Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous and sunny, so Ben and I wandered out for a nice, long stroll. After a couple of frigid months, it was nice to be able to walk without bundling up everything and worrying about windchill. We were out for about two hours and Ben hardly slept the entire time. When we got back home, he managed to stay awake as well, but finally passed out for the evening around 7:30 so that Steve and I could watch Matchstick Men. I must agree with Steve that Nicolas Cage is at his best when he plays twitchy characters, the movie was very good. This weekend we got Ben an exersaucer thingie because he likes to stand now and my arms need a rest. It's got lots of toys on it which he's very interested in, and it's perfect for the late afternoon when he's getting tired of playing on the floor and just a bit cranky waiting for Steve to come home. I also tend to get a bit cranky waiting for Steve to come home, but I was unable to find an exersaucer for adults.

Last night turned out to be very productive. Bill came over and between the three of us, and foreman Ben, we got quite a bit of the kitchen unpacked and some shelves put up. Yesterday afternoon was a time for napping. Ben went down for a nap, so I decided to try to get some sleep as well. I was just drifting off when he woke up, so I took him out of his crib (where he sleeps during the day) and brought him to bed with me. He sat up and played for a while, but he couldn't resist the sleepy mommy vibes and the warm sunbeam coming in the window and we had a lovely hour-long nap all snuggled up together - sigh!

I managed to wash the curtains, make some babyfood, and shower yesterday and that was about it aside from taking care of Ben. It's funny how when you become a mom and are staying at home, showering and brushing your teeth become these monumental tasks worthy of trumpets and applause when before they were merely a daily routine. I know you don't want to hear this, but I have gone days without showering because I don't get a chance during the day, and in the evening I'm too tired to move. Steve had his STC presentation last night. We took Ben with us because he likes going out and is generally very good. There wasn't much of a crowd and Ben was in good form, but he was a bit too enthusiastic about daddy talking, so I had to take him out into the hall about two minutes into the presentation. The first two minutes sounded pretty good to me though. We got home around 9:30 and Ben was sound asleep until we took him out of the carseat and out him into bed. He stayed up and watched two episodes of The Office with us, then we all passed out. I love The Office! I wish that there were more than six episodes in the first series. My favorite character is Gareth Keeler, he's so sad that I can't figure out how the actor manages to keep a straight face during the scenes. Bill told me that the second season is out on DVD in England, so I'm hoping that it's available here soon - can't wait!

Ben's asleep, so it's time for an update. Well, we're moved over into the new place. It's been a crazy two weeks trying to get everything done. Actually, it's been a crazy three months full of projects that were more expensive and longer than we thought, tears, exhaustion, laughter, further exhaustion, and more trips to the hardware store than seem humanly possible. I am now sitting in our new office, crammed with boxes in our new place, also crammed with boxes. The predominant problem seems to be that we already had too much stuff for our old place, so moving into a place exactly the same size with the same amount of stuff was a disaster waiting to happen. There have also been some minor problems, such as discovering that the washing machine drain was a very small rubber pipe coming out of the wall which we had to replace with something much larger, and having no heat on one side of the house for a day because you have to practically hit the breaker with a hammer to get it to turn on. My mother-in-law stayed for an extra two weeks to help us through all this chaos, she left today and I miss her already. My folks came in almost every week for two months to help us out. They may recover by spring, but without their help, we wouldn't even be close to finished. So, my place is a mess, there are boxes everywhere that need to be opened and either unpacked, or edited and stored, and there's still stuff to do at the old place, like clean and patch the walls. Of course there's also putting up shelving, curtains, cleaning, organizing, hold on, why am I sitting here writing? Bye!

Some of you may find this funny
My son discovered that he can give me a raspberry while he's breastfeeding.

What else is new?
Well, we're getting a few more things accomplished over at the new place, but it's very slow going. My folks have been coming in and helping where they can, and Steve's mom is coming in next week which should help if we're ready to paint. Ben and I went out to the mall yesterday and just wheeled around and looked at stuff. He loves getting out, and with the frigid weather that is continuing to plague us, it's one of the few things that we can do without freezing. On Monday we went to a big grocery store and went up and down every aisle. As soon as this cold snap ends (May?) I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time outside. There's a park across the street, so there's no end to the trouble we could get into over there.

Oh
One of my favorite books, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is now an Oprah pick. I'm not sure whether to be happy about this or not.

Jobs

As part of Blork and Martine’s 12 Monkeys project, here’s my list of most of the jobs I've had. I'm sure there are a few that I've blocked from my memory
I was supposed to do this January 14, I'm not usually this late for work...
Farm work - Hay, hay, hay
Senior camp counsellor - In New Hampshire the summer I graduated. Much hijinks and no parental supervision
Ski technician, instructor, patroller - They don't pay much, but you do get free skiing and listen to all the lurid gossip of fellow employees
Filing - I've had so many jobs as a file clerk, it's surprising that I have fingers left. One of the most memorable was a contract for a car dealership garage. Me and a dozen garbage bags full of invoices working nights after they closed - and yes, we do get ripped off - a lot!
Pizza delivery - You get bigger tips when you're a girl, but it's a scary job sometimes
Department clerk/girl friday - Taking care of a load of guys who liked to cheat on their wives while on business trips - I hope all your penises fell off!
Book editor/layout person - No money, but so much fun :-)
Microfilm clerk - Evening shift, which completely rocked because I was young and could get off work at midnight and go and meet my friends at the bar, party til whenever and sleep in all morning-sweet!
Assistant to VP - my first job managing people, the power, the power! They totally screwed me over
Call centre manager - For a telemarketing firm. Although the people I managed were just openers, my conscience made me leave eventually.
Tech writer - First as a contractor, and now something bordering on permanent, it's a career that I really enjoy, for now.
Mommy - The newest addition to my c.v. that has been one delightful moment after another since it started 6 months ago

There's finally a little time to write while Ben has a morning nap. Despite the cold weather yesterday, we bundled up and went to Walmart just to get out of the house and wander around. Our mission was to buy some kid's hangers for his clothes (they were on sale). I didn't realise that you need kid-size hangers until I tried hanging up his little jackets and overalls. I also realised that I never included any of the hangers for baby clothes that I gave as gifts over the years - sorry everyone!
I warmed up and cleaned off the car and packed up Ben for the trip. He gets excited when you put on his snowsuit now because he knows that we're going outside. Large, open Walmart parking lots are about the coldest places ever on high windchill days, but we rushed in and then spent a bunch of time just wandering the aisles and looking at things. I found one of those aquarium things on sale, so I picked it up to replace the mobile. Sadly, the days of the mobile are gone. We've been moving it farther away from him every day, but yesterday morning I walked into his room to discover that he'd managed to get a hold of it and was laying there with the thing bent over while he happily chewed on the giraffe. I moved it to the foot of the crib so he can still look at it from the changing table. He seemed very taken with the aquarium, I've wanted one for ages!

How cold is it?
It's so cold out my mailman is delivering mail in his car. Brrrrrrr!

I don't normally do this, but...

you are the cute but psycho happy bunny. You are
adorable, but a little out there.


which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Merry Christmas, Love, and Joys of the Season to All!

Chaos update
Well, it's past the middle of the month and almost nothing is accomplished at the new place. The biggest problem is that I can't work over there during the day because of Ben, and after Steve gets home, we're both too tired. That leaves the weekends, when we've also had to do all of our regular errands - ack! My downstairs neighbour is helping me knock down a wall in the nursery that had about two feet of space behind it that I can use for storage. Of course there were big old heating ducts there and when we took them out, part of the hallway wall came with it - oops! Now we have to fix that as well, and have an electrician in to take down a register. She's also going to add some plugs for us in January some time. If she's going to do that, we have to remove some baseboards to make her job easier, which means that we're going to have some wall issues which will make painting impossible until she finishes. We should be able to start with the kitchen and bathroom though because we're not doing anything in there until we buy the the place. We've had huge piles of snow falling on us recently which makes wandering around with Ben a bit more difficult. On the up side, the snow is beautiful and Christmassy and Ben looks very Maggie Simpsonesque in his snowsuit. I've almost finished the shopping too. We went downtown on Tuesday and got most of it completed. I pushed the stroller and Steve carried Ben around from store to store, which is easy when you live in a city with such a great underground network. Ben, of course, got a lot of attention. Part of being carried around by someone who's 6'4, is that you get a great view. He looked like a figurehead on a ship, all wide-eyed and smiling at everyone. He's really becoming an atrocious flirt!

Let the chaos begin!
We are now renting two places until Feb 1. Yup, the lady moved the last of her stuff from next door and hopefully cleaned up a bit. This means a month of cleaning, painting, sanding, and organizing for the big move sometime in January. Steve's mom arrives for a visit tomorrow, so I should be able to start getting stuff done over there Wednesday. It will be great to paint in a place without furniture! I've almost decided on paint colours, but I have to take the colour chips over and stick them up on the wall and have a look.
Yesterday officially ended something called black powder hunting season. First it's bow season, then two weeks of rifle, then black powder.I can only assume that this means hunting with muskets. I suppose that the deer have more of a chance this way, as you only get one shot, and then you have to reload, but it just seems silly to me. Do you also dress up in period costumes? To me, hunting is fine for food, but I've never appreciated people heading into the woods with their new red hats shooting at anything that moves for sport. My grandmother puts orange coats on the dogs for a month, because you hear all kinds of stories of city folk coming up with their rifles and shooting cows, and horses, and dogs, mistaking them for deer. My dad used to hunt when we lived in Alaska. He and a group of friends would get flown up north into the middle of nowhere for a week and hunt moose and bear. They normally came back with a couple of moose (mooses?) that they would split between them and we would have meat for half a year. When we moved back here, my dad retired his rifles. He didn't think that it was fair to shoot something that couldn't defend itself. My dad's opinion is that if you're hunting a moose or a bear and you miss, that animal has a pretty good chance to kill you (of course, not as good as if it had a rifle with a site and opposable thumbs), but what's a deer going to do? Blink you to death?

Ack!
Ben's been feverish since Friday night - probably because of his latest round of shots. Must not panic. Tempra's great!

It's a beautiful sunny day and with any luck Ben and I will be going out for a walk when he gets up from his nap. We celebrated our friend Terences' 40 birthday on Saturday and Ben was an excellent party guest, although he did conk out on his daddy, at least he wasn't wearing the lampshade this time. On Sunday, Guislaine came over for a belated birthday supper. Normally, we join her and other friends for a delicious meal at a French restaurant,but this year we couldn't make it. Steve made beef bourginon and I made a chocolate layer cake that was very yummy.
I'm starting to really think about paint colours for the new place. I have to decide soon, we must start painting at the beginning of December. I'm not sure if I'll be using the same colours as I have now, it's probably time for a change. Maybe I'll use some of the colours, but in different rooms. I keep having dreams that I'm walking through the place and it's huge, wishful thinking! It's going to be a whirlwind this Christmas with so much going on. There's a transit strike going on here, so Steve drove himself to work today. It kinda sucks because he bought his bus pass and now has to shell out for gas and parking. Ben's going to the doctor for his next set of shots on Thursday. The first time we went I was so anxious for him - I hate needles. He took it like a champ and only cried for a few seconds, then slept for most of the day. I almost forgot! He tried cereal for the first time on Sunday and seemed delighted with the texture and taste. It must be bland as cardboard, but I'm sure that just to try eating something off a spoon is fun. Most of it gets pushed back out and then shoved back in with his hands. We videotaped the event for posterity. Sigh, he's so super!

Another weekend has zoomed by! On Saturday we drove out to the townies and changed my tires and picked up a spare car. My folks bought a used Oldsmobile stationwagon because their older car gave out on them. After they bought it, they found out that the other car was fixable, so they offered the old Ford to Steve so he can get some practice driving around. Because of complications, he drove the Oldsmobile home. It was cold on Saturday, there was some snow and a really biting wind - hello winter!
Sunday we had many visitors and we watched Finding Nemo. We went to see it in the theatre when I was still pregnant, and I cried a lot. This time I only cried a little, but there was a lot of blinking. Why do animators always kill off the mother?
Ben's been in a very good mood lately, he seems to be smiling at everything and everyone. This morning he woke up in his co-sleeper and babbled for quite a while, he's generally very happy in the morning, but not so talkative. Eventually he's going to have to sleep in his crib in his room and I'll miss watching him wake up and stretch and squeak.
I have a lot of errands to run today, so naturally Ben has decided to have a long nap instead of his short little catnaps. Maybe I'll go have a nap too.....

Gone Fishing
Steve discovered that Ben loves watching fish. The Finding Nemo DVD has a virtual aquarium. The fish from the movie aquarium swim by and every now and then do something cute. He was entranced for at least 15 minutes!

Say Cheese
When you have a baby, you get on all sorts of new mailing lists. So far, I've received samples of and coupons for diapers, baby wipes, baby soap, lotion, formula, baby magazines, books, toys, you name it. The most recent was a free photo session. They called, and when I said I wasn't that interested, the lady on the phone said "It's free, the photographer will be at your home between 10 and 11 on Monday". Yesterday, the photographer showed up on time with all his photography stuff. He turned out to be a very nice young guy, two years out of photography school and great with babies. He managed to set up in the livingroom and we began. Ben was a real pro, of course he's had a camera in his face since he was born. First he took shots of Ben on his tummy in clothes, which went much better than I thought it would. After this, I stripped him to his diaper and the cheese began. Within the blink of an eye, the photographer whipped out a tarzan getup, complete with a stuffed monkey. I have to admit that I thought it was pretty funny. After this came the basket of fruit which Ben was added to with a lettuce leaf on his head. Seems that there's no escape from the dreaded Anne Geddes. The last photos were taken of Ben in his diaper posing again on his tummy. The sitting up shots were exciting, mostly because after the photographer got him into position, he let go of Ben for a split second while he took the photos. For this reason, I think that it was better to have a young guy, I'm sure his reflexes are much better than some middle-aged guy. We should get the proofs in a few weeks, so we'll see what we get. The really great part was that about five minutes after the photographer left, Ben was fast asleep. Apparently being beautiful takes a lot out of him :-)

Spongebob's pants are on fire
Note to self: when disinfecting sponges in the microwave, do not accidently hit ten minutes instead of ten seconds and then walk to the other end of the house. Burning sponge in the microwave is about the nastiest smell ever - but at least we know that the smoke detectors work.

Wow, it's the end of October already! I keep looking at the blog and wanting to post, but somebody's been taking up a lot more of my time than I previously anticipated. It's funny, you have an idea of what it's going to be like to have a baby and stay home with him, but you never really know what you're getting yourself into. For the most part, I've really been digging the mom thing, Ben's an amazing baby. He's sleeping about 6 hours a night now, which is pretty good. People tell you that you learn to live with less sleep, and they're right! Steve can fall asleep in seconds now to take advantage of any quiet moment. I tend to be more alert to Ben's fussing, so it takes me a while to get back to sleep after night time feedings and cuddling. Did I mention that Ben's a cuddler? He's about the cutest thing ever when he falls asleep in your arms.
I'm also getting pretty good transporting baby in the car seat and stroller to run errands. When I started, I had no clue. I'm sure that more than one mom has rolled her eyes at me and muttered "rookie" under her breath as I've tried to attach the infant seat to a grocery cart or tried to get him into his stroller in the parking lot of the mall. A few tips:

• At the grocery store, park near where you return the carts, that way you can get a cart and attach the infant seat and then roll across the parking lot to the store (this becomes important when your baby starts packing on the pounds), and you can put the baby in the car and return the cart without taking your eyes of him. I was sprinting across the parking lot a few times before I figured this out.
  
• Keep your stoller in the trunk of the car, you never know when you'll need it, and if you live upstairs, like me, you don't have to drag it up and down.
  
• Get yourself a nice, light, small-ish stroller. You can't get those SUV strollers up and down stairs easily if there are no ramps, and let's not talk about narrow aisles! I have a small stroller, and I can barely manage some store aisles.