Today

Today I noticed that Jameson was playing super intently with his stuffed animals. He took each one from the stuffed animal bin, saying, "nigh night monkey, nigh night doggy, nigh night robot (which is what he calls Iron Man)," etc., laying them on the couch in a row and ordering them to go sleep then whispering "I love you" and walking backwards away from the couch to get another animal. I was pretty amazed. Sometimes he kicks Blake in the head, other times he tucks his robot lovingly into bed.

I'm sure by now you've seen this photo.

And I have heard so many people say, "there's no way a normal person gets that fit eight months after having a baby."

Yeah, I know, they don't. Because she didn't do this in eight months. Fitness for her is clearly a lifelong priority and I doubt she spent her pregnancy watching movies and eating Cheetos. I am sure she was in great shape during her pregnancy, too, so getting to this point was not an impossible stretch.

The other argument is that spending so much time at the gym makes you a bad mom. Well, if Facebook surfing and Netflix binge watching burned calories, a lot of us would look like her. There are lots of things in life that take us away from our kids; some just have more enviable results.

You go, Maria Kang.

(This post was typed as I ate chocolate chips directly from the bag.)

Baby Blake

Blake is now seven weeks old. The time has seriously flown. I can't remember what life was like without him. I can't believe how much you can love a baby that hardly does anything. I can't think of any more cliche, but true, statements about this little boy.

For the past week or so, Blake has really been smiling and cooing. You could catch one here or there by the time he was about four weeks old, but now it's a regular thing. It's so sweet to see. He also has been sleeping for longer stretches at night. He'll usually go down between 9 and 10pm, and not wake up until 2am, 3am, or even 4am. The 4am thing happened for three days in a row (actually one night it was 5am), so I bragged to everyone on Facebook and Instagram, and the next night he woke up at 2:30, Blake's first "Bazinga!" of what i'm sure will be many. You know, just so I remember who's the boss.

He loves his swing, but isn't too into the bouncy seat, which is the opposite of Jameson. We're being more aggressive about getting him to like a binky. So far, his favorite is one that Jared and Chelsey got him that has a huge black mustache on it. Ohhh, baby.

He is an amazingly good nurser. I've been pleasantly surprised  with how easy it's been to feed him, giving me plenty of time to watch trashy TV shows on Netflix and do little else. (What do you people think of Revenge? Intriguing or really, really sad? I had to start another show about rich people being mean to each other once I finished Gossip Girl.) The only way that breastfeeding has cramped my style is that I can't drink caffeine anymore. I've had one Diet Coke since he was born, and the following eight hours turned out to be the screechiest, most sleepless, terrible night of both our lives. Luckily I was able to kick the caffeine habit early on, when the withdrawal headaches just kind of blended in to the hormonal/sleep deprivation/holy-crap-I-have-two-kids-how-the-h-am-I-going-to-survive headaches, and now I'm good.

I think I mentioned that Jameson has slowly taken more interest in Blake. Today, that interest took the form of dousing the poor baby with half a Peach Fresca. Blake was mad at first, but then he realized that the refreshing citrus scent was actually quite delightful.

And now for the pictures:

Blake/Mom selfie. The selfie camera on my phone is not so hot.

I even sleep awesome!

I'm happy, but don't want anyone to know I'm toothless.

Mark's First Blog Post In A Very Long Time

Hi there, it's Mark.  Mark LaRocco.

So, for years now (or at least many months) I've been telling Holly how I miss writing.  Sure, I write a lot for work.  But that's just boring legal stuff.  Memoranda, motions, replies, letters and emails, and things like that. I feel like my creative writing groove is gone, but not unrecoverable.  With more practice writing non-legal stuff, I can get good again.  Or at least acceptable.

I believe I had the idea to just piggyback onto Holly's blog, as a contributor, and Holly had the idea to rename the blog from Holly Lynn Says to LaRoccos' Modern Life.  Brilliant.  So here I am.

Holly is good at keeping everyone updated on our growing little family, what with our two little boys and all. I imagine I will spend some of the time writing about my family.  But I hope to write about other things that interest me such as movies, sports, people, and peanut butter.

The point is, I need a bit of a creative outlet to get my ideas on paper, and then elaborate and expand on them and develop them and see if they mean anything or if they are just fluff.  I found that when I used to write papers for school, sometimes my good ideas actually grew out of my writing, rather than the other way around.  I think my best papers came out of my philosophy classes and some papers I wrote about faith for an Institute class from a Brother Harding. I've gone back and reread some of them, and I can't believe I came up with some of that.  Writing about the paradoxes of faith actually helped me to understand faith better, as if the insights that resulted from the writing would have only sprung forth from the writing itself.

Sometimes, I feel like maybe that is because I'm a slow, deliberative thinker.  Perhaps I overanalyze too much.  This morning I went on a show for KBER 101 with Mick & Allen (The Freak Show) to plug Jolley & Jolley, the fathers' rights law firm I work for.  Mick & Allen, and about three callers, asked questions that I didn't know the exact answers to, but I took some pretty confident shots and stabs at them.  (Why the violent imagery to convey uncertainty?  Shots and stabs?)  As the "expert" on a radio show, I couldn't not know the exact answers.  Confidence was supposed to exude from me.  Using many hedge words, as I did on many a law school exam and the Bar itself, is not what people were looking for.  And I don't think it's what Jolley & Jolley was looking for when they asked me to go on the show.

But my point is, I wish I could have paused for a few minutes after each question, done some legal research, maybe talked to a couple smart lawyers, and given a well-reasoned, well-researched, accurate answer to each question.  But the format of the show doesn't allow for that.

Where was I?  Oh, right, thinking and writing.  I feel like I have good thoughts, and some of them have gone unexplored.  I would like to explore my thoughts.  This, I feel, happens best in two ways: (1) Good conversation, and (2) Writing.  And sometimes, my writing, as annoying as that may be to read, will sound like a conversation between two people.  No, it won't. Yes, it will.

At any rate, I hope to use this blog as a way to express ideas, vent, give opinions, and occasionally be funny. Also, it will act as a sort of journal.  I've been writing in my journal less and less, and I've decided that it is due at least in part to my handwriting getting worse and worse.  A blog should solve that problem.

Well, I was hoping to wrap this up with a neat and tidy point.  But, I guess not.  Like the great work Freakonomics, there may be no grand unifying theme.

Well, see ya later.