Who doesn’t like hearing a baby laugh?  Jack-Evan has begun laughing full force.  Smiling at him will get him to laugh.  Pootin’ on his belly will get him to laugh.  Tickling his cheek will get him to laugh.  But there is nothing that will get him to laugh as hard as eating his feet. 

And that’s what mommy does best, I guess.

(Press Play to Watch Video)

…Because if you do, you’ll be suckered in to poking fun at yourself in the most inhuman way.

Why oh why do we find humor in the subtlest things?  What possesses us to throw down our household duties and take up the most mindless activities online?

Right now I’m going to blame it on a bad back.  I mean, it wouldn’t be wise to mop with a hurting spine, right??

Right??

Hrm.

Well, anywho.

There’s this site that I found a while ago called “Yearbook Yourself” (www.yearbookyourself.com).   The object is simple enough - just choose your gender, upload a forward facing photo of yourself, align your eyes and nose with the grid, and WHAM…. you are given a 50 year look into what your senior yearbook would have looked like every 2 years since 1950. 

Here I am in 1950!

….and here I am graduating in 1982.  POOF!

Ain’t I purdy?

So well.  If you’re reading this, it looks like you didn’t take my post title seriously.  And now I bet you’re about to go off (secretly, of course) and find out what you would have looked like in 1962.  Or perhaps 1974.  Or every year in between.

…Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hey mommy!  Are you going to play with me?

“Well, Jack,” says mom, “I think there’s someone you should meet first. 
Turn over and look behind you…”

Whoa!  Who are you??

Wait, what do you mean your name is Jack-Evan TOO???  How is that possible?

Mommy, is that really possible?  I thought I was the only Jack-Evan.

I dunno, maybe I’ll let you play with my stuff. 
Just don’t steal my mommy from me.

Great!  Now gimme five!  Whoohoo!

The End.

Here we go!  We’re leaving for the beach.  Mommy says I’ll have fun.

After mommy dresses me, I play with my cousin Jeana for a while.
Then we head out to see this thing they call the ocean.

Mommy, why do I taste salt on my fingers?

Lil’ Robbie, do you taste salt??   …….I still taste salt.  Strange…

(Those big bunch of people are all my family)

Mommy’s feet, Jack’s feet.  Mommy’s feet, Jack’s feet.  Mommy’s feet….

Mom, this salt is making me quite sleepy.

(Quickchanging at the beach.  Sand in my diaper doesn’t feel too good)

This wind feels soooo good.  Just let me sleep 5 more minutes mom!

Ok, well, maybe 50 more minutes.

After cruisin’ the boardwalk in my stroller, we came back to the hotel.

Why am I the only one strapped in a car seat???  Robbie, let me out…please…
I want to head back to the beach.

Whew.  Sleeping at the beach is the best thing in the world.

Maybe next time I’ll stay awake long enough to play
on the boogie board mom & dad bought for me!

I just noticed that I’ve only posted a couple of times this month…and nothing in the past week.  I suppose I have bloggers block.  teehee.

We’ve had a great month so far.  Jack turned 3 months old on August 4th and we had his photos done at Sears.  The portrait package will be ready to pick up tomorrow!  I’m quite the excited mother.

This past weekend, my cousins Sheena and Joy came in from Oklahoma for a visit.  Joy brought with her Charlotte, her little girl, who was born exactly one week before Jack-Evan was!  It was exciting to see them together for the first time.   A bunch of us family members loaded up and headed to the beach as well.  :)  It was quite fun.

Anywho….Jack is napping right now and I’m catching up on Oprah.  More later!

This past Friday we went to have Jack-Evan’s 3 month photos taken.  What fun that was!  Unlike his 4 day old shoot, which he slept through, he was all grins and giggles in this one.  He is definately a little flirty hambone. 

Here are the proofs we got back…

I am one of those women that has a firm image in my head of “who I want to be”, and of course the blogs I read reflect the traits that I admire most in a woman and family.  It’s from these blogs that I gather tips, encouragement, and advice on how to slowly and successfully mold myself into who I desire to be remembered as after I die.  

The typical themes of the blogs I read are…

• Homeschooling
• Christian living
• Proverbs 31 women
• Old fashioned living
• Natural / holistic family care
• Farm living
• Mothering
• Being a good wife
• Cooking
• Home living

I rarely surf outside these bounderies, unless I know the person.  (I do however make allowence for reading the ProBlogger blog to learn bloggy tips!).

Here are just a few of blogs I enjoy regularly because of their “meaty” content and outstanding advice:

• Home Living by Lady Lydia - her “theme” articles are a must read if nothing else!
• Organizing Junkie - if you want to organize, visit this blog.  ‘Nuff said.
• Simple Mom - this blog is so daggum awesome it makes me choke.  The advice and articles are top notch!
• Happy to Be Called Mommy - this little lady is so amazing I feel like crawling under a rock and hiding just from glancing at her fantistic daily happenings.  It puts me to shame!  Just the past few weeks she’s canned a gazillion pints of different home grown things, dried apples, built her kids a playhouse, and all sorts of other amazing things.  And she teachers herself how to do it all too, courtesy of google and reading. :-D 
• Hillbilly Housewife - I don’t quite like this as much as I did when the original owner was running it, but there are still some awesome articles to read! (And the “magic milkshake” recipe from there has become a staple at our house)
• Frugal Abundance - run by the original “hillbilly housewife” owner!  I “moved” with her when she left the hillbilly housewife website to start this new one.

Gosh, where is the time going to?

My baby boy just celebrated his 3 month birthday a few days ago.

It’s been such an awesome, spectacular, fantastic 3 months!!  I never knew that something so tiny and helpless could overwhelm me with so much love. 

Here are some of the milestones I’ve watched him reach so far:

• Tracking an object
• Smiling
• Laughing
• Turning towards a voice
• Playing with his toes
• Facial recognition of 4 people
• Playfulness
• Mimicry of lip motions and tongue movement
• Babbles (trying to imitate talking)
• Awareness of hands
• Trying to reach for things
• Gripping a rattle, blankie, shirt
• Rolling from his belly to his back

It’s so awesome to watch him change and grow each and every day.  He’s growing right before my eyes….some days I wake up, look at him, and say “Son!  Oh MY!  You grew 2 feet!”.  

Ok, well he doesn’t exactly grow that much overnight, but you get my drift.

People might think we’re crazy, but we’re both ready to have more.     Kevin and I both have always wanted a lot of children.  It’s so wonderful to be a parent, and it’s especially encouraging to see a trend of “bigger families” going on in many families.

Since my early teens I’d always thought I wanted 4 children - 2 boys, 2 girls - if possible.  Being an only child, born to parents who both had many siblings (9 on mom’s side, and 5 on dad’s side), I was quite jealous of the bond I saw between my mom and her sisters and my dad and his brothers!  I always said I would never put my own child through the torture of being an “only child”, and wanted to ensure my daughter would have both a sister and brother, and that my son would both have a sister and brother (something I will always lack).  So, henceforth my rationing to have 4 children.  I was blessed to end up with a man who wanted children like I did - if it were up to Kevin, we’d have 9 or 10 kids. :)  And now that I have Jack-Evan, I have raised my preconceived limit of 4 children.  If God blesses us with more, that would be awesome.  I no longer have reservations about the possibility of having a larger family, like my grandparents did.

I also testify that the “amnesia” effect of childbirth has already kicked in with me.  It truly is a real phenomenon.  I mean, I remember the fact that I had major pain (even with an epidural because of a “hotspot”), and that for 3 weeks afterwards I was in torture.  But I swear, I can not remember the actual feeling of pain, nor am I afraid of it any more.  At first, I remember thinking that I never ever ever wanted anything or anyone near my body again, let alone have another baby come out.  But that feeling has dissipated, and the desire to have more children has returned.  I guess that’s the way God designed us so that we could carry on “replenishing the earth”.  I find it oddly comforting that even though God cursed Eve with “pain in childbirth”, he made amends by allowing us to forget the pain.

Anywho, it’s late and I better head on to bed.  My two boys (Kevin and Jack-Evan) are already sleepin’ like logs, and silly me, being the nightowl that I am, is here wandering around a bit in cyberspace!

Wootwoot!  I can’t believe it.  I’ve been tagged for my very first MEME.  How special am I!? :) 

Well, ok, I admit, it was a random tagging by my bloggy friend Amber (Bringing Good Home), but still….doesn’t that make me randomly special??

No?

Ok, well go with me here yall.  Just pretend I’m special.  You know, for the sake of the MEME and all.

The point is to post 6 quirky, yet ultimately boring, things about myself that you don’t know.  So here it goes.

1. I could read at age two, and read on a 6th grade reading level by kindergarten.  Not that it matters now, because, well, I didn’t turn into a genius or musical child prodigy nor nothing.  And it certainly didn’t make me rich.  Pity.
2. When I bend my big toe, my middle toe bends too.  I can’t help it either.  It just happens.
3. I’ve only kissed 3 guys in my entire life - and one of them is my husband.  (I was extremely picky)
4. I’m obsessed with history!  Any history.  If something happened before I was born, you can be sure I’m on it.  I especially love ancient history and stories about the minoans, romans, and egyptians.
5. I collect those yellow pepsi stuff point caps religiously.  A few weeks ago, you could have even spotted me picking them up in the stands after the baseball game we went to.  Now that I think of it though, that’s more weird than quirky.  Oh well.
6. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get up and obsessively clean the house.  I was organizing DVD’s at 3:23 am last night!

…ok, now that I’m on a roll, I’ve come to the end of the MEME.  Darn it.  And I had some more good ones too.  But then again, is it a good thing that I want to share my quirkiness?    Perhaps not.  Maybe that’s why we were only asked for 6 quirks….or the lists would go on forever!

Now, here are the rules of this little MEME game:

1) Link to the person who tagged me. (done)
2) Mention the rules. (yeppers!)
3) Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself. (only 6??)
4) Tag six other blogger´s by linking to them.
5) Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

….

Ok, I’m going to cheat a bit…. I’ve had this sitting in my drafts folder for a couple days now and I feel like I’m never going to get it published if I wait any longer.  I haven’t really tagged anyone, but if you want to do the meme, post it on your blog and leave a comment here - I’ll re-edit this post to add your name and a link to your blog too. :) 

(Is it bad to cheat on tagging?  Or is it the blogging equivelent of just being too shy…or lazy? haha)

I was over at one of my favorite message boards - www.SavingAdvice.com - when I noticed a discussion going on about saving money on dog food.  The first post was basically a brief mention about how we shouldn’t buy cheap dog food because if we really knew what was put into it, we’d feel really sorry for our dogs.

Well, I do know what’s in the cheap stuff so I had to chime in.  So-called “Dog Food” is somewhat of a hot button for me.  I can’t stand when haughty veterinarians claim that you shouldn’t give your animal “people food” and that the only thing they’re allowed to eat is commercialized pet food (which, conveniently, they then try to sell to you).  Baloney! Commercialized pet food was just invented in this past century.  Dogs have survived many millenia without it!  Good, nutritional REAL people food - vegetables, meats, rice - are the best foods a dog can eat.  I’m not advocating that you should throw bones, french fries, or pizza rinds at Fido and call it a night….I’m just saying that healthy human food (baked, broiled, steamed, raw) is healthy dog food!   Our dogs, and my parent’s dogs, have always eaten a variety of chicken, steak, vegetables, etc, right along with us. (My dad’s daughter…uh..I mean, yorkshire terrier, Prissy gets a Tbone 2-3 times a week).  Now, at our house, we do use a commercial dry dog food as our current budget doesn’t allow for us to feed them enough human food affordably - but I view commercial dog food as “second best” and more out of necessity than of something “they must have to live”.  If I were rich, I’d probably have a cook cooking daily for our dogs.

Come to think of it, if I were rich, I’d have a cook cooking daily for me too. :)  But anywho…

After I finished my reply, I thought I’d just bring the post over here to the blog to point out how to examine your own dog food bag.  So without further ado…here is my reply on that topic…

————————————————–

RE:  Don’t Buy Cheap Pet Food

I did a large research report one time on the quality of dog food for a college class I had.  Dog food companies are able to use 4D (dead, diseased, dying or disabled) meat in dog food.  These are meats that are, by law, not fit for human consumption.  Bones, blood, bits of feathers, intestines, and all are allowed in too.

You can easily tell what the main ingredient - and if it’s one of these 4D “meats” - by examining your ingredient label on the dog food.  Look for words such as “by-product” and “meal”.   There are many combinations listed on the ingredient list, such as “meal byproduct”, “lamb byproduct”, “chicken meal”, etc.    The first ingredient listed is the main one in the food you are buying.

Another bad thing about “cheap” dog foods are that many of them use a wheat or vegetable as the first main ingredient, such as corn.  Dogs are carnivores - they need meat to stay healthy.  If your dog food bag has corn listed as the first ingredient, you’re essentially giving your dog nothing but non-nutritional filler his entire life. 

So if you are heavily concerned about what you give your dog, watch out for…

1. Anything in the ingredient list with the word “meal” or “byproduct” beside it

2. Food bags that have a wheat or vegetable as the first ingredient

Don’t let the vets “fool” you (they are NOT animal nutritionists) - even expensive dog foods contain byproducts and meal…some of them are even worse than the cheaper ones.