Odds & Ends for Friday

A quick update for this Friday:

Our very nice neighbor and my new friend, Elizabeth, is letting us use her daughter's play horse. Her daughter does not like it at all, and Paprika, of course, loves it! She wants to climb on it herself and bounce away. She loves it! We're having a lot of fun with it and we're so glad we get to use it for the time being.

Our heater is out- kaput, not working! I have a space heater going in Paprika's room, but otherwise it's downright chilly in our house. Our thermostat says it's 60 degrees, so we've been bundled up and keeping warm. I am going to break down and call the heating repairman this afternoon, since it's become obvious that the heater won't fix itself and winter has just begun.

Today is the first day of rain we've had in I don't remember how long. Paprika ran to the window and started exclaiming "water! water!" as if it was the most amazing thing that water was falling from the sky. I told her that when it comes from the sky it's called "rain" and then she started saying "Ain! Ain!" I wonder if it is confusing to her that water, while so important, has so many different names and uses. Ocean, Lake, river, rain, waterfall, ice, snow, bathtub water, drinking water, toilet water, etc. It's a lot to sort out!


Paprika Looking at the Rain for the First Time:

We have a busy weekend ahead of us planned. We are going to Lauren and Don's Christmas Party tomorrow- and I'm so excited about it. Paprika is spending the evening at our local Mother's Day Out center, and I know she'll love being around other kids. We had a tour and she wanted to play with all the other kids while we were there. It's a fantastic place. It'll be my first time dropping her off, and I'm nervous as heck about it. But, I know that she'll be in great hands, and we'll be back to get her before she knows it. Can you tell I'm a little nervous? I'm sure she'll do better than I will!

I am hard at work marketing my book, UnInked! The Complete Guide to Tattoo Removal. It's selling very well on Amazon.com and Borders.com. I am working on finding other channels to sell it. I am in talks with a distributor, which would put the book into brick and mortar stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I have started a few websites: http://tattooremovalsupport.com/, http://tattooremovalbook.com/, http://erikafinn.com/, and http://zibibooks.com/. I still need to work out the kinks on the websites, add to them, and the "Buy It Now" option needs to be easier and more user friendly. It's baby steps right now, literally!

I am also working on two more books in my spare time. I am co-authoring a book with my good friend Jessica, and we have an agent from ICM who wants to rep the book for us. That's great news. We hope to go with a large publisher for the book, like Random House. We are about half-way finished writing the book- it's fun writing with a partner!

I ordered our Christmas cards a few days ago and just got a notification that they're in route! They are majorly cute this year. I can't wait to send them out!

Mr. Mustard is busy, busy with work. So far this year he's done more shows than I can remember, and all of them were major. In his next break between shows, he may do some work at home- which I would love!

Full Sentences!

Paprika now regularly speaks in full sentences. She's been doing it for a few weeks now, off and on, but over the past week it has become much more regular. Now, she often puts words together like "that is baby" and "let's go outside" or "go down." She is picking up words at a very rapid pace. She learns at least one new word per day, sometimes many more. For example, last weekend she learned choo-choo train, jump, purple, turtle, pig, goat, fish, sheep, star, banana, puppy, woof, cow, moo, and a bunch of other words I can't recall off the top of my head. We estimate that she says between 50-100 words now. It's the funniest thing because sometimes I will be sitting there reading her a book, and she'll just point to something and say what it is- even if I've never pointed it out before. She follows the words along in her book and "reads" to herself when I'm not reading to her. It's quite remarkable.

Thanksgiving 2007

We're back from our long, four day weekend in Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving. We had a great Thanksgiving! Mr. Mustard's mom prepared a wonderful meal. Mr. Mustard's sister, Andrea, was there, along with her friends Jill, Mike, their baby, and Mike's mom. It was a full house on Thursday, and everyone had a nice time. One of Mr. Mustard's best friends, Tom, came over on Thursday night and met Paprika officially (last time he saw her she was asleep).

Andrea and her friends left Thanksgiving evening, so the rest of the weekend, it was just me, Mr. Mustard, Paprika, and Mr. Mustard's mom. We had a very full weekend. We went to the beach, went out to eat a few times, and met up with lots of Mr. Mustard's old friends from highschool. Mr. Mustard's mom babysat for us Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. Mr. Mustard and I got to go to dinner by ourselves, we went to two movies, and we went to a little holiday get-together one of his highschool buddies had at his house! Mr. Mustard said he had fun playing "twenty-something" for a few days! Paprika greatly enjoyed spending time with Grandma Urth.

Mr. Mustard and I saw "American Gangster" and "Enchanted" in the movie theater. "American Gangster" was his pick, "Enchanted" was mine! My next door neighbor from when I first moved to Los Angeles and lived in West Hollywood, Amy Adams, stars in "Enchanted." It's wild to think that we shared a wall for so many years, and now she is a major movie star. She is absolutely wonderful in the movie- a real talent. She is such a nice person, so I'm glad she's having so much success. It couldn't happen to anyone sweeter or more deserving. How cool.

An Autumn Day at the Park!

We had a wonderful weekend. On Sunday, we went to the park and played on the swings, blew bubbles, and watched a baseball game. Paprika was fascinated with the baseball game and wanted to watch it from start to finish. She had a great time climbing on the jungle gym and keeping up with the big kids.

Paprika's vocabulary continues to increase daily. She says kitty, kitty, kitty all the time now and wants to love on our cat, Meg, whenever she has a chance. She also makes little sentences, and I can really understand what she is saying. Today, for example, she was sitting in her stroller for all of two seconds when she started saying "down, walk, down, walk" because she wanted to be FREE! She is not one for sitting in her stroller - she wants to be a busy body, out and about!

We are getting excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow. This past week I have been reflecting on how truly blessed we are and how thankful we are for our full and rich lives. We are lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people- family and friends alike. And we are fortunate to live in a time when we can achieve whatever we desire, our dreams are only limited by our imaginations. This time of year always makes me reflect on where I am going in my life and what I want to accomplish in the next year. So far, things are really just perfect. We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

The Four Deuces

Mr. Mustard and I went to a very fun murder mystery birthday party on Saturday night. Mr. Mustard's friend, Eric, rented out a club in Hollywood and invited about 50 people to his party. The theme was 1920s, and everyone had to dress up. Mr. Mustard wore a sharp Zoot Suit and I was in flapper regalia. We had a GREAT time. Everyone was assigned a character and had to play their part in solving a fictional murder mystery. My character was an assasin who would kill anyone for a price. Mr. Mustard's character had amnesia and had to make up wild stories to confuse everyone else. It was a riot!

Paprika stayed home and played with Mr. Mustard's mom, who was down for the weekend. The funniest part was that the red dress I wore to the party was my prom dress from my senior year of highschool! I never thought I'd get to wear it again- but never say never!