Wes and I went on a date to dinner and a movie last night. To Wes' disappointment, it was my turn to pick the movie and I chose "New Moon." I have to get it off my chest. I'm completely in love with the Twilight series. I read each book in record time, I have a book mark with Edward on it, and I got butterflies when we were waiting for the movie to start. But I should've known. After all, we did see "Twilight" in the theater and it's not exactly Oscar material. I hate to rip "New Moon" to shreds, but WHAT THE HECK!!! I mean,really? Where did they find the actor who played Jacob? He started off with a bad mullet wig (not his fault, but still), had horrendous lines (again, not his fault), but just couldn't pull off a tough guy. Yes, he's eye candy. No doubt. But every time he delivered a line, the audience laughed...and it wasn't supposed to be funny. And I just can't decide if I like Kiersten Stewart or not. It takes her a millennium to deliver a line! I understand she's trying to convey teen angst, but the movie would've been 30 minutes shorter had someone behind the camera screamed, "Spit it out already!!!" O well. I was pleased that it stayed so true to the book. Even though I have my issues with the acting, I'll still end up buying it on dvd. And who am I kidding? If someone asks me to go see it again, I will. I'm in love with the love story. Stephanie Meyer and Hollywood big shots are making a fortune off of suckers like me.

Below is a review of "Twilight" that someone emailed to me. So funny.

I present Saturday Night Drive-in's Twilight Theater:
PALE GIRL: Hi, I’m new here.
PALE BOY: I hate you. I love you. I want to eat you.
PALE GIRL: Let us go yearn for one another in the woods.
PALE GIRL: Did you just stop that van with your bare hands?
PALE BOY: No.
PALE GIRL: Yes you did.
PALE BOY: No I didn’t.
PALE GIRL: I saw you.
PALE BOY: You are clearly a crazy person.
PALE GIRL: I’m not.
PALE BOY: Look at me over here in the sunlight.
PALE GIRL: Ooooooh, sparkly.
PALE BOY: I am your darkest desire and your worst nightmare.
PALE GIRL: You’re a chocolate pony filled with algebra?
PALE GIRL: How old are you?
PALE BOY: I’m a 21-year old actor, playing a 90-year-old vampire, pretending to be a 17-year old teenager.
PALE GIRL: So you can buy beer?
PALE BOY: I’m dangerous.
PALE GIRL: I’m not afraid.
PALE BOY: I watch you while you sleep.
PALE GIRL: That’s disturbingly hot.
PALE BOY: I've killed people.
PALE GIRL: I love you unconditionally.
PALE BOY: I drive a Volvo.
PALE GIRL: I just remembered I have a thing I have to go to…
PALE BOY: You make me twitch and sulk.
PALE GIRL: You make me breathe through my mouth.
PALE BOY: I would like to take you on a date in a tree.
PALE BOY: I will refrain from doing anything un-gentlemanly, like killing and eating you.
PALE GIRL: I am dating the undead Jonas Brother.
PALE BOY: Do you see how fast I can run?
PALE GIRL: You look like a meth addict on a treadmill.
PALE BOY: You can’t run this fast.
PALE GIRL: Good. I’d hate to look that stupid.
PALE BOY: Us vampires like to play baseball.
PALE GIRL: Why?
PALE BOY: We suck at knitting.
PALE GIRL: Uh huh.
PALE BOY: See what I did there? “Suck at knitting.”
PALE GIRL: Yep, got that.
PALE GIRL: The Native American guys keep making wolf references.
PALE BOY: Shhhh. Those are sly nods to the fans who’ve read the other books.
PALE GIRL: There are more books?
PALE BOY: Yes, three more.
PALE GIRL: And we’re contractually obliged to appear in those films, too?
PALE BOY: Afraid so.
PALE GIRL: My agent is so dead.
BAD GUY VAMPIRE: I’m going to eat you. You can tell your boyfriend to avenge you.
PALE GIRL: Now? Or after I’m dead?
BAD GUY VAMPIRE: Well, not right now. I’m going to kill you right now.
PALE GIRL: Hmmm. Maybe I could leave a note for him. About the avenging?
BAD GUY VAMPIRE: Okay, that would work.
PALE BOY: Excuse me, some plot has come up. I must go wrassle this evil vampire.
PALE GIRL: Don’t mind me, I’ll be over here pining. And yearning. And bleeding.
PALE BOY: Would you like to go to prom with me?
PALE GIRL: Will there be a gazebo with fairy lights?
PALE BOY: Yes.
PALE GIRL: Will I feel like the most special, moody princess in the world?
PALE BOY: Yes.
PALE GIRL: Will there be synchronized group dancing?
PALE BOY: No.
PALE GIRL: Okay.
PALE GIRL: Our love is eternal.
PALE BOY: Our angst is interminable.
AUDIENCE: Our patience is finite.

Evening Itinerary

Act I, Scene I

7:30 pm- Corinne rocked to sleep, Taylor fell asleep snuggled up to Wes while watching ESPN.

8:00 pm- Nikki chooses to sleep rather than watching "The Hills," showing how tired she is having given up the chance to watch the spectacular drama unfold.

8:15 pm- Nikki feels particularly old and crotchety when she complains about the phone ringing.

10:00 pm- Cue crying baby. Nikki stumbles through the mess that is her bedroom, across the hall, stepping on a block, and cursing. Nikki glad baby is too young to repeat expletive.

10:00-10:30 pm- Rock baby. Again, and again, and again. Baby seems asleep. Place baby down. Baby wakes up the second any part of her skin feels the crib sheet. Super.

10:30-11:00 pm- Nikki rocks baby, praying Corinne's 4 top teeth finish busting through this week. This is grueling.

11:00 pm- Nikki stumbles back to her own bed upon completion of putting child to sleep. Nikki now too awake to fall back asleep. Nikki recounts the day, and plans for the day ahead.

11:30 pm- Nikki falls asleep.

11:35 pm- Cue 3 year-old climbing next to Nikki in bed.

11:35-12:45 am- 3 year-old continually tosses and turns, kicks and punches in her sleep. Nikki looks over at Wes. How is he still asleep through all of this?

1:00 am- Cue baby crying again. Nikki, not so politely, tells Wes it's his turn, wishes him luck, and finally falls asleep

1:05 am- Wes takes Corinne downstairs. Why not catch up on ESPN, if you're awake at 1:05 am?

5:30 am- Nikki wakes up, wet. Proceeds to inspect bed. Lovely. 3 year old, who hasn't had an "accident" in a year, peed the bed.

5:30-6:00 am- Nikki manages to move Taylor to dry part of bed, and begins gathering pee soaked sheets. Laundry before the suns up.

6:00 am- Cue Corinne crying downstairs. Nikki goes downstairs to find Wes on toilet holding baby. This is unsanitary. Nikki takes baby, relieving both of them. Apparently Corinne was "up every hour, on the hour." Nikki makes mental note to reward Wesley somehow for his efforts.

6:30 am- Taylor's awake and is "Dairy, dairy sorry I had an accident. I dreamed about a bath." All is forgiven.


I'm just waiting for the day when neither kid has a cold and/or teeth popping through, so I can sleep all night in my own bed!!! A girl can dream, can't she?



One night we'll all sleep soundly in our own beds.


VIDEO of Corinne walking. Sigh..

Goodbye, October

I love October. We celebrated Tay's birthday, our anniversary, had an awesome Halloween block party and enjoyed cooler weather. But boy are we tired, and we're starting off November sick. Ugh! Countless hand washings, bottles of disinfecting lotion and numerous spritzes of Lysol haven't done us much good so far this flu season. So not much to blog about but I thought I'd just do this mini post of pictures we took this October. This year has absolutely flown by. Corinne is 9 months, crawling like a maniac, walking across the living room, and climbing up on tables. Taylor is constantly asking me things like, "What are trousers?" and "What does especially mean?" Hi. You're 3. Where is this coming from? I can feel the year winding down, and am just happy we survived it.

Wes and I celebrated our 8th anniversary!










Tay was Alice for Halloween, even though she wears this dress everyday.





Great Grandpa visiting

Lambardi Ranch field trip










Taylor said, "Nana, take a picture of me," and then posed in front of the TV.

Ms. Tay

3 years ago today, I was in a hospital bed at Kaiser Panorama City. At about 5 am I woke up to find a sweet little baby beside me in one of those hospital baby beds, crying softly, with a bruised and bloody ear from being pushed half way out and then shoved back in, only to be cut out of my belly shortly after that. Now we were both tired and recovering, and I paged a nurse to pick her up for me since it felt like my insides had been pulled out and carelessly thrown back in.(Which is pretty much what happened.) Taylor looked at me in that newborn baby way that makes you realize how recently they've left the presence of Heaven. She fell asleep and I fell in love. But I knew that she wasn't just mine. She was sort of there for everyone at that time. We all needed a little hope. She was probably the most anticipated baby in that maternity ward. I remember my sister holding her and saying, "Hello, Ms. Tay." It fit her. Ms. Tay is how we referred to her for a long time, since she always seemed to be a bit older than she was. And today Ms. Tay's 3. She changed our life in so many ways and we love her so much. I want to remember that at age 3, Taylor loves dressing up like a princess. She will sit and "read" books for an hour. She can navigate the computer like a pro. She always says, "I love you dairy, dairy much mommy." She is always waiting for Daddy to come home. She lives to spend play time with family. She wants to put on makeup with me every morning. She loves to reenact "The Lizard of Oz" (not a typo) with me as every character, except Dorothy of course. She reminds me to stop thinking so much and just play. She's helped me clean up my language by reminding me that, "We don't say 'crap' or 'shut up'." And most of all she just makes us happy. Even on the days when she is a stinker and challenges my patience, she always finds a way to make me laugh. I love her more than she will probably ever know. But that just comes with the territory of parenthood, right? I don't think we knew how much love we could have in our hearts until she came to us.

I read an article in TIME about how much kids cost these days. The author summed it up by saying, "Kids give you an excuse to work on your fastball. They're excellent bed warmers, and small fingers can untie hopeless knots. They remind you to be brave and trusting, and that few things worth accomplishing are ever achieved without making a mess first. They often say better prayers than you could ever think to. They smell really good when they're clean. And yes, they are reminders of our mortality-in fact, I know I'm going gray a lot faster than I would have had I been childless, especially now that I have a teenager. But it's a cosmic gift that, in letting us grow up with them,they keep us young, so that sometime maybe we pass each other, the student becoming the teacher, the parent the child, and we will sit back and marvel at who they've become, knowing they are now smarter and stronger than we are. We'll savor their company and feel safe in their hands. Care to put a price on that?"

Questions and Quotes from Taylor This Week:

"Alynna's here! She's ganna snuggle me."

"Mommy, where does Jesus live?"

Tay:"What does it mean?"

Nikki: "What does what mean?"

Tay: "Bide my time. The Wicked Witch says 'I'm ganna bide my time'."

Nikki:.......It means she'll wait.

Tay: Oh.

Nikki:.......stunned silence

She's on a "Snow White" kick this week.

Joseph (our celebrity neighbor) and Taylor, who's so sick of pictures that I promised her tonight I wouldn't take so many.
Corinne, happy as ever.

The police line-up picture.

Sorry, Mickey.

Love this picture of Wes. He likes to play around with beards and mustaches while shaving. This is his Ron Burgundy look.

There are some great things about My Baby Daddy, as the kids say these days. Wes is a go getter. One of the hardest working men I've ever met, and 100% a family man. One thing you may not know about Wes though, is that he can kill small mice with his bare hands. That's right. Even though I'm a clean freak, we've been sharing our house with a family of mice since we moved in. The geniuses at KB built our neighborhood before they built the houses up on the hill. So once construction started on the hill, every furry little critter that lived up there scurried down to our neck of the woods. We started off by taking into consideration that they too are God's creatures. They must also serve a purpose on this Earth and therefore should only be captured and returned to the outdoors, and not harmed in any way. But after 2 years in this house, our philosophy has changed...dramatically. It's us or them and we've declared war on the little buggers. Instead of using sticky pads to capture them and treat them humanely, we've switched over to traps. Nothing brings me more joy than laying in bed at night and hearing the SNAP! of a trap. I've got a baby crawling all over the ground, for goodness sake, so don't judge me. I can't have her picking up mouse poop and mistaking it for a puffy. Last weekend I was feeding Corinne on the couch at 6 a.m., minding my own business, when all of a sudden 2 mice crawled across the living room floor. I screamed like the total wuss that I am and Wes flew down the stairs. One mouse got away, but Wes cornered the other one in the bathroom and killed it with his shoe! A few days later, Wes saw another one strutting across the kitchen and he murdered it with his water bottle. We're hoping that word will get out to all the other mice in the neighborhood. Stay away from the Pollard house. We take no prisoners!!



Totally unrelated pics of the kids

Not a mouse.


Quite possibly the happiest baby ever. She's SO fun, and loves to laugh & snuggle.


Sponge Bob at Universal Studios





Too tired after the water park to be excited about Diego and...that bird whose name I can't remember.







Their future's so bright....

Corinne, waiting for Tay. She worships that kid and is treated like...a younger sibling. Poor thing.

She's Crafty!

(Tay's first picture that actually resembled something a couple of months ago. =) )

Now that Taylor is into doing crafts and drawing, I'm finding that I'm running out of room on the refrigerator for all of her artistic masterpieces. I've even been giving them away as "thank you notes" every once in a while, and have even used them as wrapping paper for birthday presents. But I decided I'm not going to be the mom who saves every macaroni necklace and every scribble that Taylor makes. I'll definitely treasure some special ones but for the others, I've decided to scan them and toss them. They make lovely screen savers and I've even printed some out as 4x6 photos and stuck them in a photo album. I figure they'll last longer that way and it's quicker than scrapbooking. Take a look at some of Taylor's work.

Tay loves these! It's a picture of a haunted house and you put all the stickers on it any way you like.
I was impressed by this caterpillar.



Another cool sticker page

I wrote numbers on the back of the ice cream scoops and she glued them down in order. makingfriends.com has some cool and free printable crafts.

3 Headed Caterpillar

The Boob Tube

A friend of mine in high school had a bumper sticker that read, "Kill Your TV." I remember seeing that and thinking, "Wow. That's harsh. Why would someone say such a hateful thing towards something that brings so much joy to so many people?" As I matured, I began to see the harmful effects of TV. How it numbs the minds of children everywhere and feeds ignorant people a load of crap about a plethora of topics, convincing obviously idiotic people that they know something about something which they really know nothing about.Encouraging them to regurgitate information that's been fed to them via manipulative advertisers and political string pullers. But I digress. Although I still believe some of that to be true, as a mother I thank the TV Gods daily for allowing me to place my beautiful child on the sofa for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. (That tends to be all she watches these days since she's now almost 3 and busy doing so many other things.) But I thought it would be fun to blog about what Tay watches so she can look back at this after it's blurbbed into a book and remember those programs that she loved so much. I can still vividly recall sitting in front of the TV watching my favorite show as a child, "Punky Brewster," and I still have flashbacks of childhood whenever I hear the "M.A.S.H." theme song thanks to my dad. My mom never watched TV much when I was growing up. Now I know why.I almost never get to just sit and veg in front of the boob tube. But on the rare occasion when I do, I'm all about "Dancing With The Stars." Love that show!!


"Yo Gabba Gabba!"



Taylor loves this show. It's hosted by some crazy dj with a furry hat and stars these cheesy muppetesque characters who sing songs like, "Don't Bite Your Friends." It's totally offbeat and I love it.They somehow manage to get big name stars on it too. Reminds me of the old "Muppet Show."


"Ni Hao Kai Lan"

O.k., not sure if I spelled that right. If you haven't had the pleasure it's a show about Chinese characters who talk about feelings. At some point in the show a character has a melt down, be it an angry one, sad one, etc. To which Ni Hao attempts to make them feel better. And along the way they teach Chinese. Taylor picks it up fast, as kids will. When they say a word in Chinese I listen, analyze, question what it sounded like and then repeat it totally wrong. Taylor, on the other hand, will repeat it right the first time.

"The Upside Down Show"


My favorite show by far! It's like watching a comedy sketch show or improv show. It's two guys who are just silly. That's the premise. But they also teach vocabulary and imaginary play. Because of this show, Taylor uses words like "delectable," "delightful" and "marvelous."






"Oobi"

This show comes on at about 10:00 pm, so I have to DVR it but it's worth it. Oobi and his friends are hands who speak in the same syntax as American Sign Language (not sure if the producers even know that.) It's super cute and cracks me up. Taylor loves it when I use her Mr. Potato Head's eyes to make my own Oobi on my hand.