Happy Birthday Carol!!!!

Today is Scottish Carol's birthday. I was going to call her but, alas, by the time I thought of it, it was 5 pm. That means it's 10 pm in Scotland, which is too late to call someone if you want to be polite (and I'm Canadian, so of course I want to be polite).

Carol and I have been e-mail buddies since we were fifteen and now that I have free long distance to the UK, we talk on the phone all the time. We met in person once, in 1999 when I went to England and Scotland with my family. Since then we both got married, Carol bought a house and I had a baby. In September, Carol and her husband are vacationing here in sunny Canada. I can't wait to see her again!!!



Anyway. Tonight we are going to the drive-in to see Shrek. And expect to see more birthday-wishing blog entries in the next few days. Tomorrow is Becca's birthday and Monday is my brother's. Holy birthdays, Batman!

William's Public Meltdown

William had his first shots a month ago, so today when the Early Years Centre Calling New Parents' topic was immunization, he staged a protest. Wailed his little lungs out. Normally, when my little angel gets a little fussy during one of these talks, I tell myself that noone else thinks he's disrupting the whole group. This time there was no denying it.

Since this talk was given by some official shot expert, the woman who normally heads the class came over and offered to help me with riot control. She walked him around the room for me and he was fine until she gave him back. Figuring it was because I was sitting down, I stood up and rocked him, trying various holding positions like some kind of baby juggler.

Finally I sat down and whipped my boob out. This muffled his cries but didn't do much else because he wasn't hungry. I stripped him down to his diaper and tryed again. This time he sucked until he fell asleep. He woke up three seconds later, slightly cranky but definitely improved.

Even now, as I write this blog, I've been trying to transform William into a happy baby. He's quiet now in his crib, but at last check was not asleep. Yes, it is 4:30 pm, but he needs his nap. (Or, more specifically, I need his nap).

My only explanation for William's mood is that it's hot today, and the child has inherited his father's intolerence for heat. My husband is legendary for wearing shorts and sandals on cold October days.


Today's playlist quiz:

1. She-ra! She-ra!
2. I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind.
3. Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime.
4. May I have your attention, please? May I have your attention, please?
5. Inspector Gadget. Woo hoo!

Hint: I have a lot of theme songs on my playlist.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day Eva/Babcia, and Robin, and Becca, and all the Moms at the Early Years Centre, and Lynda and Cathy (who threw me the Salsa Shower) and all the other mothers in the universe. But most especially, Happy Mother's Day Mom (aka Omi). This year I have a whole new appreciation for everything you did (and are still doing) for us. I love you Mom!

Anyway, here's what William got me:

And today's playlist quiz:

1. Don't wish it away

2. Been so long now I've wanted to touch you

3. Greetings, Kermit the frog here.

4. The tables are empty.

5. Does she walk, does she talk, does she come complete?

Mom's cooking for us again

Today we are going to dinner at my parents house. So far we have eaten at my parents' house every day this week but one. I love my parents, and my Mom's cooking, and a break from cooking for myself, but soon I think I'll have to start contributing to the grocery bill. Anyway, just to prove we are not leeching, here are all the legitimate reasons why we chose to frequent Omi McNicoll's:

Monday: My nephew and my dad's birthday, so we had to come. Hunter picked Pizza as his meal of choice, and even though that is not technically my Mom's cooking, the family still footed the bill. Plus, Mom made a delicious strawberry cake.

Tuesday: I went to the zoo with my parents and Hunter. Now you can't really go out with my mom without her inviting you home for dinner and I would be crazy to say no to dinner made by Mom! We had manocotti.

Wednesday: I went to the farmer's market and bought corn. We had corn and porkchops for dinner. Not at the parents (Silly me).

Thursday: Adam had a Sound of Music meeting and, rather than sit around alone with William all night, I invited myself over to my parents house. Okay, this one could be considered leeching. We had ribs. Yum!

Friday: My uncle and aunt and cousins planned to come over today, but Mom randomly called me yesterday afternoon and said we were meeting them at Spencer Smith Park. We hung out at the park for a while. Baby William and Morty the Jackapoo collected "Oh how cute"s and the rest of us had ice cream. Of course Mom invited everyone back to dinner. We had spinach, baked macaroni and cheese, vegetarian chilli, and barbecued sausage.

Saturday: Today's the day my aunt and uncle actually planned to come, so my Mom's cooking a "Feast". Of course, every meal my mom makes is a feast. I'm sure it'll be delicious.

Thanks Mom!

Today's playlist quiz:
1. Give me a kiss to build a dream on,
2. Oh the power to be strong and the wisdom to be wise...
3. Isn't awfully nice to have a penis?
4. Another day is gone and I'm still all alone.
5. It's been a hard day's night and I've been working like a dog.

The Mother Goose Baby Singles Club

William and I went to Mother Goose today at the Ontario Early Years Centre. Apparently there's a waiting list ten kilometres long to get into this program so it's kind of a big deal. The idea is you and your baby go and learn rhymes and songs and have a good time. What actually ends up happening is a bunch of babies looking around, squawking and goobering on things, while their Moms go "Come on honey. Look at Mommy. La la la." I think William has a crush on the little girl Emma who was sitting next to us. He kept staring at her. While he my son was fascinated by his new love, I was learning some songs and rhymes. Here's a simple one I like:

Tony Chestnut knows I love you
Tony Chestnut knows I love you
Tony Chestnut knows I love you
That's what Tony knows

When you say a body part, you're supposed to point to it. Like TOE, KNEE, CHEST, NUT(head), NOSE, EYE, love you. Get it? I like it because 1: it's very punny, and 2: William likes it when I touch his nose.

Anyway, my facebook friends got me wise to a fun time-wasting quiz. I post the first lines of tracks that randomly come up on my iTunes, and my internet buddies can rack their brains trying to figure out what song it is. I've decided to make this a regular blog feature (until I get bored of doing it). No fair googling lyrics guys.

Today's playlist quiz:

1. Stardate 2434.2
2. Baby can't you see I'm calling
3. What I've got you've got to give it to your mama
4. Maybe I didn't love you quite as often as I could have
5. Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away.

Hint: # 1 is not really a song.

William's first trip to the zoo (and Hunter's too)

Being a zoo-going family, my Mom felt she had neglected her duties as Omi when my nephew turned six on Monday having never set foot in the Metro Toronto Zoo. So she made yesterday's trip to the zoo one of his birthday presents, and invited William and I to come along. I love the zoo, so I jumped at the opportunity to give my 3-month-old son the experience.

William's favourite animal:

For the first 15-20 minutes of our trip, I took William out of the stroller to show him the various animals (afterwards I gave up and let him sleep all day). He was more interested in staring into space than looking at Orangutans, but I got a smile out of him when viewing this snake. Of course he could have been smiling because I signed "snake" for him and he always finds it amusing when Mommy does goofy things. We'll go with he likes snakes.

This trip's most photogenic animal:

The hippos. It was feeding time when we got to the hippopotamus habitat so they were strutting around showing off just how majestically ugly they really are. I got like a billion shots. Last trip's most photogenic animal, the goat, barely made an appearance.

Hunter enjoyed the zoo thoroughly. His favourite animal was the zebra, but for some reason I didn't get a picture of it. So just for fun, here's another hippo shot:

And some gratuitous baby shots:

Double Birthday Wishes

Happy Birthday Hunter and Dad (aka Opa)


Since it's my Dad and my nephew's birthday, we'll be heading over there shortly for pizza and cake and gift giving. Other than that not much is going on. Went to the mall. Bought some shirts. Got William a pair of pants so he can look just like his Daddy. I mean more so.

Weekend in Review

Yesterday we went to see Spiderman 3 on IMAX. I remember back in the day when you could only watch IMAX movies at Ontario Place, and even then you had to see a documentary about the human body, with some random shots of roller coasters and, if you were lucky, Antarctica. Now you can see pretty much any movie on the big big big screen. Anyway, Spidey 3 was a pretty good flick, though not as good as 2. You just can't beat a big cuddly Doctor Octopus.

Today William was all: "Mom! Why didn't you take me to see Spiderman? I never get to go out, gosh darn it!" (At least I assume that's what he was saying, I don't speak baby). In any case I took him for a walk all the way to Eireann's house where we sang Karaoke revolution. We being me and Eireann; William was asleep.

Now I'm at my in-laws' house. William's Babcia cooks us dinner just about every Sunday. Us being me and Adam; William still drinks boob. Anyway William's Babcia goes crazy over William and loves taking him for walks. She just puts him in the stroller and hikes all over the neighbourhood. It's her thing.

William's First Picnic

Gorgeous day today, so Adam and I arranged a picnic for the gang at Lowville Park. The gang in this case includes me, Adam and William, along with my parents, my brother Craig, my friend Eireann (who is currently dating my brother. Yes!), and my parents' new dog Morty, a Jack Russel X Teacup Poodle who is about half the size of William. The tiny puppy hammed it up and got most of the "Awe! So cute" comments, allowing William to have his lunch in peace (breasts do make the best picnic baskets).

The non-babies and non-puppies had ham sandwichs, brownies, apples, grapes, bagel chips, Ah Caramel snack cakes, ice tea, and some bizarre pickled watermelon rind that my Mom bought in Georgia. We then spent the afternoon hanging out under a tree by the creek, pretending to be outdoorsy.

Some more pictures:

William in his stylish frog hat


Morty the Jackapoo


Craig and Eireann

William's first "swim"

Yesterday William had his first swimming experience at the Y in St Catharines. We adopted a one-baby-per-changeroom policy, the Moms (Becca and I) took William and the Dads (Drew and Adam) took Aedan. The swimming diapers that Aedan lent William had Little Mermaid on them, so we preserved his manhood by covering them with gigantic Sesame Street Bermuda shorts (courtesy his Omi and Opa).

Adam got in the pool first and I passed him William (Drew passed Aedan to Becca). William imediately got this look that said something like "GAH! What the heck is this, Mommy?" but he didn't cry. Everyone, lifeguards, random strangers, were raving about how cute the babies were and how great they were in the water. I was so proud. I mean, it was Aedan's second swim, so he was an old hand at it, but William had never been in a pool. He is a super star! While he didn't cry, he kept that incredulous look on for the entire 10-15 minutes we were in the water.

We rapped William in a Ducky towel and Becca and I took him back into the change room, where I stripped him naked to wash the clorine off his body. This is when the crying came. It was a cry that says "Mom! I'm naked! In the girl's changeroom! How embarrassing!" He calmed down when I put him in a cuddly sleeper.

A random woman told me that in the olden days people used to just throw their babies into the water and see how they did. Um, Okay.

Post-pregnancy bathing suit shopping

Tonight we're going swimming at the Y with Becca and Drew and baby Aedan. This will be William's first time in a pool and will be a super exciting baby-book-worthy experience. But, problem, my body is completely different than the last time I donned a bathing suit. My gargantuan boobs were hard to fit even before they turned into udders. Plus, now I have these unsightly stretchmarks that make bikinis problematic.

Becca had offered to lend me a suit, but what if that one didn't fit? And when has anyone ever felt comfy in someone else's swimwear? The thought of trying on a hundred ill-fitting bathing suits at the mall across the street just about put me in tears, so I called my Mom. My Mom's the best. She came over right away and took me to La Feminique, the specialty shop on Plains Rd that sells bathing suits, bras and chocolate vaginas. The service there is fabulous. The lady there helped me find a suit that fit and covered my stretch marks for only 30 bucks. They were very sympthetic to my gargantuan boob situation. So I got a navy tankini that supports the girls and covers all my icky bits, well except my thighs but they'll be under water.

All this and everyone will be looking at baby anyway.

Fell into a Black Hole Today

The great thing about using Vonage as my phone service is that I get to call my Scottish friend Carol and talk as long as I want for free (theoretically I could also call other people overseas, I just can't think of anyone else worth talking to). The thing that sucks is that when the internet cuts out, I fall into a black hole and have to float around in deep space while I wait to be reconnected to the Earth.

It so happened that today I was on the phone with Carol when this happened. Before I realized what was happening, Carol's pleasant Scottish lilt faded into oblivion and I was left in a communications abyss with a suddenly cranky baby and a pan of overdone mushrooms.

A list of things formed in my mind of things that I absolutely had to get done, but obviously couldn't:
-call Carol back and finish our conversation properly
-phone Adam and ask him if he was coming home soon and if he minded burnt mushrooms
-check my e-mail for the second time today
-msn Adam to tell him the phone wasn't working
-attempt to amuse William with some nostalgic cartoon downloaded from youtube
-blog about being in a black hole

Mommy and Daddy's Night Out/ William's Night with Omi and Opa

Yesterday was date night for Adam and I. Adam got gift certificates for Casey's Bar and Grill that were only good in Toronto, so we went, thereby using up almost as much in gas and parking as we saved by using the certificates. Plus a movie(cereal coupons are no good on Saturday). Oh well.

We left William with my parents, and I worried about him the whole time we were out. It's not that I don't trust my family, I knew they would keep him safe and entertain him greatly. But we were gone from 4pm to 10:45pm, what if I didn't leave enough milk for him (two bottles)? What if he missed his Mommy? Or worse, what if he didn't miss his Mommy?

Despite the worrying, going out when you have a baby is actually better than pre-baby going out. It's the preparation: asking my parents to watch him, two mornings of pumping bottles, packing extra outfits in case he gets cold, or dirty. This rigmarole makes the whole outing more of a big deal, and therefore more fun.

The movie we saw (since I know everyone cares), Hot Fuzz, was pretty darn hilarious. The boys who brought you Shawn of the Dead have done it again with lots of amusingly unnecessary gore. William was also amused, but not by gore. According to my Mom, he laughed when my brother danced to the Baby Elephant Walk.

And he had enough milk. Mom was still feeding him the second bottle when we came to pick him up. When we got home I performed the amazing feat of removing a sleeping baby from a carseat and placing him in his crib without waking him up. I figured he would wake up and then I could feed him, but no. My breasts were aching to be juiced so I pumped a bottle. It's a good thing too, because he didn't end up waking up until 7am!

Happy Earth Day.

William gets poked in the leg

I've always maintained that with today's level of technology there should be some gentler method of immunization, besides a needle. Maybe orally through an eye-dropper, or rubbed on as some sort of cream. As I was telling William earlier, they should mix the vaccines in with different colours of face paint so you could get a fun clown face and be protected from disease all at the same time!

Unfortunately the clown face method is yet to come into common usage, so this morning my son had to get red-faced the old fashioned way: by screaming.

Now I hate needles, hate them, and seeing my son get two of them (one for each cute chubby thigh), made me want to cry too. One problem is that I don't know how much he's hurting. He cried, sure, but he cries in similar fashion when he has the hiccups, is hungry, or gets tired of playing with his dangly-mirror-turtle-toy.

At least his tylenol tastes like white grape juice. Why doesn't adult tylenol taste like white grape juice?

Germy Daddy

Every Tuesday William and I walk to the Ontario Early Years Centre where a nurse whose name I forget does a talk on something. Last week's topic was making your own baby food. The week before that, sun safety and West Nile virus. I don't know what the topic is today, but we probably won't go.

Why not? William's germy Daddy has given us both colds. At least, I have a cold. It's hard to tell if William is suffering from a sore throat like the rest of us, or just crying because he's a baby. Whatever, the point is I don't think it would be very nice to spread the germs to the other Mom's and babies.

So what do I do with myself? I know not. Perhaps I'll peruse the book on sign language that I got at the Salsa shower. So far I learned that I've been doing things all wrong. For one thing, I was incorrectly doing the sign for change. For another, the signs for "milk" and "change", while practical, are no fun for babies. Babies are more likely to learn words and signs for things that they can't express by crying. Like "airplane" or "ceiling fan". Or so says the book.

Another obstacle to this signing business is that I need to have two extra arms grafted to my body. I wonder how those who are truly hearing impaired hold their children and talk to them at the same time. Maybe I'll figure this out by the time he's six-months old (the optimum age for starting to sign according to the book). At least this sore throat will be gone by then.

Hopefully this cold will be gone by Thursday so William will be healthy enough to get his first shots. (Although, postponing such scariness can't be too bad).

Salsa Baby Shower

Yesterday William had another party thrown in his honour. This time the shin dig was thrown by my Mom and her writer friends (who have known me so long they can be considered surrogate Moms).

The shower was all Mexican themed because my Mom had this idea to get a dancer to come and teach us Salsa babies dancing. This is sort of like line dancing except you dance with a baby strapped to you and there's a Latin beat. Anyhoo, usually when I do this sort of thing I'm the only person who can't keep rhythm. This time I had a whole row of writer Moms to keep me company in that regard.

After the dancing, my nephew Hunter lay waste to a nearly indestructible toucan pinata (the stick broke before the bird), and we ate nachos and other Mexican delights (like these pierogi-esque things I don't remember the name of).

William was very well behaved and everyone raved about how cute he was. When he started to fuss, my Mom offered Hunter a loonie to settle him and he did. Hunter, the six-year-old baby whisperer. Seriously, he is a fabulous cousin. Already William gets such a kick out of him.

I'd like to thank everyone for throwing me a party and buying my son stuff and being great grandmas, aunties, and cousins. Olé.

Signs of the times.

As part of my ongoing quest to alleviate boredom and create a genius child, I decided to teach William (and myself) some sign language. After a three second internet search I found this website, which describes what the signs are, rather than the ever more logical approach of demonstrating them with pictures. Anyway, I managed to commit the signs for milk, change, Mommy, and Daddy to memory.

I opened and closed my fist like mad while I was feeding him (the sign for milk) and shuffled my fists around while changing him (the sign for change). Since he lacks the coordination to suck his fist with any more than 60% accuracy, I have doubts about his ability to sign, but he does enjoy it when Mommy does crazy things.

A baby in a hood is just as good

I had a short dream about this blog. I dreamt there was an article about it in the Toronto Star as part of the new "blog review" section. My Mom brought me the paper. There were two guys reviewing the blog, kind of like an Ebert and Roeper type thing. Both of them gave the thumbs up. There review was followed by a full page ad. Some line from the blog was quoted at the bottom of the ad and I was annoyed because I felt the quote was taken out of context and that it made the blog seem different than it actually is. Some people are never happy! I woke up all set to blog about my good fortune at being in the paper and all. Unfortunately, it didn't actually happen.

Luckily though, William is wearing a cute outfit today that is sure to garner almost as many hits as would a full page ad in a national newspaper.

At least the building didn't burn down.

The weather today was cold and rainy and icky, so William and I decided to take our daily walk at the mall. I bought a five dollar top that covers my stretch marks. When we returned to our apartment building we found that the new maintenance crew were turning the fire alarm on and off for no reason.

The loud BRRRRIIINNNNNG that echoed through the halls was enough to shake my brains loose and send souls to Stovocore. Needless to say it woke the baby and he let out one of his drown cat cries. Despite the brrrrinnnging, I wanted to go home, but the guys who were messing with the alarm were also messing with the elevators, and we couldn't go upstairs. One portly gentleman was getting in the maintenance crew's face, yelling "This is ridiculous!" and being louder than the alarm.

Outside, a hundred and three old ladies waited with their terrified froo froo dogs for the brrringgging to end. I took a walk with one of the old ladies and we talked about how my grandmother was doing (she knew everyone in the building), and about William, and about how the new maintenance people didn't know what they were doing, and about how we wished it wasn't so cold and rainy and icky.

The alarm stopped and we (all a hundred and five of us) went inside, but the elevators still weren't working. Some of the old people decided to take the stairs, but I had a stroller and couldn't.

Finally I went back to the mall and nursed William in the comfy chair in the family washroom. Nice, but not as nice as home.

Blogging with Wii

We are now the proud owners of a Wii and, thanks to my husband's powers of nerdom, I can surf the internet with my tv. I am now typing by tediously pointing a wand at an onscreen keyboard.

Finally, I can watch tv, surf the net and play mindless video games without the bother of traveling from the couch to the computer and back!