Deep Thoughts at Dinner

As we gathered together for our little family dinner tonight, I gazed upon my beautiful boys.

Carol: These are the wonders of my loins.

Eric: Yes.

Carol: Loin? Loins? How many loins do I have?

Eric: ...

Carol: What is my loin?

Eric: I'm not sure.

Carol: Is it similar to a pork loin?

Eric: I think so.

Carol: How many loins does a pig have? Two? I think a cow has two, because when we got that hind quarter of a grass-fed cow we got one tenderloin. I think there's one on the other side.

Eric: Okay.

Carol: But if I have two loins, where are they located, and how are they responsible for the kids?

Eric: That's a good question. I think you should check Wikipedia.

Carol: Is it in my thigh? Fruit of my loins. That doesn't make sense.

Eric: And how is that difference from Fruit of my Loom?

We were eating salmon. The omega-3s made us philosophical and smart.

Vocabulary Fail

Eric was playing with the kids while I made dinner today. Lee was trying to climb everything, and Dylan was working on a puzzle with Eric. Some altercation occurred between them, because Dylan's indignant high-pitched voice suddenly soared over to me in the kitchen.

Dylan: "You're not my Daddy!"

Eric: "Yes Dylan, I am."

Dylan: "No, you're not! You're not my Daddy!"

Carol: "I assure you, he is."

Dylan: "No, he's not!"

Carol: (joking with a wink to Eric) "Are you saying Mommy's a slut?"

Dylan: (does not know what this word means) "No, Daddy's a slut!"

I thought this statement was hilarious and started giggling in a gleeful manner. Then Dylan got angry with the world at large.

Dylan: "Daddy's a slut! Mommy's a slut! Lee, you're a slut! YOU'RE ALL SLUTS!!"

After that much repetition and reinforcement of the newly acquired word "slut", I think we might have some trouble with his preschool in the near future.

I'm Not Into This

After this long, something fairly momentous must have occurred for me to think to myself, "I should blog that." And here it is:

What is it with my generation and marathons? It has become increasingly clear to me over the past couple of years that marathons are a big deal. It seems everyone I know is training for one, planning to train for one, running their first one, running their first half-one, running a bunch of half-ones with the goal of running their first whole one sometime soon, somehow getting Tiffany's necklaces for running one, having people make documentaries about them training for and nearly failing to run one, impressing their future spouses by riding their bicycles alongside their love interests as they run one...the list goes on.

This trend horrifies me. I have always had a fondness for sitting which is only surpassed by my fondness for lying down. The mere idea of running for four or five hours at a time makes me so tired I feel I need to...well, lie down. It also kind of makes me want to vomit. Back in high school when we had to do that 15-minute run, I remember being so out of breath I was wheezing like a sick old man. I had a Scarlett O'Hara moment where, as God as my witness, I would never go running again. And so I haven't.

But seriously it's all over Facebook, people are crazy about marathons. So congratulations to all friends and family who self-flagellate with this extreme form of physical achievement - I will never in a million years be able to join your ranks. Perhaps one day I will proudly post pictures of a sweaty sex-a-thon Eric and I had. Then it will be your turn to vomit.

Magic Rod

I got mastitis this weekend. It sucked.

If you're wondering what mastitis is, it's a breast infection. Somehow, bacteria gets inside a milk duct, and what results is a clogged, inflamed, red, and very sore funbag. You come down with severe flu-like symptoms, and it really knocks you flat on your back. It's one of those things to be wary of as a breastfeeding mother.

I'm still not completely over my battle with this thing, as my right boob is still sore and unhappy, but almost all my flu-like symptoms have gone away and I feel much better overall. I have my fingers crossed that I'm on the mend, because then I won't have to take any antibiotics. I like to save those for very special occasions only.

This illness really put a damper on the weekend. Today is actually the 10-year anniversary of the day Eric and I went on our first date, as well as our 5 1/2 year wedding halfiversary. We had planned to do something to celebrate, but that all went quickly to hell. Eric has been wonderful this entire weekend. It's a lovely anniversary celebration for me, in a way, because he has spent this time reminding me of all the reasons why I love him, and why going on that first date with him was the best thing I've ever done. Meanwhile, I've spent the weekend making him wonder why he ever signed on to this gig in the first place. His flat-chested Chinese wife gets a boob disease where they finally swell up, and he can't even touch them.

Here are all the great things Eric has done for me this weekend:

- let me sleep for endless hours

- kept the kids away from me as I slept for endless hours

- played with the kids

- fed the kids

- changed the kids

- brought me lots of water refills

- recruited his parents to make homeopathic drug runs

- kept the kitchen clean to keep my mood up if I decided to venture downstairs

- encouraged me to take long, punishingly hot showers

- cut up apples for me to eat

- put both kids to sleep

- brought Lee to me whenever he was hungry, so he could help drain my boob

- after the kids were asleep, sucked on my infected boob himself to try and help me drain off what Lee didn't get (calm down, it's just milk)

He was really great.

He also suggested repeatedly that my mastitis might be more quickly healed with the help of his Magic Rod. I think that since it was big anniversary weekend, he had been looking forward to some guaranteed sexytimes. He was probably just trying to salvage what he could of the occasion.

Yesterday:

Carol: "I'm going to take some of this vitamin C and echinecea before going to stand in the shower. Hopefully it helps make me better."

Eric: "You know what can make you better? My Magic Rod."

Carol: "Your parents are still here."

Later that night:

Eric: "Do you want to read your book down here or do you want to come to bed?"

Carol: "I definitely want to come to bed."

Eric: waggles eyebrows

Carol: "No, Eric. I'm still really tired, I need to sleep."

Eric: "Magic Rod can help!"

Today:

Eric: "The kids are napping. I'm going to make some tea. Do you want some tea?"

Carol: "No, thanks."

Eric: "Do you want to take a nap?"

Carol: "Yes, I totally do. But no sex! I really want to nap."

Eric: "Let me cure you with my Magic Rod!"

Five minutes later, in bed:

Eric: pouncing painfully on Carol's infected boob "MAGIC ROD!"

Carol: "OWW!! Get off, that hurts!" twists away and turns her back

Eric: grabs Carol's hips "Very good. You are presenting."

Carol: "I am not presenting!"

Eric: "Magic Rod works just as well from behind."

This is the man I started dating ten years ago today, the man I married, the man with whom I have two beautiful little boys, and the only man I want to see every morning for the rest of my life. Not only will he take care of me and make me laugh when I'm sick but even with deformed breasts, and gross flu-breath he makes me feel sexy and wants to ply me with his Magic Rod.

Happy Anniversary, babe. I love you.

But really, keep that thing away from me.

Eric is Mistaken

My old roommate Gloria moved to New York City several months ago. I love to make fun of her because she's a good sport, and she does things that are funny, but the truth is she's brilliant and incredibly successful. She finished her PhD about a year ago, and has been turning down job offers all over the place, just waiting for the perfect one. I guess that it finally came around, because she took this insane job on Wall Street, leaving me so she could move to Manhattan where she now lives in some ritzy neighbourhood in a building with a doorman where they gave her new granite countertops and reglazed her bathtub before she moved in. She works long hours during the day, and then goes home to sleep in a huge pile of money that's loaded each night onto a solid gold bed frame by a team of trained unicorns. I swear this is true.

We hadn't hung out a whole lot in the past year, because she was busy with consulting work, and I was busy being pregnant/having hemorrhoids/taking care of a newborn, but when I got the news that she was moving, I was surprisingly devastated. Don't it always seem to go?

Anyway, she called a couple days ago so we could gossip about people we both knew, and it was really nice to chat and catch up. After we hung up, I went to find Eric.

Carol: Hey, so when the weather gets a little warmer, I want to take a trip to New York to hang out with Gloria.

Eric (very enthused and excited): Yeah, totally!

Carol: No, not with you. Just me.

Eric: Oh. (unhappy)

Carol: You can come next time.

Eric: Hmph. (sullen and grumpy)

Poor Eric. This is what happens when we have kids and you go away for guys' weekends, bachelor parties, and the occasional bike race. Mama cashes them in for girls' weekends in New York City.

I can't wait.

Don't Want

This is the story of the day I stopped wanting to play boardgames with our friend Chris.

I always thought it would happen first with his girlfriend Kim; she's not a very good sport when we play boardgames. She doesn't even wait until someone else wins. Often on the first turn if she perceives any slight to her gameplay strategy, it becomes personal.

Settlers of Catan

Carol: I rolled a 6...I get sheep!

Kim: I don't have any settlements with a 6...I hate you.

Power Grid

Carol: I'm going to buy this power plant

Kim: That's the one I was considering buying...I hate you.

Puerto Rico

Carol: Let's play Puerto Rico!

Kim: I always lose in that game...I hate you.

On the other hand, it is usually very enjoyable to play with Chris. There are two reasons for this: 1) he's always excited to play and maintains a happy upbeat mood throughout, and 2) he almost always loses because he's so busy enjoying himself he doesn't pay attention to strategy. He did actually win one time, and we were all very happy for him but I'm not going to lie, I win often and I enjoy that feeling (I should also mention that I once made the mistake of telling him this, as a compliment, and he was greatly offended. He didn't come by to play games with us for months after).

On Saturday, they came over to hang out and play games once the kiddies went to bed. Eric was multi-tasking and deploying some code or missiles or something upstairs on the computer, so we held off playing our current favourite game (Dominion, with multiple expansions) until he could join us. Instead, we opened up Blokus, an easy puzzle-type game with tetris-like pieces. The gameplay was simple, you just had to try to place as many of your pieces on the board as possible while blocking other players from placing theirs.

It turns out that Chris ROCKS at Blokus. It's a spatial visual game, and I guess his testosterone-fueled man mind kicked in and he easily won the first game. Eager and excited to chase that feeling, he readily agreed to a second game since Eric still wasn't ready to join us. The second time around, Kim and I were both better prepared and we blocked Chris far more effectively than before. Chris felt the resistance and became increasingly agitated, anxiety and excitement mingling with the desperate desire to feel that rush of winning again. As he struggled to break through one of my barriers to a wide open playing space, he got way too into it and exploded.

Chris: I WILL PENETRATE YOU!

A silence fell over the kitchen.

And I don't really want to play with Chris anymore.

Lullaby Parenting Fail

Eric can't carry a tune or keep a beat. This doesn't stop him from enjoying music and singing along to anything he likes, but it does pose some challenges when it comes to singing Dylan bedtime songs. He knows part of an Estonian lullaby his mother used to sing to him, but for the past several months he's been softly singing the Wheels on the Bus song to Dylan. He likes it because you can make it as long or as short as you want, and he started inventing verses with animals once all the usual bus verses are done. For example:

The lion on the bus goes "roar roar roar"

The pig on the bus goes "oink oink oink"

Then he made the questionable decision to invent verses with animals whose sounds he doesn't know, animals like giraffes and hippos. Also, elephants, because although we know the trumpeting sound an elephant makes, it's difficult to sing it in a song. How did he deal with this problem?

The giraffe on the bus goes "giraffe giraffe giraffe"

The hippo on the bus goes "hippo hippo hippo"

The elephant on the bus goes "elephant elephant elephant"

I heard him singing these verses once, and I was all "Did you just teach Dylan that a giraffe says 'giraffe giraffe giraffe'"? But these don't compare with what just happened tonight.

Eric and I were both hanging out with Dylan in his bed and reading books since Lee was being a lovely baby and already sleeping. When we finished all the books, Dylan wanted a song, "Daddy sing a song? No Wheels on the Bus?" Eric turned to me, "I don't know any other songs." I joked, "You know the engineer song" referring to the only song Eric can reliably sing while producing a recognizable melody. It's a song lots of engineers sing, and at Queen's it's a big tradition for engineers to scream this song while drunk, and then all the years take turns singing their unique year verses.

Eric said, "That's kind of inappropriate, isn't it?" I said, "Haha, yeah it is." Then Eric happily started singing in a quiet lullaby voice:

(To the melody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic)

We are we are we are we are we are the engineers

We can we can we can we can demolish forty beers

Drink rum drink rum drink rum drink rum and come along with us

For we don't give a damn for any old man who don't give a damn for us!

Not so bad. But before I could say anything, he tenderly launched into his year verse:

We build the fucking shit that keeps the world a-turning round

We're hardcore motherfuckers and we'll pound you to the ground

The Artsci Farts have got no smarts, the Commies never score

We beat the pit, we are the shit, don't fuck with Sci'04!

That's the last time I plan to make that joke.

(And yes, that's Eric in the middle.)

Halloween, Festival of Poison

Sometimes you raise your children with all the best intentions, and despite your efforts you still manage to screw them up in special, mysterious, and inexplicable ways. Then again, sometimes it's crystal clear why your kids are messed up.

We're pretty picky about how we eat nowadays. Almost all of our food is organic, we try to eat a lot of raw foods, and we avoid sugar like it's poison. Our friends find us insufferable. Sometimes we'll give in and cheat and we inevitably feel disgusting and sick afterwards because our bodies aren't used to it anymore. Dylan sticks to the same plan, and whenever he manages to get his mitts on some real cake or cookies, he gets crazy eyes and runs around like a child possessed.

Halloween was going to be difficult. He has never eaten so much as a single Smartie in his life, let alone any kind of candy bar and we weren't planning on letting him start. For several weeks leading up to Halloween, we psyched him up for his costume and the decorations and the pumpkins. And while we didn't want him eating candy, we did want to take him trick-or-treating. So we told him trick-or-treating was when you put on your Halloween costume and went outside to people's houses. You ring the doorbell, ding dong!, and someone will come open the door. Then you say "Trick or treat!" and hold out your bag. This is the important part: that person will then put a piece of yucky poison into your bag. When you get home, you'll take out all the poison and give it to Daddy to take to the people at work.

He was pretty down with it. He agreed with everything we said, but I have to admit he looked suspicious.

Last night was Halloween. Dylan and Lee were dressing up like skeletons, and our friends Luke and Cathy were coming over with their new baby Ryan who was also going to be a skeleton. We invited all the grandparents and my brother came over too. We ordered (non-organic evil) pizza and I made (non-organic evil) garlic bread. Cathy was a doll and made an organic fruit salad, and her mom brought homemade (non-organic evil) pumpkin muffins. There was wine and beer and a general orgy of gorging - a gorgy, if you will. After the eating and picture-taking, Dylan went out with Eric and my brother to canvas the neighbourhood for poison.

He had a pretty good time. Eric said that he got excited to go up to the houses, and he enjoyed seeing all the other kids out in their costumes. He was also very intrigued that people were giving him things. With every treat that went in his bag, his childish wisdom and intuition told him that this was something very good, that the so-called poison in his bag was in fact something delicious that he would very much like to put in his mouth.

At one house he got a candy bracelet. As they walked away, he pulled it out of his bag and inspected it closely.

Dylan: Dylan eat?

Eric: No Dylan, it's not for eating.

Dylan: Dylan eat?

Eric: No Dylan, remember it's yucky. It's yucky poison.

Dylan: (dubiously) It looks tasty.

Eric: Does it? I think it looks yucky. Hey look, here's another house!

When he came back home, his little treat bag was full of chocolate and candies and chips. Dylan was so excited he immediately emptied the bag onto the large storage ottoman in the front hall to show us all his loot. We oohed and aahed over his stash of poison. Eric and I stressed that it was not for eating because it was yucky poison while our guests struggled not to intervene. He was especially interested in a bag of Doritos.

Dylan: (hopefully) This is so yummy.

Eric: Oh yuck, no. That's spicy and yucky, and it makes you sick! It makes you throw up!

Dylan picked up a (delicious looking) sour key and held it up.

Dylan: Dylan eat?

Carol: No baby, it's not for eating.

Dylan: Dylan want to eat it?

Carol: Why would you want to eat it? It's not food.

Dylan: (suspects he's being lied to) Dylan want to try?

Carol: No, that's silly. Hey, I know! Let's throw it on the floor and stomp on it! Let's throw it on the floor and stomp on it with our feet because it's so gross, and we can sing Gross Gross Gross Poison!!

Luke pulled me aside later and expressed his concern that if we keep up this campaign, Dylan may one day go to school and throw the other kids' candy on the floor and stomp on it. He makes a valid point.

Rogers, You're Such a Jackass

Today Eric called Rogers to try to deal with a problem I had:

Rogers: Rogers Customer Service, how may I help you?

Eric: Hi, my son threw my wife's iPhone 3GS on the floor and the screen cracked. Is there anything you can do for me?

Rogers: Let me check...I'm sorry sir, but your wife isn't eligible for a hardware upgrade. I can't help you, but you can purchase a new iPhone 4 for $749.

Eric: No thank you, goodbye.

He then hung up and immediately called back.

Rogers: Rogers Customer Service, how may I help you?

Eric: Can you please put me through to the Cancellation Department?

Rogers: Yes, please hold.

(music music)

Rogers: Rogers Cancellation Department, how may I help you?

Eric: Hi, I would like to cancel my wife's wireless phone plan.

Rogers: What is the reason?

Eric: My son threw my wife's iPhone 3GS on the floor and the screen cracked.

Rogers: All right sir...well, we would like to keep your wife as a customer. You can purchase a new iPhone 4 for a discounted price of $269 to replace the one that's broken.

Eric: Okay.

Spontaneous Haiku:

You hold the power

It doesn't need to make sense

Ha ha ha Rogers

Thanksgiving Parenting Fail: Dylan Doesn't Share

For the last five years, we've been building a tradition of having a Thanksgiving dinner with our friends at our place. It used to be a ridiculously cramped gathering in our little condo. There was always more food than conceivably necessary, and nowhere to sit. People would be forced to sit cross-legged on the floor balancing plates piled dangerously high with food and gravy. We would make the organic turkey, and our friends would bring everything else. One year, there were so many people that we ran out of Thanksgiving-type foods for people to bring so one guy brought butter chicken and naan. But I digress.

This year was a smaller group due to people being on honeymoons and vacations, but Dylan's friend Cameron came with her parents Jordan and Lindsey, and her baby brother Preston. Cameron was born two months before Dylan, so she's one of the closest in age friends he has.

The trouble started early. We were trying to psyche Dylan up for the party early in the day so we told him about how all his favourite grown-ups were going to be coming, and also his friend Cameron! We enthused about how Cameron is so nice and fun, and that he and Cameron were going to have a great time together. He looked at us suspiciously. He knew there was going to be a catch. We told him that when Cameron came, they could play and Dylan would share his toys. Dylan is not good at sharing.

Dylan: "No. No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Then he ran around like he was having a seizure and had a meltdown screaming fit.

Our friends arrived, people sat around chatting and waiting for dinner. Finally, Cameron got bored and asked if there were any fun toys. Cameron's mom said reasonably and innocuously, "Why don't you ask Dylan where his toys are?"

Dylan: "No. No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Then he ran around like he was having a seizure and had a meltdown screaming fit. It lasted a really long time. It was highly embarrassing.

I'm a pretty firm believer that there's no such thing as bad children, just bad parents. So it would appear that we suck.

Sorry, friends.

iHate You

I sign up for those group savings sites. So far, I get emails daily from Groupon, WagJag, FabFind, and LivingSocial. I've purchased two deals, one was a voucher for a burger meal at some gourmet burger place downtown that uses non-conventional beef, and one was a $50 voucher for Gap but you paid $25 for it.

Maybe you're already aware of this, but today FabFind posted a HUGE deal: they were offering a limited number of Apple iPads for $10. That's a 98% savings! I got pretty excited when I saw it in my mailbox this morning, and I called Eric at work to tell him to keep an eye on it. I wasn't the only one who got excited because predictably, their server crashed all to hell with all the people scrambling to get on it. Eric and I certainly did our best to maintain the chaos by keeping open four tabs each and refreshing them constantly.

We didn't get an iPad, and I'm not too surprised or disappointed about it. I was running after two kids all day, and Eric was leaving work to come home just as the FabFind site was fixed and ready to go live. This isn't a rant about my sense of self-righteous entitlement to a $10 iPad.

FabFind sold all but one iPad, and that last one they gave away for free in a Facebook contest. You had to go on their Facebook page and write why you felt you deserved the free iPad and the person who got the most votes would win. Here's what I would have written, if I had been able to sit down at the computer for long enough:

"Because I was so excited about this, iPeed."

I thought it was quite clever, and it still makes me giggle. I also voted for Eric's Aunt Sandra who wrote:

"Because an iPad is way more fun than a maxipad."

The leader for a long time was this guy:

"Because I'm having a very hard time uploading apps to my invisible iPad."

I like these responses. They're fun and light and appropriate. Besides, it really comes down to who has the most loser friends sitting around doing nothing but checking Facebook and responding favourably to your begging them to vote for you in this contest.

Some responses were stupid. These were the ones where people complained that they deserved the iPad because they had spent all day refreshing their screens when they should have been working. Which hello, that's what everyone was doing. That's not original or deserving. That's annoying. Some people were boring and talked about how it would help them in school or work, or how they wanted it to give to someone for a gift. Some were really sanctimoniously irritating, and talked about selling it and donating the money to charity. Bleh.

But the worst, THE WORST were the people with sob stories.

"I deserve the iPad because my son was recently diagnosed with juvenile diabetes."

What?! I'm going to guess you're fat. The last thing you or your son needs is an iPad. What you both probably need is some good nutritional counselling and a gym membership.

"I think I deserve an iPad because of the epic run of bad luck that I've had lately. Illness, unemployment, potential homelessness. Yeah. :/"

Are you sure you're having bad luck, or maybe you just suck at life? Either way, it doesn't entitle you to an iPad. And if you're potentially going to be homeless, what are you going to do with the damn thing anyway? Are you going to write "Spare some change, God Bless" on it and be the hippest panhandler in town? By the way, this is the person who's currently in the lead, and it looks like she might win. So keep an eye out for a homeless girl with an iPad. She's probably too ill to fight you if you try to take it from her.

"I'm having major surgery next month and won't see my 3 kids for a few days : ( I want an easy way to stay in touch with them. Please vote."

Why...aren't your kids coming to visit you?

"I deserve an iPad because my 38 year old husband died during a nap about a year ago. I fell asleep with his breath on my neck and his arm around me, and when I woke up he was gone."

This was by far the worst one. It actually wasn't even on the vote list, because this woman couldn't get it to post. I think that was because the instructions said to limit your answer to 140 characters, and hers was so long she posted it in a two-part wall post on FabFind's Facebook Wall page. It went on and on about how her family scammed her out of $300,000 and she couldn't collect her husband's something something because she was collecting unemployment and the government was screwing her and she was suffering from PTSD and now she's living with said family who don't love her...it was really uncomfortable and awkward. And here's my rant: this is inappropriate and gross. Why are people using their horrible life tragedies to try to win an iPad? If all of this is true, then this woman probably deserves my sympathy, but she just gets my appalled disgust. I wonder how her late husband would feel about this? He dies a sad early death, and she tries to leverage his passing to get a free iPad. On Facebook.

All in all, I quite enjoyed today's FabFind diversion. And people are stupid.

For Roslyn

Wow, my last post was last December!

My friend Roslyn very nicely hounded me on Facebook today to blog something. My typing fingers were itching, so I thought why not? I'm going to blog something.

Quick update: We had another baby boy in June. We named him Lee, it's easy for Chinese people to pronounce. I expelled him from my person naturally at home, and it was an amazing transcendent experience. And my vagina suffered no tearing! Which is excellent seeing as I tore about an inch and a half while expelling Dylan. Lee looks nearly identical to Dylan except he's fatter and rounder and more smiley.

We've mostly gotten used to living way way far from the city in our slice of suburban hell, and we've managed not to rip down the house yet.

Dylan started preschool in September and I'm not sure he likes it. At the very least, he's very dramatic about being dropped off and picked up, though the teachers assure me that he has a fine time in between. He better start liking it soon, it's not okay to not like school in this house. We're Asian like that.

Eric and I are the same, we celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary this summer. Time flies when you're having babies! The difference is we're totally skinny again, Eric especially. I still have wobbly thighs, and my stomach is a sad sagging wrinkly mass of despair. But I'm about 4lbs away from my wedding weight. It rocks, yo. I thought I was going to be a fat tubbelard forever.

And that's the update! I'm going to write an actual post about an actual thing immediately following this. Stay tuned.

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

Ah shit.

This is currently published in Status form on my Facebook, but it deserves a blog post too.

Dylan has been guzzling some truly awful vegan protein shakes in the morning. It's called Vega, and it's basically ground up vegetables, and it's disgusting. Eric drinks it, so Dylan wanted to have what Daddy was having. As a result, he now loves the stuff and consumes nearly an adult size serving every day. It makes his poo green and runny.

I think you can see where this is going.

We got home this afternoon from a weekend up at Horseshoe Valley for my Grampa's 85th birthday. It's a step down from the Caribbean cruise we all took for his 80th, but he's become much less able to travel in the past five years, so Horseshoe Valley was a good alternative. We were totally exhausted when we got home, and were planning to chill out and relax for the remainder of our Sunday.

Dylan started exhibiting cranky sleepy signals, so we ran his bath and started his bedtime routine. I was watching him in the bath when Eric came in to take over, and as I looked up to say something to him I heard a fart noise. I looked back at Dylan, saying "Baby, did you just fart?" Eric said "No, he pooped!" and we sprang into action.

Trailing behind Dylan in the tub were five small pieces of poo. Eric panicked and pulled him out of the tub. "He's still pooing! There's poo hanging from his bumhole!!" I shouted. Eric plunked Dylan on his feet on the floor, dripping wet in the cold air. The poo continued to come out, so Eric put his hand underneath to try to catch it. The poo overflowed and started to drizzle onto the floor. Eric gave up trying to catch the poo, and so it ran down Dylan's legs. It smelled terrible. As it started to pool on his little chubby feet, Dylan started to cry.

I leapt over both of them and ran to Dylan's room to get some wipes. I came back and Dylan was crying and holding out his arms, trying to climb onto Eric for comfort. Eric got poo on his shorts. We kept saying "It's okay, Dylan, it's okay!!" as we frantically tried to clean off his thighs and feet and bum. Eric finally whisked Dylan off to the stand-up shower in our ensuite, and left me in the room with poo all over the floor, poo-wipes everywhere, and a bathtub full of toys and five small pieces of poo.

It has not been a chill or relaxing Sunday evening.

Update of Randoms

What I Had For Lunch Today
I heated a small non-stick Green Pan. Then I took a can of sardines and - when the pan was hot - I dumped the contents of the entire can into it. I arranged the little fishies so that they rimmed the edge of the pan, with a couple crossing the middle of the ring. Then I cracked two eggs into the oily holes. I grabbed a big handful of organic baby spinach and tossed it on top of the eggs. Then I put the lid on the pan and waited for the whites to set. When the whites were cooked and the yolks still runny, I slid the sardine egg pie onto a plate and sprinkled sea salt on top. Then I broke the yolks and let them run all over the top of the pie, and then I ate it. Now I feel kind of sick because it was a lot of rich protein. I plan to now eat half a jar of olives.

I Now Love Olives
I've never liked olives. They taste weird, salty but somehow also sour and offensive. For some reason, a love of olives has snuck up on me and now it's like I can't live without them. Specifically, I love kalamata olives, preferably the organic kind I get at Planet Organic Market. They're less salty, I've had some kalamatas that are ridiculously salty and very difficult to eat. But last week I bought a jar of these organic olives to try, and they were so delicious I ate the whole jar in one day. The next day I went back and bought five more jars of olives, and now I'm down to my last jar. I also bought a jar of black olives to see if I would like those, and they're okay but not as good as the kalamata olives. I loves the Greeks and their olives.

Pellegrino Contains Crack
As an experiment, I quit drinking pop. It wasn't easy because Coke Zero used to be like my favourite thing ever. But now that I've finally realized how gross and awful aspartame is, and I can't go back to sugar pop because it tastes too sweet and makes my teeth feel fuzzy, I figured the only thing to do was quit drinking pop altogether.

Anytime I wanted a Coke Zero, I would instead pour myself a big cold glass of Pellegrino. I've liked sparkling water ever since we went on our honeymoon to Europe almost four years ago. I usually refrain from drinking it in quantity because it's expensive. We did a sparkling water taste-test years ago when we bought all the different kinds of sparkling water from the grocery store and tried them all. We loved Pellegrino, and we really didn't appreciate Perrier so much. Why does it explode like a goddamn grenade in your mouth?

After a couple months of not drinking pop, I was cleaning the kitchen and saw a lonely can of Coke Zero in the fridge. Cathy had been slowly finishing off my pop supply for me when she and Luke came over for our weekly TV night. I decided I had been so good with not drinking pop for so long that I deserved a treat. I cracked open that can of Coke Zero and took a long swig.

It was so gross. I'm sorry to all you people who still love pop, but it really tastes like strange dirty water that is vaguely sweet and has fizz. I HATED it. Wow, I thought to myself. This is so amazing. I don't have to be a slave to any food or beverage. If I can conquer Coke Zero, I can conquer anything!

Last week I ran out of Pellegrino and the world ended. I've been BESIDE myself, craving Pellegrino. I've been extremely irritable and desperate. I've picked fights with Eric for no reason, just because I was upset about not having Pellegrino. Last night I was such a bitch that after Eric had already bathed Dylan, he insisted that we go to the grocery store to get some. So we did. And now I'm better.

Bright Neon
Our chiropractor recommended that we take a bunch of vitamins. One of them is making our pee insanely bright neon yellow. I've never seen anything like it.

Pervert In Training
We taught Dylan to touch himself when we say the word "penis". It's pretty awesome, but also probably not the best thing in the world.

Ooh la la, oui oui!

Eric and I love Paris. It's our favourite city in the world, which I know makes us wildly unoriginal but we don't care. We love the food, all the buildings, the food, and all the food. We are especially obsessed with Laduree.

Laduree is a patisserie/restaurant, and they make lusciously decadent pastries and croissants. Chief among these is the MACARON. I can't tell you how much we love these almond biscuits sandwiching assorted fillings of jams and flavoured buttercreams. My favourite flavour is rose, and Eric's is pistachio. They are slightly crispy - but not unyielding - on the outside, soft and moist and chewy on the inside. The fillings are not too sweet, but bursting with spurty orgasmic flavour. Don't tell people, but one time we had sex using macarons as tasty lickables. Too much information? Yeah. What did you expect.

A typical day for us in Paris goes as follows:

- Wake up
- Go to Laduree to buy a large assortment of croissants and macarons
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to a museum
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere awesome for lunch
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to Laduree to restock on croissants and macarons
- Climb the Eiffel Tower
- Return to hotel to dress for dinner while snacking on croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere delicious and highly acclaimed for dinner
- Watch the Eiffel Tower light up at Trocadero
- Go back to hotel and take turns having showers. The person not showering eats macarons in bed.
- Do the sexy sex (I prefer doing it doggy-style in Paris because any macaron crumbs that are still on the bed from snacking, I can lick up while Eric takes care of business)
- Sleep

Eric's mom and sister just got back from a trip to Paris. I had prepared a list of things they should eat there, and the top of that list was of course Laduree. But I'll skip to the end, because it's the best part:

They brought Laduree macarons back for us!!

They are only good for 2 or 3 days, so they were very anxious to see us right away. I shrieked with uncontainable glee and almost crapped my pants when they pulled the familiar pale green box out of their goody bag.

Eric and I just sat across from each other at the dining table after putting Dylan to bed and taking showers. We ate each and every single one. We wept. And now, since I've cut out sugar to lose weight and my body isn't used to having sugar in it anymore, my heart is racing and I feel very dizzy. But I don't care.

I love you, Paris.

I love you, macarons.

How long has it been since a poo post?

I can't remember how long it's been. Anyway, here is one coming right up!

You may already know this if you have me on Facebook and read my status from a few days ago. So if you are one of those people, sorry for making you think you had a new fecal update to read, but I'm sure there will be a new one forthcoming in the near future. There always is.

Eric has an enormous butthole. It's possibly the largest butthole in the entire world. I know this because we like to show each other our noteworthy poos, and Eric's poos are always EXTREMELY large. They look like bear poo, or zebra poo. When Eric was a child, he once made a poo so big it wouldn't go down the toilet. He had to furtively go outside and get a stick and break it up to make it flush away. I can't say for certain, but I'll bet a gay guy wouldn't feel much with Eric. Hot dog down a hallway. Eric won't let me test the theory though, because I've asked several times in our 8 years together and he refuses to allow me to experiment with inserting things into his cavernous tunnel. But I'll bet that with some lube I could easily get a can of Sprite in there.

A few days ago, Dylan shit in the shower. He has shit in the tub three times as mentioned in a previous post, but this time I was having a shower with him and he did in on the floor. There I was, shampooing my hair while he stood in front of me playing with a conditioner bottle and chatting to himself. I put some soap on my body puff and leaned over to lather him up, and I smelled it. A stinky warm poo scent.

I peeked over his head, and there below his little buttocks were two pieces of poo. Two ENORMOUS pieces of poo. At least, they were enormous for a little one-year-old toddler. They were at least the size of MY poos! I think I make some pretty standard poo. And this little kid of mine who is like, a fifth of my size, makes the same size poo. It boggles the mind. Does this mean that when he's my size, his poo will be FIVE TIMES as big as this?

Like father like son, I guess. We better get us some industrial toilets.

Ode to Garlic

I love roasting garlic. It's one of my new very favourite things to do. I buy six to eight heads of garlic, peel off as many outer layers of papery skin as possible, chop off the tops to expose the meaty pungent garlic, and bathe the entire head in olive oil. I then wrap each head lovingly in foil and roast it in the oven for 30-40 minutes.

The heads come out sweet and buttery and lovely. And then we eat them in a sensual orgy of oily delight.

It's excellent because now that we're new-age hippies, I'm all opposed to antibiotic drugs for sickness, and garlic is "nature's antibiotic". Roasting the garlic this way takes away the garlic-breath threat because slow-roasting it cooks away the compounds that make garlic a breathy nightmare. We eat it at least twice a week.

And I always roast extra so I have one or two heads leftever. I pop all the cloves out of the skins and mash them up with lots of extra virgin olive oil. I use this garlic puree for so many things!

For example:
- garnish on my salad for lunch the next day
- smeared on salmon filets with salt and pepper and then baked in the oven
- mixed in with canned salmon, eggs, green onion, parsley, and lemon juice and fried into garlic salmon fish cakes
- mixing with basil and parmigiano reggiano and tossing with whole grain pasta for Dylan
- using as a marinade for shrimp
- stuffing chicken breasts

I'm sure there are other uses. I just haven't found them all yet. Oh garlic. You are so fine and wonderful.

I will end with an ode in haiku form:
Don't ever leave me
Sweet and oily, so supple
Sliding down my throat