Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Allow me to introduce myself... they call me Professor Coldheart



So what was that about a new years resolution to post more frequently? Hm... I'll have to try harder. I have had a bit more success with one of the other resolutions, giving Rocky a nice long walk every morning. I of course, waited to start this until last week. Monday morning walking out side was getting punched in the stomach and that was the warmest day all week.

I still haven't even posted about the big news, really we've had a few big news stories since my quasi hiatus about five months ago. I'll get around to it eventually even though I'm sure most all of the readers if I still have any left are aware of most of our mundane happenings.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Jacqueline has been more and more precocious, and I just wanted to share a few of the recent examples with everyone. Seems like she has new stuff and surprises for us every day. For example, today I came home and she was climbing on her cardboard building blocks. I told her not to do this, and she told me to go back to work. So that was a fun one.

I seem to have a penchant for trying to expose her to things from my childhood. I'm sure that as she grows this won't be as appreciated, but who knows. She is still so very young and I need to remember that, but so far she has surprised us in her willingness to try new things. When we brought her home from the hospital I put a small stuffed Ewok from Star Wars in her bassinet to watch her.  It's still in her crib and she can't sleep with out it. Not long ago as she was learning to say more and more words, I would hold up her animals as we got ready for bed. "Ducky", "Mickey", "Minnie" she would exclaim as i picked up each one. "Ewok" she shouted when I picked him up. I don't really even remember trying to explain that one to her, but she must have picked it's name up in passing.

For Christmas one of her books she got, was this one Darth Vader and Son, we sit and read it every once in a while. It's probably not a great book for a 2 year old, but she likes the pictures, and she likes "robots" C-3PO and R2-D2, and she likes, Darth Vader. My two year old is a fan of one of the great film villains of all time in his watered down version, and possibly the movie version. She demanded we watch Star Wars when I told her the robots were in a movie.

Here are a few videos of her watching the robots. It didn't hold her attention too long, but it was dinner time and she didn't nap well.


I love how in this video her kid books are off the side and she is looking at a book of Van Gogh paintings.



She is a very sympathetic child as you can tell, note her real concern for Luke while is incapacitated by the Sand People.

There is a follow up book on Darth Vader raising Princess Leia that we are looking forward too when it comes out.

Now back to the title of my post. I remember from when I was a kid, and I'm sure this sucker is still on a vhs tape in my parents basement watching a Care Bears episode with a villain named Professor Coldheart, ( I probably looked like him in the picture above after my morning walks with Rocky last week). Well it turns out that was the first Care Bears animated special, before it was a regular TV show and after it was a greeting card and toy line. That episode was called Care Bears and The Land Without Feelings or something. Jackie has been exposed to Care Bears in their current CGI versions, I think from the Hub channel which exists purely to sell Hasbro toys to kids and caters to nostalgic 80's kids/parents like myself. So I went looking for the Land Without Feelings and found it used for three bucks on Amazon.

$3 for a 22 minute TV episode I guess is not a great deal, but I thought she might enjoy it, and she has. Maybe too much. She is emulating the bratty kid from the show, that wanders into the "Land Without Feelings" and gets turned into one of these horrible looking frog/slave kids.

The kid from the show says "I don't care" a bunch of times, until he's within earshot of our antagonist. Well Jackie now says that too. In this video after she got done saying it to me at dinner (she was trying to be funny parroting the line from the show), I got her to say it a few times for me in the hallway.



The good news that if we can pull off the Care Bear stare.. we can snap her out of it. I would be this Care Bear with the half full beer mug on his belly, Drinky Bear I guess would be my name. I found this image on google from someones ebay listing...


The pink elephant is fitting, an homage to my favorite scene from Dumbo if you will.

Jackie somewhere along the line learned about cow boys, she has a straw hat and a zebra to ride around on and say "yee haw". This little straw hat which she loves, has become her cowboy hat. Apparently she has been roaming the living room on her Zebra while I am at work looking for adventure saying she is a cow boy.


Anyway, it's late and I have an early meeting so enjoy the update!