I have entered Jack’s photo in week #4’s Baby photo contest album over at ContestforMoms.com.    The urge to do it was just far too powerful for me to resist.  I fought the temptation for 2.7 seconds and couldn’t stand it any longer.  I mean, I do have the cutest baby in the world, right?  (C’mon, what kinda mom would I be if I DIDN’T think that??).  Regardless, I had to do it.

I just hadta.

So I pressed the upload button and away the photographic megapixels went…soaring through cyberspace until they magically recrystaled in their proper format in the contest album.  Waahlah.   It was sickening how easy they made it.  

So.  well.  anyway.  I don’t think there are any prizes offered (I didn’t read enough about it to determin), but it’s still nice to see my baby’s face sitting there amongst the other kiddos.

Even if that’s not your kinda thing (and until a few moments ago, I swear it wasn’t MY kinda thing either), go take a looksee at my sweet little poopie head Jack-Evan and leave us a comment.  

Just look for the photoin that album called “Jack-Evan” (of course).

Spanks.

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baby Contest, Baby Photo Contest, Cutest Baby In The World, Cyberspace, Dork, Mom, photo contest, Prizes

(Note:  No leaves or  babies were harmed in the making raking of these photos.)

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Babies, fall, Fall Foliage, Leaves, november, photos

Well, I’ve found the answer.  Here.  

Go read it now.  I dare you.

(Warning:  Please do not have pepsi in your mouth while reading this or your screen might get soaked.  Just sayin’!)

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Can Openers, Crockpots, Electricity, Fried Onions, Frozen Turkeys, Gravy, humor, Pepsi, pilgrims, thankfulness, thanksgiving

In the meanwhile, we’ll be helping my dad clean his yard up - tons of family folks are coming for thanksgiving! Mom is the “matriarch” of her siblings….her 8 siblings…and we’re a very close family. I love when all of us get together, even though I am the youngest one of the “first-grandchild generation” that lives in SC. Almost all of my cousins are at least 8 years older than me….one of them is 44, I believe…and all of the others are at least 8 years younger than me. I’ve always felt like a baby around the older ones and a big, protective sister around the others. But such is life.

Afterwards, we’ll be leaving Jack-Evan with my mom and dad at 5 pm while Kevin and I take the SUV to pick up PupPup. He’ll need to be able to lay down in the back, so we have to remove the baby car seat base to make room to let the seat down.

If I didn’t have a baby, we’d also be headed to the Kelly Clarkson and Reba Macintire concert in Charlotte, North Carolina tonight at 8 pm. Kevin was the 10th Caller on a local radio station trivia contest and won two tickets this past Wednesday (they’re worth around a hundred bucks each).  He was so excited when he told me!  But after deliberating about 3.6 seconds, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave my baby for that long yet. We’d be gone round trip about 7 hours! Kevin even offered to let me go alone with a girlfriend, saying he would like to see me go have fun for my birthday (Dec. 1), but I passed that up too. I just can’t fathom being away from Jack-Evan yet. In my mind, I know he’d be fine for that amount of time since he’s now accepts sippy cups and baby food, but in my heart, I knew it wasn’t him I was worried about - it was ME. I’d probably have a massive meltdown being away from him. It’s. Just. Not. Doable.  No way, no how.  Maybe when he turns 26 or something, but at just 6 months old?  nope.  Not even the fun of a power vocal duo concert could draw me away from my sweet little baby.  Plus, what if he decides not to take the sippy cup?  What if he just wants good ol’ fashioned mommy cuddles?  What if he starts crying and I’m not there to sooth him?  What if he says MumMum and I can’t hear his calls? what if he turns his head around justso in that way he does that’s so cute, looking for me, and doesn’t see me? What if he thinks I abandoned him?  His reasoning skills and sense of time isn’t too well developed ya know.  I just couldn’t bare it if one ounce of him missed me.  I just couldn’t bare it if one ounce of ME missed him.  He’s my little poopie head, you know.

Anyway, I’m making myself cry, silly sentimental momma that I am.  And I’m not even going anywhere!  Just the thought of being that far away sends me into emotional meltdown.

Luckily I have an understanding husband.  He found someone at work to gift the tickets to, and hasn’t said anything more about it.  He’s quite the nice guy.

So I better go.  Keep PupPup in your thoughts!

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: animal neutering, Appointment, concert, Cousins, Humane Society, Kelly Clarkson, Local Radio Station, Matriarch, Mom And Dad, mommy worries, Our Pets, Reba Macintire, Siblings, thanksgiving, Trivia Contest, Vet

Twilight:  Ok, I begrudgingly admit, I’m not cool anymore.  (Ok.  I’ll even more begrudgingly admit that I probably was never cool in the first place).  Would you believe I had never heard of this book until about a month ago?   At just 25, I have apparantly left the realm of the trendy hip-and-happening fad crazes of life and zoned into mommyhoodishness where I’m so clueless about the world that I’d probably stare at you blankly if you mentioned the name Tina Fey. (Ok, not really, exaggeration for emphasis, but you get my point.)  So anyway, with the hyped up book-to-film movie “Twilight” opening tonight, right now as I speak at 12 am EST, (with Harry Potter 4’s Cedric Diggory as the main lead!), I just had to read the book to see if it lived up to the hype.  So this past Tuesday I scored a copy from the Library (a miracle in itself because the waiting list was 40 deep - a reallyreallyreally nice librarian snuck me a just released copy), brought it home, and finished the 500something page book this morning at 4 am.  It took me 6 and a half hours to read it (hurray for babies who sleep through the night, right?).

 Ok, so where do I start?  It was a fun read.  But it was just that.  A fun read. It was not better than Harry Potter as I had heard, but really, Vampire romance in Washington state and pubescent wizardry in a fantasy Londonesque world just can’t parallel.  So what is this Twilight thing?  It’s the first book in Stephanie Meyer’s series, and the main character - Isabella “Bella” Swan - chooses to move back to her dad’s dreary, always raining Washington State hometown of Forks after her mother remairies a semi-pro ball player in Arizona.  All of the typical small town plot lines are developed (small high school, everyone knows everyone, word spreads fast, etc.), but oddly enough, she ends up being extremely popular right from the start (something I find VERY hard to believe for a brooding, dorky, clumsy, inept, brainy, shy, non-talkative, pale 17 year old loner).  Popular with everyone except for one group of “siblings” in the school who are inhumanly beautiful and keep to themselves.  In fact, the youngest, Edward Cullen, seems to hate her from the beginning….that is, until he saves her life by stopping a car (that’s about to crush her) with his bare hands.  There’s such a powerful draw between the both of them, but the more they are drawn to each other, the more he warns her how dangerous their relationship is.  Why dangerous?  He won’t say.  But the urge to be together is just far too powerful.  She finally pieces together who they are, and gets to meet the entire vampire family like any normal girlfriend would.  Only thing is, they’re vampires. Good “vegetarian” vampires, but vampires nonetheless.  

Even worse, the draw Edward feels is because her blood smells so good and he “vants to sock her vlood”.  :::rolls eyes:::: It only gets worse (as in worse for her) from there as a “bad” vampire tracker discovers her one day during a game of vampire baseball (I guess it’s their version of quiddich?) - and it’s up to Edward and his family to keep her safe.

Bad vampires vs. good vampires, vampires who could go out in the sun without melting, vampires who lived in normal homes, didn’t sleep in coffins, or anything like that….the whole entire vampire myth was…uh…revamped for the book.

All in all, the plot lines seemed far too contrived. I found myself at many points laughing aloud at how absurd some parts were (something I never did in Harry Potter).  It had only one or two psychologically intense (as in, it really gave you something to think about) moments in it.  Yet there were never any earth shattering quotes such as when Dumbledore told Harry “We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”.

 One thing for sure though, Stephanie Meyer did a great job in creating the “feeling” of the irresistable pull between the two main characters - and it played on many a girl’s teen fantasies (doesn’t all young adolescent girls secretly want a dangerous-but-good intelligent boy with inhuman strength and perfect Greek god beauty to sweep them off their feet?? no?  ok maybe that was just me.).  The chemistry created between the two characters - and the feelings it invokes in readers - is probably what sent this book into hyper frenzy cult status.  The book itself is not great, but the “feeling” it gives you is.  It’s Juliet and Romeo all over.  Tragic love with a bite (pun intended).  The best thing is the characters actually remain chaste and it took them forever just to even have a first kiss (ala Mulder and Sculley type of anticipation).

I can already tell from the trailers that the movie is a bit different than the book.  But that’s ok, I suppose.  No movie can ever compete with the book (’cept for the 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, but that’s another story).  I’m not sure if I’m going to read the 2nd book in the saga (New Moon) because really, the ending of the story didn’t leave me full of anticipation.  It’s really easy to guess which direction plot lines are going to take - Bella gets hurt, Edward saves her, the two are irrisistably drawn together, Bella gets hurt, Edward saves her, etc.  The characters have no depth.  It’s as if Meyer didn’t have any imagination left after a third way through the book.  Perhaps that’s why I like JK Rowling so much - you could never tell what was going to develop next in HP.  Twilight just didn’t “leave me hanging” like it should have.

And…actually, if I’m being fully honest….except for the wonderful magnetism that eminated from the main characters and the irresistable urge to keep turning the pages again and again, I thought the book was silly.  

So why then did I have so much fun reading it and was drawn into the enchantment?  I dunno.  I liked it emotionally.  Litararily, I didn’t.  I’m not the only ambivalent reader either. Just read the other
low starred reviews on amazon to see what I mean.: 

So anyway, this has been quite a long review.  I do have some other books in my library bag this week but I hadn’t got around to reading them yet.  

I’ll have more by next week..

———————————————————–

So what’s in your bag?  Play along with me!  What are you currently reading from your library?  If you don’t have any books out currently, share one you’ve read in the past.  Just write up a library post on your blog, then come back here and post a comment with the link to your post.  I’d love to know what everyone else is reading.

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: books, Cedric Diggory, Crazes, Fad, fantasy fiction, Harry Potter 4, Hype, Librarian, Plot Lines, reading, Stephanie Meyer, Tina Fey, twilight, Vampire, Waiting List

Dear Family and Friends….

Sincerely, Jack-Evan

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 6 month old, baby jabbering, baby talk, infant, Little Jack Speaks, video

It’s finally happened.

After 12 years of doing business online, my bank account has finally been hit by theft. 

Earlier today, I received an NSF notice from my bank which immediately got me puzzled - the account in question is just a little personal checking account for “fun money”.  We dont use it for family funds or anything, I’m just sentimental about it since it was my firstever checking account, opened when I was 17.  I always know exactly how much is in there and where it’s going at all times - yet the NSF letter claimed I was overdrawn and had 70$ in OD fees to boot.

So, I immediately go online to check on my account.

It seems that on Nov. 10, an electronic check for $39.95 posted from Ryco Pica Customer Service.  Sicne it was electronic, of course no signature was needed.   I had no idea who or what this was from, so I called my bank first.  After a few moments, we determined that this was likely fraudulent.  Tomorrow I’ll be going in to file an official unauthorized draft.

Then, I called the number for Ryco Pica (1-866-700-0304) listed on the transaction, and spoke to a nice lady there.  Apparantly they’re a contracted payment service for various (shady!) businesses.  She pulled up the transaction from her side and told me that the transaction had gone through in my maiden name (a HUGE red flag right there because I have been married for over 2 years now) and that it was for an adult website service.  Definately not my doing.  She was extremely helpful and agreed it was fraudulent, and said there was a note on the account that my bank apparantly had already been in contact with them to cancel future drafts.  She advised (like the bank did) that it would be best to close out my account too once I file an unauthorized charge since I don’t know who still has that information.

So right now I’m a bit hopping mad.  How dare someone steal my account information for my poor little measly personal account.  *sigh*  Now I’m going to have to close out that account!  Poor little account. (Told you, I’m sentimental).   I hate the fact that I’m now bruised and no longer naive to identity theft.  No longer can I say “It won’t happen to me”.  It took 12 years of buying online for it to finally catch up to me, but it did at last.  Grrrrrr.

So anyway, I just did some searching online and apparantly there has been a rash of Ryco Pica fraudulent drafts over the past 3 weeks.  You can read a message board thread on it here. 

Make sure you pay attention to your account!

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bank drafts, Checking Account, Customer Service, Electronic Check, Few Moments, fraudulent charges, identity theft, Maiden Name, Money, Red Flag, ryco pica customer service, Shady Businesses, Signature, Unauthorized Charge

Welcome to this week’s Library Friday! 

I go to the library so often that I thought I’d make a weekly MeMe to discuss the books our family loves to read.  Each Friday, I post some books I currently have in my library bag here at home.  You can play along too if you want to!  Just write up a “Library Friday” post on your own blog, then come back here and post a comment with a link directed to your library post.  I would love to see what some of you are reading too!

In my bag this week…

I Took the Moon For a Walk - Back in April, a month before Jack-Evan was born, I decided it was time I familiarized myself with the children’s section of the library.  When I discovered this veryveryvery adorable children’s picture book, I was hooked and knew I would want to check it out many more times!  It’s a simple rhyming, fanciful story line where a little boy who can’t sleep goes on a walk around his neighborhood with the full moon.  The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous with intricate detail.  Even adults will have fun “walking” with the moon, and noticing the various people and animals around town.  Some of them are small so you have to look veryveryclose.  The words are written in a loopy style, flowing up and down the page akin to the way the moon might “bounce”.  It is really fun to read and say aloud too!  I personally believe that children’s books should also entertain and capture adults - something that’s very hard to accomplish for most authors.  But this enchanting book certainly fits the bill, and it’s a far cry from much of the atrocious twaddle out there labeled “children’s books”.

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Animals, book reviews, children's books, Enchanting Book, Full Moon, Illustrations, Intricate Detail, library books, Picture Book, Sleep

I hate it when I get a new blog going and then a piece of code from the template decides to break on me.

I hate it worse when I haveabsolutelynocluewhatsoever what piece of code that is!

That’s what’s happened to me over the past day or so as I was trying to get www.HomeschoolFever.com going (it use to be “Homeschool From Birth” but I found a new redirection for it).  Anyway, none of my javascripts were working at all.  I use self-hosted wordpress, google analytics, sitemeter, 1&1 hosting, and numerous plugins.  SO, that means that my problem could be coming from ANYWHERE.

Google wasn’t googling hits, Site meter wasn’t sitemetering uniques (when I knew I was getting them from internal Wordpress stats), MyBlogLog wasn’t bloglogging visitors, adsense wasn’t adding any cents, and everything just seemed to be out of whack. 

To make a long story short, I transferred my entire homeschool blog to 3 different MySQL databases, hoping against hope that the original database was corrupted and a fresh install would solve everything. 

It didn’t. 

I was BEYOND frustrated.

Finally, I came home tonight from visiting some relatives and low & behold and wonderfulawesomeperfectlysweet blogger lady over at The Gluten-Free Homemaker left me a comment letting me know that the comment box seemed to be missing when guests viewed the page. 

The COMMENT BOX!  BINGO!

That was the only file I hadn’t dug myself into because the comment section looked perfectly fine on my end (I was logged in as administrator).  Who would have guessed that a funky line of code was breaking everything for my arriving guests??  Phew.

I ran as fast as I could clicked over to my theme editor in the admin panel, found the broken code, removed it, and BAM.  Javascript is now working fine.

Analytics are now analyzing, adsense is adding cents, and site meter is once again metering it’s little heart out. Booyah!

Glad that’s all behind me now…

So anyway (beware of upcoming shameless blog promotion) why don’t you head on over and assure me that the site looks fine, and while you’re at it pick up some free Greek Alphabet flashcards I made.

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Blog, blog woes, Google Analytics, greek, Homemaker, homeschool, Javascripts, Mysql Databases, Site Meter

Place:  Our bedroom.

Jack-Evan, who is now a hearty 6 months old, is lying between his father and I, enjoying some cuddling & play time before lights out. 

As I’m finishing up the story book I’m reading, he turns his little head towards me and says MumMum - then immediately turns his head the other way towards Kevin and says, just as clearly, DaDa. 

It wasn’t the first time he had uttered those syllables, but it was the first time he had used them together, with both in context.

So now I take this proud mommy moment to gloat.

© Jack's Mommy (Lisa) for Little Jack's Corner, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conversations at our house, Genius, Play Time, Proud Mommy, Syllables