Month: August 2007

Tristan’s big splash

It’s been such a lovely summer so far, full of sunshine and traveling and beaches and pools and water parks. I know we’ve had a good summer because we’re on our fourth package of swim diapers… that’s a lot of fun in the water!

Over the course of the summer, Tristan has gone from not quite being able to swim the width of the pool with a float to being able to swim very short stretches unassisted in a panicky sort of dog paddle. He’s shown a lot of improvement with all the time we’ve spent in the water lately, and has taken great delight in being able to jump off the side of the pool and “cannonball” into the shallow end.

Yesterday, we spend an unexpected but lovely four hours or so splashing about and lounging on the deck of our friends’ new pool. Despite Tristan’s improvement through the summer, I had serious reservations when my friend UberGeek asked Tristan if he’d like to jump off the diving board and UG would help him get to the ladder. It’s a testament to many, many years of friendship that I would even consider letting Tristan try – that, and the way Tristan’s face lit up when he said, “SURE!” and scrambled up onto the deck before I could even formulate a protest.

The first jump, as soon as Tristan surfaced sputtering and wide-eyed, UberGeek was there to grab him and guide him to the ladder. I took a deep breath of my own and bit back my maternal concerns as Tristan practically ran to the diving board for the next jump – and the next, and the next, and the next. By the end of the afternoon, he was jumping in and able to swim to the ladder completely unassisted, and was also able to swim most of the length of the pool with only minimal assistance. Just like getting up on two wheels, it’s amazing how quickly the little synapses fire in a growing brain to suddenly “get” a new activity and master it.

Simon too was the picture of contentment, splashing around in an unusual swim ring built into a t-shirt, a design I’ve never seen before. While getting him in and out of it was quite reminiscent of shoving him down the birth canal, it seemed a lot safer and sturdier than water wings or a traditional ring float.

In a single afternoon, Tristan went from barely able to swim a foot or two to jumping off the diving board and swimming to the edge, and I went from ensuring neither boy was further than arms’ reach away from a grownup to letting them splash and float contentedly around the deep and shallow ends under their own power. I’m simply gobsmacked. And it served as a good reminder that the boys are likely to be ready to take on new challenges far earlier than I’m going to be ready for them to do so.

I only wish I’d had a camera with me…

The one with the naked princess, of course

The boys have been running around all day, and we all need some quiet time. I ask Simon what he wants to watch. Quelle surprise, he wants to watch Star Wars.

“Which one do you want to watch,” I ask. “The one with the Jawas, the one where Han gets frozen in carbonite, or the one with the Ewoks?”

“No,” clarifies Simon, “I want the one with the naked princess with the gun.”

He’s THREE, for chrissake. THREE!!

(Okay, so I don’t know a single guy born between 1965 and 1985 who didn’t have the same crush, but I had no idea Leia’s Metal Bikini had its own fan site, let alone an episode of Friends.)

(Edited to add: this exists, with more than 7000 threads and 125000 posts, and yet *I’m* the strangest place on the Internet?!?!?)

My Internet Legacy

I never get tired of playing in the referral logs, speculating on the search terms that bring people here. I see some search terms over and over again (gift ideas for two year olds is a perennial favourite, as is cavities in a three year old, and I’m mystified by the sheer number of people – sometimes 10 a day – looking for a variation on lactating or lactation blog.)

Some are a little more obscure. I’m sure I was no help to the guy who wondered “how do i know my piranha is pregnant.” Maybe we should get them together with the guy who asked “why is my sperm bigger.” Bigger than what, I couldn’t help but wonder. And, erm, how exactly did you know?

I’ll have to try a little harder to boost myself up the page on the search return for “canadian child care sucks“, but with the new nanny starting next week, my fingers are crossed for a good outcome at last.

My mother is endlessly tickled about my noteriety as the number one search return for “ottawa slut” but i’m just as happy to be first on a search for “Ottawa + Mommy Blogger.”

Myself, I’m absurdly pleased to be the number one google return for “strange internet places.” No doubt, the Web is full of strangeness, but I had little idea that this little blog was the strangest.

And now, since I’m obviously in danger of taking myself a bit too seriously today, is some more strangeness for you, courtesy of the Goddess of the Quirky Meme, Angry Pregnant Lawyer:

YOU ARE PAPER!

You Are Paper

Crafty and creative, you are able to adapt freely to almost any situation.
People tend to underestimate you, unless they’ve truly seen what you are capable of.
Deep down, you’re always scheming and thinking up new plans. Your mind is constantly active.

You are quite capable of anything you dream of. You can always figure out a way to get what you want.

You can wrap a rock person up in your sheet of trickery.

A scissor person can sneak up and cut you to pieces.

When you fight: No one can anticipate your next move

If someone makes you mad: You’ll attack them mercilessly when they’re unprepared.

Almost 15 weeks update: the midwife question

See, bloggy peeps? I take your advice! I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the midwife, just so I could keep my options open for a little while longer.

First, I have to tell you that I heard the baby’s heartbeat, and all seems fine. What, you haven’t been obsessing over it, thinking of it every two hours half hour six minutes like I’ve been? Heck, it took me until I was on the bus on the way to the appointment to figure out that I wasn’t having heart palpitations and trouble breathing because of any larger fear of the midwife herself, but over knowing she would have a doppler and I was afraid to face the possible silence like last time.

The bad news is, I really liked the midwife and the whole philosophy of midwifery care. I mean, that’s bad news because if I had hated her on sight, it would have been a lot easier to simply go back to my OB and carry on.

There are a handful of concerns that I can’t quite shake, mostly having to do with scenarios when something goes wrong. To her credit, even though my OB has no bedside manner whatsoever, when she couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat with the doppler at my 16 wk appointment last year, all she had to do was walk me over to the ultrasound clinic on the other side of her office, and she did the scan herself to try to find the baby. I know it would never be that easy with the midwife, even though I understand that they do have full referral access for all that stuff.

I think the one thing that most surprised me and most concerned me is that even with a hospital birth, the midwives don’t use the fetal monitoring tools like the heart rate monitor. With Simon, I can still clearly remember after many hours of stalling labour when I finally began to have serious contractions there was one terrifying moment when the baby’s heart decelerated significantly enough (140s to low 60s) for the nurse to demand of Beloved that he push the call button for assistance. There was no real emergency, and in hindsight it was probably just the stress of passing a baby the size of a Toyota through an opening the size of an orange, but the idea of not hearing that reassuring whoosh-whoosh-whoosh throughout the labour seriously freaks me out.

Here are the other niggling concerns I have:

With Simon, I was 10 days late when they finally started induction, and even then he took more than 24 hours to come out. I asked the midwife about induction, and she said they consult with an OB when you are 42 weeks. Ugh. Did I mention Simon was 10 lbs? I know, nothing says the next baby will be that large or that late, but still…

I have every intention of delivering at the hospital and staying at the hospital for as long as they’ll let me. With Tristan, I was terrified to go home because I didn’t want to be solely responsible for the mewling little mass of perfection, and with Simon I left after 24 hours (against the doctor’s and nurses’ objections) because it was the first time I had ever been separated from Tristan. When the midwife said that it’s standard practice after midwife deliveries for the mother and baby to go home after three hours, assuming all is well, I told her that I wanted to take full advantage of the hospital stay and she laughed and said it’s funny how mothers with more than one at home tend to say that.

Of course, there’s the fact that midwives no longer have priviledges at the Ottawa Hospital, so I’ll have to deliver at the Montfort, but the more I talk to people in the community about this, the less this concerns me. But still.

There are many things I like about midwifery care:

* the post-natal care. The first couple of weeks with baby at home have been rough on me both times. The midwife comes to visit you at home at least five times in the first two weeks after baby is born, and I find that incredibly reassuring.

* longer appointments with more holistic care.

* will know the people who are with me when I’m actually delivering the baby, and they’ll know me (as opposed to taking a gamble on the nursing staff, and the 1 in 10 chance that my own OB is on call that day.)

* when I told the midwife about how at Simon’s birth the anesthesiologist said I was his most difficult case in more than 500 epidurals (!) she suggested we could make an appointment for a consulation with an anesthesiologist before the birth to discuss options. (Seriously! Why did my OB not do something like this after I told her how much trouble the anesthesiologist had at Tristan’s birth?)

* office is very conveniently close to where I work for appointments, as opposed to the OB who is two long buses away.

* no traumatic memories attached to the midwife’s office.

* when I couldn’t help myself and cried a few tears of relief when I heard the baby’s heartbeat yesterday, she smiled and rubbed my arm and said, “Everything’s fine!” in a very comforting voice. As opposed to my OB, who didn’t touch me or express any overt sympathy through the entire miscarriage experience last year. In fact, it was the ultrasound tech, following up on what the OB started and confirming that the baby had died, who took a moment to physically touch me and tell me how sorry she was. It’s just a more humanized level of care.

So, I don’t know. Through the course of the afternoon yesterday, I changed my mind five times. If it weren’t for the fetal monitoring part, I’d be comfortable making the switch. Then again, it’s not like I’m lacking anything with the OB’s care, and I know she’s world-class in her field.

Sigh.

I do know that through this most difficult month, as 16 weeks come and go, through a complete fluke of timing in the overlap of care I’ve got an appointment every week this month. Yesterday I saw the midwife, and tomorrow I go for my final IPS blood test. Next week, I go for my scheduled 16 wk appointment with the OB, to hopefully discuss the IPS test results. The week after that is my first clinical appointment with the midwife, should I choose to go that route. And the week after that is the ultrasound. I couldn’t have planned that better if I’d tried!

So, what say ye, bloggy peeps? You’re the board of directors at DaniGirl Inc, and we need to make a decision today on the direction of the company. What do you recommend?

Computer versus TV

The good news is, the boys aren’t watching a lot of TV these days.  I’d say the daily consumption has dropped to less than an hour, and I won’t embarrass myself by letting on exactly how many hours they were consuming before.  Some days when I was on vacation, the TV stayed off all day.

The bad news is, they have a new addiction of choice.  You see, my three year old and my five year old are now bona fide computer game junkies.

Sigh.

Their drug of choice is Star Wars Lego, and I must admit that it baffles me just a little bit that a Star Wars Lego video game even exists.  The boys love it, though, and would play it for hours at a time if I let them.  They also play a few other games, like Pixar’s Cars, and the Lego Island and Curious George paint games I got at the grocery store, and Simon especially likes the games on Nick.com.

So on the one hand, I’m okay with the reduced consumption of TV because at least with the video games, they’re engaged and doing something.  They’re forced to share and to take turns, but they still play collaboratively.  They’re problem solving, thinking, and developing at least some cognitive skills.  Not to mention memory:  Simon, who doesn’t yet clearly identify the letters of the alphabet let alone read, can click through six or seven layers of menu screens based solely on having seen it done a few times.  It’s actually kind of amazing to watch.

It’s also hilarious to hear them integrate the language of the video game into their regular play.  "Let’s play another level," said while leaping forth with lightsaber in hand, means "Let’s keep playing."

And yet, I have to admit that I am not completely at ease with this newfound addiction to video games.  First, at least when the TV is on the boys drift in and out of the room, playing with their toys and each other while the tube drones on.  With the computer, they stand fixed in front of the monitor, fingers thumping on the keyboard, for as long as we’ll leave them to it.  And I’m already becoming rather tired of hearing "But Moooooom, just let me finish this level!" whined at me each time I tell them to move along to something else.

I’m thinking of getting a timer and limiting them, maybe to 20 minutes each per day.  But, true confession time:  it’s so easy to let them play.  They’re engaged, they’re content, and most importantly, they aren’t pestering me or each other.  Computer time is free time for me, and at this stage in my life, I’m willing to trade dilligence for indulgence.  Call me lazy.

What do you think?  Are computer games better than TV?  Is there room for video games in a balanced day, even for a preschooler?  How much is too much?

And most importantly, how on earth can I justify limiting their computer time when I spend countless hours glued to the monitor myself?  Hypocrite, thy name is blogging mother…

Blog woes

I’m feeling a lot of blog angst today.  First, while I was on vacation they unilaterally cut access to blogs from work.  Ugh!  No blogs whatsoever!  You might remember, I’m starting work on a project to integrate social media more fully into how we communicate as an organization; this isn’t a step in the right direction.

Luckily, because of that at least I have an excuse to wave my fists and wail and demand blog access back, and my uber-cool boss has put my name at the top of the list of people who should have immediate access restored.  But this is government and nothing happens quickly.

On a larger scale, though, I think I’m finally ready to make the leap to my own domain.  I’m officially done with Blogger.  I almost jumped ship a year ago, but when they introduced Blogger Beta, they introduced the one feature I had been most coveting:  labels, or categories.  But, I recently realized that each category will display a maximum of 20 posts.  Everything else is lost to the ether, and some of my categories have more than 60 posts in them (hell, you know as well as anybody that if I’m anything, I’m prolific!)

Apparently, I’m restricted to 20 posts per category because I chose to keep my customizable "classic template", the one I understand and can tinker with.  I could move to the newfangled Widget template, but I would lose some flexibility.  I’m finally fed up.  I’m done with Blogger.

Earlier this year, I registered danigirl.ca, so I already have the domain.  I know I ask this question about twice a year, but for those of you who haven’t yet tutored me on this, any tips for inexpensive, reliable hosting in Canada and new blog software?  I’m leaning towards WordPress, because I’ve heard MT is more of a pain than it’s worth.  I’m worried that WordPress won’t let me tinker, though.  Thoughts?

In which I rant just a bit

It’s my last day of vacation and I’m feeling a little cranky about it. Plus, ya know, I’m old now, and entitled to be curmudgeonly without warning.

So to celebrate this mood of minor annoyance, today I present to you the top five things that piss me off.

1. People who don’t acknowledge common courtesy.

It drives me nuts when I slow down to let someone into a lane ahead of me, or stop to hold open a door, or step back to let someone else go first, and they don’t even bother to acknowledge me. I don’t need a bouquet of roses, but a nod or a smile or a wave (or god forbid, a “thank you”) would go a long way.

2. People who don’t signal lane changes.

Apparently, I have a whole set of issues with lane changes. (Can you tell I drove back and forth through Toronto recently?) Also on their own sublist of things that piss me off are people who think they are entitled to your lane simply by virtue of the fact that their lane is ending, regardless of the fact that you might currently be occupying said lane, and people who must occupy the buffer of space I’m trying to leave between myself and the car in front of me as we hurtle along the 401 at the speed of light.

3. People who dribble on the toilet seat and don’t wipe it up.

It happens. Either you dribble a few drops when you stand up to wipe, or you are one of those people with stronger knees than me who can hover over the seat and give it a good spray when you pee. Regardless, would it kill you to take a minute and a square or two and wipe the seat when you’re done? I really shouldn’t have to do it, and it’s nothing short of disgusting to sit down and realize that you just sat in someone else’s pee.

4. People who sit on the gym equipment and chat.

I like to move quickly through my weight workout to keep my heart rate up, and I was told many years ago by a trainer that it’s best to stick to a particular order, working the larger muscles before the smaller ones. While I don’t mind jumping out of order if it’s busy and there’s a lot of people using the equipment, it drives me nuts to have to wait for a machine because someone is sitting on it while chatting with someone else. Frankly, it also kind of bugs me when people sit on the machines between sets, and when people don’t wipe down the equipment between uses. Hmmm, looks like I have some issues with the gym as well. Maybe a little too much testosterone in my system?

5. People who don’t say “excuse me” when they need to get off the bus.

This one is my number-one irritant right now. I’ve been idly thinking about blogging it for months. Almost every single morning, I sit on the aisle side of a shared seat on the bus. A surprising amount of the time, I’m sure the vast majority, when the person sitting beside me needs to get off, rather than saying “Excuse me” or even “This is my stop”, they simply make a lurching thrust toward me that I’m supposed to detect and interpret as an intention to get off the bus and that I should get out of the way. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and it pisses me off every single time. Seriously, how hard is it to say “excuse me”? I usually toss in a smile for free when I do it.

And they say we Canadians are overly polite. Bah!

By all means, don’t let me rant alone. What cheeses you off?

Summertime food ideas?

While I love this steamy hot summertime weather, it’s sapping my already-nominal culinary inspiration. I’ve completely run out of fresh summertime food ideas. We’ve done burgers to death, and I’ve lost my taste for hot dogs. It’s too hot to boil pasta, and we’ve had enough corn on the cob to pluck an entire corn field clean.

Last night, we had one of my summertime favourites: steak and veggie kabobs rolled in peppercorns, grilled on the BBQ and then served as make-yer-own pita sandwiches with tzatziki and feta and fresh cucumber and tomato slices. Mmmmmm!

Save me from another pizza; I’m desperate for inspiration. What’s your favourite summertime meal?

Cottage weekend

As I mentioned, we spent an extended summer weekend with my brother’s family at his in-laws’ cottage. Gotta love in-laws with a cottage!

The trip didn’t start out so well. By the time we started loading the car on Saturday morning, it was pouring rain and we were two hours behind schedule, partly due to the extended search for the cord to plug the DVD player into the cigarette lighter. Imagine our delight when we went to plug in said DVD player and discovered the cigarette lighter was dead. We were suddenly and unexpectedly facing a seven to eight hour drive with not nearly enough diversions planned to pacify the boys. Right then and there, we almost called the whole thing off.

We didn’t, though, and it’s a testament to how wonderful the weekend was that I can honestly say it was more than worth the hassle of getting there. And we survived a trip all the way across the province to Lake Huron with only a handful of colouring books, some snacks and our wits. Not that I’d ever do it again intentionally, but it’s kind of nice to know we could do it.

We left the 401 near Kitchener, and drove through the pastoral farmland of Southern Ontario that is so evocative of some of the best summer memories of my childhood. There is something about that rolling farmland, the yellow bricks one only finds around London, that particular shade of hazy blue, and the achingly beautiful turquoise of Lake Huron under a cloudless sky that fills my heart with sweet nostalgia. Turns out that even 19 years after the fact, sometimes you can go back home again.

The in-laws’ cottage was actually a grounded trailer with an extended sunporch / florida room, parked year-round at what looks like it used to be a Jellystone campground (warning, noisy link!) deep under a canopy of towering maples. The boys loved the built-in bunk beds, and thought it was pretty cool that Uncle Sean let them drive the golf cart (apparently almost every trailer has one for tooling around the campground) all by themselves.

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And where there are golf carts, there are of course serious golfers.

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Aside from spending time with family, the main attraction for me was the proximity to Lake Huron. The first beach we visited was so rocky we could barely keep to our feet, and we did little more than wade in up to our ankles and fill our waterguns.

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But the second day, we made a pilgrimmage to one of my very favourite summertime places in the whole world, the beach at Grand Bend, Ontario. The water was clear and warm and perfect for swimming, and the day couldn’t have been more lovely. I could have stayed on the beach for days.

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Except, of course, for a wander up the main drag to get some french fries and ice cream. Some traditions are sacred, and beach food is one of them.

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Who could have guessed that two-and-a-half days of beaches, pools, putt-putt, ice cream, campfires and four kids under six could ever be so refreshing?

On the last day, rather than drive straight home we detoured to a place I haven’t been since I was a tender one year old. I’ve been meaning to get back there for ages, and I don’t know a single person who grew up in Ontario who can’t hum the theme song for the African Lion Safari (sorry, more noisy links. I hate that!) It was another blazing hot day, which simply amplified the African savannah feel to the day.

This is not a picture of me feeding Ritz Bits with Cheez to a baboon who is perched on the passenger side mirror. Feeding the animals is strictly forbidden, as is opening your window.

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In fact, if you were – hypothetically speaking, of course – to open your window to get a better picture of the cheetah lying in the grass mere feet from your car, you would hear the immediate and bullhorn-amplified voice of a park ranger insisting that you CLOSE YOUR WINDOW, and if you didn’t immediately heed that first demand in your quest for the perfect picture, you would certainly be motivated to do so by the clear note of panic in the second and far louder bellow to CLOSE YOUR WINDOW NOW. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Not that you would ever flaunt rules so blatantly. Not even later when this very friendly and not in the least bit fierce or bloodthirsty zebra came over to say hello.

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By midafternoon under the blazing sun, the combined temperature and humidity topped out over 38C. Thankfully, the park has a supersized splash pad just about the perfect size for a pair of overheated preschoolers.

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We finished the day by enjoying the elephant show, including a 15 month old baby elephant gamboling beside its mother that was particularly charming. It’s nice to see the “mischievious toddler” thing extends to other species. And we ended the day on a high note – literally, with Tristan, Simon and I perched atop the back of Jenny, a very patient and very big elephant.

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Unfortunately, this isn’t a flattering shot of either of us.

(Click thru for more photos on Flickr.)

Yay day – the birthday edition

I have a lot to be grateful for as I look ahead to my birthday tomorrow. (Shameful how I gratuitously troll for your birthday wishes, isn’t it? It’s the Leo in me.)

We’re on our way home after a nearly perfect summer extended weekend away. Details will follow, but it included endless hot, sunny weather; a cottage tucked into a perfect little campground; my brother’s family; a pilgrimmage / day trip to my very favourite summertime place; and a baboon sitting on the passenger-side mirror of the car begging for Ritz crackers. No, really!

So today, I’m happy for family, for boys who are road-trip tolerant, for weekend getaways, for perfect summer weather, for people who love me and whom I love in return, for a life so full of joy it exceeds whatever wildest hope I might have had for it when I was growing up. It’s the best birthday gift a girl could ever want.

And you? What are you celebrating today?