We were told this would happen

We had a very nice weekend in Vancouver with Sugar Daddy's aunt & uncle. Doodle Bug was in a crappy mood for most of the time & ate less than 1 jar of baby food the entire time, along with about 15 Cheerios, 1 small piece of potato, 2 french fries (yes you read that right - bad, bad parents), half a cherry tomato & 2 bites of a muffin. Probably 1 days worth of food in 4 days. Of course as soon as she got home she made up for it all by eating 2 jars of food & giggling happily when she saw her toys. Ahhhh the comforts of home.

The weekend was spent hanging out, doing a bit of shopping(where I fell in love with a white leather coat & white leather boots but then realized that was $1000 worth of love with taxes & frankly I don't think I qualify for that much love), eating (pumpkin pie from the awesome Jody!), meeting up with friends (& their sweet new baby) we haven't seen in about 8 years & taking a gander at the the cool 40 foot sailboat belonging to our gracious hosts. Wow! Too bad it was a bit too cold for a jaunt in the bay. Cold? In Vancouver? Uh huh. It rained of course while we were there but then the snow began on Saturday afternoon. Of course being the bad parents that we are, neither of us had really checked the forecast before we left Seattle & so didn't even think to bring a coat or hat or mitts for our precious child. Oh we suck. At least we had a warm blanket to protect her from the scary white stuff that was falling from the sky.

Scary white stuff we thought we left behind in Ottawa. Hmmm... Turns out we brought it with us. Yes denizens of the Northwest, blame it on us. First we brought a month of no rain & then to mess with your heads we stuck you with this. Bwah ha ha!

So we woke up to a winter wonderland on Sunday & it kept on coming down as we packed up our belongings for the car ride home. We met our friends for lunch & hung out until about 4 just catching up & letting Doodles chase their cats. (oh the squeals of delight issuing forth!) Finally we got on the road for what should've been a 3 - 4 hour journey, depending on the border crossing line up & how many times we had to stop to nurse. The Canadian part of the drive was easy going despite the snow & traffic was pretty light. Then, once we got about 5 km from the border everything came to a standstill. It's usually a wait at this crossing but we hadn't seen the line back up this far back before so we figured maybe they were being extra vigilant for Thanksgiving weekend or some other strange reason we weren't privy too. Somehow we managed to bypass a bit of the line & finally made it through in about 40 minutes. We thought it would be clear sailing the rest of the way back but we were to be thwarted over & over again as we experienced the conundrum of unexperienced winter drivers.

What was a typical Ontario winter's drive in snowy conditions became a painful ordeal of standstill traffic & Sugar Daddy saying over & over "What is wrong with these people?! I am the best driver on this road! Doesn't anyone know how to drive?". Apparently not in these conditions. The amount of fancy SUVs & 4 wheel drives that were driving 20 km/hr on the Interstate was enough to boggle our used to 3 foot snowdrift minds. It was a bit icy in patches but nothing too crazy to warrant the number of vehicles off the road & the snail's pace at which we were going. The only vehicles that seemed to be able to handle it were the big wheel pickup trucks & 10 year old SUVs driven my mustachioed dudes. It was a bit surreal & really frustrating when we calculated that at the rate we were going we wouldn't get home until 2 am. Ugh.


We managed to somehow do a bit of passing & hit a few miles of decent driving speed every once in a while so we figured that we cut our estimated arrival time down to 10 pm. Better than 2 but still way past what it should have been. Traffic cleared up a little once we went past Bellingham but we still got to laugh derisively at the vehicles going in the opposite direction who were stuck behind a row of snowplows. Everything was stopped for miles behind them. (They may have been stopped for an accident we didn't see but I'm going with snowplows because we saw rows & rows of them going North but only 1 going our way so I'm jealous ok?)

Anyway, we finally made it home around 9:30 safe & sound, thinking everything was back to normal. Turns out nope. Monday afternoon it started to snow over top of the bit of ice that was left on the roads. Then all hell broke loose. Sugar Daddy was stuck in the underground parking garage at work because no one knew how to drive their vehicles on snowy pavement. After waiting for 40 minutes he gave up & went back to his desk for a couple more hours. The eventual drive home took another 40 minutes. It usually takes 8. I got to listen to more scoffing when he finally made it here & we tuned into the news to hear all about the crrrrrazzzzy weather.

The next morning it looked like this:


What is that? Maybe an inch of snow? Two tops. Get this my eastern friends - the city was shut down. Work was cancelled, schools were closed, roads blocked off. We couldn't get over it. I went for a walk with Doodle Bug later in the afternoon so we could go to Gymboree but it, along with 80% of the shops in the town center were closed "due to inclement weather". The local roads & sidewalks were a bit icy. The temperature was a slightly chilly 1 degree Celcius. Back East this is nothing. Here it is something to talk about. Here, this is serious & we shouldn't be laughing at it (that means you jackass). There really is a lot of ice & the hills (of which there are a ton around here) are treacherous. This is the second snow day they've had in about 10 years so no one is quite prepared for the conditions & how to handle them. There's more snow & freezing rain & cold to come in the next few days so who knows what's going to shut down next.

Us? We'll try & keep the smirks off our faces. At least until next year when we start freaking out because the sky started tossing scary white stuff at us again.

Missing out on the Turkey Eatin'

We missed Canadian Thanksgiving because, well, I don't really remember. I think Sugar Daddy was in London for work or something. October was a blur people, a blur.

This weekend the U.S. holiday is upon us & we're headed up to the Great White North. Three hours drive up to the lovely city of Vancouver to hang out with family & friends. To do some shoe shopping with colourful money. To possibly sail on a boat. To enjoy a holiday without the holiday crowds.

To miss out again on turkey, stuffing & pumpkin pie. The turkey & fixins I can wait until Christmas for but damn, I love me some pumpkin pie. They've been sold out at the store every time we go & I'm too lazy / busy to make my own. Maybe there'll be a sale on the leftovers when we get back. Here's me crossing my fingers.

Anyway, have a wonderful Thanksgiving my new American pals & I'll see ya when we get back. Canadians - watch out, here we come.

Non-emergency Emergency

I hate the thought of using emergency healthcare when it’s not warranted. It’s such a waste of resources & time that should be saved for real emergencies. Unlike calling 911 to get directions or to complain about Burger King not getting your order right. Or to go to an emergency department for a migraine & then sit for 3 hours on the free phone complaining to your pal about how your boyfriend doesn’t love you & you are pissed because your narcotic patch ran out two months ago & there are kids screaming & how that is so not cool. Lady, what’s not cool is you. If I had a migraine (which I get quite regularly) I certainly wouldn’t be able to talk on a phone, never mind sit in a loud & well-lit waiting room.

Get the impression we checked out some more healthcare? Yup. Within a month of moving down here Doodles & I got sick. We put her in the daycare at the gym for an hour & a half one day & two days later she came down with a cough that she gave to me & which then got worse for both of us. I suspect it turned into bronchitis, at least for me, & it took forever to go away. Then it sort of came back again but not as bad & it coincided with the shots last week, plus what I think is more teething. Anyway she’s been sounding like a mangy tobacco-smoking purring cat for ages now & the past few days there’s been a lot of coughing & hacking that disturbs her sleep & my worry. I asked the person when we got the shots about her possibly having asthma but after a stethoscope listen she said she sounded congested but fine.

Yesterday she got a bit worse & I could hear her wheezing. She sounded tight, congested, phlegmy & her breathing was almost twice her normal rate. Last night when I was nursing her I got Sugar Daddy to take a listen & he wanted to call the doctor. Microsoft Health has a number you can call to get advice & to request an actual house call (I thought those were pretty much obsolete but I guess MS has got the power) so he dialed them up & explained the situation. Upon describing her symptoms they told us to call 911. Huh? We are both asthmatic so we knew she wasn’t that bad. What we were hoping for was a house call or be told to go to the Urgent Care Center (vs. hospital) so we could get her an inhaler with a spacer or nebulizer just in case she got worse. A preventative line of attack. That’s what we requested so they told us they’d get a doctor to give us a call.

He calls & tells us he doesn’t want to prescribe without a definite diagnosis of asthma which he doesn’t feel comfortable making during a home visit. OK That’s cool. Totally understandable. He suggests the urgent care but then calls us back & says they don’t want to do that either & so therefore we should go to the nearest emergency room. Great…. I picture sitting forever in an uncomfortable waiting room filled with a variety of sick people. I picture the sleep disturbed baby not wheezy when we finally get to see a doctor. I picture boredom, frustration & futility.

What I pictured is what we pretty much got despite Sugar Daddy telling me that since we are in America now there won’t be long Canadian style wait times. Two & a half hours after arriving the Doodles gets weighed, temped (where she’s never been temped before the poor, poor thing) & assessed at level 4 because since she’s screaming so much the triage nurse says there’s nothing wrong with her lungs. There’s 5 levels & we are on the second to last so anyone worse that comes in after will be seen before us. One more hour later, during which she dozed off, we finally get called in. A super nice nurse checked her out without waking her, said she wasn’t wheezy & another twenty minutes later the doc comes in & almost does the same. Of course she wakes up when he’s checking her ears, so then he does the rest of the check while she’s half awake & getting upset. He doesn’t want to make a definite diagnosis either since he doesn’t know her history, etc. but he will prescribe an inhaler with a spacer for her that we can use if she gets really wheezy again. So we don’t have to use the emerg unless it’s an emergency. So not so futile in the end but definitely a lot of boredom & frustration felt.

Now we have an inhaler with a spacer & a mask for her which we’ve used twice. She freaking hates having the mask put on her face despite us trying to make the experience as fun as possible. We show her the pictures of the bears on the spacer & tell her she needs some bears in her chest. She’ll play with it & point happily at the bears but as soon as it nears her face she pushes it away & gets pissed off. But, it works. The breathing is smoother, clearer & there’s less purring. Too bad she still has the temper of a mangy cat.

Bandwagon

Seems I’ve been jumping on a few bandwagons lately. Have you noticed? Not that I’d know since none of you bastards comment anyway. (Kidding.)

So… I’ve hitched my fake horse up to a few new things, a little behind the times on some, oh so totally with it on others (ya right). Here’s a sad little list for you:

• Blogger beta – I was afraid, very afraid to make the jump. I thought I’d read somewhere about losing previously posted photos so I was horrified at the thought of a bunch of red X’s scattered throughout my poor blog. Turns out what I thought were a pack of lies & I’m loving the new setup. Plus I made a new banner. Clean & simple. Just like me. Shut up.
• Internet Explorer to the nth or whatever the latest version is. At first I thought all my favorites were lost but now they’re just under a fancy smancy + button. I still can’t find my Edit doohickey though which is unnerving. I'm also having trouble getting the Beta dashboard to show up (works in Firefox). Also, there’s something up with my Flash player. No matter how many times I download the new version, it still won’t work, hence the regular Flickr badge to the right. Hopefully Sugar Daddy will fix when he returns from the Great White North. Maybe with Vista – I’ll let you know what that’s like.
• BloggerChicks – I got the code for this about a thousand years ago & didn’t put it in my template what with all the moving & shite. Now it’s there but apparently the sign-up sheet is out of commission until the end of November. So I’m plugging it without being a part of it. We’ll see what happens. I may give up. Just like I did on the feeds. I never did figure out quite how they all work (I understand the basics, it’s the fine details that I don’t have the energy to sort my head around) & it’s not like anyone ever subscribed to them either.
• Library Thing. I love, love, love this. Why I didn’t do this when I first read about it is beyond me. I’ve signed up for 4 accounts. 1 for the stuff I’ve been reading lately (since I had Doodles, but I can’t remember all of them since my positronic matrix is fried.), 1 for my library of books (that I haven’t started cataloguing yet because I am afraid of the end number), 1 is for the baby’s books (61 so far) & another for the books I’ve taken out of the library to read to her. My hope is that we’ll keep it up so she can have a list of all the books she’s ever read. Totally cool.
• Flickr Pro account. Ya I was suckered in after I “lost” a whole bunch of my uploaded pictures. $25 bucks & a whole ton of newly uploaded pics later & I’ve barely used 1% of my monthly quota. Awesome.
• Gymboree. When I looked into this in Ottawa I thought it was insane to pay good money to go play somewhere when I could basically do the same at home. I had the drop-in coffee mom group, spinning class, friends to talk to, other babies nearby to shove mine at & what I thought were plenty of toys. Here, I aint got nobody (nobody nobody cares for me | I'm so sad and lonely | sad and lonely sad and lonely) & it’s been raining a hell of a lot so we went to a free drop-in class & it was awesome. Doodles loves loves loves it & I even met someone from Ottawa. How weird is that? So. Worth. It.
• Skinny jeans. Ya you heard me. I bought a pair of skinny jeans. I haven’t worn them yet. I’m too scared & might possibly need them in a size smaller. (Woo hoo!) I’m under my pre-pregnancy weight but things have shifted & I need new clothes. Last Saturday the dude took care of the monkey for a few hours (taking her outside sans sweater!!) so I could go to the shops. I ended up in Macy’s surprised to find myself thinking I looked not half bad in a pair of Calvin Klein skinny jeans, a long sweater & cute shoes. Then I thought, man I need to do something about the mop that is my hair.
• New hair. (Holy hell this is a post in itself. Be prepared for the longest bullet point in history!) Yes Trish I cut it again. Sheesh! You see moving to a new city brings with it so many dilemmas that one doesn’t necessarily think about prior to packing. The whole doctor thing for instance (see a couple of posts down (update: have called Pediatricians & made appointment with doc who I thought had the nicest smile on the website.)). There’s also the horror of finding a new hairdresser. I’ve had two, maybe three good hairdressers in my life. You know, the kind who just get your hair. For me this is rare. My hair is weird. It’s very fine, dry, curly, cowlicky, frizzy, there’s a lot of it & to top it off I now have resistant grey. I’ve had few grey hairs since I was 13 (how mortifying to find one at that age!) & now they come in so fast (& they are multiplying! The horror!) it’s like that whole Dorian Grey episode. At the end when all the hideousness of age & corruption transfers itself onto him? Ya that part. So… I’ve been to the hairdresser’s once since we moved & while the colour was fabulous, the cut left me feeling like a 1980’s heavy metal guitarist. Why must they (the hairdressers) insist on layering my hair? Some layering is good, otherwise my hair can look like ancient Egyptian statuary (wedge-shaped headdress). However, much layering = bad ‘80’s glam. Plus, it makes the bottom half looks stringy. The stringy-ness was getting to me & I was feeling a mess because I had done the stupid thing & dyed it myself again since I wasn’t sure when I’d get back to the salon. So there I was looking at myself in those stylin’ skinny jeans & I decided I needed a haircut, pronto. I’d been formulating this in my head since before the last cut & decided I wanted a bob. Like what I had in my high school pictures. Hey man, I was cool. Back off. Plus I had read somewhere (magazine, internet, who knows?) that it was totally bitchin back in style because of Jessica Simpson, Sandra Bullock & maybe Madonna. But I had thought of it way before them. Really I had. Anyway, the fancy salon couldn’t fit me in so I went to something called Regis. Way in the back of my mind I seemed to remember a Regis salon from my childhood in Winnipeg where my mother would take me for trims & perms but I wrote it off as silliness & not having had any lunch. Looking at the place, it appeared warm & inviting but I guess anything would’ve with the torrential rain that was beating down. The girl that I took to be a receptionist was sweet & said she could fit me in in about 45 minutes so after a quick bite I went back to find out that this sweet young thang would be my stylist. She was really unsure of herself & I was beginning to freak out in my head sitting complacently in the chair thinking that this was going to be a disaster. I just kept smiling though & making stupid chit chat. Why I never said anything is my fault as I’m totally intimidated by all hairdressers. I said bob but what I got was shag. After the first few cuts I thought it was going the way I dreamed it would & then I thought she was done because it was looking great. Bob-like. Then she kept going. I got more layers. All over. Everywhere. There was no semblance of the bob in my head anywhere on my head. Crap. In the end it has actually turned out ok & pretty cute when I put the right amount of products in it (don’t get me started on the money I’ve spent trying out product) but I am on the hunt for the next perfect stylist. You know, one that gets it.

Finger Update

This is mainly for me to keep track but also because it's pretty cool. Today Doodle Bug gave me her first sign. I've been signing to her from the beginning & I didn't think it was really getting anywhere because she didn't seem to be paying attention most of the time. Turns out she picked something up because today she told me she wanted milk.

Milk!

At first I think she was making the motion to say "gimme what I'm gesturing at" but with a few reinforcements of saying milk whenever she made the sign it worked. Now she keeps coming up to me making the sign over & over again. Methinks she wants the snack bar permanently open.

eta - Turns out she doesn't quite get it yet. She keeps making the sign but she's using it for just about anything she wants. Wants to see the flowers? Milk. Wants to look at a doggie on tv closer? Milk. Oh well. I'll keep working on it.

Giving me the Finger

There’s this funny story about one of Sugar Daddy’s aunt. A very sweet lady, she got cut off one day in traffic. She was so upset she uncharacteristically gave the other driver the finger. “Are you serious?” we all asked incredulously. Turns out she passionately gave him the index digit instead of the middle one. Oh wait. Maybe it was the thumbs up. It’s been a while since I heard the story. And seen the actions that accompany it. Anyway, it’s a laugh riot, trust me.

Since the Doodles had her birthday, things have suddenly gotten a tad easier & way more fun. She’s so much more sure of herself & confident in her walking abilities. This in turn, has made her a lot happier & slightly less reliant on me. All of a sudden I can breathe. And pee. I even got to take a shower while she was napping yesterday. It’s not a wonderfully smelling bed of roses or anything yet – the nap situation is really, really weird (I think she’s transitioning from 2 naps to 1) & it’s kind of messing with my head. And what was once our semblance of a schedule. Oh wait. Not schedule. Let’s call it a routine. That sounds good & non-committal like.

Anyway, back to the fingers. It seems the Doodle Bug has figured out what her index finger is for (I know you were thinking I was going to tell you she was giving me the middle finger. Shame on you for thinking so poorly about an innocent baby!). She’s been picking up Cheerios & other assorted finger food for ages now & I’ve seen her dexterity getting better & better. But what’s really cool now is that she’s learned how to point.

And point she does.

She points at things she wants to see. She points at books she wants to read & she points to pictures on the pages in the books. Ask her where the little dog (who laughed to see so much fun) is & out comes the finger. Where’s the cat, the cow, the pig? Point, point, point. The girl really knows her farm animals. I’m not sure what that says about us but what the hey. It makes me feel so proud when I can ask her where the bee is & she’ll stick her cute little index digit right on the fat black & yellow bug & then to top it all off, she’ll make a funny buzz buzz noise with her tongue sticking out. Kind of a raspberry, kind of a word. It doesn’t seem to be a fluke either; she’s about 90% consistent with only doing it for the bee. Way to go baby!

She puts those index fingers to good work in other ways too. She gets so excited about her books with the animals in them that she’ll flip to the pages with her favorites (cow, dog) over & over again all the while reading to herself. The books that we have with paper pages (versus the board books) are now all dog-eared & torn (& taped) from her constant page turning. My photo albums are getting bent up & the plastic ripped. The toys with buttons to press are getting pressed (if I have to hear Tad’s rendition of Oh Where Has my Little Dog Gone one more time I think I’ll rip my ears out). The dog is getting poked in the eye. I am getting pinched on the boob & she is constantly pinching her chubby little knees so she can tickle herself.

All this is wonderful but there’s one more oh so special thing she has learned to do with her fantastic digits.

Pick her nose.

Shots

Yesterday we got a taste of the U.S. healthcare system. Yesterday I tried not to cry while singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to keep my baby’s mind off her pain. And to drown out the screaming as two nurses held her down with me while they injected her with some mean looking sharps. Yesterday the Doodles got 6 shots in her chubby little thighs. It would’ve been more but on seeing the needles I asked to save the flu shot until later. I didn’t really want her to get it anyway because any time I’ve received one I’ve been sick for about a week. (Yes I know you are not supposed to be able to get the flu from the vaccine but... ) Sugar Daddy on the other hand wants her to get it – he’s never had a problem with stuff like this. Me, I’ve read enough on the possible side effects, as well as the benefits, so as to not have a clear decisive opinion on whether or not she should get it.

She also got a Hepatitis B vaccine. The leaflet on this explains that those at risk are those having unprotected sex, iv drug users, etc. Strange, but I don’t think my 1 year old child fits into any of these categories. Nor do I think that she will have much contact with the at risk population until she’s a few years older.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-vaccine. We love the vaccines here. It’s just that some of the info I was handed afterwards made me think. Plus the fact that it was handed out afterwards rather than discussing it all beforehand kinda pissed me off. I guess it was because the entire visit was odd & stressful. The whole experience was similar & yet so different from what I’m used to. I’ve had the same doctor for the past 12 years minus a year or so of seeing a doctor on campus while in school & the odd walk-in clinic & specialist visits. In the past 12 years I’ve never had to worry about finding someone new to check out my lady parts or prescribe me medication because I knew I could always rely on my family physician if I needed or if I didn’t like what the walk-in clinic did for me. I may not have agreed with everything she said but she was always nice, patient, kind & treated me like an intelligent participant in my own healthcare.

One of the issues on my mind about moving to the States was the status of our healthcare coverage. I needn’t have worried & in this I know we are extremely lucky to have Sugar Daddy working for a company like Microsoft. It appears that everything we need is covered from doctor’s visits to massage therapy. With this group plan we get access to wide range of providers that are listed on a website. I just type in our address & up pops a list of who’s available in my area. It’s just a list though & so I’m left scratching my head trying to make a decision based on the sound of someone’s name in my brain. Since we don’t know anyone here it’s hard to get a recommendation based on personal experience. With Doodle’s next round of immunizations coming up & our suspicions of her having asthma I took the plunge & called one of the three nearest set of doctors. The closest one I wrote off because of her pro-life stance & religious affiliations – just not my cup of tea. That left a community clinic & a medical office. I went with the clinic because it was slightly closer (like a block, lazy ass) & the idea of community sounded caring & inclusive.

It was definitely inclusive. I’d like to think that I don’t have a problem with this but apparently I have some issues. Not with who is being provided for or the expertise of the providers but with the feeling that I was being treated as undereducated or lacking some intelligence. It wasn’t the personal treatment per say but rather, the questionnaires I had to fill out, the repeated questions (already answered on the forms) from the assistant, the nurse & then the medical person, and the assortment of pamphlets I was given afterwards, that gave me this impression. Questions concerning my coverage, my living status (married being the last available option), monthly income, what type of housing (if at all) I was in, if I was a drug user, alcoholic, or smoker. Questions regarding my baby about how much formula (surprise! She gets the boob & for this was called lucky) she took, whether she still took a bottle (uh... she neverreally did?), how her naps & sleep habits were (naughty me for continuing to co-sleep), how much food she ate a day & whether she was hitting all the usual milestones. It wasn’t what the questions were about that got to me, but that I was asked them over & over again like I either wasn’t telling the truth or I was a little too dense to understand what the truth was. I don’t blame the askers – it is their job after all – but it really just didn’t make me feel very comfortable.

And this discomfort makes me feel like a spoiled snob. Which in turn makes me uncomfortable with myself. But at the same time I'd like to think that anyone coming from what I've been accustomed to would feel the same way. The questioning was so over the top for me that I didn't even think to ask what vaccines were being given to my child. I was expecting to go in to get a checkup, talk about the breathing issues & schedule an appointment for the shots. I was so flustered I didn't even get a chance to write down her new measurements. Weight = 18lbs something. Height = ? (at home she's 27") Head = ? I was told she was somewhere around the 40 - 45 percentile for it all so at least I received some information.

The people were nice & they were competent. I just don't think they were the right fit for me which means I’m not going back there despite the fact that Doodles is supposed to go for another round of Hep B shots in a month. Instead I’ll call medical professionals number 3 on my list. Maybe this time we’ll even get to speak with an actual doctor about our concerns. Hopefully I won’t have to feel as though I’m being spoken slowly to &, hopefully, we will find someone who I can eventually appreciate as much as I do my old doctor.

I miss her.

More open letters

Dear Pervert,

I'm glad you like our webcam, really I am. It's nice that you like looking at my innocent baby (or is it????). Thanks.

However, if you honestly think that I'm going to show you my boobs by either flashing you or by nursing my sweet child, you are sadly mistaken.

That is all.

~

Dear other webcam viewers,

Apologies if you witnessed Sugar Daddy in all the glory of his after-work uniform of t-shirt & underwear. At least you would've also witnessed the glory of a half-empty bottle of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Shiraz.

Deliciously embarrassed

~

Dear Friends,

Sorry to lump you in with the perverts but we wanted to wish Happy Birthday to Timothy, Uma, Nicole, Kanti, Todd & Evelyn & anyone else we missed sending wishes to. Also welcome to the world to baby Carson. You are pretty cute! Isn't this better than a card?

Hell ya!

~

Dear Family,

Thanks for all the wonderful presents that were sent to Freyja for her birthday. She especially liked ripping & eating the wrapping paper & the pages of her new books. She also looks great in the clothes that fit her & we can hardly wait to wear the bigger stuff. Well.... I think she can wait since she hates to wear any form of clothing but I really like them & will force her little hands through those sleeves when the time is right.

Love ya!

~

Dear Redmond Drivers,

Why are you not as polite & attentive as Seattle drivers? Why do you have trouble noticing two extremely bright & garish neon yellow day-glo crosswalk signs located beside a popular park containing a well-used playground? One set of them are even conveniently located right next to a decent intersection. Why do you not stop at said crosswalks when there are people with small children who probably have the propensity for running into traffic? Apparently a man in the middle of the street pushing a stroller with cars stopped in the other direction also doesn't warrant slowing down your precious SUVs. Seems even cop cars are immune to stopping for people. It's not just this crosswalk either. There is definitely something lacking in the ability of drivers to notice pedestrians here, especially compared to the painstaking troubles Seattle drivers would go to to stop for anyone trying to cross a street, crosswalker or jaywalker, light or no light. Perhaps, just perhaps, your reliance on your personal vehicles has rendered your eyesight incapable of seeing those who rely on the motion of their own feet.

No offence,
A local pedestrian

~

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Well, this is it.

We made it through an entire year without leaving you on any doorsteps.

Just kidding my love.... I could never let you go. Plus there's no way you'd let me get more than 5 feet from you without kicking up a stink loud enough to attract attention so that we could never get away with doing something like that. And so, this is for you. Perhaps one day you'll be able to appreciate it for what it is in all its smaltziness.



Hopefully this will work. Here's the link if the embed doesn't show up. You'll probably need to download a new flash player though. I had to & something is still wonky.

As for the virtual webcam party, I'm turning it on now (11:00 am Pacific). The schedule for today is hanging out, followed by us possibly leaving for Gymboree drop-in, then back home for napping, then leaving for swim class. After that it'll be time for cake & presents (7 pm-ish). For those back East you'll probably be in bed by then but hey, this is the best I can do. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of pictures.

Toodles from the Doodles.

One Year Tomorrow

The laptop screen is repaired but things are running slow & crashing a lot lately so I don't know if I'm just having a run of bad technological luck or if something else is up. I'm trying to finish up another one of those cheesy mommy-blogger videos of baby's first year because I know you are all dying to see how wonderful my baby looks to music (yes I know I did one before & despite the cheese factor you all loved it - right up there with velvet kitten pictures right Brian?). I'm getting frustrated though because I seem to be having some audio issues with Windows Movie Maker & I don't know if it's my stupidity or my computer. Hopefully I'll figure it out during the next naptime so you can all prepare to get teary-eyed at the beauty of my sweet baby.

Who is heading out of babyhood & into full-scale toddler mode.
The walking? Spectacular.
The stair climbing? Up & now down.
The talking? We can make out cat, dog & duck.

Pretty cool eh?

Too bad she hates fancy gourds....

boo hoo hoo

Just kidding.

She's crying because she is wearing clothes. And because I am all of 2 feet away from her. Somedays I think she just wants back inside. Too bad for her this time last year I was heading into pitocin induced labour 17 days overdue (always gotta plug that fact 'cause it makes me feel badass). Some days I wish I could shove her back in there to stop the crying but mostly I'm just glad she's here to give me at least one happy beaming smile a day.

Those make it all worth while.

p.s. Freyja cam should be on most of the day tomorrow for those who want to view the sham of our festivities. There's no schedule but there will be cake & presents & of course, beer for those who need it. Undoubtedly that will be me.

The Black Screen of Death Comes to Call

I am writing this while looking at the tv (& what I am sure to be a dearth of typos). It's really really weird & makes me a little bit dizzy. Seems the monitor on my Compaq Presario R3000 has bit the dust. I thought I saw a little piece of red pixellated crap on the bottom left corner two nights ago & then yesterday morning after working just fine, I came back to tell ya'll about Halloween adventures & could do nothing. Oh ya & this was after coming home to find dog shit in my kitchen & piss in the den. Great day eh? Plus Calvin hid the leftover Halloween candy so I was freaking pissed!

Anyway, looks like my baby has to go into the shop for repairs so I'll be without my lifeline to the world for a few days. What the hell am I going to do? I'll miss you all. Argh!