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Have you heard about the new ipad from Apple? It is a new super iphone type of keyboardless mini computer. It can do everything with the touch of a finger. Sounds amazing huh?
Today I read that the name "ipad" is drawing a lot of criticism because it sounds like some new tech feminine hygiene invention. People are calling it the itampon and asking if you can swim with it! Others asked if women will send their husbands to the store to buy ipads?
The CEO for Apple said that "pad" refers to home...as in "let's go back to my pad." They also said that with the right device the name doesn't matter. They said that you could call it "mangled baby duck" and people would still buy it.
Ok, seriously how dumb does Apple think we are?
Names are a big deal. There are things that I don't buy because I can't pronounce the name. At a restaurant if I am debating between two meals and one has a name that I can't pronounce correctly, I will order the other meal. There are drinks that I know John would drink but he won't order because it's not too cool for a guy to order a "fuzzy navel". When John and I were picking out names for Shane we landed on the name Cooper, but decided that it sounded too much like "pooper" and that was bad!
So, I want to know if Apple has any women working for them? Cuz a chick would definitely have known that the name "ipad" was not-so-good! I can barely type that without laughing! Apple may have just really screwed up this time around.
In my expert female opinion the name for the new ipad should have been ....the idong! Pretty good huh?
When I was growing up we had special occasions where I remember having movie nights. We would bring up the jumbo sized orange pillows from the basement, get some blankets and watch movies on the family room floor in our pajamas with my parents. I am not sure what we watched exactly....The Wizard of Oz, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Little House of the Prairie, or the Muppets. But I do remember really looking forward to doing something so exciting and out of the ordinary.
This week I decided to give it a try with the boys. We picked a night. I got out their brand new sleeping bags that they got for Christmas. We ate an early dinner and had an early bath. We made a snack. The boys got into their jammies and were beyond thrilled to hop into their sleeping bags and watch their movie.
My sister helped me pick out a movie. She recommended the movie "Up". Her kids all saw it and loved it even though she said that the beginning was a little slow. Well, it turns out she left out a few other key details too!
My boys were SCARED out of their minds! They were confused by the opening scenes where the old lady DIES! Then there were the scary talking DOGS who ruthlessly pursued an endangered bird. Then there was the evil adventure man who chased everybody down trying to shoot them with a GUN! The only part that my boys didn't freak out about were the opening BORING scenes!
Wyatt asked my why I got him a "big kid movie and not a movie for little boys"? The next morning he lovingly helped me pack it up into the case to return to the Redbox. When we got into the van he checked to make sure that I didn't forget it either! He gave it a big thumbs down!
Later we made a trip to the library and picked out a Berenstein Bears movie that was more appropriate. We repeated movie night the next night with the new movie and it was a raging success!
The boys love movie night and I think that we are going to do it once a week. I am always looking for new traditions that the boys enjoy and may remember some day and this is one that truly fits the bill!
Since life is so boring around here, John and I have been trying out some new games to spice things up a little bit.
For example, this morning after I loaded the boys up in the van I realized that the battery was dead. I immediately knew that John had left the interior lights on after vacuuming the van out last weekend. Then I realized that he was trying out one of our new games called "Mommy the Mechanic". It is a super fun game where I have to try and remember where the secret hood release is located on the floor in the van. Then I have to quickly locate and hook up the portable charger onto the battery before any of the boys get out of their car seats. Today I set a new PR of 5.32!
I told John that the battery is getting too easy for me and he should switch to the bonus round and screw with the brake lines or maybe siphon out all of the gas. That will create some excitement for me and the boys.
Tonight we tried out another game called "Clean or Dirty" where somebody has a basket full of clothes and they have to figure out if it is clean or dirty. Tonight's game was challenging because it contained BOTH dirty AND clean clothes. John is trying to set a PR for the most times that somebody has washed the SAME load of laundry.
The nice thing about the game "Clean or Dirty" is that you can play it with the dishwasher too for an additional challenge.
We can't let the boys have ALL the fun by themselves, now can we?
Shane learned to crawl this week. He prefers the military crawl as opposed to the traditional hands and knees method. Its a little screwy to watch, but it gets him from point A to point B. Luckily he doesn't crawl at top speed yet, but he is still pretty fast.
Fast enough to find a penny on the floor this morning and choke on it. I got it out with a little belly squeeze, but it wasn't a great start to our day.
Yesterday I went upstairs to get some toilet paper and Shane crawled into the laundry room. John found him in there with the door closed and he was kicking the door with his feet. John said that he thought that I was locked in the laundry room and was freaking out. Later the other boys insisted that Shane closed the door himself! Yeah, I'm not so sure about that one!
Sammy is a little freaked out about Shane crawling and getting all of his stuff. He keeps saying "No, baby!!!". Yesterday he tried moving Shane out of his way by grabbing a hold of his pajamas like it was the handle on a suitcase. He kept walking by with his Shane suitcase and saying "No, baby" over and over again. My poor baby suitcase!
I used my video camera to get a video of Shane crawling and it was a disaster. Sam was so jealous that I was trying to get a video of Shane and not him that he kept popping into the video and saying "hi" just as Shane would start crawling and then I would miss it! Talk about needing to be the center of attention! Hello Broadway!
My little guy is growing up so fast. He will be 1 year old in a little over a month! We are loving every minute with him...well I don't know about Sam, but I sure am!
John and I went and saw the movie The Blind Side last week staring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw. They are a married couple who adopt a neglected kid who ends up becoming a football great. It was a really good movie in a lot of ways.
Of course I like Sandra Bullock in just about anything. I actually believe that she and I would be great friends if we met in real life. She seems wholesome and normal. I'm not really sure how her motorcycle chopper husband fits into our friendship scenario, so I prefer to pretend that we are friends and she isn't married.
Anyways, the movie was also really good because it was thought provoking in a self-improvement kind of way. It makes you want to take a look at your life and see how you are impacting people...not just your own family.
Would I take in a homeless person? Probably not, unless they really liked to babysit. But how much time do I spend thinking about improving other people's lives? Do my kids realize how lucky they are to be living the kind of life that we live? Do I realize how small my problems are in the scheme of things? Am I doing anything to help?
What can I do to make somebody's life better in 2010? I haven't figured it out yet, but I am working on it. It is one of my New Year's resolutions... that and spending more time with my good friend Sandra.
The snow plow finally arrived...along with record amounts of snow. It has been snowing for days. Seriously! We are getting a lot of use out of the snowsuits and sleds this year. We are all getting a lot of exercise too... since it requires a full workout to get the kids dressed and outside every single day.
It only takes me about 9 years to get everybody dressed in their snow gear to go outside. Wyatt can put his snowsuit, boots, hat, and gloves on all by himself. Score!
Jonah can gather all of his own gear and lay down on top of the snowsuit so that I can zip him in. I have to help get his boots on and pull the pant leg over the top of the boot. I have to help put his hat and hood on and get his mittens on with his thumb in the separate thumb hole and pull his sleeve over the mitten top. He assists as much as he can, but he definitely has a ways to go.
Sam doesn't recognize his own snow gear. He doesn't gather it up. He is usually skipping around singing or spinning in circles while the other two boys are getting dressed. He operates very differently than the rest of us!
Most of the time as soon as Wyatt and Jonah are dressed and already out in the snow Sam starts bawling because he finally realizes that he is not even close to being ready. He will break into hysterics when I tell him that he needs to pee before he gets into his snowsuit (I learned that one the hard way!). By the time he finds his gear another 10 minutes has passed!
Sam doesn't help get his own boots on at all. It's as if his legs are attached to someone else's body. When I say push your foot in he bends his toes or wiggles his fingers. Argghhhh! The absolutely most frustrating part is getting his mittens on. He insists on having his thumb in the separate thumb hole, but he can not do this feat in under 10 minutes! For real. It is like trying to dress a frog in a three piece suit!
Today I got Wyatt, Jonah, and Shane (in a snowsuit in his stroller) outside in full snow gear and Sam still had not found the potty! I am not even kidding! It might be faster and easier to teach Maggie to get into a snowsuit than Sam!
Can you imagine trying to get him to school on time? Sam where is your backpack? Do you have underwear on? Make sure that you use the potty before you get dressed. Where are your shoes? Are you wearing socks? Is your homework in your backpack? And on and on....... Then the bus will come and he will start crying! I can see it now!
Someday I hope that Sam's wife reads this blog so that she realizes that I tried to teach him to be self sufficient. His brothers are self sufficient. His parents are self sufficient. We try to be patient with him, but maybe it is better if Sam and his wife consider living somewhere where it is really really warm. That way he can be naked all day and sing, and spin, and march around and pee outside and save his poor wife the trouble of going through the rigors of getting the little toad dressed every day!
Why do I have to sit up for this picture?
Tomorrow is John's birthday. So I took the kids shopping for birthday presents today and let them pick out gifts to Daddy from them. It is kind of fun to see what they pick out for John. It reminds me of when I was little and my Dad took us shopping for my Mom for Mother's Day and her birthday and we always seemed to get her the same pack of doublemint gun. Sorry Mom....we should have varied the flavor a little bit!
Wyatt told me that Daddy needed a pink boat for his birthday...and then he saw a pink canoe hanging from the ceiling at Dunhams and insisted that was exactly like the one that Daddy needed. Seriously can you believe that they make pink canoes? (Of course I should try and find the picture of the boat that Al I had growing up. We made my Dad paint it pink and named it the Stephal. True story!) Anyways, I told him that Daddy already had a boat and didn't need that one so Wyatt said that he wants it for himself for Easter!!!!!
Jonah picked out some football game highlight DVD's for Daddy. I talked him out of that gift.
Sam picked out some women's slippers for Daddy. Veto!
We ended up with a mitten with a snow scraper attached for clearing the windshield on Daddy's truck. They all agreed that it was the perfect present and are going in on it together. Not a bad gift actually.
In other news I rushed out of the house this morning in a snow storm to get to the preschool that I would like to send Jonah and Samuel next year. They opened registration on Jan 1 and I wanted to make sure that there was space for them in the fall. It is truly competitive around here for "good" preschools and morning sessions. I would love to avoid all of the drama and competition as far as preschools are concerned because it's absolutely ridiculous, but if I don't play the game then my kids will not have a place to go to preschool in the fall!
Anyways, I filled out all of the paperwork and wrote the checks and they were able to guarantee me two spots for the boys in the morning session 3 days a week next fall. And it cost me $270....that's just for Jonah and Sam!! Holy cow! If you include Wyatt's tuition next year we will be paying almost $500 a month for preschool for all three boys! I should open up my own preschool....it's quite a racket!
We have been getting snow every day since we got back from Michigan and John is still waiting for his snowplow attachment for his four-wheeler to come in the mail. I have a feeling that when it finally arrives tomorrow it will stop snowing for the rest of the winter! He is just dying to use it. I am looking forward to seeing how John handles all of the kids fighting to ride with him when it finally does come in the mail.
