My Ultimate To Do List (if time was not an issue)

1. Write a novel.
2. Have my novel go to number 1 on several lists, including Oprah's.
3. Become financially independent on wealth from said book.
4. Take a dance class.
5. Become such an avid and athletic dancer that I gain a rockin' dancer's body.
6. Audition for a play.
7. Star in the play.
8. After the play is attended by a major Hollywood producer, have her become so inspired that she immediately seeks me out for a "special project", the likes of which Hollywood--nay, the WORLD--has never seen.
9. Learn all of the rules for football (well, I had to include something realistic, right?)

Slice of Life

The babysitter is due in three minutes and hubby is passed out cold on the couch. Wild Saturday!

Family and Travels and Family Travels

We just returned from five days of San Diegan adventures. Well, Natalie just returned from five days away; Keith and I took her down on Friday to attend Joel McHale's (of E Network's "The Soup") fantastic comedy show, left her at Auntie Ali and Uncle Jack's house on Saturday so that we could drive back up to go to a wedding (which was wonderful!), and then headed back down to SD to hang out with my dad and stepmom for three days. Enter a boat trip around the harbor, complete with wave runners and inner-tubes, a trip to the Wild Animal Park, and one fussy child thanks to a head cold and canine teething...

Have I mentioned how tired we are? And now we're screaming toward "Steen-O-Rama"--a family reunion for Judi's (my mom-in-law) side. Fortunately, it's in Yorba Linda.

Tonight has been a perfect answer to our frenetic pace. We've been catching up on our reality shows via DVR and are now dual-internet-surfing. Ahhh...

Please baby Bean. Sleep tight.

New Look!

Like the woman I am, I am always finding (small) ways to reinvent myself. My blog is no exception. So when I saw that Blogger had new ways to customize, I began dickering and came up with this scheme. It's uber-easy to read, which will hopefully make me more likely to blog more often. You see, there is so much tosay, but it's just that I'm so incredibly tired at the end of the day, I usually don't have enough energy to do anything but a status update on Facebook. Pathetic, I know.

Here are some milestones we've passed lately:

Natalie...

1. Says TONS of words, most notably: mama, dada, bubba (our cat Tony's nickname), nana, banana, doggy, kitty, boat, ball, cup, car, hat, pool, milk, diaper...the list goes on! She's going to Harvard, we're convinced.
2. Can sign a handful of those, including book, boat, more, and milk.
3. Has begun standing/dancing on her own two feet sans help via objects or other people. It's only a matter of minutes before that girl is doing kick-ball-changes around the dining room table. She certainly has the energy for it!
4. Reads CONSTANTLY. She is a sponge for new information and loves to point out favorite items in her books and name them. Loudly. "DUCK!" ... "DOG!" ... "BALL!" ... "KITTY!" She's even started identifying women in books and calling them "mama". Too cute for words.
5. Is altogether too freaking amazing. It's difficult to live in a house with this much fun, but we do our best.

Ponytails, pretty suit, and pool--could it get any better than this?

Keith...

1. Has refined his cardio-god skills and is now able to run TEN miles at a time. Who is this insane man I married?
2. Took me to Vegas for our first weekend away as a married couple rather than Mommy and Daddy. What a wonderful trip! Rejuvenating and refreshing.

Natalie, Ali, Keith, Me, and Lizzie at the All-Star Game Charity 5K Race.

Keith gets cozy with a golden croc at the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef.

I...

1. Downloaded an app called "Couch to 10K" (but have not gotten around to using it yet).
2. Won our Via Azul Golf League's British Open golf draft. Sweet! I made around $160 and immediately spent it on doorknobs (that all matched! at one time!) for our house. They look mighty purty.
3. Am still considering writing a (great American?!) novel, but am settling for an occasional blog post and a really great part-time job working with new teachers in our district. It's a change for the better and I'm looking forward to the new school year.
4. Actually got to go on vacation TWICE in the past few months. The first one was a girls-only trip to Ft. Lauderdale with Jen, Leen, and Ali. I'm still pinching myself that I have a husband cool enough to shove me out the door while he stayed home to babysit the Scush and friends cool enough to want to spend three days with me. Not a bad deal.

We verified that there is a large population of plastic women in Florida.

Tony and Cleo...

1. Are still cats who eat a little too much (well, Tony does) and cough up furballs.
2. Cuddle with the best of 'em.

And that's life for now. More to come...

Spring Cleaning

I just cleaned up my garage and have come to the conclusion that if I could just sell our gently-used gift bags for a buck a piece, I'd probably be at least $200 richer.

My 21st Century Mom

My mom is awesome for a number of reasons, but one of them is her ability to join us in the technological age. Yeah, we've had our ups and downs. I do remember when she first started using the computer and would fret over which password to use on which site, how to copy and paste things, etc., but she's so much more proficient with all things techie now. Sure, she doesn't know what WEP stands for in WEP key, but at least she knows she has one. That's more than your average Joe for sure.

But the computer is not why I'm writing this. It's my mom's embrace of a little piece of technology which she resisted for so long: the iPhone. The iPhone has long been a lauded invention in the Carmona household. Keith and I have used ours to do everything beyond the usual tasks: scheduling, grocery lists, gaming, logging feedings and diaper changes in the early Natalie days, placating our daughter in more recent Natalie days...you name it, I think the iPhone does it. If it gave good back or foot rubs, I might have left my husband and run off with my iPhone.

In those early days, I was kind of a zealot trying to get others to come over to my side. I'd show it off to people like it was my firstborn (well, before I had a firstborn), pointing out every application, bell, whistle, and feature. My sister was already a fan, so it wasn't too difficult to get her husband on board. We persuaded Keith's entire family to get them, too.

But try as we might to convince her, my mom was kind of dead-set against learning yet another phone. And I understood her frustration. It seemed there was a decade from about 1996-2006 when I'd get a new phone every two years and, without fail, it would have a totally different set of operating instructions than the last. Add to that the fact that you had to manually copy over all of your contacts and it became an understandably defeating process. Still, she finally relented this year and I don't think she regrets her decision.

Case in point:

We just had a ten-minute conversation about 12-year-old boys with mustaches via text message. Now that's something for the memory book.

Skinny Scush

After her one-year appointment, we learned several things about our dear daughter. She has an ear infection, so the cold has progressed into her poor ears causing all of the fussiness as of late. Her first dose of antibiotics will be administered as soon as she awakens from her nap. We were also told that Natalie is steadily climbing in the 25th percentile, as she has since birth, in both height and head circumference. Unfortunately, her pediatrician noted that she is in the 5th percentile of weight. The universe is so unfair. Keith and I are madly trying to lose weight, while we have to add calories and fat to everything she eats. Why can't I have that problem?

Oh, and a few more things I learned today:

1. With the amount of Kix we go through on a weekly basis, we need to buy stock in General Mills.
2. I'm so lazy right now that I Googled the maker of Kix, rather than go to the cupboard to see for myself on the box.
3. Natalie hates needles. I mean HATES them. Oh, and she doesn't respond well to the phrase, "Man up!"
4. It would be really neat if all of our furniture was about knee-height so that Scush could cruise everywhere. She gets colossally bummed when she comes to the end of the furniture trail and has nowhere else to go.