Good dental hygiene

ben bathroom
Originally uploaded by dina the mundane and oblivious.

Is there anything cuter than a kid standing on a stool and brushing his teeth? I think not :-)

We had our second ultrasound on Monday and everything is looking perfectly normal. We don't have pictures because we got it on videotape and I forgot to ask for a pic for the web. Luckily, we have to go back in two weeks so my doctor can have a better look at Pumpkin's heart which was beating and looked ok, but she couldn't get a good view of the chambers. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will have a womb with a better view :-) I know that everything is just fine because I experience serious kung-fu action several times a day and at least a couple of times at night. This baby seems to be way more active than the first, perhaps Ben stretched it out so there's more space or something.
For Father's Day Ben and I took Steve out for breakfast on Saturday because on Sunday we drove up to see my folks. We did some chores while Ben frolicked in his new sandbox - complete with a roof and mosquito-resistant netting. Yes, our son is spoiled to little bits by his grandfolks.
This weekend is a long weekend for us. We're going up to the townies again to help my folks take down their pool in preparation for a new one. The old one is over 20 and has just started to come apart. This means more sandbox time for Ben and grandma gets to chase after him up and down the hill. Last week, he ran down the hill and threw himself into a ditch. He's starting to get those toddler scraped knees and bruised shins.

Melting and meltdowns

It was hot this weekend! Hotter than hot! Stupid hot! But I had a great birthday weekend despite the melting humidity. Friday night I went to bookclub and Steve made my b-day cake - twice. He tried to take it out of the pan too early the first time - oops! Saturday we cleaned and prepped and people arrived around 5-ish and we snacked and then had burgers and cake and ice cream. We moved our bedroom air conditioner into the diningroom which managed to bring that part of the apartment down to near-tolerable temps. It was a fun party, there was even a game involving rewriting Hamlet! I got lots of great gifties too. The heat got to everyone eventually though - the party ended at 10 and Steve and I washed up and watched some of my DVD (Scrubs-season 1) and went to bed. Sunday I woke up to more presents! Excellent choices from Ben and Steve and Steve's folks and brother. Ben was a bit off in the morning, but we figured that he'd sleep in the car. My car doesn't have air, but we thought that we'd be fine on the highway, and we were fine, but Ben was not. He fussed and wouldn't sleep and then just before Bromont he melted down and went super hysterical and we had to pull over. His back was soaking poor guy! We took him into a Burger King and let him cool down for half and hour and then continued to my folks' place, but he really didn't sleep, so by 6 he was fed up and hot again so we came home and gave him some tempra and put him to bed in his air conditioned room and he slept all night. We had some BBQ and cheesecake at the folks and some nice gifties. Strangly enough, Ben seemed to get more stuff than I did :-) At least I didn't have to mow the lawn.

Happy birthday to me!

Store wars - Chewbroccoli!

Oh and....

my birthday week has officially begun. Bring on the fun!

Reading and the weekend

I finished two books recently - Andrea Levy's A Small Island and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. Both are highly recommended. The first is a novel told in multiple narratives about four people in London after WW II - two Englanders and two Jamaicans. The second is a literary detective novel set in 1985 England, where the Crimean War is still being fought and literature is popular culture. If you studied lit in university, you'll fantasize about this alternate universe. The main character, Thursday Next, has to stop an arch villain (Acheron Hades) from destroying popular English novels. Half the fun are the character names, such as Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt. It's part of a series that I'm definitely reading.
Now I've moved on to Motherless Brookyn by Jonathon Lethem and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. The first is told by a detective with Tourettes, the second is an autistic 15-year old. So far, I'm enjoying them both.

Great weekend! We stayed in town and just hung out and enjoyed the hot weather and sunshine. Ben has taken up long distance walking. He walked about 8 blocks to the video store Saturday and almost all the way back with Steve and I and then played in the park for another 45 minutes. He's very good about holding our hands when he's walking, but he wants to walk, he gets really annoyed when you pick him up to cross a busy intersection. If he keeps this up, he'll have the calves of an everest climber by age 3. In preparation for his birthday, we went out yesterday and picked up his gift - he pointed at it in the toy store flyer. It has little people and airplanes. The fun thing about this age is that he has no idea what we do at stores, so we can take him shopping for his gifts and even have him help us pick them out and they're still a surprise. We also managed to clean the house a bit and watch two movies - Porco Rosso and Closer. Clive Owen was brilliant as Larry, there's a reason that I love this guy so much. Porco Rosso is a Miyazaki film - they never disappoint.