Thursday, February 10, 2011

Work it Baby!


Like any smart mom in Hollywood, I put my son in showbiz so he could start bringing home some bacon. I told him, "Son, LA is expensive and mama is hungry. Go to work already!" And so he did.

Max's first paying gig was shooting an infomercial for Baby Bullet. He did great at the testimonial when he was a mere six months old. The producers voted him the gerber baby of the group and raved about his happy demeanor.

It was a wonderful day of work for us. We hung out with some other new moms and I even got my hair and makeup done while Max played with one of his new baby friends. At six months postpartum that was a real treat....the hair guy even gave me a scalp massage. That was so special for me--Between that and the portobello mushroom sandwiches at lunch, I was stoked for the baby and me work experience!

The baby bullet infomercial has been airing and I've gotten tons of messages from friends across the country that they've seen Max in all his adorableness at strange hours of the night on their televisions. Since we never watch infomercials and are no longer up all night breast feeding, I will probably never see the show live, but I did go over to the baby bullet website to take a gander. Of course Max was all smiles and bouncing around while I spoke highly of the baby food making product.

A few weeks ago, one of the producers called me and said they would like to work with Max again. They wanted two shots for another baby bullet show, separate from the infomercial. All they needed was to film him eating carrots or sweet potatoes and a taking a pacifier. Easy enough, right?

We were getting the details and found out Max had an 8am call time and the producer said more than anything they just wanted Max to be happy. My response was to explain to him that if you want the baby to be happy, you probably want him to be awake....ahahaha!!!! I realize that we are anything but traditional with our 11pm bedtime.

So I suggested that we push the call time back to 10am since Max has been waking up at 9am. He didn't hesitate for a second and changed the entire shooting schedule just for us. Tom Cruise doesn't even get that kind of star treatment!

We arrived on set last Friday for Max's second debut and the wardrobe gal asked if we could've found a happier baby when Max squealed and waved to announce his presence. We got him dressed, introduced him to the crew, and showed him his mark where he would be sitting in a high chair.

Everything went perfect up until that point when it was time to eat his carrots. His face puckered up in disgust after the first bite and it looked like he needed to vomit. We gave him another bite and it sounded like he was gagging on a fur ball.

So we went to plan B and offered him sweet potatoes and he wanted nothing to do with them either. He ended up blowing spit bubbles of orange goo all over his bib and the high chair. He made it very clear that there was no way he would slightly entertain the idea of ingesting food at that time. Nope, no chance at all!

Maybe he wasn't hungry or the puree was boring because it wasn't flavored with onions, garlic, and other vegetables like the soups we make for him at home. We'll never really know, but they didn't seem surprised at all. The director even mentioned that when you work with babies and pets you never really know what is going to happen.

Fortunately Max was happy to take his pacifier and they were able to at least get that one shot. He was more than happy to suck on the NUK pacifier every time we offered it so I didn't feel too bad that they didn't get any of the shots they needed. And lucky for me because Max was elated to grab the pacifier and put it in his mouth by himself with confidence 5 times in a row.

We ended up working a whopping 45 minutes from the time we arrived to the time we departed. They sent Max away with $300 cash and off we went. Not bad for a day's work. Not bad at all.

Now I know that my baby does not eat on command. Let's hope the news doesn't buzz around town too fast and ruin his chances of working again. This baby books job purely off his positive reputation....He doesn't even have an agent for goodness' sake!

He's his own person and that's the way to work it baby!

1 comment:

  1. He is such a cutie!! I haven't seen the infomercial yet, though I've been watching for it. And I'll be watching for this next one too. Just wait - he'll be winning an Oscar in the next 20 years ;-)

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