New Moon: The Review

So, I just got home from the theater and I've got some good news.

First off, GNO was a success.  I feel like I just had a vacation.  My friends and I had a lot of fun.

Second (and the part everyone wants to know), the movie was good.  That's right, I said good.  Actually, now that I think about it I'm going to go ahead and say it was really great!  I loved it.  A lot.

I feel that the screenwriter and the director did a fabulous job with Mrs. Meyers book.  And even though they took some artistic license, changing things up a little, none of the changes were drastic enough to bother me.  There were times when I felt  the deviations from the original storyline were pure genius, only adding to the plot.

Director, Chris Weitz, was able to breathe life into the characters--giving them personalities--an area I feel Catherine Hardwicke failed, epically.  I found myself caring about the characters again, though yeah, Bella is grating on my nerves.  But I suppose that's to be expected since I've never really liked Bella all that much.  The thing is, I'm not sure if it's Bella I can't stand or if its just Kristen Stewart.  Maybe both? 

Which brings me to my only real criticism of the movie: I don't think Kristen Stewart can act.  I gave her a free pass after seeing Twilight, but that's only because everything about that movie was horrible.  All the actors seemed to struggle in Twilight and I was fully willing to blame their short-comings on poor direction.  But now, with a new director, all the actors seem to thrive while Kristen Stewart just... doesn't.  Okay, and Taylor Lautner kind of sucks, too, but not half so bad [as his wig].  So yeah, not liking Kristen.

I want to mention that I really like Billy Burke in the roll of Charlie, Bella's dad.  He does an awesome job and really, I can't see anyone else do better.  Billy is Charlie.

The Volturi?  Exactly as I pictured them.  EXACTLY! 

Oh! And did I mention that I love the wolf pack?  'Cause I do.  I love love love them!  I feel they were, for the most part, well cast.  I mean, amirite?

Sam, Jared, Paul, and Embry, the wolf pack sans Jacob.

Anyway, like I said, I loved the movie.  I think it is well worth seeing (more then once).  And girls, I think there is enough action that guys will like seeing it too... maybe (there still is a lot of teenage angst and brooding but I don't think my husband will mind.  Not after seeing the the showdown in Italy.  That's right I said showdown).

P.S. Am I the only woman in the world that doesn't think Edward is attractive?  I'm pretty sure I am.  But seriously, I just don't get why everyone is losing it over this guy:

Unattractive much?  I think yes.  I mean, with his smashed-in nose, angular face and freakishly pale skin there are times I could swear I'm looking at Lord Voldemort.  That's right, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!  Not Sexy!   

Girls Night Out

It is Girls Night Out at Bitner Manor. Tonight I am going out sans kids and husband and meeting up with a few of my close friends. What are we going to do, you ask? Oh, you know, the usual: dinner, dessert, girls' talk--nothing out of the ordinary... unless you think it's weird that--around at the stroke of midnight--we'll transform into these squeeing, love-sick fangirls:


That's right, we're going to see New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight saga.

I know, I know, I can't believe I'm going to go see New Moon either. Ever since I read Breaking Dawn I've become a very out-spoken critic of the series. And I was extremely disappointed in the first movie of the Twilight Saga. I even wrote about it. Despite all my criticism I've always maintained that New Moon is my favorite book in the series. Besides, this movie was directed by Chris Weitz not Catherine Hardwicke, so I figure it cannot possibly be worse then the last movie (knock on wood).

Anyway, I'm excited!  I'm grateful that I have a husband who puts up with my love/hate relationship with the Twilight series and is cool with my going out tonight--a school night.  I'm glad I have an opportunity to go out with my friends.  And even if the movie is the worst thing to ever grace the big screen, I'll still have a great time (though I won't hesitate to post a scathing review here).

Here's to vampires, werewolves, irritating protagonists, Girls Night Out, good friends, and awesome (read: patient) husbands (I love you Duane.  You are My Jacob, which, in my book, is a very very good thing)!

TEAM JACOB!

P.S. Speaking of Duane, he now has his very own blog.  Check it out.

Visit to the Pediatrician's office

Matilda and Malia patiently waiting for the Nurse Practitioner.

So, the other day I took Malia and Matilda to the pediatrician for their check-ups. Overall it was a good visit, until the needles came out--I'll talk about that later. Get this: Matilda weighed in at 30 lbs, 1 oz! And Malia? Weighed in at 40 lbs, even. The best part is Malia is 4 years old (-ish... her birthday is in July) and Matilda is 19 months. The fact that there is only a ten pound difference between the two, isn't lost on me.

Am I worried that Matilda is so big? Not-so-much. Why? Because Mayah and Malia were exactly the same when they were her age: very chubby. And it was around the 18 month mark their weight plateaued, staying the same for another year or so. So, no, I am not worried. And anyway, I love chubby babies/toddlers, especially when they are as cuddly as my Matilda.

When it came time for the Nurse Practitioner to ask questions, things got a little wild. What I mean is, Malia started tickling Matilda--who is insanely ticklish--and before I knew it things got a little out of control. And by 'out of control' I mean it was as if there was a clown convention going on in that tiny room: all sorts of giggling, shrieking, and examination table paper crinkling like mad. Neither the Nurse nor I could concentrate. So, I did what any rational mother would do: I separated the two of them. Unfortunately this didn't help matters much.

You see, at first I tried to hold Matilda in my lap, but since she was so wound up she wasn't having it. So after struggling with her for a short while, I placed her on the floor. It was at this point that she decided to spin around in circles, laughing like a hyena, because she was getting the full attention of the Nurse Practitioner.

Remembering that my mom--who was visiting at the time--was sitting out in the waiting room, I excused myself and got her so she could help me control Matilda while I answer questions. Thankfully, this worked and we finally got through all the questions--only losing about 10-ish minutes overall.

It was at this point the subject of shots was brought up...

So, yeah... here's the deal: the girls are a little behind on their immunizations. And by 'a little' I mean 'a lot'. Of course I'm embarrassed about it, which is why I've been putting off going to the doctors office, which, of course, only made matters worse.

Fortunately the Nurse Practitioner understood my apprehension about getting my girls immunized--you know, with Mayah and all--and I didn't feel judged, which was nice. She figured we could get them caught up within the next few months or so. Unfortunately that meant the girls would be getting five shots each before we went home.

It was so sad! Malia was 9 months old the last time she had an immunization shot so she had no idea what was about to happen to her. And of course, being the middle child, she was happy to have the attention of TWO nurses, so she was all smiles. They had me hold her arms while they explained to her that she was going to get five pokes, and she started to giggle innocently. It was at at this point that I wanted to cry or have someone slap me (repeatedly) for being a bad mother. And if I could have, I would have taken all five of those shots for her.

Long story short: she cried. A lot. And she said "Mommy, NO!" over and over again until they were done (which only took about thirty seconds but felt like a ba-zillion years). When they finished with her she gave both nurses the stink-eye and I told her not to be mad at them. And after they brought her a Popsicle, she wasn't.

When it was Matilda's turn, the first two shots didn't even make her cry. It was during the third shot that she started to waiver. And the fourth shot pushed her over the edge into full-fledged screaming--it was so sad. Thankfully, she only had one more to go, and she was done. But afterward she held onto me tight while she sobbed.

Shots are the worst! I really hate them. Because every time one of my kids get them, I cry too. I try not to, because, man is it embarrassing! But I can't help it. I wish immunizations didn't have to be so dang painful. And I wish I didn't have to take Matilda and Malia back in two months to get more (because they are so behind).

But like I said, the visit wasn't so bad: both girls are healthy and getting caught up with their immunizations, which is a good thing, right? Now I don't have to be embarrassed to take them into the doctor's office.

P.S. After the we left the doctor's office, I went to Target to get some children's Tylenol. I also got the girls an inexpensive present for being so brave. Oh! And some candy. I know, I am such a freaking pushover sometimes. But in my defense: FIVE SHOTS EACH!!!

The Blog Thief

I swiped the following blog post off a blog belonging to my friend, Alisa. My reasons are two-fold: 1. I could see how my list stacks up to Alisa's and, 2. I could blog about it. 'Cause, we all know that I've been a major slacker in the posting department (okay, also in the reading-of-other-blogs-and-commenting department. My bad). Basically, I'm trying to get into the habit of blogging again. So, without further ado:

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ()
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( )
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ( )
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (X)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ()
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ()
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( )
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis ()
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( )
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( ) *
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon (X)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( ) *
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( x)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( )
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ()
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ()
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )*
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ()
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

I can't believe I've only read 21 of the 100 books listed above (for the record, Alisa read 36-ish books on the list). It's funny, I've had every intention to read the majority of the books on this list but never got around to actually picking them up. Some of books listed I actually did pick up but never finished. Sad. Anyway, I guess I'd better get myself to the library and knock out some more books on this list.

My Baby is 18 (Months), Today!

Matilda enjoying snack time in Nursery

Can you believe it? Yeah, neither can I. It seemed like she was never going to be old enough to be in Nursery. Okay, so eighteen months isn't that long. But, when I measure that time in the amount of stinky diapers I've changed--for her alone--well, then it just seems like forever.

Now I give time permission to really, really slow down so I can savor the next few years of her life.

An Afternoon at the Park

I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Puppy Party

No, I did not just purchase a puppy for my kids - I'm not crazy. But my kids, particularly Malia, are quite fond of puppies. So we have quite a few stuffed toy puppies. A lot, actually.

The best part about all the stuffed puppies?

All the puppy parties I discover...

Just one of many puppy parties I've had to break up recently.

I especially love the real slice of bread they seem to be sharing. Perhaps it's a table? By-the-way, Malia is the culprit. She's the one who insists on feeding her toys real food. Silly kid.

Kids are the best, aren't they?

P.S. The above picture reminds me of that really classy portrait of dogs playing poker. You know, this one: