To tide you over

Proof of teeth














I told you. Not the cutest picture of either of us but I just had to show you all. That was Saturday. As of yesterday they are out a little bit more & she is now testing them out on the snack bar (a.k.a. the boobs). I have been afraid of this happening for a while now & I've heard so many people say that once the teeth are in, that's it, they are done with the breastfeeding. So far it's not so bad. She's clamped down towards the end of a feeding a few times now so I've been keeping my hand close & ready to pry her off if need be. I've had to stop her about 5 or 6 times now & last night I said "ouch" & pulled her off so she got upset & cried for a few moments but then happily latched back on. Now I know these two teeth are not fully out & she's got a hell of a lot more to come but I figure if I can handle three freaking months of thrush & the Raynaud's syndrome then I can handle a few nips at the old nips.

That is unless she starts chomping on me with these.




Hey mommy....












I vant to suck your blood!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Gramma gave me my loves of

hanging out by the pool in the hot summer sun
(lying on the hot concrete patio stones until they seared your flesh so you had to roll into the cool blue water but then only swim on the left hand side because it was farthest from the creepy filter where the dead frogs & mice would be found)

sipping on a shandy to cool off
(bubbling ginger ale & lager clinking over a couple of ice cubes in a tall clear glass)

holiday dinners feasting on gravy & rolls
(thick delicious gravy made in double or triple batches because the standard amount was never enough)

rhubarb jam & crabapple jelly
(tart homemade goodness from the fruits of our land - is rhubarb a fruit?)

good table manners & politeness
(always saying thank you & please)

standing on the kitchen stool helping with the baking or drying dishes
(i still have the stool with it's 1950's laminate & wonky legs)

building gingerbread houses
(coloured icing & gumdrops holding the pieces together)

sliding down the bannister & the slippery stairs
(hours of fun bumping our butts along the edge of each step racing to the bottom)

doggies
(Bridget & Breichen you were so pretty even covered in mud from the clay banks of the Red River)

lilac bushes
(the heady smell fills me senses)

snow forts in her yard
(where the white stuff blew into a small mountain through which we dug tunnels & foxholes so deep we could be lost for a day)

acting like a monkey on her trees
(scratches & woodticks ignored until after dusk)

shortbread and scones
(almond, plain, currants, butter)






Thanks for these & so much more.

I love you Gramma!






~Birthday wishes also to my old friend Kelly. I am the worst returner of e-mails.~

Worky Work

It's like the Matrix, only suckier.

You see all those lines & squiggles & dots? I done drew that... ain't it purty? It is a wonder that I am not blind. And yet, this isn't really even that complicated a drawing. Some of them would make you go mad (mad I tell ya!) if I put them up here.

So that's what I do. Draw lines & get paid for it. That is, when I actually do any billing. That I totally suck at. The AutoCAD though, I pretty much rock. Well... not really, but my employers think so & that's what counts. Plus since they don't know any better, I'll just keep letting them heap praise upon me & keep them in the dark about what I don't know.

I've been working every now & then since the bun came out of the oven &, since I work from home most of the time & have the most wonderful & flexible (probably not literally so get your minds out of the gutter) ladies to work for it has been pretty easy to do stuff around the baby. She'll play in her car (exersaucer) or on the floor surrounded by toys & pillows or even in her crib chirping away as I pick apart & draft construction plans. It's all very lovely & productive & if I need to I can stop, coddle the baby as need be & get back to work later as long as I meet our eventual deadlines.

So I said I'd been working every now & then. Well it actually hasn't been too much lately. I haven't really done anything for almost 2 months. That is, until yesterday. Holy crap am I ever rusty. It took me probably three times as long to draw what usually takes mere moments of time. So pathetic. It's as though I am slowly forgetting everything I learned in school & beyond. Like my brain has that fuzz on it that you get on your tongue after drinking all night at a sleezy bar, then eating a greasy garlicky donair before passing out on someone's couch without brushing your teeth. I am losing my mad skillz & it is a little frightening.

I've got more work to do today so I guess I'll go caffienate myself into some form of fake mental alertness & try to pass off what I'm doing as something productive. Hopefully the Doodles & the men downstairs will co-operate with me. Calvin & his dad are building me a nice clean new laundry room in the basement so I must be pleasant with them despite their incesssant hammering that is keeping the baby awake. Her lack of naps combined with the teething pain is making for one little Miss Cranky Pants.

What is that thing up in the sky?

That yellowy orange circle thing. Haven't seen that in ages.

It burns.

In celebration of the sun returning we bought the baby some fancy pants sunglasses.

huh?

well hello there

She was all obliging & the like until the press got wind of it.

no papparrazzi!!

My baby just made me bleed my own blood

Despite efforts to get back to sleep I am lying in bed this morn with the little Doodles in the crook of my arm, when she suddenly decides it is time to stick her index finger up my nose to see what that feels like. I feel a painful poke in the region of my brain cavity so I pull her hand away & am aware of the sensation of gushing. Hands immediately to nose as I scramble out of bed, hastely placing pillows around baby, & rush to grab a roll of toilet paper as I spew forth a torrent of red from my right nostril.

That was a fun way to start the day.


No no no do not disturb whilst I am eating puh-lease!

Also, the teeth, they are a coming. Sharp little razor like fangs have been seen & felt breaking through the surface of her much maligned gums. It's fun & cute but it also makes me feel old. She's growing so fast & I feel old & wrinkly & flabby beside her. I would also feel grey but I dyed my hair the other day to cover it up. Stupidly I left the stuff on too long so now I look like a frizzy haired Munster. Once upon a time I could / would do this & be oh so rockin' & alternative (back when that was cool) but the black hair just isn't really going with the mummy uniform of sweatpants & sloppy nursing shirt. Plus the frizz is just not attractive.

Anyway, back to the teething. Calvin, Freyja & Uncle Bruce were out the other day for breakfast at the Ottawa Bagel Shop & picked up a teething bagel for the bun. Could be the best invention ever or the worst, depending on how much cleaning of sticky fingers you like to do. She loved it & gnawed on the thing for about 2 hours. Then she got home & sucked on it some more. Then we left it on the table & the stupid dog stole it. Then the stupid dog was constipated for two days. Then we bought some more bagels & hid them from the stupid dog. Can you tell how much I love my stupid dog these days?


the aftermath of bagel & blueberries

Oh ya. I made a title banner. Do you like it? Calvin doesn't get the "you know you love me" tag. I don't know what's not to get. Anyway I made a few of them that I'll try out over the next few days so let me know what you like best.

Anybody? Bueller?

Apparently Calvin's life is a sitcom

The butter problem turned out not to be an issue. In fact it (the cake) was delicious. Chocolatey & very smooth going down. I am also happy to report that there was even enough left over for breakfast this morning to go with my toffee nut latte after I slept in until 11:30. Plus I got roses today "just because".

So we're sitting around the table last night & Calvin starts talking about the time him & his sister were being greedy, sneaky pigs & ate the middle of some chocolate cake before it was supposed to be served. To cover up their bad deed he said they filled the hole with paper towels & then covered it back up with icing. Bruce turns to him & says "You idiot. That was a Cosby show episode." Cue hillarious laughter.

I know the '80's were a blur dude & you had had a few beers last night, but come on, the show had totally jumped the shark by the time that episode aired. What were you thinking?!

~~Apparently he mixed it up with the time his sister licked all the icing off of the brownies. ~~

Butter makes it better right?

Because I just accidentally doubled up the butter in the cake I am making for my friend's birthday party. Ack!

I do have some left over so maybe I can start a new hobby like butter carving. Apparently this is Bob Hope in the 70's.

In butter.

mmmmmm

6 Month Check-up

I have become a jungle gym. My body is bruised, battered & aching from accommodating baby whims. The movement is constant (in this she is her father’s daughter) & if I don’t hold on tight she will break free from my arms & fall precariously to the dreaded hard plane of the floor below. In order to see all things at once she whips her head & body back & forth, around & around in a frenzy of taking it all in. Her eyes are wide & I wonder how fascinating it all looks to her, how new & shiny the world is. She reaches for objects in her field of vision & then, the ones on the periphery. The grabbing & grasping at anything she can is constant & if she snags something desired it is deposited immediately into her drooling mouth.

She sits on the floor a few feet from me surrounded by pillows, looking at the dog, then her toys, then me, then her toys again & practices her short burst of a laugh. Almost a cackle. Smack goes the hand on her musical cube & then two fingers in the mouth while she twiddles with the polar bear. Both hands now grabbing the cube trying desperately to get the bear in her mouth, so the music is constantly switching mid tune. I am creating an opus from all the sounds – just you wait. Next up, plastic keys, then the mirror that rattles. Banging it all against her legs, trying to find out what I don’t know. How it all fits together, how each material tastes, what it sounds like? It is fascinating to watch her little mind at work & her face gets so serious. Then all of a sudden she beams & starts laughing again. Then it’s back to sticking the next object in her mouth.


Where's that damn polar bear?!

And speaking of objects in her mouth, the nursing is still good. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since all the trouble at the start when it was literally feeding to feeding determining whether or not I could keep going with it. Now when she’s really hungry she starts making this funny laugh cry like she’s super excited about what’s about to come but it’s just.. not… coming… fast… enough damn it! Then because she’s all giddy with the milk lust she spends the first few minutes patting or smacking my hand & doing a dance with her cute little feet on my thighs. I was wondering why I kept getting these weird small bruises but duh, they are from the constant kicking punishment. If we are sitting up or out in public when she feeds it’s a whole other story because there’s just so much to look at. She’ll yank herself off, expose me & look around to take it all in for a bit & then it’s back on for another hit. Then off again & arches her back so she’s almost upside down to see what the world is like from that angle.


Yay! That's the... red... heart!

We had her 6 month checkup yesterday and while we were in the waiting room another mom about my age came in with a cute little 8 month old girl. We chit chatted a bit & once Freyja actually noticed the other baby she was smitten so I brought her over to sit on the floor. They went at it trying to grab each other’s hair & patting the other on the cheek or leg, whatever was handy. It’s been a while since she’s hung out with any other babies who aren’t in car seats (besides our picnic last week) and it was just so cute how big their smiles were for each other. Now it’s interactive! Of course that just demands more energy & vigilance from me but hey, besides the eye poking, it’s pretty fun.

So the check-up was good. She’s growing well, staying in her percentiles (around 75 weight & 45 height) & was deemed very active as she ripped off about 3 feet of the paper roll from the examination table & proceeded to put about half of it in her mouth. My lovely doctor was in a great mood & much more relaxed about the food issue, saying don’t worry about it so much, she doesn’t have to eat rice cereal, try her on veggies & don’t bother with any juice (which we weren’t going to anyway). If all she wants to eat is those silly blueberries that’s ok too, just keep trying with the veggies. There was more I wanted to ask her but whenever I’m at the doctor’s I get all discombobulated & forget everything. Even if I write it all down I forget to pull out my list & feel like a dweeb every time we leave. At least the vaccination shot went ok and for that I must thank my pal Roopa for the recommendation of the Emla paste. It’s a cream you smear on & then cover up at least one hour before the needle & it anesthetizes the area. I swear she didn’t feel a thing so, totally awesome dudes!

Anyway, (I say that in my head here way too much don’t I?) all is good & healthy, & today after the immunization she seems pretty happy (unlike last time). We are going out with her tonight to a birthday party (see below) so I hope the pleasantness lasts & we don’t regress back to the meltdown of the day before because mama needs to have some quality drinking time. As for that scream festival, I think it was a mix of gas & teething pain combined. I thought I felt something sharp on her gums yesterday & today it is even more pronounced so I think we may finally have some teeth coming up. I just hope she doesn’t start biting anytime soon because I’ve seen what she can do to a rubbery toy & it ain’t pretty folks.


Playing with the triangle mouse (Please don't hate me in a few years baby for putting up naked pictures of you. They are just too cute to resist!)

~~Happy Birthday Karen & Shannon!~~

Sucky things

Tonight was payback for that 3 hour nap she had the other day. We have just tag teamed the screecher for the past 4 hours. Nothing was working. Thought it might be teething so I rubbed her gums with my finger, with a cold cloth & gave her some Tempra in case she was in pain. That did nothing. Thought it was gas so I burped her, bounced her, massaged her belly & gave her Gripe Water. She had some burps but the screaming continued. Finally Calvin had to revert back to the swaddle & rock. She finally passed out all bundled up like when we were back at the beginning. Poor thing.

I know we have a really great baby, easy going, healthy & happy most of the time. Perhaps this is why it is so hard when she gets so upset. The heart - it just gets shredded into rough scraps of tissue when you can't seem to do anything right. (I just had to go bounce her for another half an hour. The swaddle has been abandoned & she lies clad only in a diaper on the bed. My back is so tired.) Then the frustration kicks in & I feel myself getting angry. You tell yourself over & over not to get angry, not to get frustrated. She doesn't know what's going on & even if she did she can't tell you. Not so you'd understand anyway. Communication gets a bit limited when screaming at the top of your lungs is all you can do to relieve the pain.

There came a point tonight where there was nothing we could do but let her cry-it-out. It was horrible & didn't work. She screamed & writhed her way to sleep but every few minutes she'd wake up again doing the same thing. Ugh. I can only imagine what this weekend is going to be like. She gets her 6 month vaccinations tomorrow & who knows how she's going to take it.

Oh ya & some idiot slashed one of the tires on my car. Thanks asshole. I don't mind spending $165 for a replacement. Really, it's my pleasure to afford you the opportunity to practice your deliquent knifing skillz. Hope you impressed somebody 'cause it ain't me & if i catch your ass trying anything like that again I will torture you with a lovely sound recording of my child splitting open the universe with her tiny wailing mouth.

Happy Blogiversary to Me

~And a very Happy Birthday to Lynn & Velia~

Whatever will you buy me?

It's the paper anniversary of course (or clocks by the modern calender) but what does that mean in a virtual world? Some extra bandwidth? Some free cool graphics? Ya right. So I'm thinking cupcakes.... ya, cupcakes will do nicely. Thanks in advance dear sweet husband.

Yummy!

How I came to blog

I first met the internet when I met Calvin at MUN in 1992. It was a text-based world of newsgroups full of academic information & lots of porn where it would take an hour to download a picture. Not that any of the computer science geeks were downloading porn - it was mostly pictures of Deanna Troi from Star Trek TNG. We all know there’s still tons of porn but it’s also now this insanely vast network of billions of people & it just boggles my mind trying to comprehend its size. Sort of like the universe or even the solar system in that the scale is just too overwhelming to really truly understand. So since 1992 I’ve spent more time on the information superhighway than is probably good for me but like some bad addiction, I’ll never be able to kick it. The last four + years I’ve been reading (lurking at) Freakgirl’s blog for a daily dose of infotainment. I still spend almost every day there for a little while so I don’t lose my edge over the hubby for finding things out first. As with so many other blogs out there now I find myself interested in her daily life & like some weird stalker on some level I feel like I know her. (Yes I know I am sort of pathetic.) Anyway her site broke my blog virginity & I was hooked.

The links (oh the links will always get you people!) would show me things & take me places I’d never been so I felt like I was on some whirlwind tour of life or rather, other people’s lives. It was fucking great. At the same time I would also spend hours lurking (after working of course!) & sometimes posting at on-line message boards related to reality tv & wedding planning since Calvin & I decided to finally have a par-tay. I then started our website as a way to help guests navigate our upcoming wedding day since so many were coming out of town. I used Front Page to make it & was proud of myself for being able to figure out most of it & be able to tweak some the the html code plus make my own graphics. After the wedding I attempted to change it into a photo blog but it got way to much to handle with the amount of pictures I was taking & the way I was going about it with Front Page so I gave up & just let it stagnate like some forgotten project out there in the wild frontier of the web.

When we were trying to pregnant I went madly searching for info & found the Fertility Friend website where I could track my cycles & oh so wonderful things like cervical mucus & what was stupidly termed “baby dancing”. You’d think a website devoted to mucus & blood would have the balls to call it what it was but I guess s-e-x was an offensive term. (Like baby dancing isn’t – gimme a break!) Then I finally got knocked up & started my mad Googgling about anything & everything related to pregnancy. I thought to myself, hey since there’s blogs related to everything else there has to be something out there on being pregnant. Somehow I came across A Little Pregnant & was suddenly voraciously reading infertility blogs with more than a little bit of guilt. I could sort of relate because it wasn’t nearly as easy getting pregnant as I thought it would be but I counted myself so very lucky that I never had to deal with some of the stuff they were going through.

Somwhere along the way I stumbled across Milenka's Blogroll (it seems changed now, the link I had before had them categorized into sections like Infertility, Pregnancy, Moms, etc.) & found a few pregnancy journals & blogs so I had proof that they were out there. Plenty of them were what I'd consider pretty cheesy & full of fuzzy cherubic angel baby graphics which I guess are ok but not really my style. Then there were the others that seemed to tell it like it is, the real truth about puking, swelling hands & feet, weird stabbing pains & the paranoia of having done something bad to your growing baby because all you ate was McDonald's cheeseburgers & ice cream. Finally I had found the crowd I wanted to hang with but was more than a little intimidated so I hung back on the sidelines a little while longer lurking & biding my time.

That's probably when the heartburn started & the need to get the pain off my chest. Plus I figured this was the easiest way to keep family far & wide up to date on the bun in the oven. What to call it...... hmmm.... bun... oven. There's a bakery called Bunsmaster plus the remembrance of this made me giggle. What can I say? I'm easily amused. (I just googled bunmaster & found myself first followed by this - oh my god don't click on the link. No don't do it. I warned you.) And so the blog was born with a photo of orange flags in Central Park under a very silly title. Looking back I could have written more. I could have written better. But here I am still typing away whether I have the time or not because now it's so much more for me. If I don't let it out the release valve on my sanity will pop & then you'll all be sorry.

So thanks. Thanks to family & friends who took the time to read about my stretch n' sweeps, my late night heartburn & finally, after 42 & a half weeks of pregnancy, the Doodlebug's arrival. Thanks for sticking with me while I complained about the burning boobs, the screams (though apparently we have it good), the purple boobs, the apathy, the refusal of boobs & the horrible micro-organisms attacking my boobs. Apparently this blog is mostly about boobs. Take that Google search engines, though it might give the person who was looking for info regarding Canetsen on a cat some paws for thought. Get it? Paws....

It's stupid crap like that you keep coming back for isn't it?

And the photos. Always for the photos.

Now where's my damn cake people?!

Monday Morning Memories #3

I know it's not morning (here anyway) but I have an excuse. Calvin's parents are in town & we've had a morning full of baby lovin'. Now exhausted, she's been sleeping for the past almost 2 freaking hours & still going strong!! This, my friends, never happens. The naps around these parts usually last about 45 mins. max. I am beside myself & don't know what to do. Of course I am blog surfing now that the in-laws have gone out for a while instead of doing some much needed office organizing but hey, you gotta come down from that Mother's Day high slowly or you will crash & burn. Hard. So I'll do my bills tomorrow honey. Promise.

Rory, Happy (belated) Birthday my bro-in-law. I spent hours looking for a picture of you to put up here but came up empty handed so I gave up posting yesterday. I hope many tall smooth glasses of delicious Guinness went down easy & with no morning after the night before bitterness. breithlá sona duit

And now, on to the memory, complete with an embarrassing picture (hey mom, I finally found that box of photos & I'll bring them when we come out to see you). That's why I'm here people. To embarrass myself for your pleasure.


Princess

For grades 1-3 I went to Red River School on Main Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was basically a two room school with some other rooms for administration. The three lower grades were in one room & grades 4-6 in the other. It might have been some sort of open concept education or it might have just been small. There weren’t a lot of houses in that part of the city then – we were pretty rural. Prior to this I had attended kindergarten at Governor Semple School & I loved the principle because he always called me princess. He knew my mother somehow so I think I got a little special treatment, plus I was a total suck-up / teacher’s pet. For some reason he was also the principle at our school though he mainly stayed at the larger one.

One day he came to our little school to sit in on some classes (auditing the teachers I suppose) & it was very exciting. At the time we were practicing our letters & the teacher told us to draw some S’s & make them as pretty as we could. Besides being the suck-up I was also the artist of the bunch & I knew how to make S’s like nobody’s business. I went to work making the most exotic fancy bunch of S’s I could. There was one made into a snake complete with hissing tongue, while others were large block letters filled with beautiful flowers. There were scrolling ones with super flourishes on the ends & very architectural bold ones. It was freaking fantastic & I was so very proud of my wonderful accomplishment.

Of course I was finished before everyone else was & wanted to show off to my favorite principle, hoping he would pat me on the head with a “that’s a talented princess”. So off I went up to the front to show the teacher who was busily talking to the principle. Being seven years old I didn’t understand that those S’s were supposed to be keeping us busy while she was probably stressing out showing him her curriculum. I went up & stood patiently beside them waiting to show my masterpiece. She looked down at me & took a gander at what I had been doing & showed the principle. I think she shook her head & laughed a little so I beamed up at them expectantly. Then she told me I needed to make regular S’s, that I wasn’t supposed to be doing artsy things to them. Then I was sent back to my seat.

I was totally crushed & embarrassed that I had made a mistake. A huge mistake. In front of the principle. I scribbled over & scratched the wonderful S’s I had made & wrote regular ones, in between the lines, over & over again. I had to make it up to the principle. I had to show the teacher I was still the smartest in the class even though I had done the wrong thing. The principle left without seeing that I had fixed it all up, but as he left he did say “Bye princess”.

Grade 1 baby!

Happy Mother's Day ya'll

Warning: Baaaad poetry below

So far for Mother's Day Calvin gave me a lovely potted orchid (how long will it take me to kill that I wonder?), a small dent on the roof of my car & then he stepped on my breast pump so now there is no way I can modify the suction strength. I am just hoping I hadn't left it on super sucker mode or else my nipplage is in for a big surprise next time I go to supplement my baby's dinner. But I also got to sleep in a little bit & eat delicious German Pancakes for breakfast. Mmmmm icing sugar & lemon.....

I've been getting a bunch of e-mails over the past few days full of mother's day wisdom & sentiments so beautiful they've brought tears to my eyes. There's always the requisite smultz but even that has just a tad more meaning to me now. Oh how I've changed. Yesterday we even went for a Sears Portrait Studio sitting. The baby was cute but I felt I should've been doing something like this just to get the full effect of the cheesy poses they put you in. Why oh why didn't we just go to Loblaws? Or better yet if I knew how much it was going to cost why didn't we go get something a little more my style? How far I have fallen from cool (self-delusionary though it may have been).

I was going to write something special for my mother to tell her how much I love & appreciate her but nothing seems to be sufficient. I hope your day is sweet & relaxing & full of garage sales & nice glass or two of excellent wine. Freyja misses you tickling her feet.


Grandma & the Doodles

And now on to some general mommy lovin' of the bloggin' kind. A "call-to-celebration" has been put forth by Her Bad Mother to spread some goodness around as an antidote to some experimental public derision. It was asked of us to write a love letter post to any mommy blogger who has made a difference in our world. But alas, I could not just pick one (probably because I have enough trouble making decisions about what to put on my pizza, let alone trying to come up with one wonderful blogger to put before all else) & was tempted by the word "ode". Hence I give you, bloggy mothers & all other mothers & those who want desperately to be mothers out there this pathetic & admittedly pretty lame poem with so much linkage your eyes will burn. (I tried for more but started losing my mind.)

Ode to Amazing Mommy Bloggers
(a la Pablo Neruda)
(no offense to Pablo Neruda)

Out of desperation
hear their cries
lamenting
loss of sleep, or, perhaps,
gas, oh the gas
of infant bellies, insatiable
lust of boobies
sodden with milk
the love emerges
through
aching hearts,
bursting pride
and bareness of soul laid open
upon virtual page.

Blogging mommies!
unite
drink from the Kool-Aid
pitcher of electric happiness
sate your thirsty
palate
and leery polyps
like a girl gone child.
Information superhighways beckon
to far off lands
bridging distances
vast, and mothers
good and
bad.

Lessons taught
fraught
with humour, ripe with
irony, sarcasm and picture-perfect
smiles so broad,
crafted
and stitched together
tableaus and postcards from the
edge and verge of
nervous
breakdowns show the
new
mummies, mommies, mums, moms, mothers, mamas, mommas, mamans and
etc., that it is
going
to be
ok.

And yet do not forget
pain so deep for
what was
not to be, scars along
womanly essences,
fertility
eluded; but then
hope arising from
adopting
small perfections.

Rise drinkers full of
support
all hail
all mothers
everywhere:
peace
out.

My John Hughes Moment

So I wrote this post that I worked kind of hard on that was basically a response to some brouhaha that’s been going down in mommy blogger land recently. It was about the sort of group-think mentality that can occur when you get a related bunch of internet users writing similar sentiments. Obviously there’s good (supportive help) & bad (internet trolls) to all of it.

Anyway I’ve decided not to post it mainly because of my chiken-shit-edness & Calvin’s suggestion that it might polarize some readers. Then I also read this & have to say I am glad about my decision. I realized that by writing it I wasn’t writing it for me or Freyja but for what I wanted to be a growing audience. Why the audience? Self-gratification of course. That ever present need to please & be thought well of by friends & strangers alike. To make me feel better about myself because being popular is good right? It was like being in high school again as the geeky weird girl who would’ve liked to be popular but knowing that wasn’t going to happen went with the I am a rebel look & so am too cool for you. I don’t think that even makes any sense but whatever.

So I wanted to see my name in blogger lights (by being added to people’s blogrolls) or to gain some probably ill-fated glory by being linked to for some wondrously fantastic post. I didn’t do too much about it besides listing myself in a couple of webring things but I still had the desire. So I started writing more stuff on the big concerns of women, motherhood & the like under the guise of practicing my craft. Stuff I never did post because as usual someone else seemed to write about it better elsewhere. I began getting discouraged & then pissed off because I’d see other bloggers who’d only just begun have so much more “success” than I. But you see they’d put more effort into it. Or maybe it was effortless for them to come up with great stuff in a short amount of time whereas I was stuck barely literate at my laptop until I’d had my morning coffee & then I was already running out of time because damn it I had to do laundry again.

The last week or so with the insomnia, the teething (please let it be teething) & the stress I was creating for myself over trying to become popular almost did me in. But, I also managed to go on a picnic, visit a new friend with blueberries, exercise a little bit (do not ask me about that 10km thing though ok?) & get this, go scrapbooking (& it was fun!). While I was there on Friday night my friends (real live ones) expressed how much they enjoyed reading what I had to say & it made me feel great. So it’s back to basics for me & writing what I want without trying to become something I’m not. Calvin said most of my audience wants cute & if it comes off too trite & vapid for some people then they can (continue) to ignore it. I don’t have the energy right now to give more to this than I already do & my sweet little baby is growing so fast I need to take more moments throughout the day to soak her all in. I’m doing this for her.

The Beauty of Blueberries

We have finally found a "solid" food that the Doodles likes. Up until now we've tried rice, barley, sweet potatoes & prunes as well as mushed up banana & applesauce. At first she seemed to like the rice cereal but after a couple of tries all she did was push it out of her mouth with her tongue. Same with all the rest along with some fancy facial contortions to display her distaste for the stuff. I thought she'd end up breastfeeding until she was ready for college at the rate we were going.


Blueberries

We were over at a neighbour's place the other day & her friend's 7 month old was eating some blueberries & pears (PC Organic) so I thought I'd see if I could get mine to taste it. She sucked that stuff off my finger so hard I'm surprised there's a nail left on it. Then she attacked the bowl with a gusto I've only seen when she's jonesin' for my boobs. Interesting....


Yummy

Once upon a time Doodles was known as Grape Face. Now, Blueberry Baby will do just fine thanks.

Blueberry face

Coming up tomorrow or the next day, a mother love fest. Oh and speaking of mothers, many congratulations go out to folks I've been forgetting to mention, plus a few belated Happy Birthdays. Hello to new Baby Jack, Nya & Xander. Happy belated shout outs to Emma, Nancy, James, Pete, (Josee & Barbie I got you right?), Haley, Tina B, Cleo, Scott, Malibu Tracey, Colin, Bodacious Brynnski-doodle & Dan. Anyone I missed I'm sorry but this baby thing makes my brain operated like a sieve. I love you all!

Insomnia Insanity

Every night I’m exhausted & go to bed half asleep after watching an hour or two of television because I think it helps me unwind from my day & it stops my mind from racing. Of course when I get to bed it just starts up again & I can’t sleep. I hate insomnia. It just eats away at your sanity. It is not the baby; she sleeps pretty peacefully beside me. It is instead my anxiety surrounding the baby. What kind of bad things can happen to her & what I need to be vigilant about so nothing does? What if I drop her? What if she falls off the bed? What if she starts crawling & falls in the pool? What if I pass out in the tub with her in my arms & she drowns? What if I get in a car accident while she’s at home with Calvin & something happens to me? How will she survive without my boobs? What if someone steals her & does bad things to her? What if I’m not providing the right sort of non-paranoid non-over-protective parenting she needs to nurture her independence?

Holy crap, that’s a lot of what if’s & I haven’t even scratched the surface of some of the delusions I’ve been harboring. This is what the lack of sleep is doing to my poor addled brain. I’m so tired I am falling asleep typing this & yet if I go back to bed I’ll just lie there thinking about what a stupid post this is going to be & why the hell can’t I write something worth reading? And now? My stomach hurts. Oh & get this, once I fall asleep I start having these idiotic dreams like this one….

Calvin & I are in some reality show where The Amazing Race meets Punked meets The Surreal Life. We are partnered in the race with Jessica Simpson & LiLo. Jessica has her new ginger hairdo & Lindsay is auburn-ish. Phil is there of course & I think I get a hug. And we’re off. The girls go somewhere while Calvin talks to an old doctor man about the clue & I for some reason have to go to the library. Not so I can figure out the clue but so I can check my account to see if anything’s overdue & post something on my blog. (Loser!) We are in my old hometown of Winnipeg but apparently close by are the Gatineau Hills. I have to go along the Assiniboine River to get to the next checkpoint thing where my teammates are waiting for me. The girls are sitting around doing their makeup & LiLo starts bitching at me because I’m dressed in my usual best of track pants & nursing shirt. She’s better than me she says because she’s a Virgo, pale & has freckles but has a great tan to cover all that up. Oh & her eyebrows? They are naturally that perfect. She doesn’t even have to pluck or wax them! Wow! So I pull my car up (why I have to drive my own car & not some cool Mercedes I don’t know, but I’m pissed about it) closer to where we have to make a quick getaway from & I notice that my seat is too far back. One of those bitches was driving my car. Calvin is in big trouble.

See? I’m losing it people. Losing it.

That & I watch too much reality television. Tonight I'll probably dream about ANTM models trying to outwit each other on Survivor. I'll say Jade wins that one. Reca-nize soldier soul sista & dwelve into her starshine. The others just can't withhandle her. Sad isn't it?

I swear

I think this thing was just flying around my living room. Somehow I managed to flick it back outside but I am afraid it will come back & attack my laptop as an enemy agent. Help!

Clark-Nova

Monday Morning Memories #2

(It's morning somewhere isn't it? I've been trying to post this all day with technical difficulties so suck it up people.)

How the Bun Came Out of the Oven

Well it seems that my new MMM has coincided in its second week with your 6 month birthday. What better way to celebrate it than with my clouded memories of your birth. Way back in November I promised a birth story to my 15 readers & never came through with it. I did actually write one with every single gory detail I could remember but it ran about 6 pages long so I figured no one in their right mind would want to read it. So now I will attempt to recount what happened without the running on & on about crap. (It seems I am finding it near impossible to shrink this down any more plus some of you already know the story so apologies if you get bored. If you want to keep reading click on the word tempted.)

Let’s see, it’s 17 days past your due date & everyone is raring to go. Except me. I could keep going like this. The feeling of you inside my belly is nice & it makes me feel pretty badass to be the world’s longest gestating woman. But… of course no one will let me keep you safe (disputable) & warm inside any longer so its off to the hospital we go to get you out one way or another. Over the past week I’ve had 3 stretch ‘n sweeps, a castor oil & root beer milkshake, nipple stimulation via the breast pump, spicy food, long walks, some other stuff & an attempt to break the amniotic sac all in an effort to coax you out. I must have one hell of a nice oven for you to want to stick around after all that poking at your head & some major indigestion showing up as non-stop hiccups.

Once Josée the midwife arrives at the hospital & we are checked into our labour room it’s time for a yet another peek at the ol’ cervix to see if you are ready to bust out of the joint. Nope & nope again. The attending OB & her cute intern come in for a consult since I’m post dates & we all decide to break my water to try & get things started before having to resort to the heavy-duty drugs. This had been attempted twice before with no luck because the sac had been pressed right up close to your head. The doctor was confident she could do it so off comes the wrapper on the crochet hook of pain. Really it wouldn’t have been bad but somehow she scratched me with the hook when she put it up the va-j-j despite me squealing in protest & scrambling back as far as I could up the bed. It’s done & first the trickling starts & then the hysterical laughing because it tickled & felt like I was peeing myself. The laughing of course makes everything come gushing out even more which brings on more laughter which brings on more fluid. You get the drift – a never-ending circle of leaking & laughing. I’m told I can put on a diaper & go walk around for an hour. Great, a diaper, I feel so feminine. So I get helped out of bed as I am not so mobile at the moment & splash! All over the floor goes what must be about a 2 litres of fluid. Oh what fun! Somehow, giggling & dripping I make it to the toilet so I can let the waters run a bit before I attempt to get dressed again. Finally I pull on the adult diaper & my pants, get someone to tie my shoes & away we go to walk until I have some good contractions or my feet fall off. At 42+3 weeks it heads or tails as to which happens first.

So we walk, and walk and walk. We walked the halls, the lovely path near the hospital, the nearby mall

& finally we did the stairs. Turns out my feet gave out before the uterus. Prior to this I’d had contractions but they were all manageable so I thought I was some kind of super-human labour machine. Not. The walking did bring them on a bit stronger which appeared promising but when I was checked again the powers that be were not satisfied so out came the big guns. Throughout the pregnancy I’d of course Googled everything & anything I could about labour so I was not looking forward to what the Ocytocin (Pitocin) was going to do. Anyway, I’m hooked up after 3 attempts to puncture my “twirly” veins & settle in for a long while of waiting, walking the halls & chatting via webcam & Instant Messenger to my sisters & mother out West. Oh & Calvin brought in a dvd player so we could watch Garden State. I think it was a good movie but halfway through I started zoning out on the yoga ball while Calvin & the midwife ate Chinese food so between the food jealousy & the increasing pain I really can’t remember what happened at the end. After one last pee I make it to the bed because I just can’t bounce any longer. What used to be small hills on the contraction print-out has now turned into mountainous jagged spikes & then these turn into a vast range of never-ending peaks.


rockin'
What I was worried about is happening. There is no break in between the peaks & my mantra of “relax, relax, relax” & deep breaths is no longer working. I guess I’m in the zone but the zone fucking hurts like hell. So much for that high pain threshold of mine. I’m desperate for some relief so I beg to go in the tub & am finally allowed after another internal lets us know I’m at 7.5 cm. It takes probably 10 minutes to walk the 10 feet to the tub & get in to what should be oh so soothing warm bubbly water. It totally sucks ass & my hopes of being able to cope through this intense pain without drugs are completely crushed. Somehow I get the words “I want a fucking epidural” out of my mouth & Josée immediately goes into action to get a nurse to page the anesthesiologist which surprises me because I thought she’d try & talk me out of it. Not that I am not grateful (oh so grateful). Anyway the dude is doing a c-section & can’t come for another half an hour so I’m left to my own devices which involve a lot of moaning & wailing like a wounded animal. Finally the anesthesiologist arrives and asks if I’m the one who wanted an epidural. Calvin tells him no, I’m the one who wants “the fucking epidural” to which he replies “I think I got that stuff right here”. Yay good doctor man. He takes my pulse & asks if I’m an athlete because he’s never seen such a low heart-rate for someone in labour. Calvin tells him I’m just kind of weird and that my normal resting heart-rate is around 40, which is true but hasn’t been like that since I got knocked up. Who knows what the hell was going on but the guy was impressed. (Wow, I am super-human after all. Just not when it comes to pain obviously.) Then a nurse comes in and asks if I would mind having some paramedics come watch the epidural.

What?! Here I am making freak show noises with my butt exposed (along with old fuzzy tattoo that no one needs to see) & 4 or 5 people in the hallway want to come watch me get a huge needle in my spine? Oh sure, that would be great. I’d love to have them all in for tea & crumpets too. I think Calvin noticed the look of incredulousness on my face & told them no. Finally they get me to bend over & not move while the doc tells me blah blah blah something about adrenalin… mistake…. You feel it…. Blah blah blah. Apparently he put in some adrenalin first to make sure he got the right spot and I would feel it if it was wrong. All I could feel was the next contraction bearing down on me & then I was told it was over & could expect to feel better within a half an hour. What?! I though it would be instantaneous or at least sooner than that. So I continue to moan for about 25 minutes before the good stuff kicks in. Oh sweet, sweet drugs. A wave of relief washed over me finally & I could rest a while.

Hours go by. I think I sleep. I know Calvin does while poor Josée pries her eyes open with toothpicks or something. At one point we do a check & she tells me I can try pushing if I want. Not much happens so its back to resting. Oh & I’m starving so I take a few sips of watered down Gatorade & suck on a homemade popsicle. It tasted like heaven but soon I noticed the familiar burning sensation in my esophagus that I’d experienced the entire pregnancy. Hello heartburn hell. Plus the epidural was wearing off by this time & because I hadn’t been able to feel the contractions while I was on it they had turned up the ocytocin full blast. So I am burning in so many places that shouldn’t be burning & its really pissing me off. To top it all off I can’t get into any position other than lying down because my legs are too numb to hold me up.

The other midwife arrives after an hour of pushing & burning & vomiting & she is surprised to see me making no progress. Finally someone turns down the ocytocin & gets another bag of epi drugs so I can finally get some strength back. It’s sometime around now that they tell Calvin (not me) that if something doesn’t start happening soon they’re going to have to get the doctor & probably pull out the vacuum, the forceps or go in for a c-section. They try to get me into some other positions but nothing works so I’m flipped up on my back like a turtle & Theresa (the other midwife) pries my hip bones apart from the inside (!!!) which is apparently the magic trick because things finally began to happen. Calvin tells me he can see the head, someone else ask me if I want to touch it. I tentatively reached down & felt a weird spongy, slimy mass & then to my horror, what was my horribly stretched & swollen girly parts. So freaky. Calvin said afterwards that the head looked like some weird animal trophy mounted on the strangest plaque ever. Nice dude, nice.

So the rest of labour was pretty much breathe, then push, then burp, then breath, push , burp & so on. The heartburn never stopped, I never could really tell when I was having a contraction & kegels apparently do nothing for you when you have an epidural. But hey, I didn’t tear & for that I am ever grateful because I can’t imagine it being worse to pee afterwards than it was. Oh ya, the baby. Someone finally told me the head was out & to give one more push. I didn’t know that that had done it because I told them all I had a few more pushed in me ready to go. Of course they all laughed at me, told me it was out & that they were just suctioning out some meconium. They put the babe on my stomach & I looked down in wonder at this weird looking creature for what seemed like forever. Calvin cut the cord & got it out of the way so he wouldn’t mistake it for anything else. Josee asked him if he recognized what the parts were & he said that he hoped so as he’d been looking at them all night. It was 18 hours or so since I’d had my water broken & I finally had a little 7lb 14 oz girl in my arms 18 days after her due date.


proud

I remember little dark eyes staring up at me. I remember the sliminess of her skin after they put her on my belly & I remember being told she was a girl. I remember the hospital room and the soothing coolness of the floor. I remember the burning heartburn & the animal instinct to moan in pain. I remember when I felt the stirring in my soul that this creature was mine & what an enormous responsibility I now had to see her grow up. I remember the love wash over me like a sunshower & fill my heart with a smile that now grows larger every day as she smiles back at me.



Freyja daya doodle bug I love you more than you’ll ever know & so much more than I can ever explain. You are my everything.
Love,

Fabulous Freyja Friday

Here's your fix people. I know you crave cute baby pictures so who am I to say no? Besides I have been working on a post for three days now & I can't quite seem to finish it because some little person keeps interrupting me. It's pretty hard not to forgive her though.


Checking out the tulips. And yes she tried to eat it.


Mmmm plastic donut. I love the riot of coral.


What is this contraption? One of this week's purchases & it has paid for itself in making her sleepy for nap time. Plus fresh air is good.


Now this is fun