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...