!). The last picture is me.






And Meredyth's:
American Gothic (according to her), Anna Kourniwhatever (according to some dude in a bar, if I remember correctly), and Melinda from Real World (Linds and I think so). The last picture is Meredyth.






EDIT: Meredyth would also like for me to note that she looks like Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused (he played Mitch):


Go ahead!!! Be brave and send me your picture, then tell me who you think you look like. I'll add a picture or two and we'll see what people think.

For you, Mere: