My inability to keep a secret

Lately Adam and I have been hoping to have another baby. Thus, with baby on the brain, I have the urge to take a pregnancy test every month just before my period arrives. Now those things are darn expensive. I've heard rumours that they can be purchased at the dollar store, but I've yet to find one with a family planning section. Anyway, I found a box at Zellers that came two in a package, so I felt I could test this month AND next month, every time I felt the urge. Well, the second one was a waste, because I took one this Friday morning and it came out PREGGERS.

Now last time I found out I was pregnant, I told everyone I knew three seconds later. All the baby books say to wait three months because before then your baby could disappear and you'd have to tell everyone the pregnancy is cancelled. I obviously don't think that will happen, but there's another drawback to telling people early. That is everyone thinks that you've been pregnant FOREVER. If most people tell at 3 months, then most people only have to wait 7 months for their friends to have a baby (yes, I realize that's 10 months. They lie about the 9 month thing). For this reason, Adam and I decided to wait until after we move, in June.

Secret keeping Day 1: Friday I went to the Early Years Centre and told none of my mommy friends.
Secret keeping Day 2: I hid my prenatal pills because I knew my brother and sister were coming over to babysit, but neglected to close babynames.com where I had been browsing for name ideas. My brother noticed and teased me that I'm pregnant. I totally lied and said I was "naming a character."
Secret keeping Day 3: I went to my inlaws house and didn't tell anybody. Although my mother-in-law would later tell me "I was thinking that you were pregnant. Because you looked different in your face."
Secret keeping Day 4: Today. I talked to my Mom on the phone. She must have asked me "what's new?" six times but I evaded the question easily because she rarely gave me time to answer. Then I went to my parents house for dinner. My appetite was feeling a bit off and I made the mistake of saying so. This prompted my mother to ask "Are you pregnant?" Instead of a quick "no" (which would be the right answer for a secret-keeper) I blushed, and finally admited that, yes, I am pregnant. So 4 days is officially how long I can keep a secret. And now I'm telling the world (because I already told the McNicolls, which is pretty much the same thing).

Just a warning though.... I will be pregnant forever.

Attack of the lobster people

Like the nerdy couple we are, Adam and I occasionally amuse ourselves by writing revolving stories. The revolving story is an exercise for campfires, sixth-grade school assignments and date-nights with hubby. One person starts the story, then the next person continues, then the first person continues that, and so on. Normally this results in a nonsensical poorly-punctuated tale that is only amusing to the writers themselves, but every once in a while one comes up with gems like this:

One day Adam and Jen were relaxing in their condo when suddenly Adam looked out the window and said, “honey, check out that weird light in the sky!”
Jen looked where Adam was pointing and saw a glowing green disk surrounded by 12 evenly-spaced pink lights. The object was coming closer and closer to their condo until it landed in the parking lot below. They turned on the tv to the security channel to see what the security old guys were going to do.. and then Sam a new guard went outside and asked the ship to move as it was not allowed to park there.. but the door to the ship opened and smoke and gas exited from it.. a few steps appeared and a silhouette of someone or something appeared.
It was a woman with a head in the shape of a lobster. The lobster-woman reached out her claws and snapped off Sam’s name tag, then she reached for his nose, but Sam ducked away just in time.
Adam decided he couldn’t just stand by and watch Sam be attacked by the lobster woman. So he made a zip glide out of bedsheets and slid down. Unfortuantely Adam miscalculated how many bedsheets it would take to slide down.. he only used 3 which only reached to the 6th floor.. and he slipped off the end and hit the ground hard.. luckily his Adam’antium coated skelton saved his ass.. (once again) . he got up and ran over to lobster chick and guard guy.. and grabbed the lobster chick by the claw and swung her over the building.. he then ran for cover .. thinking some new fangled weapon would appear..
Unfortunately all this was just a diversion, planned by the lobster minions to distract Adam and Jen while her lobster minions snuck into William’s room and kidnapped him. He was the perfect human baby and they needed the perfect human baby to power their lobstertonian reactor.
The lobster minions looked half lobster, half spider monkey. They stashed William in a special crate and quickly darted him into the ship.. without Jennifer noticing as she was involved in a complicated Japanese game of riddle and puzzle solving.. William screened and cried. And then Jen heard him and she dove out the window.. without a second thought.. well until she was airborn and could think about what she just did.. and just then she disappeared.. Adam saw Jen go poof and thought she must be in league with the lobster people.
He was heartbroken and began wallowing in self-pity. Then he got over it and constructed a spaceship to follow them using his colour television, the voicebox out of one of william’s talking toys, the washing machine, and the bedroom ceiling fan. It was a crude design, only reaching a max of warp 3. the only issue with the new ship was protection from the elements.. so he grabbed some plastic ceran wrap to protect his eyes while traveling. He also grabbed his gps and quickly entered all star charts currently known with his left hand as he was shifting from warp 1,2,3 with his right.. Adam was gaining on them quickly and then made contact and leaped from his ship and grabbed hold of a latch on the alien ship with suction cup hands
Meanwhile, Jen had already infiltrated the Lobster queen’s lair and was looking under her bed for William. She then looked in her closet, which was filled with garlic butter (for an unrelated ritual). That gives me an idea, thought Jen. She heated the garlic butter to the boiling point using a ray gun she found under the bed. Then pored it all over herself in a weird yet attractive.. way similar to a MTV rapper video.. anyways.. she decided she needed a shower as the garlic was getting to her.. but as she went looking for a shower.. the lobster peeps spotted her and rang the “Awoooga” alarm system.. she ran for it.. and was call for William but then remember she could just email William on his new blackberry.. and so she did.. William responded quickly and said that he had gained control of the main computer with his cranial diaper.
Just then Adam came through the window. He came right to where Jen was because he had been weirdly attracted by the garlic butter incident (her plan all along). Then they teamed up and went to central command to meet baby William. Jen still had a container of garlic butter so they could eat any lobster people they happened to kill on the way. As they ran together they tackled one helpless lobster lad and immediately started to rip off his claw arms and dip them in garlic then munch away.. a good hour was spent but they didn’t seem to mind.. thinking to themselves that its healthy to eat meals in regular intervals rather then skip them.. William was getting impatient and new they were depriving him of food and started wailing and bugging the lobster people.. to the point that thet let him loose in the halls just to get a break.. thankfully Adam and Jen had saved William a lobster claw.
When they had all finished eating they left the ship and boarded Adam’s homemade space vessel. “But what about the lobstertonian reactor?” asked Jen. “Surely they’ll come back looking for a way to power it.”
“Fear not mother,” said William. “I destroyed the reactor using a rather potent poopy.”
“Good job!” said Adam. And they traveled back to earth. And stopped in to buy a top of the line very large Plasma television that Jen said Adam could buy if he ever saved there lives.. Adam was pleased and they all lived Happily every after.

The end.

Park Days

Recently all the snow melted to be replaced by the beautiful sunny-but-not-too-hot weather of spring. So William and I have been spending a lot of time in the park near our house. William could care less about the playground itself (although he does enjoy an occasional slide, and sometimes a swing). Mostly he loves running in the field, and playing in the dirt.

By "playing" I of course mean, eating, digging, poking with sticks, and lying on his stomach doing the breaststroke. I've tried to prevent at least the eating, to no avail. Anyway he has such a good time, who am I to be a killjoy?

Evolution: A Jenterpretation

I thought I'd take time away from my baby-blogging to do a post on evolution. It's a pretty cool theory (by theory, I of course mean absolutely true facts that are uncontested by people who know their science stuff).

Every living thing on Earth is part of the same family: the germs in your body, the grass on your lawn, George Bush, everything. Creatures that are the most different from us (like the mold growing in the fridge) are distant cousins of ours, while primates (they have opposable thumbs, we have opposable thumbs, we're practically the same animal) are our closest relatives.

Natural selection is the part of evolution that explains why some traits get passed on and some don't. To explain: Say you have a family of monkeys that live in a jungle where there are ferocious beasts that want to eat them.
Bobo the monkey has flexible feet that make it a lot easier to climb trees, so he climbs the tree, has ten kids who can all climb trees too and they all live happily in the tree.
Al the monkey can't climb trees but he's super intelligent and can outwit all the beasties, he also has ten brainy kids.
Bo the monkey can run really fast, but he can only carry two baby monkeys while he runs, so only 2 of his kids live.
Dumbo the monkey is an idiotic slowpoke who can't climb trees. He does have a big wart on his left foot, but that doesn't help so Dumbo gets eaten before he can have any kids. Not all mutations are useful, you see.

Meanwhile, the beasties eat all the Dumbos, and some of the Bo-offspring. But they're still hungry. Some of them learn to climb trees, some of them get smart enough to catch Al and his family, some of them start running as fast as Bo. In other words, the monkeys evolve to get away from the beasties, and the beasties evolve to catch the monkeys. Keeping in mind that the beasties and the monkeys (and the trees) are cousins.

Now you might be thinking, but Jen, we shouldn't eat our cousins! Unfortunately we need to eat at least some living things to survive (bummer), but as highly evolved Al-monkeys we've developed many different philosophies to help us deal with the squimishness of having to eat our cousins:
Some people have decided that they'll only eat our very distant relatives, no mammals, no birds, and in some cases, no fish. They have eyes, we have eyes, they're practically human.
Some people have opted to pretend that plants and animals aren't our family members at all, and have instead invented elaborate mythology about Earth and humans being the centre of the universe.
Some people (and this is my personal favourite) get other people to kill and harvest our cousins for us, so they come in fancy packaging, with eyes removed, and they don't look very alive anymore.

Despite the required gruesomeness, I'm glad we're all related. I think our family is pretty darn amazing, don't you?

International Tag is Back

Some of you may not know that in addition to this mildly popular Super Happy Blog, I also co-blog on Jen and Carol's International Photo Tag. The premise of which (taken directly from the header of that site) is:

"Canadian Jen posts a picture, then Scottish Carol posts a picture of the same thing (only Scottish). Then Carol posts a pic of something else, then Jen posts a pic of the same thing (only Canadian). And one day, with luck, we'll have a photo blog that compares Burlington, Ontario, Canada with Glasgow, Scotland in some interesting way."

Why am I mentioning this now? Well back in November I posted a pic of Burlington's population sign. Well, Glasgow doesn't have a population sign, and Carol took her time snapping a pic of the equivalent: the "Welcome to Glasgow" city sign (something about her having to risk life and limb on a busy highway, er, I mean, motorway). Anyway it took five months, but she did it!

So anyone who's keen on seeing a pic of a Scottish city sign (as well as many other pics comparing Burlington, Ontario with Glasgow Scotland), click here now.

Ten Reasons Why My Nephew is Awesome

I babysat my six-year-old (seven in May) nephew Hunter today, and he's awesome. Here are ten of the many many reasons (in no particular order):

1. I actually have sort-of adult conversations with him (only with more jumping around and light-saber miming). Like our debate about which is better Star Trek or Star Wars. I know, no contest, but Hunter actually believes that Star Wars is the superior series. (He's so young).
2. When I ask him what happen in school today, he actually told me. ("Do you want the good news, or the bad news?") He had gymnastics, which he loves. Also, another kid accidently hurt Hunter's ear while they were playing.
3. When he told me he had "just one thing" to do before we left the park, that one thing was rolling down a big hill, an activity I wholeheartedly endorse.
4. He totally understands when I sometimes have to stop in the middle of a conversation to chase William down a hill or prevent him from eating sand.
5. He didn't get angry at all when William messed up his sand-sculpture of the Star Wars ship ("the one that Padmé fell out of").
6. When I asked Hunter if he liked spaghetti, he replied "I like pretty much everything."
7. He's totally amazing with William. Both of them get big smiles on their faces when they see eachother. And when I had to go into the kitchen, William didn't scream for a change, because Hunter was entertaining him and feeding him a cookie.
8. I can play eye-spy with Hunter. And it's actually challenging for me.
9. We can play videogames together, and he'll totally pause it right away when it's time to eat, or time to go home.
10. I never have to worry that he's going to eat or choke on something bizarre because, unlike William, Hunter doesn't pull random objects out of the muck and put them in his mouth.

Thoughts from a Super Happy Mind

I was making a package of Mr. Noodle the other day, and it reminded me of a snacking fad that happened in my school around grade seven or eight. We would crush the Mr. Noodle in the package, open it up, sprinkle the seasoning on it, and then eat the seasoned raw pasta as if it were chips. Everyone thought this was a super genius idea. For some reason, I'm not tempted to try it now.

William was wearing his brown and white striped onsie and cargo pants today. Adam put on his cargo pants too, and I said, to Adam, "Wouldn't it be great if you had a brown and white striped shirt to match?" Well my husband thought that would be too hard to find. But later, we we were at Old Navy and found a men's T-shirt with the exact same stripes. Unfortunately, William dirtied his onsie at lunch, but I'm washing it now. This is just too cute to pass up.

Yesterday I went Karaokeing with my brother and Eireann (my best friend and future sister-in-law maybe one day). I made my theme 80s Halloween hits and sung "Thriller" and "Ghostbusters". For some reason my brother, much to the amusement of everyone, enjoys songs that were meant to be sung by women and treated us to "Wouldn't it be Loverly" and Carrie Underwood's "Before he Cheats". Eireann did a rather nice rendition of "Walk this Way." The highlight of the evening was when a slurring drunk guy sang "paradise by the dashboard light" with the Canadian Idol contending karaoke hostess belting out the girl parts. I just love Karaoke.

My husband has just informed me that he heard on the radio that Charlton Heston has passed away. I wonder if anyone thought to take his gun from his cold dead hands.

Yesterday we went to William's friend's first birthday party. If you ever get the chance, I recommend attending a party where most of the guests are under the age of two. Out of all the highly expensive-looking toys and activites, William liked the bubbles the best. Reminded me of that line from "Knocked-up" about kids and bubbles. Apeshit, I think was the term. So true.

Dreaming of Omi, and a Pilgrim in a Field

I had a dream last night that had my grandmother in it. In real life, Omi has Alzheimer's. When she moved into a nursing home, my husband and I took over her condo. In a few months, my brother will buy the condo and we're moving into a house.

In the dream, Omi was back to her old self. She didn't have Alzheimer's, at least not to the degree she has now. My Mom and Omi and I were shopping at Zellers, in the mall across the street from our place. We were looking at toys and Omi said "See? It's fun living across the street from Zellers." I told her that Zellers and I have a love-hate relationship and began ranting, as I often do in real life, about how they never seem to restock their shelves. As we continued out of the toys, into an overly large glassware section, we wondered if that was a trick to keep prices low, not having enough staff to restock shelves.

The cash registers were outdoors in a field of tall grass and the man in front of me was dressed like a pilgrim. I overheard his conversation with the cashier (also dressed in old fashioned clothes). Apparently, the pilgrim had been kicked out of his previous village for reading a controversial book. He was trying to explain to the cashier that he didn't agree with the book's ideas, he had simply read it, then later read a review to see what other people thought of it. He said something about what his neighbours had done to him, but all I remember is that he used the word crucified. Take that dream analyzers!

I told my husband about the dream when I woke up. He said "if Omi didn't have Alzheimer's then we wouldn't be living across the street from Zellers." As if that was the weirdest thing about the dream.

Anyway. It's time for me to get my family all together, because we're going to a birthday party for one of William's Early Years Centre friends. Happy Birthday Fynn!