IT'S MARIA'S BIRTHDAY!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARIA!

IT'S HER 30TH TODAY.

Here is the link to her YELP page. Send her a compliment congratulating her on her birthday.

http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=eW-IQGFyOcqg-aKuhxKf3g

MINI LOBSTER SEASON

So, it's mini lobster season again.

Time to catch some lunch. And Dinner. And, well, breakfast too.

Problem is, I'm BOAT BITCH again. (Yes, that is an official term.) I'm our best lobsterer. Even Dad & Chris don't argue that. But last year I was pregnant, and could dive down. This year I messed up my ear. Last weekend, while we were scouting for spots, I didn't equalize properly when coming up from about 30 ft deep. The doctor says I have barometric trauma, and it will be weeks to months before my right ear stops being clogged.

Oh well. I will still be there next Wed & Thurs in a supporting role. A boat bitch takes care of the 3rd lung, the dive flag, the ladder, lobster that are brought up to the surface, keeping the boat neat... stuff like that. And I still take home some lobster.

That is the point, in the end.

MIAMI YELP RESTAURANT WEEK

JULY 20 - 26

MIAMI YELP RESTAURANT WEEK

EAT GREAT FOR CHEAP!

YELP EATS! - Please click on this link to go directly to the event page and find out even more and official details.

Eat at fabulous, fancy restaurants... FOR $25 BUCKS!

The way it works, is you pick the participating restaurant you want to go to (be sure to check out the menu). Make reservations. While making reservations, be sure to say you are with YELP.

Then you go and eat a 3 course meal (appetizer, dinner & dessert) for under $25.

Yes, this is so much better then the Miami Spice menu. Not just the food, but the prices. But that is why this is only lasting a week.

So if I were you, I'd check out the list of restaurants and the menu items and make reservations now for some time next week.

I've been to Escapozzo, and it was fabulous. When you check out the event page, if you click on their link, you can see my review of this place. It won ROTD (Review Of The Day).

Note**

That amount does not include Tax or Tip. Always tip well for good service (20%).

GET UP, STAND UP, STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

Here is our little democrat, standing up for what she believes in.

Right now, she believes she'll have another bottle.

(Just like her daddy!)

AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A G THANG

Well, there is no questioning that Joey is crawling now. It isn't a matter of a few steps; she will crawl clear across a room if something she wants to explore is on the other side.

BUT...

Joey has a gangster pimp lean.

She is "crawling" with her left knee and her right foot.

Okay, think about what a baby looks like on all fours, on their knees. Now picture a baby in the squat or froggy position, almost sitting but really resting their weight on their hands and feet with their but dropped so that I almost touches the floor. Now split the images and put them together. That is how Joey is crawling... with a gangster pimp lean. Fo Shizzle my nizzle!

It's hysterical. I need to capture it on film and put it on YouTube. But whenever I turn the camera on, she stops, because she wants to look at the camera then. She knows the camera does something.

She is also standing on her own for a split second at a time. She has been pulling herself up on things for a while. She especially likes to use the magazine rack, where she was then able to slobber on and destroy part of the TIME commemorative issue of the inauguration (which happens to also be the week of her birth). Mark and I play a game with her that we call Mt. Mommy or Mt. Daddy. We lay on the floor and she tries to climb over us or some part of us. Well she keeps pulling herself up to standing, using our bodies, and then lets go. Of course, only to fall a split second later. She sure is proud and happy with herself though. I think she is going to hurt her cheeks smiling that hard; it's like she trying to get the corner of her lips to touch her earlobes. I know a certain grandpa that has a smile like that.

ALL MOMMY IS SAYING IS GIVE PEAS A CHANCE.

Joey's first real food (other then rice cereal) was peas.

And she did not like them at first. I have video of it. The faces were hysterical.

But once I gave up on the bowl and spoon and let her play with it, she actually ate more.

Sorry she can't tell you herself, but she doesn't talk with her mouth full.

Now mabye we can introduce the utensils again. Changing outfits 3 times a day gets tiring after a while.

JOEL STEIN IS SERIOUSLY FUNNY

Afterbirth: It's What's For Dinner
By Joel Stein Friday, Jul. 03, 2009

There is so much you can't know about your spouse when you get married, like that one day she will want to eat her placenta. But there are two things you don't argue about with a pregnant woman: what she eats and that being full of life indeed looks sexy. So when Cassandra told me that for $275, a woman would come to our house, cook Cassandra's placenta, freeze-dry it and turn it into capsules to help ward off postpartum depression and increase milk supply, I said, "$275 is a bargain compared with the $20,000 I'll have to spend to tear out our kitchen immediately afterward."

Most mammals, Cassandra explained, eat their placentas, to which I countered that most dogs eat their poop. I stopped arguing there, figuring that like many of Cassandra's hippie ideas — the compost bin, rubbing lemon on her underarms instead of deodorant — she'd give up on this in a few weeks. Even as the due date approached and she was still set on eating her placenta, I couldn't imagine that she'd remember to request it from the doctor after the most physically draining experience of her life. This is a woman who, 9 times out of 10, forgets the bag of leftovers at the restaurant.

Though I am exceedingly squeamish, when my son was born, I was shocked that I saw only the beauty of childbirth. Until the placenta came out. There are many normal human reactions to seeing a placenta, ranging from screaming to vomiting to warding it off with a cross. For those of you who have never seen one, the placenta is to the baby what Stephen Baldwin is to Alec Baldwin. It's what your liver would look like if it got into an accident on the autobahn with one of those aliens from Mars Attacks! and their bloody carcasses threw jellyfish at each other.

When the placenta did come out, Cassandra, dazed from 21 hours of labor, somehow made sure the nurses delivered it to us in a flat plastic container, which I put into an ice-filled Monsters vs Aliens cooler I brought. When I asked if I could keep the placenta overnight in the refrigerator out in the hall, the nurses looked at me like I was crazy. When you gross out people who work at a hospital, you have accomplished something.

In a fog, I drove the placenta home, where I wrapped the container in a bag and wrapped that bag in a bag and wrapped that bag in every remaining bag we had in the house. I slept at the hospital that night, grateful that my son will never remember what his parents just did.

The next day I drove back to the house to meet the placenta lady, Sara Pereira. To my surprise, Sara did not look unkempt, frumpy, heavy or in any way like a Wiccan. She got into placenta-cooking after taking a Chinese-medicine course and has already prepared more than two dozen placentas this year — and orders are picking up rapidly. When I asked Sara if her parents were embarrassed by what she does, she told me that her father sells bull semen.

By law, Sara has to cook the placenta at the placenta owner's home. But to my great relief, she brought her own equipment, gloves, sponges and even more detergent than I'd hoped, scrubbing constantly as she worked. If I ever kill a man in my own home, I am totally calling the placenta lady. (watch video)

As she steamed the placenta with some herbs, the kitchen got that ironlike smell of cooked organ meat, with vague undertones of a consciousness-raising group and a Betty Friedan rally. Sara said Cassandra had a particularly robust placenta, and she hoped to get 120 pills out of it. As she sliced the cooked organ and put it on parchment paper in a dehydrator, she told me that some people drink the placenta raw as a smoothie. "I do this for a living, and I couldn't do that," she said. The pills, she explained, were superior, since Cassandra could stretch their hormone-rich benefits much further, perhaps even freezing some for menopause. Sara did not understand that when Cassandra's looks fade in her 50s, there's no way I'm putting up with this crap.

I drove back to the hospital where, thanks to my experiences, the food looked good. When we got home the following day, Sara gave us a truly beautiful placentapill presentation: a pretty glass jar, a card, a CD of lullabies and a satin pouch. In which was part of my son's umbilical cord, fashioned into a heart. When I asked Sara what the hell I was supposed to do with that, she said people often use it to keep a baby's first tooth and lock of hair. That's when I realized that placenta-eating is really just the beginning of how gross we humans are. And I went to change my first diaper.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1908194,00.html
(above is link to actual article on TIME website)

BLOWING STUFF UP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U037NlsK1EE

watch the boys blow up a trash can on the 4th of July.
And then you can save the you tube page, as I will continue to add stuff.

JOEY CRAWLED!

Sorry no pic, but it is kind of an in-motion thing. I am going to maybe sign up for a YOUTUBE account, so that I can post videos. This afternoon Joey went left hand, right, left & then right again with her knees following in a forward motion. I think that constitutes crawling. (In volleyball, it takes 3 times over the net to count as a volley, this was 4.)

We haven't actually finished safetying the house. Guess that is being moved up the to-do-list in priority. So is buying some more rugs. (Birthday/Christmas ideas... anyone? anyone at all?)

She SAT UP BY HERSELF for the first time this weekend too. I mean, she has been sitting really well for about a month now (she is 5 1/2). But she was on her belly and got into a seated position all by herself. Mark saw it first. But I finally saw her do it today.

Now the question is when will she walk? I walked at 8 1/2, Mark at 13.
When will she talk? Mark was talking at 9 months and my mom doesn't remember with me. (Isn't that a shame?) We know that I walked before I talked, and that I was talking before a year. But I was also bilingual and my first word was Spanish (Mira - look).

4th OF JULY

We had a bunch of family & friends down to the keys house for 4th of July. Sorry there aren't many pictures... we were too busy having fun to pic up the camera. Or we were afraid it would get wet.

Doyle & Maddie came to visit from Jacksonville. So did Melissa. Matt, Mandy & Austin came for the day, and Madison stayed over night. Terry & Gail rode down, and Tara & Joe stayed the night. Andy & Shawn were part of the work crew and came down Thurs. And you know you can never get rid of Brendon.

One pair of dads... zero parental responsibility.

Doc & Doyle: the next generation.

Bosom buddies from the start.

I can't begin to tell you how entertaining it was to watch these two play.

(Especially the part when Maddie sat on Jo-Jo's head.)

We went to breakfast by boat on Sunday morning.

Joey is in her spiffy new life vest, courtesy of Matt & Mandy.

(She thinks it tastes great!)

WHO'S GOT ME?

Melissa came all the way JUST to visit me.

And she even followed me to the Keys, to visit me there too.

Aren't I special.

Meyers Cousins

A day of fun in the sun at the beach.

Well, sorta.

We went to Deerfield Beach to visit some of the Meyers that were in town. But it rained almost the entire time. We did go in the pool for a bit, and stick our toes in the ocean.

Joey really seems to be enjoying the pool more but still isn't too crazy about the sucking motion of the waves going back out.

Hi Daddy!

Gotta disagree with you on this one mom.

Not fun.

Now pick me up.

Mandy & Jen.

Who's got me?

Alright, everybody in the pool!

(In the distance, is Andy w/Owen, Madison & Uncle Tom. In the foreground is Austin & Papa Rick.)