A Good Movie Weekend

Like my snazzy hat?

Saturday morning arrived with unseasonably cool and cloudy weather, so despite my best attempts to create good mojo by making homemade lemonade and baked beans at 6 am, the trip to the lake was off. Instead, Aunt Jen came over to Casa de Jelly and we had a little cook-out, and then she offered to baby-sit while I took a little nap and went to a movie. Huzzah! This meant I got to see ‘The Hangover’, which, due to their incredibly successful marketing skillz, I had decided I needed to see RIGHT NOW or else I WOULD DIE. Dudes, it was awesome. True, it was aimed at 12-18 year old boys, but that’s my exact demographic for movies and video games and web sites (really, I am loving ‘Fail Blog’ right now, it’s very sad). So then yesterday I decided to make the weekend perfect by finally watching ‘Role Models’, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Plus it had the same little Asian dude who was naked in ‘Hangover’, so that was a bonus. And it made me miss that whole LAIRE/LARP scene a little bit, because I am a loser.

The Bean was bit by something other than Cade this weekend, which resulted in two raised, hard, red, warm-to-the-touch bumps on her leg that I was totally at a loss how to handle. I finally applied some ‘Bite MD’ despite the directions, which clearly warned that applying it to a baby would result in enormous lesions or lead poisoning or acid reflux or something. On second thought, the warning really wasn’t all that clear, which was why I felt it was the best solution. Today she seems to be ok, and when I poked the spot she didn’t scream or try to bite me or faint, so I figure she’s going to pull through despite having me for a mother.

I finally got her 1-year photo taken, the one I’ve done every month in her little pink chair, which neither of us were in the mood for. We were both tired, and surly, and sweaty, and wanted to be somewhere else. She wanted to be in the bath tub, since it was That Time, and I wanted to be on a beach with a plastic cup of rum punch. So now I just have to take the pictures yearly until she’s five, and I’ve satisfied my totally arbitrary rules based on a magazine article I read before I got pregnant.

Just leave the bow alone... please... look at mama

Sit down... look at mama... just one freaking picture, please, for the love of...

Speaking of That Time, Jellybean has figured out the daily schedule and likes to stick to it. If Nanny is 5 minutes late, Jelly is scurrying into the kitchen and pointing frantically at her bib babbling 'Buh-buh-buh' and booster seat, because OMG baby is STARVING TO DEATH waiting for breakfast. When it’s nap time, she finds her blanky and grabs a pillow off the couch and lays down on the floor if you are too slow. At around 4:30, she will start waving ‘bye-bye’ to Nanny, and will crawl over to the front door and point at it. It’s hilarious. ‘Thank you very much, Nanny, for all you have done today, but you are dismissed now. Have a pleasant evening, and please send down my mother to start fixing my dinner at once’. Have I mentioned she’s a bossy little thing?

The other cool thing I got done this weekend was to pick up some little toys from The Wal-Mart. Little toys? you may be rightly asking. Why the heck would The Bean need MORE TOYS? Well, as you know we are preparing for our Canada 2009 Summer Road Trip – The Great Mistake, I Mean, Northern Adventure. I read something somewhere that had a tip for taking long trips with toddlers. Buy some small items (like, Altoids and straight pins, only more fun for children), wrap them up, and then when you get to That Point on the trip when the kid is screaming and you’re lost or sitting in traffic or between two semis in the mountains or out of gin, you can magically pull out Ta-DA! A present for baby! What is it?! How exciting! The ribbon and tissue paper alone should make her go out of her mind in delight, and make her forget the sodden diaper and car seat strap rash and extreme anger about the injustice of a stupid road trip which she certainly didn't get a vote on. I picked up items that are guaranteed to amuse and delight a Jellybean for at least 10-15 seconds, which should buy me enough time to find a lake to drive the car into and end my pain and suffering. There’s a toy remote (which, for some reason, has a ‘Hello’ button that I find oddly amusing), a clamshell phone, a key fob with plastic keys, a faux MP3 player, and the piece de resistance – a ‘Fur Real’ doggie. When you pet it, it lifts its little furry head and opens its little eyes and makes little cute puppy whimpers. I may never get Jenny out of a car again.
For me, I got Smart Food (it’s the only time I ever want it, I’m surprised they still sell it) and Red Bull. And two Yo Gabba Gabba DVDs. Really, I think Jelly is going to like the trip more than hanging out at the house with me.

I had all kinds of other things I was going to post about, like about how I had a dream that my nephew was my son, and I felt oceans of relief that I didn’t have to fret any longer over a sibling for Jellybean. Or how I don’t like to say the word ‘Daddy’ when I get to that point in a book or song, and I need to get over that and learn to deal with it in a healthy way before she gets any older. Or that any day now the sheriff is going to show up with the summons for the custody hearing, and all I want to do is take a picture for her scrapbook – is that weird? Do you think he’ll do it? That would be hilarious.

Have a good week, everyone! Remember – we’re almost halfway to CHRISTMAS!