Trent loves his Uncle Kev and Aunt Darice

Kevin and Darice arrived on Saturday night. We spent Saturday at Mike and Tara's for the OU game, and Trent was perfectly behaved and sooo cute when he curled up in my lap and went to sleep! Oh it just melts your heart. Kevin and Darice got Trent the coolest present. It's a dinosaur that is about as tall as him from head to floor, and he can sit on its back. At first he didn't know what to make of it, and when we sat him on it he was a bit confused, but now he tries to get on it on his own and bounces on it (it doesn't actually bounce) but he rides it like it does. I think he's going to really enjoy his xmas pressie from Nana and Grandad :-)

Kevin and Darice have enjoyed spending time with Trent. The last time they hung out with him he was still very young and not as interactive as he is now. Today we hung out in his play room and went through his flash cards from Renee. This is one of his favourite toys. Today he saw the monkey card and said "mummy" and made an "uuh uhh uh" sound like a monkey. Then he also saw the yak card and repeated the word "yak" after us. It's just amazing how much he's learning right now. So very cool to watch. Every day he busts out with a new word or sign. Yesterday we were driving and he pointed to the car in front of us and signed "car".

You can tell that Trent loves his uncle Kev. He sat next to him on the couch and tried to imitate him, and he had the biggest smile on his face.

A mushy post about friends

This month marks 16 years since the best move my BFF, Barbie ever made. Moving to Texas! Early next year she and I will be celebrating our 16 year anniversary. I've always believed that boyfriends/fair weather friends come and go, but best friends are forever. Sometimes when you make friends, you immediately know you'll be friends forever. Those are the friends with whom you can be completely honest, who can handle you raw, unfiltered opinions, and will always forgive you when you disagree or hurt their feelings. This, for me, is Barbie. There are those friends who slowly become best friends over time, too. Not the same "lightening bolt" so to speak, kind of a slow charge until one day you realize that your week isn't complete unless you interact with this person (you know who you are). Then there are those who you didn't expect to become your best friend but turn out to be irreplaceable (you know who you are, too).
I remember when I first met Barbie. I was fresh off the boat, so to speak, and she had just moved down from Iowa, a cocky 17 year old who thought the world owed her. I would greet her every morning with "morning Baaaaaahb!" and she'd reply "uh.. it's BaR-BIE". And I'd laugh because she hated to be called Barb, and it cracked me up to have her correct me. She was so emphatic and animated. Her hands would go up as a visual cue for me as she sounded out the word "BaR-BIE", and her eyes would kind of dart around in her head. Y'all know the face I'm talking about. LOL!

Anyway, happy 16 years in Texas, Baaaahb! And here's to another 16 years of us laughing, fighting, and being there for each other.

quality time with Trent

Brian made his yearly trip to the race track with the Honda this past weekend. He is now certified to race without an instructor! Go Babe! Unfortunately, he wore through an entire set of brake pads, and is spending today working on getting the Honda back up to spec. He had a blast, though, and he made some very cool new friends. Hopefully he can make this a more frequent trip than just once a year. Meanwhile, Trent and I spend the whole weekend hanging out, just the two of us. I really enjoyed it, I think Trent did too.
On Saturday morning we played and watched the Disney channel, then we went for a run in the afternoon and played some more up until bed time. On Sunday we ran errands together, and had a lunch date a Whataburger. Trent was the most charming lunch date. He used his fries to eat almost a whole carton of BBQ sauce, and he only wore a little bit. We sat and chatted and used lots of sign language and Trent flirted with people as always. When we were leaving a lady came up to us and said that she was really enjoying watching how we interact with each other and she was really impressed with Trent's communication skills. It's so nice when random strangers compliment you on your kid :-)
We also had a productive weekend. Trent helped me vacuum the carpets upstairs (he sat on my hip as I pushed the hoover around), then we cleaned the floors downstairs (Trent pushed the swiffer around), we cleaned out the pantry and Trent helped me by putting things in the trash can and when I was finished, he so helpfully took something out of the trash and put it back in the pantry ;-). And then he helped me fold all the laundry by crawling on it and pulling out random things for me to fold. After a nap and chores we went out for a run to help offset the Whataburger we had for lunch, then we played and Trent took a bath, playing with his new bath boat we picked up during our errands. And we ended the day with stories until Trent signed "sleepy" and he went to bed.
I think alone time with Trent was just what I needed! I'm just so proud of my little helper.

you guys

I realized the other day that I no longer use the word "you" in its plural form (which is still "you") and instead I use "you guys". Even when I'm referring to women. I do this because in America, using you as plural confuses people and they think you're addressing just one person in a group. At least that's been my experience. I don't like how "you guys" sounds, so....

I'm going to embrace my Texanism:

Coming to a conversation near you soon...

"Y'all"

As in "y'all better not be makin' fun of my accent when I say y'all".

Dog - Free to good home

Our neighbor has a puppy he's giving away (FREE). It's a Dachshund, it's house broken, and it's great with kids.

He's giving it away because his wife says the dog 'stares' at her when she is undressing, and that gives her the heebie jeebies. I think she is just weird!

So ff you're interested, or know someone who is, let me know. Here's a picture of the dog (see below).




















Hehe. Creepy, no?

Baby Blue Tooth

It's amazing how much information toddlers absorb about their surroundings. I was blown away the other day when Trent picked up a USB thumb-drive that way laying around. My first instinct was to take it from him, but as I was about to, I noticed him putting it up to his ear and trying to talk into it, just like daddy does with his Blue Tooth headset!

There are no flies on this kid!

It's Alive!

So remember my recent post about my Canon Digital SD450 LDC screen getting shattered? Well it is now in full working order! Just call me Handy Mandie from now on :-)

The instructions I used can be found here: http://www.andyozment.com/guides/broken_lcd_cracked_screen_canon
These instructions were spot on and extremely helpful. Without them I probably would have made many mistakes and it likely would have taken many times longer. So thanks, Andy Ozment, for explaining this so well!
One small amendment to Andy's instructions:
In step 6, you actually can remove the tripod mount. I found that there were 2 small screws holding it in place on the SD450, and I undid those and the tripod mount came right out. I highly recommend doing this rather than threading paper through with the old ribbon cable. (I did try that method and broke the paper, which then caused me to look for other options).
Here are some pictures of the process...

Camera with the case removed







Camera with the LCD removed, but still attached by the ribbon cable. The white area is the LCD backlight.






This image shows a piece of paper taped to the ribbon cable so you can pull the new cable through with it. I suggest if you use this method that you use something stronger than paper, like string, instead.




This is the new LCD screen in place after it's been connected to the circuit board.






And this picture is evidence that it works! YAY!







Of course, I couldn't stop at just fixing the camera. I also wanted to understand how this happened since clearly the glass surrounding the LCD was not actually broken. So I decomposed the LCD screen layer by layer till I found the source of the crack :-)
The screen is made up of two layers of glass. One thicker outer glass, then a paper thin layer of glass, presumably with the transistors embedded into it, which is overlayed by two sheets of flexible polarizing material, with the liquid crystal between the two. The paper thin glass to which the polarizing material was attached was shattered. I still have no concrete proof that it was sound that broke the screen. But it's looking more likely.

Baby Einstein

I don't put much stock into other people's comments about their kids being geniuses, or smart, or gifted. I think every parent would like to think that their kid is special, smarter than other kids of the same age, etc. So I am posting this not to say my Trent is a genius, but just to say I'm proud of him for working so hard on his communication skills.

At school yesterday his teacher told me that they took out a sign language book, and Trent knew far more signs than anyone else in his class (even though he's the youngest).

His sign language vocabulary is quite impressive, I must admit. He's also mimicking things we say, so now's the time to "mind your Ps and Qs" so to speak. He has a toy owl (courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa's trip to Ireland) and he is very fond of it because he actually can say it's name. "Ow-el". He points to it, or holds it out to show me and says "Ow-el" very clearly. And the other day I asked him what an owl was, and he signed and said bird!

Way to go Trent! we're so proud of you.

Election 08

I can't let the presidential election results go uncommented... And I don't like to talk about politics. My views on politics are similar to my views on religion. Private. Nobody's business but mine. And if you want to shove your ideals down my throat or persecute me for mine on either subject, I'm likely to tell you to f*** off.

As a person who doesn't have the right to vote in this country, which I might add, is by choice -- I am quite eligable to become a citizen, and I have my reason for not becoming such, which far outweigh any benefit I might gain from doing so -- the most PC thing I can think to say is this:

Thank you America :-)

Get yer kit off, Jason?

Ok, I'm a huge fan of Jason Statham. I'll watch anything he's in because he usually does awesome action movies where he plays a complete and utter badass, and while he's not the best looking man on the planet, he exudes manly sexiness. I watched "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale" last night. Well, I attempted to watch it, let's put it that way. About an hour into it I declared it a complete snooze-fest. I've come to expect a certain level of gratuitous shirtlessness and greased-uppedness from Jason, based on his past films, but this movie had no such thing. At least not in the first hour. Where's the hook, man? how are you gonna keep us womenfolk watching if you dunna take yer kit off? Sure there were some fight scenes in which he was a badass, but again... shirt. Hear me, Hollywood. It's what the ladies want.

Suede rocked my LCD screen to pieces!

Check out these images of my LCD screen on my Canon SD450:



The interesting thing to note here is that the actual glass is unaffected. It's simply the LCD that is shattered. There's clearly an impact point, which would lead you to believe that something hit it. But I'm 99% sure that nothing hit it. I have no evidence to support this theory, and I've tried Googling it, but no hits, but I think that the sound produced by the band cracked my LCD! Ok, it's a far-fetched idea, but bear with me here. I mean sound waves can actually break glass. A little background on why I think this:

So the girls and I were at the cave party. Suede was playing (side note: Awesome party, very creative costumes). We went to dance and Barbie and I put our purses on top of the speaker. The camera was in my purse, which was never dropped or put in harm's way. I had taken a photo only moments before we went to dance and all was well. The next time I took the camera out, which was a few moments after retrieving my purse from the speaker (where it had stayed the whole time I was dancing), the LCD screen looked like that!

So the camera is toast. It still takes pictures, but I can't access any of the menu functions like this so we're stuck on Automatic. First instinct is to write it off and buy a new one, but the geek in me wants to take it apart and fix it, bionic man style. I blame my dad for this trait - when I was a kid, I'd always find him in the garage with the back off of a TV or the guts of a VCR hanging out, and I'd watch as he fixed it. Is it strange that I feel a little excited at the prospect of taking something apart? Anyway, I'm gonna order a new LCD and install it myself. What do I have to lose? If I pay someone to repair it, that would cost more than just buying a new camera. And if I destroy the camera, well ok, I'm out $60 and I no longer have a tiny camera that doesn't fully function and we're back to buying a new camera.

We have the technology. We can rebuild it. Wish me luck!