Back In Business!

Sun, 31 May 2009 12:59:03 -0700

As you may or may not have noticed, due to serious technical difficulties, TeamMiltonFrank.com has been down for the past four months. Luckily, absolutely nothing new has happened with Wyatt during that time, and he has made no advancements whatsoever, so as long as you read the last blog entry from January 25th, you are totally up to speed. Good? Good.

Oh wait, no, I totally forgot. Wyatt has learned all sorts of cool new things over the last four months, mainly walking and the beginnings of talking. Yes, that’s right, he is a full grown man now, and can do anything any adult can do. Yes, the last four months have been amazingly prolific for the little guy.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of bandwidth, I can’t bring you totally up to speed by including all the pictures and videos I normally would have posted during this down time. So, I will just post a few videos below for anyone not on Facebook who needs a little refresher course. But from now on, I will go back to blogging about once or twice a week, so you can all rest assured you will be sick and tired of TeamMiltonFrank once again in no time flat.

Enjoy...

Shirts Are For The Weak!

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:14:39 -0800

Hey everyone (all two of you, I presume)!

Just wanted to throw up a quick blog report since I just blogged the other day, but I wanted to include a couple of cute photos and a new video for the world to see.

Meredith, Wyatt and I had a pretty relaxing weekend. After Meredith took me out to a really nice local restaurant for my birthday Friday, and we saw our first recreational movie in seven months, we decided to make the most of the rest of our time with Wyatt and just soak the little guy up.

On Saturday, we pretty much just hung around the house, and ventured out for a short while to do some errands. We had lunch with the little guy at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, long one of our favorite restaurants, and most certainly fat becoming one of Wyatt’s favorites as well. He really likes the guacamole, black beans and rice there, and it is really fun feeding it to him. That night I had to go to the Producer’s Guild Awards for work, unfortunately, but luckily the little guy apparently wound up going to be about ten minutes after I left the house for the show, so I didn’t really miss too much.

On Sunday, we loaded up TeamMiltonFrank into the left-wing-scum-mobile (Prius), and headed to a park in Beverly Hills to meet up with our friends Dave, Dana, Jim and Beth, and their respective little ones, Sofia and Sophie. While I did some a bunch of pictures, I took them with a new funky film camera that Meredith got me for Christmas, so I won’t be able to post them online until they are developed this week and scanned to the computer. I hope they turn out well, but don’t have too much faith as this is the first time in a long time that I have shot with a manual film camera, and it is a lot harder to shoot when you can’t look at the view finder and see what you’ve got.

But I did take a few photos of Wyatt just hanging out in his bedroom yesterday morning, which turned out kind of cute. Here are a few to preview, and as usual, the link below them takes you to the full set.

And after all the fun at the park with Sofia and Sophie, we headed back to the house, took our shirts off (well, Wyatt did at least), and just spent some time clapping, crawling, and climbing (activities I proudly took part in).

Snow Day!!!

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:58:09 -0800

Today was a banner day for our little native Californian. You see, yesterday was the last day Wyatt would go without knowing what it felt like to play in snow. So considering the little man has two bona fide ski bums as parents, it was only a matter of time until he found himself floundering in some of the good cold stuff.

As it turns out, one of the perks to having your son in an entertainment industry only daycare, is that the place seems to have limitless resources when it comes to entertaining the kids. Once a year, in fact, the center pumps in 8 tons of snow into the kids’ courtyard, so that all of the little West Coasters can see what it is like to get sent outside by your parents to play in the cold, only to wind up with soaking wet pants and a ice cold heiny.

Wyatt actually really liked the snow, and was pretty much all smiles the entire time. He managed to make a tiny snowball and eat it (checked by parents for yellow tint before consumption, of course), and basically just hung out, enjoying the cool breeze shooting down his diapee.

I think it is safe to say that in a year or two, we’ll have this tyke cruising down the side of a snow covered mountain with reckless abandon.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

New Year, New Bath

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:23:19 -0800

Happy New Year TMF Fans! Sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted, but we were out of town for two weeks straight, and I just haven’t seemed to find the time to sit down and blog for the past couple of weeks.

Not too much new has happened with TeamMiltonFrank that is worthy of reporting. The little man is still growing like a worm, and developing so fast it is unbelievable. He crawls like a champ now, and is seemingly capable of bursts up to 35 miles per hour. He also has incredible strength, able to topple items many times his own weight.

So far this year we have been spending a lot of time playing with the little guy, reading books to each other, and making sure he doesn’t cause too much damage around the house. Though at this point we’ve already resigned ourselves to having to purchase a new coffee table once we are out of kid phase.

We did make a pretty amazing purchase yesterday, which will make bath time much more fun for the whole family. Up until now, bathing the little boy has had to be a team effort, as our bath tub is super slippery. What’s more, the sliding glass shower door on the tub only opens about two and a half feet, so I have had to spend all of bath time scrunched up against the sliding glass door, spotting the little man, as Meredith scrubbed away. But yesterday we bought a bath chair for Wyatt, which holds him in the seated position. This way, his erratic and unpredictable lunges for bath toys won’t end with him dunking his face in the water, which means I am freed up to take some pictures.

After taking a bath, and lots of other times too, we like to spend time just hanging out in Wyatt’s room reading and having fun. And if Wyatt can just be in a diapee, he is all the happier.

Christmas Presents!!!

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:36:08 -0800

I don’t have much time to blog tonight as it is already 10:36PM, and the taxi is coming to pick us up at 5:00AM tomorrow for our flight back east. But I just wanted to post a quick video of Wyatt opening and playing with his first Christmas presents ever.

We, of course, made a couple of rookie parent mistakes. The first being that the toys we bought him were way too advanced for such a little guy. One of them was for four year olds and older, and the other was for three and up. Sadly, I think it will be a while until the little guy really gets to play with Santa’s presents. The second rookie parent mistake was thinking that for some reason, Wyatt would actually like his toys more than the wrapping paper itself.

At least we all had a good time, and the little guy seems to still believe in Santa, despite the fact that his presents were sealed with blue masking tape (Scotch tape shortage at the North Pole, apparently).

Oh, and since I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the tree in the video, I used a picture of the tree as the blog main photo. I hope that will suffice.

Ho Ho Ho...

Nap Time?

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:26:31 -0800

Yesterday, after a long morning spent getting TeamMiltonFrank organized and across town in time to see Santa before the lines got too long, we arrived home tuckered out and sleepy, to say the least. After a quick meal, Wyatt seemed all but fully asleep, so Meredith placed the little boy into his crib, hoping for a long afternoon nap, which would award Mommy and Daddy with a much needed break, and perhaps an opportunity for an afternoon nap for themselves.

But, as it turned out Wyatt had a different plan entirely. Meredith reported that the second the little guy hit the mattress, he was suddenly filled with a new energy, looked up at her with wide eyes, and jumped up, ready to play. While we were saddened at first, as we hoped everyone could get a little shut eye, it turned out to be for the best as we had a really great time playing with the little dude, which is always welcomed.

See for yourself...

Santa Claus!!!

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:20:30 -0800

We finally made it. And as it turns out with us and the Santa Claus visit, the third time is the charm.

Two weekends ago Meredith, Wyatt and I mounted an outing with some of our friends, Jim, Beth, Dave, Dana, and their little ones, Sophie and Sofia, to visit Santa Claus, but after an hour or more of waiting in line, and a few tantrum flair ups (unfortunately not from the kids), we all decided to bail on Santa and try again later.

One weekend later, Meredith and I planned out entire weekend around getting to see Santa, but once again, fell just short of the finish line as life, baby food, poopie diapers and an antsy dog once again stood in our way.

But no, not today. With the alarm set for 6:30AM, and a nearly foolproof plan in place, Meredith and I set out to make sure this little boy was going to sit on the lap of a velvet-panted old man today, Santa or not, if it was the last thing we did. And hooray for us, because we made it.

Just as we arrived at the mall about 45 minutes before opening, the little boy was sound asleep in the back of the car. We decided it would be best if I headed out to get in line, while Meredith stayed warm and snugly in the car, listening to NPR until our little bundle of joy woke up.

Twenty minutes or so later, as I waited in line, I actually got to see the man himself, walking from the parking lot (presumably from the rooftop, where his sleigh was no doubt double parked), clad in jeans, a black leather jacket, and a leather paperboy hat (and what I thought looked like a pretty severe hangover). Soon after the front doors opened, and jolly St. Nick sat there in his giant red chair waiting for all the little boys and girls to beg him for their favorite toys.

Meredith joined me shortly after, and soon enough it was our turn. As I approached the old man, I have to say that I found myself kind of excited as well, as it has probably been about 25 years since I have seen the old dude in person. In my most enthusiastic voice (so as to get Wyatt excited for this monumental moment), I exclaimed “Hello Santa!” to which he replied a relatively lackluster “Hey.” Okay, I guess you can’t expect the guy to be too cheery at 8:00AM on a Saturday morning, while staring down the business end of about 8,000 screaming kids. Not to mention that he still must have millions of toys to make, and the inevitable all-nighter he has to pull next week.

After we exchanged our pleasantries, I sat the little boy down on the old guy’s lap, stood back, and we did everything we could to make Wyatt smile. Nothing. But, at the very least we didn’t get any screaming or crying, and as you can see from the pictures, Wyatt seemed at the very least somewhat curious about this strange old man.

I am happy that Wyatt’s first Santa experience went off without a hitch, and hope that this time next year, he will be just the right age where perhaps he will know who Santa is, but will be just as happy playing with an empty paper towel roll.

Stand Up Guy

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:21:30 -0800

In the last week, Wyatt has made a tremendous about of progress in terms of gaining mobility. Not only has he learned how to sit himself up without the aid of some foreign object like a stool, mommy, or daddy, but he has miraculously learned how to pull himself up to stand using just about any common household item. I mean seriously, if you put this guy within a few yards of anything that can hold his weight, he will zero in, scootch over to it, and pull himself up in no time.

And as it turns out Wyatt really likes to stand up. He is really quite proud of himself actually, and would rather spend all of his time standing than doing just about anything else, most notably having his diapee changed.

As one might imagine, we are really excited to see the little guy progressing so well. It is great to see him meet new challenges head on, and figure out how to overcome them on his own. While each new task may be accompanied by a lot of frustrated crying, he always forges ahead and gets the job done.

On the other hand, this new trick of his is, in many ways, is completely and utterly terrifying for us. You see, this means the little guy is only a month or two away from walking. And that means he is only a few months away from running. Which really means we are only a few months away from having our lives totally change for the rest of hour lives. If my calculations are correct, we will spend the next 18 years or so running around trying to keep track of this little dude, and make sure he doesn’t get himself into any situations that could get him (or us) into trouble.

To give you a sense of just how terrifying this new feat can be, I’ve put together a short video that best illustrates what this all looks like through our eyes. Make sure you have your sound turned up for the full effect.

Try not to get too frightened watching...

TeamMiltonFrank Photo Shoot

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:15:00 -0800

Hey everyone. I am afraid that I have bad news for all you TMF fans who came to the site to see Wyatt’s first Santa Claus picture, as we went to the mall this morning, waited in an incredibly long line for about an hour, and decided to bail after we moved probably ten feet during out entire queue. We are still determined to get Wyatt some time in front of Santa so that he can pitch him his Christmas list, but it will sadly have to wait until next weekend.

In the meantime, we received our professional family photo shoot (thanks Gi-Gi) pictures last week, and they turned out so incredibly well. Here are a few of the literally three hundred we got, as well as a link below to see more of the best.

All In The Name Of Science

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:01:44 -0800

As I think is pretty obvious, we take a lot of care in making sure we are always doing the right things when it comes to raising Wyatt. While we know there is no possible way that we could even come close to being perfect parents, we try as hard as we can to consider each and every little thing we do. Whether it is our interacting with him, making sure he gets plenty of rest, pushing advanced math skills, etc., it is all very important to us. Which brings me to the topic of today’s blog, eating.

Sure, we give Wyatt only organic baby foods, packed with nutrients and vitamins that will help him grow big and strong some day. But we were asking ourselves the other day if we thought we were feeding him properly. And I’m not talking about what we feed him, but literally how we feed him. Okay, I know what you’re saying, it isn’t that complicated. Put food on spoon, place spoon in baby’s mouth, repeat. But hey, we are nervous parents, so we decided to do a little research.

As it turns out, some leading child developmental psychologists have theorized that the way a spoon goes into and out of a baby’s mouth, can have a profound affect on the way said baby will cope in the workplace later in life. To do this research, they developed an extremely expensive, and highly technical device called the P.A.B.R.C. 3000 (short for Peas and Brown Rice Cam 3000). Meredith and I talked about it at great length, and decided that we needed to get one of those things for ourselves if Wyatt is ever to become the 48th President of the United States.

We gave it a whirl this morning, and I think you’ll see that it was worth every penny. We are currently compiling and analyzing the data, and will let you know shortly just how much of a genius Wyatt is.

Enjoy...