Category: It IS all about me

You were right!

It’s on days like these that I truly love my one-year sabbatical in SAHM-land. I started the day with a coffee date with Andrea, who gets sweeter every time we meet. She took the most gorgeous photos of Lucas… I stole this one, but you should pop on over to her site to take a look at the rest, and I’ll wait for you to get back.

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See? Great photos! And great conversation, too! Reminded me that I really have to get out to see my bloggy friends in person more often.

Then, I headed over to Milkface to see what y’all were on about — and you were right! What a great little store. There were three other moms there trying on slings when we arrived, so I got the chance to eavesdrop on the best sling recommendations for a 5 lbs week old baby (!!) and an 8 month old wiggler, and watched one mom wriggle her baby into a sling worn like a backpack.

And I brought home this Maya wrap to try out. It’s like the bright colours were calling out to me!

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Lucas had been fussy in his baby-bucket car seat carrier, but as soon as I slipped him into the sling in the store he settled right in. He tolerated it for 30 minutes or so last night while I unpacked groceries and puttered around the kitchen, too, which is about 28 minutes more success than we’ve had with the Baby Bjorn. So far, two thumbs up for the Maya sling!

And thanks to another darling friend, I have also been loaned one of these fancy-ass swings for as long as Lucas will fit into it:

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With blue skies and warm temperatures forecasted for the whole week, I feel like Lucas and I are getting a fresh start and ready to take on the world! Or at least the laundry. Hey, ya gotta start somewhere.

Oh no, not another post about pants

Oh happy day. Today is a day to celebrate, my bloggy peeps. A mere yay day is not going to do it this time. Today, we dance on table tops, buy drinks for strangers, and beam beautific smiles that will make the neighbours wonder what we’re up to. It’s a glorious day, my friends. Mark your calendars, because today is the day I bought a pair of new jeans, jeans with a button and fly, that fit. Real people pants, not maternity pants. Oh happy, happy day.

I must admit, the single most aggravating thing about this past pregnancy was the pants. I don’t know why the maternity fashion industry moved away from the belly panels that were the standard look of my previous pregnancies, but I have to tell you that in nine months of pregnancy plus the “fourth trimester” of four weeks postpartum, I have yet to find a pair of pants that fit. They’re too big, they’re too small, they pinch or they fall down. Sometimes, all at the same time.

I really thought that immediately I’d divested myself of the 10 lbs baby that at least one or two pairs of the maternity pants might fit me a little bit better. Not so much. And let me tell you, there is nothing more irritating than pacing the floor with a crying newborn and having to stop every half a dozen steps or so and hitch up your pants before they fall down around your knees. One day they fell so far down I simply stepped out of them and continued on my way. Thankfully, I wasn’t in public at the time, although I did nearly have the same experience in the grocery store one day and had to put the armload of groceries I was carrying on the floor so I could stop and hitch the damn pants up.

I realized in searching through my own archives looking for my previous rants on this subject that I apparently have some serious issues with pants that may warrant some sort of therapy one day. Don’t believe me? Look here or here or here or here or here or here or here. Apparently, if you took out all the posts about pants, I’ve only logged about 150 blog posts in three years.

But! Pants!! That fit!!! And you know the best part? They were on sale. Not just on sale, they were a spectacular $16 for a pair of perfectly lovely jeans. They’re a size (or two) bigger than my ideal size, but I truly do not care because I will be able to confidently stride across my bedroom without fear of the sudden glare of white light off my ass cheeks as my pants give in to gravity. And I will wear them by day and wash them by night and wear them by day again and again until either I drop another size and can fit into my other fat pants or summer arrives and I can walk comfortably around in my underwear.

I’m good with either option.

And, since I’m still typing and Lucas is still snoozing, I have to brag about this, too. Can you believe I found mittens? In March? On SALE? I mean, everybody knows that if you want to buy mittens, you buy them in September when you buy your halloween stuff, right? When you actually need mittens, because you’ve been innundated by fourteen farking feet of snow, even though it’s only March the only thing you can find at the mall will be flipflops and suntan lotion. But not me — down to my last two pairs and despairing that the boys would yet lose a finger or four to frostbite, today I found not one, not three but FIVE pairs of mittens for a stellar 95 cents a pair and I gobbled them all up.

It’s nothing short of a miraculous day, I tell you. And now I’m off to burn every single pair of maternity pants I own.

Yay!!!

What a great way to start what is likely to be a very exciting week!

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For the second year in a row, you’ve voted this blog the Second Best Family Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards!!! Thank you so much to Jen, who nominated me, and to all of you who voted through rounds one and two. I’m very honoured, especially given the amazing quality of the other blogs who were also nominated.

Congratulations to first place winner Beck from Frog and Toad are Still Friends, third place winner The Genealogist, finalists Don Mills Diva and City News: Family Matters, and to all the great bloggers who were nominated this year.

As if that weren’t exciting enough, at the risk of having the Uterus That Cried Wolf, I’ve been having mild but noticable contractions since I woke up this morning. Hey, he’s got to come out of there eventually!!

Thanks again for the great honour – I love all of you!!!

Hey, lookit that!

Thank you!!

You voted Postcards from the Mothership to the final round of voting in the Canadian Blog Awards! YAY!!!! I’m so honoured, thank you!

So now you know what you have to do, right? It’s rather obvious that I need something else to obsess over for the next eight days, and this seems like a lovely choice. In 2005 I got a bronze for best new blog, and last year the silver for best family blog — could I be so bold as to dream of… ack, I can’t even say it out loud. You only have one vote this round (or, at least, one vote per computer, yanno, I’m just sayin’, if you happen to be at home AND at work…) and I’d be honoured if you’d vote for me again. I promise, no more voting requests for a very long time!!

Although I’m truly disappointed that my nominations in the Family Blog category (Mad and Mama Tulip) and Best Personal Blog (Suz ) didn’t make it to this round of voting, I’m delighted to see that Cinnamon Gurl’s Write About Here has also made the final round for Best Photo/Art blog and Ali’s Juice has made it to Best Entertainment/Cultural blog, so vote for them too, okay?

Thank you again for your support in this, and in everything. I’m drunk on hormones and the bloggy love, and just moments away from standing up on the table to either publicly declare my love for all of you, strip, or fall over flat on my face. (You can see why I don’t drink much anymore.) So thanks, and what the hell are you still doing here? Git over there and VOTE already!

I have the bestest bloggy friends

This was going to be a rather drawn out recap of my little jaunt to Toronto over the past couple of days, but I have exactly no time to write it up as it deserves. Okay, so the majority of it wasn’t incredibly exciting, except I got to meet some really cool people doing really interesting things with social media, and you’re probably lucky to be spared the excruciating details.

But I have to tell you about this. I was supposed to meet up with a bunch of my bestest bloggy friends, most of whom I haven’t seen since last year’s Motherlode conference presentation — but because it was a Tuesday night, and because they’re all busy mommies, many of them couldn’t make it.

In the end, it was Marla and Lee and I who got together for a lazy, chatty and very yummy dinner at Fran’s Diner. (I had pix, but forgot to take them off the camera. Sigh.) I’m so so happy to have had the chance to meet up with Marla and Lee, who may just be two of the sweetest and most interesting people I know – and now Toronto seems even further away from Ottawa than it ever did.

You’d think just spending a couple of hours with great friends would be enough, but did I mention there were presents, too? Marla, whose creativity knows no boundaries, made up a card with instructions that informed me there were three gifts: one for now, one for later, and one for now and later.

The gift for ‘now’ was eensy, beensy baby sockies embellished with “I love mommy” (pause for you to say, “awwwwww”.) The gift for ‘later’ was a package of comparatively ginormous men’s sweat socks. (pause for you to giggle appreciatively.) And the ‘now and later’ gift was a set of gorgeous scented candles, to help cover up the stinky boy-feet smell.

But the very bestest part? Way down at the bottom of the bag was a printout of this:

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It’s a handmade baby quilt and pillow they ordered from Etsy.com for me baby. With moons and stars! And no crib bumpers! Do I not have the most wonderful, sweet, thoughtful bloggy friends ever?

Thank you to Marla and Lee, and to my friends who couldn’t make it but contributed to the gift: Ann and Jen and Nadine and Kate and Andrea. I can’t tell you how touched I am, and how lucky I am to count you all as friends.

In defense of Donder

“Oh no,” lament the bloggy peeps who have been around for a while. “Not the reindeer thing again!”

Why yes, as a matter of fact. It’s the reindeer thing again. If I can educate one misinformed soul every year about the correct names of Santa’s reindeer, my mission will be a success. (Besides, I’m in Toronto at a conference as you read this and hard up for fresh material and bloggable time. So, please accept this repeat post dredged up from last year with my gracious apologies.) Now, where were we? Oh yes, the reindeer thing…

“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen;
Comet and Cupid and DONDER and Blitzen…”

As you might know, my last name is Donders. As such, it has been my lifelong quest to set the record straight and right the wrongs entrenched by Johnny Marks and Gene Autry.

Here’s a little history lesson for you. The poem “A Visit From St Nicholas”, commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”, was written back in 1823 and is generally attributed to American poet Clement Clarke Moore (although there have been recent arguments that the poem was in fact written by his contemporary Henry Livingston Jr.) The original poem reads, in part:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.
“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Dunder and Blixem!

As explained on the Donder Home Page (no relation):

In the original publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1823 in the Troy Sentinel “Dunder and Blixem” are listed as the last two reindeer. These are very close to the Dutch words for thunder and lightning, “Donder and Bliksem”. Blixem is an alternative spelling for Bliksem, but Dunder is not an alternative spelling for Donder. It is likely that the word “Dunder” was a misprint. Blitzen’s true name, then, might actually have been “Bliksem”.

In 1994, the Washington Post delved into the matter (sorry for the noisy link – it’s the only copy I could find online) by sending a reporter to the Library of Congress to reference the source material.

We were successful. In fact, Library of Congress reference librarian David Kresh described Donner/Donder as “a fairly open-and-shut case.” As we marshaled the evidence near Alcove 7 in the Library’s Main Reading Room a few days ago, it quickly became clear that Clement Clarke Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” wanted to call him (or her?) “Donder.” Never mind that editors didn’t always cooperate. […] Further confirmation came quickly. In “The Annotated Night Before Christmas,” which discusses the poem in an elegantly illustrated modern presentation, editor Martin Gardner notes that the “Troy Sentinel” used “Dunder”, but dismisses this as a typo. Gardner cites the 1844 spelling as definitive, but also found that Moore wrote “Donder” in a longhand rendering of the poem penned the year before he died: “That pretty well sews it up,” concluded Kresh.

So there you have it. This Christmas season, make sure you give proper credit to Santa’s seventh reindeer. On DONDER and Blitzen. It’s a matter of family pride. (Or, for more fun with the true meaning of Donder, you can read this post from the archives, too!)

Where I’m coming from

An interesting meme on identity, pilfered from daysgoby. I’m not convinced I’ve done it justice.

I am from paperback books, from Lays BBQ chips in a turquoise bowl, and from orange shag rugs.

I am from primary-coloured paint chipping from cold metal playground bars, from a blue two-wheeler with a white banana seat and high-rise handle bars, from dog-eared lined notebooks and fat red pencils.

I am from the bruised green sky of a pending thunderstorm, from snow that works its way under even the most tightly wrapped scarf, from sleeveless shirts on starry summer nights.

I am from the raspberries and the lilacs, from red rosebushes crawling up the trellis and emerald green lawns carefully tended. From yellow brick houses with gingerbread trim, and wide straight streets with towering trees.

I am from presents on Christmas Eve, from crepes made from scratch, from Kiefers and McLeods and even deBeers – yes, those deBeers, but too far removed to inherit any diamonds.

I am from the laughter and the bliss.

From you are my shining star and you can do it. From you can’t play with us. From we don’t want her on our team, you take her, but we don’t want her either.

I am from Jesus Christ Superstar crossed with the Force and belief in a higher power. From but why? From how can you know?

I’m from kilts and Delftware and the Maple Leaf, from potato salad and rice-a-roni at Christmas, from hagelslag on buttered rye bread triangles, from canned spaghetti on french fries.

From the Mosel river valley, where the voices of ten brothers and sisters raised in song flowed through the vineyards and over the sundial, from twin brothers who married sisters, and from highschool sweethearts.

I am from patriotism and respect and kindness, from endurance and appreciation, from storytellers. I am from love.

(Feel free to play along.)

Spot the Ottawa bloggers

First of all, shame on me for not yet saying a HUGE thank you for each of the 288 votes (!!) you cast for the Best Parenting Weblog Award. Really, thank you! I’m honoured and touched and will treasure each vote, and I’m sure some dark future days when I’m feeling insecure and ridiculous with all this blog stuff I’ll be recounting each precious vote like a miser with his gold.

And you saved me from last place!! I could have written a post about the wonders of eighth place, and what a terrific number 8 is — but my hilarious if numerically-challenged fellow competitor, Hollywood Flakes, has already written that post for me. So, er, what she said!

(Edited to add: Ack! Apparently we need some fact checkers around here. I’ve made an egregious claim to the glory of eigth place, led down the garden path to delusions of grandeur by the aforementioned numerically-challenged Sarah of Hollywood Flakes. *blush* In fact, the rightful heir to the title of “KingQueen of Eight” belongs to Bub and Pie. I am, most humbly, your Real Martian Beauty, That Number 9 Cutie. Hey, I never claimed to be good with numbers…)

In all seriousness, though: thank you, my friends. *curtsey*

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A couple of weeks ago, a reporter from the Citizen sent an e-mail asking for opinions about the recent recall of cough and cold medications for children. I wrote back what I thought at the time was a rather unhelpful response, basically saying I was surprised to hear about the recall and perplexed as to why the medicines had been on the shelf all this time if there had been questions about their efficacy. I didn’t realize until after I sent my response that he had addressed his e-mail to a handful of Ottawa mom-bloggers.

The article came out yesterday, but I didn’t notice it until this morning. I had no idea, until I read it, that the Canadian Paediatric Society’s position has always been that cough and cold medications should not be administered to children under three years of age. As I said to the reporter, I’ve been using them sporadically with the boys from as soon as the label on the box said it was okay, although I can’t say I’ve noticed a huge difference one way or the other. I’m not a not a huge believer in OTC medicines at the best of times, though, and with the exception of tylenol I’m reluctant to medicate all but the worst symptoms when I know we’re dealing with the common cold. As I said to the reporter, I’ve been trying to conceive, pregnant or nursing for the best part of eight years, so I’ve learned to do without and come to prefer non-medicinal options for the boys as well. There’s also a huge article on the same page, reviewing what works and what doesn’t work when treating a cold.

Can you spot the Ottawa bloggers?

My rebellious streak

I am, for the most part, a law-abiding citizen. I don’t knock over liquor stores, don’t carry concealed weapons, and rarely roll my stops – even when making a right-hand turn. I’ve never been pulled over for speeding. The only time I was ever actually inside a police car was when a very nice officer escorted Beloved and I home from the site of an accident Beloved had making an ill-advised turn into oncoming traffic. I am, in short, a good girl.

There is, however, one set of laws I will flagrantly flout. Not only will I break them from necessity, but I will break them for the sheer thrill of it. I am incorrigible.

My name is DaniGirl, and I am an inveterate jaywalker.

Even though the nearest intersection may be mere metres away, I will cross the street in the middle of the block. I will cross against the light. I will dodge moving vehicles, standing on the yellow line in the middle of the road, waiting for a break in traffic. I’m sure that I commit some sort of jaywalking offense at least a dozen times in the course of an average day. One very, very stupid day back in my ill-informed youth, I crossed (Mom, look away please) twelve lanes of highway 401 through Toronto.

I find it somewhere between quaint and annoying that people actually stop when the little white walking dude disappears and the red hand starts to flash. Even when no cars are coming! It never fails to perplex me, and more than once I have nearly crashed full speed into the back of someone who stops at the curb, so intent am I on crossing at my own leisure.

Jaywalking as a habit is so deeply ingrained into my psyche, I have to remind myself to obey the rules of the road when the boys are with me. Oh, the agony of walking aaaallllll the way down to the corner to cross the street on the way to the park, when we could just nip straight across from the end of the driveway. It’s excruciating.

What a rebel I am, eh? Life on the edge, I tell ya! So, what about you? What laws do you see as “optional”?

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Today is (thank goodness!) the last day to vote on the Weblog Awards. You can click through to vote (hint, hint) or if you’re on the main page, scroll down to the poll embedded in yesterday’s post. Polls close at 5 pm EST.