bling

Posted on 01/01/2016 by amberunraveled

Daddy was on daycare duty while O was at an audition a few weeks ago. He text me this adorable picture of W enjoying her new favorite place sweet frog frozen yogurt.

awww cute.

Then he text me back and says “notice anything?”

Oh god, new baby earrings!!! So adorable!! C has to do that stuff because I can’t watch. He said her eyes got all big and when they walked away she looked him square in the eye and said “They HURT me”. Sooooo sad 🙁

I was really unsure if she would keep them in or mess with them because she didn’t really ask for them like O did. But She loved them! She kept showing everybody “Look at my earrings.” She was so proud and she even twists them herself.

pfizer

Posted on 01/01/2016 by amberunraveled

O just wrapped her first big time commercial.

It was probably the biggest one she has done so far in terms of competition and work involved on her part. Her BandAid commercial ended up being really big but it was nonunion to start so none of the union pros were able to audition. This commercial was a union job so all the union kids auditioned in addition to any nonunion kids. She had a couple solid lines and a principal role in the shoot.

I must admit I was nervous, we go on these auditions and typically the odds are so stacked against you that you leave and don’t think much more about it. (ok, well that’s such a lie because I think about it every day until I hear it books!)

I took her to the first audition, also called first round/call. We had just been to the same casting office a week or so earlier for a different huge casting (20 kids for a school class) which I was sure she would have booked but alas I will never know what casting is looking for. She did get a callback for that one too but ended up not booking! Bummer.

I will never understand this business and as much as I retrospectively analyze each experience it never paints a clear picture. We arrived on time and hung out in the waiting room. The casting director came out and informed all us moms there were lines for the audition so we all scrambled to get our kids prepped last minute. Usually we get the script ahead of time to practice but this was only a one-liner so it was no big deal. O ran lines a couple times then was called back and skipped her way into the audition room. But when she came out O came out with this look of sadness on her face I was immediately in mad-mom mode wondering what these people said to her.

“what happened, what’s wrong?” she informed me that casting asked her to do other lines that weren’t for her age. LOL. Good thing? Bad thing? One will never know. Except I did learn during the shoot the client thought O was hilarious because she apparently told casting in the audition “those aren’t my lines“. And she was right. And they loved her ‘tude I guess.

Then the callback audition.

This was awful timing for me and C so Grandmom ventured out this time. All was smooth sailing and O said she had fun and did a few more new lines.

O then got a “hold” placed on her, which is when they want specific kids to be available to them while they figure out which one they will use for the shoot.

When we got the booking call I was nervous and excited.

It’s a lot of pressure wondering how O will be feeling the day of the shoot, if she will be into it or pick that day to decide she’s over this whole “acting” thing.

To top it off O woke up with pink eye two days before the shoot. I was FREAKING. Luckily I treated her with medication I had and it went away pretty quick but she totally woke up full blown sick sick sick the day after the shoot. I did learn a little stress reliever while on set – union gigs always book a back up kid in case things don’t work out with the first pick. PHEW. There were two for O’s role, two for her fake older brothers role and two sets of twins for the baby sister role! That was crazy because all the babies were cranky too. The very last baby of the four ended up working out for the shot.

She cracks me up with these roles. Whenever she gets off book for an audition she always incorporates new language from the audition or the characters name into daily play with her sister. She did a voicover audition for a fairy role and had t say “whoopsie-doodle”. Now her and W say “Whoopsi-doodle” all the time. And she makes us call her by her character name all the time too. Maybe she is a method actor? har har.

The shoot ended up going great. It was a lot of work for her but she nailed it. It should air in February – I will be sure to post it 1 million times everywhere I can as soon as I get my hands on it.

wondering stuff

Posted on 11/13/2015 by amberunraveled

Do you ever wonder about very deep, random stuff? The existence of man and the depths of the universe? There is such small small small stuff, like an atom and then such large large large concepts like a galaxy. It’s hard for my small mind to wrap around. I’m usually so busy with the really important shit in my own world, like oh damn I have to cook dinner again, when will this ever end? I don’t often have time to just wonder about stuff, plus it creeps me out real bad.

O mentioned something to me today in the car and it made me remember a concept I spent a lot of time thinking about in my younger days, she said something like “oh look the grass is green again” or something to that effect and it made me curious if she was seeing the same colors I was. As well as briefly wonder, what was the color of the grass before it became green again?

It’s one of those mind *uck’s ~~man will never~~, I will never understand. Scientists probably tested this stuff long ago and I am just behind the times. But if people can be color blind and not even know it then there has to be a chance I see green and someone else sees blue but we are trained to recognize our colors to be called what they are. Is this even a thing? Can this be possible? Am I high right now? Maybe. I do feel a bit jittery and feverish. As I even started typing this for absolutely no purpose but because I have been really MIA lately on the blog all these things keep popping in my head, like what about instincts, what the fuck are those? How do we have instincts still? And how am I sick right now, this is total bullshit. How can I be sick and people walking on the damn moon? It’s not right, seriously.

potty

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

We have a book “everybody potties”. Girls do it, boys do it, Grandma does it,Kitty does it, Puppy does it… and that’s basically the book. It’s cute and its that thick cardboard so your kids can chew on it and won’t be able to shred all the pages into subway lettuce like a gerbil in heat. Why do kids shred paper? It’s like this instinctual impulse to just destroy, everything. I can;t even build blocks with my kids because it’s always a fight. O has got the hang of it finally but W is like Godzilla still, no building or structure is safe. Maybe they learned it from the dog? She is a major shredder though her specialty is diapers. She doesn’t like the clean ones, the dirtier the better, it’s a sickness really.

Anyway I found this image of our book, I keep it in the car for light reading in traffic.

So I got this for O when she was small and W likes to read it in the car. All you have to say is “Pee-pee” and they go ape-shit laughing like hyenas on crack. If you say “Poop” there’s no coming back from that you will likley have an accident of some sort.

SOOO on to the point, O was begging me to read her “book” she is obsessed with making books these days, and I am annoyed because like any real mom I am always trying to do something that requires my full attention and I am never able to give my full attention to anything because someone is inevitably always requiring something of me AT ALL TIMES > wow, that seems harsh and awkward and a little violent but you know what I’m saying don’t act like you don’t.

So I take a break from whatever it is I am doing to look at her book because. And this is what I find…

Cover. Awwww. She can write her name so I am not sure what this says but it has a heart and a little girl so I say “Awwww”

Page 1. WHAT??? HAHAHHA OMG this is a COMEDY, ok damn well if I knew that I would have read it a long time ago, I LOVE comedies. Dude. Leslie Patricelli better watch her back because O is like totally as good an artist, (if not better since she’s 4) than that lady’s artist, or that lady if she does her own artwork.

then this page. BOOM > that’s what I’m screaming. what. She is clearly on the potty and she is doing her thang. Now, don’t be judgy – I don;t know if that’s the sink or one of those things you use on the beach to search for coins and other relativley metal things, or maybe she’s watching her iPad? I’m not sure, but you know what, it doesn’t even matter. Because my 4 year old writes books biatches and I can actually read them. I am like SO PROUD. She is so funny. And awesome and cute and smart and I just want to SQUEEZE her so hard that her eyes bug out. But in a loving way not a violent way.

Oh BTW when I was looking for the potty book image I found this:

This is so going in C’s stocking this year. I might buy everyone one.

box trolls

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

O. M. G. this movie was horrible. Not only are these things totally creepy but the movie was weird and dark. Guess it was my fault for not looking at the rating before we had family movie night and watched this awful train wreck. I just assumed cartoon – kids, plus C’s mom was talking about how the daily shows were all touting that someone carved all these figurines and positioned them all individually throughout the whole movie so it wasn’t computer generated or something – that could all be rumor mill though I wasn’t interested in this enough to find out so I have no clue what the facts are…

***spoiler alert***

What I do know is the movie was creepy, the trolls were creepy and at the end during the big monologue of individuality where the bad guy smashes all the trolls with a big stamper O lost her shit and flipped the F out and I was left dumbfounded staring at the TV thinking WHAT THE F IS THE RATING ON THIS SHOW!!!???? Yes, again bad parenting I should have done my HW. Obviously the trolls were all fine and had snuck, (WTF is “snuck” not a word? Spell check keeps telling me it’s not a word. What is the problem – what is past tense for sneaked???)

Anyway all the trolls had escaped their boxes and all was well with the world, happy ending tra-la-la, but still to see O completely devastated made me want to hurt people. Whatever. Lesson learned, although the rating thing only would help with the creepy-ness of the movie because O has since had complete and utter breakdowns from Big Hero 6 and Home. It saddens me that she got stuck with my emotional instability. I just watched the latest Fast and Furious and cried like an infant. So sad!!!

AND to top it off my kids want to wear boxes like all the time. Its so annoying to try to cut holes in boxes. Big Hero and Home are totally EXCELLENT movies. I mean, who doesn’t love Jim Parsons?

fair

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

We took the kids to the fair last week. I am excited just thinking about it. I love taking the girls to do fun stuff. Plus I have been shooting a webseries on the weekends so I wanted to do something fun and special with them. Plus, plus I wanted to see how W did on the rides because I want to plan a Disney trip.

O being herself. Hollywood 24/7.

Look at that face! She was so adorable. I was nervous she was going to blow a gasket because she’s all in the “do-it-myself” phase which literally makes me want to throw shit. There is a lot of stuff that drives me crazy that I have been able to let go of since having kids; like order, hygiene, a clean house… but when I am in a rush, like every morning – I don’t have time to watch you take 27 minutes to put on your underwear, W. Nor do I have time for you to change your outfit 64 times, O. I am just about capped on my maximum OCD tolerance. I digress…

Anyway I thought W was going to loose her shit and fight me standing next to her on the carousel but she let me hold on to her. Actually I was pretty bummed because C bought them both unlimited ride bracelets before we realized W was too small to ride any rides!

Lucky for us this fair wasn’t too strict on rules and let W onto the rides anyway! We just watched the rides first to make sure there weren’t size restrictions for a reason… like the higher up ones.

That was her first ride by herself, she had this weird face the entire time and she didn’t move a muscle, O had the same reactions on her first rides when she was little! We were like… “is she scared?’ “is she going to cry?” “why is her face like that?”

Then she got off and wanted to do it again, and again, and again so we knew she loved it.

W reallllly liked all the rides that were horses. I think she would totally *love* to ride horses when she grows up but I doubt C will ever let that happen. I used to ride horses for years when I was younger and decided to pick the hobby back up after I met C. He would come watch me in my lessons sometimes and decided I wasn’t very good. Just because I got thrown off a lot doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good rider, I like to think I had very challenging horses – therefore I was actually an excellent rider… but anyway –

They let her on a bunch of rides she was too small for – oops!

We were safe about it though. This little kid swing was awesome.

C won a prize throwing a baseball at a wall of bottles. He had to break a bottle. He’s so manly and strong.

O and W played this game of throw a ball in a hole – win a prize. O picks a cute blow up pony. Ugh, W not so much.

She picked some crazy ass purple alien. Whats worse is the damn thing stands up by itself and she puts it in odd places throughout the house and scares the shit out of me. She also put stickers all over its face for some reason. Creepy.

Ssssso fun. I want to try Dutch Wonderland next.

snapper

Posted on 06/03/2015 by amberunraveled

I have done a garden every year with moderate success. We have great morning sun and lots of ground so it’s pretty easy to get veggies to grow around the yard. Last year C made me a really great formal looking veggie garden and we had tons of veggies that went to waste. Every year we say we are going to only plant one of each type of veggie plant like cucumber or zucchini but then I always plant two in case one dies and then I feel to guilty to pull up the other one because it’s like alive and all and I don’t want to kill it. So weird, I know.

I experimented this year and did Lima Beans and Broccoli. I have never done these before and didn’t care too much if they worked or not so I just planted them right in the ground, oh I did spinach too.

I dug a trench and put in spinach and the broccoli. The next day I saw the Guniea Hens in my garden with big holes all in the areas I planted the seeds. Ok. That round was done for. No biggie.

Well a few weeks later I planted a row of sunflower seeds and they came up all nice and neat and then a whole bunch of other stuff came up all jumbled in a group. It’s lima beans, broccoli and 1 small spinach plant.

We are working on replanting the front too because the super cold winter killed a lot of our plants out front. Ugh so much work.

To my surprise a friendly (NOT!) snapping turtle took a liking to my small zucchini also. We were all staring at this prehistoric beast and realized it was acting all weird, like in a trance. I knew from my extensive National Geographic watching (and C said he knew from that kid sea turtle movie) that it was nesting!

How crazy is that?! Like real life NatGeo. I’m scared now we will have an infestation of snapping turtles.

O did some amazing artwork at school to represent our little turtle family.

barre

Posted on 05/21/2015 by amberunraveled

I’m not a runner. Or a swimmer, or a weight-lifter, body-pumepr, jazzerciser, zumba dancer… you get the point. But I do have constant disgust and guilt about not doing any types of physical activity. Especially when I wake up in the morning and my bones hurt and I’m stiff and arthritic. It’s depressing. So last year I tried Insanity and it was total torture and I hated every second of it.

This year I finally got around to trying Barre. I’ve been wanting to do it for like – ever. There is a studio down the street from where I was working last summer and when I would walk to Subway on sunny days for lunch I would sit and chew my pickles and stare longingly with all the rest of the pervs eating lunch – at a perfectly sculpted female buttox in the studio window. I would daydream about rocking a thong that summer on family vacation… just kidding. My kids would be like, uh your butt is hanging out mommy, grossss.

So anyway – ironically there is a studio by my house and my awesome MIL bought me some sessions for xmas, SCORE>>>>

Unfortunately, they don’t watch kids so it’s like impossible to ever go but when I do get there I actually enjoy it and have fun. I can’t walk the next day but I feel proud.

I found this picture online and sent it to my friend and C to show them how painful it was in class.

The irony is I was like “I’m the girl dying” and they were both like, “oh, in blue??”

“No guys. This is not a real picture and that is not really me.”

Guess the joke was on me that I picked a photo with someone who actually did look like me.

dammit

Posted on 02/22/2015 by amberunraveled

As a mother I try to avoid profanity as much as possible so in moments of utter frustration I tend to huff really loud similar to an animal giving birth.

something like: uggggghhhhhhhhhHHHHHH in various tones and pitches.

However, O just informed me “when something goes wrong, I need to yell DAMMIT really loud“.

Sounds legit.

shadow box

Posted on 02/20/2015 by amberunraveled

I was reading this blog a while back I found on Pinterest (shocker) and this lady had made these shadow boxes for her kids that were super freaking cute. Like so cute I went to Michael’s and bought a bunch of miscellaneous crap without the slightest plan, rhyme or reason. Just a wild hair. That is the story of my life, I will randomly see something and become so inspired that I spend every waking hour obsessing over it until I get it out of my system. It’s like these little spastic fits of creativity and motivation in between long spans of boredom and laziness.

Okay – I am finally back. You guys don’t know this but I just got sucked into the black hole of Pinterest. I went to go find the image above because it was such a perfect and accurate representation of how my stupid brain works. Anyway I started reading all the other hilarious quotes I’ve posted and started laughing thinking I could totally make a blog post about funny quotes – oh snap, wait I am working on a blog post right now, that’s right I logged in here for a reason, back on track. Boom.

Anywho, back to the boxes… I had to look through my pictures and pick out a theme. I picked pink for O because everything I purchased and received for my first girl was pink.

Look at that tiny little thing. I don’t remember anything about the hospital stay from my first child. I was on so many drugs and tranquilizers it was all a blur so it’s nice to see pictures of what actually happened. Apparently my parents visited. Look how sexy my ma is. She’s a G-MILF.

Christmas Day, bringing the new baby home. We stopped to pick up our furbabies at C’s parents house.

Dude. Look at this kid. Made for the camera.

O’s Box. Aunt Lauren hand made that hat for her and she wore it a lot too because her head was like 90th percentile (trust me on this it felt that way coming out) and this hat stretched real nice. I wrapped that letter O with yarn too for a splash of texture. I also glued all the stuff in there with a glue gun. The blog I read said some people tacked their stuff in there so it didn’t get ruined but her perspective was it was now art and wasn’t going to be wore again. I agreed and glued my shit in there too.

W was different. I didn’t do all pink with her from the beginning but I did do a lot of animal print.

Us bringing this small fry home. Obviously I was eating tacos and taking drugs because I see wraps on the table and the medicine cabinet is open in the background.

My brother took these adorable pictures of the girls. So sweet.

Look at that little face. Almost makes me want another one…

Ha just kidding it doesn’t.

Her little box is pink too but a bit more funky. O was always classic, W seems a bit more brave and wild. Second child thing, self fulfilling prophecy – guess I will never know.

Amber Unraveled

Tag Archives: kids