Edie Before and After
It doesn't look too dramatic here, but there is a difference. Plus, once the blood goes away, I'm sure the difference will be even more obvious.
They almost didn't do the operation due to Edie's cold (number kajillion of the winter). I think they could sense our despair of having fasted this poor two year old all night and morning, getting her all prepped and ready for action. Also, the amount of psychological prepping Jo and I had to due was pretty intense as well. In the end, they felt the gain out weighed the risk, so they went ahead. I had been so strong up until that moment they took her away. Seeing her in the nurses arms, with her own arms outstretched to me, crying, screaming Mommy! Mommy! made me pretty much lose my bones and melt into a puddle on the floor. Luckily, big strong Jo was there to pick up my sorry self and get me out of ear shot. Thank god one of us is strong in these situations.
Edie did remarkably well, and what I will remember forever from that day is when she was brought out crying from the operation. As soon as she was in my arms, she immediately grew quiet and went back to sleep. It was a very profound moment for me, that I could comfort her that way. Sniff.

EDIE'S OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS! THANKS FOR THE CALLS AND EMAILS....YIPPEE!
Details to follow later....

Husband Seeks to Divorce Wife Due to her Ridiculous Library Fines

Well, he’s not going to leave me but he’s not happy with me. I got all excited last summer with the whole concept of going to the library, taking out a kajillion books and DVD’s, for absolutely FREE! I sort of forgot along the way that you have to return these items, and what I really didn’t know is that you have to pay $1.00 for every day a DVD is late being returned. The outcome? A $130.00 fine from the Ottawa Public Library, who have turned my case over to a collection agency. Sheesh, I think that’s a little hardcore considering I was late returning a few Baby Einstein videos and Dr. Seuss books. I guess baby’s not buyin’ any new boots any time soon.

I had Edie in for her pre-op appointment yesterday and it’s all a go for her operation tomorrow. I’m a little concerned about how she will deal with it. Last night she looked at a little cut on her finger (a week-old wound) and burst into tears crying “waaa!!! Bo-Bo!” How is she going to deal with her eyeballs being operated on???

Grace is showing signs of jealousy, I guess by all the concern people are showing over Edie’s operation. Yesterday at the Dr.’s office she insisted on also being weighed and having her chest listened to, eyes and ears looked at. She claimed that she was “sicker” than Edie and even wanted to get a needle. Weird. (And no, the doctor didn’t give her the luxury of an unnecessary needle).

If you want to send donations to my library fine fund, you know where to contact me :)

Giant baby head….

I have pretty much the coolest job ever. I was encouraged (told to) go see the Ron Mueck exhibit at the National Gallery
If you are in Ottawa, you should go check this out. His models are so real it is unsettling. The one thing that made me sort of laugh inside though is that, like I mentioned, everything is very real looking, from the wrinkles to the pubic hair to the toe nails of the subjects. Then you get to the woman who has just given birth and her new baby is lying on her stomach, umbilical cord still attached. Even this artist who focuses so intently on making the subjects realistic feels the need to sanitize the whole notion of childbirth. It’s not clean and pristine, it can be downright messy and kind of gross. While the birth of my two girls was a beautiful thing, I would never consider the birth of other people’s babies to be.

Okay, enough with the soap box. Here are the things I hope to accomplish this weekend, stay tuned next week to see if it gets done:

1) Clean out the medicine cupboard (when Grace required cough suppressant at 3:00 a.m. last week, I was less than thrilled with myself when I discovered I had put an empty bottle back in the cupboard – WHY do I these things!)
2) Get Edie to nap (please God, please let her nap!)
3) Round up some new slow cooker recipes (everything is starting to tase like tomatoes and oregano).
4) Go for a run. I only got out once this week and I feel pasty, pudgy and low on energy.
5) Clean out my closet (gotta make room for the all the spring stuff I’m itching to buy!)
6) Build a snow-fort (hopefully the girls will help!)
7) Make some time and call my best girlfriends who are unfairly scattered around North America.


We’ll see, we’ll see.

Other odds and ends:

My father-in-law has parked his Mercedes in our driveway. I’m acting very aloof about it and letting the neighbours speculate. Hee hee.

Grace has two birthday parties this weekend, Edie has one. My God, even Edie has more social action than I do and she’s only 2!

Jonas has his second last hockey game of the season tomorrow….yippee! I get my husband back!

Edie was scheduled to have her operation back in January, but because of a nasty cold, it had to be delayed (for the record, Edie has been on and off sick since October 21st). I have to admit I was a little bit relieved when it was cancelled as I’m no fan of my baby being put under and operated on. The date was moved to March 7, and that’s next week! I brought her to the doctor yesterday to get her checked out due to yet another nasty cold, and the good doctor wants to see her again next Monday to give her a pre-operation go-over.
I’m nervous. I have a feeling the operation is going to happen. I feel nervous because I like user manuals, instruction booklets and step-by-step guidelines for things, and after Edie’s operation she’ll just get sent home with us, same day, with whatever instructions from the doctor we have retained in our grey matter (I’m not so good at retaining information – especially important information. Now ask me any celebrity related question and for some reason I can retain this and can spew out facts and figures).
I have a few other blogs I’m faithful to, and take great comfort in knowing that there are other moms who know what’s it’s like to have to bring their child to the hospital; Chantal over at http://www.breadcrumbsinthebutter.typepad.com went through hell with her son and a rare illness and http://www.mamatulip.com/will be visiting the hospital soon with her little one soon. I don’t know these people, but reading about their experiences helps me a lot.

Enough about that.

Grandad came over last night and babysat while Jo and I wined and dined. We needed that. Did you know at the Keg you can have your glass of wine “Keg-sized”? I guess this is the classy version of “super-sizing” something. Yum! Both kids slept through the night (hollah!) but it was still painful to get up at 6 a.m. We have our alarm set to a radio station, like many others do I’m sure. So, I’m wondering what the song programmers are thinking when they play songs like Avalon by Roxy Music http://www.mp3.com/albums/13741/summary.html?from=88575 Is this going to make me jump out bed and get going in the morning??? No, it’s going to make me feel all warm and fuzzy and fall right back to sleep, like I did this morning.

I catch my bus to get to work for 7:00. I have a few reasons for doing this. The bus is crowd-free at this hour in the morning and the bus driver is friendly (he stops for me when he sees me running down the street. I get downtown in 15 minutes because there is no traffic and the bus just zooms along. Getting to work this early means I get to leave work at 3:00, giving me extra time at home to work out, get dinner ready and pick the kids up early so I have some quality time with them before shipping them off to bed.
This morning, Edie and Grace were early birds and were both awake before I had to leave the house. They both seemed happy and surprised to see me. They were both so fluffy and sweet. When I walked out the door there were tears (Edie) and quiet sadness (please don’t go Mommy) from Grace. It was then I realized that there is another reason I get up so goddamned early every morning….it’s so I don’t have deal with the guilt of leaving my family every morning.
Sigh.

I have a two year old.

Edie the Bikini is two years old today. She came into the world easily and adapted to her surroundings easily. She rarely woke her daddy or me in the middle of night – in fact we had to wake her for her evening feedings. She is so different from her sister – quick to smile, but also quick to cry. When in the safety of our arms, she greets strangers with a great big HI! and looks a little perplexed when the greeting is not returned. Most of the time though, her sunny disposition is hard to resist, and for the most part she gets an enthusiastic Hi! back.
And now she is two, and now she tests us, and she sometimes annoys us and she sometimes tortures her big sister. This is her right as a two year old. Why would anyone expect anything else from her?
All I know, is at the end of the day, when I get that big (sometimes snotty) kiss goodnight, it still melts my heart.

I have a five year old.

Ms. Grace is five. She's half a decade old. I'm glad she woke up early this morning so I could see her before I headed off to work. I'm glad her daddy emailed me to report that she was tickled when everyone rushed to wish her a happy birthday at her daycare - apparently she was absolutely bursting with pride. I'm glad this very non-domestic mommy took time to make and frost cupcakes last night to share with her kindergarten class. I'm glad I have a husband who saw the importance of driving the cupcakes over to her school to ensure that they got there safely. I'm glad that I'm just as excited as she is to open her gifts tonight. I'm glad that after struggling with post partum depression I can finally feel the joy, pride, optimism that a mommy should feel on her child's birthday.

I'm glad I get to do it all over again tomorrow when Edie turns 2.

High’s and Low’s

High: Went to a movie Saturday night, it was Music and Lyrics. The opening credits are worth the price of admission alone. Lots of laughing out loud.

Low: Upon getting ready to go to the movie, I sprinkled baby powder in my hair to absorb the grease – couldn’t remember last time I washed my hair.

High: Brought both girls to Cosmic Adventures on Sunday for a birthday party and they both had tons of fun.

Low: Edie screamed all the way home. The really bad part is she was screaming bo-bo, which means she was hurting somewhere and nothing I did made it better.

High: Had all the grandparents and Auntie over for a birthday dinner for the girls last night and fun was had by all.

Low(s): 1 new noisy toy; Grace crumbling in tears at bedtime because she wanted to her new puzzle one more time and we said no; Edie’s little tantrums at the dinner table because she didn’t want to sit in her high chair; the fact that we are doing all this all over again when we have Grace’s birthday party with her friends next weekend (actually, this isn’t a low, I kind of get excited too).

High: New, high thread count sheets, pillow cases and duvet cover.

Low: Edie waking up every night at 2 a.m.

High: Putting in couch time to catch up on PVR’d Gray’s Anatomy, the Office and Lost

Low, very low: Gray’s Anatomy didn’t record properly so I couldn’t watch part II!! GACK!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

So why do you do it then?

Have you ever noticed that kids can be so smart, but also a little thick at the same time? Case in point, we have these chairs at home that are high up and have bars on the back of them. I lifted Edie up on to me last night so she could see what was going on in the kitchen. Edie then turned herself around in one; promptly got her leg wedged in the bars and couldn’t get it out. Crying ensued, said leg was rescued, tears were dried, the world was once more a happy place. Until she put the same leg, through the same bar, and got stuck again, and again, and again. Look, I know that kids learn via repetition, but come on, how many times do you have to hurt yourself before you get it? After rescue kajillion, my patience was wearing thin and I was no longer a sympathetic Mommy with tissues to dry up the tears. That’s when my wise almost five year old very calmly suggested I take Edie down from the high up chair so she doesn’t keep getting her leg stuck.

Oh. Right. The lovely thing about Grace is that she didn’t say it with even a note of condescension.

Oh my god, this is hilarious. If you have a blog, use this translator
http://www.gizoogle.com/, if you don’t check out my blog translated….

http://sites.gizoogle.com/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmeanoldmommy.blogspot.com%2F

Super-DUPER funny!

Thanks to Christopher for passing it on!

Am I middle aged????

Gasp, I just found out now, a minute ago, that the Grammy's were on last night. I used to be on top of this stuff, watch it, talk about it the next day. I had no idea they were on last night ! Oh man, I feel so out of it.

Same make, different model

When we had Edie, I just assumed that raising her be the exact same as raising Grace. I quickly learned that this wasn’t case. Edie never fell asleep in the car (Grace’s chin was always touching her belly in the car); Gracie was a somewhat difficult baby, Edie was easy-peasy. Grace bounced back after a fall. Edie needs several day to recover; Grace would laugh in the face of a stern voice, Edie crumbles to her knees, begging forgiveness for any wrong doing. Grace potty trained at 2 years and 3 months old with 1 accident. Edie has other plans. Edie is just shy of turning two and she wants it bad. She wants others around her to rush her to the potty the minute she says “pee!” She wants a high five every time she gets it right. Sounds great, right? Problem is I’m not ready for this. Diapers are easy, let them get filled up, change them now and then, and you’re good. Toddlers with no diapers is not easy. You are running to the bathroom constantly and doling out stickers for jobs well done (I’ll add here that Edie also sees to it that I get a sticker for a “job well done”). What I’m saying here folks is that I’m lazy and I want to wait until it is pretty and warm outside so we can have our first trial and errors under Mother Nature’s watchful eye and not on our family room carpet. I have a feeling I won’t be asked to write any parenting books in the near future!

wow. i just looked at my calendar and it is FULL. for a brief moment, i felt proud of myself, happy that we are so popular and socially engaged. then i took a closer look. this weekend holds family fun day at the school and a birthday party at Midway (Hollah!) next weekend holds, wait for it, not one, but three birthday parties (all for the five and under crowd). how to pick, how to pick. and the following weekend we celebrate both of our girls' birthdays at Cosmic Adventure/grandma's house, our house, etc. Not one flippin' thing on the calendar is something for me and Jo to do jointly, and not one thing is on the calendar for me to do solo (no, I'm not going to count my appointment with my gynie as an outing!) Somebody, invite me out!

Wait, Feb. 16, i do have an inivitation to meet other women who bitch about their life in their blog! i think i invited myself, does that count?

thank god for t.v.....












i don't know how single parents do it. i got hit HARD this past weekend with the flu, or a really bad cold. swollen glands, stiff neck, painful joints. i literally couldn't get out of bed on both sunday and this morning. jo had to do it all. what do people do who don't have a partner to share in "sickness and in health?" there is no way i could have cared for the girls on my own this weekend. scary eh? this illness has definitely made me think about my sisters who are doin' it on there own.

other than that little cheery note, our family has been kicking butt in the fun department...ummm, can you say tobogganing at mooney's bay? this is so much fun! and free! try it, but just look out for the family with snotty noses cruising out control down the hill....i guess we will tackle winterlude this weekend, assuming all antibiotics have kicked in done their job. it's wierd, i feel like it's a personal failure when i or my kids need antibiotics. i like to think we are above all that, super-hero healthy. oh well, i guess we will have to excel in other areas (i wish i could be proud of the number of times a day i wipe snot from my kids' noses - but it's just not the same)

i watched a great movie on my sick bed today - american dreamz http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465142/. clever and funny. it must have flown under the radar as i didn't hear about it when it was out.

*this rambling blog entry is courtesy of extra strengh tylenol and lack of nourishment as it hurts to swallow)

Nobody told me there’d be days like these….
Last night I was tired. Jo went out to play hockey and I looked forward to getting the girls to bed and enjoying a little couch time. Grace complained a little that her tummy was aching – I chalked it up to her delaying bedtime. I rubbed her tummy until she was asleep (8:30). I then busied myself with making everyone’s lunches for the next day and tidying up the kitchen. (9:00). I longingly looked at the couch, but also thought of the laundry piling up. I threw in a quick wash and grabbed the items from the dryer, items now permanently wrinkled from sitting there for days. (9:30). Again, I gazed wistfully at the couch, but as I walked towards it, I impaled my foot on a piece of princess lego. With a quick scan, I realized there were toys everywhere, so I did a quick tidy up. (10:00) Finally couch, you are mine, I thought to myself. I poured myself a glass of wine, doled out some Doritos Cool Ranch chips in a bowl (well, I wish I was that civilized – I actually grabbed the whole bag) and plunked myself on the couch and readied myself for a PVR’d episode of Trailer Park Boys. That’s when the retching began. From Grace’s room came the most god awful, “exorcize this demon from my body “ sound. It was my darling girl throwing up everything she has eaten in her entire life. Now, for you seasoned parents, you may think this is no big deal, for me, it was freak out time. For Grace, it was freak out time. You see, in all of Grace’s almost 5 years, she has never, not once, thrown up. She was terrified about what was going on with her body (and I don’t blame her, it didn’t look or smell pretty!) She must have puked on every single item on her bed - this includes a family of stuffed animals, each equally important roles. This includes my bean bag that I heat up in the microwave for my achey muscles (grrrr). This includes her sheets, her duvet, her pillow, her mattress, her pyjamas, her hair, her slippers, the clothes I laid out for her to wear today and a library book. My god, have you ever been so overwhelmed you just don’t know where to begin? In the end, every thing was okay and Grace got over the trauma. Our family now has an “official” barf bowl (did your family have one of these when you were growing up?) and Grace is sort of proud of being in the Barf Club. I could hear her telling her friends about it at school this morning.

All I can say is thank God for Febreeze. Would it be wrong to snort it? I can’t seem to get the smell out of my nose.

This is the story of the Barbapappas…..

Do you remember this show? I didn’t have cable as a kid and I had two significantly older siblings who monopolized the T.V. with “boring” fare. Therefore any T.V. time I did have I absolutely cherished. Shows that stand out in my memory are: G-Force, Simon and the Land of Chalk Drawings, Read-Along, Sesame Street (duh), Smurfs, Barbapappas and The Wondeful World of Disney on Sunday nights (“Mom, can I please be excused to go watch Disney!?). I watched these shows on a tiny little television that you had to (gasp) stand up to change the channel. Okay. I sound like an old fuddy duddy, right? (Back in my day….)

I know history repeats itself, and it makes me laugh to think about what Grace and Edie are going to tell their children one day. Are they going impress their youngsters with stories of their hardships during their youth? I can just imagine Grace saying “You have it so good. When I was growing up, we only five channels dedicated to kids shows, and we had to watch it on a 50” plasma!” Or Edie complaining “Huh, back in my day, the potty training seats only played one song when we tinkled….”

Visions of greatness…

Grace got a stripe last week at karate. Grace got ANOTHER strip this past Friday at karate. This is unheard of. This is exceptional. Children just do not get stripes two classes back to back. Grace is above average, she will be a champion black belt and break records. Okay, okay, I am prone to exaggeration, but I am very proud of her, she is doing so well in her classes. Even Edie has joined in the fun, demanding to wear Grace’s old belt wrapped around her tummy a zillion times and raising her arms in a karate pose. Love it.

This weekend found us dong the following:

Saturday Jo and I roped in the ‘rentals to babysit in the afternoon so we could go shopping….fun!

Saturday night we had dinner with two super-fun couples….lots of belly laughs (who knew trading post-partum depression stories could be so funny!) Edie quickly put a halt on all fun being had – the babysitter called all panicky because Edie was beside herself crying Mommy Mommy over and over again. When we got home, Edie, indignantly planted herself in our bed (how dare we go out, tsk tsk).

Sunday was mellow. Jo took Grace swimming, I napped with Edie (30lb hot water bottle). Jo had some football friends over (something about an important game – this decides who goes to the SuperBowl bleah bleah bleah). I snuck out with a friend to go see Children of Men. I don’t have the words or time to describe this film right now. I did like it though, a lot.

Gotta love swimming. The house was quiet at exactly 8:15. It got loud again at 1:30 a.m. with Edie crying (screaming?) I’ll save that story for another time.

I’ve been slacking big time, sorry to those of you who check in regularly. What happened to me? I think Christmas and New Years just exhausted me – we had fun, lots of fun, but I burned out. I think I’m back in the game now.

Edie was supposed to have her operation today, but lo and behold, she woke up with the snottiest nose EVER on Friday, and the cold has been working its way down to her chest ever since. She spent the night (quite righteously) between Jonas and me. How can a 23 month old make a king sized bed feel like a twin? She managed to send Jo and me both to our respective corners while she ensured comfort for herself. Anyhoooo, the docs won’t touch her with any kind of illness, so the operation is called of for now. I’m a little relieved, I’m not in a hurry to get it done, I know it has to be done, but the delay buys me a little more time to deal with it.

I took Grace and her friend to feed the ducks on Saturday. We all had a little lesson in compassion and how Mother Nature can be a bitch. There was a duck the girls quickly named “Broken Beak” as half of his top beak was broken off. This duck was in rough shape, every time he managed to get some bread we were feeding the ducks, another duck would come along and grab in out of his mouth before he could swallow in (meanies!) The girls proclaimed this as being “NOT FAIR!” and managed to scare away the other ducks and focus on just feeding Broken Beak. I was proud of them. They also want to go back next week and feed Broken Beak again…..I’ll bring them, but Mother Nature might take care of Broken Beak in her own way….try explaining that to a couple of almost 5 year olds in love with a duck.

If anyone knows what “VEEE! VEEEEE!” means, please let me know. Edie is trying to communicate something of obvious importance to us, and we just aren’t getting it. It’s like she has the answer to the meaning of life, but a cruel joke is stopping her from telling us about it.

I was very social last week. Check it out:

-Wednesday, went out with a girlfriend for coffee and a movie (we saw Rocky Balboa…so fricking good)

-Friday night, went out with two girl friends for a movie and drinks (saw Pursuit of Happyness, it was okay. Willl Smith is cheesy though).

-Saturday night, my folks came over to look after the girls while Jo and I went our for dinner with good friends of ours. This was super-fun. One thing I don’t get though. My dinner sucked, I only ate an eighth of it, I told the waitress it sucked, she looked concerned and said she would see what she could do. When the bill came, she said she didn’t charge me for dessert. Huh? I liked the dessert. It was the main course I had issues with. Weird.

Okay. I feel unloaded now.

To sleep, perchance to dream…..

Poor Grace is suddenly terrified of her own shadow (literally). She cannot go anywhere in our house alone (even if it to her own room to get a toy); going to bed is quite stressful for her, and she has consistently been up between 1:30 and 2:30 in the morning all freaked out about something. At this point, I try to coax her back to sleep, but more often than not I shake a sleepy Jonas and send him in to lie down with her. It’s a tough phase, and I can totally sympathize. I’m not the best sleeper myself, often waking in the middle of the night with racing thoughts, but it is so frustrating when I have settled in zzzzzzzzzzzzzz land and am then jolted awake by Grace’s little cries for help. I know it is just a phase, but I am so freaking tired.
While I’m at it, I might as well continue complaining. I am now sick for what I think is the fourth time in 2 months – sore throat, achey muscles, tired/tired/tired and sniffles. What is going on? When God was handing out immune systems, did he forget to give me one? I forget how it feels to be rested and healthy.
Okay, okay. Something positive. Today I am wearing my new skirt from the Gap (scored for $12.99) and my rocking Bad Luck cardigan that Jonas bought me for Xmas . At least I look like a bad ass in my pitiful state (maybe it will distract from the bags under my eyes).