Be still my beating heart...

In entertainment news this week, an article jumped out at me, as I'm sure it did many other 30ish women...rumour is the New Kids on the Block are reuniting.
For those too young to remember, the New Kids were the Zac Effron of their day...only there were 5 of them, one for you and each of your friends. They hit the music scene at just the right time for my teeny-bopper heart. Of course I had a favorite, and of course my room was wallpapered in pictures of him.
This got me thinking about all of my old crushes and where are they now:

Starting with Kirk Cameron...I was 10, he was 15 and on my TV every Tuesday night. Now he's 37 and a pastor/evangelist. His website is http://www.wayofthemaster.com/ He and his wife have 6 kids.

Along came Corey Haim...I once polled my dorm floor and just asked Haim or Feldman and recieved an answer from every female there, they knew what I was talking about. I think I was 12 when Licence to Drive came out and one look at that crooked grin and I was hooked. Unfortunately, the afterstory is not nearly so happy. As often happens with young stars, this one went down the path of drugs and alcohol. I've heard he (now 36) and Corey Feldman have their own reality show now called (surprisingly) The Two Coreys. He's single.

Chris Young was another favorite of mine from the movie, the Great Outdoors. Now 36, he produces music videos. That's all I could find out about him.

Of course, the inspiration for this blog post was Joey McIntyre. *sigh* Could a 13 year old girl be any happier than listening to him croon "Please Don't Go Girl", imagining him to be singing to her. He's now 35 (the youngest New Kid...the oldest is now 40 btw...tha'll make you feel old in a hurry). I missed his season of Dancing With the Stars (I started watching 2 or 3 seasons in). Apparently, he's still doing well in entertainment, with some work on Broadway under his belt. He's married with a baby boy.

Of course the New Kids led way to many copycat acts including The Party (Chase Hampton is now 32 and still in music, his band is called Buzzfly http://buzzfly.com/buzzfly.htm), Tommy Page (now 37 and still recording...who knew?), and The Guys Next Door (no idea where they are now).

Post New Kids era were Christian Slater (now 38) and still acting and Chris O'Donnell, now 37, married with 5 kids and last seen on Grey's Anatomy.

There you are, all updated and feeling old...God Bless Wikipedia.

Come on People!

I'm absolutely outraged! I know I shouldn't be surprised anymore...people do terrible things. They have been doing terrible things since Adam and Eve lied in the Garden of Eden and they will continue to do terrible things until Christ's return. But let's use a little bit of brains here! In the past 2 weeks I have been really distressed about stories I have read in the news that involve small children. The first was about a father who threw his children off a bridge, all 4 of them under the age of 5. The second was of a mother who left her 6 kids (and 2 others) ranging in age from 1 to 15 alone for a month while she went off to Africa to marry someone she met online. And finally the father who got drunk, took his 2 little ones out in nothing more than a diaper and t-shirt onto the prairie in more than freezing temperatures, the police who found the man did not know about the children for 8 hours, and by that time , it was too late.
You know what? Children are a responsibility! They cannot take care of themselves. They depend on us. We need to take care of all of their basic needs, physical, social, emotional, spiritual...until that time when they are ready to do it for themselves. When you make the decision to have children, that is a life altering decision that you will be responsible for for the rest of your life (yes, I know generally people say 18 years here, but it is a rest of your life type thing).
We live in a day and age where birth control is readily available...if you don't want to have children, plan for it and don't have them! If you have them and you believe that you cannot meet their needs, there are people who would love to adopt them that cannot have children themselves.
Parenting is a lot of work with no breaks. I understand that, I have children! Ask for help if you need it!
I'm going to stop here, because I really could rant and rant and rant about this for a long time.
Please! Take care of your children! They depend on you!

Big Wheel Keep on Turning, Proud Mary Keep on Burning

I've had this song in my head since about 12noon today...the 5th time I'd changed clothes since about 3am. Yes, you guessed it, I'm dealing with a sick child. He'd also had his clothes changed about 5 times. The sick child in question was not Elijah (he had his turn earlier this week, and it didn't hit him as hard)...no the sick child this time is baby Jeremy. Poor little guy! He's never been sick like this before and nothing will tear your heart out more than a sick baby. He just looks up with this tired face and pitiful eyes questioning, what's going on? I know little guy, you have no idea, you just want your mama and you want to feel better.
So why Proud Mary? I just started to change the words, instead of Rolling Down the River, I'm just Rolling with the punches...you get into a bit of a sick routine, get the baby into the bathroom as fast as possible, let him empty everything out, wipe him up, change clothes for me, change clothes for him...clean everything up, and continue doing laundry, again.
The poor little guy is sleeping now, looking for a brighter day tomorrow.

let's go to the movies

I've been waiting for this day for 3 1/2 years, (and we threw an extra day in there for good measure)...the day that I would take Elijah to the theatre for the first time.
It's no secret that both Jonathan and I love the movies. Going to the theatre is a real treat. I still remember the first movie I saw in the theatre when I was little. My Dad took me to the Muppet Movie and I was enchanted.
Yesterday was supposed to be the day we went. We got to the theatre, I prepped him on what we were doing and what it would be like (very important when you have a highly sensitive pre-schooler)...he was excited, he was ready, his eyes lit up when he saw the poster on the board outside and then the news I was not expecting...the show was sold out. You try to gently explain that to Elijah with better success than I did. Big Tears. "Don't make my movie be sold out"...I managed to calm him down and then we got home...more big tears as soon as he saw his dad..."Daddy, my movie was sold out"...fortunately, we have a plethora of DVD's...one of which saved the day.
So today, I managed to successfully pry him away from the church (no small feat in itself, by the way) with plenty of time to spare for the earlier matinee than we shot for yesterday (I figured, if the 1:30 show was sold out, we could get tickets then and there for the 4:00 one), this time, I was able to give Jonathan the thumbs up signal as he waited in the parking lot just in case...and Elijah and I were off to see The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, A Veggie Tales Movie.
We got our popcorn and orange pop (usually I go for a diet coke, but it was for Elijah), gave the ticket taker our tickets and headed into cinema 3...Elijah took one look inside and almost did a 180 back out again. "I'm scared...I don't want to go to a movie" (I had anticipated this might happen) We found a seat and started to talk about why he was scared and I began to explain all about going to the movies. We went back out to the entrance and found a booster seat that velcroed to the seat (great idea by the way)...when we went back into cinema 3 I let Elijah do a little exploring. He found us new seats (at the top of the stairs very last row...also a great idea, because you don't bother anyone if you have to get up). I showed him where the projection window was and peaked at the machine, explaining how it worked.
He was still a little nervous, right up until the movie started...in fact he spent a good deal of the time waiting with his head burried in my shoulder. Once he saw the picture on screen he was riveted and smilling. Elijah opted to keep his hat on for the duration of the movie (the ear flaps dulled the noise a bit for him) and chatted a little bit...but as I quickly found out, going to a kid's show matinee is not the quietest bit of cinema there is. I especially loved his repeated comment every time something bad happened, "that's not very good". He spent the last part of the movie sitting in my lap, which was nice...since we had Jeremy last year, I don't get to spend an awful lot of alone time with Elijah, so I'm glad we had something special for just the two of us. I know Jonathan wanted to take him to his first movie too, but he did get to take him to his first hockey game...this kind of evens it out a bit.
Overall, I think he liked it. When I asked him to tell Daddy about the movie, he said, "It's a secret, if you want to know, you have to go see it yourself"...I don't know if that's a hint, he'd like to see it again, or not, it's pretty cute either way.

For Jill

Ahh my friend Jill...apparently my only faithful reader who misses my blog. I've been going through the cycle of blog guilt and didn't want to write another "I'm sorry for not writing in my blog kind of entry"...Yes, my blog has suffered as many other blogs have suffered by the online allure of Facebook...hooked on Scrabulous (please don't shut it down Hasbro, I haven't beaten Brad yet!), and reconnecting with friends of the past that's where I've been...always with my blog lingering in the back of my mind.
For inspiration I visited month one of Blog the First, re-reading the entries that started it all (Sept. 2005), enjoying my random musings on marriage, motherhood and teaching. So, perhaps I will take a few minutes away from Facebook to blog again...we'll see.