Never Be The Same Again

Okay, so I've been promising Charlotte for months that I would contribute to the family blog. Unfortunately, my mind set takes the thing that I feel has the most priority and helps me focus on that first. I find it sad to say that, at times, well... I guess all the time up until now, entertainment has taken a slightly higher priority than blogging. Finally my school work has turned into larger, slower, developed projects and I can do other smaller projects on the side like writing here.

I know that Charlotte likes to talk about our darling girl, Daphne, all the time and I intend to let her announce every sweet little giggle, sigh, and mumble amongst other things that our precious does. However, I need to talk about her just this once so you know that the way that I see things may differ slightly from Charlotte's view.

It is important when dealing with small children to keep in mind that they don't fully control every action they take. In fact their actions become all the more amusing when you remember that they don't really have control. I absolutely love to play with Daphne: and although I may feel MY personal bubble is shattered when people get too close to me, I get the feeling that she enjoys how close we get to her. Regardless of the way she may really feel about the invasion of her privacy, caution must be taken when approaching her. Just yesterday she had been sitting in her car seat and as I came in close to her face she kicked me in my Adams Apple. Surprised and a little amused I coughed, then laughed, and moved in close again. Once again her foot met my neck, and so it did the third time as well. On my fourth decent, I grabbed her foot and moved it aside, and I thought that I noticed a hint of frustration in Daphne's eyes.

Daphne's strange reflexes don't stop with just me. Last night Charlotte and I held Daphne between us, and as I was playing with her she reached out and honked my nose. Charlotte loved that and laughed for a good two minutes over it. Then, still laughing, she reached over to give Daphne a kiss on the head, only to have a tiny fist backhand her in the face. It made a lovely "thock" noise which I then laughed at. So apparently they are teaching self defense in the pre-existence now. Either that or my martial arts training has been passed on genetically. Expecting parents be on your guard.

Alright, I really set out in this post to talk about the way things are the first time that we see them, how others change them and in turn change our perceptions, and how we will see the same event, dialogue or image in the future. I have three experiences to explain what I mean.

The first two being almost the same experience. I've had the pleasure of watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and poured meticulously over its cinematic beauty. It is a masterpiece. All of it has been turned into one big joke after another. When I was dating Charlotte, I had the opportunity to meet one of her friends, Tom. Tom has done some film and editing on a personal level and I like most of what he has made. One of his productions showed the mirror scene in the Fellowship movie where Galadriel tells Frodo to look into the mirror, and as he looks in he sees clips from past seasons of American Idol. Still afraid of what he sees Frodo falls back to get away from these terrible images. I loved it.

The second experience is mostly from the Two Towers movie and can be found on YouTube as "taking the Hobbits to Isengard" where lines from the movie are arranged to a bad rendition of the movie's main musical theme. Its an addicting clip, I don't recommend watching it with sharp objects laying around. I'm trying to get it out of my head right now.

The third comes from an assignment I had in my storyboarding class. We were asked to watch some lectures online @ Ted.com. Ted is full of great lectures and inspirational talks by people who have made breakthroughs in their field of expertise. If you like TV I recommend listening to the one by JJ Abrams. The one I need to talk about comes from Sir Ken Robinson, who is British and an expert on creativity. He says a lot of interesting things about how most education systems squander the creativity of the children in school. In most cases, children will say what they think is right until they start to fear being wrong. Specifically, he talks about a Nativity play that his son was in where the wise men spoke out of the order we all think is most common when retelling the Nativity story. The first wise man stepped forward with his gift and said, "I bring you gold." The second did the same and said "I bring you myrrh." The third then came forward and said, "Frank sent this!"

Well Charlotte and I are still laughing over that one, and we agree in all three cases that we will never see the Lord of the Rings Trilogy or hear a Nativity play where we won't think of it the new way that we've heard it and roll over laughing. Its a curse that we may never take anything seriously again, but a blessing that we are able to laugh more.

I think that this is more than a good sized post, considering I haven't written anything up to this point. So I'll leave you with these nuggets and hope you all find new and interesting ways to see things without losing the original meaning and emotion. Bye.

Just Chillin

I love how chill Daphne always is! I take her to work with me when I go in for a few hours three days a week, and she's usually so good while we're there at work!

Chilling on Daddy's lap while he's working

She woke up from her nap and was just hanging out in her bed. I love how she entertains herself while she's laying there! She really is just the best baby!

She is cute while she's sleeping too, so I wanted to take this picture. She has started this past week sleeping through the night! She's done it four times this week, and I am loving getting more than 2 or 3 hours of sleep at a time!

First Laugh

Okay, yes...I have turned into one of those moms who only blogs about my baby. I can't help it! Besides the fact that I spend all my time with her, she's just so dang cute! She just laughed for the first time Sunday night. She's actually laughed in her sleep before, but this was the first time while she's been awake. I missed her first really cute laugh in this video, but this is what she was doing after that first laugh. Still very cute! (Sorry it's so dark. It wasn't that dark on my camera or on the computer before...not sure why it is so dark here...)

Halloween

For Halloween this year Daphne had a couple different outfits. At work on Friday, we decided to dress her up in the little ghost onesie we got from her Aunt Jordan. She got to be dressed up alongside her daddy, Mr. Incredible.

On Halloween, it's my sister, Kristen's birthday, so we went and had dinner at my parent's and hung out there watching a movie. Happy Birthday Kristen! We started Daphne out wearing a little pumpkin-type Halloween outfit Andrew's mom got for us a few months ago. It says "Baby's First Trick-or-Treat" on it.

Doesn't she have the cutest dimples ever?!

A fun family picture

After that outfit, we changed her again into a Minnie Mouse outfit that my sister, Rosie, gave us.

Dressed up again with daddy, this time he's Stitch.

It was a fun night, and we had fun dressing up our darling little girl, although next year I think we'll be a little more adventurous with her costume.