Devil Baby

To be honest, I had almost completely forgotten about this experience. I think I had learned to permanently block out some memories. But then, as I was looking on my camera for something I could delete, I realized that I still had not blogged about this devil child that I had over that fateful weekend.... This year for an elective, I took Child Psychology. It's a really fun class where you learn about all stages of having kids and the child developmental stages. Obviously one of those stages is birth and newborns. So for that, we had the opportunity to take home a "Realcare" baby. This slightly creepy baby doll (http://www.realityworks.com/realcare/realcarebaby.html) has a computer chip inside of it that runs a program for 3 days. This "baby" goes off of a real babies schedule, and you have to "feed" it, change it's diaper, and burp it. The caretaker has a chip on their wrist that you scan over the baby's computerized stomach before you take care of it so the computer knows it's actually you. When it's head flops back, it screams, and if you "abuse" it (punch/kick/throw it), that is registered and recorded. At night, it wakes up an average of three times a night, and wants to be fed every 2 hours. I didn't think it would be so bad, and to feed it, you could just prop up the bottle. NOT SO. That weekend was the worst weekend of my LIFE. This devil baby was set to a "colic" program, and would not. stop. crying. I couldn't prop the bottle up on it's chair to feed it like you could the other babies, it wanted to be held. I made the mistake of going to the Harry Potter movie the first night I had it, and missed the last half hour. Then at church, I was in the Mother's room the whole time with my stupid screaming "baby". I'll admit it, I called my child psych teacher and we tried resetting it, but it was just a super sensitive baby.... In conclusion, I will say that this is a good enough program to discourage any teenager from having children during high school, but it might have worked a little too well... there are a few girls in my class who have vowed never to have children. This is the set-up that I had for my "baby" (which my friends named Amanda). The light was perpetually on, and I didn't actually fully put the diaper on. I just slid the "dirty diaper" out from under the baby and put the new one under it.

Kind of creepy, isn't it?

Someone asked me once why I was feeding a doll. I responded, "Because it's hungry." Duh....

When I was at the movie theater, I heard another fake baby cry in the bathroom. When I went to investigate, my friend had brought her baby to the movies too! We decided together that it was probably not a very good decision, and that it's very weird to change a dolls diaper in a public bathroom.

Sadie wanted a baby too, so she wrapped up her doll and started carrying it around.

This is going to be harder than I thought...

Driving doesn't seem hard until you're actually behind the wheel.
I've been taking driver's ed for about a week now, and everything seems pretty simple. A lot to remember, but simple. Not so when that knowledge is actually put to use...
Mom , Dad, and I went for my first "drive" tonight, if that's what you want to call it. It's been said that every LDS person learns to drive in the church parking lot; so far this is true. We went to the church and practiced parking, turning, backing up, changing the song, all while trying not to hit invisible cars. Harder than it sounds.
I only ran into the curb once, but if there were actual cars in the parking lot, about 40 people would be after me...
This does get easier, right?.........

Hymn Blooper!!!

The fourth Sunday of every month, I play the organ for sacrament meeting, and this last Sunday was no different. And I had practiced more than usual this month, so I thought I was ready... thought being the key word.
Most weeks, there are no congregational hymns, just the three regulars. Well, lucky me, on November's fourth Sunday, there was a congregational hymn. So I stayed up on the stand during the talks (like I do every organ Sunday) and got ready to dash to the keyboards as soon as the second speaker was done.
All was going well- I made it to the organ on time, got it turned on and switched like I wanted relatively fast, and I turned to page 140. Little did I know that the hymn I was supposed to play was page 241.
I had played the introduction to the hymn, and looked over to the chorister to see when to start. But she gave me a funny look, and I realized I was playing the wrong hymn. I instantly thought, "Oh, page 141." And I played the intro to that. By now there were a few smiles throughout the congregation, and I was pretty frustrated. I couldn't figure out what was going on.
Then, it hit me- 241.
So I just laughed and moved on. And that small little thing got me a ton of comments, and compliments.

Tip for the future: If you ever make a mistake, particularly if that mistake is in front of a lot of people, just laugh and move on. Trust me, it's SO much easier than being embarrassed. ;)

Another totally random thing:
You know how some of the composers or authors of the hymns are "Anonymous", and they abbriviate that "Anon."? I used to look through the hymn book and think, "Wow, this guy 'Anon' really knew how to write!" :D