Check it out!

Chris was mentioned in a BYU article about a research paper on profanity in teen movies. He worked on the paper while in grad school with three of his professors and it was recently published in some swanky professional journal. How very cool! He’s only just briefly mentioned although he did the majority of the coding and man-work behind the paper. Oh well. At least he was getting paid to watch all those movies!

(lame photo courtesy of BYU)

Update: The Deseret News also posted an article on the research as well. While the article itself isn't great, the comments people left are. Especially the one in which the person called for the professors to be fired since they made impressionable young minds watch movies with swear words, which is funny because they only watched movies that were PG-13 or PG, and they were all movies that we had already seen at some point before. Chris left a comment there as well to set the record straight.

It’s been a long week

A certain little boy has been quite a handful this week. I’m not sure what exactly is bothering him but I’m putting my money on his molars that keep coming in little by little. Plus, he refuses to eat just about everything. Even his favorite foods and snacks won’t tempt him.

Art seems to calm him down. When we color, he wants Chris or I to draw him cars over and over, while he watches and cheers us on. I was getting a little tired of cars so to distract him from his tantrums and general crankiness, I pulled out some paints for him to play with. And it worked. He concentrated on those paints for a good hour.

  He liked to get giant globs on paint on the brush before he would put it on the paper.

The paints are now a mess but that’s how Brendan likes it. He was more interested in mixing the colors than actually putting them down on the paper. Eventually every single color was turned brown.

And of course, we ended up with paint on his shirt; so that came off and Brendan proceeded to paint his body.

I can’t help but love his creative side.

Passing on the tradition

Last week, we were enjoying some black olives with our dinner- one of Chris’s favorite things- when Brendan decided that it was time to stop eating and start playing again. He quickly found out that the olives make perfect finger puppets.

He thought he was so funny, and you know what- he was. We all had a good laugh. It’s a good thing my camera happened to be in the kitchen that evening.

He had some help but we finally got an olive on each finger. I think just about every kid does this.

He even tried eating one but that only lasted a second. He didn’t even bite into it. As soon as it hit his tongue, he spit it out. I’m quite surprised I got this picture, in fact. He may not eat them, but he sure does love playing with them.

Maine was fun

We had a great time this weekend in Portland playing, sight-seeing and eating lots of yummy food. It was so nice to get out of town and do something different- I just wish the weather had been better. It was a little chilly on Saturday so we didn’t get to enjoy all of our activities as much as I would have liked.

We went to the Children’s Museum of Maine and Brendan had a BLAST there.

They had so many activities and interactive stations, which is so great when you have a toddler with a short attention span. Brendan loved running from one thing to the next. He’d stop for a second and then zoom off to the next cool thing.

Brendan particularly liked the building station. He spent a good amount of time here and was the only kid at the table when we were there. It was a nice break from the crowd.

We had a bit of a tantrum when we left but what else is new? We carried him screaming and crying to the car and he calmed down once I gave him a piece of gum. He loves gum.

We headed to the beach despite the cold weather because what would a trip to Portland be without the beach? It wasn’t the ideal conditions for spending the afternoon outside but Brendan didn’t mind at all.

Of course Brendan was interested in the rocks.

He found a big one and had fun throwing it in the water. It took him a few tries to make it there but he finally got it in the ocean.

He even found a seagull to chase.

I was surprised by how much he liked the water. I thought he wouldn’t go near it but he was so excited and I couldn’t stop him from getting wet.

The only thing was that he kept getting in deeper and deeper until he was in up to almost his knees. He couldn’t quite keep his balance in the water that deep so he proceeded to fall over into the ocean. He was soaked. 

The funny thing was he wasn’t crying because he fell in and got wet. Oh no. He was crying because he was angry that I was making him get out and leave. Next time, I’ll make sure we go when the weather will be warm enough that he can swim to his heart’s content.

We had such a good time and we can’t wait to go back again.

Coming to you live from Portland, Maine

We are currently sitting in a Courtyard Marriott hotel room, watching Brendan run around the room and partying like it's 1999. We needed a getaway so we decided to head to the coast. Portland, Maine has much to offer and we're looking forward to spending the weekend here but for now, the hotel is proving to be enough for Brendan. The first thing he did was jump on the bed and dive into the pillows. He's had so much fun jumping around and laughing his little heart out. I think he'll sleep good tonight.

Hope everyone has a memorable and enjoyable holiday weekend! We'll be back on the blog in a couple days.

Chris is a Super Star!

Chris had his first solo article published online today about Twitter. You can go here to read it. Way to go, babe!

It must be a boy thing

This was all Brendan's doing. Well, actually Chris and I had to help him get the underwear on his head since he couldn't quite do that on his own but it was all his idea. I bought him Cars underwear in hopes of using them when we start potty training sometime in the future but he got a hold of them and decided they would best be used as a head accessory.

And he topped it all off by wearing one of my necklaces too. I think it's a good combination.


I swear, I don't know where he gets this from and I have no idea what prompted him to do this. All I know is that all he wants to do now is put his underwear on his head and run around like a maniac. And we'll let him.