When all else fails, upload videos of your children in all their adorable cuteness:
Hard to believe he’ll be a whole year old next week!
Month: January 2009
More free stuff!
Okay, so I know it’s been ages since I’ve given you any real good reason, content-wise, to keep coming back here. Once we get into a new routine next month, I’m sure things will improve. Well, that and once we get over all these viruses. Oh yeah, and when birthday season is done (all three boys in the next six weeks), then I’ll be back in top form. Yeah, I’m sure that will work out!
Anyway, ahem, as long as I keep throwing you bribes, you promise to keep waiting for me?
Last summer, I raved about the Barenaked Ladies new kids’ CD, Snacktime. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a second copy in the mail not long after I purchased tickets for their Ottawa holiday show, along with an autographed picture of the band. (A nice touch, I thought.) And I suppose the third copy I received last week, also with a return address of BNL’s label, Nettwerk, was some sort of apology for the last-minute postponement of the concert due to the death of one of the Ladies’ mothers, although I can’t be sure because it arrived in an envelope with no note of explanation. Regardless, when we received the second copy I was content to keep one in the car and one for backup, but in the age of digital music I really don’t need a third copy.
All this to say (sheesh, no wonder I don’t blog anymore, it takes me bloody forever to get to the point!) I have a free, factory-sealed copy of the Barenaked Ladies’ Snacktime CD for kids and it’s yours for the asking. Just leave a comment and tell me why you want it, and I’ll do a random draw on Saturday, January 31.
A few stolen moments
The boys are playing happily behind me, the big boys stacking a dozen or so Webkinz into piles for the baby to crawl over. So rare is the opportunity to be online with everyone in the same room, I must take advantage of it even if I have nothing to say!
It’s been a rough couple of days. The stomach flu that had Simon down late last week took the weekend to work it’s way through the rest of the family. Tristan was sick last night and so I kept him home today, but he’s full of piss and vinegar this afternoon. I think we did, no joke, a dozen or more loads of laundry since Thursday night. Anybody want to come over for a folding party?
Lucas had it Saturday night, too, but seemed to be okay yesterday. This morning, he was particularly fussy and pulling at his ears, and since I’m getting good at this after three kids, I suspected an ear infection. We were lucky to get an afternoon appointment with the ped, and it turns out his ears are clear. He does, however, have a “very mucusy” throat and his ear is full of fluid. If you’re keeping count, that’s back to back stomach virus and respiratory infections the first week of January and again this week. Plus his two top teeth broke through this weekend. No wonder he (and, by extension, I) haven’t slept more than 3 hours in a row for a hundred years a couple of weeks.
Despite the sickness, though, and the fact that today marks the start of my last week of maternity leave (ever! *nostalgic sigh*) I’m feeling pretty chipper. Hey, if everybody in the house has been sick in the past five days, that gives me at least a four-day window before the next virus can set in, right? And right now, a barf-free week sounds like winning the lottery!
Ah, but the mood behind me has turned. The baby has lost interest in the Webkinz mountain, and the boys have started to bicker. (Little wonder, they’ve been cooped up together for days on end by now!) Only four more hours until Beloved gets home from work… not that I’m watching the clock.
Hey, guess what? I’m normal!
Now, I know y’all are standing in line to disagree with that statement, but it’s true! According at least to this definition, I’m normal!! Some time in the last week or so, I’ve lost just enough weight to trip me down to a body mass index (BMI) of 24.9, which is no longer overweight but normal.
Look!
See? Normal! And if it says so on the interwebs, it has to be true!
Now I know
What could possibly make me long for the last couple of nights, when the baby woke up between three and seven times a night, where I was rocking him to sleep two or three times in a row, only to end up jiggling him to sleep on my arm when I give up in frustration? What could make me think that those were the nights when I had it good?
How about six solid hours of an almost-five year old barfing every 20 minutes? Yep, that would do it.
Of course, the baby slept through the whole thing. Dust molecules moving over the Mojave Desert disturb him, but six hours of relentless dry heaves in the next room don’t merit so much as ripple his slumber.
Sigh. At least the five year old seems better this morning. Wanna lay bets on what’s in store for the almost seven-year old or his beleaguered parents? I really, really don’t want this virus.
(This is not the sleep deprivation post. This is the “Hey we just finished a barfy virus three weeks ago, it’s not our turn again already!” post. Once I finish sanitizing five loads of laundry, I might get back around to the sleep-dep post. Consider yourself whined warned.)
Oh good lord, has she been reduced to blogging about poop?
Hey, whaddya know, it was a dead tie between poop and sleep! Poop had the lead going into yesterday afternoon, so that’s the one I have ready for today, but we really gotta talk about sleep this week, too. Stand by!
***
I’m about to put Lucas down for a nap, and I catch a whiff of eau de rotted blueberries. Time for a diaper change. (Aside: my sniffer seems to be on the fritz. Either his shite don’t stink, or life in a house with four XY chromosomes has indelibly damaged my sense of smell. I think I’m okay with either option.)
Ahem, anyway – diaper change. I flip him onto his back on the change mat on the floor and try to keep him there. Lucas is hell bent on escape. I finally manage to divert him with a colourful block. My son, he is. “Oh, pretty shiny block… ”
Not only does he stink, but he’s leaked through onto his undershirt and his pants. Oh joy. I pull open the diaper and try to hold his feet with one hand and divert his flailing arms with the other, while using my third arm to keep him from flipping over and my fourth arm to actually change the diaper.
Missing at least two of the required arms, I don’t move fast enough to catch the block as it lands with an unsavoury splat in the middle of the poopy diaper. I try to hold his kicking legs by the ankle in one hand while doing at least a passing cleaning of the block with a diaper wipe. One foot wriggles free and stomps down, of course, into the poopy diaper.
I go into triage mode, deciding the block is clean enough for the time being but something must be done to prevent further spread of the poop. I yank the foul thing out from under him (why must raisins do that in a dirty diaper?) and put it aside. I peel off the poopy sock, which has brushed in two places up against his leg, and swipe him with half a box a few wipes. All of the wipes, in fact. The wipe box is empty, there is still poop to be cleaned, and the crate of backup wipes is upstairs. Sigh. I take a clean diaper from the basket and do my best to finish the job. (Aside: another excellent use for clean diapers? Sopping up spills on the carpet. My brother showed me this one when he splashed a full glass of red wine onto our carpet last year. Press the clean diaper into the carpet until all the excess liquid is absorbed, then scrub the stain with a diaper wipe. Works great on spilled coffee, too!)
Lucas, who has not stopped wriggling madly throughout this exercise, is still hell bent on escape. Every time he senses even a momentary diversion of my attention, he makes a break for it. Now stripped naked, in the instant it takes me to look up and put my hands on another clean diaper and bum cream he manages to flip over, get to his hands and knees and start crawling away. He is less than an inch away from getting his hands on the dirty diaper from which he has been recently relieved when I intervene. He howls indignantly as I wrestle him back into something resembling a prone position.
Eventually, I get him wrapped in a clean diaper and manage to get most of the diaper cream off his fingers (I’ll leave it to you to figure out how that happened) before he manages to get it into his mouth or eyes.
I set him free (and happily mostly naked) a careful distance from the mess behind me and turn just in time to see the cat walk without hesitation directly through the centre of the still-open dirty diaper, leaving a trail of poopy cat prints across the carpet…
Pick-yer-own blog post day
Isn’t this exciting? (Or perhaps a new high in lows?) I have three not-quite finished draft posts saved and YOU get to choose which one gets finished and which ones get deleted — or at least condemned to languish forever in the unexamined depths of my drafts folder.
I’ve had just enough time online lately to write about 2/3 of a post. The problem is that by the time I get a little bit more online time, I’ve either lost interest in the topic, or found something more pressing to whine write about. And now that I’ve got a couple of drafts on the go, I’m paralyzed by indecision. Which one should I finish? That’s where you come in.
Here’s your choices:
1. The 10-pages-in review of the Twilight books
I started writing this one when I really was less than half way through the first book and was loving it. By the time I got back to it, I was most of the way through the third book, and my interest wasn’t exactly flagging, but I’d lost the initial rush of excitement. And now that I’m almost done the fourth book, well, let’s just say I’m having trouble with this one. Choose this option to find out why!
2. The one about baby poop
Yeah, well. That kind of says it all. Choose at your own risk.
3. The one with the sleep deprivation whine
Lucas has gone from sleeping through the night at eight weeks to waking up six to eight times (whimper) a night. I’m in serious need of some help. Choose this one if you’ve got advice, or if you want to commiserate, or if you want to gloat that you knew it couldn’t last.
What say ye, bloggy peeps? What’s the next post going to be about?
Fashion police — help!
I went on a bit of a bender after Christmas. A shopping bender. A clothes-shopping bender. It felt sooooo good! Not only were there amazing deals to be had (I didn’t pay more than 50% of ticket price on anything) but I was shopping for a size I haven’t worn since before any of the babies were born. I’m down more than 25 lbs since August, and down more than two jean sizes! Every time I tried on a pair of pants, I did it with trepidation, expecting to find a size 12 way too tight — and in some cases, I even found it was too loose. Yay me!!
I took full advantage of the Boxing Day sales, and in three quick trips spent about $275 on new clothes, but with deals like $19.99 for a $78 pair of Gap tuxedo pants, and $11 for a $65 Jones New York skirt, I’m sure I ended up with about $600 worth of clothes.
After more than two years of buying clothes based on a sole criterion (does it fit enough to keep me decent?) it was pure bliss to be buying things because they were pretty, or funky, or just felt really good. And buying actual outfits instead of trying to make random impulse purchases fit with what I already own. I ended up with three skirts, four pairs of pants, a blazer, a couple of blouses and sweaters and even a pair of kicky little ankle boots. I tell you, it was like living my own personal episode of What Not to Wear!!
The problem, of course, is that I didn’t have Stacey and Clinton to right my fashion wrongs. I *think* I did okay, but there are some fashion questions that continue to escape me. Perhaps you, the wise and wonderful bloggy peeps, can help?
For example, the kicky little ankle boots: can I wear them with a skirt? I have both a narrow little skirt that falls to a bit above my knee and a fuller skirt with a flare that falls just to the knee. Can I wear the short boots with that, or do I need calf-high boots for that?
And since I’ve got your attention, what about jewelery? If I’m wearing gold-tone earrings, do I have to wear a gold-tone in my necklace and/or bracelet? And is earrings plus a necklace plus a bracelet too much? Oy, I’m so bad at this!
And what about makeup? Am I supposed to match my eye shadow colour to what I’m wearing, or can I wear the same purple-to-grey cool palate with warmer oranges and browns?
Ugh, you can see I need some serious intervention! I’m actually excited about going back to work, just so I can wear my fancy new duds, but I don’t want to look too much like a fashion “don’t” as I step outside my comfort zone!
Hey you guuuys!! The Electric Company is BACK!!
Waiting for the return of your favourite show can be very trying on one’s patience. Thursday nights during the few weeks between the fall and winter seasons of Survivor can seem interminable. The wait between May and January for Lost is almost unbearable. But this is really something worth waiting for: after 30+ years, my six year old self’s favourite show is back with all new episodes! As I blogged about back in May, the Electric Company is back this week, the new episodes start airing on PBS and TVO!
I took a quick peek over at the new Electric Company website, and after an initial “hey, you messed with my favourite show!” moment, I think I like it! A lot!! They have a little trailer that shows some promise. It looks like they’ve kept the flavour of the original episodes, with a kind of madcap randomness, but updated for kids of today. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of Electric Company Old Skool, you can see it here. (Or you can come over to my place and watch the DVDs with my kids me!)
I’m ridiculously pleased to be on the mailing list for these kinds of releases from Sesame Workshop. Here’s what they had to say about the new Electric Company:
The Electric Company television show is brought to life with a 15 minute narrative storyline that is interspersed with segments that include curricular clusters of music videos, sketch comedy, animation and short films.
The cast of characters of The Electric Company is a group of do-gooders who keep the neighborhood safe with their literacy superpowers and solve problems often created by a group of troublemakers called “The Pranksters.†Stationed from their home base, The Electric Diner, the team consists of four core cast members.
* “Keith Watson,†played by Ricky Smith, is a 13-year-old boy with the power to turn words into graphics/animation.
* “Jessica Ruiz,†played by Priscilla Diaz, is a 13-year-old girl with total aural recall allowing her to replay and display speech as text.
* “Lisa Heffenbacher,†played by Jenni Barber, is a high school student with the power to solve any word problem at super human speed.
* “Hector Ruiz,†played by Josh Segarra, is a 20-year-old college student (and older brother to Jessica) that has the power to visually recall things he’s seen, even if only peripherally.Teaching letter sounds and words through a series of short films that occur within each episode is vocal percussionist, Chris Sullivan, who plays “Shock,†an Electric Company member who works in the diner and provides the beat as the Company carries out its missions.
Season one of the new The Electric Company will feature comedy segments with Live With Regis & Kelly co-host Kelly Ripa, Academy Award winning actress, Whoopi Goldberg, kid comedian and actor, Kyle Massey, former NFL superstar and Today Show correspondent Tiki Barber, rapper Common and 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer; music videos with Grammy Award winning musician Wyclef Jean and hip-hop superstar Sean Kingston; and original songs from singer/songwriter Ne-Yo, Saturday Night Live’s Jimmy Fallon, rocker Pete Wentz and R&B star Mario.
And, because we’re not in 1976 anymore, Toto, there is an entire interactive section to the new Electric Company website, too:
The new Web site at pbskidsgo.org/electriccompany invites kids to experience the world of The Electric Company within an interactive environment. Launching in conjunction with the television program, the Web site blends elements of popular kid-friendly internet applications that encourage kids to create, share, and rate each others’ video creations and decorate their own profile pages. Kids will also be able to play educational games, based on the curriculum featured in each episode, and win points in support of their favorite The Electric Company characters. The site will stream full episodes that will have aired the day before on TV, Web exclusive behind the scenes segments, cast interviews, outtakes, bloopers and celebrity clips. In addition, extensive downloadable outreach materials will be available to support the TV series and supplement the curriculum that parents, caregivers and teachers will be encouraged to use.
If you live in Ontario, you can catch the new Electric Company with a two hour launch on TVO at 5 pm this coming Monday, January 19, and then Mondays at 5:30 or Saturdays at 9:30. (How happy am I that I’ll be able to watch it with my kids????) You can also catch it on Fridays on PBS.
Sing it with me:
We’re gonna turn it on.
We’re gonna bring you the power
We’re gonna light up the dark of night like the brightest day in a whole new way
We’re gonna turn it on we’re gonna bring you the power
It’s coming down the lines, strong as they can be
Through the courtesy of The Electric Company
The Electric Company. The Electric Company!
(I’m still bummed I can’t get the ringtone for my cell….)
Fun in the snow
I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing on the computer, thinking about new themes and layouts and whatnot for the blog (what *is* it about January?) and updating to the latest version of WordPress (ack! Change!!) I hate that I have nothing to show for it, aside from no longer being able to comfortably navigate my own dashboard. Sheesh, usually a couple hours online gets me at least a post or two!
So, in lieu of a real post, I invite you to admire these pictures of Tristan and Simon enjoying the toboggans Granny and Papa Lou gave them for Christmas. Bonus: you can admire the nice pix courtesy of my new Fuji FinepixS2000. It’s no dSLR, but it captures some nice moments, no?
Of course, there’s more on Flickr!