Jillian's Blog

Last night, Paul and I stayed home for the 3rd year in a row. We considered going out to the Malediction Society party a few blocks from here. Unfortunately, our babysitter got sick. That would be my mother, who caught Ben’s sinus infection two weeks ago, and, like me, hasn’t quite recovered. So we decided to stay home again this year.

I stopped off at Whole Foods in Pasadena after picking up Ben last night to procure a steak for dinner. After much deliberation, I settled on a New York style loin. There was actually a pretty serious run on steaks at Whole Foods – between the Rose Bowl parties and the staying-in trend, the steaks were flying out of there. The woman in front of me was doing exactly what I was: staying home and cooking dinner for her boyfriend. I suppose, with the ridiculous prices for New Year’s Eve dinners, and the crappy economy, more people are staying home and cooking high-quality meat rather than paying $50 – $60 apiece for it in restaurants.

So I came home laden down with groceries, and, after making sure a certain Tiny Boy was asleep, began dinner preparations:

For those of you who somehow missed this, the Wii Fit Soccer game is actually all about hitting balls with your head. You have to shift your balance to meet the ball…or dodge the cleated shoes or DECAPITATED PANDA HEADS (they also look like soccer balls…sick mind soccer balls) that fly at you.

Ben, in his attempts to be Just Like Mom & Dad, wants to play on the Wii Fit…but, being a toddler, doesn’t know how. So after he lets me weigh him using the “Baby Stats” in Wii Fit Plus, I let him “play” soccer. He stands on the balance board and wobbles a bit, and will eventually make the connection between the screen and his movements. But in the meantime, it’s hilarious watching him…and listening to the commentary:

BALL!”

“BALL!”

“BALL!” (with pointing for emphasis)

“SHOE!”

“BALL!”

“SHOE!”

“Uh-oh.” (when shoe hits head and the game makes the buzzer noise)

“BALL!”

By the way, the new Wii Fit Plus tracks Ben’s weight by weighing us together and deducting my most recent weight. I usually weigh myself immediately before for accuracy. Ben has a Mii on the system, so he shows up in Wii Fit Plaza, as a baby on the floor, along with all the other players on the game, and the game even shows an image of my Mii holding his Mii when he’s being weighed. It’s a lot better than the old “repeat the weigh in test, oh, I see you are holding something weighing 12 pounds!” system on the former software…now it tracks Ben’s weight just like it does mine, with a calendar and graph. (He’s 27 pounds exactly, for the record. Perfectly average height and weight)

I still get such a kick out of seeing him react to the soccer balls though. Maybe I will have to get him a WiiWaa when it comes out (Promo video made more awesome by using track by J.U.S.T.I.C.E.)

How the hell is it I never saw the Slap Chop Autotune Mix before now?

I’m trying to update my blogs on a more regular basis, even if it is inane crap like this. Tonight, I didn’t have to cook dinner (yay, leftovers!) so I came home, put Ben to sleep, and then jumped onto the Wii to go through another EA Active workout. I now have the sequel to the EA Sports Active game that came out last year, and I’m actually pretty into it. I like having the new exercises, and I like that the sensitivity issues with the Wii controller seem to be less prevalent than they were on the original. If there’s two things I’m trying to do daily in 2010 they are:

1) Blog more again
2) Work out on the Wii

There. So here you go. Inane commercial remixes I find brilliant and humorous. Now daily!

This year, my family was wonderful.

This year, they came to us.

Paul, Ben and I have barely recovered from the trauma of Traveling To Pennsylvania last month. And while I would have gladly loaded my family onto a plane to go to Victoria, when my sister suggested Christmas in L.A., I jumped at it. When she came up with the plan for us all to stay in Santa Monica at a rented house on the Venice border, I was delighted. Not only would we get to spend Christmas with my family, but we would get a little beach vacation out of it!

So Paul and I moved our little family out to a rented artists’ cottage just northwest of Lincoln & Rose for the last few days before Christmas. We brought three carloads of Mostly Unnecessary But Fun stuff, including the Wii. Grudge match “The Price Is Right” video game playing ensued. Presents were exchanged and opened. My mother’s traditional perfect turkey was cooked. It was a haze of family time, eating and holiday fun – exactly what the holidays should be. Oh, and beach walks through Venice, which I have sorely missed since moving east.

One of my favorite moments was watching Monica decorating the Christmas bush (a shrubbery!) with Ben. She would ask Ben if a decoration should go on a certain branch and he would say “no” until his aesthetic sense dictated it should be hung where she was indicating. Then he held up gold ribbon bows – not the easier to reach silver ones – for her to add. Ben has indicated that he actually understands color groups! And he was babbling away and chatting to Monica in Ben-speak and having a wonderful time with her. It was adorable. After watching Jon do the same thing with him the next day, I was ready to check their luggage to make sure they didn’t take off with my toddler.

Sample gifts:

FROM MONICA & JONATHAN TO BEN: A large toy dump truck, with realistic dumping action, made out of high quality German engineering
FROM US TO MONICA & JON: A pair of Roombas, a regular one and a Dirt Dog
FROM MOM TO HER DAUGHTERS: Nana’s jewelry, which Mom had appraised. Not only are they beautiful pieces, but it was a piece of our grandmother’s legacy that my mother passed on to us, making them officially priceless
FROM ME TO PAUL: Super Mario Brothers for the Wii, which he is playing now
FROM MONICA AND ME TO MOM: A tiny, cherry-red Acer netbook she can take to the Starbucks when she’s hanging out in WeHo
FROM US TO BEN: A crapload of Duplo, which we will find shoved everywhere for years to come
FROM NANA TO BEN: The “Llama Llama Red Pajama” trilogy, which he loves
FROM MONICA AND JONATHAN TO BEN: Thomas the Tank Engine dishes, which result in a delighted cry of “Choo choo!” whenever he gets to the bottom of a meal

However, we had to break up the happy gathering on Friday, Christmas Day, when the rental house went to another renter. Monica and Jonathan flew back to Ontario, and we loaded up the cars and drove back to SiFi by way of WeHo. Mom is now here for her winter in L.A., which runs through the first week of February. She has a little sublet house in West Hollywood, where Ben and I dropped her off on Christmas Day. She even has a borrowed car that goes with the house, so she can re-learn the city she grew up in. (“Oh, the Troubadour! I went to shows there! How is it still open?”) For now, she’s happily ensconced out in WeHo, where she feels perfectly at home. Seriously, it’s like BC out there – gay couples with their kids, legal marijuana…just like English Bay in Vancouver!

Paul and I then spent the rest of the weekend recovering and unpacking. Well, not so much with the unpacking. As always, I will probably have a suitcase on the floor for a month after my return home. But for now, I’m telling myself I’m going to put it away during the next 4 day weekend, which starts Thursday. Winter holidays are awesome.

This is a video of me dancing with Ben to hellogoodbye’s “Here In My Arms” earlier tonight:

From 09-12-08 Ben Dances with Mama

Ben’s sleep schedule is a little off today. Actually, that’s an understatement. The time change, plus an erratic sleep schedule due to travel and his stomach problems, has resulted in a Confused Internal Clock for my tiny boy. Tonight, it took me two hours to get him to go to sleep, resulting in a 9:40pm bedtime, not his usual 7:45pm sleep time. And those two hours weren’t easy because I was ON MY OWN. Paul went to his cousin Megan’s wedding, and I stayed home with Ben…just like how Paul stayed home with Ben when my cousin Capri got married this summer. We don’t want ANYONE ELSE to have to try to take care of him & suffer through the Ben Bedtime Resistance. Here’s why it took two hours to get him to sleep tonight:

7:30PM: Settle in to read Richard Scarry’s “The Very Naughty Bunny”, punctuated by cries of “Mun-nay!” (“bunny”), and pointing.

7:45PM: Cue up the white noise. Place Ben’s head on shoulder and turn out lights. Start singing to him (“Love Will Tear Us Apart” works nicely)

7:55PM: Still shouldering. Stop moving for a moment…and Ben’s head snaps up.

8:00PM: Give up trying to get Ben to put his head back down, due to extended yells of “Dow! DOW!” (“Down”) and suicide lunges out of my arms. We go back into the living room, where he immediately points at my laptop and chirps, “Ernie!”

8:01PM: Quell meltdown resulting from my refusal to cue up the videos on the YouTube Sesame Street Channel

8:02PM: Meltdown ends when I pull out the new Thomas the Tank Engine book Grandma bought for Ben

8:30PM: After much playing and chasing around the hotel room, Ben starts lying down on the floor for a few seconds at a time to “rest”, and rubbing his eyes to indicate he’s tired

8:42PM: I re-shoulder him and bring him back into the bedroom

8:43PM: Ben resumes trying to twist out of my arms and yelling “DOW? DOW!!!!”

8:44PM: I tighten my hold on Ben to keep him on my shoulder, and start singing louder.

8:44PM: Ben starts shrieking for “Da-da!! DA DAAAAA! Da da da da…” and sobbing hysterically

8:45PM: I give up trying to lull Ben to sleep with Counting Crows, and start singing the intro bass synth line to Covenant’s “Like Tears In Rain”. Ben immediately settles

8:46PM: Ben’s tortured, hysterical, desperate sobbing subsides into the occasional gasp. I reflect, again, on the fact that I have the only baby who is calmed by goth-industrial dance tracks.

8:50PM: I get my laptop and cue up a Bar Sinister playlist from two weeks ago. We dance through the same Covenant track, the Presets’ “Pretty Little Eyes,” Assemblage 23’s “Smoke” and the first few bars of a Combichrist track. After “Like Tears In Rain,” Ben chirps, “More?” After “Pretty Little Eyes”, I try to put him down…and he immediately jumps back up. I sigh and resume dancing with his head down on my shoulder.

9:10PM: Instead of putting Ben down, I fall backwards onto the bed out of SHEER EXHAUSTION, with him still on my chest…like he hasn’t slept since he was VERY WEE.

9:30PM: I open my eyes to realize that I have a sleeping toddler on me, who is, at last, peacefully unconscious. I carefully transfer him into his crib, and go to wash and sterilize his bottles by boiling them on the tiny in-room kitchen stove.

Now, I hear a wedding afterparty starting up, and after tonight, I totally deserve to go catch up on drinking with my extended family-by-marriage. Unlike my family, who always want to get up and work out or do yoga the day after a wedding – or who just don’t drink much because we’re Jews -Paul’s family knows how to TEAR IT UP. They’re actually loading in booze right now, into the conference room of the Staybridge Suites we’re staying at, for a WEDDING RECEPTION AFTER PARTY. Awesomeness.

Paul and I made thanksgiving plans over two months ago. We booked a Virgin America red-eye flight from LAX to JFK, hoping that we could get Ben to sleep through the flight if it was at night. We chose the flight because:

a) It was a red-eye flight to the East Coast
b) It was less expensive than other flights for the airline price-gouge festival that is Thanksgiving
c) We like Virgin America. A lot.

Of course, any money we saved on the flight was eaten up by the ridiculous price of renting a car in New York. But we had a flight that we thought would work for our tiny family. We would take the red-eye and drive to meet Paul’s family in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

This was what we planned for Thanksgiving…right up until Ben started throwing up yesterday afternoon, three hours before departure. He woke up from a late afternoon nap, had some milk, and then vomited – not spit up – all over Paul. He didn’t have a fever, so we didn’t think he was sick, and thought, maybe he just ate something that didn’t agree with him. And so, the boys took a bath while I continued packing, and Ben seemed to be perking up and smiling again…until he threw up on me.

That’s when we shut the trip down. Ben kept throwing up after that, gagging and spitting up what little was left in him, every twenty minutes for the next two hours. He would cough and then start saying “no, no, no” as he started gagging. It was heartbreaking to see him so miserable, especially since he still doesn’t really speak enough English for me to explain to him what’s wrong.

I started making calls while Paul shouldered Ben, trying to get him to go to sleep. Actually, by “making calls”, I mean, “rocking the Internet”. In ten minutes, I had unchecked us in from our flight, and cancelled rental cars and hotels as applicable…and then I started re-booking. We decided to try to fly out the next morning, and actually ended up with a better flight schedule through Dulles Airport in Washington DC. A few clicks of the keyboard later, and we had our entire trip rebooked…well, a few clicks plus one phone call to the shuttle service we chose to get to the airport with.

Ben woke up at midnight hungry and thirsty, so we gave him a bottle…of canomile tea, not formula. Then we let him get up for an hour to play, before giving him a snack of formula laced with probiotic bacteria (I mixed in the powder from a capsule) and putting him back down. This morning, he woke up in a fine mood…grinning, cheerful, and not a trace of nausea or vomiting. And with him all better, we were able to finish packing and make our way to LAX…with our usual luggage complement of two giant suitcases, two diaper bags (one just with toys and clothes for the trip), my laptop bag and purse, one stroller and one carseat.

It actually worked out for the better that we had to change the flights, for the following reasons:

1) We can take a late flight back on Monday, instead of having to wait until Tuesday morning, because Virgin America added a new later flight from Dulles last month

2) We got to upgrade to Main Cabin Select, which I consider highly beneficial for travelling with a toddler. Extra space rules.

3) We don’t have to deal with JFK airport. Yay

BTW, for Ben’s vomiting? I blame the trayf they feed him at daycare. I found big ol’ chunks of hot dog in said vomit. Ew.

This is how out of it I am: I never heard that stupid Owl City “Fireflies” song until right this minute Not until this post showed up on Gawker comparing them to the freaking POSTAL SERVICE.

I LIKE the Postal Service, even though they are now a dated staple of the O.C. TV show. Remember 2003, when Death Cab for Cutie were just getting big and the Postal Service LP was released? I heard the Postal Service on a roadtrip to the Bay Area right after it came out, and I *hearted* it. (I was listening to a lot of dance music in 2003 and 2004, thanks to a couple DJ friends in Vancouver.) Comparing something this trite to the Postal Service is like comparing Twilight to Interview.

Anyways. I’m listening to “Fireflies” now, and recalling a KROQ segment on it. It’s a genuinely catchy song, and with better lyrics, I’d like it. But I have to agree with our local loudmouth radio personalities – these are genuinely the worst lyrics I’ve ever heard. It sounds like an inspirational novelty track from the 80s wandered into Williamsburg, like the Disney Channel version of Vampire Weekend. This also totally justifies my reluctance to find out what’s actually popular out there, lest I be forced to cringe in pain at lines like “I get a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs // As they try to teach me how to dance”. And the only resemblance it has to the Postal Service is that they RIPPED OFF THE SYNTH SAMPLER.

Gah.

Ever since Indie 103.1 shut down, I’ve been without contact with the new music world. Sure, I could probably read SPIN…but then I’d have to read SPIN. And I’m too short on time and effort to keep up with new indie music. Paul occasionally goes out looking for new music and new indie bands to listen to, so occasionally, I’ll hear them as part of his Rhapsody playlists. My new music sources come from the Bar Sinister playlists and the reviews in Gothic Beauty magazine. When you only have so much bandwidth to put into stuff like “finding new music to listen to”, it tends to go into the top priority genres.

I am making one foray into pop culture tonight though. I’m going to see the new Twilight movie. It’s New Moon on Monday!, as my friend Wendy titled the email about it. Ha. Duran Duran reference. I’m not even quite sure what the appeal of the Twilight franchise is, and I actually did read all the books, under much the same compulsion that I read any sort of plot-driven books (I read both The Lost Symbol and Under the Dome in the last week or so, and both were equally un-put-down able). Maybe I just want to see a pretty movie shot up in my homeland of the Northwest. Maybe I just don’t want my brain to work too hard. Which is pretty much the same reason I was compelled to listen to that Owl City track twice, even while mocking it.

I bought Ben a Pacific Northwest Alphabet book when we were in Seattle: “O Is For Orca”. Sure enough, now, when I ask him, “what does the letter O stand for, Ben?” he says, “Awr-ka!” I’d bet I have the only 17 month old in L.A. who knows what an orca is. I’m so proud.

Ben actually knows a lot of words now, and what he doesn’t know the words for, he makes the noise for. Our last trip through Whole Foods sounded like this:

BEN: Moooo!
ME: Yes, that is a cow on that milk carton!
BEN: Riwey!
ME: Yes, that doggie on the dog food does look like Riley!
BEN: Elmo!
ME: Yes, that is Elmo on those cookies.

I’m very proud of Ben. He recognizes a lot of animals and objects (book, car, hat, Grover) and makes noises for animals he can’t pronounce (“ba-a-a-a-a-aaaa! mooooo! neighhhhh! buk buk buk!”) He can recognize and say “orca” and “owl”. And he can even tell us the names of some of his books: “beach” for Bats at the Beach, “Bah-bah” for “Babar”, “Nonny” for Noddy and “Wilethink” for “Where The Wild Things Are”. He learns more and gets smarter all the time, and it’s a miracle watching it happen.