Aren’t we fascinating?
 
A Family Tagging
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
This dude’s kinda scary.
 
I’ve been tagged a couple of times now, so I figured that I’d indulge you all in a family tagging: six interesting things about each member of the Monahan family. Daniel: This is an obvious one for anyone who knows Daniel even a little, but Daniel LOVES TOYS! He lives them, breathes them, and creates them (not literally, except for the last one). He is like a modern-day Geppetto. Santa’s tried to hire him in the past for some freelance work, but apparently Santa didn’t get that the “free” part of “freelance” wasn’t literal. Elves are a bit less stingy with their time, I guess. Daniel once climbed up into the ceiling of the closet of his math classroom IN THE MIDDLE OF CLASS! He got caught, but somehow managed to escape punishment. You’ll have to ask him about it. Ask him about getting locked out of his house in the buff, too. Daniel hates board games. HATES them. I used to want him on my team (duh, I married him), but then I learned that he actually tries to sabotage the game so that it will end earlier. I can be a bit competitive, so this got to be real annoying real fast. You always know which answer is his in Balderdash (“Sandiver: A person who dives in the sand”), the buzzer always stops on him in Catch Phrase, and his answer to every question in Trivial Pursuit is some portion of human anatomy or an obscure reference to a cult film from the 1970s. Daniel loves orange juice. I think he has a vitamin c addiction, but the government has yet to fully recognize this particular disorder. I do believe that it stems from a weird OCD-like fear of scurvy. Daniel is the best gringo-tacos cook I’ve ever met. Deeee-licious! He’s also very good at manning the grill and rotisserie, and came up with the brilliant idea of doing a rotisserie turkey for Thanksgiving this year. We did, and it was AMAZING! I’m trying to get him to branch out more and, you know, cook more often. It hasn’t worked yet. Daniel studied Business Economics at UCLA (basically, Accounting), and graduated with an amazing GPA. He actually aced an exam in one of the hardest courses in the major - to the surprise of everyone in the class, including his professor. Now, he’s an artist. Go figure. Chelsea: I have a serious problem with taking on too much responsibility when I can barely handle the basics that are in front of me. Right now I’m a stay-at-home mommy, substitute teacher, full-time student (this will be increasing to double-time in January), I’m planning everything for Christmas including a 16-person brunch at our house, I’m still trying to send out Christmas cards, I’m knitting two hats as presents, I’m going to make 100 tamales on Thursday, I’m teaching a RS lesson at church on Sunday (yes, the Christmas lesson), I’m trying to plan an exciting birthday for Daniel on Friday, and I’ve been scanning in hundreds of old photos for another Christmas present. On the other hand, the laundry isn’t done and is decorating our floors, I don’t know the last time that I vacuumed, I’m way behind on the website, I ate too much salsa with dinner and now have heartburn, my desk is so messy that I can hardly find the keyboard and keep having to retype all of my resultant mistakes, and it’s WAAAAY past my bedtime. As usual. I like coins. I collect them. Not because they’re valuable, but because I find them fascinating. I especially like interesting coins from other countries, and my collection includes money from probably about 40-50 places (many of them are pre-Euro coins). My all-time favorite, though, is the Susan B. silver dollar. My all-time least favorite is the modern-day penny. I do take donations. I’ve been quoted in major regional papers at least twice. Once was in the San Jose Mercury News as an example of how UC Berkeley is becoming more conservative (HA! Especially funny if you actually know me). The other was in the San Diego Union Tribune. The reference was to Brendan Frasier, and the quote was “He’s gorgeous, and that’s always a plus!” (even funnier if you actually know me). You kinda have to know the story behind that one. According to National Enquirer, I’m 25% alien. The story ran about 10 years ago. I’m not joking, not even a little. And I’m not surprised. I love to cook. Eight years ago I was regularly teased about my ability to turn Rice-A-Roni into Rice Soup. So in 2003, I decided to cook a new recipe every single week. I did a pretty good job of this throughout the year, and eventually was able to learn enough from my 40 or so ruined meals to finally concoct a couple of good ones. And suddenly, cooking was fun. I HATE being tickled. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to tickle me, or anyone with a black eye. They’re probably interchangeable. I had one friend (a therapist) tell me that since I was constantly tickle-tortured as a small child, my tickle-receptors got crossed with my pain receptors, and now I feel pain when I get tickled. I would rather be shot in the foot than be tickled. Bella: Bella is incredibly brave. Except around vacuum cleaners, Christmas trees, and strange men, especially ones with whiskers. We learned this long before Santa was ever introduced into her life. She even gets nervous around her grandpas. It’s practically the only time that she’ll snuggle into me, so I don’t mind so much. Bella is a serious chatterbox. She says dada (daddy) mama (mommy), grrma (grandma), yeeeh (yay), hiiiii (hi), baaah (bye), baba (bottle), behbeh (baby), bah (bath), and behr-behr (bear). And she’ll try almost any other word she hears that starts with a B. It usually sounds a lot like “baaah”. And she makes about 72 other strange sounds that I haven’t managed to decode yet. If she’s not chattering away, then she’s either eating, sleeping, or hitting something. Bella is OBSESSED with bears. It started with a trip to Borders a few weeks back. Their marketing campaign this season is an adorable polar bear that’s plastered all over the place in the store, and they have a fuzzy plush version of it. Bella saw that plush, got all excited, and grabbed one. The problem was that she had a runny nose at the time. So Bella’s now getting a plush polar bear for Christmas. And every time we go into Borders now we have to take her around the store so that she can touch every single one of the pictures in the store. There are about 60 of them. It’s really cute, though, to be walking all over the place with a squirmy, excited 8-month-old screaming “behr-behr! behr-behr!” repeatedly. We make a lot of friends when we’re there. Bella is a charmer. Everywhere we go people come up to us and passionately tell us that we have the cutest, most adorable baby. And we do, of course! One Sunday, Daniel brought Bella out of the main chapel because she was being too noisy. When she finally calmed down, he brought her back in. As he was walking past the overflow toward our seats, Bella saw the 30-or-so people watching her go past, waved to all of her admirers, and yelled “HIIIIIIII!!!” at the top of her lungs. I was in stitches, and so was everyone else in the room. Bella HATES to sleep. It’s gotten to the point where she screams and cries when we even approach her bedroom, even if it’s just to change her diaper. It’s sad, but we have to just let her cry it out most of the time. Otherwise she’d be horribly sleep deprived, because she won’t sleep if she can see anyone around her, and she will never allow herself to appear tired (other than the droopy eyes and rubbing of her face). Babies this age are supposed to be sleeping 14-16 hours in a 24-hour period. She maybe gets about 13. I don’t think that I’m a bad parent, but I do think that if she screams for a full hour straight that she’s probably not planning on napping. Bella idea of perfection is being held by her daddy, having her mommy make silly noises and faces at her, gnawing on a teething biscuit (and then throwing it), and holding a stuffed polar bear. What more could one possibly want? Everyone I know has already been tagged... Either way, I tag: Kristen, Kiersten, Calli, Kenny, Kori and Kenna (I love alliteration!). Simply write six interesting things about yourself as a blog post, and then tag six new people. It works well for writers’ block.http://www.angelsandgringos.com/http://www.nationalenquirer.com/http://www.borders.comhttp://web.mac.com/srecordhttp://themommyreport.blogspot.comhttp://thekelsays.blogspot.comhttp://www.kennethpike.com/http://welcometomysoapbox.blogspot.comhttp://kennamtn.blogspot.comhttp://thepaperbox.blogspot.comshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1shapeimage_3_link_2shapeimage_3_link_3shapeimage_3_link_4shapeimage_3_link_5shapeimage_3_link_6shapeimage_3_link_7shapeimage_3_link_8shapeimage_3_link_9