From there to here, from here to there, Funny things are everywhere
The Integrated Prenatal Screening test results are in: chance of Down Syndrome is less than 1 in 42,000. Chance of neural tube defect is less than 1 in 11,000.
Plus, baby’s heartbeat is a strong and vibrant 150 bpm today.
This is me dancing around my cubicle. Happy happy joy joy!!
Blogging really is a feast-or-famine kind of thing, isn’t it? There are times when your brain is empty, and you go days fearing you may never be graced with an inspiring idea again.
And then other times, your brain is so busy blogging all.the.time that at any given time, you have half-composed posts oozing out of your brain, begging you to get to a keyboard and release them to the Interwebs. This is one of those times. I have a lot of ideas rattling around, but nothing cogent enough to form a full post.
Thank goodness for the existence of random bullets!
So, it’s the nanny’s third day today, and she didn’t quit yet. I’m so happy! (Amazing how my standards have dropped, isn’t it?)
Seriously, though, even beyond her not quitting, I’m thrilled with the new nanny. The boys ask every day whether Jen and Jordan (her one year old son) are coming today. She brings them to the park; she plays games with them; last Friday, she brought them to her house for the afternoon and they did fingerpainting and came home with home-made, car-shaped cookies. She’s got Simon on the potty a couple of times a day. She even emptied the clean dishwasher so she could put the lunch dishes in it. Really, I love her!
I’m not the only one who loves her. Friday night at dinnertime, Tristan had just finished telling us all the fun things they did with Jen that day. He asked if she would be coming back the next day, but I told him that Mummy and Daddy don’t have to work on Saturdays or Sundays, so we’d get to spend the whole day together as a family. “And besides,” I teased him, “would you rather spend the day with us or with Jen?”
He didn’t hesitate nearly long enough before answering, “Jen!” In other circumstances, I might have been peeved, but frankly by this point, I’m happy with that answer.
It’s still a little awkward having her in our house, though. We’re making up rules as we go along, because I hadn’t really thought any of this through. I don’t know if I should leave a list of suggested lunches for the boys, based on that week’s trip to the grocery store, or just let her root through the cupboards and make it up based on what she finds. I’m also not sure whether I should be buying stuff for her to make lunch for herself.
I was also thinking about leaving suggestions for activities, and leaving her our family membership card for the Farm and the Science museum. If it were me, we’d be going to the library, and playgroups, to parks in other neighbourhoods – anything to burn daylight! – but I don’t want to overwhelm her. I’m not sure I’d want to be doing a lot of field trips by myself with a 1, 3 and 5 year old!
So, day three and all is well on the daycare front. It’s going to nearly break us financially (her pay is barely $100 less a week than Beloved earns) but at least for the next year I’m willing to pay that price. Do you think this is finally the good karma I’ve earned after more than half a year of dreadful experiences?
A quick editorial aside comes to mind as I’m writing this post. When I refer back to old posts (which, I am noticing, I am quite fond of doing) should I be linking to the original posts back on Blogger or the ones in the archive here? The original ones have the comments. What do you think?
We had a fun and adventure-filled but ghastly expensive day on Saturday.
In the morning, we visited the Ottawa debut of A Day Out With Thomas. Those of you who have been around for a while will remember the absolute magic of our first adventure with the Very Useful Engine, two years ago in St Thomas, Ontario.
Our latest adventure was not quite so magical, but a fun morning for the boys. In addition to a rather uninspired 30 minute train ride through some scrub and industrial land, there were train tables, temporary tatoos, arts and crafts, and of course, a giant gift shop filled with all things Thomas and Friends. Tristan’s waning interest in the big blue engine was rekindled, but Simon has always been less of a fan than his brother. In the gift shop, he looked around for a while before asking, “But where are all the Star Wars toys?”
In the afternoon, we went with Granny and Papa Lou to one of my favourite summer traditions, the Ottawa SuperEx. While the SuperEx never lives up to what I loved about London’s Western Fair from my childhood, I still look forward to it every year. I love the grease, the sleaze, the colours, the carnival food, the excess of it all.
The boys don’t really need me to ride the merry-go-round with them anymore, but I still do.
But mostly, they ride by themselves.
They weren’t big enough to go on the bumper cars by themselves (they couldn’t have reached the pedals even if they wanted to) but Beloved and Papa Lou were willing to go along for the ride. My mom and I watched from the sidelines and laughed the whole time – of the four of them, I honestly couldn’t tell you which one was having more fun.
I think my favourite part of the SuperEx are the games of chance. My mom and I are usually pretty good at the squirtgun games, but this time it was Tristan who won his own stuffy.
And no matter how expensive the day might have been, all the money in the world can’t buy memories like these.
Tristan, Simon, Beloved and especially DaniGirl are pleased to announce the arrival of their brand new baby blog, the newly independent Postcards from the Mothership on Danigirl.ca.
This version of blog was delivered after more than a week of hard labour on the part of DaniGirl, with extensive coaching by Beloved.
Special thanks to:
You’ll see I’ve imported the archives, but simply can’t import the old comments. I will continue to cross-post at both blogs until after Labour Day, but original blog will be kept indefinitely, in case one day a fix is available.
Please take a look around, and let me know if you see any problems with links or the design or anything. I’m open to suggestions, too!
So? What do you think?
Just been for my 16 week OB appointment. Let me tell you, it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than the last time I had a 16 week appointment, and did not live up in any way, shape or form to the “oh no, not again” anxiety dreams that haunted me all last night.
The whole thing lasted – I kid you not – maybe seven minutes. She checked my blood pressure (110 / 60) and asked how I was doing, and pulled out her doppler. Just because my life is not complete without some moments of heart-stopping drama, we didn’t hear the heartbeat on the first side she tried – and my heart shrunk down to the size of a pea. And then, when she pressed her doppler to the left side of my abdomen, there it was: whoosha whoosha whoosha, that beautiful baby music. And my heart grew to the size of an elephant.
And that was it, the appointment in its entirety. The IPS results aren’t in yet, so I’ll have to check back early next week. But I’ll happily celebrate good news when I can. 16 weeks and all is well!
Ugh! I had no idea there would be so many major and minor complications in the set-up and transfer to my own domain!
It ended up being rather easy to set up the domain and web host, and relatively inexpensive. It took maybe an hour or so, plus a few hours of shopping around.
Designing the new blog banner took up the better part of a Saturday, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a good start, anyway.
Choosing a “theme” for WordPress continues to be an ongoing drama. Unfortunately, I have some vague and some specific ideas of what I want, and I must have looked at 300 or more themes trying to find one that was just right. Relatively minimalistic, single sidebar; how difficult could the choice be? Don’t get me started.
Finally, I downloaded one, and to my great shock, it’s coded in PHP instead of the CSS/HTML combination that my Blogger template is written in. So in order to customize it at all, I’ve been teaching myself PHP. Did I mention ugh???
I got frustrated with that one and downloaded one that has more CSS in it, but I still cannot make that sucker bend to my will. I’m currently picking at it on and off. We’ll see how much longer I have patience for it, but I’m getting dangerously close to going back to trolling themes again for something that works for me out of the box.
The FTP program I was using was making me nuts, so I downloaded a copy of FileZilla. That means in the last five days I’ve learned how to use my new web host’s control panel and file manager, a new FTP program, a new blog interface, and the beginnings of a new programing language. My brain hurts!
To add insult to injury, last night I was mucking about trying to figure out how to import both the Blogger posts and Haloscan comments. I found out that the verion of WordPress installed automatically on my web host was outdated, and I had to upgrade before I could import from new Blogger. So I did – more practice with the FTP software and the web host control panel. Then I found out that the line of code that I need to change in the Blogger import php file doesn’t exist in the latest version of WordPress. Classic Catch 22: can’t import new Blogger into old WordPress; can only import Haloscan comments into old WordPress. Argh!!
I’m not quite $90 into this venture… too late to call the whole thing off?
Edited to add: okay, progress. I just realized that one of my major PHP headaches was resolved by the upgrade to WP 2.2. Widgets! I love me some widgets! Also, I must pause at this point to heap praise on the designer of my new theme, Tom at One Hertz, for actually responding to a question and helping me out. Also, major kudos to the tech support guys at Namespro.ca, with whom I had registered my domain. When I sent them a quick question asking how long it would take to transfer my domain to my the new web host, they took the trouble to go into the web host’s FAQs and give me explicit instructions on how to do it myself. Excellent customer service definitely makes up for much bloggy angst.
And in the time it took me to write this, WordPress has completely hung in trying to import my 949 Blogger posts. Two steps forward, one step back…
As usual, I consumed most of the newspaper on the bus on my ride to work this morning, and I have to tell you that the news was not good.
Aside from the fact that I now have a new big boss (holding off judgement on that for the time being) I read that Mattel has announced another massive toy recall for lead paint and dangerous toys. Then I read an article that says out of 250,000 births in Canada every year, as many as 1,700 babies suffer skull fractures or other traumatic injuries during birth. And to completely wreck my morning, a new study confirms that “eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring.”
Sigh. It’s enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and hide there for a day or two, isn’t it?
Since I went looking for it and you might want to do the same, here’s the Mattel recalled toys list. It mostly affects Sarge from Pixar’s Cars for lead paint, and some Batman, Barbie, Polly Pocket and other toys for dangerous magnets. We have a Sarge, but he’s been with us since Christmas and the recall period is for Cars from May through August 2007. But still!
I mean, seriously, when you think of name-brand toys you can trust, don’t you think of Fisher Price, and Barbie, and Mattel, and even Thomas the Tank Engine? These aren’t dollar store junk toys, for goodness sake. I’d rant a little more on this topic, but Ann Douglas has a great article up over on Yahoo Parenting that says it far better than I ever could.
As for the birth injuries article, well, that just makes me feel a little bit better about my decision to go with the midwife. And about my consumption of junk food? I’ll have to pause a moment to wipe the crust of honey cruller sugar from my fingers while I formulate a proper response to that one. In the meanwhile, I blame my mother.
The news isn’t all bad, though. If you’re looking for something a little more lighthearted, field reporter Fryman sends along this link to a photo gallery on the Globe and Mail’s web site of roadside mascots, including the World’s Largest Atlantic Salmon, Perogie, Fly Fishing Rod and – of course – Hockey Stick and Puck. Canadiana at it’s best! How many of them have you seen? Wouldn’t it make a great end-of-summer road trip to tour around and check them all out?
So, if this blog were to mysteriously reinvent itself in a new home, would you want all the original posts to move with it? Or would you expect a fresh start in the new location, assuming the old posts will be archived here for eternity and beyond?
And what if it were possible but intimidatingly difficult to shuffle almost 10,000 (!!!) comments from HaloScan to the new location… would the old posts be worth having in the new location, but stripped of their comments? Or would it be worth the extra chunks of pulled-out hair and special favours begged of tech support to get those comments over there, too.
What say ye, bloggy peeps?
(Don’t worry, Mom. I promise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to the new blog location!)
I first read this story in the newspaper on Sunday morning, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Everyone I’ve spoken to in the last couple of days has been subjected to this story, so fascinated by it am I.
Did you hear about the 62 year old French guy who’s about to be launched to a height of 40 km (25 miles) and do a seven minute free fall on to a Saskatchewan field, exceeding Mach 1 and creating a sonic boom with only his body in the process?
I’m honestly torn between “how wicked cool is that?” and “what kind of suicidal dumbass is he, anyway?”
From the canada.com article:
At 40,000 metres, temperatures are around -100 C and the air is so thin he will have to spend hours beforehand inhaling pure oxygen to remove all traces of nitrogen from his blood. He must nose-dive out of the pop-can-shaped capsule, freefalling for seven minutes before pulling his chute 1,000 metres from landing for an eight-minute descent to the ground. But if he goes into a spin at the start, no one knows if he will survive as he plummets to Earth at speeds reaching 1,500 km/h and in cold dipping to -115 C, breaking the sound barrier at 1,067 km/h and crashing through the ozone layer.
There’s also an article in the Times Online that describes the experience of the previous record-holder for longest freefall: “set by Joe Kittinger, a US air force test pilot who jumped from just under 20 miles in 1960 and told of his four-minute 36-second descent in a 1961 autobiography, The Long Lonely Leap. ‘There is no sound, no movement,’ he wrote. ‘No wind hisses in my ears or billows my clothing.'”
Apparently, if Fournier is successful with his Grand Saut (French for Big Jump), he’ll break four records: the longest freefall, the fastest freefall, the parachute jump from the highest altitude and the highest altitude achieved by a human in a balloon. The part that really fascinates me, though, is the “crashing through the ozone layer” bit, coupled with the breaking of the sound barrier with his body. From the few articles I’ve read on this, they have no idea what the impact of creating a sonic boom will have on his body.
What do you think? Is this guy a hero, or a Darwin Award waiting to happen?