Month: January 2008

Liveblogging labour or false start?

It’s 4:30 in the morning and the house is silent. Everyone is asleep except for me and the dog, who has followed me downstairs with faithful if not bleary curiousity.

I didn’t sleep more than 45 minutes last night. I suppose this means I am biologically unable to bring a child into the world without giving up an entire night of sleep. Sleep deprivation, my old friend…

My contractions started some time around 8 pm last night, but were the mild and sporadic Braxton Hicks type for most of the evening. By the time I turned off my bedside lamp around 9:30 or 10:00, they had a mild intensity but rather startling regularity. I tracked them in six to eight minute intervals throughout the night, and they crowded as close as just two or three minutes apart for long stretches.

I contemplated calling the midwife for a while around 11 pm, but was reluctant to wake everybody up for nothing. Even Beloved is still blissfully unaware of my long, quiet and watchful night. Sometime around 3 am I dozed for a while, and the contractions seemed to switch places with the annoying twitches of restless leg syndrome. For the last hour, the contractions have been mild but noticable, and part of the reason I came downstairs was to see if they were really contractions or just some strange nighttime hallucination. After eating a banana in the freezing cold and dark living room, I noticed the computer and thought I’d see if anyone else is awake this early in the morning. In the time it has taken to type this, I’ve had three or four more mild contractions.

Hmmm, at a glance only Sheila guessed January 25 as Baby’s arrival date — think she might be our big winner?

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Since this might be the last time I post for a while (cross your fingers for me!) — or not! — I’d be remiss if I didn’t poke you one last time to remind you to vote for me in the final round of the Canadian Blog Awards! Hey, if I can think if YOU at a time like this, the least you could do is throw me a vote!

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Ouch! Hey, that was a long and painful contraction… huh, maybe this is the real thing after all!

The rockstar meme

Maybe it’s the result of too many years reading Dave Barry, but my ear is always attuned to turns of phrase that might make a good name for a rock band. MamaTulip tipped me off to this meme, and then I saw it at Suz’s place too. I couldn’t resist!

Directions:

1. Click on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. Finally, click on this link: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

You then take the pic and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your pic.

meme-image-2.gif

(Flickr image courtesy of javieketela)

Wicked cool fun!

In which she tries to get her head out of her uterus

I’ve been spending a lot of time blogging in my head lately, but can’t for the life of me get a full post out of any of it. Some random bits of flotsam and jetsam:

I have to blog my appreciation of the Canadian kids’ clothing chain Please Mum. I’ve always liked the quality of their clothes, and was so impressed with the winter parka that lasted Tristan two years that I bought both boys their winter parkas there this year. Tristan’s was fine, but Simon’s had a wonky zipper right from the start. Not a big deal, but enough to be an annoyance and prevent Simon from being able to zip up his own coat most of the time. Then, last week the coat split under the arm when Beloved went to boost Simon into the van, and a couple of days ago the zipper suddenly spazzed out entirely and popped open every time I zipped it up.

Fed up fighting with it, I brought the coat back to the store this week. I had no receipt, and told the clerk that while I generally admire the quality of Please Mum’s merchandise, this one had obviously been made at a quarter to five on the Friday of a long weekend.

She took a look at the various offending bits and clucked her tongue. She not only refunded my purchase price (already reduced once when I brought it in for a price adjustment three weeks after I bought it) but gave it to me in cash instead of as a store credit. “That should never happen,” was all she said when I told her that I was truly impressed with the customer service. So, props to Please Mum! (They have a great special on right now where you will get $25 off a $50 purchase — good deals to be had! And no, I’m not blogging any of this for any reason except I think stories of decent retailers and excellent customer service need to be noted and shared.)

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Something smells a little sketchy in the bottom of my refrigerator, but I cannot for the life of me convince myself to sit on the floor and start searching for it. Sometimes these things just clear up on their own, right?

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Oh my god, is WonderPets (click through at your own peril!!) not the most annoying children’s show ever? Seriously, I’ve seen it three times since I’ve been home on maternity leave and I want to scratch my eyes out every single time it comes on. Why do they sing everything? And why the fuck does that duck lisp like that? I don’t know if I can take a whole year of this.

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Telling a pregnant woman to drink an additional three to four cups of raspberry leaf tea a day to induce labour is somebody’s idea of a practical joke, right? Or am I supposed to pee the baby out?

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Tristan had a school project this week. It was his turn for “All About Me” week at school and he had to draw up a series of pictures on themes to be presented to the class, like, “My favourite food is (meatballs, pogos, lollipops and ice cream)” and “My favourite colour is (red)” and “When I grow up, I want to be (a racecar driver)” and “My favourite thing about me is (my blond fuzzy hair).” The very last statement was “I am special because…” and I was quite curious how he’d answer that one. Imagine the melted hormonal puddle I became when he answered it thusly: “I am special because my mommy and daddy love me.” Couldn’t you just hug him to bits?

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!

Interminable Intermezzo, or, Seven thoughts on the end of pregnancy

Back a couple of weeks ago, Rebecca from Adventures in Mommyhood tagged me for the “seven weird things about me” meme. I think the blog is a testament to the fact that there are far more than seven things that are weird about me, so I’m going to twist this one into the new all-uterus-all-the-time format of blog and adapt it to be “seven things about the end of this pregnancy” meme.

  1. I feel like I’m caught in suspension between two worlds. It’s been almost a week since I’ve been at work, but baby shows no signs of arriving. Theoretically, it could be as long as seventeen or even twenty days (whimper) until baby arrives, but the midwives are now so concerned about his size that they said they won’t make me go much over seven days past my due date. Every twitch and twinge is cause for serious – and ultimately disappointing – analysis. Does anybody else find it terribly ironic that pregnancy is bookended by an obsession with finding, or not finding, some predictive smudge on the toilet paper?
  2. Further to point one, I have now made it my full-time occupation to entice this baby into leaving my womb. Beloved hasn’t gotten this lucky since the good ole days of trying to get knocked up in the first place, and I’m chugging red raspberry leaf tea like it’s going out of style. I walked loops around Bayshore Shopping Centre for a while yesterday morning, and took the dog for a rather frigid walk around the block after dinner. I swear, I haven’t had this much exercise since the good ole days of trying to get knocked up in the first place!! So far, I have tired feet and an incredibly sore pelvis, and one good contraction to show for my efforts. Bah.

  3. I have two emotional channels right now, and I vacillate randomly – and regularly – between them. One is a blissful sense of contentment, where all I can think about is how much I love my boys, how wonderful they are and how great my life is. The other is a deep and dangerously cranky annoyance with the entire universe and its conspiracy to irritate the shit out of me by any and all means possible. Aren’t you glad you aren’t Beloved right about now?

  4. Speaking of Beloved, he’s an angel. No, really, you have no idea how great he has been during this last stretch of pregnancy. From turning the other cheek again and again in the face of my increasingly irrational hormonal outbursts to taking on the lions share of just about everything around the house to not blinking an eye when I ask him to massage my poor beleaguered tailbone (I can’t help think of Peggy Bundy saying “Rub my toushie!”), he’s been a superhero.
  5. Despite the fact that I’m nearly catatonic with exhaustion, I can’t sleep more than an hour or two at a time during the night. It’s getting so bad that I’ll roll over to look at the clock (itself an effort of Herculean proportions!) and whimper with dismay when I see that it’s still only three or four o’clock in the morning. More than once, I’ve found myself thinking, “Oh my god, is it not even morning YET? Will this night never end?”
  6. I have become a space cadet. I can’t tell you the number of times I find myself, during the course of a day, sitting and staring off into space – often while holding a half-folded sock in my hand, or in the middle of looking for a can of soup in the cupboard. My brain has deserted me entirely.
  7. I have three speed settings right now: slow, really slow, and glacially slow. Our phone rings four times before the voice mail kicks in, and more than once I have missed a call because four rings isn’t enough for me to haul myself off the couch and make it the fourteen steps around the end of the couch and into the next room to get to the phone. My new theme song is Mussorgsky’s “The Ox Cart” from his Pictures at an Exhibition symphony, which Beloved hums at me regularly. (And yet, I still love him. Go figure.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my next dose of evening primrose oil and I have to massage the accupressure points on my ankles…

Shower me — with ideas!

In these last, long days before Baby arrives, I’ve had plenty of time to get organized. There are freshly-washed blankets and towels and sleepers, the cradle is assembled and waiting, the car seat is installed and ready. I have diapers, nursing pads and a new nursing pillow. I’ve run out of things to worry over, except for maybe my water breaking someplace inappropriate or not being able to get to the hospital on time. But since it’s beginning to seem like baby will never actually arrive – and yes, I know I still have more than a week until my due date! – I’m not worried too much about that just yet.

See, don’t I look like I’m ready?

38w1d

So you know what I’m worried about? I’m worried about blog! I know about newborns, I know about blogging — but I’m a little sketchy on the idea of blogging with a newborn! Writing posts these past few weeks has become increasingly difficult as the baby takes over my brain, so I can barely imagine how difficult it will be to think of things to write about after baby arrives – let alone finding the time to do it.

But I’m committed to it, my bloggy friends! I know I can do it, but I need your help. There’s a lot of reasons to celebrate in the next few weeks. In addition to Simon’s birthday on February 1 and the pending arrival of the Player to be Named Later, it’s my bloggy anniversary on February 2 — three years of blogging!!

When a baby arrives, some people give a baby bathtub full of blankets and sleepers and towels (thanks Mom!) and some people make sure you won’t starve in those first bleary days at home with baby (thanks, friends at work!) Now what I really need is some inspiration!

I can blog about just about anything, as I’m sure I’ve proven through endless drivel-filled posts during the last three years. What I need is inspiration, a direction to wander, a place to launch from. In lieu of casseroles or more baby clothes, would you consider giving an idea or two? Ask me a question – about me or about the world. Leave me a link to your favourite meme or something interesting you found online. Suggest a topic, any topic, that I can blog about in the first little while after baby arrives and save me — and yourselves — from two months of posts about sore nipples and an in-depth analysis of the contents of baby’s diapers!

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If you haven’t already done so, today is also the last day you can cast a vote for me in round one of the Canadian Blog Awards! (hint, hint)

Simon’s party

Phew! For nine months, I’ve been worried that the Player to be Named Later would arrive just in time to disrupt Simon’s birthday party. That’s not to say he might not still arrive on his due date to share Simon’s actual birthday, but at least we made it through the party uninterrupted!

We kept things small, easy and, quite frankly, easy to cancel or reschedule! We invited only family or friends so close they may as well be family. We met at a local indoor playground and let the kids play out some energy before inviting them back to our place for cake and prezzies.

Simon and Amelia
Simon charmed the grown-ups by taking quite seriously my admonition to take care of his friend Amelia, and held her hand the first 10 minutes we were there.

Coffee and chat
It’s great to finally have the kids at an age where the grown-ups can relax and chat while the kidlets play.

'Just what I wanted!'
Star Wars Lego was a big hit! Just as I was snapping this photo, Simon was exclaiming his delight and gratitude to Granny and Papa Lou for “just what I wanted!!!”

Simon's superhero cake

It was a great birthday, full of fun for the kids and low-key and laid back for the adults. I couldn’t have asked for anything more, and Simon was delighted.

Meme-a-palooza

Filched from Toddled Dredge (but she out-geeked me!)

Take the Sci fi sounds quiz I received 63 credits on
The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz
How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz lose weight
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Filched from Casey:


You Are the Middle Finger


A bit fragile and dependent on your friends, you’re not nearly as hostile as you seem. You are balanced, easy to get along with, and quite serious. However, you can get angry and fed up with those around you. And you aren’t afraid to show it!

You get along well with: The Index Finger

Stay away from: The Pinky

(You think this result has anything to do with “oh my god, are you STILL pregnant?” crankiness?)

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I don’t even remember where I got this one. If I filched it from you, let me know and I’ll give you props.



(Junior High? Further evidence of the inherent control exerted by my barely-repressed inner fourteen-year-old girl.)

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Another less-than-subtle reminder that if you haven’t already done so, you can vote for me (or one of the many other worthy nominees) in the Best Family Blog category of the Canadian Blog Awards. You can only vote once per round, and voting for round one ends January 21. Vote me through to Round 2 so I have something to distract me from that other thing that I’m trying not to obsess over, okay?

Pop culture anniversaries for Generation X

2008 happens to be the 20th anniversary of the year I graduated from high school and moved from my parents’ home in London, Ontario to Ottawa. Twenty years since high school – ouch!

There was a fun article in the Ottawa Citizen last week that I would link to here if only I could find it online using their inefficient and rather annoying search engine. It listed a series of pop culture anniversaries that will be celebrated this year, many of which I’m sure will make you scratch your head and say, as I did, “Holy crap I’m getting old!”

For example, did you know it’s already been ten years since:

  • the FINAL episode of Seinfeld (it seems more like it should be ten years since the debut!)
  • the debut of Dawson’s Creek (I used to love watching this before we headed out to the Clocktower for pints on a Friday night.)
  • the debut of Sex in the City, of which I have only ever watched maybe two episodes.
  • the release of Brittney Spears’ first single, Baby One More Time.

In addition to my graduation from high school and life-alterning move across the province, it’s been twenty years since:

  • the debut of Roseanne.
  • the release of Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy AND Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (somehow, they’re better juxtaposed)

And, not from the article and not a nice round number, but because I got it on DVD for Christmas to replace my almost worn through copy, can you believe it’s been 21 years since the 1987 release of The Princess Bride? I just watched it again last weekend, and it’s as good as it’s ever been. I even considered Westley as a middle name for the baby!

It’s been 25 years since I started high school in 1983, in addition to:

  • the finale of M*A*S*H (always a favourite show in my house when I was growing up. I have fond memories of watching M*A*S*H and Barney Miller with my dad, and imagine they had a lot to do with the strong cheeky and ironic streak in my own sense of humour.)
  • the theatrical release of Flashdance and Risky Business. C’mon, admit it, you either owned a torn sweatshirt that sat canted off one shoulder, or a pair of RayBans.
  • we were stunned by the revelation that Darth Vader was Luke’s father in The Empire Strikes Back. (This wasn’t in the article either, but significant enough in my own childhood to make its exclusion from the article seem like a heinous oversight.)

It’s been 30 years since:

  • the release of Grease and National Lampoon’s Animal House (I didn’t actually see Grease until VCRs appeared on the scene in the early 80s, but I had a photonovel that I wore to dog-ears, and my next door neighbour had the soundtrack. We spent endless summer vacation days alternating between playing Grease and the Partridge Family that summer of 1978!)
  • the debut of Dallas and – the one that inspired me to blog this article in the first place – the debut of Mork and Mindy. 30 years of Robin Williams… I’ll let you make your own editorial observations on that one!

Holy crap, I’m old.

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Just a little reminder that if you haven’t already done so, you can vote for me (and a whole raft of deserving others!) in the Best Family Blog category of the Canadian Blog Awards. You can only vote once per round, and voting for round one ends January 21. C’mon, you want to keep me in this so I can continue to pester you to vote for me in the finals, right?