Sick

It felt like only minutes after reading this post by Her Bad Mother that my head started pounding, something big with pointy edges set up residence in my throat, and I could feel my temperature rising.

After a rough night (for me, Will slept almost all the way through) I've been trying to make Will sit through yet another episode of Elmo. No big hardship for her, but she hates that I've been lying down. I've been signing "Mama's head hurts" and "Mama's tummy hurts" but she just signs them back with a concerned look on her face and then starts whining again.

Thanks to Her Bad Mother for being so articulate on this topic. It seems ridiculous, but what I feel the worst about is missing Will's swimming lesson again.

Just details

Yesterday, Will and I drove all the way to the butterfly conservatory to meet her cousin Michael and Grandma (who has been watching Michael while his parents are enjoying some child-free time in the Dominican. Nice.).

I had checked the butterfly website at least three times for directions, but apparently did not bother to read when the conservatory is open.

Yeah. So we've driven 90 minutes and the kids want to run around but it's pouring rain . . . why not the children's museum?

So fun! So big! So filled with dinosaurs!

So closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Add to that getting lost on the way to the Chinese buffet, it ended up being a very long drive for lunch.

You are the grown-up

I have been repeating my new mantra for the past 45 minutes.

You are the grown-up. You are the grown-up.

Will is not napping. She wants to play in the crib. She wants out of the crib. She wants me out of the room, but herself out of the crib. She screams as I try to put on her pants and her socks. She screams as I wrestle her into the stroller and into her coat.

You can't scream too. I tell myself. You are the grown-up.

Just as I turn the stroller around and towards the street, a man on a motorcycle zooms by. I start down the driveway and he does a u-turn at the end of the street and zooms by us again.

Hooligan. I think, even though the sight has silenced Will's crying. Grow up.

I push Will in the shortest possible block and she passes out on the home stretch before the turn back onto our street. The man is sitting on his motorcycle at the corner, getting ready to kick start the engine. I'm worried that he will wake up the child, but as we rush passed I get a closer look.

He's at least sixty, sitting there on the bike, his feet clothed in argyle socks and navy blue crocs.

Um, seriously? Gramps? You are the grown-up.

The privilege of a picture

We were at a big family party with my in-laws last night. Will was a hit in her first shalwar kameez and I was playing with my new digital camera, trying to get some good shots with her grandparents and cousins.

I was disappointed when the memory card was suddenly full. My husband's cousins were appalled that the one we were using was so small, didn't we know we could get a 4 gig card for twenty bucks?

I eagerly uploaded the images when we got home, added them to the store of well over a thousand images from Will's first 18 months alone.

This morning I finally got around to starting Kiran Desai's novel "The Inheritance of Loss" and was struck by the following:

They were poor people photographs, of those unable to risk wasting a picture, for while all over the world people were now posing with an abandon never experienced by the human race before, here they were standing X-ray stiff.

There is a photograph of my dad's parents in Holland on their wedding day. Black and white, beautiful but very formal. I wish I had it to juxtapose with these.



And finally:

Flashback Friday: Arts and Crafts Edition

A couple of weeks after I enjoyed reading the romantic saga of Swistle's 12-year-old self, my parents did what they have been threatening to do for years. They dropped off two ginormous boxes full of stuff from my childhood. And apparently there are more to come.

I discovered that I was rather crafty during my childhood, the 6-11 years. I believe the following piece took that entire 5 years to complete:


No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is in fact a piece in the "latch-hook" medium. And the Strawberry Shortcake subject places the date of the artifact circa 1982.

Oh, how I enjoyed the latch-hook. And yet I have no memory of ever completing any of my (numerous) kits, even this one, which was definitely my favourite. I briefly considered that my mother might have completed it for me, but she is even less crafty than I am, despite her willingness (and success!) at sewing ballet costumes and capotes. (Don't ask.)

(Okay, they were coats made out of blankets for a Grade 7 overnight trip to Ste. Marie Among the Hurons. And my mother was the only person who could figure out the pattern, and ended up making capotes for half of my class. So perhaps she is more crafty than I am - at least with a sewing machine!)

The next artifact is a painting from 1980, when I was six years old:


It seems that I was very particular in painting my own eyes green (true) and the baby's eyes blue (probably also true). I seem to have fancied myself with very blond hair (not totally wrong for my 6 year-old self), and my sister with none, although she was born with a head of dark hair that later fell out and grew in much lighter.

But take note of the gigantic clown mouth I have painted on myself, that matches both my dress and hair ribbons. Not to mention the terrifyingly huge and dripping (albeit smiling) baby head.

The caption written above reads: "I am playing with my sister. She is laughing. I am saying, 'I love you, baby sister!'"

Ah, the beginnings of the sisterly bond, captured in art.

Mamma mia! Cacciatore!

I am making spaghetti sauce.

Right now. At 9:16 in the morning.

For later. I'm planning ahead, because the mushrooms will go bad soon and I know we have swimming at 4:00 today and will be starving when we get home.

If this planning ahead and following through isn't a quintessential "mom" thing, I don't know what is. Not to mention the smell of spaghetti in the morning.

Is that me?

Just got home from getting groceries for the week, and Thanksgiving, and the store was already a zoo and it's only Monday. And they don't get their fresh turkeys in until at least Wednesday, so there will be one more trip on Friday after Kindermusik to get the actual bird.

I did pick up an actual roasting pan (as opposed to two foil pans on top of each other I have used in the past) and some fall clothes, mostly for Will.

I had put Will in her high chair to have lunch, and I decided to open up some creamy tomato soup for myself. Of course, it sprayed all over my new "Grammar makes me [sic]" shirt. So I threw on the one shirt I had picked up for myself from the store.

(As an aside, am I the only one who wears clothes before washing them? I always wash the baby clothes, but I love the way new, "pre-washed" clothes look.)

For the past 10 minutes I have been wandering around trying to locate the source of a sudden hideous smell. Kind of like wet cat, but not wet. Maybe recently wet but now dry cat?

Neither cat is the culprit.

Will smells like apple sauce.

It's me. In my new shirt. Something around the buttons in the collar.

Ew.

Bring on the coffee

The child was up for half the night last night. Literally. I've said before that she isn't a great sleeper, but I can't remember a time when she wailed (and wailed and wailed) for over an hour and a half in the middle of the night.

I am sure she had some sort of pain or discomfort (there was an unusual absence of poop yesterday) and she perked up quite nicely after getting some advil. So when she suddenly wanted to play I became quite "cross" with her and then the wailing began again.

On about the 14th time I said it was time to go to sleep, turned off the lights and pulled her into a snuggle, she finally settled.

So this is where we are Chez Lasha this morning. In love with the Tassimo and already one episode into Elmo.

Yawn.

The Emperor Parades Back

And apparently may be breastfeeding too . . .