Happy Birthday Pumpkin

It was around this time one year ago that you were born. You were in such a hurry, the nice doctors didn't even have time to give Mommy an epidural. The pain, although I will remind you of it for the rest of my life, was so worth it. You are such a perfect little girl, my favorite little girl in fact. You are so happy so much of the time, you are walking everywhere and babbling and pointing and laughing. You love wrestling with your brother and playing tickle. You find joy everywhere and fill my heart with it. I love you so my little Naomi.
Hugs and kisses,
Your Momma


Oh, and Happy Halloween everybody! Here's a little something fun that I like to do. Go up to a stranger who is obviously not dressed in costume and try to guess what they are. Don't tell them I told you to do it.

no one can hear you flush

I got into work this morning to discover that a busted waster main has turned off all water to the building. No coffee, no bathrooms, of course, the two kind of go hand in hand anyway. The nearest bathroom is downstairs and at the end of another building. People are coming by and asking, "I'm going down to the bathroom, you coming?". I now have more information than I ever wanted on my colleagues toilet habits.
In other news, they are adding an extra person in my office. It was supposed to have a small table for meeting with people, but instead I'm getting an extra body taking up oxygen and talking. One cone of silence please. I'll be nicer tomorrow I'm sure.
Look! It's a fairy!

First full day

It's my first full-time day at the office. I feel a bit strangled. Part-time was great while it lasted, but now I know I'm not going home early to pick up Ben from daycare, or play in the park while it's still light out. Sigh.
Fall is here, I love this time.

We were out in the park yesterday for a while before cold hands and noses forced us back inside. Naomi practised walking on sand, a huge difference from hard floors.

Ben enjoyed pushing his sister on the swings:

Time for more coffee :-)

Witty insults

I wish I was clever enough to come up with one of these. Use a few on your least favorite person.

Look who's walking

And here I thought nobody liked me

Lisa just pointed out that my comments didn't work. I think that I have it fixed. Could the beautiful people who still visit my blog leave a comment to test it for me? Thanks!
I love you all.
Work is better. I'm not very busy, but I heard that there are a few things coming my way.
I was listening to a radio piece on CBC this morning about cocoa farming on the Ivory Coast. This is where most of the world's cocoa is produced, and a lot of it is done by exploiting child labour. I'm not really an activist, but the irony of kids selling chocolate bars for school fundraising that was harvested by kids has pushed me too far. If you go to the Global Exchange site, you'll find all kinds of information on stuff that you can do. There are even fundraising alternatives. The one in Ottawa with Cocoa Camino looks yummy. Chocolate lovers unite! Let's stick it to Nestle and Hershey and make them do the right thing!

The grind

Today was my first day back to work. It was grey and dreary. It's weird to have to try to get out the door on time after a year. Ben was upset because I dropped him off at daycare, but he was fine after he got there. I'd forgotten that people drive like real jerks in the morning. When I arrived at work, nothing was set up, no computer, no phone, no chair. By the end of the day I had a computer, and after several calls to support I had software, passwords, then the correct versions of software. I stole a chair and a lamp from an empty office and scrounged a bunch of pens. My new office is nice and quiet, my officemate is gone for at least six weeks. Nothing has changed much since I've been gone. Tomorrow's bound to be better.

a week in bullets

• It has now been a week since I stopped breastfeeding Naomi. The decision was not totally mine. Since she's started eating more regular food, her feedings have become shorter and less frequent. Her biting however, increased. When you have four new teeth, you tend to explore new textures, and it only took her a few feedings to realise that when she bit, mommy reacted. The last time she nursed, she bit me and when I yelped, she laughed. Game over. It's really depressing when you have to stop, but I wasn't going to continue after I went back to work, so it's time. I just can't get over how much formula we need to replace my boobs.
  
• Naomi started swimming classes yesterday. She was the prettiest little splasher there, and she loves the water.
  
  
• I'm starting back to work at the beginning of October. I'm trying to get in touch with HR to arrange to work part-time for the first couple of weeks. I've been told that we're moving to a higher floor and that I will be getting a nice, bright corner office. The bad news is that I have to share it with a hypochondriac, but as a friend pointed out, that means I will have the office to myself quite a bit :-) I may also be able from my new perch to provide traffic updates during rush hour.
  
• We watched the first episode of the Amazing Race and were amused by the couple selection. If you were white and applying to the Race this time around, you better hope that you were either gay or had amusing hick accents. There's a cultural rainbow on the AR and Survivor this time around. Of course, Survivor decided to be "controversial" and split teams up by races, it clearly sounded more shocking on paper than practise.
  
• I've entered my Autumn cooking frenzy. Yesterday I made muffins, cauliflower soup, whole wheat bread, and squash in preparation for a risotto. I also have another cauliflower to do a casserole and I'm thinking that I should get some stew made and in the freezer.
  
• We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2 this week and it rocked! I liked it better than the first one.
  
• And finally, my cute, cute boy
  

Loving the hair, hating the guns

I went out to the salon with my trusty hair person, Maggie, and came out looking faboo. My hair will not look like this again because I just can't do anything this nice with it myself, so have a look. I'm tempted to just carry the photo and show it to people.

After, we went to Value Village where I found some costume stuff for Ben, here is the very original cowboy fairy

We then went out for lunch where we saw the news reports of the Dawson shooting. I really hoped that we wouldn't see another tragedy like this one after U of M. One innocent life lost is one too many. I went home and hugged my kids and wished for a world where it would be safe to send them off to school. Maybe the boy who did this needed a few more hugs in his life.

Five years ago today

That was some serious I-do-ing. Would I do it again? Damn right!
Love you Stevie, with all my heart :-)

Tales of a reformed English major

Back in the old days, when I had an attention span, I was a voracious reader. I used to read a wide variety of topics and kept several books going at once. Now, the back of the Cheerios box looks like fresh prose every morning. I also used to be a bit of a snob about pop literature. Anything with an Oprah stamp was beneath me (unless I'd already read it, then Oprah was a wanna-be) and I scoffed at the idea of chick lit. Well, then I became a mom. The piles of unread, untouched books got larger on my nightstand the longer the kids existed. I now have a couple K2-sized stacks blocking my view of the alarm clock (I don't need it anyway) and my access to my face cream (my wrinkles cry themselves to sleep every night). Serious reading takes so long now with all the re-reading I have to do when I open up the book and realise that I can't remember what I read the night before. Why would anyone use more than three characters in a book? They just confuse me!

Anyway, all this to say that when my mother-in-law came down with a stack of Sophie Kinsella novels, I was wary and at the same time in need of some good brain-light reading. Verdict? I love these books! I ignored all my other books and read through every single one. They are like Harlequins for people with brain cells. The shopaholic series is a fun read and the main character is surprisingly interesting and intelligent. The other two novels (Can You Keep a Secret and The Undomestic Goddess) are even better and could also be directly translated to movies (I can already see the trailers). The women are all beautiful, the men that fall for them are all handsome, rich, talented, well-built, or all of the above, but Kinsella has taken the time to write them well and research her topics. Maggie has just given me another potential chick-lit find by Emily Giffin, I'll let you know how that goes.

jump up!

Hot

I'm melting. Today it was 46C with the humidity. It was like walking around in tepid water all freakin' day. I grabbed the munchkin and ran to the mall where the air conditioning was set to subarctic so that stores could sell Fall sweaters. I have never seen so many pregnant women walking around in my life! I sympathized with each and every one. We're expecting a huge thunderstorm any minute. If it knocks out the power, you'll find me running naked outside dodging the lightening.

9 months old

The girl has now spent as long on the outside as she did on the inside. So far, we are pleased with her and have no intention of sending her back :-)

We may have voided the warranty anyway; she took a tumble off of our bed this morning. Mommy is feeling very guilty for turning away for 2 seconds to grab a shirt :-(
She's now cruising and climbing and I just know I'm gonna need a leash and a bell once she starts walking, which should be tomorrow at the rate she's going - ack!

Question

How long can Italian soccer fans keep hanging those flags from their cars?
And now, some music:

So Ben's birthday party the weekend before last was great. Our guests piled into our kitchen because it rained so we couldn't do it in the park this year. Ben had a blast, everyone had cupcakes, and Ben was spoiled with gifts.

His actual birthday was not as nice. At 3am, he crawled into our bed and coughed until he threw up, then coughed more and was just burning up. The day was spent being listless and cranky and unable to settle or sleep. Finally, I went to the pharmacy and got some children's nyquil, which worked after a while. Poor thing! We had planned on visiting Angrignon Farm and having some wading pool time and then going out for chinese food at Ben's favorite restaurant.
The rest of the week was a blur of sick and semi-sick children. Naomi's still got it and last night she was either screaming her lungs out and coughing them up, or fitfully sleeping on me, we're both beat.
Yesterday we made it to Angrignon Farm and Ben had a wonderful time and Naomi had an amazing snooze in the stroller.
Click the photo to see the set.
Ben's really making progress with his speech. He's getting much better at using names, and has even referred to himself, which he's never done before. When he plays hide and go seek, he pretends not to see you and looks around saying "where's Daddy?", its very cute!

Naomi started crawling with gusto and couple of weeks ago and chasing her brother, father, mother, cats, and brooms (we can't figure that one out either). Not only that, but that very week, she also started pulling herself up to standing using the furniture, toys, and people's legs. Ben is often the target of much of the chasing and pulling up because he is his sister's favorite person in the house (unless my boobs count as people). He has been pants a few times and now tends to avoid her which makes her very unhappy. We figure that she'll be cruising by the end of the week. This has all happened so fast that I haven't had time to video it properly. If I don't do it soon, I'm going to miss all the wobbles. Ben didn't cruise until he was almost a year old and didn't walk until he was about 13 months or so, so this is a big change for us. We had to break out the playpen and put it in the kitchen for containment purposes.

She's into everything and gets so mad when you restrict her movements. I don't know where she gets that from :-)

Happy Birthday Ben

I can't believe it's been three years since you came out of me all red and screamy. You've had a very interesting year. Since your diagnoses in January, so much has changed. You started daycare, which we hadn't planned on, but it's worked out very nicely so far. You like all your classmates and your teacher Linda. It seems like the more people you know, the more people love you. You've started speaking and telling us what you want and don't want. We finally heard you say "Daddy" and "Momma" and our hearts just swelled to bursting and for weeks every time you said "Momma" I'd blink back tears I was so proud. Now you are starting to speak in two word sentences, and also say "where are you going?" and "what's up?" and it's so funny. You come into a room and say, "hi Momma, what are you doing?", and I know that you don't really know quite what you're saying, but it's too cute to hear your voice. When we were driving out in the country, you were looking out the window and looking for cows and saying "cows, where are you cows?" and your daddy and I were killing ourselves laughing. You are also the best big brother in the world. You are so gentle with your sister and loving, she's very lucky to have you.

We have a long road ahead of us, but we are making so much progress. You are the most adorable, beautiful boy that I know and I love you more than the world.
Love, your Momma

Our silent white god, oh we love you!

Our silent white god, oh we love you!
Originally uploaded by dina the m and o.