mostly pictures of the kids, maybe some links, and probably some music.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Holy Crap do I ever love this couple!




So true, breath catching
heart overflowing with love
they make life better.

We Are Sick!


Man, are we sick.

Sick sick sick.

I have had some sort of a flu. Aches and Pains, Fevers and Chills, Nausea, Diarrhea. No fun at all. I am still not all better 12 days in. I went days without solid food, and even had trouble keeping liquid inside. Not down, just inside. I thought I was getting better, but last night I started to get plugged up sinuses, and a painful nasty chest cough. I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Not only have I been sick, but everybody else at home has as well.

The dog had bloody Diarrhea all over the carpet several times. She is better now. The Teenager stayed home a day last week, and then yesterday puked into a garbage can on the subway while going to school. The Wife seems to have the sort of cold/flu thing I had, not all the symptoms are the same, but it is close and is progressing in the same way (she is at the “the toilet is my best friend” stage right now.) The baby is running a fever and is all snotty, we thought it might be what we have, but the doctor says it is the ear infection come back to haunt us. Yeah, life is sweet at our place.

Last week was the first time the baby has been sent home from daycare. They called N and said “come and get her, fever of 101”. Unlucky baby, but lucky N. Makes you feel like such a super parent, dropping everything and rushing off to save your kid. She has been home since Friday, if she can go without aspirin tonight she can try going back tomorrow.

The baby is a total walker. Last week there was still some crawling, but no more. Oh sure she still has the Frankenstein style lurching going on, and hasn’t figured out how to move her centre of gravity down to her hips, but she walks. She really walks. She has even been working on the sideways and the backward walking.

The baby is really working on talking too. Not so much with recognizable words, (though got some very clear “there you go” action this morning) but her babble is becoming much closer to speech. She has been using punctuation for a while now, but lately the babble itself is mimicking what we have just said to her. She is convinced she is making perfect sense and “talks” to us all day long.

I have officially taken a new job. I will be working at Grip Ltd., which is an agency right down town in Toronto here. It will mean commuting again, which is a drag, but I am having to commute right now to take the baby to Daycare, and Grip is about a 15 minute walk from the daycare, so that is ok. I will be working with some comrades I have worked with before (Shout-outs to Nadia, David, Sharon, James, Jim etc.), and a whack of new people. I am excited and nervous and all a tizzy.

I am just hoping that I am all-better by Monday so that my first day is my best day.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Sorry Sorry



Sorry Sorry

It has been a long time since I wrote anything on here and needless to say loads has changed

J is well set into daycare. She seems to look forward to going in the morning, and there are several workers that she is smitten with. Sure, some mornings when I leave her she gets a little weepy, but on the majority of the mornings she is all like “see you later” and I am all like “boo hoo hoo – my baby is growing up so fast”.

J is a total walker. She has been working on it for the last 2 weeks or so, but by yesterday she was walking at least 90% of the time, and any crawling was usually just to get somewhere she could pull herself up. Yesterday she and her mother (who is the daily picker upper to my dropper offer) walked down the block, hand in hand, and I am all like “boo hoo hoo – my baby is growing up so fast”.

J has regained most of her appetite (she was sick for a couple of weeks), but has mysteriously gone off fruit. It used to be she was a fruit-a-holic, now she pretty much only eats grapes. I think she eats differently at daycare, but in the morning it is just the grapes from the fruit salad, and some of the cottage cheese. She will eat her morning hot cereal (and shreddies), but she insists on wearing at least half of it, and most of that in her hair.

J is adding new words. Hat and Shoe are the standouts for the last few days. For a while I kept thinking she was saying Hot and not Hat, but I clued in when she kept pointing to my head. Speaking of Hot, she received a lesson in it’s meaning the other morning. Despite my telling her no a number of times she insisted on sticking her finger into the steam vent on the humidifier. Many many tears followed, but she has avoided it since.

J has a new tooth bringing the number to 8, and is totally working on the next one right now. I am really glad I don’t have to nurse a teething baby. Sure I envy the closeness of nursing – but I like my nipples on my body

N and I both had haircuts. Mine really needed it. In fact my hair was so damaged that Anna Maria (former neighbour and stylist) had to cut off more than half. I am not sure I like the look on me, but my hair looks better. Boy oh boy did I have a lot of grey hair in the pile on the floor.

The teenager has just completed her first exams of 2007. Helped her with studying. Even for math, although that was like me reading something phonetically – I had simply no idea what I was saying.

I am back at work. The first week was quite the shock. I found it so tiring, and confusing, and I missed my time with J. Now as I approach the end of week 2 I am right back into the groove, sadly it is like I never left. Even though I have just been away for 4 months, and even though I love the convenience of having work so close to home I have decided to leave my current employer and try something new. I have resigned, and February 2nd is my last day. I don’t have a new job yet, but I have a couple of promising leads and shouldn’t find it too difficult to land employment. If I need to I will go freelance. Maybe one day I will get up the nerve to leave the ad industry and try something totally different, but for now I will stick with what I know.

I am not going to make any promises about being more regular with my postings, at least not until my work situation is settled, but I am still enjoying myself here, and don't plan to quit.

My Daughter the Drug Addict



My god, but the baby loves meds. Whether it is ibuprofen for teething, or the horehound and licorice tea for her cough, or the antibiotics for her recent ear infection, the girl will gulp it down. I remember hating the taste of meds (although I guess I didn’t hate the taste of the entire bottle of pills I gulped down – I still remember having my stomach pumped, well actually I remember one of the nurses arms, and being totally afraid); maybe they have changed the formulas.

Sit










J loves to sit down. Most of the time she is happy to sit just about anywhere she can lean back on something, a wall, a dog, a parent, but if she sees a stool, or box or any low sort of sitty thing she cannot resist. She walks up to it, turns her back, gets into position, and drops her ass into place. Once she is sitting she will either kick her feet, or if that won’t work, cross one leg over the other. It is pretty cute, but it can be a pain if you are trying to get her to do something else.

Holiday Snaps

We had a lovely time over the holiday weeks at the end of December, we got to visit with family and friends and have many of them visit us.


In Bracebridge with my parents.



Along the banks for the Humber river, with N's mom, step-father and nephew



With my brother's girls (Taryn on left and Mikaylah) at my Aunt's house near Bradford



With N's two nephews, Ben on left in town from Vancouver, and Daniel down from The Yukon