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.

Black market Henckels anyone?

So the doctors in Britain want to ban pointy knives because they contribute to many nasty assaults each year. Apparently, they don't think that they're necessary in a household kitchen. How do you carve a turkey with a bread knife? I guess I could always use a pointed stick.....

Be prepared.....

There is so much wrong with this.

Updates

Kuan and Ryan came up from NJ last week. Kuan's looking fabulous for a 7-month pregnant lady, and Ryan's becoming such a big boy. He and Ben wandered around the house playing near each other with only a couple of minor skirmishes.
Steve's folks came in for a visit, which allowed us to see Hitchhikers and the last Star Wars. Movies are great! HGTTG wasn't hilarious, but it was well cast and the Vogons are by far the best thing about it. I thought that the Arthur-Trillion romance plot wasn't necessary, especially because it only seems to be there to appeal to people who never read the books, and everyone I know who's seen the movie without reading the books thought that the movie was terrible and made no sense. The Star Wars was fantastic - lots of action broken up with occasional bouts of bad acting. I was especially impressed with the effort they put into trying to find actors who could be younger versions of the characters in the original (episode 4). Very pleased with this movie I was.
Ben ate chicken for the first time since he's started feeding himself. It may be because it was shredded, or because it was from Chalet BBQ. I don't care. Hooray for carnivores!
The sun has been out all day today, we were all beginning to suspect that the summer was going to be grey and 12C.
In other Ben firsts, today at playgroup he took part in making a craft instead of just eating the one that Steve makes for him. He sat in a chair and put stickers on a piece of paper - that's huge!
My latest doctor's appointment was a success. We listened to the heartbeat and all my blood tests came back with honours. At least my blood is smart.
I've started feeling a bit of baby movement which is pretty exciting.

Name game

So I was a little bit pissed off after reading this article in the paper this morning. This economist is predicting popular names for babies in 2015, and not only is the name of our first-born there, but also the two names that we've been considering for our next little bundle. What people name their kids in 2015 doesn't matter to me, what does matter is that pregnant people are reading that article today and may think that one of my names, which I thought were kind of special, are perfect. We have the only Bennett born in Quebec in 2003, and I kind of wanted to keep that less-than-common streak going. I didn't know anyone with my name until I hit university, and it was nice to not be the fifth "Rachel" in my class, or whatever the popular name was when I was a kid. Now I feel like I'm just following a trend, which is sucky. Fortunately, in Quebec those names will not be very popular because French names rule, but what about when my little XX or XY goes outside the province? Will he or she be awash in a sea of Norberts or Berthas (real names withheld)? Time to send that economist a big bag of thhhbtttt!

Climbing out of the crevice

I am now at the tail end of a cold that completely knocked me on my behind. I can't remember the last time I was that sick, never before have I missed an entire week of work because I couldn't get out of bed. Of course, if I could have taken cold medication, I might have stood a chance. Ah well, it's only a head/sinus thingie now, so it's back to work!
I found this Chris Harding animation on Drawn, it's funny, go and look.

New Project

Hi All,
Due to the overwhelming success of Version 1.0. We
have decided to embark on Version 2.0, project code
name: Pumpkin.
Launch date is a tentative October 31.

Pumpkin had his/her screen debut yesterday, and amazed
the doctor with tons of kicking and waving and
swimming. There were a few deductions during the
swimsuit competition. According to my doctor, I've
been de-aged to a 24 year old being pregnant. Hoorah!

holy (white) smoke!

New popey! Benedict is not a bad name, but I was really pulling for Kenneth. Doesn't Pope Kenneth sound like the name of a pope you can trust?

The curse of the loaner

Loaner cars suck. Correction, my loaner cars suck. I have no idea what I did in my last life, but any time that I need a loaner when my car is in the shop, I get the single-most disgusting car that I have ever seen - until the next time I get a loaner. In the past I have been given the keys to everything from compact cars without working heaters and windshield wipers, to station wagons with flat tires and no engine coolant. Well, the garage didn't finish the repairs on my car yesterday, so I got the keys to a rusty chevrolet corsica with half the console and door buttons broken off and a driver's seat that can't be adjusted and looks like it was eaten by a bear. Oh, and they smoke in it and seem to use everything, including the cupholder, as an ashtray. I didn't even bother to lock the damn thing this morning. Please say a small prayer to the parts gods to send those blessed bushings to the garage today.

It's amazing how cute small children look in yellow raincoats and rubber boots.

I haven't been doing much beyond working, going home and playing with Ben, and sleeping. We did get up to the Townies for my dad's birthday last Sunday which was a beautiful day. On Saturday we bought a new vacuum cleaner, it does a killer job on the livingroom rug and carpet in Ben's room, but it's not doing a good job on our hardwood floors, so back it goes this weekend. We are also going to get a new BBQ this weekend. I have been dying for grilled meat since spring began, so I cannot wait! Steve already has the fridge stocked with steak and hotdogs. Our old one had the biscuit last year, there's no shame for it. I'm starting to look forward to the end of the month, Steve got me tickets for the new Cirque de Soleil show for Christmas. A nice perk of living in Montreal is seeing the new shows before the rest of the world. I went to one a few years ago and was blown away.
Besides The Amazing Race, we're now also glued to the set every Tuesday night for Dr. Who. I was a big fan of the old series (I started watching them when Tom Baker was the Dr) and was pleasantly surprised that the new version has retained that no-frills attitude towards special effects and just concentrates on having some reasonable dialogue and decent stories. I think that they've captured the essence of the original. It started a while back in the UK, but we've only seen two shows so far in Canada. I was a bit surprised when it was announced that Christopher Eccleston was leaving the show after a year, but I'm sure they'll find another good actor to replace him. The other thing that's caught my attention recently was a photo in the paper of the new fabricated 'popera' group Il Divo. It's not my style of music, but man are those guys pretty or what? All the ladies in the department are drooling over them.

Home again, home again

Well, we survived and the trip was actually pretty good, aside from the fact that I am now even more tired than I was before I left. I have now reached the level of tired floppiness that requires large paint scrapers to get me up off the sofa. I did sleep quite a bit last night, so hopefully I will catch up in a few days. Ben discovered the moving sidewalks at the airport, which are apparently the best ever, and elevators, which are equally exciting. Luckily the airport wasn't very crowded, so he ran to his heart's content. The plane rides were short, which was nice, but the last leg was on a small Dash 8 which I really don't care for. You always feel like your teeth are going to shake out of your head. I did get some nice shots of Ben at the airport on the way home, the light was too good to resist.

Yesterday at the office was a bit of a disaster. I should have just put a sign on my door saying "Brain out today, ask tomorrow". Ben's getting back into his routine. He was so happy to get home on Monday, he kept running around and touching things and grinning like a madman. The weather's really springy and gorgeous today, I should go outside for a wander around the block. See ya!

Attack of the zombie lady

I am fatigue girl. For the past two weeks, Ben has woken up at 3 most nights and stayed awake until 5. He's not unhappy, he's babbling and singing and whooping it up and it gets louder and louder until we go and get him and bring him in for some milk and cuddles. When we put him back in his crib, he continues the partying. Steve falls back to sleep quite quickly, but I stay awake and usually fall back to sleep sometime just before I have to get up. I've become one of those walking zombie people, the kind that I curse when I'm trying to get somewhere and they're sitting in their cars at green lights not moving. It's a hazy existence, somewhat unreal. All I really need is a long weekend like the one coming to rest and recharge. Oh wait, who else is navigating through aviation hell this weekend taking a toddler on two planes and a stopover at a large airport? Raise your hands? Crap, I thought there would be more of us. The last time we took Ben on planes, he was crawling and cruising, not exactly the running man he's become today. You put him down anywhere now and he bolts. He loves running at full tilt through open spaces, without a thought to where he's going or if we're following. This is fine at home and the park, but in a crowded airport, the thought makes my heart do running leaps at my throat. My only hope is that we can anchor him to something heavy, that will at least slow his progress. If you see me on Tuesday with my head on my drool-covered desk, cover me with a blanket and let me sleep for a week, preferably with pay.

Chalk mug

Why didn't I think of this? It's so simple and combines my two favorite things: coffee and the need to doodle. Get two so that you can have conversations with a colleague during long meetings.
(via Gizmodo, via RedFerretJournal)