One of my favorite all-time Christmas albums is A Charlie Brown Christmas. I love Vince Guaraldi's jazzy sound, and I also love the animated special. We have a copy and watch it during the holidays, and of course Ben is now hooked too. I came across a piece on NPR that talks about how Guaraldi's music almost didn't make it and how CBS thought that the themes of materialism and faith weren't appropriate for children. Can you imagine a Christmas without A Charlie Brown Christmas? How would you describe a Charlie Brown Christmas tree? Good thing CBS caved. The album was released 41 years ago, and has never gone out of print since. If you don't have it, it's a great addition to your Christmas collection.
I was walking through a forest of Christmas trees at a lot yesterday (already!) and the scent was out of this world. Nothing puts you in the mood for Christmas like that smell.

Like Bart Simpson, but with an accent

A tech support guy actually said "aye caramba!" to me today. I think we outsource to Costa Rica now.

The holidays are coming whether you're ready or not. Generally speaking, I am not. I forget about a hundred things that I wanted to do for Christmas etc. that seemed perfectly reasonable in July. I have baking projects, and projects for the kids to make things for people, and shopping, and cards, well, you know what I'm talking about. I came across this site last night for getting organized for the holidays. Although I will not take advantage of many of these templates (a cleaning checklist? are you out of your minds?), there are certainly some here that may put the ho back in holiday. I know there's no such thing as a liday, gimme a break, it's Monday.

The great leveler

Adventures in driving to work:
Older, distinguished gentleman in a suit driving in your Audi with your impressive phone ear piece: I watched you pick your nose in my rear-view mirror for a good 15 minutes while stuck in traffic. What did you have in there that was so fascinating? Did it put up a fight? After the first 5 minutes, it went past disgusting and right into plain funny. I even turned around to watch you for a while, but you were to preoccupied in the dig. Thank you for the laughter, but I wouldn't want to be the people you shake hands with all day. Buy a hankie or a box of kleenex, please.
Why do people think that when they get into cars they are invisible? That's two-way glass people!

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.