The Talker

I'm expecting a very large Christmas gift this year from Rogers. (Rogers the company, no, not you random blog-reading guys named-Roger - although, feel free). We bundle all of our household media (cable, internet, home phone and Eric's cell phone) from these guys, so we always receive a nice hefty monthly bill from them...which I pay promptly because I want nothing, NOTHING to interfere with the enjoyment I get daily from my PVR. 

But it's not the cable side who love us. It's the wireless. And you know why? Because my husband used over 1600 cell phone minutes last month. 1600. I will spare you from digging out your own calculator and tell you that is over 26 solid hours of air time.

Now, you may think about this ridiculous number and say...well, Naive Wife, surely he must be chatting up some yappy minx who-is-not-you, because that's a LOT of usage. But no...here is what makes this truly alarming...it's volume, plain and simple. Rarely, if ever are calls more than 5 minutes. Our bill last month came in a large 8x10 envelope - meaning, it was too thick to FOLD. Pages and pages of incoming and outgoing calls. And it's not even a work phone, at least in the 9-to-5 sense. No, I looked at the bill with what can only be described as shock and awe, and even knowing who most of the calls are to and from (bandmates, band agents, personal training clients, friends and me) it is still a sight to behold. 

Now maybe it's just me. Maybe there are lots of people who regularly use this many minutes, and that fact that I even find this noteworthy enough to blog about says much more about me and my lameness than him. I mean, I had my own phone line in my bedroom in high school and I was on it all the time. I'm sure I talked more than 26 hours a month...but I was 16 and this was waaaaayyy before internet. (I pause here for a moment to imagine a chatroom scenario using our Commodore 64 - which surely would have entailed downloading a text message on cassette and then walking said cassette down the street to a friends house.)

Anyway, I have come to terms with the fact that my husband is neither a teenage girl nor, the other obvious option, a drug dealer (the first option is actually more likely than the second). No, its all legit. Crazy, but legit. 

Still, you're welcome, Rogers.  I am assuming that our thank you/Christmas gift is in the mail. I'm sure Eric would like a new iPhone, but I'm thinking maybe a new PVR? With three tuners and more recording hours? Thanks. 

Timbits!

Its been so long since I updated I almost forgot i even had a blog! 

However, Kieran has just fallen asleep watching The Polar Express for the zillionth time,  and Kaya is also napping, so I'll see what I can write before my unexpected break ends.  

So, we are in full-on Christmas mode here. This year is the first that Kieran is able to grasp the whole Christmas concept. He loves Christmas movies and has, thankfully just moved away from requesting some cheap animated version of Babes in Toyland ad nauseum, to the MUCH more entertaining Polar Express. Or as he calls it "Po Pess", which, might I just say,  took me FOREVER to translate to regular English. Especially since I actually 'misheard' it the first time as Bo Bess, which sounded suspiciously to me like an American Idol contestant and not at all like a magical steam train to the North Pole.

***

Speaking of movies, I caught the tail end of Erin Brockovich on TV last  night.  It's one of those movies, along with Shawshank Redemption, and My Cousin Vinny that I will watch every single time it comes on TV no matter what else is on or what else I should be doing.  And while I was watching it, mad that I had missed the first hour and a half even though I've seen it 10 times, I realized how much I miss movies that have a great story. It could be that I've spent the last couple of years in toddler territory, but it seems to me more and more that we don't get movies with great stories any more.  We get superheroes (sorry, Eric), special effects, crazy violence, or a relatively boring story with a twist ending, but very few fantastic stories. Shawshank Redemption, which I will easily rank as my favourite movie of all time, is one of those. I miss that.  

***

How much soup is too much soup? I find it slightly alarming that Kieran is requesting soup for every single meal of  every single day. Any soup will do, but mainly, the Italian Wedding Soup is the perennial favourite. It's quite tiresome actually. He was also on a salad tangent for quite awhile, prompting Eric to note that Kieran could live quite happily on the lunch special at East Side Mario's. This current eating trend is, at least, cheaper that the shrimp fixation of a few months ago. 

Kaya on the other hand, is in love with (and I pause here while I gag for a moment)...beets. I loathe beets.  To me, they smell like dirt. Sweet purple dirt. But Kaya, in surely what is going to be one of her many acts of youthful rebellion,  loooves them. After a meal is done and her entire mouth is stained purplish red, she looks like a baby vampire just finishing a ritual sacrifice, which is creepy rather than cute. 

***

And my break is up for now. Back to the real world where I am behind on my Christmas baking, wrapping, shopping, packing and cleaning. Apparently, I'm getting a Dyson handheld vacuum cleaner as a pre-Christmas gift this year. Eric had to tread lightly, as husbands must do, when bestowing cleaning appliances upon their wives at Christmastime, but I'm genuinely excited. You would be too if you had an 8-month old Cheerio flinging vampire-baby in your house. 

Is it Hot in Here?

As it turns out, its hard to blog from down here in Hell, where I've been all this week. 

I won't bore anybody with the details of my early week, except to say that after 4 days of Kieran's high fevers, coughing fits not helped at all by his asthma medications, and a cough so horrible it could only be generated by the Sound Effects people at Paramount, we wound up with a diagnosis today of pneumonia.  

Just great.

Of course, today, even before the Dr. called with the bad news from his chest X-Ray, Kieran was already better and was playing with his cars rather than lying semi-comatose on the couch, only answering questions with blinks and sideways glances as he had been since Monday. 

Now,  I may not have pneumonia myself, but I will apparently never miss an opportunity to elbow my own way into an illness. If there is something going around, I just need to get it for myself, so naturally I'm sick as well.  As is Kaya, although even sickness does not dampen her easygoing personality. She will sit happily on the floor, fever raging and in a pool of snot, quietly trying to cram a block into her mouth and smiling when you talk to her. 

But this morning was bad. After I sadly made my phone call to his babysitter to say that Kieran would be missing yet another day, Eric took pity on me and told me that he was still owed a half day at the office and could easily take the afternoon off, thus giving me a break to get outside the house and away from sick children. So, I whiled away the morning just doing laundry and waiting until he got home so I could take a leisurely shower instead of one where I had to keep one ear outside the curtain lest I missed the sound of one of the children coughing themselves into fatal asphyxiation. 

Around lunchtime, Kieran's doctor calls to tell me about the pneumonia. Yay. And a little while after that, Eric finally calls to say that he was just about the leave, but the battery on his key fob is dead and he only has a key to start the car, not the one that manually unlocks the doors. I have that key in my purse, of course.

He went to the Toyota Dealership next door and they did have a new key battery, but it still didn't work. So, seeing my leisurely shower and childless afternoon getaway slipping away, I load up the two kids, both sick, into the van to drive downtown. Eric isn't waiting at the front door of his office when I get there and, as usual my cell phone is dead and I can't call him. So I drive to the back parking lot and unlock the door of his car manually, noting that my key fob ALSO is not working. This, as it turns out, is rather an important piece of information, but since I know virtually nothing about cars, I didn't think about it. 

I drive back around front where Eric is now waiting, drop him back off at his car and give him all my Nissan keys. Since I'm feeling tired and sick myself, not to mention guilty about dragging two sick babies downtown, I drove off. About 20 minutes into the drive, I start having this weird feeling...like I should have waited to make sure that Eric's car started. 

Turns out, it didn't start. The battery was quite dead. He realized this seconds after I left the parking lot and had no way to get stop me. I come home to a series of messages, starting with the rant about me never having a charged cell phone and getting more frustrated as the messages went on. As it turns out, a co-worker gave him a boost and the car was humming merrily, but somehow during this time, all the doors had wound up being shut and automatically locked. With BOTH sets of our car keys now inside and Eric outside in the freezing cold and me back home. 

By the time I called him back, another co-worker had called CAA for him and he was now just waiting for them to come open his door. 

While listening to these messages, I'm also getting the kids out of their winter gear. Kieran was definitely feeling better, which was good considering I hadn't even picked up his antibiotics from the pharmacy yet. But as I was taking off Kaya's hat, I took a good look at her. She'd been a bit sick since Wednesday but, unlike Kieran's, her fever though consistent had been quite low. And the night before she had started the same alarmingly horrible cough that Kieran had. But she had never never seemed as sick as Kieran had so I didn't really pay much attention. But looking at her then, I just knew that something was very wrong. She was boiling hot, her eyes were all glazed and watery and she just looked generally awful. She had barely eaten all day and I tried to give her a bottle, but she just wasn't interested. 

I called the doctor's office, which by this time, was only open for another hour, and they told me to come right in, so I pack both kids back into their winter gear and the car and off we go. When the Dr. saw us sitting her in examination room, she gave me a look that clearly meant "oh my god, here's a panicking mother who doesn't even realize that pneumonia isn't contagious" but after she listened to Kaya's man-sized cough, raspy lungs and wheezy breathing, and heard about her low but prolonged fever, we had our second pneumonia diagnosis of the day.  And now I have two children with asthma puffers and breathing masks and a fireplace mantle lined with pharmaceuticals. 

Black Friday, indeed.

What Would Jesus Do?

You know how when you hear about some horrible domestic incident on the news and there are always friends, neighbours, teachers who report after the fact that they saw the warning signs and yet did nothing? I've always hoped that I would be one of the people who WOULD do something. Say, if I heard screaming coming from a house or something that I would call 911 rather than just keep walking and assume it's none of my business. 

Sometimes though it's not so simple. 

I have blogged about our neighbours before. We have the cranky old people beside us: some less cranky old people across from us: and the family next door consisting of a mousy wife, two young daughters and the weird -overly-chatty husband who can have the same conversation with me once a week and never seem to remember. Despite the rampant neighbourhood gossip about this man being a raging drunk and having fights with all the neighbours, we've actually never once seen anything totally out of the ordinary. In fact, it sounded like in the years before we arrived our little street was a regular Knots Landing (I'd say Melrose Place, but that would imply that my neighbours had either looks or money, and alas, neither is the case). Apparently there was lots of fighting and drama all over the place. Now its just sort of dull. I think the people who we bought the house from were a huge part of the drama and when they moved things seemed to have settled down.

Periodically though, this seemingly nice but odd family next door have crazy arguments. I once heard the father and his preteen daughter having a screaming fight over Elton John. (The daughter thought, predictably, that Sir Elton was lame). What struck me about the argument was that there was no air of "jest" about it. There was fury on both sides and it seemed so silly. Then about a year ago, one of Eric's clients came to our front door reporting that our neighbours were, as she put it,"having a domestic." Anyway, I just sort of decided that they are a hot tempered family because this will happen and the next day it all seems fine and they are off camping for the weekend or asking us to sign their passports so they can go to Disney World. 

Then a few weeks ago, I was woken up from a dead sleep at about 1:30 by what sounded like a group of teenagers on the street. It was a Tuesday and Eric was at a band practice and I hadn't heard him come home yet, which was odd because 1:30 would be late for him on just a practice night. The voices were not going away and as I sat up in bed I realized that a fight was going on outside.  I also realized that Eric WAS home and with him was their new lead singer, Erin. Erin was trying to leave but, as it turns out our neighbours were having a crazy huge fight in their driveway and she was sort of afraid to go outside. Eventually, as it became clear that the fight was not going to end, she left and as the door opened I could hear the yelling as if it was on our doorstep. The wife was screaming something about how "he always does this when she has to get up in the morning." Anyway, I guess they were NOT expecting to see anyone leaving our house because as soon as they saw Erin they shut up and I'm hoping were sufficiently embarrassed and went back inside. Again, the next day, all is well. 

Then last night, something really bizarre happened. It was about 9 pm, and coincidentally Erin is just arriving at our house again. We'd had a snowstorm and the roads were bad so Erin's husband had called to make sure she had arrived, as she doesn't have a cell phone. So, when Eric saw her car pull up he went outside to give her his phone. And the neighbours are at it again. This time, while Eric was outside, the wife came running out of the house screaming: "Help Me! Help Me!" but then ran back inside and then about a minute later, came out again screaming "Help Me! Help Me!", then the daughter (who's about 14)came outside and seemed really embarrassed and got the mother back in the house and I think that was the end of it. 

I was thinking about calling 911, but didn't. I think if Eric hadn't seen the daughter come to the door, perfectly fine, I might have. Because really if I ran out the house screaming for help, I'd like to think that someone would actually HELP.  But something about the situation seemed more "crazy" than "emergency".  .

Still...all day, I've felt guilty.  What if there is something really bad going on? What if one morning I wake up not to an argument, but an ambulance? Last night, it felt like calling 911 would be a big deal. Eric seemed to think the wife was drunk. But still, something obviously isn't right over across that fence. I'm sort of worried that they have crossed a line from harmless and, dare I say, even a bit funny, to something that I need to start worrying about.

Anyway, I think next time (and something tells me there WILL be a next time) I will call the police. When it comes right down to it , there are worse things than embarrassment. 

Everybody Out of the Pool!!

Just in case you thought you had read the last breastfeeding blog from me, be warned, here comes another. But, don't worry,  it doesn't involve me...just my ever-present opinions. 

There was a news story in the Toronto Star yesterday about a woman who was asked leave a public pool because she was breastfeeding. This woman is asking the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to look into it, and on the surface I would think...rightfully so. Right now, there is a huge "Anytime, Anywhere" breastfeeding campaign going in this region and surely this is exactly what they mean.

Really?

Here's the story: the woman was in the pool talking to a group of friends when her 20-month-old daughter started to get fussy, so she moved to the steps of the pool to breastfeed her daughter there. The female (and coincidentally pregnant) owner of the pool, asked the woman if she would mind moving to the change room or the viewing area where she might be "more comfortable". And thus begins yet another war....

Now, legality aside, there are some key words above that make me pause. Those words are public pool; 20-month-old; steps. 

Come ON. 

First of all, why would anyone, legally able or not, WANT to feed her baby (ahem, toddler) in a public pool that probably has  seen more pee than a Yonge St parking garage stairwell? Mix that pee (and God knows what else) with pool chemicals and that DOES sound like a nutritious, tasty meal.  It reminds me of the time we dropped Kieran's soother on the floor of The Brick. I WANTED to give it to him so we could continue shopping in peace, but didn't because that would have been gross. Perhaps if I had scraped my boob across the floor and fed him in the doorway that would have been more acceptable?

Secondly, was the 20-month-old THAT hungry that she could not wait to be removed from the pool? She's not exactly a newborn, nor even a baby. Not to criticize her parenting...well, YES, I'm going to criticize her parenting! How about telling the girl, "not right now, Mommy is in the pool talking to her friends?"

And finally, the pool STEPS. Convenient for you perhaps, but for the other pool users, perhaps not so much. 

This mother said she felt ashamed and embarrassed to be singled-out and asked to leave, but I can tell you right now, that although I support breastfeeding 100 per cent, I think this woman is an oddball. 

Normally, because I was far too cowardly to even think about public breastfeeding,  I consider those who do as brave. In a bathing suit it would border on heroic since there is no scenario I can imagine where this can be done discreetly. (Which, by the by, I'm sure is a main part of the reason why the woman was asked to leave and the ick-factor just a lucky defense.)

There are of course, people who feel quite strongly on both sides of the issue. Lots of supporters are saying things like "this never would have happened if she was bottle-feeding." Well, probably not, because unless she had the bottle hidden up her tankini, she would have had to leave the pool to go get it and I would HOPE would not go back to the pool steps to bottle feed her child. 

No, in my oh-so-humble opinion, human rights violation or not, it just seems like outright self-centredness on the mother's part. Surely the only person benefitting from the "pool steps breastfeed" was the woman herself...after all, she didn't have to cut the conversation with her friends short to deal with her child. It was not to the benefit of the daughter, who probably has been fed in warmer, cleaner and more comfortable places in her day. Obviously, the pool owner is not benefitting...her pool is now the site of pro-breastfeeding demonstrations. 

I would even be surprised if the greater good, which is to say, the generalized acceptance of public breastfeeding, will be served.  I'm sure advocates would be happier if the woman championing their cause was a teensy bit wiser but then again, they probably don't care since any publicity is good publicity.

Anytime, anywhere, indeed. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to feed Kieran his lunch. In a rest stop bathroom. On the floor. Its legal. And delicious. 

They're not Just For Breakfast Anymore....

So..how long does it take to boil an egg? I think it's something like 3-5 minutes for soft boiled and 10-15 for hard boiled. But, here's a trick question. How long does it take to boil an egg until it explodes into a billion hard-boiled smithereens? 

That would be an hour and a half. 

I went out last night with the girls for dinner and some serious girl talk, which we haven't done in ages.  I got home probably about 12:30 or so and was immediately struck by this horrible smell in the house. I tentatively walked into the kitchen and at first everything looked sort of okay, but also sort of off....then, as I looked closer, I see small unidentifiable yellows bits all over everything. The stove, the floor, the counter, the ceiling  - basically from one end of the kitchen to the other and (as I found today) even into the living room.. It wasn't until I looked in the sink and saw the burned carcass of a pot with charred black bits all over it that I started to figure out what might be happened. There had obviously been some kitchen catastrophe of which Eric had attempted to clear away, albeit half-heartedly.

To answer the next obvious questions of what, how and why, I needed to locate my husband who was lurking downstairs on this computer, and looking quite sheepish when I walked in. Yes, he put on eggs to boil for his next morning's breakfast and then went to put Kieran to bed, fell asleep himself and woke up an hour and half later to the sound of eggs exploding like firecrackers all over the house. Trust me, I'm not sure what was worse... the smell of burned eggs or the process of chipping burned yolk of the ceiling. 

Breakfast is ready!

Genny on the Town

Eric's band has yet another new female lead singer. I believe this is #5 in the past 18 months.  The singers have all been varying degrees of good with flashes of great, but it has taken them a long time to find just the right fit...and I'm thinking, fingers crossed, that this one is keeper. Not just because she's really good (probably the best yet), but also because I cannot take the eternal drama of them finding a new female lead, rehearsing endlessly and then her ultimately leaving/being asked to leave. Drama, I tell you and quite exhausting.

Anyway, Eric suggested that last Saturday might be a good day to go see them since they were playing at relatively popular bar downtown. Now that the band is doing very well, they are playing at bars that people actually go to. This is a big change from the early days when me and my drunk friends might be the only patrons at some boring pub.  But I thought it was a great idea - he has been playing so often that I have more or less forgotten that I used to make an effort to attend most of his gigs. 

It was going to be my first night away from the Papaya since she was born. Almost seven months. Still, I was more than ready, so  I imposed on the goodwill of my brother and sister-in-law for the second night in a row (Halloween being the night before) and arranged to have the kids stay over there overnight.  

So, off we went. The bar, which I had been to before, has a real reputation of being a cougar bar and I remembered being shocked at exactly how many older ladies were there. What was even more shocking was that those exact same older ladies are apparently STILL going. It was a crazy mix of young and old. Like a tacky wedding with a good band. And, without a word of a lie there were two ladies, who were clearly pushing 70, all dolled up and rocking out the dance floor. In true Grandma-fashion they were even holding their ears because the band was "too loud." I had our camera and spent an inordinate amount of time trying take their picture. I took shot after shot of them while pretending to take shots of the band. (Later, my curiosity getting the better of me, I engaged one of them in conversation for awhile...apparently, while I sit at home watching reruns of "What Not to Wear" they hit that bar every single Saturday night.)

I just kept taking pictures. I got tons of photos of the band and my friends and even had a new one picked out as my new Facebook profile picture. At one point, alcohol interfering in my iffy ability to work the camera to begin with, I ended up on video mode and so I went ahead and videoed a few songs, which caused me to run out of room on the memory card. I put the camera away, but then, some young guy started to actively hit on one of old ladies! It was a golden moment and I felt I needed to get a picture, so I went ahead and deleted a bunch of  stuff I had shot earlier  and then started to take more pictures of what was happening on the dance floor which, the time at least, I considered to be real hilarity. Alas, the last pictures of the night were clearly those taken by a drunk person of drunk people. All off centre, blurry, stupid. But I was happy  and figured that out of the dozens of pictures I took - at least earlier in the night - SOME had to be good. 

So, the next day as I languished on the couch feeling decidedly ill and postponing the pickup of my little darlings, Eric took a moment to download the pictures I had taken.

Except they were All Gone. All that was left was the horrible 20 or so that I had taken just before last call when nobody should be either driving nor operating a camera. I vaguely remember the camera asking me to confirm that I wanted to delete photos on a screen that was unfamiliar to me, but those pints of Creemore did not allow me to stop and think for a moment. So we lost  it all. Not just that night either.  It was goodbye to all the Halloween pictures, and everything from several months before that, which I am choosing to NOT think about. (Sure I can put the kids back in their Ladybug and Cow costumes...but I would always know it was staged and the true moment lost.)

Still, all in all, it was a good night, but I'm still mad. All I have left is the memories of two old ladies in their pearls and heels, dancing to "I Kissed a Girl" and "500 Miles". And tomorrow night, as I watch Stacey and Clinton mock yet another unfortunate slob in their cruel three way mirror, I will think of them and shed a tear. 

Halloweenies

I always thought there were two types of people in the world...crazy Halloween people and, well, everybody else. I'm pretty sure we all know a crazy Halloweenie...someone who lists the day as their favourite holiday and starts planning next costume in early summer. 

I am not one of those people. 

After my trick or treating days were done, and Halloween became a day to only dress up for zero reward, what was a mild dislike of the holiday, morphed over time into a full blown loathing. It became, along with New Years Eve, what I call, a "high pressure holiday". I always felt like I needed a really cool costume but it took me forever to come up with the idea. All through high school and university there were always Halloween functions so every year I would wait until the last minute and then come up with an idea that required a lot of work - face paint, hair colour, the works. For example, I would be a "bag of garbage" -  filled a garbage bag full of balls of newspapers and covered my face in dirt. I have always be willing to look like an idiot on Halloween.

But then one year about 7 or 8 years ago, I went to a Halloween house party and I knew I was done with the day for good. 

I had decided to go to this party as a "person falling out of a building". This required making my hair stand upright, and inserting a lot of coat hangers into my clothes to make them appear windblown. Like I said, a lot of work. So, with my hair full of about nine cans of hairspray and coat hangers hand-sewn into the seams of my shirt so it stood upright above my head (and when someone asked what I was, I told them I was falling from a building,  put my hands up in the air and screamed "AAAAHHHH!") I walked into the party and looked around and realized just what I hated about Halloween...it's that nobody else seems to put in much effort or is willing to look silly for the night. You have your prom queens, your Elviras, your brides,  your princesses (which is wearing your prom dress with a tiara)... basically people just taking their fancy dresses out of the closet and making themselves pretty for the night. And there I am having taken hours  hand sewing coat hangers through the seams of my shirt while some girl takes her black witch robe and hat out of its cellophane wrapper and is done.  (Don't get me started on the guys..mechanics, doctors, farmers. The occasional pimp. All boring.)

Shortly after this party debacle, the day slid even lower as "pretty costumes" have now officially been replaced by "slutty costumes'. This year, I knew the "sexy" transition is 100 per cent complete when my niece told me that at a Halloween store there was a costume that was a"slutty nun." Please, I'm OK with the sexy barmaid, the sexy nurse and even the sexy cat, but can't our friggin' NUNS be left alone? 

Anyway, having sworn off dressing up, I turned my attention to handing out candy. No dressing up required. The first year I did this I lived in a ground floor apartment right downtown with my sister and I told her that I wanted to hand out candy. She had lived in the apartment longer than I and warned me that they got a LOT of kids, so I bought probably about 20 bags of candy. She was right about it being crazy... I got home from work at 5:30 and there were hundreds (and hundreds) of kids swarming the neighbourhood. By six I was giving kids one tiny pack of Chiclets each and I was out of candy by 6:15. (That was also the year that at about 9:30 the doorbell rang and some man in his forties was standing on our doorstep holding a shopping bag in one hand and a cigarette in another and asking if we had any candy left.  Creepy.)

Now with the arrival of children the day has become more enjoyable again. Since Eric's band was playing and he wasn't around we turned off our own lights and went to my brothers house. Kieran (dressed as a cow) had a ball trick or treating with his two cousins....even though he ran out of steam after about 25 houses and had to be carried to the next 25.  (At least he's a small cow).

So, assuming Kieran doesn't need to be carried every year, there may be hope for the day. One year we may even go so far as to decorate our house up all Halloween-y and play scary music at the doorstep. 

However, rest assured, I will never, EVER dress up as a slutty nun. 

You're a Serial Killer, Charlie Brown

That old classic "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" was on TV tonight and I thought it might be fun to introduce Kieran to some of the stuff I watched when I was little. Thankfully, time and progress haven't  rendered it completely unwatchable like say, Mr Rogers Neighbourhood, which I notice is being replayed on PBS and is the Most. Outdated. Program. Ever.

I was immediately struck by how different these old cartoons are from the pablum that kids are fed today. Kids shows today are all either about love, caring and sharing or they are relentlessly educational. And, really, after a character asks a question, do they have to pause for 3-5 seconds for kids at home to yell out the answers, every single bloody time? (I'm talking to you Dora). 

But, back to Peanuts... I'd forgotten how cruel those kids are. Funny, but cruel. Seriously, poor Charlie Brown gets a Halloween Party invite and is immediately told by some bitchy girl that it was be a mistake and that he was on the list of kids that weren't supposed to be invited. And it's downhill from there. He's then the loser that opens himself up to further ridicule by cutting a million eye-holes in his ghost sheet and is the kid that gets only rocks while trick or treating. 

This leads me to wonder...we all know that Charlie Brown never, ever catches a break, but that must have taken its toll over time. How much rejection and negativity can a little kid take before he's putting Snoopy in the microwave and learning how to make bombs off the internet? Perhaps next we'll see him being followed around by an A&E camera crew as they chronicle his downward spiral into a world of drugs and prostitution?

All I know is that we haven't seen the last of Charlie Brown and if I was Lucy Van Pelt, well...I'd be practicing my psychiatry under an assumed name. 

See you at Christmas, Charlie Brown. Stay Strong. (But if you cannot fight your urge to kill...I'm going to give you Caillou's address. Can't stand that kid.)

Thanks for Calling

So, the phone rang the other day, one of the dozens of telemarketing calls that I field on a daily basis. This time, it was someone asking for 30 seconds of my time to do a survey on water usage. Seemed innocuous enough, so I answered a couple of questions regarding my use of tap water vs bottled water and then forgot about it. 

A few days later, the phone rang again, and after I answered, I rolled my eyes because I should have known. It was the water survey people again, this time saying that due to my participation in their survey I had been especially selected to receive a free Shoppers Drug Mart Gift Card, all I had to do is have someone come to the house to perform a simple water quality test. 

I should have hung up right away, but, although I'm pretty good at cutting off telemarketers I ended up listening to the girl, mainly because I sort of wanted that gift card. But, unless you do actually hang up on them, it's easy to get trapped. So, of course, I wound up with an appointment to have someone come to the house to test our water, even though I know all they want is to sell me some sort of filtration system. 

What was irritating me however was the fact that they kept stressing that my husband needed to be present for the appointment. I knew that when I made the appointment that he wasn't going to be home, but since I had zero intention of buying anything, I figured I'd let them tell me how bad our water was and then get the gift card. 

About five minutes after I hung up with the girl, the phone rang again, this time it's the "supervisor" just re-confirming the appointment. By this time, I knew I'd made a mistake and was going to be in for the hard sell. Anyhow, the supervisor stressed again that my husband needed to be home. It seemed painfully clear to me that they need the husband to be home because their systems are so atrociously expensive that wives use the old "I'll need to clear this with my husband" schtick to get rid of the sales guy (otherwise known as the "water tester"). 

Seeing my easy out, I said that, in fact, my husband was NOT going to be home at that time after all. The woman paused and then said that they were going to have to cancel the appointment. (Cue my sigh of relief). But the woman went on to say that they don't allow their testers to come when the husband isn't home because "its unsafe for the woman." And that to protect all parties they prefer not to leave their male technicians alone with female homeowners. 

So, hold the phone here, sister. 

What exactly are you trying to say? Are you telling me that your technicians are a bunch of lecherous perverts who've been known to assault or harass unsuspecting stay-at-home moms? Or are you insinuating that your innocent technicians are mere prey to us wily stay-at-home-minxes? And furthermore, does Rogers know this? I wonder, because they have never requested a man be present when they come to install cable.

Thanks for worrying about our collective safety water people, but I'm calling you out on this one. Don't try to pretend that you are concerned about my safety because I don't actually believe it. Granted, I would rather NOT be at home alone with any of your apparently creepy technicians but now that you've mentioned that I need to be worried about my safety, I'm even less likely to have you come over to perform your little water test. And also, what if I didn't have a husband? What if I was single or divorced? Does that mean that I can never know if my water is poisoning me? 

So, obviously, I am ignoring any further calls from my "friends" all Lifetime Water and I have since registered into the "Do Not Call" database. It's for my own safety.

Babies. Election. Satan. Not necessarily in that order.

So, for the first time since the Papaya was born 6 months ago, I had a baby (and toddler) free day yesterday. Almost 8 hours of pure selfishness...and you know what? Nice as it was, I'm not sure it was worth the $30 I paid in extra daycare costs. 

Not that there was anything wrong with the day itself, but the reality is...Kaya is just zero trouble. Seriously. This child just goes with the flow. Happy. Kicks her legs in unbridled joy when she realizes that you are about to pick her up.  She has suffered teething and a really nasty cold with no personality change. Unless you wipe her nose, in which case,  she screams and thrashes like Satan being burned with holy water.  

What made me realize that I had wasted my money was when I went to pick the kids up from daycare and the sitter tells me that Kaya is the "best baby she's ever had." (Guess they didn't go after her with a Kleenex). I wasn't surprised but my second thought was...why did I bother? I realized that although I can move a lot quicker when I'm not lugging an almost 16-pounder in an infant carrier everywhere, it's not a big deal. 

On a related note: we may have to tone down the use of the nickname "Papaya" since she is clearly beginning to think that is her name. Not sure I can stop now though. 

****

We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. Spent in the leafy utopia of North Andover, Massachusetts, where of course it was NOT Thanksgiving, but Columbus Day. I'm sure my brother and his family are among the few in the town who mark the Columbus Day weekend with turkey and wine. OK, maybe just the turkey. I suspect there are many people who spend the day guzzling wine. How could they not when confronted by the endless, hate-filled, drawn-out, country-dividing spectacle that is the American Election. Whatever the outcome, the end cannot come soon enough. The only thing I'll miss about the election being over is Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. (Its funny cause its TRUE.)

What a complete contrast to the speedy snoozefest that was the Canadian election. which was a face off between two of the LEAST interesting candidates in the entire history of mankind (let alone Canadian politics). And, of course, we ended with the same result we had going in. Thanks for wasting our time and money Harper, you dead-eyed fool. 

***

For the Love of Little Girls

I was at Toys R Us yesterday. I was meeting  a friend for coffee and was early so I wandered around the store to see what I could buy. It's funny with the second baby...you realize just how little you actually NEED. Not just because you already have everything, which you do, but because you realize how quickly the stuff you do buy gets relegated to the closet or the storeroom. 

Which is why, while standing in line to purchase a $15 tray in order to extend the life of Kaya's Bumbo, I was behind a family with a loaded cart full of unnecessary items. The Deluxe Baby Bath Spa and Shower was one of them. So was the Video Baby Monitor and a $90 diaper pail. If I had been standing behind these people when Kieran was a newborn I may have been jealous, but this time I just thought they were suckers. 

Having said that I must make a small confession. I have bought almost NOTHING for our daughter. Ninety-nine percent of her clothes are either hand-me-downs or gifts. Basically, all I have bought for this child is diapers and formula. I have even been making my own baby food this time (a lot of it is peaches.) However a few weeks ago I saw the 1-2-3 Tea for Me Exersaucer. All of a sudden I felt really sorry for this little girl who sleeps on football sheets and uses toy cars as teethers. I wasn't being frugal... I was being cruel!! So, after thinking about it for a few days, Eric told me to just go buy it already. So, I did. And she loves it. And its pink. With a musical teapot and a little purse with fake/chewable money and a layer cake. So, I guess maybe I'm a sucker after all. 

One other item that Kaya has which Kieran didn't was a Christening gift from a friend of mine called the "Dream Screen." It's a little video player that attaches to the side of the crib and when the baby pulls a little bug it starts playing music along with a mesmerizing video.  I usually put this on for her during the day as entertainment rather than at night because it seems a bit loud and bright for nighttime. Although, the other night, she woke up and was inexplicably fussy so I turned it on for her and left the room. I came back a few minutes later to check on her and was slightly alarmed. In a dark room, the Dream Screen casts the exact same blue glow as a television. I half expected to look into the crib and see Kaya passed out in a bowl of Mr Noodles and the screen scene changed from a computerized nature scroll to a Singles Phone Chat Infomerical.  She's going to be ALL SET for the University years.

You Tell Him Kieran

Let's cut to the chase. Where have I been? In short, my two year old stopped napping (sniff, sniff). 

I had really hoped that he would hold out until closer to three, but here we are barely past two and the naps are history. Or at least, the predictable naps are history. If I'm incredibly unlucky he will fall asleep while I'm making dinner or in the car and then, in addition to no nap, he'll be up until 10. That's a LOT of two year old. 

Consequently, he's become quite attached to me. He's disdainful of just about everyone else, turning his head angrily away if someone else so much as speaks to him. Sometimes this even includes his father. 

Yesterday, Eric and I were discussing me finding time to take another cake decorating class. The conversation goes like this:

Gen: I'm thinking of taking another class. 

Eric: You should. Just do it. 

Gen (voice rising in exasperation): I WOULD but your stupid schedule doesn't give me any free day. 

Eric (voice rising in return exasperation): Well, just pick a day and TELL me and I'll clear.....

Before he can finish, Kieran comes flying out of absolutely nowhere and puts himself between me and Eric. He turns to his father and starts wagging his finger at him. "DO NOT YELL AT MOMMY." 

HAHAHAHAHAHA.  

Just Peachy

After a flurry of blogging the past few weeks, I see it all came to a crashing halt. It's been a boring type of busy lately.

Last week, much of my free time was spent getting ready for the baby's christening, cleaning, shopping, cake making blahblahblah. The day went very well, thank you for asking. Except of course that it was the one day all month where the Humidex goes to nuts and we had to keep cranking the AC up lest the guests melt into a puddle round the shrimp ring.

The rest of the time I have been drowning under a mountain of...peaches. Peaches. Hundreds of peaches.

A friend of mine has a 4 peach trees in her backyard, and this year, for whatever reason (most likely the copious rain) they have produced ridiculous amounts of fruit. I think she has peaches numbering in the thousands. So last week, I went to her house and we picked peaches (me off the tree, Kieran off the ground), brought them home and I went to work freezing, baking and pureeing them into baby food. I used them all up and was patting myself on the back for being both thrifty and domestic-goddess like.

Then earlier this week,since we hadn't had any for several days, Kieran started to ask for peaches so I went out a bought a big basket. The next day, the peach-friend calls to beg me to come back and take more. So, reluctantly I go to her house and lined up in her entryway are three overflowing bags of peaches. I pray she isn't expecting me to take all of them, but she was. I lug them home and drop them on our doorstep and today figured I had to start doing something with them. It wasn't the warm and fuzzy (pun intended) domestic experience of last week. This week the peaches are on their last legs...huge rotting spots on many of them, and covered in 8 trillion fruit flies. Sometimes I would reach into the bag and my hand would just hit mush. I'm pretty sure they were actually rotting in front of my eyes as I was sorting through them. But, I went back to work, finding all the good ones and pureeing MORE baby food (poor Kaya is going to have peaches every day until she's 2), freezing more bags for protein shakes and future crisps and smoothies and then even made a cobbler for dinner. After what felt like hours, I gave up and took about 40 out the green bin and dumped them in. Then I turned around to see that i still have a full bag remaining...not to mention the basket that I bought a few days ago. Uncle.

And this weekend...we are picking apples. Luckily, I loathe cooked apples - no pie crust or cobbler topping can distract me from my hatred, so no baking frenzy will take place. Selfish I know, however, the fruit flies will have a new place to call home.

Tidbits...or Timbits. Mmmm Timbits

So, I read somewhere that if you haven't lost the baby weight by 6 months you never will. I need to know what they mean by "never". Is that statistically never or empirically never? No matter. I still have five weeks.


Lance Armstrong is planning a comeback to racing. Please. Can't anyone stay retired any more? Next thing you know my Dad will come out of retirement to go back to teaching. It's all so predictable. Besides, what does he (Lance, not my dad) want to prove? That he's found yet some new way to escape steroid detection? Call me cynical and jaded. Call me irresponsible, but I for one do not believe that man won 6 (or was it 7) Tours de France (Tour de Frances?) completely clean. Can't he just stick to dating starlets?


The baby slept for 12 hours solid last night. Seven-thirty to seven-thirty and not a single peep in between. I fully expect three wise men show up at our door bearing gifts for the new messiah. Which will be nice...I'll finally find out what the hell myrrh is.


Eric bought a couple of Scratch and Win tickets the other night. My ticket (boringly) consisted of scratching four symbols and then winning the corresponding prize at the end of the line. On my second line I won $50. Whoo Hoo! Then I won $5... whoo hoo. Then I won $20....then I read the rules. Apparently I needed to have 4 matching symbols, not three like I thought. I continued to scratch the ticket and by their rules I won nothing. By MY rules I won $100,175.


We went last week to update our Health Cards. Since Eric had to replace his anyway (his wallet still MIA) and since mine is one of the old, raggedy Red and White jobbies, we all went. It was the usual rush of getting two kids out the door for an undetermined length of time, so I was a bit frazzled when we finally hit the road. We finally got to the right place and had just settled in waiting for our number to be called.
Me: "Thank God we don't have to get our picture taken. I totally forgot to brush my hair."
Awkward Pause as I look around the room and see cameras flashing all over the place.
Me: "Ohhhhh."
Eric: "How did you not know this?"
Me: "The kids cards don't have pictures..."
Eric: "You're an idiot."
An idiot, with frizzy unbrushed hair and an official document to prove it.


We went to watch Eric's playoff baseball game on Sunday night. I was not-so-secretly-hoping his team would lose, so he would have Sunday night's free again. Watching baseball with babies is scary. I kept having visions of foul balls smashing into soft baby skulls. (See? Scary thought, right?) We didn't stay long. And they lost, so our work was done anyway.

I'm waiting anxiously for the Fall TV season to start. I actually watched The Hills for the first time ever last week. Is that show supposed to be real? I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but everyone on it is a complete tool. I followed that up with a little 90210 which is Lance Jonesing itself back onto our lives. It's the same stupid show as 15 years ago, only this time there's a black kid.   Yawn.

Water Wars

Sadly, I have no new Internet rumours to report today. This saddens me as my life, as you will see from the next entry,  is quite dull otherwise. 

I know I have mentioned past run-ins with the neighbours on both sides. The old people who get all bent out of shape about Eric's clients parking on the street are a total write off. But the younger people on the other side are OKish. Or, the wife and kids are OK. The husband though is creepy. For a few months he forgot my name and was calling me "Jezebel". How brutal is that? We know he's a drinker, but I'm never sure if he's also sort of stupid because he asks me the same questions every time we have a conversation. 

Anyway, he is currently refilling his pool after having the liner repaired and he asked Eric yesterday afternoon, just as we were heading out for a few hours,  if he could borrow our hose. Eric said OK. Obviously, we are totally naive because we didn't think anything of it until we come home and see that he's borrowing our hose all right....still hooked up to our water. So, at about 10 pm last night the water was still running so we figured enough is enough and  turned it off. Literally seconds later, the guy is banging at our door explaining to Eric that he'll pay us blahblahblah, so the water got turned back on. 

This morning at 7,  I get up and I can STILL hear the water running so I go outside to turn it off. I'm just coming back into the house and there he is over the fence. "Oh, sorry about the hose, Jezebel." What? Is this guy standing over the hose all night? Does an alarm sound inside his house if our hose stops? I was out there for five seconds! Anyway, I told him I was turning it off, but he said he would give us $100 and then give us more if our water bill was crazy. It still pisses me off though. I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable and un-neighbourly, but his pool takes 20,000 litres of water! Why do we have to be responsible for half of it? 

It's better when your neighbours are NOT talking to you I think.  

Politically Incorrect

I'm not so much into politics, American or Canadian. I like to know a little bit about most issues so I can get by at a dinner party and vote with a clear conscience. Of course, if there is something that particularly interests me, I'll go to great lengths to learn a lot about it. But in general I prefer other types of news...like gossip.

But when politics and salacious gossip come together....it's fabulous.

Simply put, I am fascinated, BEYOND FASCINATED with the current scandal that is unfolding in the US regarding Sarah Palin, John McCain's questionable pick as his presidential running mate.

First of all, I'm going to come right out and say that Sarah Palin is the kind of woman I loathe, both in real life and politics. She is a gun-loving conservative of the highest order, is anti-abortion (even in the case of rape), wants creationism taught in schools AND believes sex ed is teaching "abstinence only". And she has poofy blow-dried hair, which may or may not be held up by a banana clip.

No, Sarah Palin and I would NOT be friends.

Oddly, my dislike of Palin started way before she ever entered into the American election race. No, I first disliked her back in April after I gave birth to the Papaya.

Kaya was born on April 13. Sarah Palin, who is 44, gave birth to a son on April 18. So, the uncertainty and randomness of childbirth was still fresh in my mind when I heard about this Alaskan Governor whose water broke while on state business in Texas. What did this woman do? No, no, she didn't check into the neareast Dallas hospital. She did what any mother of four (soon to be five) would do...she stayed in Texas to give her speech that night, then without telling anyone at the airline that she was in labour (or soon should be), boarded a plane to fly from Texas to Alaska (with a stopover in Seattle no-less). She landed in Alaska, then drove past some fancy medical centres in Anchorage to give birth to her son in a hokey small town hospital an hour away. Did I mention that she had gone into labour one month early and her son was born with Down's Syndrome, which they knew about before hand? At the time, I distinctly, remember thinking: "is this woman a MORON?" I thought this was THE most irresponsible thing I had ever heard.

The childbirth rule is simple: the more children you have the faster labour goes. Now, "Three-Failed-Labour-Inducing-Gel-Gen" will be the very first to admit that there are exceptions to every rule, however that does not change the fact that you just DON'T know that YOU'RE going to the be that exception. How did this woman know she wasn't going to give birth on the plane? What a horrible, unforgivable, risk to take with the life of your baby. As a brand new mother I was offended by this woman's reasoning which seemed to boil down to some sense of misguided Alaskan patriotism. After all, I'm sure the baby would rather be alive than "Alaskan".

Fast forward four and half months and, low and behold, this woman of questionable judgement is (rashly in my mind) chosen as John McCain's running mate. Her, and naturally her fresh-scrubbed family, are thrown into the intense media spotlight. It takes only a few short days before rumours start to surface, that Sarah Palin's fifth baby was not hers at all, but was, in fact, the son of her now-17-year-old daughter.

Sure it's a vicious rumour, but for me, it's like everything clicked into place. You sure wouldn't be worried about flying across the country (two countries, in fact) if you weren't actually pregnant.

After doing a bit of research, keeping in mind that it can be hard to differentiate fact from fiction on the internet, it would appear that this rumour has some serious legs. As in, the daughter apparently was removed from school for 5 months last year for "mono", and the fact that Palin sprung the news of her pregnancy on a shocked public when she was 7 months pregnant didn't look it.

Believe it or not, I think I actually would prefer that this woman would try to pass off her unwed teenage daughters baby as her own for presumably, the sake of her career and and her reputation, rather than believe that she would be so cavalier as to risk her baby's life as she indisputably did. Or maybe I wouldn't. Whatever the scenario, the woman is an idiot.

But it's not over yet!

Yesterday the news breaks that NOW Sarah Palin's teenage daughter is 5 months pregnant. What?! They apparently decided to announce the pregnancy to dispel the growing rumours about baby Trig's parentage. Since when is "She wasn't pregnant then, but NOW she is" an appropriate defense?

My mind is just about the explode.

Could this be an elaborate cover up of monumental proportions? Could Bristol Palin be pregnant...for the second time?Far less likely, and I'll only mention it because it would be hilarious...could they be faking her pregnancy now ? After all 5 months is a very convenient length of time to be pregnant when trying to dispel rumours that a 4.5 month old is not yours.

Regardless, that "abstinence only" education has worked like a CHARM.

All I can say is that I do feel horrendously sorry for the teenaged Bristol who gets the short, pointy end of the stick no matter what scenario turns out to be true. Because to live out whatever drama she's been living, under the global media spotlight, must be a nightmare. The best thing for poor Bristol would be for her mother to withdraw from the ticket. I might actually gain some respect for the woman if she did that.

I have no idea where this will go....perhaps the truth is exactly what has been publicly put forward. I have no idea and I don't really care. But the simple fact that this scandal is attached to a US Presidential Election makes it irresistible. Can it last? Is there more to come? If my head is going to explode, what about John McCain's? We all know he's not getting any younger.

America...this could be your First Family!!

See You in September

First of all, OMG it's my third post in as many days. OMG, I just typed OMG. Stop the insanity. 

So Blogland, it's my birthday today. 

I've always had an iffy relationship with my birthday. For anyone potentially planning a baby, please avoid if possible August 31 . I won't pretend is as bad as Christmas or its vicinity, but still, it's bad. 

Here's the thing. For my entire childhood we spent our summers out at our camp. (That would be a "cottage" to anyone who is not from the North and is envisioning either a campground or a cabin with bunkbeds and organized sports.) My dad being a teacher, we moved out to camp the day after school was out and moved back to town literally the day or two before school started. My parents were, and remain, cottage die-hards. 

So this summertime move meant that I wound up with a group of camp friends and a group of school/town friends and never the two did meet. The problem? By August 31, all my camp friends (none of whose parents were remotely as die-hardy as mine) had all moved back to town and, as for my school friends, I hadn't seen them in what seemed like forever and since our camp was a half-hour out of town, they weren't going to get dropped off for a few hours of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.  So, I wound up never really having a party per se. I think maybe some of my camp friends stuck around but since we'd been joined at the hip for 10 weeks, I'm sure it was not much different than any other day, except there was cake. My parents would give a me a Doodle Art or new pair of snazzy polyester Gauchos (that was a bad year) and that would be that. 

Some years, depending on when school started, there was nobody around but us and we would be busy packing, sweeping and closing up for the winter. On those years, I'm sure we would have stopped for cake, but the mood was always slightly off. 

When I started university, I found that my birthday was always spent on the road on the way to Ottawa. Or in Ottawa, where I wasn't yet in touch with any returning university friends. In those days, since my brother lived in Ottawa, I think I spent a few birthdays with him taking me out for a pity dinner. 

Finally, when I was officially all grown up and the end of summer no longer meant re-location, I figured things would heat up, and admitedly I had a couple of good years, but nothing to write home about. (Or blog about for that matter.) Finally, when I was about 27, I decided to take matters in my own hands and DO something. Something fun. So, I decided to fly to Halifax where one of my good university friends was now living. (Shout out to Dar, who I don't think reads this blog!!) She was/is a good partier, so we planned quite the shindig for Saturday night although technically my birthday was Sunday. She got a huge group of friends together, the vast majority of whom are actors and gay. Sounds like a good time, right? 

It started off great...we went out for a nice seafood dinner and then to bar to meet up with a few people and I remember thinking to myself, Halifax is awesome, the people are all ready for a good time, THIS was a FANTASTIC idea! Then all of a sudden, I notice that people seem to be gathering around a TV in the bar and things have started to get really quiet. I'm still drinking and pretending that nothing is weird, but finally, the situation could no longer be ignored. I joined the crowd gathered at the TV to find out that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash (well, she clung to life for a few more hours so that her official date of death could be August 31 in all time zones). NOOOOOOooooooooooo! No! I want another round of drinks, not an international incident!!!! Instead of feeling horror and sadness, I was pissed. Gay actors are NOT interested in any type of party when princesses are killed. Party over. 

The next day, I forced my friend to go barhopping in the afternoon, but Halifax was a ghost town, as most people were still holed up in their living rooms glued to their televisions. 

And on it goes. After that, I officially threw in the towel and decided that, as far as my birthday is concerned, I should keep my expectations as low as possible. And I have. I started to just invite a good group of friends to a favourite restaurant for low-key dinners. All good. 

Then I got married, and figured, well now at least I'll never have to worry about being ALONE on my birthday. Even, if everyone else is camping or squeezing in one more weekend at the cottage, my husband and children will at least be with me. Although par for the course, last year, I remember I took the day off work because I was a) getting a new furnace installed and b) barfing my brains out at 8 weeks pregnant. 

So, this year, I should not have been surprised when Eric sheepishly asked if it was OK if his band accepted a gig (Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights) in Grand Bend. Remember my expectations are always low, so I said OK,  and proceeded to make some plans for the weekend so at least it wouldn't be totally wall-to-wall me-and-babies. And aside from a few passive-aggressive attempts at making Eric feel guilty, I was fine. 

Until today. August 31. 

Instead of sleeping in until almost 8 as they have been all summer, both kids are up at 7. I blearily make coffee, feed the cats and settle in for some repeat episodes of Mighty Machines. (OOOH, it's the one about the sawmill!) My parents call, and while we're chatting, Kieran who has been potty training for the past few days and doing really well, decides to stand on the arm of a chair in the corner and pee directly into his plastic bucket of Mega Blocks. I get off the phone and start mopping up and then dump all the blocks into the sink to be washed. I start to tidy up a bit, and walk outside to put a few things in the Blue Box only to see that some kind animal has spread the contents of our festering Green Bin all over the driveway. I try to shovel up the rotting, fly-infested organics and but finally have to resort to using my hands to get the last of it. Gross. 

I go inside, finish cleaning, get Kieran breakfast, and while I'm off getting the baby dressed, I hear him screaming. He, is standing on his booster, unable to get down, peeing all over the dining room table, chair and floor. So much for potty training. And breakfast. And dinner invites to anyone who reads this blog. I toss him in the bath, disinfect the dining room and start getting dressed. Eric has arranged for a babysitter to come for 1130 and I'm going downtown to meet a friend for brunch at noon. At 1125, Eric calls. His wallet is gone. Lost, stolen, hiding in the bottom of his duffle bag perhaps, but gone. 

Seriously. I am devoid of all sympathy and tell him so. The only place left that it could be is some music store in Grand Bend that doesn't open until noon. The babysitter has arrived. She's a high school girl that Eric trains, seems perfectly lovely and intelligent and I hurriedly go through the basic instructions. At some point she says, she's never babysat an infant, so I go into more detail, but I'm only going to be gone a few hours, and am anticipating that both kids will be napping while she's there. 

I email Eric the bank phone number to cancel his cards and head off. I'm on the road 10 minutes, not even out of Mississauga when the phone rings. It's not, as I hoped, Eric with a found wallet. It's the babysitter...Kaya is crying inconsolably and she doesn't know what to do. Ten minutes, I've been gone and it's already disintegrated into calling the parent? NOT a good sign. I tell the girl to give Kaya a bottle or put her in the swing, both surefire tricks. Five minutes go by and she calls again. The baby is still wailing. I contemplate turning around but suddenly she says that it sounds like Kaya is settling and all is good. 

I have a lovely afternoon full of brunch and Frappucinos. I come home and everything is fine. 

Both kids are now in bed. Its quiet. Eric's wallet is still MIA and I just ate Kieran's leftover soup (from lunch) for my birthday dinner. On TV, are the annual obligatory Princess Diana tributes to mark my day. A very peaceful evening to bookend to a chaotic, and mostly disgusting morning. 

Bring on September 1. 

Want to Buy a Breastpump?

I'm conflicted. 

My beloved Kaya, who is now exactly 4.5 months old, is soon going to be a fully formula fed baby. My goal was to breastfeed for 6 months, so I've fallen short of what I would have considered success and way short of the 12 month goal that is currently recommended by most, if not all, pediatric associations. 

Now, considering Kieran was only breastfed (and not nearly exclusively at that) for 2 months, I guess I should feel good that I hung in for twice as long, but instead, I just feel guilty and selfish. I read the articles. I know the facts. It's the whole grass vs astroturf argument.  Natural vs synthetic. Formula, I'm sure was invented to save lives and not to make it easier for future mothers like myself to read email during feeding time. 

But people, the fact remains that I just don't enjoy it. Like, at all. 

Now I realize that, if I were a stellar mother,  my enjoyment should not matter.  What should matter is what is best for my child. But I'm being seduced by the bottle. Oh, how I love the bottle. (I'm talking baby bottles right now, the "I love wine" post will come later on.) And what is more...Kaya loves the bottle. If she so much as sees it out of the corner of her eye, her head whips around, excorcist-like, to stare at it. When I bring it close, she grabs the bottle with her little hands,  chomps down the nipple like it might get away and sucks away with what can only be describe as relief-tinged-joy which eases into total relaxation. This does not happen with breastfeeding. She is quite blase about breastfeeding...in fact, I'm sure that should she be able to articulate her thoughts she would be saying something like..."Mom, I can barely breathe down here...I think it's time to put those bad boys away." Or something like that. 

So, I have lasted almost four and half months. Let's call it almost five. In fact, by the time she is fully weaned, it might BE five months and which point I can start revising history to say I lasted "just over five months." See? That is the guilt is talking.

When I was struggling with Kieran, my mother, who had four perfectly healthy formula fed babies, said that in her day, breastfeeding was something "only poor people did." Times have certainly changed and I would agree, rightfully so. But for me, and for Kaya, I think our time is almost done. 

Bring on the wine.

Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming....

Forgive me for my last ranting post. I'm calmer now. Although perhaps it was a nice refreshing change from my usual boring "mommy blogs"?

Regardless back to mommyland we go...

So, I have been successful in fixing Kaya's napping issues. Or rather, she fixed the issues herself and would undoubtedly roll her eyes at me trying to take credit for her success. I was only sort of half-heartedly trying to get her to transition her naps from the swing to the crib last week and then suddenly, more or less on her own,  this week we have a solid morning and afternoon nap happily in the crib, almost three hours each.  I love this baby. 

Of course, Kaya's apparent new napping schedule is quite distressing to Kieran. All day (excluding his own nap) all that kid wants to do is ride his bike around the neighbourhood. Now, I seem always be saying that we can go when Kaya wakes up. When he hears this, he runs to her door and screams "Wake Up Kaya!!!" which of course she doesn't. Poor Kieran. 

I've also started potty training the boy. What a messy job THAT is. He'll sit on the potty and go, but that doesn't mean, of course that anything lands in the potty itself.  It's like visiting the Trevi Fountain, only more erratic and less tourists. Little boy potty training must be why God invented the Swiffer Wetmop. 

Long weekend ahead of me...and Eric is out of town with his band. This prospect is distressing to me, since this long weekend also happens to be my birthday. The thought of three days and nights on my own is boring the hell out of me already. Throw my birthday into the mix, even if  it just means that I get out of diaper duty for a day, and its much, much worse. 

Stay tuned...there may be another rant coming...

Attention Welmert Shoppers....

Many people who know me, know of my intense dislike of a certain huge discount store. My hatred of this store, which we will just call Welmert, is based on the following indisputable facts: that it's insanely busy; it's full of rude shoppers clogging the aisles with their big blue carts; and by far the worst offense - it's consistently slow and understaffed checkouts. (Why have 20 closed registers and only have 2 or 3 open? To mock your shoppers? It drives me stupid.)

Every time I go, which is rare, I vow to never shop there again, but then I see a sale price and decide to try it once more. But I'm done. Do you hear me Welmert? Done.

It started few weeks ago. We had to buy a new lawnmower and they had the best price. Off we went one evening at 7:30 - packing up the kids even though we were nearing their bedtime. We got to the store, found the lawnmower, located our own dolly and picked up a few sundry items - which ARE remarkably priced - and headed to checkout. This part took us 20 minutes tops. At checkout, 2 are open for people with more than 10 items, the lineups are all backed up well into the clothing displays. It's now 8 pm and the kids are tired, but I take Kaya out of her carrier and let Kieran wander around the store while Eric waits. And waits. And waits. He's in the line for about 30 minutes before finally its his turn. But the price of the lawnmower is scanning at $50 higher than advertised. The girl rings for the manager and then stands there staring at her nails. 5 more minutes go by, I count 24 people lined up behind Eric and no manager appears. I sooooo want to leave but we NEED that lawnmower and God knows when Eric will have another free evening, so I bite my tongue. Finally a manager comes over to the checkout area delivering extra bags (NOT answering our cashiers call) and we explain the situation. She pulls us out of the line and checks the flyer but there are no lawnmowers in it. So, we have to go all the way back to the seasonal section and physically show her the sign and then she OKs the sale price. I'm pissed at such a total waste of my time and am about 2 seconds away from telling her that they should be ashamed of making people wait 45 minutes to pay for their crap, but I refrain. We leave...it's 9pm.

That night, coincidentally, we are going through all our summer photos and trying to decide which to print. After shopping around we realize that Welmert is advertising 15 cents a print and nobody else even comes close...so I cave. The prints, all 160 including some 5x7s and 8x10s, are ready the next morning so I go pick them up, there is no line and I'm happy. So happy, that while I'm there I look into their portrait studio and decide that I'll book a session for the kids. (They are advertising a pretty good portrait deal for $7.99 whoo hoo!). I'm happy until I get home and see that EVERY single photo has a big scratch line through it. Every one, including the 8x10 etc. So back I go, fuming and they reprint all the photos. Fine.

So, yesterday was the portrait appointment. I made it for 6pm so Eric could be there and it was early enough that I can still get the kids home at a decent time. We dress them up in their matchy-matchy navy and white outfits and go.

It starts out OK, except that Kieran is being uncooperative. The set up for a toddler and baby is less than ideal as the carpeted hump they have the baby propped up on precludes Kieran getting close to her unless he's willing to put his arm around her, which he isn't. We convince him to lean in a couple of times and kiss her, but although cute in theory the photo is of the back of his head, blocking her face. But without him leaning into her, the photo set up looks stupid. So we abandon the two-shot and take some individually. Kaya is an budding supermodel - smiling and laughing- but the photographer is having trouble and keeps saying the camera isn't taking shots when she's pressing the buttons. Same thing for Kieran. But after about 45 minutes we have enough and we're done.

Now apparently, a few days prior, the studio had made the big switch to digital, so the photographer had told us ahead of time that when we were done we sit at the computer and they show us some of the "optional enhancements" they can now make to the photos right there. The photographer picks only the 8 or so (of 35 total) that she thinks are best and one by one pulls it up and without any input from us makes some kind of enhancement to it...for example: cute photo of Kaya with a navy shirt and white background NOW can have a huge hot pink "PRINCESS" printed on it. We watch her go through and butcher most of the photos - adding ridiclous crayon borders and typing "Giggles!" beside a laughing Kieran shot. In the middle this her computer crashes (surely it was protesting her lack of taste). Kieran is starving and rolling on the floor. Kaya is starving and fussy and this is taking FOREVER. We hate all four photos of the kids together and but do we have a cute series of three photos of Kieran laughing that they put side by side in what they are calling a "collage" and there is one shot of Kaya that we absolutely love. We're thinking of going ahead and ordering that when the photographer says the cost for the three photo "Kieran collage" is $179. For a moment, I'm thinking...she must mean they are a $1.79 but I get her to repeat the price and its $179, plus $80 for the frame.

Exsqueeze me? You KNOW you're Welmert, right?

I realize now that the $7.99 package sign is gone and I ask about new package prices. The girl gets a little flip book out, which is apparently top secret as she sheilds it from my eyes, and says the cheapest package is now $79.99. I see. So, I ask about getting the photos on a CD which she had mentioned earlier was now available. That is $99. What if we go with no package and just get one 8x10 of each child..that would be $9.99 per sheet. OK, we'll do that just to get the frak out of there. The picture of Kieran we like best is off center so she zooms it in a bit and then tells us that if we print the zoomed in version, even though its correcting her error, it's another $6. She can tell we're pissed now. But we pick another of Kieran that is at least centered and confirm the order. We would have left empty handed but we had wasted over 2 hours now and I wanted something to show for it.

Anyway, both kids are now crying and we pack up our stuff and leave. We get home...its almost 8:30, I'm trying to get the baby to bed and Eric is giving Kieran dinner and I see the message light is flashing. It's Welmert. We forgot to pay for the two photos before we left and if we don't go back to the store that night and pay, its going to cost us an additional $9.99 Call Back fee.

Screw you Welmert, I'm going to Bellers. 

Higher, Faster, Stonger of the Preschool Variety

So, as happens every 2 years, I'm addicted to the Olympics. I, who normally couldn't care less about sports (unless you count the years the Blue Jays won the World Series) can watch anything as long as it happens during these two weeks. Even ridiculous Olympic sports like Show Jumping, which as far as I can see should be in the Horse Olympics, not the human ones.  But still, for me it's all about the actual races...anything based on speed where you can see first, second, third all at the same time.  I'm increasingly lukewarm about any sport where judges (or animals) are involved. Swimming, rowing, running...those I can watch all day. I'm not even sure if I care that they are all drugged, I still love it. 

Also, Michael Phelps is hot. 

Anywhoo. 

Back to real life, which has been relatively quiet since we got back from Thunder Bay...

I had a horrible "incident" at one of the Early Year programs this week. We went to one of the sing-a-long classes where the kids all sit in the middle of the room and they wheel in all the old people behind them. There was one particularly decrepit looking woman who seemed mostly paralyzed from the neck down sitting in a wheelchair behind us. 

As it turns out, this class is like a giant Health Hustle, or for those who may not get the 80s reference, it involves songs that make kids do things of the "jump up if you're wearing red" variety. There was one song that involved tossing a bean bag to the person next you. Kieran, who is always really slow to warm up to these classes (I secretly hopes he finds them as lame as I do) happened to love the bean bag song. He jumps up and starts throwing his bean bag around and before I can stop him, he whips one with incredible-unforeseen-force, right into the face of the old, paralyzed woman behind us. I run over to the woman and grab the bean bag which is now sliding off her face and am apologizing profusely, but this woman, like something out of a bad comedy movie is FURIOUS. She starts yelling and swearing and asking "what the hell I'm doing hitting her in the face." It was brutal. The lady beside her, which I think may have been her daughter, was telling me it was OK and that she didn't know what she was saying, blahblahblah. But it was totally awkward and it look about three people and, finally,  a rousing rendition of a "Bicycle Built for Two" to calm her down. Needless to say, as soon as the class was over we took off. 

Maybe really, really old people and little children aren't the greatest mix. 

Nice Potatoes

I don't have a lot of time today, but I felt like updating since I haven't logged on since we got home earlier this week. 

It feels like we were gone forever. I will spare you all gory details of my absolute horror when we pulled up in front of the house. Instead of seeing my cute (to me, at least) little house, with its tidy, happy little garden,  there weeds close to two feet tall all over the front lawn. The garden was almost 90 percent weeds. Everything was either overgrown or dead. Not the welcome I had hoped for, but in Eric's defense, he was wounded for the two weeks prior to his arrival in Thunder Bay, so I suppose gardening/mowing was the last thing on his mind. Still, I almost wanted to take a picture of the lawn, but realized there is no need. The scene in burned into my brain forevermore.  

I spent the next few days, unpacking, cleaning and weeding and now things are more or less back to normal. 

Now that Kieran is going to  daycare two days a week, I decided to partake some more in some of the programs offered at our local Early Years Centre. We walked over on Tuesday to the Centre down the street...the one, I have mentioned that is located inside a Long Term Care facility. The building is under total renovation and the Centre, which used to be located in a nice room off the lobby has been relocated (temporarily, but for at least a year) to a former residents room in one of the wards.  The relocation happened while I was gone, so it took me forever to find the new room and can I just say, I was sort of creeped out. 

You can't really tell this from the lobby, but Long Term Care really isn't a happy  "retirement residence." No, it's more like a hospital. An old hospital. One without air conditioning or enough nurses.  To get to the new room I had to wheel my stroller past all these rooms full of old people lying in their pyjamas on hospital beds. It didn't seem very kid-friendly any more. The new room is OK, but I felt sort of uneasy and I think Kieran sort of felt it too.

So yesterday since we were trapped in the house in the middle of yet another rainstorm, I packed up the kids in the car to go the other EYC (the one with all the Filipino nannies and the mommies and their BMW SUVs.) They have also done a remodel. Now, there is Starbucks inside. Not a real Starbucks (which would be far preferable), but a little storefront complete with Starbucks logos, cups and laminated menu cards. I can now go up to a four-year old barista, invariably named Bella,  and order my own pretend Venti Sumatra Decaf Extra Bold No Foam. Shudder. I think I prefer the creepy hospital setting. 

Is maternity leave over yet?

One last note: after dropping off Kieran at daycare today I made a run to the grocery store as we have out-of-town friends coming over. Kaya was in a good mood and was happy as a clam in her carseat as I shopped. Happy, smiley babies always get lots of attention, so I wasn't surprised when an older lady veered out of her way to come over to peer into my cart where I had the carseat resting. I'm all set to start rhyming off the baby particulars (she's 4 months, her name is Kaya, yes she's a pretty good sleeper) when the woman says: "Nice Potatoes!"

"Uh, thanks. They're local..." I sort of stammer and the woman continues on her merry way. 

Sorry Kaya, they WERE nice potatoes.  

Less is More

Re-reading my last blog, from the very start of our vacation - back when I was young and naive, I see that I was still deluded that 5 weeks with my two children here at my parents was a great idea. Big sandy beach which a nice, swimmable lack, what could go wrong? Now, 4 weeks in, I feel the need to rethink the wisdom of this trip.

First of all , to take a two year old for this long from his routine has been less than wonderful. He's so far out of his usual element that he's overstimulated, constantly underslept and often plays so much that he is plain worn out by late afternoon. He refuses to nap, falls asleep in a chair at about 5 and then will not go to bed properly and the next day, we start all over again. The result has been a cranky, clingy child - one who is prone to screaming child when he's frustrated about something or sometimes even if just leave the room. Add into this mix a 3-month-old, who, wonderful though she may be, is still only a 3 month old and "WILL NOT BE IGNORED, DAN" (yes, that is a random Fatal Attraction reference) and you have a not-so-relaxing vacation.

So, I'm exhausted as well. Since Eric (more on him later) has just arrived, today is the first day that I feel more relaxed. No coincidence this is my first blog update since he left. Other vacation firsts...today was my first time out in the kayak, first time lying down in the hammock and last night, the first time I have had a block of sleep longer than 4 hours.

Of course, Eric's arrival has already helped enormously. Not that my parents don't help because they TOTALLY do (not to mention that I don't have to cook, clean or do laundry), but unlike with my parents, I don't feel guilty asking him to do anything or better yet, he just DOES it. Guilt, unnecessary though it might be, is exhausting.

Now for Eric. He is currently sitting in the Emergency Room at hospital. Again. Playing baseball back at home two weeks ago he slid into second base (SAFE!) and in the process ripped off a grapefruit sized patch of skin on his leg. To make a long story short, this has resulted in a serious infection, 2 trips to the walk in clinic, 3 trips to Emergency, twice a day nurse visits and round the clock intravenous anti-biotics, both at home and here. (My 4 hours block of sleep was accompanied by the rhythmic wheezing and occasional beeping of Eric's IV pump. )

After scrambling to arrange for his nursing care here (he thought he's be done on Saturday), not to mention trying to arrange security clearance to fly with his cooler full of liquid medicine, he arrived yesterday all IV'd up. When he showed us the wound I cannot imagine how it looked before the 14-day course of antibiotics because it still looks hideous. Kieran, who was so happy to see his Daddy, took one look at his leg and wouldn't go near him after that- and still won't unless the wound is properly bandaged, and thus hidden away. Frankly, I don't really blame him. And obviously, IV at camp, with a baby and a toddler, is less than ideal. He cannot swim, sauna, play on the beach or give children baths. Having Kieran climb on him is nothing short of an act of pure courage and Kaya has already yanked on the tube with her surprisingly strong baby grip.

Anyway, I suspect today's trip to the hospital will result in an yet another extension this continued nightmare since I'm quite sure that no doctor worth his degree will look at the leg and take him off the antibiotics just yet. The minor upside for Eric (besides having his family around him) is that he now gets his nursing care on the deck overlooking Lake Superior.

So, I'm looking forward to heading home and getting back into regular life. I'm going to have to break Kaya of numerous bad habits that she has acquired here (Napping in swing? Check? Sleeping in my bed? Check. Nursing to sleep? Check.) Most of all, I want my sweet two year old back. Hopefully, the clingy, cranky version stays here....