Photo Scavenger Hunt

My BIL, sister, and I created a photo scavenger hunt for ourselves.  We spent a weekend taking pictures that fulfilled certain requirements like “something glass” and “a picture of someone taking a picture.”  If you feel so inclined, you can take a peek at the pictures and vote for your favorite in each category.  (You can comment on any of the pictures you want; to vote for it add a +1 to the beginning of your comment.)

Or don’t.

Either way, here’s where the pix are: http://wingedcatstudios.com/PhotoScavengerHunt/2010-05-14-Ott-Household

And a sneak preview of the photos from the category of “victory”:

 

Oh, you’re still here?  Then I guess you know what you’re missing.  Now scat!

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Chicken taco bake
Roasted red pepper/tomato soup

Baby fish is here!

As some of you may know, my good friend McStreamy has spawned.  This is one of the first pictures she sent me of her little mackerel (unbaptized, otherwise he’d be a Holy Mackerel).

McStreamy and MountainMan are, by all means, exceeding expectations as new parents.  Frankly, they’re making the rest of us look bad.

Anyway, the little guy needs a good alias for my blog.  Kevin and I came up with a few ideas and need your input.  Either vote for one of these or be so bold as to come up with something better:

McCreamy (as per above picture)
McSpawn (or just Spawn)
McJunior Double Cheeseburger
Fry Guy
Little Fishy (because it’s fun to say “he’s a little fishy…”)
Smolt
Not My Kid

So…what should it be?

And to provide further inspiration, here are the faces behind the names:

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Twice baked potatoes (bacon/cheddar/chive and gorgonzola/mozzarella/shallot)
Roasted asparagus
Old fashioned chocolate cake

Not much doin’

So here’s a little of nothin’.

1. We bought a swimming pool but found that it had a leak in it, so yesterday Kevin went outside to put it back in the box.  Vincenzo was hovering over him, panicking and crying at the same time.
Kevin: What’s wrong?
Vincenzo: Don’t take it away, Daddy!
Kevin: But there’s a hole in it.  We’ll just get a new pool to replace it.
Vincenzo: Not the pool, Daddy, *sob*, the BOX!

2. Vincenzo got really and truly photo bombed this weekend.

3. Vincenzo is very proud of his ability to tell time.  Today I saw him demonstrate to his grandma how to adjust the hands on a clock I made him and explaining, “See, Grammy?  You just have to make sure the short hand is always on the 13.”

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Costco dogs, I hopes I hopes!

Waxing sentimental (again)

I had to pull out a box of bigger clothes for Rocco this weekend.  That was always hard to do when Vincenzo was growing, too, but it’s doubly hard now.  With Vincenzo, the boxes were full of clothes from friends and relatives, but they were new to me.  With Rocco, the boxes are full of his brother’s clothes.  The star-spangled swimming speedo that everyone always laughed at; the lizard onesie he wore at his first birthday, the year he nearly ate a salamander tail; the PJ’s with the word “Bob” on them from when Vincenzo called everyone and everything “Bob.”   When I change Rocco’s wardrobe out I’m not only sentimental about my baby getting bigger, but I’m really missing that other baby I used to have.  He’s four and a half.  In mom years, that translates roughly to “a different lifetime.”

How could this sweet, calm, peaceful baby Vincenzo…

also be this loud, shooty, running, yelling thing?

Sometimes it feels like someone hit me on the head with a board the day Vincenzo took his first step and I just came to today, and I’m very confused as to why my baby is no longer squishy-soft.  And I’m confused about why he keeps shooting me.*

Looking through the clothes reminds me that there really were all the months in between, and all the weeks and all the days too.  I know I’m talking about just a year or two back, but it was such a different time of life.  I was roping the friends in like a cattle rancher, sealing friendships with play dates and pedicures, mixing new friends with old friends in parties just for kicks.  Making my own baby food because have you seen how much it costs in the store?  Looking forward to story time at the library, baby group at the hospital, gym class, sing-a-longs at the mall.

It’s a bit different now.  I’m tormented when I meet a new mom I like now because frankly, I don’t have room for more play dates or dinner dates.  I’m protective of my family time at home now—not seeing anyone but ourselves.  I buy baby food because time is worth way more than money these days.  I signed Rocco up for baby group and gym classes and resented having those bites taken out of our schedule so I quit.

Still, watching my second baby grow up is just as amazing as watching the first.  It’s nature’s little spoonful of sugar.  The thrill you feel when your baby reaches a milestone makes you not notice that his thighs aren’t quite as pudgy as they were yesterday.  I still wanted to call everyone I knew the first time Rocco sat up and the first time he signed “all done” and the first time he played a silly game with me.  I wanted to call everyone.  (I just didn’t have the energy to call.)

Life is different now.  It’s busier.  It’s more complicated.  It’s funnier.  IT’S DEFINITELY LOUDER.  I call myself a crazy lady, and I’m not just talking about my mental problems anymore.

But I am overwhelmed by the joy and love that come with this Thing we casually call Motherhood on a daily basis.

It is overwhelming.

But just exactly how much time do I have before I will be wondering where this newest baby of mine has gone?

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Kalbi marinated flank steak
Cheesy polenta
Salad with sugared pistachios oranges

*On a random note, I’m pretty sure Rocco’s first word is going to be an intense, “Pshooo!”  (Vincenzo’s latest shooting sound.)

Photos shmotos again

Okay, back to all pictures.  But it’s either a photo post or no post and as Vincenzo learned at preschool, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

 

Rocco, calling on his hunting/gathering ancestry at The Sacred Hunting Grounds of the Splat Mat:

Vincenzo, calling on his oversized baby ancestry.

 

Temptation.  I has it.

Cute.  I has it.

Yup, still here.

 

And for this week’s winning shot:

WHAT’S COOKIN ‘2NITE:
QFC deli, over to you

One night in the life of MrsMouthy

This is the counterpart to A Day in the Life of MrsMouthy, and it’s significantly less funny.  But maybe that’s just because I’m so damn tired…

8:00: Put Rocco to bed

8:30: Put Vincenzo to bed.  He thanks God for the ability to transform into any animal he wants and for shooting.

9:00: Force Kevin to watch TV with me even though he is visibly tired.  He tells me we should go to bed because we’ll probably be up all night and I tell him to stop being so dramatic.

9:30: We go to bed.

11:30: Rocco wakes up crying; we let him work it out on his own.

12:30: Vincenzo wakes up crying.  Kevin calms him down because Vincenzo has never once in his life worked it out on his own.

1:30: Vincenzo walks into our room, shoves us off our pillows, lays down across them, and falls promptly asleep.  I take him back to bed.

3:00: Rocco wakes up crying.  We give him a binky and he falls back to sleep.

4:30: Rocco wakes up crying.  I nurse him.

4:31: A cat we’re watching spends an hour pulls the same move Vincenzo pulled 3 hours earlier, only she does it over and over again for an hour.

5:30: We fall asleep.

6:00: Rocco wakes up.  Kevin goes to hot yoga, I play with Rocco.

7:30: Rocco takes first nap.  Vincenzo wakes up.  Kevin heads to work.  I decide once again that today might not be the best day to broach the subject of whether or not to have another kid.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Coq a vin
Mashed potatoes
Salad with fennel and grapes
Chocolate silk pie

Look, Ma! No pictures!

A conversation as our family was driving home and the car was being bombarded by little white puff balls from the cottonwood trees:

Mrs.M: Oh look, it’s hailing!
V: That’s not hail.  Hail bounces,
Mrs.M: Do you mean to say it’s snowing?!
V: That’s not snow.  Snow is bigger.
Mrs.M: If it’s not snow and it’s not hail, then what is it?
V: It’s chairs.
Mrs.M: Chairs?
V: Chairs.
Mrs.M: Well then it’s chairing very hard at our house right now. 
K: Maybe we can build a little chairman out of it in the morning?!

WHAT’S COOKIN ‘2NITE:
Der…

 

(Shoot!  How did this photo get here?)

Beach bums

My husband says, “You’re not going to post another one of those photo blogs, are you?” 

My mom says, “I love the photo blogs!  Keep them coming!  But are you going to lose your regular readers?”

And yet…I seem to have nothing to write about.  Maybe it’s because I’m so busy taking pictures and looking through them?  My life is one part living it to three parts documenting it.  I take pictures, I take Flip videos for the grandparents, I take regular videos for our family, I make a family scrapbook every year, I make the kids their own scrapbooks for their first couple years, I keep Rocco’s baby book up to date, and I have a journal for Vincenzo, one for Rocco, and one for myself.  I’m afraid after Kevin reads this that he’s going to ask me to start up a journal for him too.

Oh, and I used to write blogs full of partial truths about daily life.

Anyway, the point is I don’t have much to say lately except, “Say cheese!” and, “Can you stand over there where the light is better?

We spent a couple days at the beach this week; I guess I could write about that.  But oh yeah, I took pictures so WHY would I use words that I have to think of and type out letter by letter and then actually reread, trying to block out my ninth grade English teacher’s voice yelling, “TOO MANY HELPING VERBS!” while mopping up the blood my keyboard has shed.

So.  The beach.

 

The ice cream truck pulled up at one point.  I wish I could post the music this ice cream truck was playing instead of just a picture.  I’d just like to know why in heaven’s name would an ice cream truck even be programmed with Christmas music?

This is the only non-phallic picture I got of my son sucking down a Mega Missile.

As for this one, stick a fork in him.  He’s done.

These pictures are especially precious to me today, as the endless, unblinking gray skies have made their ho-hum return and it feels like we’ll never go to the beach again.

372 words and counting.  Is that enough?

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Stuffed portobello mushrooms
Penne a la vodka

I has a camera.

QUICKIE: Vincenzo, walking into the lobby area at our pool: *sniff* “I can smell the fluoride already!”
********************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Here are a few pictures from the 100ish I took yesterday.  I promise not every blog post for the month of May will be like this but me and this project are still in our honeymoon phase and we want y’all to know how in love we are.

We spent the afternoon at the beach.  To all those LOLruses out there, WE HAS YUR BUCKIT.

(Get used to seeing this hat—it’s going to be in probably every picture I take of Rocco until he’s 42.)

From the beach to the sprinkler, sporting inside-out undies, natch.

Then we made the baby do push-ups.

After dinner we planted a vegetable garden.

And jumped.

And jumped.

And jumped.

And talked about how far we jumped.

I was having a hard time taking a picture of Kevin and me spooning while actually spooning, so I found a stand-in.  Kevin said the substitute was just as cuddly and responsive as his wife.  I had to agree.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Fridge frittata
Strawberries in cream

Photo CRAZY!

In the hopes of improving my photography skills I have set myself a challenge: take 100 pictures every day in the month of May.  And by 100 pictures a day, I mean 30.  And by 30 pictures a day I mean sometimes none at all.  Oh, and the 100-Pictures-a-day-May Challenge began on May 12. 

Here are some results from Day 1 (or Day 12, depending on how you’re counting).

Ever wonder what Dr. Jekyll looked like as a baby?

Or his counterpart, baby Hyde?

And let’s not forget their older brother, Dr. Crazy!

Hey, I never said the 100 pictures had to be good—they just have to be taken!  But I do like the next two pictures, for whatever reason.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Diet Pepsi with Lime