Musings from Baby Jail

Good Things

2009-06-07T06:29:00.003-06:00

Have I mentioned to you how lucky I am? Probably not, seeing as the last time I posted here was over a month ago. Is anyone still out there?

Anyways, I am lucky because I have people. Wonderful, fantastic people. People who make me cry a little if I think too long about how wonderful they are. Because of these people we were able too, in the last month:

1. Survive
2. Pay our bills
3. Pay our outstanding property tax bill
4. Buy groceries
5. Buy Mary a new bike
6. Breathe easy and smile every once in a while.

When I went to Edmonton I knew something was in the works. I knew that the wonderful people that we left behind had planned to give us something. The magnitude of what they did for us still leaves me speechless, even today. To know that we have friends like that, people that we see maybe once a year who care that deeply for us...well, it really means more than anything. They were there for us, they helped us, and they made it easy to accept their help (which is a big thing for prideful mooks like us).

So, if you are one of those people, thank you. If you know one of these people, thank them for me.

More has gone on in the last month that I need to tell you, but for now, I've gotta get dressed for work.

2009 Thus Far

2009-04-10T10:38:00.002-06:00

Has been the pits. Absolutely the pits. Between Miss Frances being ill for months on end, the crappy weather, and the loss of Tybalt and Rupert, I really didn't think it could get much worse. It did though, oh boy did it ever.

Two weeks ago Ian came home from work late. I was angry with him because I had expected him at supper, and when I tried to call he wasn't answering his cell. When he finally walked in the door I was geared up for a fight, but the moment I looked at him, I knew something was Very Wrong. He had lost his job that day. I'm not going into specifics because we have taken this to the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board, but I will say that things about his termination were extremely fishy, and the situation was not at all well handled by his employer. Because of what they did and how they treated it, Ian is unlikely to qualify for any sort of Employment Insurance or assistance getting training. We have been working to find him a job for the last two weeks, sending out his resume to different places every day, and after two weeks he has not received one phone call back. Not one. In short, we are fucked. Seriously, and utterly fucked. We aren't going to be able to pay the mortgage, bills or buy groceries very soon. I started a new job this past week working for an answering service. It's good, I am really enjoying working, but ten dollars an hour for 20 or so hours a week is not going to even begin to solve our problems. I mean, I know that it's better than nothing, but it's not going to pay or mortgage, let alone buy food and pay the bills.

So, things around here are definitely Not Great. It's hard to look on the bright side of things, to find the Grace in Small Things, when all I can do is worry about what on earth is going to happen to us, and wonder how we will make it through this. I keep thinking how this move to Saskatchewan, the move that was supposed to make everything easier, has failed utterly in that regard. We're at the point where Ian is considering going back to Ironworking. Going back to being out of town for months at a time. I had a hard time dealing with that when I was in Edmonton, with the city and a bus load of friends to keep me sane. I don't know if I can do it in Milestone, where my closest friend lives an hour away in Lumsden and I have virtually no other support system in place.

Anyways. 2009 has been the pits. The day after Ian lost his job in a most fishy and unacceptable manner, I found out that my mother is having some health issues. Some potentially Very Serious health issues. The type of issues that normally would make me cry a whole lot, and need to throw up some. There's nothing concrete yet, we are still waiting for some tests to be done. I am clinging to that thought, even though I know enough to understand that this is not likely to be something benign and happy. We are preparing for a diagnosis that begins with the letter "C", and I'm not sure I can deal with that. The thing is, my Mother has been a smoker since she was 14 years old. The thing is that where the lumps have been found, well, that means Bad Things. If those lumps are C___ it means that the C___ is everywhere. If that's what it is. I keep telling myself that. We don't actually know that it's C___ yet. Except I'm pretty sure I do know that's exactly what it is. Here's where I'm going to sound a little hysterical, a little like a crazy person, but this is my blog, and it's okay. See, when I was a kid, my Dad had C___. They tried to hide it from me, because that's what parents do, I guess. They didn't want to ruin my summer. They held off on my dad going to the hospital till I was away at camp. They wanted me to have fun. The thing is that I already knew that my Dad had cancer. I had a miserable time at camp, and I was incredibly angry with them for not telling me. Fast forward many many years. Five years ago, Ian's dad got sick. No one really knew what was going on, even the doctors. I knew. I knew the moment Ian's Mum first called to tell us that his Dad wasn't doing well. From that moment, I started telling Ian to prepare himself for the worst. I started telling Ian that we needed to save our money so he could go to Halifax. I knew 4 months before the doctors figured it out. And now. I know too. I just know. I really wish I didn't, but I do.

I've been trying to be optimistic, but it's hard. It's so incredibly hard. I'm not an optimist by nature, I never have been. I've always looked at the world through the opposite of rose coloured glasses. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. I don't know how much longer I can keep being supportive of Ian. I don't know how much longer I can force myself to stay happy and calm in front of the girls. I don't know how much longer I can force the C-word out of my mind every time it creeps in unbidden. I don't know what we are going to do, and I don't know how we are going to do it, and I'm terrified.

GiST #5

2009-03-21T11:48:00.002-06:00

This whole finding things to be thankful for is harder than it looks, especially these last few months. I feel very much like I'm stuck in some hell dimension, where everyone around me is sick and needy, and they are sucking the life right out of me. Frances, Ian, and now Mary...it's just never ending. In better news, Frances has been referred to a pediatric allergist in Saskatoon for her constant sicks. I just spoke to the receptionist and we have an appointment booked for April 15th. Also, I finally made an appointment with the family doctor for the terrible gastrointestinal issues which have been plaguing me for months, but I've not had time to worry about because I've been so busy caring for others.

I'm not even going to go into the terrible money problems we are having right now, other than to say that I don't know how people do it, and I don't know what we are going to do or how we are going to carry on this way. I could get a job, but because I have no education beyond high school, the best I can hope for is a low paying retail job. As I learned in the fall, I'm unlikely to find something that will make it worth my while after paying for daycare and gasoline to get too and from work. If I'm going to work, which is something I don't want to do in the first place, it's going to have to be worth it. I'll need to bring in at least as much as we get in our child tax benefit (which I'll lose when I start working) after paying for daycare and gas. Huh. I guess I did go into it a little bit after all.

Last night I went to my first punk rock concert! It was quite an enjoyable experience, though I have absolutely no voice this morning.

On to my Grace in Small Things:

1. The fact that we have a medical system in this country where I can take my sick children to the doctor without worrying about going bankrupt.

2. The fact that anyone in this country can do the above.

3. Scottish Punk Rockers with pierced nipples, tattoo's, bagpipes and kilts.

4. The snowman named Walter melting away in my front yard, and my husband and daughters pride at successfully making their first ever snowman.

5. The thick ice fog that just appears in the evenings, blanketing everything with white, muffling sounds, and leaving a beautiful thick frost on the trees in the morning.

GiST #4

2009-03-03T12:10:00.002-07:00

I had a bizarre dream last night about my family and a friend of mine. It was strange, because usually in my dreams I either don't have children and a husband, or if I do have them, they're far away in the dream. I very rarely dream in the detail that I had last night either unless I'm pregnant (I'm not). Anyways, I emailed the dream first thing in the morning to my friend, and he had an interesting idea about the dream which I hadn't thought of, but in hindsight makes a pile of sense.

At the rink yesterday, a child came up to me, she was about 10 years old. She asked me why my hair was so pink, and I told her it was because I don't eat my veggies. Her brow furrowed as her Mum laughed behind her, and finally, she looked at me and said with great intensity "But....what does that mean??"

I made banana chocolate chip pancakes for lunch today. Yum.

On to my Grace in Small Things:

1) Overripe bananas.
2) Crock Pots.
3) Strong winds bringing warm weather.
4) An insightful friend.
5) A cup of hot tea waiting for me in the morning.

GiSt #3

2009-02-27T09:29:00.003-07:00

Since dying my hair pink, I have been a much happier person. How strange is that? The kids at preschool were all extremely impressed with my hair.

On to my list.

1) Pink.
2) Garlic.
3) Morning snuggles from Mary.
4) Frances belly laughing.
5) Sundogs (not because of what they mean, but because of how pretty they are).

Pinkedness

2009-02-25T16:40:00.003-07:00

I spent the night at Cenobyte's place, and when I woke up this morning I had a terrible headache and pink hair. See?

Really the pictures don't do the level of pink justice. The light in here is pretty awful. You'll have to take my word when I say that against the white white snow, in the sun....my hair is almost blindingly pink. It's so pink, it glows.

I stopped at McDonalds for cheeseburgers to bring home to Ian and Mary as a peace offering for disappearing for a full day. The girl at the drive thru who took my order looked at me, and her eyes got wider and wider. Finally she said "That....that's some pink hair, you've got there. Didja loose a bet?" I said "Yes. Yes it is, and no, I just like pink." The girl nodded seriously and quietly, and finally, as she was handing me my change said "Well...you have a...really...you just have a nice day." I'm absolutely positive that if she had been able, she would have backed slowly away from me.

Mary, however, approves of the pink hair. She keeps looking at me with this amazed, admiring expression on her face. When I ask her what she's looking at she sighs and says "Mama. Your hair is pink. SO pink." I have a little dye left, and I may give her a couple of pink streaks of her own tonight.

GiST #2

2009-02-23T09:24:00.002-07:00

Look at me go! Two days in a row, right?

1. Paranoid Android
2. Tragically Hip
3. The silence that comes after the children go to bed.
4. The busy noise that fills the house before the children go to bed.
5. Being introduced to new music by a friend in the wee hours of the morning.

Visit Grace in Small Things

GiST #1

2009-02-22T17:44:00.003-07:00

Because I am a follower, and because I've been getting overwhelmed by the negative lately, I've decided to try this whole Grace in Small Things. The basic idea as I understand it is to post 5 small things for which I am grateful every day for a year. Now, I'm not sure I'll be able to do this every day, but I'm certainly going to do my best to do it every week at the very least.

Here we go.

1) The sound of my cats purring.
2) A cold nose in the morning, when the rest of my body is cozy and warm under the covers.
3) The smell of onions frying.
4) Miss Vickies potato chips.
5) Guy Gavriel Kay.

Nihilist Mary

2009-02-17T20:31:00.002-07:00

Tonight, while I was washing the dishes, Mary sang a song for me, and I've written it down to share it with you.

Nothing
(Sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)

Twinkle twinkle little nothing,
How I wonder why you are
Up above the world so high
Like a nothing in the sky.
(At this point the singer should wander away, mumbling nonsense)

I think that it's really quite deep.

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. I'll get better, I promise.

February hasn't been great. I lost two cats at the beginning of the month, and I've been drinking far too much.

On the plus side, I spent the last couple of days in Lumsden enjoying the company of wonderful people and drinking too much. Also, I now have a ring made out of a spoon.

February

2009-02-02T12:24:00.002-07:00

I missed a whole month!

It's February. If something bad is going to happen to my family, it will be in February. Life, or whatever, takes the time in February to kick us in the teeth. Every February. This February is no different. My house reeks of spoiled meat. Several hundred dollars worth of spoiled meat. A deep freeze full of spoiled meat.

This is only the first day. What other treasures are in store for us?

I think I might skip February all together this year.

Four

2008-12-31T08:25:00.004-07:00

She's four years old today. My table is covered in Princess gift bags, Princess wrapping paper, Princess clothes, Princess shoes, Princess movies. She keeps saying "It's wonderful, Mummy! Just wonderful! It's gorgeous!"

What happened to the baby, or the toddler? Where have the last four years gone?

Also, I just finished making a Black Forest Cake for Mary's birthday, and it looks not half bad.

When did we get from this:

To this?

Not So Merry

2008-12-24T11:21:00.003-07:00

I just spent the morning in the city. Frances is still sick. Sicker, really. She's had a fever hovering just below 40 degrees celsius (104 Fahrenheit) since yesterday afternoon. She's not eating, she's lethargic and very obviously in pain somewhere. We took her to the doctor, got her checked out, went for bloodwork, got some new antibiotics and are now home. The Dr. said that if her temperature stays as high as it is, that tonight we should take her to the hospital. Being a natural worrier, I tend to jump to WORST CASE SCENARIO MADE FOR TV!!! conclusions when things go poorly, especially with my children. The fact that Frances also has several scary and oddly unexplainable bruises is wigging me out just a little bit. I am trying not to freak out. I'm trying to stay calm and rational, and on the outside, I'm succeeding pretty well I think. Inside though, I am a quivering mass of worry and panic.

Anyways, Merry Christmas to you all. May your holidays be better than mine.

Sick

2008-12-15T17:23:00.002-07:00

It's been a while, eh?

The last month has disappeared in a haze of germs and coughing. Frances, Mary and I have all been sick pretty for pretty much the whole month. Fun fun. Today we took the girls for a recheck, the Dr. took one listen to Frannies chest and sent her off for x-rays. Turns out Miss Fran has pneumonia. I feel like a stellar parent.

Anyways, other than being sick, and trying not to freeze (-46?? WTF??), we haven't been doing much. Preschool, dance and skating are taking up Mary's time when we are able to leave the house. Frances' vocabulary is developing in leaps and bounds. She is getting very good at making her desires known. She also knows some sign language, which she uses frequently.

Ian's Christmas party for work was last month, before the long stretch of sick. We had a wonderful childless weekend of party, shopping, fancy dinner and concert going. It was a wonderful refresher, and it served to remind me why I married Ian in the first place. I wish we could go out on child free dates more often that twice a year.

So, that's really all that's been happening. The next couple of weeks will be filled with Christmas preparations and baking, administering medication and fighting over toys.

If I don't update this again before the time comes, Merry Christmas to you all, and have a wonderful New Year!

Politics and Love

2008-11-15T21:38:00.003-07:00

So, when it comes to Canadian politics, most of the players are...well...boring and old. It's no surprise to me that most Canadians paid more attention to the American elections than to our own. There's not a lot of charisma in Ottawa. Anyways, one politician that I have always loved is Justin Trudeau, the son of Pierre Trudeau - the closest thing Canada has ever had to a political Rock Star. I don't know much about Justin, save that he is super cute, extremely charismatic, and he lives in Quebec. Also, if my dreams lately have any truth to them, he is amazing in the sack. For the last week I have been fornicating in my sleep with Justin in all sorts of exciting ways that I won't go in too here. He has my vote.

(Better Justin Trudeau than Brad Wall, eh?)

My Favourite Quiz Result Thus Far.

2008-11-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Your result for Reincarnation Placement Exam...

The Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan

34% Civilization, 74% Humanity, 44% Urbanization, 51% Danger, 70% Exoticness, 32% Chaos, 78% Hedonism.

You were a little difficult to place. You want a world that's exotic, but still very civilized and under control. And your answers indicate you don't give a fig for technology, education, urbanization and all the benefits thereof -- but you still have a great fondness for the human beings who tend to pursue these things.

Well, we have something for you that should be something of a treat. You won't get out much. But we don't think you'll mind.

In the Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan, you are born and bred to serve pleasure all your days. Physically beautiful and mentally geared toward pure pleasure, you will spend your allotted days subjected to all manner of hedonistic play and sensual experimentation. You need never suffer a moment of pain, nor of sobriety. Cuddle up, honey, relax and enjoy yourself.

You kinky pervert.

Take Reincarnation Placement Exam at HelloQuizzy

Halloween

2008-11-07T09:21:00.003-07:00

Hello there,

Things have been trucking along as usual here since my last post. Mary is getting busier and busier. She now has Preschool two mornings a week, Dancing one evening, and skating two afternoons a week. We had our first skating class this past Wednesday, and Mary seems to remember everything from last year. She is well on her way to being a better skater than I am. Her language is also developing apace now that her hearing is pretty much perfect. She's so smart, and she loves to learn. We have a picture book of animals that we got her last year for Christmas, and it is her bedtime favourite lately. Every night we sit with her, and she tells us every animal in the book. "That's a Bamboon! That's a 'Rangtang. That's a Bottle-Nose-Dolphin. That's a Red-Eyed Tree Frog. Look! A Wombat!" God it's cute.

Frances is also growing and turning into a neat little person. She's still annoying from time to time, but man she's adorable. She loves people now, and has whole conversations in her own special language. When Mary was this age the noises she made very guttural (now we know she couldn't hear, so it makes sense), so I used to joke about her speaking Klingon. Frances uses long, intricate sounds, her tone rises up and down like she's actually conversing. I believe she's speaking Elven. Frances is also at the age where one discovers the joy of the temper tantrum, and man, can she throw a tantrum to make my ears bleed. She flings herself to the ground, screams, and not content with just that, she also pounds her head on the floor in rage. It's really quite appalling.

Anyways, here are some halloween pictures for your enjoyment.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-10-13T11:56:00.003-06:00

Words are unnecessary.

Beautiful Princesses

2008-10-09T15:16:00.003-06:00

Once again it looks as though I've neglected my blog. For a whole month this time! Jeez.

Things here have been interesting. I spent a week away from home, all by myself, and it really was quite fantastic. I flew to Abbotsford (Vancouver), picked up a rented car, and the next day drove my mother and her cats to their new home in Edmonton. Things went mostly smoothly with only one or two little bumps. The drive was wonderful, it was a perfect day to go through the mountains. My mothers new appartment is really quite fabulous, and in a perfect area for her. A walk away from downtown, a walk away from the grocery store, and less than a block away from major bus routes. I'm awfully happy for her, and I can't wait to visit again. I also got to do some visiting in Edmonton which was nice. I spent a few days in Edmonton, and then I hitched a ride to Saskatoon with Rico and his roommate. There was a Firefly game in S'toon, which was fantastic and most of the Edmonton crowd was there. I also ran into and caught up with an old friend who I haven't seen in about 15 years.

Mary started preschool while I was away, and she seems to be really enjoying it. She goes every tuesday and thursday morning for two hours. It's nice to get a break from her and spend some time alone with Frances, and it seems to be doing wonders for Mary. She also started dance class this week, every tuesday evening at 5:30. Once skating starts on mondays and wednesdays she is going to be a very busy little girl. She can't remember anyones name though, so she's told me that her dance instructor, her preschool teacher and three kids in her class are all named Sarah. I got suspicious pretty quick - there can't be that many people named Sarah in a town of 500...

Frances started walking while I was away, and now she is rarely not on her feet. Ian calls it a "zombie lurch" more than a walk, but she's working on it and she gets smoother every day. She still isn't sleeping through the night.

Mary is still crazy about Princesses. I really have no idea how I managed to raise such a girly little thing, but rather than resist I've decided to run with it. For the last few weeks Mary has been asking me to paint her fingers - I assumed she meant her fingernails. So, today I did it, I painted my 3 year olds fingernails. She was very careful and didn't move her hands at all while the polish dried, and she is so darned proud of her "beautiful princess fingers" that she can hardly contain herself. I couldn't get a very good picture of her hands, but here are a couple of the best -

She's still walking around with her fingers spread like that right now, about 90 minutes later.

Employment

2008-09-13T22:38:00.004-06:00

Wow, it's been a while, eh? Hopefully someone still reads this and I'm not just talking to myself.

Things have been good, I guess. Finances are still tough, but I have a job interview for a position which I will likely be the most qualified by a mile. It's working at a veterinary supply store in Regina, and it's really kind of perfect, as long as it pays well enough to justify the gas and daycare costs. It's a monday to friday gig, 9 - 5:30, which, like I said, is pretty much perfect. I'm nervous about the interview, I'm nervous about working again (it's been an awfully long time), but the more I think about it, the more excited I get. It'll be nice to get out of the house, to be able to afford new clothing, Christmas gifts, maybe even an evening class (I'm thinking bellydancing or Tribal).

I've been meeting more people - in the city of course. I have pretty much written off Milestone as a lost cause. I'm kinda sick of being ignored, and watching my daughter be ignored too. I won't go into specifics now, because you've heard it all before, but living in a small town blows hairy goats.

My mother is officially moving to Edmonton, she has a job and an apartment. I'm flying out to BC on October 1st so I can drive her and the cats to their new home. I'm pretty excited about having her so much closer to us, it will be so much easier for us to visit with her on this side of the mountains. I'm also giddy excited about getting to see my E-Town friends after getting Mum moved in. I am trying very hard not to be bitter about the fact that if she had gotten her shit together and moved back eighteen months ago, we would not have left Edmonton. I am a little concerned that my time helping Mum move will make it harder for me to get a job, but the plane ticket has been bought, and I'm not going to leave my mother in the lurch...so...

We are expecting frost tonight, so here is a picture from our summer vacation in the Okanagan, one with me in it, and one that I don't hate too terribly much. I'm not fond of the hot hot heat of summertime, but there are certainly some lovely memories made when the sun is shining brightly.

Pessimism

2008-08-26T10:29:00.002-06:00

Those of you who know me well may have figured out that I am an eternal pessimist. I try not to be, but I often get wrapped up in my vision of the worst, and can't imagine anything but that vision happening. That's where I am right now.

I have to get a job. A full time job, probably in the city. Being a one income family is not working anymore, and we are more than broke. Our bills and groceries in a month add up to more than we bring in. It sucks. So, I'm going to get a job. We talked about me getting a job here in town, most likely at the gas station. I have decided though, that if I am going to get a job, I want it to be a decent one. So, I am looking at clerical type positions in the city. I type quickly and well, and I have lots of customer service experience, so I should be able to find something in time. The problem is, I really, REALLY don't want to work. It's not that I'm lazy, it's that the thought of someone else raising my daughters makes me physically ill. The things I will miss out on, the fact that I'll only be with them two days a week while someone else gets to be with them the rest of the time, the fact that I won't be around for Mary's first day of school, for the day that Frannie decides to actually walk on her feet, I'll miss all the funny conversations, the fights, the fun. It really upsets me. I couldn't sleep last night, this morning I keep crying...I'm a mess, and so far I've only applied for three jobs. I hate it, I don't want it, and I don't have a choice. Blargh.

Also, we ate meat that has since been recalled. I'm not thrilled about that either. I am a bit of a hypochondriac (though not as much as I used to be), and when Mary had some gastrointestinal upset this morning the first thing that went through my brain was "OMG! It's listeriosis! We're all going to DIE!" I quickly calmed myself, but I'm still a little worried. I suspect her tummy problems had more to do with McDonalds for lunch yesterday and the stinking heat, but I'm still watching her like a hawk. Symptoms of Listeria poisoning can show up anywhere from 2 to 90 days, so I have a lot of time to worry. Of course, when I'm working, I guess the babysitter'll have to watch out for that, eh?

Arranged Marriages

2008-08-20T10:45:00.002-06:00

I have a friend in town who has two little boys. Her older guy, P, is a year older than Mary, and her younger is about 6 months younger than Frannie-Lou-Who. Mary and P have played together a few times and they seem to get along pretty well. P's Mother's name is not Charlie, but that's what we call her for some odd reason. I keep telling Mary, "Her name is R___," and Mary says "Yes! Charlie IS a Beautiful Princess Mama!" So, we call her Charlie. Anyways, Charlie shared a couple of conversations she had with P, and I would like to share them with you.

P's Musings on Relationships and Marriage.

P - Mom (Charlie is a Mom, unlike me, I am a Mum), so, when you were kids, Dad was your brother, right?
Charlie - Ah, no. No, Dad was never my brother.
P - Oh. So, dad was your brother?
Charlie - No. Let's not spread that rumour around town. Dad was NEVER my brother.
P - Oh, okay. So you and dad were friends when you were little?
Charlie - Yes, that's right. Daddy and I were friends when we were younger, before we got married.
P - So, you were Daddy's girlfriend when before you were married?
Charlie - Yup.
P - Oh! Just like Mary is my girlfriend, right?
Charlie - Uh. I guess so, yeah.
P - That's great! When Mary and I grow up we are going to get married, just like you and Dad!
Charlie - Really?
P - Yup!

P's Further Musings on Relationships, Age, and Why a Knowledge of Geography is Important when Considering Marriage.

P - Hey Mom, was Dad older than you when you were kids?
Charlie - Well, is Dad older than me now?
P - Yeah.
Charlie - Well, what do you think?
P - Mom, I don't know. Was he?
Charlie - Yes, Dad was older than me when we were little, just like he is now.
P - Huh. So, I'll always be a year older than Mary, right?
Charlie - Yes, you will always be older than Mary.
P - That's Great!
Charlie - Why is that great?
P - Because when Mary and I get older, we are going to get married! But only if she knows where Regina is.
Charlie - Why does she need to know where Regina is to marry you?
P - (Rolls eyes) Mom! Because Regina is where you go. When you want to get married you have to go to Regina.

So, there you have it. So long as Mary can find Regina, she's got a husband in waiting.

Things are going well this week in spite of the miserable heat. On Saturday evening the Prairie Players had a gathering at the farm of one of the members. It was a grand old time, though I'm thinking that I am far too old to consume as much coconut rum as I did that night. Poor Mary and Frances did not have a fully attentive mother on Sunday.

Potty training is going Very Well. We still have occasional accidents, but puddles are rarer and rarer these days, and Mary is more and more willing to go on the toilet. Yay! Our garbage in the last two weeks has been cut pretty much in half now that we are not using diapers for Mary, though she still wears a pull up at night. She is becoming even more fiercely independent now that she uses the potty, which is a blessing and a curse.

I have decided on a Project to keep me busy, but I'm not sure how it will work. I got a book full of recipe's for artisan sourdough breads, and I thought I might take a page from Goody's book and work my way through the book, baking one bread a week. My problem is that these breads require 5 different sourdough starters, and all sorts of fancy flours, not to mention some equipment that I don't have. I wouldn't have a problem with the starters if I had someone else who would like to take what I don't use and bake their own bread, but the closest sourdough baker I know is Goody, and Nebraska is a long way to ship fermenting flour, you know? Anyways, once I get a baking stone for my oven I will get more organized, I can't do much without one of those anyways.

Not much else is going on. I'm going to apply for a part time job at the local grocery store, if I can figure out how to write a resume when I haven't had a job in four years. If anyone out there can give me some advice, it'd sure be appreciated!

The Potty Balloon

2008-08-12T19:38:00.002-06:00

Well hello there! I was going to name this post "Panties!" but I figured that might draw an internet icky or two here to leer at pictures of my children. There are Websites!! Targeting YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!! OMFG!!!!! (That was for you, Goody).

Ahem. Anyhoo. Potty training is going...well, it's going, and that's a good thing, right? I have stuck to my guns and Mary wears panties during the day, except when we go shopping in the city. We have good days and we have bad days, but on average she gets to the potty about 50% of the time. Not so bad. As long as I remind her to sit, she will now use the potty, but if I'm not on her, we have messes. Today was a very good day, only 2 accidents. Yesterday was a very, VERY bad day. At about four in the afternoon, I walked into my terrifyingly silent hallway and found Frances sitting in the middle of a giant puddle of warm urine, splashing happily. All the books say not to get angry or yell, but GAWD is it hard sometimes.

Ian is working a lot these days, which is kind of crummy because Christ am I lonely, but is a good thing because...well, you know how lonely I am? We are more broke right now than I am lonely. Which is a lot. The mortgage payment this month is going to bounce, we owe the town $2500 in property taxes and $300 for water and sewage. Amazing, where is this money going to come from? I have been considering getting a job, but because I am a big, dumb, uneducated schmoo, any job I get will pay next to nothing, and not be worth it after subtracting daycare and gas to get me into the city. Besides which, if I get a job, hate it, and quit, we won't have the write off for taxes come spring, even if I only work one day. I may apply for a job at a book store though, I think I would like that. If I'm going to be torn away from my darling children (who I have not yet sold to the gypsies, tempting as the thought may be), I want to have a job that I don't hate, you know?

To be honest, I'm not THAT lonely, I guess. I mean, I'm miserable, and I wish we had never left Edmonton (biggest mistake I've made in a long time, that was), but things are getting better. The girls and I spent saturday afternoon at Cenobyte's place in Lumsden, and it was extremely pleasant. Mary and her littlest guy, E, got along like they have been buddies for years, and I had a nice time chatting with Ceno and her adorable husband. It's possible that this whole working two days a week thing might actually be good for me. I may meet people. Adult people. Adult people who will be my friends, possibly even people with whom I have something in common. That'd be nice, real nice.

Subconscious

2008-08-04T18:23:00.002-06:00

I had a bizarre dream last night. Well, maybe not too terribly bizarre if you take into consideration the amount of times I have watched Dr. Horrible's SIng Along Blog in the last week or so. Anyways, I dreamed that I was at a....thing... an award show perhaps. All I know is that it was televised, and there were lots of famous people. I had fantastic seats, but I was there on my own because Ian was at home watching the girls. At one point Nathan Fillion walked past, and no one but me knew who he was. I jumped up and yelled "that's Nathan Fillion!" and waved. He smiled and waved back to me, but no one else noticed. Then, Neil Patrick Harris walked past, looked up at me, and said "Hi there Jenn!" Then NPH walked over to Nathan and said "I need to talk to this fan." NPH came back to me and struck up a conversation like we had been best friends all our lives. Then things got odd, and I was making out with NPH. I remember I kept saying that Ian was watching on TV, but NPH told me that he would never notice. Then I told him that I thought he was gay, and he said that he had said he was gay as a cover, but really he wasn't. Then more stuff happened that I can't really remember, and I ended up marrying him and having his baby via invetrofertalization because he really was gay, and while he enjoyed kissing me he didn't want to have sex.

Odd, I know. Of course, NPH is the first famous boy I ever had naughty dreams about in my life. I adored Doogie Howser M.D. when I was in my early teens, and had a raging crush on NPH then. Dr. Horrible has just reminded me of how much I adore him, I guess.

Anyways, back to the real world. We took the girls to Buffalo Days, Regina's annual summer fair. It went far better than we expected for many reasons, one of the largest being the fact that we showed up Sunday morning when they don't charge admission. Yay! That was twenty dollars in our pockets. The girls were amazingly well behaved, Mary had a blast and was absolutely fearless on the rides, and us adults enjoyed ourselves too.

Ian has a lot of time off right now, the long weekend has worked out nicely with his summer schedule. We have thrown caution to the wind and put Mary into real panties now, no more diapers and pull ups. So far we have had no luck whatsoever, and lots of messes. She still refuses to use the toilet, and while I hate to sound like a broken record here, I'm at my wits end. Nothing at all has worked, we've tried every suggestion in the book. Now I guess all we can do is be consistent, keep at her and try my hardest not to loose my temper.

Other than that, not much is going on. Today I made hamburger buns, my first attempt at buns, and they turned out perfectly. Tomorrow we are cleaning house, and possibly going to the swimming pool. Next week I'm going to try to convince Ian that we should go to Craven and buy some farm fresh veggies.

Did you know?

2008-07-25T18:14:00.002-06:00

As of yesterday I have been married for four years. Huh. Crazy. I bought Ian Season one of Dexter (wow. What a show!), and he is buying me an exercise bike (I asked for it, so it's okay).

Ian's birthday is Monday, so for a joint anniversary/birthday par-tay we are going to see Batman tomorrow, followed by a steak and beer. Then I'm taking off on my own to go GAME!

Four years, a new province, two children and four cats. How time flies.

Summer

2008-07-23T13:53:00.004-06:00

Well hello there! It's been a while, eh?

Summer is going okay so far. We had a wonderful time in the Okanagan at the beginning of July. The trip there was very long. We drove to Calgary on day one, which really isn't a bad drive at all. It turned out to be about nine hours because we did need to stop a few times for the girls (who were remarkably well behaved). The driving is pretty easy, prairie pretty much the whole way. We did drive through the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains which is, believe it or not, right here in Saskatchewan. We spent the night at Ian's aunts place and headed out in the morning. It was a nice visit with Aunt Sue, she's got a lovely little home and was a wonderful host. We ended up staying much later in the morning than we intended, so we didn't get the early start we had hoped for. The second day of driving was...well...hot. By time we got to Banff it was well over 30 degrees out, and the drive through the mountains was brutal. It got up to about 43 degrees, and our air conditioner does not work; the only time we had cool air was when we could coast downhill. We didn't get to my uncle's place in Peachland until almost 7 that evening, but thankfully they had just started supper, so we got to eat.

The time in Peachland was wonderful, though we now realize that vacationing as an adult is not the same as it was when we were kids. Our time was all about the girls, we worked very hard (and often didn't have a lot of fun) to make sure the girls had a good time. We did get to my favourite winery on the Naramata Bench as well as a beautiful lavender farm in Naramata. I know for a fact that we will do our best to get out again next year, and every year after that. We hope to find a relatively cheap tent trailer to make the trip even more fun (fun. right. camping with small children.) and affordable.

My uncles place is really amazing, indescribable really. The main house is huge and goregeous, there are a couple of guest houses as well as a trailer and ample camping space down at the beach. The property is beautiful, there are golf carts to get up and down the incredibly steep hill to the beach/park area, and the swimming pool...well...it's the nicest pool I have ever swum in. It's an infinity pool, saline (so no nasty chlorene smell/sting), it has a beach entry for the little guys to play in, and a "grotto," which is a little waterfall with a spot you can sit behind it and look out over the edge and down to the lake. I wish I had a better camera, and a better brain. I hardly took any pictures.

The trip home was rather eventful. Half way through our week in Peachland we got a panicked phone message from Ian's Aunt Sue. Something had come up and we couldn't stay with her on the way back, she wouldn't be home. Um. We were at a loss. We couldn't afford a hotel in Calgary, and even if we could, it was Stampede, there was no way we would be able to find a room. We finally decided that we would drive home through Edmonton instead. That meant a 13 hour day of driving through the mountains. Surprisingly, the drive was better than the one out - the weather was much better, and the highway was less busy and nicer all around. We spent a day in Edmonton, visited Ian's family there, and headed home. Boy was it nice to get to our house. The cats and house survived, and we were all happy to sleep in our own beds.

Since we got back we have done very little. Relaxed, avoided the rain and thunderstorms, straightened up the house, tried to get on top of the awful weed problem in the yard. Frances has started to walk, which is pretty impressive, though she does still prefer to crawl. She's so proud of herself when she takes a couple of steps it's hard not to laugh. She stands there, beaming and bouncing up and down, her little chest all puffed out. She is also learning words - she can say Hi, Mumma, Daddy, uh-oh and up. She's still pretty horrid to be around from time to time, but she's finally developing a real personality.

Anyways, here are some pictures of our holiday. The last three were taken by either my fabulous cousin Sarah, or her equally fabulous husband, Captain Fun.

We've done the trip to Alberta a hundred times, but for some reason we decided it needed to be doccumented this time.

My family at a rest stop in Banff National Park

Miss Mary on the patio by the pool.

The beach.

Dad and Frances.

The whole gang on Canada Day.

View from the patio, over the pool and beyond.

Family Vacation

2008-06-27T19:58:00.003-06:00

We leave tomorrow for a trip to Peachland, in the Okanagan. My far too wealthy uncle has a beautiful summer home (compound) there and has the family out every year for Canada Day. We are going to stay for a full week, and I can't wait. We have a small kink in our plans mind you, and that is that Frances is currently suffering from a low grade case of the measles due to her vaccination last week. Yesterday she had liquid (and boy, do I mean liquid) poop, and a frighteningly high fever. The bum problems and the fever seem to have gone, but she is still extremely spotty. The nurses all say that as long as the fever is gone she should be fine, and she's not contagious. I must admit, I'm not thrilled about a 16 hour drive (in 2 days) with a sick baby and a toddler who is extremely possessive of her own window. Wish me luck, and pray for me.

Anyways, I'm off to visit with my good buddy, Ogopogo. See y'all in a couple of weeks!

Enneagram Test

2008-06-25T18:35:00.002-06:00

A bizarrely accurate enneagram test stolen from Miss Cori.

Your result for The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test...

4- the Individualist

you chose BY - your Enneagram type is FOUR (aka "The Romantic")

"I am unique"

Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.

Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.

Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.

Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.

Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being a FOUR

my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level

my ability to establish warm connections with people

admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life

my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor

being unique and being seen as unique by others

having aesthetic sensibilities

being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being a FOUR

experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair

feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved

feeling guilty when I disappoint people

feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me

expecting too much from myself and life

fearing being abandoned

obsessing over resentments

longing for what I don't have

FOURs as Children Often

have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games

are very sensitive

feel that they don't fit in

believe they are missing something that other people have

attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.

become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood

feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

FOURs as Parents

help their children become who they really are

support their children's creativity and originality

are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings

are sometimes overly critical or overly protective

are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy

Discover the 9 Types of People

Harper
SanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

You liked the test?

so S P R E A D I T ! tell everyone!!!
(use Quick-Paste below)

you wanna know MORE?

so check out, what Wikipedia says about your type...

...even more you'll find in Google

or do you prefer to

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose BY

Would you rather have chosen:

AY (EIGHT)

CY (SIX)

BX (NINE)

BZ (FIVE)

Take The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test at HelloQuizzy

Good News

2008-06-24T18:44:00.004-06:00

We just saw the Ear doctor for Mary for the last time in a while, yay! He has finally removed the giant, rock hard plug of ear wax that has likely been in Mary's ear since she was a wee thing and he is confident that she can now hear as well as you or I. This is very good news for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that I don't think I can handle pinning her down as she shrieks and sobs while the doctor pokes around in her ear anymore.

One week from this moment I will be keeping my date with Ogopogo. I'm giddy with excitement.

As promised, here are some pictures of my wee equestrian.

My Horse, Money

2008-06-20T21:41:00.003-06:00

Well, it's been a while. I've been lollyblogging yet again. It's not that I'm too busy, I just don't have much to talk about here anymore. I mean, there's only so many times I say the same thing without sounding like a broken record.

I'm Lonely
I'm Sad
I hate my life sometimes
I think we made a big mistake moving away from Edmonton
My children drive me crazy but are occasionally cute.

It's the pity parade, over and over and over again.

Anyways, things have actually been better the last little while. We had some wonderful visits with Star when she was in town, driving through to and from Winnipeg. I got to go to Edmonton for a very short visit, but I got a whole pile of visiting and socializing done. It was fantabulous to see all my friends, I sure miss them. I miss everyone so stinking much...but that's not what this post is about, right?

Anyways. The visit was wonderful. There was a Prairie Players meeting Wednesday night, which was aggravating in the extreme, but I was reminded that there are a few people in this town that I actually like. All I need to do is call them up and I will occasionally have people to chat with right here at home.

The weather is fantastic right now, warm and sunny. We bought the girls a sprinkler thingie to play in on the lawn. I took a bunch of pictures yesterday and they are incredibly cute. Unfortunately, Ian doesn't think that The Mart will print them for me because the girls are nekked in pretty much all of them.

Today I took the girls to a petting farm about 50 minutes north of here, in Lumsden. It was fabulous. Frances was mostly unimpressed, though she freaked out when the donkey sneezed. Apparently donkeys sneezing are incredibly frightening. Who knew? Mary loved every second of our time there. She kept telling me "Mummy, you love it here. I love it! I LOVE THE ANIMALS!!" She was very cute. Oh, and, Mary rode a horse for the first time in her life! It was very exciting as she is absolutely horse crazy these days, she even has an imaginary horse that she has named Money. She was an absolute natural. It was just a squat dwarven horse, but Mary had absolutely no fear. The gentleman who ran the place was as amazed as I was and he even asked if she had ever ridden a horse before this. He said that normally kids her age get frightened after a minute or two, but Mary stayed on the horse for about 5 minutes or so and could have kept going. Unfortunately my camera batteries died after only two pictures (which I will post here soon). Both Mary and Frances were amazingly well behaved all afternoon, and it was an all around Good Day. Yay!

The next week will be spent organizing the house. We leave for our vacation to the Okanagan in a week. I can't wait! Hopefully the weather will be nice.

Anyways, that's all for now, I guess. I shall leave you with a picture of Frannie enjoying the sun.

Negative Nellie No More

2008-06-03T19:09:00.003-06:00

So. I realize that I may have been a little negative the last several times I've posted here. Things really aren't that bad in spite of disgusting miserable babies and stupid small town assholes. Todays post will be about the good things that I have enjoyed over the last few weeks.

1. Return of my libido after a very, VERY long hiatus. Enough said there, I think.

2. Birds. The birds that have been attracted to my feeders are amazing and a delight to watch. The other day I had a whole flock of American Goldfinches, and they looked like giant yellow and black butterflies flitting from branch to branch in my trees. I've seen more different species in the last month than I have in my whole life, from a tiny Ruby Throated Hummingbird in my apple tree to a goofy looking Pileated Woodpecker. I also have an owl living in one of the big poplars in my back yard, at night I can sit on the deck and listen to him hoot - it's a wonderful relaxing way to end the day.

3. Frances is finally better, hopefully for good this time. Friday morning and early afternoon was awful and I spent much of my time in tears. She woke up from her afternoon nap and was 100% better. It was really quite bizarre.

4. I made new friends (I hope). I got out to Lumsden to see Alan, Jon and I was able to meet Cenobyte B, her adorable husband and her two gorgeous little boys. Mary got on famously with her three year old, and there was only one point during the several hours we spent in their back yard that we had to separate them for fear someone was going to clock the other. It was a fabulous afternoon, the girls had fun, I had fun, and I felt better afterwards than I have in a long time.

5. I'm going to be playing in a Kingdom Come game! Yay! I'm eagerly obsessing about the game and I can't wait to get the evil show started.

6. Mary is so cool. I know, it's kind of dorky to describe a three year old as cool, but she really is. She's sweet, loving, and gentle, and while she often drives me crazy not a day goes by that she doesn't make me smile. She adores Frances and loves to boss her around, and even when she's mad at her sister I can see her concentrating on not hurting her. Her imagination grows every day, and I am constantly amazed by the stories and games she comes up with. I really am blessed to have such a wonderful little person in my life.

7. Ian. He works so hard, and I know he does it so that I can stay home with the girls, and to provide for us. He drives me bonkers (Mary must get that from him), but he is almost always patient with my moods and I know he loves me. It's nice to feel secure like that.

8. Bread. I have found the best bread recipe yet. It makes two perfect loaves for sandwiches and toast, and home made bread is not only cheaper than the store bought stuff, it tastes better too. To top it off, this recipe is super easy to make, even if it's a little time consuming.

9. We are going to Edmonton for the weekend in less than two weeks. Yay! We aren't going to have a lot of time to visit, unfortunately. We're driving up on Friday, home on Sunday.

10. We are spending a week in the Okanogan at the end of the month. Double Yay! All my family will be there, including cousins I haven't seen in years and all their babies. I can't wait to see the gang and show off the girls.

There, life isn't so bad, is it?

On and On

2008-05-30T11:03:00.002-06:00

Frances is still sick. Still. It's now been three weeks since she first got ill, and there is no sign of it getting better any time soon. I spent my day yesterday trying to get advice from some sort of medical professional. I know exactly what the doctor will say if I bring her in - she's got a virus, nothing they can do, these are the signs of dehydration, if she shows any of them bring her back. I KNOW all this. What I want is for someone to tell me how long is it safe to give her gravol so she doesn't barf all over everything (which she does if she doesn't get gravol twice a day)? How long can I give her pedialyte? What can I do for the brutal diaper rash? How long can I expect this to continue? What the HELL? How long does this have to go on before we are concerned about more than just dehydration? WHAT THE HELL? How do I keep sane when my days are filled with diarrhea all over everything, miserable sobbing baby, more diarrhea, vomit, and more misery? HOW DO I STOP FROM LOOSING MY MIND??? Ahem. But no one will tell me anything other than take her to the doctor. I am unwilling to spend the obscene amount of money it now takes to put gas in the van to take Frances to a doctor who will just tell me what I already know. Why can no one help me? I spend my days vacillating between tears and rage, with a little despair thrown in just to make things fun.

Anyways. A friend is coming down from Saskatoon tomorrow, and I was supposed to meet him at another persons house who I don't know but would really like to know. Unfortunately I can't now. I am doomed to a friendless, diarrhea filled small town life. Loneliness, sick children and Ian will be my only companions. I feel sorry for myself, can you tell?

The Arts

2008-05-24T13:10:00.002-06:00

Ian had to get up early for work this morning, around 6:30 or so. Apparently Mary got up at the same time. Ian decided to be nice, he let me sleep and while he was getting ready he fed Mary and changed her bum. Then he left for work. Without letting me know that Mary was up and about. A couple of hours later Mary came into my room bearing a glass of water just for me (she can get to the water cooler and use it all by herself now. Yay. Isn't that super?). I told her I was getting up, but she patted my hand, tried to tuck me in and told me to sleep. At this point I got suspicious. I got even more suspicious when I spotted the green permanent marker all over her face and hands. Swallowing my dread, I got up and stumbled to the kitchen. The fridge was wide open, a chair in front of it. An apple was half eaten, as were several cookies. My hutch, my beautiful natural wood finish hutch was COVERED in green sharpie ink. I flipped. I yelled, and then I realized that I was very close to beating the small child cowering in front of me, so I picked her up and put her (locked her) in her room so I could calm down and do some damage control. There is nothing to be done for the wood, the ink won't come out. Ian thinks that he can sand it, but I'm not so sure. I've recovered from my anger, but I still see a little red when I look at the green ink. Mary spent an hour and a half in her room, I told her she could come out when she apologized to me, and it took her that long to decide she was sorrier than she was stubborn.

She also had a raging temper tantrum at lunch today. She refuses to eat anything she considers baby food, which is pretty much anything that Frances eats. Now that Frances has graduated to finger foods, Mary's list of acceptable foods (always small) is shrinking. Today I made noodles, but because Frances was eating them, Mary freaked and refused to eat "baby foods." Needless to say the screaming went on for over an hour, and Fran was happy (though somewhat bemused by the carry on) to eat all her noodles and some of Mary's.

I love being a parent. Really. I do.

From Away

2008-05-22T15:38:00.002-06:00

Can someone please tell me what exactly I need to do to have the people in this stupid town include me and my children? Please? I'm relatively sure they aren't doing these things intentionally, but man I'm getting pissed off.

It started with play school, do you remember that? I went to the meeting, told them about Mary, gave them my phone number and said that I would be bringing Mary the very next class. I showed up, and no one was there, I showed up the next class, no one was there. It turned out that the teacher was ill and they forgot to phone me. She was very sick and they weren't sure when she would be back, so I asked them to call me when she was so I could take Mary. Months later I ran into one of the ladies and she mentioned how they were all sorry I decided not to bring Mary to preschool. Excuse me? So I asked, surprised, if the teacher was well. Oh yeah, she had started back less than a week after I had spoken to the mother in charge of everything, and no one bothered to phone me. I was annoyed.

Two, maybe three weeks ago, I called the contact about soccer, I wanted to get Mary involved. The woman I spoke too said that they weren't sure that they would even be having soccer this year, they didn't have enough people willing to help out. I said I would be happy to help out if they needed me. The woman took my number and said that I should expect a call. I asked her to call me even if they didn't need my help and soccer was going to happen. She promised to pass my name and number along to the phone person, but if I didn't get a call that meant that soccer wouldn't be happening this spring. I didn't get a call so I assumed that they didn't have enough helpers and that it wasn't going to happen. Then, today, I go to the Co-op to pick up some milk and there is a sign that soccer is starting on the 21st (last night!). The sign wasn't up on Saturday when I was there last, and not a soul called me.

What the hell?? Is it because I am From Away? Most people have been friendly, if not terribly welcoming, but seriously. All I want is for my child to get involved in things around here, to be able to play soccer, go to play school, make some friends, I don't particularly care if they include me or not. That's a lie, I would like to have some friends, to be able to get out of the house without forcing myself on people, but that seems more and more unlikely as time passes. The play helped a bit, but I've not socialized with anyone from the play since it ended, aside from saying hello when we bump into each other in the street. I'm lonely, and Mary is lonely, and I don't know what to do to make it better.

I knew moving to a small town would be tough, but I had no idea that people would be this...well...unfriendly.

Let it end

2008-05-18T10:59:00.002-06:00

So. Frances is better. Like, 100 percent better. She is happiest sitting in her highchair shoveling cheerio's and chopped up banana's into her mouth. It's all good.

Mary....well, Mary is not so good. The liquid explosiveness started in earnest yesterday. This morning she barfed prodigiously on the couch. I should have known. Actually I did know. She was laying listlessly on the couch, and suddenly she sat up. I looked at her, narrowed my eyes and said "Mary, honey, do you need to throw up?" She looked at me, whimpered, and exploded. After she was done she looked at the mess in alarm and said "Oh dear. Oh no. Oh dear, Mama, I sorry." Ugh. I much prefer baby puke to toddler puke. Finally, something I prefer about babies. She seems to be feeling a bit better now, though she is still pale and sad looking. So, there is no end in sight, I am trapped in a house that smells of diarrhea and vomit, it's beautiful and sunny outside on this long weekend, and I'm not enjoying the weather, or getting any yard work done. Ian has escaped to work, and I have never envied his job more than I do today.

Hell Week

2008-05-14T09:36:00.003-06:00

Yeesh. The last several days have been pretty awful to say the least. Here's the synopsis.

Friday
Starts as a day like any other. Halfway through the day Frances offers up a...surprise...in her diaper. I think "Hmm. I wonder if she's finally teething." I deal with two or three more surprises (which are rapidly becoming less surprising) and carry on with life. She's still cheerful and playing, so I don't worry too much.

Saturday
The day starts with an overflowing diaper. Frances is still cheerful, but not all that interested in solid foods. That's okay, she's sick, so I just give her bottles. Late at night after the diarrhea turns her bottom into hamburger (diaper rash is no fun) I decide to phone the 1-800-dial-a-nurse number. The nurse suggests I take her to the doctor. It's late at night and Fran is sleeping peacefully, so we put it off till morning.

Sunday Morning
We get up to yet another overflowing diaper, and I hop into the van and take her to the city to see a Doctor at the medicentre. While in the waiting room Frances wiggles, laughs, flirts and is generally adorable. She flirts with the Doctor and happily goes to his arms when he picks her up. He says we have nothing to worry about, she's still socializing, drinking her formula and well hydrated. Go home, don't worry. So, I do that.

Sunday Afternoon
The diarrhea gets worse, every hour, in fact. She stops eating, she stops smiling. At 5:30 or so we get her to drink some formula which she fountains all over Ian. I call my dad and step-mum. Michael has successfully raised three of these little buggers without killing any, so I figure she might have some good advice. The two of them hop in the car, pick up some pedialyte (which we cannot get here in Milestone) and head out to visit us. Michael manages to get Frances to drink a couple of ounces of pedialyte while Mary drags my Dad around the house showing him things. ("Look Grandpa! The kitchen! A fridge! The stove, careful, hot! Come with me. The TABLE! My CHAIR! Baby's chair! Come with me. The LIVING ROOOOM! COUCHES!")

That night I manage to get a couple ounces more of the pedialyte into Frances at about 10:30. When she wakes up at 3 AM, she refuses to drink any at all. We try some formula just to get something into her, and she barfs all over poor Ian again.

Monday
We wake up. Frances does not. I go into her room to find her white as a ghost and rag-doll limp. I worry. I stress. I try to get her to drink something. She refuses. I call the 1-800-Nurses number again, and the nurse suggests I take her to the hospital, like, NOW. So I do. I spend monday in the hospital while she gets fluids via IV. It is unpleasant, but not as bad as it could be. She is so sick that she doesn't even cry while they poke her in several places to get the IV in. By the end of the day she is drinking pedialyte on her own and keeping it down, so we are discharged.

Tuesday
A good day. Frances is miserable, but feeling well enough to let me know exactly how miserable she is, which is a good thing. She drinks a lot of pedialyte without vomiting, she only has 3 episodes of diarrhea all day long. I give her some formula before bed, for which she is pathetically grateful. She doesn't vomit. She sleeps well, even though I do not. She must be on the mend, right?

Today
Not so good. Leaky diarrhea diaper first thing in the morning. Two more bouts of diarrhea in 2 hours. Vomiting. Refusing to drink pedialyte. Now Mary is complaining of not feeling well and refusing to leave my bed. I have gravol suppositories for Frances, but have you ever tried to shove something up a struggling babies bum all by yourself with no helper to pin said baby down? It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day outside already, but I'm stuck inside a house which smell vaguely of diarrhea and vomit with two sick children. Motherhood rocks. Frances is sleeping right now, thank God, but she'll be up soon, and it'll start over again.

Pray for me, my friends, that I might once again see the light of day without looking through a haze of germs and puke.

He's a Wanderin' Man

2008-04-29T11:36:00.002-06:00

Wesley came home! It's amazing, I had completely given up hope and accepted that he wouldn't be back, and here he is! Yesterday afternoon I wandered through the living room and glanced out the window. There was a cat across the street drinking out of a puddle and I asked Ian if it looked familiar. "That isn't Wesley," he said. I was already out the door, and lo and behold, it was Wesley! I had to corner him in a neighbors garage to catch him, but as soon as I picked him up he started purring and cuddling. The other cats were a little puzzled to have him back and they spent most of the rest of the day with their noses shoved up his bum, but Mary was thrilled to have him back. She kept talking about him and petting him, and it was the first thing she said to my Mum on the phone. I'm taking him to the vet on Thursday just to get him checked out, but he seems to be fine, if a little scrawny (and amazingly muscular). What a guy.

Hey, you should read this, it's awfully neat. The letter from Charles Manson is bizarre and kinda creepy in a non-sensical sort of way.

Stupid Old Men

2008-04-18T11:48:00.002-06:00

So, did I mention that no matter how old people are, they still seem to enjoy indulging in "DRAMA!"? I am so glad the whole dinner theatre is done, mostly because of the "DRAMA!" and not having to deal with it any more. As most of you may know, in small towns there are giant cliques, and it is next to impossible to penetrate the clique. Oh, they're friendly and nice enough, but you know, you just know, that no matter how nice they are, you'll never, ever actually be considered one of them. I had forgotten that fact, stupid me, until it was brought back with bone crushing force on Saturday evening. You see, I have spent a great deal of time with these people for the last several months. I've gotten to know them, they've gotten to know me. Yes, there are a few people who I don't particularly like, but no matter where you go there will be people who rub you the wrong way, and I'm rather certain that the feeling is mutual. Anyways. Saturday night, about half way through the first act, I made the mistake of glancing up at the sound booth. Now, this is something that I have been warned about from the very beginning. If you look up there, expect to have the old guys who do lights and sound try to screw you up. Anyways, I looked up there and one of the guys was up on his feet, waving his arms around. I panicked, just for a moment. What was wrong? What was he trying to tell me? Was my fly undone? Was my boob hanging out? What was it? I quickly realized that he was just screwing with me and I carried on, chuckling internally and feeling sheepish for being caught by them. At intermission I was sharing the story with a couple other young newcomers who have become fast friends of mine. I started my story with the sentence "Those stupid old men up in the sound booth caught me..." I tried to continue, but someone sharply interrupted - "What did you just say??" I repeated myself, grinning good naturedly. I was rudely told "One of those men is Bernadette's husband, you know!" I replied, slowly, confused "yes, I know that...anyways...I accidentally looked up there and they were really screwing with me today..." Once again I was cut off. "I know for a fact that you can't see anything up there when you're on stage!" Shouts Bernadette. I blink, appalled that she's actually angry with me. I try to explain "but...you can...and they were waving..." I stammer. Yet again, I get cut off as Bernadette storms out of the room and Shannon gets in my face "Just drop it!" and follows Bernadette. Patty follows the two of them, but storms back in the room a few seconds later to find me with my mouth wide open, completely stunned. "Drop it right now, Jennifer!" she shouts in my face and storms back out. At this point I am practically in tears. I didn't think I was being offensive at all, especially as these people know I call my children "miserable little wretches", I call my husband an asshole, I call the director a crazy old lady right to her face and everyone laughs. My friends are stunned too. At one point I can feel my face doing that thing that Mary's face does when she's trying not to cry, but I manage to pull myself together before going on stage for Act 2. The next night, Bernadette and Patty refuse to be in the same room as me, and Bernadette's husband, who I actually like quite a bit, does our pre-show ritual with everyone in the room but me. Did I mention that Bernadette is in her early sixties, as is Patty? So, I've moved on, but I sure don't feel all that welcome anymore. I'm still a little stunned by the whole thing. I tried to explain that I didn't mean to be rude or hurtful, that I actually like Joe and Barry, but no luck. Anyways, that's not the only thing that has gone on, especially with Patty and Bernadette, but it's the biggest and most upsetting. Maybe I'm crazy, I'll accept that maybe I went over a line, but I also feel that the reaction to what I was saying and the refusal to accept any explanation or apology is a tad of on overreaction, you know?

Phew. That was a long paragraph, hope you managed to stick through it with me.

In other news. Yay to the union in South Africa that is refusing to unload guns, ammo and grenade launchers bound from China to Zimbabwe and the hands of Mr. Mugabe!

Boo to Avent, whose bottles I've been using for Frannie because I thought they were safe, but turn out to be the worst culprits for leeching BPA into baby formula. Stupid (and I call myself stupid affectionately and respectfully, so please, don't get all offended. Just Drop it, okay!) me for thinking that because they were expensive that meant they were safe. I guess they're going to be sorry now that their bottles have been banned by the Canadian government. I suppose I should switch to glass, but I can't help but think the damage has already been done in the last 10 months of drinking from the bottles.

Hurrah for giving up on potty training and accepting the fact that Mary'll be in diapers when she's 13 years old.

Golden Showers

2008-04-15T18:37:00.003-06:00

I'm livid. Absolutely seeing red angry. Mary had to go to bed early because I could barely stand to look at her, I'm so angry with her. I have been trying a new tact to get her potty trained. I bought a seat that goes on the actual toilet, I bought a bunch of really pretty little stickers, I put up a chart beside the toilet. I've been gabbing non stop about the wonderful stickers she will get if she does something - ANYTHING, on the potty. Tonight while I was bathing Frances Mary sat on the potty for about 15 minutes. Of course nothing happened, and she announced she was all done. I asked her if she was sure, she said yes, and I let her go while I got Fran out of the tub. Mary was naked at this point as she was next for the bath. Not ten minutes, TEN MINUTES, after she got out of the tub, she pissed about a gallon all over the hallway floor. I honest to Christ don't know what to do with her. I know, I know, everyone says it'll happen when it happens. I KNOW. But it isn't happening. She's over three years old. She has no interest what so ever in using the toilet no matter what I do. I yelled at her tonight, I called her a bad girl, I feel like a terrible mother but I am literally at the end of my rope. At this rate Frances will be potty trained before Mary is. Is there something wrong with my child? Is there something wrong with me? She can't go to preschool without being potty trained. I can't trust her to go even 30 minutes without shitting herself, let alone 2 hours twice a week.

On a positive note, the string is gone. It passed naturally Saturday evening.

The play is finished too, thank God. It amazes me that women in their 60's can act so bloody immature. Yes, there's a story behind that statement, and I'll share it later on, suffice it to say, I've managed to make an enemy or two in this wee town of Milestone. Yay for me.

To end happily - here are some pictures of Frannie Lou. In the first she is enjoying my birthday cake, can you spot her two teeth? In the second she is enjoying our NEW WINDOWS! Yay!

Oh Momentous Day

2008-04-12T09:28:00.001-06:00

It's my birthday! Whee.

Mary ate string. It is half out, half in. I've seen the effects of eating string on a cat first hand. I am concerned.

Only two performances left to go!

I intend to drink a little more than necessary after the performance tonight.

Must go eat toast now.

1 down, 7 to go

2008-04-04T12:25:00.002-06:00

Last night was our first performance that really counted. The first evening of dinner theatre. It went SO well! I was amazed, especially after that terrible performance in North Battleford. I had fun, something which was definitely missing in N.B. The audience was amazing, they laughed and were clearly enjoying themselves and the play. It makes things so much easier when you have a good audience to feed from. Oh! And the food! Good God, it was incredible. They bbq'd roast beef for the main course, the whole town smelled heavenly. The salads were fantastic, and the desserts were amazing. The whole town contributes to the meal, every house in the phone book gets a call and is asked to make either a salad or dessert for one night. I have been conscripted to make a salad called "Of Rice and Men." It looks absolutely disgusting, but people seem to like it.

I have some hope on the Wesley front too! A friend of mine says she saw him over on her side of town Wednesday night. She called him and he responded by giving her a dirty look, meowing, and disappearing into a bush. If it was him then it means, well, it means he is alive and may be coming home sometime. I'm trying not to be too hopeful, I don't want to be disappointed, but my spirits were certainly lifted. So long as he stays away from dogs, cars, trains, and the open prairie where coyote's and foxes and great big owls hunt, he should survive, right??

Ninja in Pink

2008-04-02T13:09:00.004-06:00

Still no sign of Wesley, even on top of the hot water tank. While I was at rehearsal last night Ian got a call from someone who saw the signs that I posted all over town and thought they had him. They brought the cat by, but alas, it was not our Mr. Wyndham-Price. Everyone seems very positive about him returning one day, but I guess I'm a pessimist at heart, cause I just can't imagine him surviving even one night out there.

Other than the missing cat things are going surprisingly well. While I was away Frances started to crawl on all fours, as opposed to the "dying man's crawl" that she had been doing up to that point. She still drags herself across the floor from time to time, but she's finally discovered the coordination to do the real thing. She's gotten awfully cute too, I know I was only gone for a few days, but she's much easier to take (and like) since I got back. I don't know if it's just because I missed her, or if she hit some major likeability milestone while I was away.

Mary's doing very well too. Today she helped me clean up the house (well, main floor of the house) and vacuum. She does miss Wesley quite a bit, and every once in a while she will get very solemn and announce "Wesley run away. Not here." It makes me sad.

But this picture always seems to cheer me up. I call it "Ninja in Pink Against a Blue Wall."

This is the expression on Frances's face all day long lately. Much better than the screaming face, eh?

Home Now

2008-04-01T08:59:00.002-06:00

Hello everyone!

Well, the drama festival is over and done with, and thank GOD for that. It went rather poorly, in case you were wondering. The hotel was AWFUL and filthy, there were men jackhammering all day just outside our dressing room, the group that performed the night before rewired the entire light board, and the performance was terrible.

My trip to Edmonton went well though. I got to see many people that I miss and love and I got to see several babies. I did miss the girls something fierce, but I was able to speak to Mary on the phone every day.

I got home to sadness though. Ian didn't shut the door on Sunday and one of the cats ran away and hasn't been seen since. I'm trying to stay positive, but I know what happens to house cats who have never been outside when they do get out. I have my doubts that he survived the first night, what with wild animals, dogs, trains, and cars. I'm pretty devastated, and I'm trying very hard not to blame Ian. It's not his fault. But I can't help but think that I can't even be gone for 5 days without one of my pets dying or disappearing. It's disheartening, you know? Anyways, last night I ran off some pictures and lost signs and put them up on all the bulletin boards in town. I haven't got a lot of hope, but I had to do something. I managed to hold it together till bed time, and while I was brushing my teeth I just lost it and started bawling, I'm awfully attached to my cats.

The Play

2008-03-18T23:30:00.001-06:00

It went fantastically! I can't believe how fun it was, and even though there was a couple of missed lines, it went better than ever! Why on earth haven't I done this before?

I can't wait for the next performance.

Ears

2008-03-13T16:24:00.003-06:00

Gosh, I can't believe I didn't mention this earlier.

Mary went to the Audiologist on Friday, and guess what? Her eardrums are both ruptured! I felt like a grade A mother when the tester showed me the results. How could I not know? Don't you think that having an ear drum rupture would hurt something fierce? How could I have missed it? I've gotten over most of my Bad Mother Guilt, I'm mostly glad that we know now. It likely happened quite a while ago as she also has mild to moderate conductive hearing loss. From what I gather, that means that her ear nerves work well, the message just isn't getting to them due to the buggered ear drums. It is most likely the cause of her language problems too - she just doesn't hear us properly. So, we are now waiting to her from the Ear Nose Throat doctor so we can get started on fixing the problem. Tubes for the near constant ear infections that I had no idea about, skin grafts to fix the holes in the ear drums, who knows? Hopefully we will get a rush on the appointment with the ENT, there's only 3 in the city and they are all very busy, but the family doctor has asked that Mary be seen sooner rather than later because of her language issues. In the mean time we will continue going to the speech pathologist and working on her pronunciation that way, though I'm not sure how much it'll help. I mean, if she can't hear us properly we can repeat the proper way to say a word till we're blue in the face and she still won't get it, right?

DRAMA!!

2008-03-12T22:27:00.002-06:00

So, I'm in this play, right? It's the local dinner theater, and we're performing in a festival/competition too. Our first performance in front of an audience is in 6 days. SIX DAYS. And. AND. There is a person, in the play, who still, STILLLL does not know her lines. Hardly at all. At rehearsal today, she actually could not remember her characters name. She introduced herself (in CHARACTER) with another characters name. I could puke. I could just puke.

That is all.

(oh, and it's not me. I know all my lines.)

Mostly Normal

2008-03-04T07:30:00.004-07:00

Gosh, what a busy week it's been. We traded in the Taurus for a far more fuel efficient (but nowhere near as nice) vehicle. A KIA something-or-other. It makes it much easier for Ian to get to and from work, we aren't spending over fifty bucks on gas every couple of days. I've driven it a couple of times and it's okay, I suppose, though it does feel awfully low and rattly on the highway.

Thursday past we went in to the city for a fun day full of specialist appointments for the kids. Mary saw the Speech pathologist first, and it went quite well. She had fun, the SLP girl was very nice (and from Milestone too, no less). She agreed that Mary will need follow up appointments, even though she knows a great deal of words and is able to make all the sounds that she ought to at this age, she's just not consistent with the pronunciation. After Mary was all done we grabbed a quick lunch and headed off to the pediatric outpatient department for Frances' appointment with a physical therapist. I don't remember if I've mentioned this earlier (I probably have) but Frances just won't sit. She rolls, she stands with support, she gets up on her hands and knees and is very close to crawling, but she doesn't sit. I am of the opinion that she just doesn't want too, but the pediatrician was a little concerned, so off to the physical therapist we went. Frances was amazingly cheery for a girl who missed her nap and doesn't like strangers. The physical therapist LOVED her and said that while Frances doesn't need to come back, I could bring her back if I really wanted. I gather she's not used to happy babies in her fun little room, apparently preemies are a whole different breed of baby when it comes to social interaction. Anyways, the general consensus was that Frances is just fine, she just doesn't like to sit, thus she doesn't get to exercise the muscles necessary to sit well. The therapist also thought that Frances was a little slow realizing that she was falling and by time she figured it out, she was already flat out.

Oh! And I saw the Dr. about my blood tests yesterday. I'm not diabetic. I'm just fine. Except for the fact that my cholesterol levels are very high for my age. Huh? Is that the residue from living in the city and eating all sorts of take out and crap? Cause I'll have you know that I have been trying very hard to eat healthier since we moved here. It's not difficult what with the lack of McDonalds in a 50 Kilometre radius. So, I'm not really sure where to go from here. The Dr. said healthy eating and exercise. Exercise, which is far easier said than done when one has two wee people and it's minus fricken thirty degrees outside. Not to mention the fact that I despise exercise with a white hot passion. I guess I'll have to figure something out though, maybe find a decent exercise DVD at the library? I don't really know.

This week Mary is off to see the SLP again on Thursday and she's getting her hearing checked on Friday. We have lots of rehearsals for the stupid play as our first performance in front of an audience is on the 18th (ACK!). This week is the final week for skating as well, which makes it a very busy week. Tomorrow is the dress rehearsal for "Carnival," which is a sort of party/show that the skating club puts on. It's going to be a long night at the rink followed by a long night on stage rehearsing. Friday is the actual Carnival, and it doesn't start till 7:30 - which is Mary's bed time. Should be interesting. Saturday is games at the rink followed by a supper for which I need to cook an angel food cake. I was going to do it from scratch but the recipe calls for 12 egg whites, and what the hell am I supposed to do with 12 egg yolks anyways?? So I got a boxed mix, I'm ashamed to admit. The weekend culminates with a cabaret for all the grown up folks Saturday night. Mary and Frances are spending the night with my Dad in Regina so Ian and I can imbibe and celebrate being adults without worrying about having to get up bright and early in the morning. Of course I have rehearsal and cast photographs Sunday morning anyways. Sigh.

Alphabet Song

2008-02-20T17:50:00.002-07:00

Me: Mary, why don't you sing the Alphabet Song?

Mary (musically): A, B, A, B, A, C, U, Something (she actually said "something"), A, (mumbles), U, V, Mary, Frances, Twinkle, Twinkle, Prubble, Monster, P, R, Alphabet, Whale, 2, 3, 1, A, B, ZED!

Me: ...

Mary got a harmonica as a party favor from her friends birthday party. We have become a musical house. She stole an empty plastic container, a wooden spoon and a rattle and along with the harmonica, she puts on shows for me. She's a multitalented girl, her shows include all her musical instruments as well as singing and dancing....and she always bows and says "thank you, thank you" when the show is over.

Of course between tantrums and just general whining it seems I rarely get to see that side of her...

I'm off to the doctor tomorrow for an interesting appointment. I have all but convinced myself (thank you internets!) that I am diabetic, now I just need the doctor to confirm the sad facts. Mary will be spending the day with the local babysitter lady, which should be interesting for both her and me. Frances will come with me to the doctor and mall, It will be nice for me to spend some time alone with the younger child for once.

Why She's Not In A Snowbank

2008-02-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

How on earth can I stay angry?

Ouch

2008-02-10T16:51:00.001-07:00

Three is kicking my ass. I hate three. I would like two back now please. How can a child change so much in a month? Was she always like this, or has something changed overnight? She's crabby, contrary, bossy, and occasionally downright mean. I ask her if she wants something and without fail she says no, until I put it away or stop asking or just say fine. Then she wants it. She needs it. She shrieks for it. No matter what I suggest, no matter what I do, it's wrong. I am often told to "Go away!" I still see glimpses of my sweet girl, giving me cuddles, playing with Frances, begging me for kisses....but it's happening less and less often. Please, tell me it gets better. Please tell me my only hope isn't to wring her neck and run away to Guatemala. Please?

PLEASE??

Meh

2008-02-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

Yes, I have been neglecting this blog. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone actually reads it anymore. I don't know why, but lately I just can't be bothered. Everything in my life is pretty much same-old same-old, you know? Let's see. Since my last update I have... rehearsed for the play, taken Mary skating, fed children, cooked meals, baked bread, listened to the radio, changed diapers, given baths, done laundry. How exciting is that? We've had some seriously crummy weather, and it looks like we will be getting more real soon. I think I made it to the city once or twice. Ian had a wisdom tooth pulled. Ian works far too much and is rarely home these days. We are getting rid of most of the channels we get on TV which cuts our bill more than in half. We are trying to find a car that is better on gas for Ian to commute to work in that doesn't require us to give anything more than the Taurus, we can't afford to pay for a car.

Mary still isn't potty trained. I'm still waiting to hear from the Speech and Language people - at this rate Mary'll be 12 before we see someone. Mary is mostly delightful and fun to have around. She's such an incredibly loving and imaginative child, it really amazes me sometimes that I had a hand in getting her to a point where she is able to express her personality so well. Last night she had a 2 hour tantrum (not so delightful and fun) before bed that had me weeping with murderous rage mixed with sickening guilt.

Frances is getting bigger and cuter all the time. She's cheerful and sweet, and because I've been dragging her to the rink and to many of the rehearsals she is getting better with strangers. She still isn't terribly fond of old men though, which is a pity because there are lots of them in this town and they all adore her. She still doesn't sleep through the night. She is more and more mobile now - she doesn't crawl yet but she rolls around the house like a champ.

The cats are good. The outdoor cats that I feed survived the -52 degree weather.

I've been sick for about a month, I'm almost constantly nauseous which isn't much fun. No, I am not pregnant again, thank Christ. The news has had me in a state of almost constant outrage, what with babies freezing to death in their diapers and t-shirts, a young Canadian child soldier being tried for the murder of an American soldier in Afghanistan and the Canadian government doing it's best to ignore the whole thing, people fighting endangered designation for Polar Bears because it will prevent American trophy hunters from spending their money in the Canadian north, and once again hearing how I am poisoning my children because I give them formula rather than breast milk. The play is going well, we are working on the second act now which I am finding much easier to commit to memory for some reason. I am giddy with anticipation for the end of March when we perform at the competition in North Battleford....Though I am more excited about my trip to Edmonton afterwards than anything else.

Huh?

2008-01-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

What? Huh? Are you telling me it's actually been 2 weeks since I posted here? Huh. Go figure.

I've been busy! It's kind of amazing, really, but I have been really busy, and actually getting out of the house, sometimes even without children! The play is really keeping me hopping, and I love it. I've met some very cool people (yes, there is such a thing as cool people, even in rural Saskatchewan) through the dinner theatre, and I really enjoy socializing with them as well as working on the play. Just this Saturday we had a drama workshop which was fantastic. Carrie from Free My Muse Theatre in Yorkton came out and spent the whole day with us. It was long, and by time I got home I was exhausted, but it was really fun. We worked on our production a little bit, but much of what we did was vocalization and improv. Carrie was fabulous, and at the end of the day she made me a little weepy. It also brought those of us who were able to make it a lot closer together.

Mary is still skating, and doing amazingly well! It's like she decided that with a new year comes new skills (did she level up? It's entirely possible) and she skates like a champ now. The rink is another place to get out and socialize for me, and for Mary too. We often stay a little while after her lesson so she can run around like a maniac with the other kids, and I can drink some tea and chat with my friends (I have friends!).

Back to the theatre group...we rehearse three times a week, and it's really nice to get out. I've brought Mary and Frances to a couple of our Sunday rehearsals when Ian is working, and everyone is very supportive and helpful with the girls. It doesn't help much that Frances hates people, of course, but we manage. Speaking of Frances, I just can't get over how very different she is from Mary. At this age Mary loved everyone, and was more than happy to abandon Ian and I just to socialize with a random stranger on the street. Frances however shrieks if anyone strange even looks at her, and unfortunately her opinion of strange includes my poor father and occasionally Ian. I suppose it has a lot to do with our lives when they were young. We started taking Mary to Boston Pizza every Thursday night when she was 4 weeks old, so she got used to being passed around from person to person at a young age. Frances is a real Mummy's girl though, and she isn't really happy unless I'm holding her, or at least within sight of her.

The weather here has been brutal. Living a block away from the bald prairie does not make life easy. The other day we had a wind chill warning and that wind just whips up our street. It was minus 45 at one point. Brrr.

Anyways, that's it for an update...I'm keeping busy, making friends and getting happier. I still miss Edmonton, but it's not on my mind as much lately. It helps that I know when my next trip to visit will be and I have something to look forward too. For those of you who read this and have responded to my post about my visit, I'll get back to you, I promise, I'm just having some email issues right now.

Bye!

Bandwagon Jumping

2008-01-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

I hate all the hooplah around New Years and I especially hate new years resolutions. This year, however, I decided that there was no time like now to make a decision about my life. So my resolution for 2008 is to stop being a consumer. I can't stop all together, but I can give it a good try. Really, I decided it for totally selfish reasons - if we stop spending all our money on absolute crap then we can save it for things that are really important to us. Then I saw "The Story of Stuff," and I realized that there was more to this non-consumer thing than I had realized at first. I was absolutely outraged and poor Ian has had to listen to me ranting about "planned obsolescence" and "perceived obsolescence" on a near constant basis for the last couple of days (when I heard that Warner Brothers will no longer release DVD's, only Blue Ray....well....It's fair to say I was frothing at the mouth about it). So today, I put this up on my fridge -

It's a start, right?

Then last night we watched a documentary on CBC called "WalMart Nation," and I was absolutely sickened. Oh yeah, I've always known that WalMart was bad news, but I ignored it. I shop at that store all the time....How can I not....Formula for Frances is TEN dollars cheaper at "The Mart" than anywhere else. Ditto for diapers, and cat food, and kitty litter. No one can compete price wise. I pondered my dilemma all night and at about 3:30 (after Mary woke us up and before Frances woke us up) I came to a conclusion. If I don't buy that plush hot pink hippo at Walmart that sings and wiggles it's ears when you push it's foot, well, maybe I can afford to pay a little more for formula. If I don't go to Walmart and drop $300 on God only knows what crap, I can afford a bit more for diapers and cat food. We were actually planning on buying Ian's glasses (God, he's getting old the poor thing) at Walmart, but we have changed our minds. We are going to do our best to boycot that awful place.

On to other topics. Do you know how fun it is to have a three year old with (as the doctor put it) severely infected tonsils and a very bad ear infection? Can you guess how much more fun it is when you have a 7 month old baby with diarrhea. This is my life right now, although the diarrhea seems to be abating (thank Christ!). Poor Mary is absolutely miserable and in pain, and poor Ian is freaking out. His tonsils nearly killed him when he was about 24, and he wants to rip Mary's out tomorrow to avoid her going through the same. We also have a referral to a Speech and Language Pathologist for Mary. She's really not speaking a lot of English, and enough people have commented on it (including the Doctor) that I decided that it's probably a good idea. My brother had terrible problems with language when he was her age, mostly due to his tongue tie (which Mary had too) and severe recurrent infections in his ears. We've never noticed ear infections with Mary before this, but the Doctor did say there was a bit of scarring in her ears so it's likely that this isn't her first. In happier news, we finally have an actual Family Doctor. Yay! I really like her, she's fantastic with Mary, and while she isn't taking new patients my Step-Mother called her and demanded she see Mary a while ago, and now we are all in.

We started serious practice on our play this week, and eep! They want to go "script free" on Sunday, and I am not ready! It's like the lines go in one ear and out the other...my brain is a sieve. The practices are every Monday and Wednesday night, as well as Sunday afternoons...hopefully working with the others will help things stick in my brain. Oh! And we have a date for our show in North Battleford - It will be on March 27th. I'm thinking that on the Friday after the show I may run over to Edmonton to visit for the weekend - sans husband or children too! I really need to use that Spa gift certificate I got for my birthday last year, and this may be the perfect opportunity. March 27th, just over 2 months away. Pardon me, I need to go puke now...

Spontaneous

2008-01-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

This week we decided to be spontaneous. On saturday I went to Ian and said "we should drive to Edmonton on Tuesday," and he said "okay." So, our plan was made. We would have left earlier if it hadn't been for the plans to have Mary's birthday party monday afternoon.

Monday morning Frances got us up around 7. We got up, fed and changed her and put her back into bed for a little while to chat with herself so we could stay warm in bed for a bit longer. At 8 our furnace roared to life, and at about 8:01 there was a huge rumbling crash - so big that the house shook - and bright blue flashes of light outside the bedroom window. For a moment I thought that the furnace had exploded and I was waiting to die. Ian jumped out of bed and looked out the window into the dark. He shortly announced that the power line to the house was down and we may as well climb back into bed to keep warm.

To make a long story short, a Semi had driven down our street, a street where truck traffic is not allowed, and pulled down the power lines on our corner. It turned out that we would not have any power, heat or phone for at least the rest of the day, so we packed up our bags, put signs on the door that the party was cancelled, and left for Edmonton.

Here are some pictures of what greeted us Monday morning when the sun came up:

The power pole directly behind our house. If it weren't for our wonderful trees it would have landed right on top of our cars.

Across the street from our back yard.

The neighbour kitty corner to our house. The pole landed on top of her house but didn't seem to do much damage at all.

Frances on the way to Edmonton, enjoying our spontaneity.

Mary had the best birthday ever. 9 hours of uninterrupted movie watching in the van.

One Fish Two Fish

2007-12-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

In less than twelve hours my baby will be three. I can't express how wonderful the last three years have been, and I can't even begin to imagine where they've gone. I guess it's true, time flies when you're having fun. Before I had Mary I was unsure whether I even wanted children. Babies are frightening, and kids are cute enough in small doses....but to have one of my own, a little person that I am completely and utterly responsible for every minute of every day, well, it's a daunting sort of idea for someone who can't keep plants alive. I think that I've learned a lot about myself the past three years, and I think that I have grown into a better person. I never thought I would be patient enough to read One Fish Two Fish over and over again, or to sing Baby Beluga every single night. I really didn't think that I would be a good mother, and I've learned that I am and that I love doing it. Being a Mum is the best job I've ever had in my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So happy birthday Mary Bea, I love you more than words can say!

Mary on her very first birthday.

Six months old - the same age as Frances is now.

One year old and still bald.

Two years old and hamming it up for the camera.

Just a few days ago, almost three.

Christmas Joy

2007-12-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

Our Christmas this year was really, really good. One of the best Christmases that I can remember having in a long time.

Christmas Eve we all headed into the city to go to the early church service and blessing of the Creche. It was nice to go to the church that I grew up at, everyone remembers me (though I manage to remember alarmingly few names) and everyone ooh'd and aah'd over the girls. The service went well and it was kind of awesome to see Mary doing the things I remember doing as a child at the same service. She was quite proud of the donkey she was given charge of (not a real one, of course) and happily paraded it up the isle. When the time came to set up the creche she put a lot of thought into where the donkey ought to go. She didn't make it through the whole service, but it was pretty special to see her there.

After church we ate supper at my dads place and then hit the highway home. The girls went straight to bed and we got to work cleaning up the house and helping Santa. We got to bed around 11, and everyone slept through the night. Frances woke us up at about 8 in the morning, we got up, changed and fed her and helped her open her stocking. Shortly after 9 I couldn't take it any more and woke Mary up so we could get our day started. She was thrilled to open her stocking and thought the sled was pretty great. After stockings and breakfast cooked by Ian, we went for a nice walk. It was a beautiful day, only about 5 below zero and snowing lightly. We bundled the girls up and plunked them in the new sled. Mary occasionally shouted "Faster, Daddy, Faster!" and we all really enjoyed ourselves. After the walk Mary and I played out in the snow for a while longer, we visited our elderly neighbour, Teeny, and finally took ourselves inside. I had to bribe Mary to come in with a second Kindersurprise Egg.

After a cup of tea and a nap for Frances we settled down to open the mound of gifts under the tree. It was great fun, and every time Ian handed Mary a gift to open she said "Oh! Thank you Daddy!" About halfway through the gifts Mary was pretty much done and told me "No more presents Mummy." After a short break where Ian and I opened our gifts (a squishy bathrobe, a bird book, a gardening in Saskatchewan book, The Princess Bride on DVD!) she was ready to finish off. We were finally done opening the gifts around 1:30 and Frances went down for another much needed nap. We hung out, phoned our mothers, and got ready to head back to the city.

At about 4 that afternoon we piled back in the van and drove to my Dads place. We got to open more presents (another bird book! A STAND MIXER!!!) and we had a lot of fun with my fathers wifes parents and sisters family. It really turned out to be a wonderful evening, lots of fun was had by all, supper was fantastic and the girls were incredibly well behaved. We finally left at 10 in the evening with two exhausted girls and made our way home. Mary fell asleep on the trip home and we couldn't wake her up, but Frances was wide awake when we got home. She hasn't gone to sleep before 9 since that night, which is really the only bad thing about Christmas that I can think of.

I hope you all had as good a Christmas as we did. Wish me luck as I prepare for my house to be taken over by a pack of 3 year olds and their parents on Monday!

Twas the night before Christmas....

Festive Baby. She grinned all day long.

Lightening McQueen slipper, toque, mittens, pj's, signed photograph and giant plush doll. She made out like a bandit.

Pakistan

2007-12-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

It could be hormones that made me cry this morning when I turned on the CBC and heard that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated this morning, but I don't think it was. For as long as I can remember being somewhat aware of world politics I have admired Benazir Bhutto, a woman, in that part of the world who has the deep respect of her people. A woman elected into office in a Muslim country. She gave me hope for that part of the world. Maybe, maybe things could be better there. She had so much influence, even in her self-imposed exile...I don't know, I suppose it doesn't matter now.

This morning (evening in Pakistan) Benazir Bhutto was shot twice. Once in the neck, once in the chest. Her shooter then blew himself up, killing at least 13 others. She was taken to the hospital and rushed into emergency surgery, but an hour later she died. Violent riots have sprung up throughout Pakistan at the news of her death, and President Musharraf is expected to declare martial law before the night is through. So much for hope.

A Night in the Life

2007-12-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

This is how my night went last night. Why does no one sleep anymore?

6:00 - Frances gets a bath and bottle, Mary gets in the bath
6:30 - Frances in bed
6:35 - Mary picks out her pj's and gets changed
6:45 - Read "One Fish Two Fish" for the 500th and final time that day
6:55 - Brush Mary's teeth
7:00 - Mary in bed after much cuddling, arranging of stuffed animals, ensuring that there is indeed water in her cup beside the bed.
(This is how every night goes, pretty much without fail)

7:30 ish - Ian gets home
8:15ish - Ian finishes his supper
8:16 - 10:00 - Hanging around the house. Ian changed the litterboxes and had a shower. I watched the Stuart McLean Christmas special on CBC
10:00 - Bedtime for us! Yay! Sweet sleep. We hang out, chat in bed, get comfy.
10:45 - Start to doze
11:00 - Frances wakes, starts screaming.
11:05 - Change Frances, feed Frances, joke with Ian when Mary will wake us up. He says 3 hours, I say 2.
11:20 - Frances back in bed. She engages in a fierce battle with one of her toys that dangle from the crib rail (It's a peach). Loud battle cries and rattling echo through the house.
12:00 - Doze
1:00 - Mary climbs into bed and kicks me several times. (Two hours! I win!)
1:15 - Ian puts Mary back in her own bed.
1:30 - Doze.
2:00 - Mary comes into our room and stands at the foot of the bed sobbing softly. (3 hours. Ian wins too. We are all winners. yippee.)
2:05 - I take Mary back to her bed, she whimpers and asks for more water.
2:06 - I trip over the semi-trailer parked in the middle of the hallway. Curse softly. Remember why I like to clean up before going to bed and wonder why I didn't last night.
2:08 - Bring water to Mary. She is fast asleep and doesn't notice it.
2:10 - Lay in bed wide awake.
2:30 - still awake. hyper aware. Every sound could be one of those horrible children. Why fall asleep if they are just going to wake me up?
3:30 - finally doze.
4:00 - Frances starts screaming. Put pillow over head.
4:10 - Still screaming. Ian goes to get her. Reports that she was laying in her crib like she had been in a car accident. Apparently the peach won the battle earlier on.
4:15 - Feed and change Frances
4:25 - Frances back to bed.
5:00 - doze
6:30 - Ian's alarm goes off.

Poor Ian had to get up and head off to a very long day of work. I managed to doze back off and finally got out of bed at around 8:30 when I couldn't ignore Frances anymore. I had to wake Mary up at 9. I'm thinking that I may have to start locking Mary's bedroom door again, but I'm not sure that it's worth the horrible screaming when she realizes she can't get out and cuddle with me at 3 AM.

In other news....Mary actually skated the other day! It was amazing, she just decide that she could do it, and she did. She spent most of the class crawling around and rolling around on the ice, which she thinks is very very fun. Near the end of the class they lined up the kids so they could get a picture and Mary kept skating away. They couldn't really tell her not too as this is what we have been trying to convince her do for two months....so, everyone just laughed and applauded, and they finally got a decent picture of the four kids, even if Mary wasn't quite with the group. It was a fun evening, we stayed late for a pot luck, and I got to know a few more people. It's really quite a cool thing to live in a small town. At one point I had to chase Mary down to prevent her from stealing yet another sippy cup. When I was away Frances started fussing, so someone just picked her up and started to cuddle her...and it didn't bother me at all. It's quite the community.

On Being a Poor Tool

2007-12-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

What? Two posts in one day? Huh.

I jinxed myself earlier by commenting on a certain temperamental member of my family and how she has been slightly less temperamental lately. After dealing with an afternoon of shrieking for various reasons (the main one being my unwillingness to happily "GO AWAY!" when told to do so and shoved towards the door) I will not make that mistake again. Rest assured, I have not dipped her in the snow yet, though at times it's awfully tempting.

I also want to apologize for being a poor tool. I got right into Christmas cards this year, I even made my own. I had things ready to go at the beginning of the month, and most people have been sent their cards and should have received them already. Some people, however, won't be getting cards at all. I ran out of cards. Then I made more and completely forgot about them. Now, I can't find the bloody things. So, if you live in Edmonton (or Nebraska, damn it all) and didn't get a card, I apologize, I really did mean to send a card and I love you very much. Next year I'll do better....maybe I'll even write one of those cheesy update form letters to make up for it!

Oh, and Goody, go hard with your mincemeat! I just made my first batch of tarts this past week and they are fantastic! I didn't make hard sauce to go with them though, I hate the stuff and just couldn't be bothered.

One Week Left!

2007-12-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

You know, Mary must have known I was blogging unfavourably about her....we haven't had a major tantrum since then (knock on wood). Yes, there have been minor meltdowns, especially when she feels that she NEEDS a cookie and I disagree with her, but other than that she's been good.

Saturday the Elks lodge put on a show for the kids in town. They played a Pooh Bear Christmas movie, and then Santa came to visit. I was a little concerned that Mary would flip out. She's always interested in Santa when we go to the mall, but won't really get too close. Well, I needn't have worried. Santa walked in the door and she was the first one shrieking his name and dancing at his feet while he made his way to his throne. When her turn came to sit on his knee, well, she did so quite happily. She sat silently for a moment or two just enjoying the experience, accepted her goodie bag and came back to my side bubbling with happiness. I was right annoyed as I had decided not to bring the camera, damn it. Anyways, it was a fun afternoon, even if we missed out on the hay rides afterwards. Frances was about done and while Mary and I were thrilled to see the horses, Fran was not impressed in the least. Oh, and the funny thing about the whole experience? Mary's goody bag was just like the bags we used to get when I was a kid - full of peanuts. You don't get things like that in the city anymore, eh? I guess there aren't any peanut allergies in either the preschool or the regular schools, so they just don't worry about it. Mary reached in and popped a peanut in her mouth, shell and all...

Not much else going on here. I did a tonne of baking the other day, including the first batch of mincemeat tarts...heavenly. Yesterday Ian was off work and we had some errands to run, so we popped into the city to go to Walmart. A word to the wise...don't go to Walmart a week before Christmas. Just don't. We went first thing in the morning, on a monday morning, thinking that it would be okay. It wasn't. It was a zoo. Why were none of those people at work? I don't know. I did take great pleasure in blocking an isle while chatting with a lady who had a baby the same age as Frances. I could hear the irritated groans around us, but after spending an hour trying to get around slow moving geriatrics (not that I have a problem with old people, but for crying out loud...) I felt that I had a right to block traffic for just a minute.

Is this three?

2007-12-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Cause if it is, well, I'd really like two back, please.

Over the last few weeks Mary has undergone some subtle (and not so subtle) changes in her personality and attitudes towards life. I just recently connected these changes to the fact that she'll be three years old in a couple of weeks. She's still sweet and loving, cuddly and gentle most of the time. She adores her baby sister, she loves to play with the cats, she loves cars and trucks and books. Lately though, she has been incredibly contrary, temperamental, irrational and independent in bizarre ways. The temper tantrums have stepped up a notch and are far more frequent than ever before.

Last night she wasn't eating her supper. I was okay with this because she had eaten one or two mouthfulls of her chili and a whole slice of bread. I am used to her not eating, and I try very hard not to make a big deal about it. So anyways, I asked her if she was done. She said "NO!" and grabbed the bowl of chili, moving it away from me. She did not eat it. Five minutes later I asked again, and again she reacted the same way. So I scooped up some food onto her spoon and handed it too her. She shrieked in rage, dumped out the spoon, and hugged the bowl. After about 30 minutes of this I was done, so I took the bowl away to clean up. She. Flipped. Out. Screaming, yelling, howling, sobbing, flinging herself to the floor, hitting me, throwing things. It was truly spectacular but nothing compared to the tantrum she had the day before yesterday where she trashed her bedroom (books thrown all over, stuffed animals tossed willy-nilly and the bed ripped apart) and then refused everything I offered her until I wasn't offering it anymore and then she screamed that she needed it. Then I would try to give it too her and because I was offering it, she refused it again.

Sigh.

She does make up for it when she comes into my bed after Ian's gotten up for work and snuggles up with me, patting my back and whispering sweet nothings before falling asleep.

Time Flies

2007-12-13T10:48:00.000-07:00

Things are going as usual these days. I can't remember the last time I actually did an update here, really, my life is awfully boring.

Let's see. Ian worked all weekend, and I did....stuff, important stuff, I'm sure. He had Monday and Tuesday off. Monday Mary and I went into the city to do a big grocery shop and stare at the frightening man in the red suit. Mary really loves Santa's "Castle" in the mall, but she's not too keen on the big man himself. Tuesday was Ian's turn to take Mary into the city to run errands.

Mary's skating lessons have taken an interesting turn. She discovered yesterday that to move around on the ice one need not move their feet...just drop to your hands and knees and crawl, or better yet lay right down and roll. It was the first time I've seen her laugh and engage with the coaches at her lessons, so while she did not actually skate, she did have fun and I call that a success.

Last night Ian called me when he was heading home from the city, just to let me know he was on his way. The weather had turned from quite nice in the morning to very windy and snowy. About 30 minutes after he called, about the time I would be expecting him home, he called again. It turns out that the blowing snow on the road tricked him, and instead of turning with the highway he drove straight into the ditch and almost into a farmers field. Even better, a woman on her way to Weyburn saw his tail lights through the blowing snow and figured that must be where she ought to drive....and she ended up in the ditch too. Misery loves company, eh? Anyways, after trying for an hour to contact CAA, an ambulance pulled up to check on them. The paramedic chatted for a few minutes, and called them a tow truck. About 5 minutes after the ambulance left, an RCMP truck showed up and sat on the corner with his lights on, calling attention to the fact that there was in fact a corner there and people should turn to avoid the ditch. Anyways, the long and short of it is that Ian got off work at 5:30 last night, and didn't get home till 10. It was funny, right before Ian called to tell me that he was in the ditch my father had called just to let me know that if the weather was crummy Ian was always welcome to stay at his place. Is that what they call irony?

Hmm. Not much else going on. Still baking like a fiend. I made some fantastic, melt in your mouth, shortbread, some mediocre gingerbread teddy bears (that Mary loves, so she gets to eat them all), and the best bread I've made so far. I couldn't believe how well it turned out, light and airy, very tasty and perfect for toast or sandwiches.

Monday evening the cast for the dinner theatre met and we taped the play. It was lots of fun to be around other people, and the more I read it, the more I like the play that we are doing. I've also really come to like my character and I'm quite excited about starting regular practice in the new year.

Please

2007-12-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Please, just go here, okay? You won't regret it....well, you might, but it's cute!

Nice Socks

2007-12-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

Not much to report around here. Yesterday was a PJ day for me, I stayed in my jammies all day long and boy did it feel good! Today the only reason I got dressed was because Ian forgot to bring in the cat food from the van, and the boys were driving me bonkers.

I've been busy working on stockings for our family, and I've finally finished the girl's stockings! The sewing is pretty crappy, I'm not really sure how to use my machine, so I just wing it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know if I will finish Ian's and mine before Christmas, but it was the girls that were important to me anyways.

Seasonal

2007-12-04T20:37:00.001-07:00

We had a relatively busy weekend. Friday we went into the city and spent all our money (quite literally) on this and that. That night we went to a Christmas party put on by Ian's work. We stayed at my dads place as he is in Hawaii, and got a sitter in. It was awfully nice to get out without the girls. The party was quite fancy. When we arrived there was a table full of corsages for the ladies. There was an open bar which Ian and I didn't really take advantage of, being old and boring as we are. There was a silent auction with the proceeds going to the Canadian Cancer society and a couple of raffles. The food was fantastic, and they had brought in a guy from Austin Texas who is billed as "The Worlds Worst Waiter," he was fabulous. They had a hypnotist who was good, but went on far too long. There was dancing after the hypnotist, but we left when he was done his thing, I was tired, and we knew the girls wouldn't let us sleep in.

Saturday we spent what little money we had left, and came home. Saturday afternoon we put up the Christmas tree, and Sunday we decorated it. Mary had a blast putting the ornaments on the tree, and she loves to cuddle with me on the couch and just look at the tree.

Monday was skating again, and Mary continued to be happy just standing on the ice, thank you very much.

Today we got the pictures that were taken by the photographer. They're stunning - take a look!

Brrr x 2

2007-11-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Day too of the cold snap. Yes, I definitely remember why I left this province, and living on the edge of a small town with nothing but bald prairie to stop (hah!) the wind....well....ick. Why on earth does anyone live here? I watch my poor birds and I can't believe they don't just turn into little feathered blocks of ice. It boggles my mind that the little bastards can survive at minus 30 now and thirty above in the summer.

Today was a relatively lazy day. I didn't bake anything as I still have lots of brioche and corn bread that I need to get through. Mary is helping, she loves my baking. I did go through all the baby clothes and put everything under 9 month sizes away, and I pulled all the 12 month stuff out of boxes. Holy crap that baby is huge! I weighed her on the scale today by weighing myself without and then with her. According to my scale she is now 19 lbs. She's still 2 weeks away from 6 months, and she's the same size as Mary was when she was 11 months old...and we thought that Mary was big then too!

Skating went a bit better today. The other mothers joke about her guarding the circle, because she just stands there, on the edge of one of the circles in the ice and refuses to move. Today the teacher (I learned today that her official title is coach, but it seems a little ridiculous for a 3 year old to have a coach, don't you think?) actually convinced her to lift one of her feet off the ice for a second. Only one, mind you, and she wasn't thrilled about it, but she did lift it. It's a start. I felt kind of bad because the teacher (coach) has to spend so much time with Mary, but I spoke to her about it and she doesn't mind. She said that as long as Mary talks about skating and likes coming to keep brining her. So, I will do just that. Next lesson is on Monday, maybe she will lift the other foot!

I'm not going to be in Edmonton for Christmas (damn it), but when I do come visit I'll make sure to bake up something special to share with everyone! Maybe I'll make a brioche loaf, oops, sorry Goody, I didn't mean to offend your American sensibilities...I'll bake up some "Freedom Bread." Hey, how do you tell the difference between French Bread and Brioche? Isn't it all Freedom Bread?

The reason I am so fat

2007-11-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is what I do with my life:

Brioche. It isn't lovely, kinda looks like malformed breasts, but boy does it taste good! With four eggs, lots of milk and sugar, it's rich and heavenly. I suspect it would have looked better had I not forgotten the egg wash before putting it in the stove.

Six "mini" cornbread loaves. Yeah, they're small, but not what I would call mini by any means. Again, they taste heavenly, especially fresh out of the oven.

Sugar cookies I made in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Oh, they're good, and addictive.

My nicest looking loaf of bread yet. Dijon Honey bread with thyme and oregano. It is fantastic for ham sandwiches I've been told. Ian liked it, but it's not my favourite.

So, there you have it. Today I can't really get out. With the temperature at -20 plus 60 km/hour winds, well, it's damn cold out. Too cold for the girls, and too cold for me. I went out this morning to feed the birds and after 2 minutes my fingers were too frozen to open the door when I wanted to come back in. I remember now why I left Saskatchewan.

Winter

2007-11-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yikes. It looks like winter has joined us here in Milestone for real today. Brrrr. It's cold, bloody windy, and snowing today. My poor sparrows and doves look extremely cold out there today.

The weekend went well. The Riders won the Grey Cup (Yay!). I made pizza for us to eat during the game. We had pondered ordering in, but instead I found a recipe for pizza dough. My pizza was superior in every way to restaurant stuff and altogether cost a fraction of what it would have had we ordered in. I'll definitely be doing that again!

Rico drove out to visit us on Friday, and that was fantastic. It was great to see him and to actually have someone other than each other to talk too. I was awfully sad to see him go, but he sure lifted our spirits while he was here!

Other than that there isn't much to report since my last update, so here, look at pictures instead!

I made fresh french bread for Rico's visit on Friday. It turned out really well, although it did split down the side.

I'm a Superstar!

2007-11-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that I read for a part in the local theatre company Monday evening? Well, I did, and today I got a call from the director. They offered me the part of Carol, the eldest of four girls, recovering alcoholic, Chartered accountant, bitter spinster. It's funny, of all the characters in the play I liked Carol the least, and I wasn't able to identify with her in the slightest. Ah well, I guess a challenge is a good thing, right? We have another meeting tonight and I'll be getting the full script. The play runs the first two weeks in April, with a competition in North Battleford happening the week after Easter. I'm still a little shocked that I got a part at all, let alone a relatively major parts (not that there are many minor parts in a play with only 8 characters in total).

Okay, Frances is howling, she's probably flipped over onto her belly again. She works so hard to get there, and then is filled with rage when she succeeds. She hates being on her belly.

Marshmallow Creme

2007-11-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

So, this recipe for one of the many homemade Christmas gifts that I am making called for something called marshmallow creme. I couldn't find it anywhere, and I have no clue what it is, so I looked it up on line and learned that it is something almost exclusively American. So, I did what any determined gift maker would do and I found a recipe on how to make it myself. Do you know what is in marshmallow creme? I do, it's sugar in several forms, a few egg whites and a dash of vanilla. Anyways, the recipe I found made way more of the stuff than I needed. I now have a litre of marshmallow creme languishing in my fridge. Anyone have ideas of what I could do with the stuff?

Valuable Lessons

2007-11-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

How do you like the new colours? I decided to switch from pink to green in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders. For those of you who care, the Riders are on their way to the Grey Cup, for those of you who don't, well, fine then. Never Mind.

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. Ian was strapping Mary into the van so we could head off to the rink for Mary's skating lesson, and he was being pretty feeble and taking a long time. Mary was muttering to herself as she often does, and at one point she sighed, looked at Ian and said "Oh Jesus Daddy." Ian just about choked from fighting his laughter, and I was mortified. You see, I couldn't blame that one on Ian's foul mouth at all, Mary was channeling me in a terrifying way. I don't even realize when I'm saying it sometimes, but "Oh Jesus" Is my curse of choice. When Mary's being bad I often say "Aw, Jesus Mary!" So, It's my fault. I told my Mum, and she mentioned that when I was that age my favourite thing to say was "Goddamn it!" Anyways, the lesson I learned - watch your mouth around 3 year olds.

Skating is still going surprisingly well. Mary talks about it all the time, and we have to drag her off the ice. It's funny though, her instructor told me yesterday that Mary is very quiet and serious. I guess she hasn't said one word to anyone in the course of her lessons so far. It's like the ice sucks the voice out of her, and the minute her skates are off she turns back into a chatterbox. I do know that she likes it because every time we go to leave the rink it's a fight, and all she'll say is "I stay here Mummy!"

Frances is good. She started rolling over the other day, and after a few hours of practicing hard she now has rolling from her back to her belly down pat. Unfortunately she hasn't figured out how to get back to her back, and she gets mighty pissed off about 2 minutes after rolling over. So, we flip her back onto her back, and 5 minutes later she's on her belly again. She's been much nicer to be around for the last week now too. Nowhere near as much screaming, she's laughing at everything, and in one day she cut down the puking by more than half! She still doesn't have much of a personality, but I can certainly see it developing.

Oh, and as a final note, Lady Myke finally had her baby! Yay! It seemed like she had been pregnant forever, and it's finally over.

She Skates!

2007-11-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

Hmm. It would seem that I've been lollyblogging again. It's not a bad thing though, I've just been too busy to come here and moan about how miserable my life is.

Things are going pretty well, I think. This week Mary started her skating lessons, and they are going amazingly well. We had a bit of a hitch at the first one on Monday as the cheap WalMart skates we bought her were, well, cheap. She couldn't stand in them on dry ground, let alone ice, they just didn't give her the support she needed. So yesterday we went to a used skate shop, picked out a pair of incredibly cute little figure skates, and after trying them on and discovering the big difference, we bought them. Unlike Monday when Ian had to drag Mary around on the ice himself, today I just dropped her off in the care of one of the young helpers and headed off to the warmth to watch. Mary did so well, I can't even express how proud I am of her. She stood on the ice instead of laying there bawling (like some of the other students), she listened to the instructor and her assistants, and by the end of the half hour actually managed to move around on the ice a little by herself. Soon she'll be a better skater than I am, although it's not hard to be better than me at that sport (or any sport, really). She had lots of fun, she didn't shed a tear and I had to bribe her off the ice.

Yesterday we went off to the city so I could get my eyes checked. It went well, though it took forever, and nothing was resolved. It turns out the doctor I had is related to my favourite Veterinarian, Dr. Love (not his real name, and you have to say it in a pornographic sort of way to get it right). Anyways, he is sending me off to an Opthamologist because I saw squiggly lines when I should have seen straight. All I know is that he put nasty drops in my eyes that made my pupils swallow the iris, shone incredibly bright lights in my eyes, and I couldn't see my grocery list when we went shopping.

I know I've been busy doing something, but for the life of me I can't remember what else I've done. I have put together some more stuff for Christmas gifts, I've made bread. I learned that I cannot make meringue to save my life, my poor husband loves lemon meringue pies, and he will never get one made by me.

Man I'm exhausted. You'd think that I was the one on the ice today. Well, I'd better go get supper started so it's ready for my loving husband when he gets home! Aren't I a good little housewife? :)

Lest We Forget

2007-11-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

In Flanders Fields
Written by John McCrae in 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Long Day

2007-11-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today Ian is working 13 hours. Sigh. I feel kind of bad for him, although it was his choice to work so much, but I feel worse for me. As crazy as he often drives me, he is my only adult contact, I get lonely and depressed if he's gone too long.

Mary is sleeping right now. It's 5:30. She fell asleep at 3, and at 5 I tried to wake her to get her to eat supper, but no dice. Pity for her, supper was really good tonight. I ate it and drank a pint of dry cider all by myself. I don't know when she'll actually wake up, but I suspect I won't get to shower tonight after the girls go to sleep like I planned. I doubt Mary'll sleep before 9.

We bought Mary skates yesterday! She's starting skating lessons at the local rink on Monday, it should be interesting. The woman I spoke too told me that if Mary despises it after 3 classes they will refund our money. We are getting a family membership to the rink, I think I may take up curling, and Ian wants to play hockey. Thankfully my father is pitching in, we'd never be able to afford the rink fee's without him.

Frances is miserable. I'd better go.

Goodnight Sweetheart

2007-11-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've created a problem. A serious problem. I don't know how to fix it. A while back I started unlocking Mary's bedroom door before going to bed myself (yes, I lock my child in her room at night. I am a bad bad mother). She would wake up every morning between 6 and 7 and wander over to our room, climb into bed and snuggle with me for an hour or so before we got up. It's nice when she does that, I like it. Then last week she woke up in the middle of the night and came sobbing to our room. So, I pulled her into bed to sleep with us. Every night since that night she has come to our bed at some point in the middle of the night. I don't generally mind, but it's getting a little out of control. Last night at about 3 am she came to our bed, but instead of going back to sleep she lay there between Ian and I, kicking and flailing and occasionally exclaiming "Ah! Aaaaahhhhh!" or perhaps "Mummy. Mummy sleeping. Night Mummy! Cookies please?" After about an hour of this behaviour I had enough and brought her back to her bed. She flipped. After about an hour of coaxing and singing her songs at 5 AM she finally went to sleep and stayed in her own bed till we got up for the day. Today she is exhausted and I am exhausted, and I'm dreading having to break the habit that I have inadvertently encouraged.

I called the eye doctors office to make an appointment for Ian and I, and we have to wait over a month! I was some annoyed. I told the girl after the appointments were made that I was having some problems with my eyes, and when she found out that I have a black spot in my vision, she bumped me up to next week. I would say sweet, but by her reaction I think that my eye spots may be more than just a little annoying. Sigh. The last thing I need is to have a serious problem with my eyes. There's enough on my plate to keep me miserable without that.

We voted in the provincial election today. When I went in the woman who took my name was very excited to meet me. She welcomed me to Milestone, told me that she understands how hard it is to move to a small town and actually meet people, and gave me several phone numbers of people to call about the mom and tots group as well as skating classes for Mary. I'm off to call them right away. Wish me luck! I may just make a friend in this stupid province yet!

I Need It

2007-11-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

So, I'm reading these books, a series by the author Michelle West called the Sun Sword. I've finished the first three of the series and enjoyed them greatly. I went online to see if I could order books 4, 5, and 6. Five and Six are available, but four...ah four...you can't get it. Not for under sixty bucks for a stinking paperback copy. What the hell? So, if anyone out there has the Sun Sword book 4, Sea of Sorrows, by Michelle West, I'd love to borrow it. I promise not to sell it on Ebay.

Sick

2007-11-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we're sick again. Got a problem with that? Mary has spent the last 4 nights in our bed. She goes to sleep in her own bed but in the middle of the night she stumbles over to our bedroom and crawls in between Ian and I. Surprisingly, I don't really mind having her there, so I don't make a fuss about it. She's been pretty crabby for the last couple of days, and now she has some bowel issues, the poor wee thing. She's miserable, poopy and feverish.

Other than Mary being crabby the weekend went well. Ian was off all weekend and it was nice to have him around, even if we didn't get much done. He was going to finish cleaning up the leaves in the yard, but it was so incredibly windy (welcome to Saskatchewan!) that he couldn't really do anything. I baked bread, cookies and cinnamon buns. Friday I got out by myself and picked up some groceries and a new car seat for Frances. She's already grown too big for the infant bucket seat that we had, so we had to get a great big convertible one. How I long for the days of my childhood when carseats were just baskets that you plunked the baby into, and you could hold the baby in your lap if you really wanted too. I'll tell you a secret, on our way home from the town Foul Supper, that's exactly what I did. Rather than fight to get Frances into her stupid car seat, I just held her. I'm a bad mother. :)

Nothing much else has happened since my last post. Mary's worn her halloween costume every single day. It's windy and cold. Frances ate an entire jar of baby food, and then downed 8 more ounces of formula. She's going to be eating steak and chips before long. I tried to make friends with the lady across the street by bringing over cinnamon buns, but her little boy wouldn't get her, he wanted to talk to me his self, and when he was done he just shut the door. Sigh. Who needs friends when you have squirrels, right?

Don't Make Me Go....

2007-11-01T16:25:00.000-06:00

To the potty. This morning when I woke up I decided that we were going to start potty training in earnest. No more pull-ups, no more messing around. So, I put Mary in Big Girl Panties. They were very nice, and we spent a great deal of time admiring them and discussing what it means to wear Big Girl Panties. Every hour I took Mary to the potty where we sat, sang songs, and discussed the fish on the shower curtain. About 5 minutes after one of our potty breaks I heard Mary start crying in the basement. I knew what had happened, she had "made water" and discovered the down side of Big Girl Panties. I comforted her, cleaned her up and told her that next time she should try to get on the potty. Ten minutes later, more crying. Repeat comforting. Twenty minutes later there was a heartbroken wail from the basement, and Mary started sobbing in earnest and saying "BAD GIRL!" I cleaned her up, cuddled her and put her into pull ups. Obviously she's just not ready, and I guess she was feeling pressured or something. I've never called her bad girl for accidents, but she was clearly upset, and I don't really want to keep up with the potty training if she feels so stressed about it.

Halloween was fun, I guess. Mary wore her Elephant costume and we visited about 6 houses. Every time someone opened the door Mary would barge right in, ignoring the candy. I guess she couldn't figure out why we would knock on all these peoples doors and not go in for a visit. She took far more pleasure greeting the "boys" (everyone is either a Mummy, a Daddy, a Grandma, a grandpa or a boy) that came to our door, I think.

Mary the ambivalent elephant. She cheered up a bit once we got outside.

The shirt says "Your Misery Makes Me So Happy." She's my little life and soul sucking vampire. Luckily she's cute.

And here is why that dress is so very appropriate. Every time I put her down she makes that face...

Give Me The Time of Day

2007-10-31T08:50:00.000-06:00

My favourite time of day is at 6:45 AM or so. It's when Frances usually gets up (if we are lucky). I'm not a morning person, I never have been, but having children has forced early mornings on me, and I'm really starting to enjoy them. Anyways, Frances wakes up around the same time as Ian does when he's starting work at 8. He will go bring her to me, and I change her diaper and give her a bottle. She's always incredibly cute and cheerful in the mornings, and it's the best time to cuddle with her. After getting some cuddles in and eating, I put her back in her crib for a while. She's always happy to go back (nothing really makes her unhappy in the mornings) and she looks at her mobile, plays with her toys and chats with herself. I climb back into bed, and if things are timed right, Mary gets up about 5 minutes later. She runs into my room, carrying Lightening McQueen and White Owl, and scrambles into bed with me. After getting everyone organized, the stuffed toys under the blankets, she snuggles beside me while I doze for another 45 minutes. At around 8 she starts saying "G'up, Mummy, g'up!" If I don't get up right away she opens the curtains, pulls the blankets off of me, and heads into the kitchen and starts moving chairs around. I don't know what it is about our morning routine that I love so much, but I really get miserable if it's interrupted.

Last night when we were putting Frances to bed Mary just had to be a part of it. She "helped" me carry the baby to her room, gave her hugs and kisses, and "helped" me put the baby in her crib. As I was leaving the room she lingered there for a moment by the crib watching Frances, and when I told her we had to go, she said "Night night, Frances. Sweet dreams, I love you." My heart melted. It was the very first time that Mary has ever said I love you with any real meaning and without a great deal of prompting. It's a lot easier for me to like Frances when I see how much she and Mary love each other. It's amazing, when Frances is grumpy and crying, all it takes is a smile from Mary to make her happy.

I've decided to try to blog at least once every couple of days. Even if it's just a bit of Mummy blogging (this is a mummy blog, after all), it makes me feel better to organize my thoughts and put them down. Today I am going to call a 1-800 number that came with Ian's work health plan. I had forgotten all about it until I was obsessively rearranging the magnets on the fridge yesterday, and I realized that it is there for exactly the type of problems that I'm having. Wish me luck, hopefully talking to someone who doesn't know me at all will help a bit.

Sooooooo Cute!

2007-10-30T09:12:00.000-06:00

So, on Saturday Mary and I got our hair cut. She went first and it was very traumatic for all involved, especially the poor young thing who was trying to give Mary a fashionable cut. The girl kept trying to cut it "properly" rather than just snipping straight and quick, and Mary kept screaming, bawling and shoving the scissors and comb away. It was eventually accomplished and all the hair that kept falling in Mary's face has been transformed into incredibly cute, thick bangs. When I was getting my hair cut Ian, Frances and Mary wandered around the mall. They came back just as the girl was finishing up and Mary came right up to me, her beautiful blue eyes wide with amazement, and she said "Mummy! Oh, Mummy is SOOOO CUTE!!" It was so adorable I could have puked. Unfortunately the haircut is so bad that it is taking all my willpower not to take Ian's razor and shave all my hair off to start again. Ugh.

Monday

2007-10-29T13:14:00.000-06:00

Is it Monday already? Is it almost the end of October already? You certainly wouldn't know it by the weather, it's another gorgeous day outside. When Frances wakes up from her nap I am determined to take the girls for a long walk...This is Saskatchewan after all, the weather will change in a heartbeat and snow will fly soon I'm sure. The town has a snow fence up at the end of our street (less than a block away) to keep the snow drifting out in the open prairie, rather than in our driveway.

I'm still not feeling quite right in the head. Last week did get a bit better, but I'm still scaring myself. I may go to the doctor about it, I really don't know what else to do. When I'm not weeping or baking like a crazy person, I worry....not just normal worrying, but really bizarre things, overwhelming panicky things that take my breath away and make it so I can't sleep at night. I worry that Ian will be in a terrible accident on the way home from work, I worry that my father will die, I worry that my mother will die, I dwell on the terror of me dying and not getting to see the girls grow up (that one really makes me sick), I worry that Mary will fall down the stairs and break her neck to the point that sometimes I won't let her go down the stairs by herself. I don't worry about Frances, but I do worry about the fact that I don't worry enough about Frances. When we go for walks I'm afraid that Mary will get hit by a car, I don't walk near the tracks anymore (even though Railway Ave is a decent distance from the actual tracks) because I'm terrified that Mary will escape and get smucked by a train. I worry that I have cancer, I worry that there's something wrong with my womanly bits (for good reason that I won't go into here). I worry that I'm going to get pregnant again which, along with my womanly bit issues affects Ian a great deal. I know that I'm not being rational, I know that it doesn't make sense, but once I start I get so wrapped up that I can hardly breathe. I worry that if I go to the doctor he'll put me on anti-somethings, and I had such a terrible experience with Effexor 5 years ago that the thought of going through that terrifies me.

Ahem. Anyways. Here are some pictures.

My closest and only friend in MIlestone, Mr. Squirrel. When I took this picture I got close enough that I reached out and touched his tail.

My girls hanging out on the couch. Frances is really turning into a beautiful looking baby.

My first ever pie. I learned very quickly that I despise making pastry, but boy was it heavenly. The apple and blueberry filling was delicious, and the crust was flaky and melted in your mouth.

Frances in one of our new, incredibly cheap, Walmart rocking chairs in the basement.

Mary and Ian with our Jack'O'Lanterns that we carved last night. Not the most artistically talented family, but we had fun.

Spooky...

Blue

2007-10-24T10:59:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a particularly bad day. I won't go into it too much here because I know I'll sound crazy and desperate for attention and pity. I'm feeling a little crazy and out of control in a very bad way to be honest, and I'm not really sure what to do about it. Once I figure it out, maybe I'll let you know, maybe I won't. Needless to say, I'm lonely, unhappy, and bordering on scaring myself (check that, I crossed the scaring myself line yesterday). Certain people in my life aren't helping by dumping their own issues on my door, making me feel like even worse of a mother than I already do (which is pretty awful, given the thoughts I've been having about the newest member of our family), and essentially blaming me and my children for their marital problems.

By the way, I hope no one who does take anti-depressants was offended by my last post (Mary). I know that those drugs do help a lot of people. My problem is when you go to the doctor, say "I'm feeling a little sad" and they immediately put you on powerful, mind altering drugs. I also don't like the trend of medicating pre-schoolers for things like depression, ADHD, and bi-polar disorder. In my opinion, toddlers are by nature bi-polar, hyper, and attention deficient, and they shouldn't be drugged for any of those things.

So, I haven't much else to say. This past week I have baked more cinnamon buns, a beautiful apple blueberry pie (I despise making pastry, but man I'm good at it!), graham crackers for Mary and today I will bake some more bread to go with the beef barley stew I'm making for supper tonight. I think this weekend I will start baking sugar cookies to send to Ian's work, to give to the many families with kids that live on our block, and to stuff my sorrows with. Sugar cookies have to be better than the bottle of coconut rum in the liquor cabinet, right?

Equal (Rant)

2007-10-21T10:09:00.000-06:00

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal."

Have you read the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut? If you haven't, you should (you can find it here http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html). It's scary in its plausibility.

It comes to mind because this morning on CBC radio the Sunday Edition host was interviewing a man named Christopher Lane who has just had a book published. His book is called "Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became an Illness" and it's all about the mental health industry. Yes, I say industry, because that's what it is, an industry run by the drug companies. Did you know that if you are nervous about talking in front of a group of people, that if you don't like the idea of eating by yourself in a restaurant, if your hands tremble a little when you meet new people, or if you don't like using public washrooms you are sick in the head? You likely have Social Anxiety Disorder, but never fear, all you have to do is take the drug Paxil or one of these powerful anti-psychotics (or possibly a combination) and you'll be all better. Never mind the side effects, just take your drugs and you can be "normal." Oh, and don't forget to drug your child if they show any anti-social behaviour too. There's all sorts of antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs out there that you can use to alter your child's developing personality and central nervous system. Don't worry if you come down with the newest "disorder" in the books, Apathy disorder. It's actually caused by the drugs that you're taking to keep "normal," but they're developing new drugs to take for that one too. Good God, no, don't stop taking those likely unnecessary antidepressants, we'll just add on another drug to combat your drug induced apathetic haze, that way the drug companies will make twice as much off one person! Oh, you're a woman too? Well, if you have a period, you likely have Pre-Menstrual dysphoric disorder. It used to be relatively rare, but the drug companies decided that PMS would be a good thing to make money off of, so they've changed the diagnoses criteria to be identical. We'll just give you yet another antidepressant to deal with those ugly female hormones (and make more money for the drug companies too).

Yes, there are people out there who are mentally ill, people who do need these drugs. Not everyone does though, and the way things are going people who aren't drugged for something are going to be a minority. Why does every personality quirk and emotion have to be a disease, and what exactly is this "normal" that everyone is striving to reach by drugging themselves? You know, sadness is normal, anxiety is normal, a little fear, well that's normal too. We live in a scary world, bad things happen that we should feel sad and fearful about. Anxiety isn't always a bad thing, it's a natural thing and it can keep us safe. Being shy and bookish is not a mental disorder, it's the way I am, and the way millions of people throughout history have been. Yes, being a shy, awkward, bookish teenager was miserable, but I wouldn't take it back in a million years. I wouldn't want to have been drugged to be more "normal," those years helped form me into the person I am today, a person that I actually like and am proud of most of the time.

I'm trying to judge when the best time for me to pack up my family and move to a remote commune will be. We'll be the whacko's in the bush who refuse to drug their children, who refuse to be "normal." Anyone want to come with me? I seem to be able to make a mean loaf of bread...

Huh, who knew I could rant so early in the morning?

Busy

2007-10-19T12:01:00.000-06:00

I'm giving up on clever titles. I just can't be bothered.

Mary's toe is doing well, though I'm quite positive that the nail will fall off. It was pretty ugly, red and swollen for a while, and although the swelling has gone down, the toenail is a dark blackish purple and she won't let me touch it (can you blame her?) Anyways, she's doing well, and keeping busy.

Frances had her second set of vaccines on Wednesday, and boy was that miserable. She dealt very well with the pokes, but as the day went on she got more and more miserable and feverish, the poor little thing. She recovered nicely by Thursday morning though.

Tonight Ian and I are going to a Medieval feast in Moose Jaw of all places. I'm really looking forward to it, this will be the first time that Ian and I have been out together without the girls since mid-July.

This week I baked:

More of Goody's wonderful oat bread,
2 loaves of old fashioned rye bread,
a large banana coffee cake,
2 dozen lemon honey cookies,
2 loaves of sourdough,
and I'm in the process of baking cinnamon buns.

Diet? pfft. The good news is that I get lots of exercise kneading the dough.

Shoot Me

2007-10-15T20:21:00.000-06:00

I am a terrible mother. At least, that's how I feel right now.

So, I was sitting at the computer in the big wooden chair when Mary came up to visit me. She was feeling peevish today, and she whimpered to be picked up. So, I moved the chair back a bit so I could do just that. As I moved the chair, I heard and felt a distinct crunchy sound. As soon as I heard it I just closed my eyes and uttered a soft prayer "Dear God, please don't let that have been what I think it was." I then looked at Mary, whose eyes were wide and filled with tears, her mouth wide open in a silent shriek of pain, and her lips blue from holding the silent shriek for so long without breathing. I quickly grabbed her and pulled her up into my lap, and the nail of her second toe was already turning black, and blood was leaking from beneath it. She started to scream in earnest, and I rushed her up to the bathroom to tend her wound, babbling apologies the whole way. She screamed for a good long time, and let me tell you, while I once believed things would be better when she could talk, it's not. There's nothing worse than your baby sobbing "Mummy, it hurts!" over and over again, knowing that you were the one that hurt her, and not being able to do anything about it. She seems to be recovering, though she won't put her toe on the ground which results in a hobbling pathetic sort of limp, which dashes my heart into even smaller pieces every time I see it. She will occasionally whimper softly "Mummy, I need cuddles...it hurts." She's in bed now, but she milked every ounce she could get out of my guilty conscience before snuggling up with Lightening McQueen and going to sleep.

Other than attempting to rip my daughters toe nails off, I had a decent weekend. Yesterday DeeDee was in town visiting her folks and we went over for a short visit which turned into a 6 hour visit complete with an excellent supper. Her Mum is a very neat woman, her house is jam packed full of niknacks and Mrs. DeeDee loved Mary and Frances so much that she made me promise to come back. It was nice to spend time with a friend (sweet jesus I miss having friends) and there is even photographic evidence of DeeDee holding an infant! Today I made jelly. Lots and lots of jelly. Mint, apple and cranberry merlot. My mincemeat is soaking in its own juices, and all I have to do is get my act together and make a tonne of salsa or chutney and Christmas gifts will be done.

Malaria

2007-10-13T12:35:00.000-06:00

Oops. It's been a while again, hasn't it? I don't even have no internet access as an excuse this time.

It's been a busy week. Thanksgiving weekend was lovely. I cooked supper for my Dad and his wife on Saturday, and it went surprisingly well. I made turkey (of course) with stuffing, potatoes, broccoli, buns and a pie for desert. Then Sunday we had a repeat at Dad's place, without the home made buns and pie. On Monday I made the worlds grossest turkey soup which we ate for supper that night, and I threw away the next day. I put too much rice in the soup and it was more of a slimy turkey risotto glop instead. I've never liked turkey soup at the best of times, and it was just too much for me to take.

Wednesday Dad came out with a curtain rod for our living room, and now we have even more privacy! Yay! Curtains in our bedroom and the living room, and soon there will be curtains for the girls rooms. Mum is going around to all the East Indian fabric stores in Abbotsford to find beautiful, exotic fabrics to make curtains out of.

I've been putting bird seed out lately, and I am obsessed with the giant flocks of birds that hang around the house all day (so, as you might have guessed, are the cats). We have all sorts of neat birds, apparently we are on a migratory path and just about everyone stops by. We had a couple of blue jays, a whole pile of juncos, hundreds of sparrows, red poles, yellow breasted nuthatches, downey flickers, ring-necked doves...and more, but I don't know all their names. My Christmas list is getting longer and longer with the addition of all sorts of baking and cooking implements, and now bird books.

The other day we got word that my uncle who just went to Tanzinia to teach has come down with Malaria. He was taking his meds, but somehow managed to pick the disease up within a month or so of getting to Africa. We were quite worried about him, but it turns out that of the different types of malaria, he has the "best" one you can get. He's already out of the hospital and getting better. My dad took anti-malarial drugs when he was in Africa, and he said that he was almost willing to risk getting the disease rather than take the drugs. I guess the side effects are horrible and frightening. They actually think that the drug Mefloquine has much to do with the Canadian soldiers in Rwanda torturing a young boy to death and the subsequent dissolution of the Airborne.

Anyways, other than that, I've not been up to much. The girls and I are hanging out, I'm still baking like a crazy person. Last night I made honey-lemon cookies with frosting in the middle, and today I am in the process of baking a recipe I got from Goody's cooking blog for oatmeal bread. I tried out my Grandmothers cinnamon bun recipe, but it didn't work out too well, I'll have to try again.

Save Me From Myself (Updated!)

2007-10-04T10:37:00.000-06:00

Please...

I have entered a zone of hyper-domesticity. It's alarming, seriously alarming. Since I got back from Edmonton I have baked 40 cookies, made a huge batch of clam chowder (the good tomatoey stuff, not the nasty white stuff) half of which is now in our increasingly packed freezer (Santa, I want a big deepfreeze for Christmas, okay?), baked a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin, cooked supper last night, made up my husband's lunch for work, turned 6 lbs of apples into some rockin' spiced applesauce, and I am now in the process of baking bread. I've also somehow managed to invite my dad and his wife over for Thanksgiving supper which we will be having on Saturday. My plan is to make a turkey, steamed veggies, mashed potatoes (Ian's favourite) another pumpkin pie, and home made parker house rolls. Of course depending on how this experiment with bread goes today we may not be having fresh rolls after all. I've cleaned the upstairs of the house, done 6 loads of laundry, scrubbed the bathroom, and this afternoon my plan is to clean the outside windows and bake orange scones...and I'll do it too. This weekend I'm going to make up a giant batch of Mincemeat, it'll have a couple of months to soak in rum and get really yummy before Christmas. Oh, and I'm also stitching stockings for the girls and getting started on Mary's Halloween costume.

I've barely watched any TV at all, which is really a fabulous thing. I love having the TV downstairs, I get so much more done when it isn't there sucking the attention and life right out of me. Now, I get up in the morning, turn on the radio and listen to CBC-1 while I drink my tea. I hang out with the girls for a while, read Mary a few books, and then get started with my day. Mary watches a movie or two (her current favourites are a Winnie the Pooh movie, Little Bear, and Alladin. I try to get out for a walk in the afternoon, but I'm often too busy to bother. I do of course watch my shows in the evenings, although I'm not terribly impressed with them so far. House is kind of blah for some reason, Grey's Anatomy is getting annoying, ER is not great, but it's still the best of the bunch. I started watching Reaper on the advice of a fabulous woman in Edmonton and it's pretty great, I watched the series premier of The Tudors on CBC, and while the costuming is fabulous and Henry VIII is hawt, I found it a little slow and full of boobies (beautiful boobies, but still a little much). Private Practice was a complete bomb in my opinion and Dirty Sexy Money is moderately obnoxious. I've decided to avoid reality TV all together, including America's Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars, mostly because I'm trying to cut down my TV viewing to only two nights a week. The other nights I intend to spend with Ian after the girls go to sleep. Even if we can't get out, we can still talk, play cards, and do stuff together at home.

For those of you who bake bread, I have a question. Why? Holy crap is it hard work. I tried to mix it up using my electric mixer, but it just balled up and climbed up the mixer deelies. How can I avoid this problem from happening? I'm not strong enough to mix it by hand, and I don't really know how else I can do it. Also, kneading the dough sucks. I worked up a crazy sweat doing that part. I hope my bread turns out okay, but it's my first time ever attempting bread, so I won't be heartbroken if it's a flop.

My weekend in Edmonton was fabulous, even if I didn't get a chance to see everyone I wanted to see. We were busy constantly from the minute we got to town till the moment we left. I had an awfully hard time at a few points, things aren't working out as we had planned/hoped here in Saskatchewan for reasons that I'm not going to go into on a public blog (if you're curious, feel free to email me), so going back to the city that I love and all the people that I adore was tough to take. I spent a good part of the weekend very close to tears. Oh well, I keep telling myself that I love my house (which I do) and it's fantastic to be debt free (which it is), but I'm still desperately lonely and isolated. I miss my husband, we haven't been out together without the children since July. That's a long time, and it doesn't look to change any time soon. The loneliness could possibly be a reason for the frantic domesticity, don't you think?

Mary's preschool is still not running, which is really unfortunate. I've heard no word on the teacher, which is likely bad news. If it weren't West Nile then I suspect she would be back at work by now. I feel bad for Mary, I need to find her some friends here. She was so thrilled to see Jonah when we were in Edmonton, the both of them shrieked and ran around together the whole time we were there. The only time they were quiet was when they got into the water that Jonah's daddy had set aside for his fish tanks. When it was time to go, they hugged like crazy, and Mary kept following Jonah around giving him kisses. We had to drag her from his side and into the van.

Anyways, it's just about time to punch my dough, I guess I'd best wrap this up. Here's a picture of Mary and Ian enjoying some imaginary soup at my Dad's place to take you out.

Update

Hey! Here's a picture of my bread! Looks nice, doesn't it? I'll wait till supper to see if it tastes as good as it looks.

They're out to get me

2007-09-27T16:07:00.000-06:00

Wow, I just had a serious paranoid/conspiracy theory moment. I was listening to the CBC news and they are running a story about some research that "proves" that women who drink even a glass of any type of alcohol a day are at higher risk for breast cancer. For just a moment I thought that I might have been transported to a dystopian world a la Handmaids Tale. It just seems fishy to me, you know? How long till we hear some research saying that women who work out of the home have a higher risk of breast cancer? Or women who drive cars have a higher risk of cancer....It would be easy enough to take advantage of our pathological fear of breast cancer, wouldn't it?

And then I came to my senses. That'll never happen, right?

Rude people

2007-09-26T18:35:00.000-06:00

I'm getting awfully tired of rude people. Today I went to the big Fabricland in Regina to buy everything I need for Mary's halloween costume. I had to drag Mary and Frances with me, so I had no hands, as one was holding the end of Mary's leash, and the other was holding on to the car seat containing my giant, extremely heavy baby. I got no assistance from the women who worked there, one even turned away from me when I started to ask for help finding what I needed. I was horrified and close to tears when I finally dragged everyone out of there. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, it's the only fabric store in the city and I'm not going back, and Walmart doesn't have any fake fur. I guess I'll have to buy a costume ready made for her...or maybe I can look at the fabric stores in Edmonton this weekend and pick up what I need there.

We inherited a little fishbowl from my step-brother, D, last week. He accidentally dumped his fish down the drain while cleaning out the bowl, and was so devastated that he couldn't even imagine getting a new fish. While we were in the city today I picked up a couple of 39 cent goldfish to put in there, and Mary has already fallen in love. She calls the fish Nemo, and Nemo's Daddy. They are orange and white goldfish, and one is bigger than the other, so I suppose they do look like Nemo and his dad. Hopefully I won't kill them too quickly, although we are going away this weekend, and I have my doubts they will survive. I'm going to ask the little girl across the way to pop by from time to time to give them a little food, and hopefully that will keep them alive.

I had tea with my neighbours, Teenie and Floyd yesterday. They are a very nice, very old couple who have lived in Milestone for decades. They met when Floyd was sent to Edmonton with the air force during WW2 for training, fell in love and have been together ever since. They have 4 kids, 9 grandkids and a multitude of great-grandchildren. I wonder how many couples will have been together for as long as those two have in fifty years. Marriages don't seem to last like that any more, and it kind of makes me sad. Anyways, Mary had a wonderful time playing with toys that have seen more than 13 children over the last 50 years, and left calling Teenie Grandma. We have an open invitation to pop by any time for tea.

We also met a few more of our neighbours, and everyone seems very nice. The lady across the way is on the town council and involved in the towns dinner theatre. Apparently the town is quite well known for their dinner theatre, and they are always searching for new blood. She asked us if we curled (no, but I'd like to learn) or were interested in Drama at all, and was thrilled to hear that we were. While I doubt I will read for a part, I doubt I'm good enough, I would love to help out back stage or something. Anything to get me out of the house and involved in the community is good to me.

I took Mary to her preschool on Monday, and no one showed up. I assumed that the teacher had called in sick, and no one let me know because it was our first day and we aren't registered yet. I was pretty damned disappointed though, and so was Mary. We tried again today, and once again no one showed. So, we walked home and I called the lady in charge of the whole thing, and asked what was up. I honestly thought that I had read something wrong, or misheard, and was showing up at the wrong time. Well, it turns out that the teacher is currently being tested for West Nile, and preschool is postponed indefinitely. yikes. Anyways, they have our phone number now, so when things start up again they'll give us a call. Good thing Mary has the fish to distract her, I hyped up going to school so much that it's all she talked about till we got them.

Why I'm Starving

2007-09-25T12:07:00.000-06:00

I'm famished right now, seriously. There are over a dozen big, beautiful, extremely tasty sugar cookies that I spent all day sunday baking up in my kitchen, but because they are worth 4 points (!) each, I can't eat them. Yes, I am counting points, I joined the cult called Weight Watchers. Last week I went to the doctor, mainly because my tailbone still hurts from my spill down the stairs back in April. The doctors advice was that I likely broke my tailbone, but there is nothing to be done, so I should get a cushion. I then mentioned the fact that I am fat, and she agreed. She said that there are drugs out there that she could prescribe, but they are very costly and don't really work. She weighed me, arranged for every type of blood test known to man, and told me to join Weight Watchers and come back to see her in two weeks. I really quite like her, and while the easy fix would be nice, if she had just written me a prescription and walked away, I don't know if I would have been happy. She seems genuinely concerned about me, and wants to help me loose the weight and be as healthy as possible.

After my first WW meeting yesterday, I hit WalMart before getting on the highway to come home. I needed to pick up some oil so Ian can muck around with the van, and I needed formula for the not-so-wee baby. As I was loading cases of formula into the cart, a real granola muncher wandered by with her baby, and came to a dead stop when she saw me. She proceeded to stand there as I grabbed the formula, shaking her head and clucking her tongue disapprovingly, all the while frowning angrily in my direction. At first I thought it was something else, after all, people can't seriously be that rude, right? But then, as I was walking past, she actually leaned forward to her baby, safely ensconced in it's incredibly expensive Eddie Bauer car seat, and stage whispered something about people feeding their babies poison, and only irresponsible mothers would consider not breast feeding. I was so stunned and angry, I was at a loss for words, and I just kept walking. I bumped into her in the craft aisle and she just sighed, looked into my cart again, and shook her head sadly. It took all my will power not to punch her in the nose. Which is why I am going to fail at this weight watchers thing, I've got no willpower left.

Anyways, while in the craft section at WalMart I picked up a pattern for a halloween costume. I bought a new sewing machine a few weeks, and I'm just itching to use it, so...we'll see how it goes. I'm not an experienced sewer, and this pattern seems a little tough, but I'm determined to try it out. Hopefully I won't end up having to take Mary out without a costume because I didn't get this one done. Here's a picture of the costume, I found a site where you can purchase the costumes for only $70 (no thanks).

Epic

2007-09-22T14:48:00.000-06:00

My giant baby had a diaper blow-out of epic proportions yesterday. I'm not exaggerating when I say there was poo from her nipples to her ankles, and it was not pleasant to clean up. Mary's running commentary was one of the things that made it slightly more tolerable..."Oh yuck! Baby poopy! Lots of poop! Poop on baby's jammies, baby's yellow jammies. Mummy wiping poop now. Wiping baby's belly. Frances poopy Mummy!" She talked about the poo for hours, and would get right in my face till I responded. There was a time I was concerned that she wasn't talking enough, and while she still isn't as advanced speech wise as some peoples children (V and Goody come to mind) I have no concerns about that any more.

This morning at about 3:30 Mary woke up and came running sobbing into our bedroom. I pulled her up into bed beside me and she immediately snuggled up saying "I want Mummy's bed now." I was more than happy to let her snuggle between Ian and I, in spite of the pointy elbows, knees, fingers and feet that fidgit and jab while she cuddles. I drew the line at the grinding of teeth though. There are many things on the "things that annoy Jennifer" list, and grinding teeth is very close to the top.

I baked sugar cookies this morning and they turned out pretty good. I burned the first batch (still getting used to the fancy new oven) but subsequent batches turned out much better. My next project is going to be to take on Goody's graham cracker recipe. Store bought graham wafers are the only cookies Mary gets on a regular basis, and wouldn't it be great to make my own instead of buying them in boxes?

Oh, by the way Lady Myke, I would be happy to get any advice in regards to potty training you might have. In fact, I'll take anyones advice on the matter. I may not follow it, but I'll be happy to hear it. To be honest, I think the major obstacle in the whole thing is me, I just don't feel like I have the time to sit Mary on the potty every hour till she catches on when I have Frances demanding so much of my time and energy.

Anyways, here are a couple of pictures of Mary's room. It's all done now, the new furniture in place, the pictures on the wall. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The pictures on her walls that you can see by the bed and dresser were actually my mothers, and they hung on the walls of her nursery when she was a baby almost 50 years ago. :)

Back online

2007-09-20T13:39:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone (if there is anyone still out there, of course),

It was a long and painful time without internet access, but this morning the people from Sasktel managed to take the time out of their busy schedules to push the button that they needed to push to enable us to get back on the web. I still cannot fathom why it took them a month to find the time to push that button, but oh well.

We are settling in well here in Milestone. It's a little harder for me, I think, as I am at home every day with the girls and I'm getting pretty lonely. Hopefully being online again will help combat that feeling of absolute isolation that comes with living in a small town and not knowing anyone at all.

Small town living is really quite nice, though it's not as easy to meet people as one might think. The people my age who live here have known each other all their lives, and it's hard to break in to a community like that. Last night I went to a pre-school meeting and met several other mothers of young children. While they were all really nice, I still felt a little lost and lonely, and left without really having made any friends. I think that I am going to try Mary in the preschool next week and see how she does though, so I'm glad I went to the meeting. Anyways, the town is nice, people are friendly enough, and I love being able to walk from one end of the town to the other without a whole lot of effort. Oh, and yesterday, someone left two pumpkins just sitting on my front step.

Frances and Mary are doing well enough. Frances is much more civil these days, and she seems to spend more time smiling than screaming now, thank God. Mary's skin is a mess once again, and we took her to a natropath and a dermatologist in the last month. The natropath gave us a bunch of suppliments (fish oils, magnesium) as well as a recipe for home made moisturizer (grape seed oil, vitamin E and oregano oil), which I have been using religiously. The dermatologist doesn't think that it is allergies, and prescribed a cream that is unfortunately not covered by the provincial drug plan because it is relatively new. It's going to cost us $85 every 2 weeks, but we are applying for Exception Drug Status, so hopefully the province will refund some of that. I gave her the first treatment of it today and already her skin feels softer. Mary is still resisting potty training, sigh, but I have hope. Today she ripped off her diaper after pooping copiously in it, sat on the potty (doing nothing, but commenting to me when I wandered by and spotted her sitting there pantless "I made water in it!") and then asked me to get her a new diaper. It was a bit of a panicky search through the house for the poopy diaper, but she had already put it in the garbage. Sometimes she's such a good girl...

We are all making the trek up to Edmonton next weekend, and I couldn't be more excited. We are staying at the Howard Johnson hotel, which has a swimming pool, and we are going to see people! I hope. Anyways, it's going to be so fun, I can't wait. My only concern is that I'm going to bawl like a baby when it's time to leave. I miss Edmonton so much, not just the people, although of course that's a big part, but the city itself. I can't watch the Edmonton TV stations (we get them all with sattelite, but funnily enough we only get one Regina station) without getting weepy. I sometimes wonder if we didn't make a huge mistake moving away...but then I remember we are debt free and I feel a bit better.

The Move

2007-08-26T22:05:00.001-06:00

I know, I'm a lollyblogger. It's not going to get any better this week, but maybe, just maybe next week I will sit down and post something meaningful with lots of words. We are moving tomorrow. Finally, we will be in the house.

Look! Pictures!

Here is our bedroom after we painted the walls. It used to have pink and white stripes, and now it's a beautiful soft green colour.

Here is Mary's room, almost finished. I must say that whoever came up with the idea to paint trim should be put in jail for a long long time. It turned out okay, I'm not a professional painter, but it's nice.

Frances's room after being painted. It used to have dark blue and white stripes, with a burgandy border and words like "touchdown," written around the top. Ick. Now it's a beautiful brown, but it's not quite finished. Ian thinks it's too sophisticated for a little girl, but I love it, and I'm going to add some fun bright colours. One wall is going to feature the wonderful quilt that Goody made for Frances.

Frances chilling on the new couch.

The faux fireplace in the basement. It seems that I am cursed to live in houses with the most god awful ugly fireplaces. The things the people we bought the house from did to that basement area is criminal, including painting over beautiful dark wood beams across the ceiling.

Here is the "playroom." It is an unfinished area of the basement that they panted the cement walls in. It needs a ceiling and something on the floor, but I think it'll be a good spot to keep all the toys.

Here is our little maritimer. I was given this Sou'wester at our wedding reception in Dartmouth. Mary found it today and spent a good part of the afternoon wearing it.

Mary and Frances. It never ceases to amaze me what a wonderful, loving sister Mary is. Frances absolutely adores her, and Mary loves to take care of the baby. Frances is wearing a diaper shirt embroidered by Goody, it says "I'm the baby," just so I don't forget. :)

Frances flaked out on the couch, and Mary gave her the flower.

Rock star Mary on our new deck. Unfortunately those glasses broke later in the day.

Please Advise

2007-08-12T21:48:00.001-06:00

I have a problem with my eldest child. Up to this point she has been a relatively well behaved toddler, but she has recently started exhibiting a behaviour I've only seen on Nanny 911 before now. She bites. She bites a lot, and she bites hard. She doesn't do it when she's having a tantrum, she doesn't do it when she's angry, she does it for fun. She'll be giggling and playing, and suddenly lunge out at Ian or me like a giant chihuahua. Today I was standing in front of her, and she tugged on my hand to pull me down. I thought she wanted a hug, so I of course obliged, and while I was hugging her, she bit my right boob so hard that I have a bite shaped bruise. I am not impressed, and I don't know how to deal with it. When I yell at her, she just laughs at me. I smacked her bum the other day, and she just laughed at me. My step-mother recommended that I bite her back as hard as she bit me, but I can't even bring myself to spank her hard enough to actually hurt, I don't think I can bite her. Not to mention the fact that I don't think resorting to childish behaviour is going to solve the problem. Ian says that I should put soap in her mouth every time she bites, but I really don't know if that'll work either. Anyone have advice for me here? I don't want to end up with a bossy British nanny judging me and my horrible cannibal children on network TV.

She Smiles!

2007-08-07T08:30:00.000-06:00

I've had a hard time with Frances from the very begining. I've loved her, sure, but I wasn't in love with her, and I certainly didn't like her. I think a lot of the feelings that people associate with PPD are really quite natural, especially when you're all alone with a child. I mean, this unpleasant little stranger came into our lives, turned our lives topsy-turvy, and disrupted our family balance. It's a demanding little person, yelling all the time, expecting everything to be dropped at a moments notice to cater to it's whims. It's strange, while I did go a little loopy after Mary was born, I didn't feel this way about her at all. I loved her and was in love with her from the first second I laid eyes on her.

Anyways, the point is that I fell in love with Frances this weekend. Up to this point she's smiled every once in a while, but they were practice/gassy smiles, not the real thing. This weekend she started smiling for real. Yesterday evening I was sitting on the couch holding her and watching TV. I happened to glance down at her and there she was, gazing up at me with a huge, adorable smile on her face. See?

We spent a lot of time this weekend at the house. We took about 700 nails out of the walls, our next task is to putty the holes and pick out paint. We also put together the dining room table and chairs, as well as a china cabinet for all my mothers china and crystal that she brought. We have a real dining room table! We have a dining room! The space in that house makes me giddy...compared to the place in Edmonton it's a mansion.

Mary "helped" a lot with the construction of the china cabinet. It took 6 hours to put the bloody thing together. I puttered around doing dishes in the dishwasher (we have a dishwasher!!) and pulling nails while Ian laboured away at the cabinet. It looks great now that it's finished and I can't wait to fill it with stuff.

It was awfully hard to come back to the apartment last night. I love our house so much, even with all the work that it needs, I wish we could just live there already. It'll be worth the wait though, once we get the place painted it's going to be beautiful. We did make it home though, and Frances and I slept like babies.

Lots of Pictures

2007-08-03T15:39:00.001-06:00

We got our house today! We picked up the keys this morning and wandered through. It needs a lot more work than I remember, but I still love it, and I can't wait to get into it for good. Here are some pictures. Once we have everything looking the way we want it, I imagine there will be more pictures.

This is the view of the front of the house:

Here's the living room. The whole place needs painting pretty badly. We are going to leave the kitchen and dining room as is, and the basement is okay, but the living room, hallway and all the bedrooms need desperately to be painted.

Here's the beautiful kitchen. We are going to change the hardware on the cupboards, but other than that I think it'll be left pretty much alone.

Here's Mary and Poppa Larry (my Mums husband) officially welcoming us to Milestone. My Mum and Larry are visiting from Abbotsford B.C., and we are very glad that they can see where we will be living now.

Yesterday, after a long day with Mum and Larry.

Those Crazy Germans

2007-07-20T08:35:00.000-06:00

http://www.divshare.com/image/1221376-efc

A childrens book that I'll not be buying. I've been told the text is pretty funny too, maybe Emmet can translate?

Baby Blogging

2007-07-18T15:23:00.001-06:00

Hello everyone!

Things are up and down here. We seem to have the screaming baby stuff a little more under control thanks to swaddling and bum smacking. Yesterday Frances was up for several hours in the morning and again in the afternoon, and she didn't cry at all, yay! Of course she was also up every 2 hours like clockwork through the night, boo. Today she rolled over from her back to her belly. It's awfully early for that sort of thing, so I think it was just a fluke, maybe the couch cushion she was on was slanted somewhat. I'll believe it when it happens again.

Anyways, here are some pictures of our summer:

Grandma and Grandpa put Mary to work in the back yard.

Cooling off in the pool at Grandma and Grandpa's place.

Look! Her eyes are open and she's not screaming!

It's hard work being kids.

We got Mary this doll shortly after Frances was born, and she loves it. The other day she accidentally pulled off one of the dolls arms, and let me tell you, it was pretty tragic around here for quite a while.

Me feeding Frances, I didn't even realize this picture was taken.

Again at Grandma and Grandpa's place, I think those are Grandpa's shoes.

Date Night

2007-07-16T14:39:00.001-06:00

Saturday night Ian and I got out all by ourselves. No children at all! From 2 in the afternoon till around 9 that night we were childless and happy. We went to a movie, The Transformers (awesome!) and then we spent far too much money for our supper at the Keg. It was a fantastic evening. Mary spent the night at Dad's place, and we took Frances home. It was an okay night, she woke us up twice, but went right back to sleep after being fed. Then Sunday morning we went to church and met up with my dad and Mary. Church was nice too, I've known most of the people there since I was Marys age, so we hardly saw either of the girls for the entire service.

Dealing with Frances has been challenging, but we are doing all right. I've found a few things that seem to work to calm her down when she's being really miserable. It's still hard, but thankfully she saves the most awful times for when we are awake anyways. Swaddling is an amazing thing, when Frances gets really bad I just wrap her up as tight as I can, and it's like I pushed an "off" button. The screaming stops, and within 15 minutes usually she's asleep. My only problem with swaddling her is that it is SO stinking hot here that I feel bad for her. She doesn't seem to mind though, so I guess I'll just stop worrying.

Shaking Babies

2007-07-12T11:52:00.000-06:00

I take it back. If I ever said that Frances was a good baby, an easy baby, I was wrong. So deeply, horribly wrong. Frances screams. Constantly, loudly, miserably, no matter what I do. She screams and screams and screams. I can't eat, I can't play with Mary, I can't go out, because by baby screams inconsolably. She eats a tonne, and then eats more, and then eats. Sometimes she will act like she is starving, but when I try to feed her she sputters and screams and chokes. Her soother calms her down sometimes, but she spits it out and then gets filled with rage. I feel like duct taping it onto her face. I feel like doing a whole lot of things that I shouldn't, like shaking her till she shuts up (I won't, you don't need to worry, when I start feeling out of control I just go to another room).

You may be saying, "Jennifer, if she screams all the time, how is it that you are able to blog?" Well, I'll tell you. Frances has been screaming since 9 this morning, it's just about noon now. She finally fell asleep about 5 minutes ago. She drank 9 oz of breast milk, spit up about 4 of those ounces, screamed while I rocked her, screamed around her soother, screamed in her swing, screamed while I finally fed Mary her breakfast, screamed while I finally ate my breakfast, screamed while I took a quick shower, screamed while I cried, screamed while I changed her diaper, screamed in her bassinet, screamed in her swing, screamed in her bouncy chair....It was much the same last night from 6 till about 11. She screamed no matter what we did. Once she fell asleep, she slept for 6 hours, but oh my god, did we pay for those uninterrupted hours of sleep and the only way to get her to sleep was to bring her to bed with us.

It's frustrating for me when Ian comes home too. I deal with the screaming misery for 11 hours while he is at work, and I manage to keep my temper most of the time. Ian comes home, and within an hour of the screaming he's furious and throwing things and swearing. I know it's hard to deal with, good Christ I know it's hard, but it'd be nice to be able to get a break for an hour or two without worrying about him too.

I feel the worst for Mary. She is such a sweet girl, and so patient. All of a sudden I can't give her the love and attention she's used too, and she deals with it so well. She has the occasional moment of tears, but she's mostly happy and sweet, and she loves Frances. She gets upset when the baby cries, and is always giving her hugs and kisses. I feel bad that she's trapped in this apartment with Frances and me, but I can't take them out by myself. Frances screams and I'm unwilling to subject the general public to that horrible noise while Mary is charging around like an uncaged monkey. I just can't control Mary and deal with Frances at the same time. I feel bad for Frances too. I really can't stand her most of the time, and I hope that will change some time. I hate feeling this way about my baby, it feels so wrong. I should love her unconditionally, right? But all I want to do is get away from her, to get a break, to give her back, to take back that moment 10 months ago that I got pregnant. I want things to go back to the way they used to be, when it was just the three of us, and we were happy.

And with that, sleeping time ends, and the screaming begins.

One Month

2007-07-09T13:10:00.000-06:00

Can you believe it? It's been a whole month since Frances was born. It seems like yesterday, and it seems like she's been part of our family forever. It's amazing how much she's changed in the last month. She's gained over 2 pounds, she's much longer and bigger. She spends more time awake than she did when she first came home too. I don't mind it during the day, and when she isn't yelling at me, but she seems to have a scheduled alert time at around 4 am every day. Ugh. She is still a remarkably good baby, even though she does have her moments. She only wakes once or twice during the night, she's relatively cheerful and easy to look after. She had a hard time over the weekend when the weather was so ridiculously hot, but 38 degree heat will make even the best of us miserable. I know that people say that you shouldn't wish for your children to grow up because they do it so quickly, but I really can't wait till she is a bit older. I really quite dislike the newborn phase of life, and I'm looking forward to when Frances is a bit more interactive and fun to be around.

The mortgage issue finally resolved, and in our favour. We have a mortgage, although the intrest rate is absolutely ridiculous. We'll keep with this company for a few years, and eventually our credit will be better and Ian will be getting paid a bit more, and we can shop around again. I can't wait to get into our home, less than a month left till we get the keys! The month of August will be spend moving and fixing things up so that everything is close to perfect when we move in. Have I mentioned that I'm giddy with excitement about getting our house?

Mary is doing well. She really is a fantastic little creature, in spite of the occasional (regular) temper tantrums. She loves Frances deeply, and gets very concerned about her. She likes to help us burp her now, she pats the babys back very gently and shouts "I did it!" if Frances burps. She gives her kisses every night when she goes to bed, and loves to give her hugs. The only time she's really shown that she'd rather not have Frances around is when we leave my Dads place. She always says "Bye Grandpa, bye Grandma, bye Baby Frances!" but she never seems disappointed when Frances comes home with us instead of staying behind.