Punch Drunk

After the DDR post I felt compelled to do a post in honor of the new Grand Theft Auto. Whenever I think of GTA I think of the summer that I was pregnant with Olivia. Chad and I lived in a second floor apartment with no air conditioning and it was the hottest summer in years. My brother came to visit, as was his custom, so that i could spoil him for a week before what was his fifteenth birthday. Well, I hadn't quite told my family about the pregnancy yet, and because I had no morning sickness or anything I thought it would be a breeze to keep from a fifteen year-old boy. Halfway through the week I started puking my guts out. SO my poor brother is stuck in a broiling hot apartment away from his friends with a constantly puking sister.

So we rented GTA, and did nothing but sit on the couch for like four straight days. Towards the end of the week we are stopped at a red light where he is looking out the window at a man on a bike holding up the cross traffic and he turns to me and says, " Bea, do you ever wish you could just walk up to someone and punch them in the face like you can in Grand Theft Auto?" At the time, feeling grossly sick with parental responsibility I felt compelled to remind him of the moral vacuum that was GTA. Until the light turned green and the biker was still holding up traffic and I told him that an exception could be made for complete f@#$ing idiots.

Fantasy Island

Do you ever have those days where you wake up and everything is just clicking? I rarely have days like this anymore thanks to sleep deprivation, but today it is happening. No tantrums, we slept late, Chad has a light week so we were actually able to coordinate calendars for a lunch date, Olivia asked to clean the house. So we did. My tub is clean, sparkling clean, so I get to take a great bath tonight. Best of all, my husband cooked tonight's dinner yesterday, so a home-cooked meal, not cooked by me!

SO I am going to use Olivia's nap time to get a little planning ahead done and daydream about next week where Olivia goes to Grandma's for four whole days!!!!

You say you want a revolution

I do not love video games. I do not like computer games. In general I have banned my daughter from most screens and fought tooth and nail to keep her from the television. SO when we happened upon "teen hour" at the library this week I was slightly put off by the fact that this consists of the library setting up a Wii in our community room. I know that they are trying to get them in there any way that they can, but come on. Anyway, Olivia was down there in approximately two seconds to check the whole thing out. What did she find?

Dance Dance Revolution, or DDR to those in the know (don't think I didn't notice Rachel).

Olivia was all over that. I attempted to put her off by telling her it was only for the big kids, and I was promptly shouted down by the big kids who thought she was adorable. For those of you living under a rock, DDR is a game where you imitate a dancer on the screen while on a special mat and you are scored on the accuracy of your imitation. Olivia did quite well and had a great time, so the third wall of technology has fallen. I now have to avoid the library on Thursday afternoons so that I don't end up with a child that spends her days in sweaty isolation in mall arcades dancing to the greatest hits of the 90's.

More photos

The top is this year's market, and the bottom is Olivia and her one true love, Alex, the boy next door. Olivia was so thrilled to finally have the physical strength to pull her trailer with her bike. We have been reading a book about Paul Revere so picture this if you will: Olivia pedaling at glacial speed with immense effort with little Alex screaming at the top of her lungs, "The Redcoats are coming!!!"

Farmer's Market Montage

So instead of family photos at Christmas, we take photos of Olivia every year on the first day of Farmer's Market. Well, except in 2005 when we were in New York for the first market so we took one in Central Park. Since I haven't figured out how to squeeze in one more photo, this year's will be its own post. I think this shows how much we love Farmer's Market as a family and as a community. We ar very proud of our little market and now with rising prices due to fuel costs it is more reason than ever to shop locally. I went twice this week.

I consider it a distinct injustice that it is not even 70 degrees today, yet, I am sunburned.

The Voice in My Head

Today, because he loves me, and becasue he is feeling a little guilty about the fact that he has a posh gym membership and I am still out running in the rain, Chad bought me a little thing that goes in my running shoe and times my workout. Why is this important? Because I am so bi-polar with my running, I am constantly over or under doing it. Now I can program this little device to the specifications of a set running program like Cool Runnings and I will have a cute little voice come over my ipod to tell me when to walk run or run faster. If I am not running as fast as I should it plays a certain song of my choosing to remind me to move faster.

So now I need to pick that song, because I might be hearing it a lot.