Category Archives: Family and Friends Videos

A mom kind of Purple Heart

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Viv is back in school now after an action packed spring break.  We started off going to Palm Springs where Mark was cooking in the Palm Desert Food festival.  The kids liked the water slide at the hotel, and my friend Trish came out to be my food festival wing man.  I don’t like to drink alone.
Some hang time at home and then the kids and I went with Vivien’s best friend and her mom ( my friend) Renee on a tour de force of San Diego.  This video encapsulates that parental dilemma: I want you to have a great time, I’m knocking myself out and spending lots of money, but do you kids care?  THey liked hiding in a planter in Sea World more than seeing Dolphins.  We left home, why?
The first night in the hotel Rex, sans nap for the day, threw a big old tantrum.  I had to hoist him out of the car, through the lobby into the elevator.  Renee watched the girls while I wrestled him down the hallway.  Then she magically appeared as I herded him into my room promising him M and M’s to quiet the best.  She had a big glass of Chardonnay in her hand.  My kind of traveling companion!

Can’t stop this kid from dancing

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Rex has suddenly become very attuned to music.  I don’t know when it will strike, but 3 times in the last couple of days he hears a tune and stops everything else, eating, playing and goes into a very dramatic dance.  This video I shot the first time it happened.  We were at Mas Malo in downtown LA. Which by the way, is a cool place. The did a great job of keeping the interior of the 1920′s building.  It had been jewlery store, then Clifton’s Cafeteria, and now a mexican restaurant.  They also have a kid’s menu which gets big points from me.

Anyway, Rex was enjoying their chips ( which are very good) when he suddenly jumped up to this alt. rock tune and went into his own little rave.  Does this mean my son will become a dancer?  A musician? The crazy guy without his shirt on at a Phish concert?  Who knows.  But, I love seeing this development.

Fluffy Cats

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This might be the closest I get to being like the Zooboomfoo guys.

I’ve never been a cat person.  I’ve never had a cat.

When Cecily and I were little we begged our mom to give us a cat.  She would always say no.

Please we would beg.

She would say, “will you take care of it?”  We would both say, “yes, yes”.  At 4 I believed I what I was saying.  Cecily is two and half years older and she said internally she thought, “No, I won’t , you will mom.”  My mother must have been a mind reader because we never got a cat.

So we became the change we wanted.  We acted like cats. My mom would put milk in a saucer on the kitchen floor and we would lick it up.

Hey, don’t laugh I haven’t done that in.. a couple of years.

So, a situation occurred with a relative where they were unable to care for their cats.  We didn’t know if it was temporary or permanent, but we thought we better look out for them.  Rex and Vivien were thrilled.

WOW You Look Amazing

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If you are like me right now your self image is at an all time low.

IF you are like me the holiday food and spirits is sitting in your gut (which your husband just called “puffy”).

If you are like me you have been unable to exercise much because your kids are home, or it’s quite cold and or you have been to busy with family stuff.

If you are like me you have a hacking cough that has lasted weeks. This cough has spread to all parts of your family.

If you are like me you have been up in the night with one of your kids because they are sick.

If you are like me this cough is so bad that you threw up in the Best Buy parking lot ( sorry person who pulled in the space after me).

If you are like me your cough is so bad that your post childbearing body turned on you and you pissed in your pants.

Yes, I FEEL REAL PRETTY RIGHT NOW.

( Note: Vivien is wearing the dress she created on www.fashionplaytes.com.  A great site for little girls)

Well, when life gets you down, you have to turn it around, right?  So here is a short, self help moment for all of us.  ( Jo McGinley, my friend, guest stars)

Mid Morning Show with Cool Mom: Room Parenting

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I always enjoy having a talk show in my own home. When Rex was younger he was a more placid sidekick. Now he is less Doc Sevirnson and more Crispin Glover. Special guest and Cool Mom player sister Carole drops by (be sure to check out her fun blog, LA Girl Now).

Our topic for today: being a room parent makes me understand police brutality.  Any room parents out there? Maybe you can relate.

Lice Outbreak

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PP (Pre-Parenthood) this is one of the topics that would NOT have occurred to me have, but now is a regular thing among moms to chat about … besides how we never get together and why don’t we see our friends anymore.

UPDATE:  Just in! useful information on this subject has just arrived from Adie Horowitz, owner, Licenders, (maybe she is the lice lady)

Here are here tips for lice prevention.

  • Know the “lice” time of year
    • Winter: Travel time, clothing layers, hats, gloves, scarves, etc.
    • Summer: Camp, play dates, travel, hats, road trips
  • Prevention products: peppermint is a deterrent scent to the bug, many shampoos/conditioners contain this ingredient
  • Once per week throw backpacks, hats and jackets in the dryer for 20 minutes
  • Educate children on the importance of not sharing hats, hair-bows, jackets and gloves
  • Check your children frequently for head lice, it’s much easier to get rid of if you discover it at an early stage

OMG, on the peppermint one, didn’t know.  Maybe that is why Viv hasn’t gotten lice, she eats peppermint rather often.  Thanks for the tips!

My coolmom player guest today is Jo McGinley. She and I are not only old friends, but she was in the improv group I co-founded. We did a lot of improv together. If you were in San Francisco in the 90s, I’m sure you knew of Scratch Theatre!

Well, here we scratch some lice.

Teaching Kids About the Farmers Market

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Hey, I posted this vid via a blog post awhile back; it was connected to a deal with Hillshire Farms. I felt it was good enough to tweak and run here as a feature. (Sidebar: we do buy Hillshire Farms deli meats and love the reusable containers.) I am hopeful my kids get a sense of what REAL food looks like. The bumps, the imperfections, the sweetness and full flavor.

How do you get your kids to connect with plant life? Nature? Or do you?

Do You Judge Big Families? (Momversation…Sort Of)

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This was a Momversation experiment I had long wanted to do — get to talk to the moms in PERSON. Blogging and vlogging can be a lonely business so I had asked Rebecca Woolf, my blogging friend, who lives nearby, to come over and do a Cool Mom with me. Alas, the day she was supposed to come over was also the last few months of her carrying twins, so she was understandably not feeling top dog. Cut to Kelly, the producer of Momversation, writing me to ask if I would be up for a shoot with Jessica and Rebecca in the flesh. Would I!? Jessica is on the other side of the hill from me, but another mom blogger I enjoy conversing with. Not only does she have a great dry wit, but my husband knows her dad from the Spago days and LOVES him.

Anyway, the gals came over to my home, renamed “the Momversation studio” for the day. Great to see Rebecca — first time since she gave birth to the twins. The thought was this might be a new way to tape Momversation, but after watching it, the senior producer nixed the idea. Was it me or my home styled hair?  I don’t know, but the three of us said, “The people must see this!”  Because use kvetching at my kitchen table is pretty important. It’s not on the main landing page of Momversation, but it is up there somewhere.  So, think of this as the Vault.

Let me know what you think. I liked it, but I would have killed the non-stop momver music bed that runs through it.

Oh, and do you judge big families?

Tire Swing

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Often, Mark suggests things that make me roll my eyes.

Either because he put it in a pun– which wear on me.  Or I know it’s something that is NEVER going to happen. Example: “On Saturday, let’s all get out the door by 8am so we can get to the Farmer’s Market across town and buy the best Persian Mulberries before the guy sells out.”

Cut to an entire house sleeping on Saturday save for Rex jumping up and down on my chest screaming “Bubble Guppies, Bubble Guppies”.  So, my wifely eye roll is “come on, let’s deal in reality.”

So, when Mark said, “we should make a tire swing” in our big, new backyard I filed it in the part of my brain where I also lodged his frequent comment to guests, “We are going to have a zip line going from the patio to the end of the yard!”  Snare drum anyone?

So, imagine my surprise when one day we had tire swing in our back yard.

My husband is a stud.