MoseleyWorld

Yesterday, the news broke, in a USA Today interview that Matt Damon and his wife Luciana are expecting a girl. For months, MoseleyWorld has known this but our sources had asked us to keep it under wraps. We’ll let the world in on the rest of the secret: Baby Girl Damon’s due date is August 16th . Coincidentally, it’s the same due date as Moseley Girl 2.0.

Elise Amendola / AP file

This will be Damon’s third child - all of which are girls (Isabella, 2 and stepdaughter Alexia, 9). Apparently, Matt and Luciana are taking the same approach to naming their new daughter. Matt said, “We decided to wait ’til she’s born, and then we’re going to get a look at her and we’ll probably keep debating it.”

UPDATE: Luciana and Matt Damon had a baby girl, Gia Zavala, who was born on August 20.

This weekend, we popped into the studio for a few minutes to take make some maternity portraits of Carey with Saxon. Saxon was much more interested in exploring all the stuff at her dad’s office than standing still for a silly portrait. Here are a few, but we’re going to give it another shot - time permitting.

Am I teaching my daughter the fine art of negotiation, ranging from successful sales pitches to a great con game?

About an hour after going to bed, Saxon yelled, “Daddy, Hey Daddy. Hey Daddy! I got poo poo in my diaper and wanna change it.” Although I was comfortably watching the Texas Rangers lose yet another ball game, I thought how incredibly uncomfortable it would be to sit in my own excrement - all night long.

So, I went upstairs, opened the door to Saxon’s room expecting to catch the faint (or strong) odor of “poo poo,” but the smell wasn’t in the air. After turning on a light, I took off Saxon’s wet, poo poo-less diaper, held it up showing Saxon and making a look of “what gives?”

Lying on her back, Saxon with both palms open and a surprised look on her face said, “No poo poo?” in a tone that certainly sounded quizzical.  Knowing the jig was up, Saxon started rattling off all the bedtime stall strategies, in rapid fire succession: “Wanna go downstairs…read-a-book…rock-a-minute…” After realizing it was going to be time to go back to bed, Saxon settled for the kiss-hug-cover me up combo. Night night sweet Saxon, my darling little con artist in training.

Saxon loves to negotiate. One of her first spoken phrases was “one more,” usually at bed time in the form of “read one more book.” A couple of months ago, Saxon cajoled her Yaya (my mom) into reading at least a dozen books, extending her bedtime into bonus rounds.

As I held out my hand with two gummi bear-like vitamins to Saxon and playfully asked how many she wanted, she responded, “mmmm, two, no five!” After giving her two, she kept repeating, “two more violins, two more violins.”

Saxon hearts water. I mean she really loves water. Swimming. Standing. Splashing. Pouring. Especially Pouring. I can barely go into the kitchen without Saxon zooming over to the refrigerator, tiny little playset cup in hand, to ask, “water? water, please? please water?” Because she doesn’t want to drink this water, just pour it from one container to another - usually on the coffee table or couch! - I typically say no. Apparently someone said, no to water, yes to ice, because now she quickly moves from water to ice.

We have tried hard to limit the amount of television, since most “experts” dissuade TV watching, especially for kids under 2. IMHO, they’re taking an extreme stance to try to prevent parents from using television as a 24/7 babysitter. I will openly admit, Saxon is an Elmo junkie. Sesame Street is about the only thing she’s allowed to watch.

At least 7 or 8 times a day, “watch elmo” comes out of her little mouth. If I reply with my usual “elmo’s sleeping,” Saxon then begins the negotiation ladder, uttering the following (in this order): watch street? watch ernie? watch big bird? watch elmo (again)? Most of the time, I remain steadfast and seek a diversionary game or toy. But sometimes I cave. My guess is that Saxon then makes a mental note, “Hmmm…watch Elmo didn’t work, but when I said ‘watch big bird’ the old guy finally turned on street.”

we took these fun photos at a garden party at the home of David Rolston, Dallas’ best landscape architect.

So, I guess maybe I am teaching Saxon to negotiate…but the whole con game, I haven’t a clue where she gets it.

Without further ado, some more photographs from our recent trip to Tuscany. Our home base was in Lucignano a great little town in southern Tuscany. We ventured all around Tuscany during our trip. We had brought our Garmin GPS, which was pre-loaded with European maps, but it was completely blown away by the TomTom GPS provided to us once we arrived at our house. The TomTom won in every category, directions, detailed mapping and map display.

We met Carey’s sister Ashley and her husband Mike at the estate of the Il Borro Winery owned by the Ferragamo family. The Ferragamos also purchased the tiny medieval village you can see in the background.

On the tour at Il Borro

We visited the Duomo in Siena. Highly recommended. I suggest getting a guidebook (like Rick Steves Tuscany) and skipping the sugar-coated audio guide, which skip minor details. For example, no mention in the Church-provided audio guide of this painting depicting Catherine of Siena marrying Jesus as his mother watches. It’s odd how upset Catholics got with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a work of fiction , because it suggested that Jesus had a girlfriend. But 700 years ago, not only was it OK for someone to write about their "mystical marriage" to Christ, you got canonized for it!

Trompe-loeil painting on ceiling at the Duomo. A carefully crafted illusion.

An incredibly graphic depiction, in marble, of the Massacre of the Innocents. Seeing all the mothers clinging to their babies (and the babies without heads) made Carey sad.

So, it was on to brighter things, like dinner. Here are our homemade pizzas in our wood-burning pizza oven.

Before this trip, it had been 8 years since Carey and I had been to Tuscany. We were amazed at how commercialized and "touristy" Tuscany had become. Siena was still the same but with more boutiques and a lot more tourists. Two of our favorite Tuscan hill towns, Montalcino and Pienza were nearly unrecognizable due to the "improvements" made to the towns.
Montepulciano, in southern Tuscany, must be off the beaten path just enough to have retained the old world charm that seemed be slipping away elsewhere. As we walked up to the ancient gates of Montepulciano, we realized we were in the midst of a bike race.

Here’s some of that old world charm we found in Montepulciano.

And again. One of my favorite photographs from the trip. A man who lives on a fairly busy street, watering his plants on his balcony, while wearing his coat & hat. So, so old world! The old guy noticed me after the first click of the shutter and wandered back into his apartment.

Matthew McConaghey is the latest star to cash in a tabloid’s desire to have exclusive access to baby’s first pictures. OK Magazine is paying a reported $3 million for photos of baby Levi Alves, son of Longview, Texas native McConaghey and his girlfriend Camila Alves. For $3 million, we’ll not only give exclusive rights to the photos, we’ll give naming rights.

Speaking of names, unless you’ve been living in a cave with Osama, you’ve heard Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline . Nicole Kidman and her classy hubby Keith Urban named their daughter Sunday Rose.

As I mentioned previously , we’re still trying to nail down the perfect name for Moseley Girl 2.0 - who will be here very soon ! Thanks to the 4 or 5 people who gave their suggestions. Listed below are the Top 10 names for 2007, compliments of the Social Security Database. Why don’t you head over to the Baby Name Voyager browse some names and send your favorites our way. It’s down to the wire. Momma’s had enough days of 9 months pregnant + 100 degree Texas weather, so I bet baby girl will be here soon.