Santa Visit 2009 - Take One

This morning I took Dylan to get his hair cut in preparation for his Santa pictures. He had two new outfits and it's getting close to Christmas so it seemed like a good time to get this checked off our list.

Last year I took Dylan to three different malls and got three different sets of Santa pictures. We did Markville Mall first, where the Santa was nice and jolly but also morbidly obese. Then we did Bayview Village where Santa was thinner and handsomer, but kind of crusty. Both of these visits resulted in lovely pictures. Then I pushed my luck and took Dylan to Yorkdale where the Santa looked REALLY perfect. But it was not a good day and Dylan wouldn't stop crying, so it turned out to be one of *those*pictures. I thought it rounded out my collection nicely.

After spending like a hundred dollars on those visits this year, I realized it was fairly ridiculous to go to three different mall Santas. So this year we're only going to do two. I live, I learn, I grow.

Today we did the Markville Mall Santa with my mom. My brother and father came along too. It did not go well.

I spent about ten minutes trying to psyche Dylan up for it. I kept telling him repeatedly that he was going to meet Santa Claus and we would wave to him and say "hi", and then he was going to sit on Santa's lap and smile, and we would take a nice picture of him with Santa and then it would be all finished. He seemed pretty cool with it, and started to get kind of interested.

They opened and we were first in line. We went up and Dylan waved to Santa. Then he said "hi". Then I went to put him in Santa's lap. Dylan screamed bloody murder and started bucking back and forth. He screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!!!" and tried to claw his way to his gramma.

And then he punched Santa in the face.

Santa's head whipped back in recoil, and then Santa was pissed.

Carol: "Oh my god, Santa I'm sorry! Are you okay??"

Santa: (tightlipped and glaring) "Yes. I'm fine."

Carol: "Um. Okay, Santa."

Dylan continued to cry like he was being tortured, and then they snapped the picture.

Next we'll try our luck at Bayview Village with Eric's mom.

Mommy Puddle

This post is going to be really cheesy, and not in the delicious artisanal cheese way, and not in the disgusting dick-cheese way. It's a sappy gag-worthy self-indulgence.

Last night the most wonderful and adorable thing that has ever happened to me...um, happened to me. We've been telling Dylan that there's a baby in Mommy's tummy, and he sort of gets it. Like, I'll ask him where the baby is, and he'll point to my tummy if he feels like playing along. Also, he's learning to talk now, and he loves babies so whenever he sees one, he'll point and say "Babay". That's how he pronounces it, it's "bah" like"bah humbug", and "bay" like "Michael Bay". And the emphasis goes on the second syllable, so if you're saying "Oil of Olay", just replace that with "babay" like "Oil of Babay", and that's how Dylan pronounces "baby".

Dylan likes to romp around naked on our bed after his bath. This special time means a lot to him, and if you try to get his diaper and pyjamas on without allowing him his nudie romp, he gets extremely upset. So he was doing his romp last night and I was intermittently tackling him and smacking his bum to watch it jiggle, and Eric was asking me why I was doing that, and we were all just having a great time.

Then he thoughtfully looked at my tummy, gave it an affectionate pat and said "Babay", all by himself. I decided to push my luck and asked him if he wanted to kiss the baby, and so he leaned over and gave my tummy a sweet little kiss!! I melted into a blissful Mommy puddle. But it wasn't over. As he continued to romp, he would come over to my tummy and say hi to the "babay", and then give it kisses. He kissed my tummy like ten times

It was the best thing ever. You can go barf now.

Big Life Stuff Update

Huh. Three and a half months since the last post. Is anyone even out there? I'll bet not. I'll just write this for myself. This blog can become like a personal journal for me alone, and I can read my own stories, chuckling at my own folly and cleverness. What a good time I will have!

Much has happened in the last three and a half months. Time marched forward and life progressed and we will none of us ever be the same again. Right now Eric is upstairs trying to get Dylan down to sleep. And you read correctly, I did say "upstairs" because...

We Bought a House and Moved Into It

Our beloved condo had become the bane of our collective existence. I would walk from the kitchen to the TV area and trip on a toy, followed by a bra, followed by a forgotten reusable bag of organic vegetables, followed by Dylan who was crouched over picking dried food off the floor and trying to eat it.

After a fruitless 6 months of house hunting, we finally came across a house we both loved. Up until that point, we hadn't even found a house ONE of us loved. The closest we had come was one house that Eric sort of liked out of desperation that we would never find anything else. Allow me to assure you, that house was terrible.

We had mistakenly been searching for an older house with "character". We were looking in old Markham Village, which is a lovely neighbourhood with older homes on large 60' lots. We had friends who had bought a similarly aged home in North York and then did extensive renovations to make it into a stunningly lovely and charming family home. Armed with these delusions of grandeur, we set out to do the same thing.

After the aforementioned 6 months of this, we went to hang out at the home of Grant and Roslyn, our friends in Stouffville. They have a nice, modern, newly built home in a brand new subdivision. The ceilings were high and the layout was open. And Eric started having doubts about our grand plan. Then our friend Chris bought a townhome in Angus Glen. It was also nice, modern, with high ceilings and an open layout. In addition, Chris has renovated his house in the spirit of his late grandfather's amazing cottage which now belongs to a bunch of Asian people (that last part is unrelated to anything).

Eric lives his life in hopes of becoming a combination of a number of people. These people include (among others) Luke, Batman, and Chris. When Eric first got a glimpse of Chris' new home, that was the beginning of the end of our charming older-house search. We emailed our realtor and expanded our search criteria.

Two weeks later, we had successfully purchased our first home. And the timing is just right because...

We Have Once Again Merged Loins And Been Fruitful

We're pregnant! We are extremely excited.

Let me tell you, it is not easy to be trying to conceive and to NOT blog about it. Especially if you are me and your blog regularly contains too much information. But no matter, I will share it with you now.

Getting the sexytimes in this time around was way harder than the first time. When we were trying for Dylan, I kind of guessed at the general timeframe ovulation was expected, and then we humped like animals at least twice a day for a week. Tada! Fertilized egg. We were very lucky. This time, we tried to do the same thing, but it's impossible to do the sexytimes twice a day. Firstly, of course Eric works. I do not work, but I look after a rambunctious toddler all day, and that's really effective at drying up any sexy juices I might have had. Secondly, even if it were a weekend and Eric was home, it's not practical or good parenting to say "Okay one-year-old, go amuse yourself for about 15 minutes, Mommy needs to get nailed by Daddy."

Our babymaking sexytimes were basically confined to bedtime. At that point in the day we were, without fail, both exhausted and not in the mood. Dylan will always be the child we made out of love. The Dylan-making sexytimes were fun and awesome. This child I am currently gestating will always be the child we made under duress. Good times were rarely had by any in the making of this child. To give you an idea of the lack of romance, instead of calling them "sexytimes", we actually started calling them "squirtytimes".

Anyway, it took four months of squirtytimes, but a squirt finally made it to the finish line, claimed the prize, and brought it home. It's going to be fun when the baby is old enough to read this blog entry.

I will end with a contemplative haiku:

New house: where I live

Fetus lives in its new house

A.K.A my flesh