On a bicycle built for two

I used to love my bike. It was one of the first things I bought to treat myself when I was freshly divorced and my money was my own again. Ottawa is a great city for bike paths, and when we lived in the Glebe and Old Ottawa South I would love to spend a Saturday afternoon riding around, maybe up to Mooney’s Bay or just up to the store and back.

Then I got pregnant with Tristan, and never could decide whether I thought a trailer or a seat was safer – and then I was pregnant with Simon and the bike sat neglected and cobwebby in the garage for a couple of years. Since Tristan started riding his bike last year, I have been idly looking for a seat or trailer for Simon, and I finally found a second-hand trailer earlier this summer for a stellar $25 – and another $30 to get my bike back into ridable shape again.

There’s an old expression that intimates you never forget how to ride a bicycle. Well, let me tell you, after five years, your ass sure forgets what a bike seat feels like, and spends a lot of time complaining after the first time you ride a bike in five years. I’m just sayin’.

And riding around negotiating traffic downtown is a hell of a lot easier than riding through my suburban neighbourhood at preschooler speed. Have you ever tried to ride your bike for an hour slowly – at say, half of walking speed? It’s like spinning class from hell – speed up, slow down, speed up, dead lurching stop to avoid a preschooler who stopped to pick a dandilion and make a wish. Especially fun with 40 lbs of Simon inertia rolling along behind me!

For you, I will now share pictures of my ass with the Internet. (If that doesn’t class up the quality of google traffic around here, I don’t know what will.)

And, because you were so sweet with your wishes and comments this week, a gratuituous birthday cake picture, because it was on the memory card, too.

Name that iPod – Vote for your favourite!

Time to move on to the voting phase of the Name that iPod Summer Contest!

I tried valiantly to enter the code for the poll into this post, but Blogger would have none of it, so you’ll find the poll in the sidebar to the right.

I limited the choices to ten capriciously chosen nominations simply because I couldn’t figure out a way to force the poll code to give me more than ten options. However, I feel badly enough about this that I’m entering everyone who proposed a nomination into a second draw for a consolation candy prize draw, too. That’s how much I love you guys!

I’ll leave the poll up through the weekend, and confirm the winning nomination and the random candy prize winner sometime on Monday morning… the last day of my summer vacation!

What are you waiting for? Vote already!

Bedtime stories

About four months ago, I was walking through a mall downtown and they were having a book sale in the atrium. I was on my way to a meeting, and didn’t have a lot of time to browse, but I saw a paperback copy of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, re-issued with a section of glossy pictures from the movie in the centre of the book.

It was only $2.99, and so I picked it up. I clearly remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when I was somewhere between seven and nine years old. I had borrowed it from the school library. I remember lying on the black vinyl couch, and on the orange shag carpet, trying to imagine what it would be like to make a single chocolate bar last a whole year. The idea of Charlie’s father, Mr Bucket, working in a factory screwing on toothpaste-tube caps stayed with me my whole life, for some reason.

I thought Tristan would be a little bit too young for it, but around the same time Marla had been talking about reading Charlotte’s Web to Josephine, and Josie’s quite a bit younger than Tristan, so I thought I’d give it a try. One afternoon we read a few pages, but he squirmed and wriggled and asked non-sequiter questions as I was reading, and I figured we’d save ourselves the stress and pick it up in a few years.

A couple of weeks ago, Beloved – who is usually in charge of Tristan’s bedtime reading – was teaching late and I was putting Tristan to bed. I saw that they had started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and were a few chapters in, and I was delighted to continue.

At first, I thought he wasn’t paying attention. He was looking around the room, lifting his legs up the side of the wall and playing with the covers. There isn’t an illustration on every page, and I suppose a page full of text that he can’t yet read isn’t much of a focal point. But every time I turned a fresh page he would to tell me the number of the chapter on that page, so he is watching, and when I asked him about what was happening, it was clear he was following the story.

I’m so excited to have entered a new world of books that we can share. Beloved has been great about finding interesting picture books from the library, and I’ve loved reading a lot of them. But now that we can start reading simple chapter books, I have a whole childhood of memories pressed carefully between dusty pages of an old novel that I just can’t wait to share. Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, Beezus and Ramona, Superfudge… I’m excited just thinking about these old friends.

Beloved said last night that once they finish the book, he’d like to rent the Johnny Depp version of the movie for Tristan to watch, but I disagreed. He’s just barely discovered the joy of a book that can be savoured over the course of a couple of weeks, versus one consumed in a single sitting, and I’m reluctant to replace the pictures in his head with the ones conjured up by the Hollywood special-effects crews. Beloved thinks I’m a little weird on this point.

So now that we’re standing on the threshold of a brave new world of chapter books, I need ideas. Which books do you remember from your childhood, and which ones have your kids loved?

(Whoops! Edited to add: this post was partly inspired by a writing prompt over at Crazy Hip Blog Mamas. I’ve been a member of the ring since I started blogging a year and a half ago, but lately they’ve really been doing a lot of work to build a nice blogging mama community. Check them out!)

Saying goodbye to frostie

I’ve always believed in a greater order to the universe, if not in an actual higher power. Not exactly fate, because I believe we do control our own destinies. But I strongly believe that everything happens for a reason.

That makes it only marginally easier to say goodbye to frostie. No need to pee on a stick this morning, because nature informed me in her own bloody way last night that the cycle didn’t work, that toastie never did become stickie, and that I’m not pregnant.

I think the strangest, saddest part of the whole thing is saying goodbye to the idea of frostie. For five years, as long as we’ve had Tristan in my life, we’ve also had frostie. Frostie was like an empty chair at the table, a place-holder for the child that might someday be. It was our back-up plan, our big ‘what-if”. It was also the twin of Tristan. For five years, we paid a couple hundred dollars to keep it in frozen slumber, and it seems incredibly sad to me to go through all the effort of re-energizing it, only to have the cycle fail.

But everything happens for a reason, right?

You only had to read a post or two in the past couple of months to know I was occasionally ambivalent about the idea of having three kids. And yet, typically, now that I’ve been told I can’t have something I want it more than ever. I’m such a Leo.

And heck, Simon taught us that we don’t need a lab and a dozen specialists and a couple thousand dollars to make a baby. There’s an easier, much more fun and FREE way to go about it, and you know how I feel about free. I love free.

So yes, today we are sad to say goodbye to frostie. To have a dream end this way is always sad, but we are so very blessed in so many ways. I never, ever want to be that person who reaches past what she has trying to grasp what she wants. Never.

So long, frostie. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for us.

I have no idea what to call this post

I’ve spent a lot of this past week and a half pretty much obsessed with my breasts. They’ve always been the canary in the coal mine, my first indicator of pregnancy. As such, I must have groped myself several thousand times since frostie became toastie. There are entire freshman classes at large universities who have experienced less groping that I have groped my own breasts this week.

Despite the fact that they should have been bruised from all the groping, my breasts were sending some pretty strong ‘not pregnant’ unsignals up until Sunday afternoon.

Here’s a nickle’s worth of free advice for you. In the middle of the two week wait, during a fertility treatment cycle, do NOT randomly choose to wear a bra that you haven’t worn in three months. You will be driven to the brink of insanity trying to figure out if the change in the consistency of your breasts is due to the hormone fluctuations of early pregnancy, or a too-small cup size of an ill-fitting bra.

So I broke down Monday morning and peed on a stick. And despite my best efforts to conjure a second line out of the urine-soaked ether, it was quite obviously negative. I peered at it until I was cross-eyed, looking at it flat on, at an angle, and under four kinds of light – the only thing I lacked was a black light – before finally accepting the fact that the second line was simply not going to appear.

I threw it in the garbage, crawled back into bed (did I mention this was all at 4:30 in the morning?) then stumbled back to the bathroom and checked it yet again. Still negative. I laid it carefully on the bathroom counter, remembering tales of seemingly-negative tests left to ferment on the counter for hours that magically materialized as positive later in the day. But it didn’t.

But I was still feeling pretty hopeful, because Day 11 of a cycle is still on the early side. And when you’re an infernal optimist, you don’t give up that easily. Besides, my breasts remained convinced I was pregnant, and who can argue with a breast?

So I peed on a stick in the wee hours of this morning, too. No big finish here – it was negative, too. And while it’s only 24 hours later, this one has the weight of finality for me. This is the one that made a few tears of regret slide down my cheeks, because now I believe it. I think it’s done.

I’ll still pee on my remaining sticks, at least until tomorrow, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t will even the faintest hint of a positive out of those evil pee sticks, and it seems to have been enough to convince my breasts that they’re not pregnant, either.

Don’t console me now, because I’m still holding out until the blood test on Friday. Hey, you never know. But if you want to post a comment, wish me a happy birthday instead. Thirty seven years ago today, I started out on this crazy trip, despite my best efforts to the contrary. (I was late, and breech, and they had to come in and get me. Stubborn from the day I was born.) I love birthdays, and don’t know why people don’t like to celebrate them. Today of all days is my day, and that’s worth celebrating.

Name that iPod – a summer contest

I had no idea.

According to Sue of Inner Dorothy, my iPod needs a name. Her iPod is named Surely.

I’m ashamed to admit that when iTunes asked me to name my iPod, I labelled it with the incredibly lame and pedestrian “Dani’s iPod”. Now that I’ve been enlightened by Sue, I’m all over the idea of christening my iPod like stink on a diaper.

But what name is worthy of my little electronic bundle of joy? Something clever, something original, something snazzy? Well, at least something that’s not going to get my poor little iPod mocked on the playground by all the other cool iPods, at least.

And that’s where you, dear friends, come in. You’ve proven time and again that you are more witty than me by half, and twice as clever. Welcome to the “Name that iPod” summer contest. I’ll take your suggestions through the end of the week, and on Friday, I’ll put up a poll and you can vote for the best name. If you can’t make the comment box work, and a couple of you have mentioned that you can’t, send me an e-mail.

Did I mention there will be prizes? Prizes! I’m still feeling inspired by the sugar rush of the great candy swap of 2006, so the clever person who suggests the winning name will have not only the prestige of knowing you christened my beloved new iPod, but I’ll send you a gift pack of personally selected candy as well.

It’s like Rockstar Supernova and Big Brother and Canadian Idol, all wrapped up into one bloggy contest, isn’t it? Not so much? Oh well, at least you get the chance for some free candy.

So get on it. What’s my iPod’s new name?

A weekend with Mimi and Pipi

Friday morning, an hour’s drive outside of Ottawa, we arrived at Storyland and spent a morning in this charming if slightly shabby park in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

We drove all afternoon through Algonquin Provincial Park (perhaps one of the loveliest drives I have ever been on) and arrived at Mimi and Pipi’s house – also in the middle of absolutely nowhere – in the late afternoon. The boys loved roaming their exquisitely landscaped acre carved out of the bedrock of the Canadian Shield and the forest.

We saw lots of creatures, both familiar and wild: snakes, turtles, fish in Pipi’s pond, and a huge moose having breakfast in Mimi and Pipi’s neighbour’s yard. They called us to tell us they could see two moose in their yard, and we hopped in the car and made it over just in time to see one loping away into the woods. The boys had fun tracing following the humoungous hoofprints across the loamy soil. Simon actually caught this monarch butterfly, and I’m not sure who was more surprised. He let it go, and it fluttered on its way.

The weather crapped out on us on Saturday, but we managed to have a lovely day nonetheless. Mimi just this month got her licence to drive a school bus (at the impressive age of 62 no less – don’t you love her to death?) and so the boys enjoyed their first school-bus ride with a personal driver. Sadly, cameras were left at home.

Sunday, the weather improved enough for a trip to the beach, and a ride in Pipi’s boat. And yes, that last picture is of the boat that towed us back to the dock after the motor died in the middle of the lake. My biceps are aching as I type this from the paddling!

But the true highlight of the weekend was riding around the property and the local snowmobile trails on Pipi’s tractor. Every four year old needs grandparents who operate heavy machinery and let them drive boats and tractors, don’t you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_j9xGcaPPc

Bad marketing ideas # 207

Did you see this bit about the NHL coming out with pink hockey jerseys? The NHL, which is more concerned with improving profits than improving hockey, is targeting what they estimate are the 40 per cent of hockey fans who are women. Apparently there are a lot of women out there who are coveting a pink (or baby blue) hockey jersey with their team logo on it.

Not so much.

I can totally see the idea of marketing a smaller, tailored version of the jersey (shall we call it a hersey? Lookit that, witticism via typo!) made to fit an ordinary person not encumbered by 20 pounds of hockey gear – in the team’s colours. But what on earth made the NHL marketing gurus think we needed them in girley pastel colours?

I don’t own any Senators clothing, not because I have been waiting for a pastel version but because the Senators logo is so hideously ugly. And also, I’m allergic to polyester. Make me a nice cotton jersey, or maybe even a silk-lycra blend, in the teams colours with a subtle little logo on the sleeve, and put it at a price point that’s considered a fun splurge and not a major investment (I have blazers that cost less than $70) and I’d be all over it. Or rather, it would be all over me.

That’s all I have today. We’re leaving in an hour to spend the morning here, and then driving through Algonquin Park to spend the weekend with the in-laws on the other side of the province. I’m only half packed, have nothing organized for the four-hour drive, and am more than a little nervous about keeping my wee beasties out of trouble at the un-child-proofed house of my in-laws, tucked on an acre of forested land about 15 km away from the nearest outpost of civilization. Eek!

The emotional gamut that is the two-week wait

It’s been a week since frostie became toastie – or, as Beloved has christened it, “Stickie”. We’re half way to resolution and I’m finding the wait much harder than I expected.

I know, I’m not exactly famous for my patience in the first place, but I kind of figured that I would have less emotional investment this time around. I mean, either outcome is wonderful – on one hand, we have a gorgeous family with just the four of us. On the other hand, we have a gorgeous family that is 25 per cent more – therefore 25 per cent more gorgeous – than before. I can’t lose.

And yet, I have spent a lot of time fretting. And flying. And fretting. And flying. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m developing a theory on the two-week wait, because I’ve had a little bit too much time in my head to think about it. The two-week wait allows you to experience every single possible emotion on the spectrum, from elation to desolation, just to prepare you for any possible eventuality when you take that pregnancy test.

I started out pretty confident that Frostie>Toastie>Stickie had implanted, and I was pregnant. I had nothing to base it on but my own instincts, which have been pretty good about predicting actual pregnancies, but not so good at predicting gender. (I was gobsmacked to find out my babies were boys both times – I had been sure they were each a girl when I was pregnant.) I spent most of the weekend blissfully imagining how the next nine months might pass with me pregnant, and passed idle time considering how we’d arrange Tristan’s room into a shared room for the boys, and checked out other people’s mini-vans every time we drove somewhere.

I’ve slowly slid down the confidence scale to the point where I’m now fairly sure that it didn’t work. Why? Because I’ve spent WAY too much time in my head, that’s why. I don’t feel any pregnancy symptoms yet, although the deeply repressed logical part of my brain keeps insisting that at a full week before my period is due, there simply aren’t any symptoms to be felt.

Every couple of hours, I’ll have a random surge of confidence, and the gyroscope in my brain will announce it worked and I am pregnant. The alignment of dust motes in Namibia will cause a ripple in the Force a few hours later, and my emotional barometer will plummet, convincing me that the cycle has failed and menstruation is imminent.

It’s all becoming rather tiresome, to be honest.

At least it’s not as bad as the two-week wait with the IVF that resulted in Tristan. I had a toxic reaction to the estradiol level in my blood from the follicle stimulating hormones, and developed Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome, a potentially serious condition that causes fluid to gather in your ovaries. Pregnancy excerbates the condition, and when my OHSS symptoms started to abate about five days after we transferred two embryos, I was so sure that the cycle failed I cried for days – including a rather embarrassing breakdown at the clinic when they told me my OHSS had cleared up enough that I didn’t need to come in for daily monitoring any more. In my hormone-addled brain, no OHSS = no pregnancy.

That was around six days after transfer, pretty close to where I am now. And then, three days after that at nine days post transfer, I started to feel sick and bloated, and when late in the day I started having trouble drawing a breath, I called the doctor on call to check in. He ordered me to the ER and to make a long story short, we found out that night that I was pregnant. (We found out two weeks later it was twins, and lost one of the twins two weeks after that. The whole story is here, if you haven’t read it yet.)

And all that means pretty much nothing. I just have to wait. And wait. And wait. Did I mention I’m not so good with the waiting?

I’m thinking of buying some bulk home pregnancy tests from the Extraordinary Baby Shoppe – they’re only four for five dollars, plus the freebie from my great OPK adventure. I could start testing on Monday, but I’m just not sure if I could handle a full week of negative HPTs. I saw enough negatives in our years of infertility, thank you.

But hey, was that a twinge in my left breast? Maybe it’s a little tender? Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s tender because I keep groping it, trying to see if it’s tender.

Argh. I really hate waiting.

Sweet vacation days

It doesn’t get any better than backyard vacation blogging, does it?

Oh wait, yes it does: summer evening vacation blogging, when you are blaring your brand-spanking-new, six-days-early birthday present iPod Nano – and blogging.

Love the iPod Nano. Love it, LOVE IT!!!! Really, I’m hearing new things in songs I’ve listened to a hundred times or more. Changes by David Bowie and Closer to Fine by Indigo Girls and Ahead by a Century by the Tragically Hip and the Boomtown Rats I Don’t Like Mondays– the music has never sounded so clear, so crisp, and all this through dollar-store headphones, no less. The only problem is I’m alone in the house and although I want to blare the music, I’m afraid I won’t hear the boys and their endless bedtime requests for another story and a glass of water and biscuits for the dog.

Hey, wait a minute… who said that’s a bad thing? Did I mention I totally heart my new iPod???