FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it (n.)

A New Year Begins. Again.

2011-01-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't been blogging for about a month and a half. Lots happened between the last time I blogged and now. Like Christmas, where TodderL got over 20 presents. It was toy carnage for a while. Like this blog turning 5 years old. Like how I had to work over Christmas. Like how cold it's been so far, and that we had snow long before winter was official. Like how our mall Santa experience was waaaaaaay better than the previous year's. Thanks goodness!

This year, I'm going to be focusing on certain things. Purging stuff (we have way too much stuff, and I'm not talking about toys!), and this includes the amount of personal emails I subscribe to. And junk food. Getting more organized and becoming more efficient at cleaning. I've actually decided not to make resolutions. Instead, I have goals. But I'm going to approach my goals in a slightly different way. Instead of being overwhelmed with doing everything at once, I'm going to pick one or two goals once a month or every other month and try to develop each one into a habit.

What I've discovered, even today, I need to create habit, and stick to them, otherwise nothing ever will get done. It's okay if I fall off the wagon, because it's going to be a habit that I will get back on track with, like brushing teeth. I certainly hope that brushing teeth is a habit for all.

More on my life soon enough.

Childhood Diseases, So Far...

2010-11-20T21:12:00.000-08:00

This last month has been really busy for us. In between boughs of daycare colds, we went to Orlando, Florida for a nice trip. It included Disney World, Sea World and Kennedy Space Centre. It also included the biggest goose egg bump on ToddlerL's right forehead. Again. He's fallen and hit that same area so many times that he's formed a weird dent on that side. Seeing the insides of the first aid station at Disney World, twice, was definitely not part of the trip itinerary (The other time was my mom getting heat exhaustion. Apparently we picked the week to vacation when the weather gods decided to give Orlando record high temperatures and lots of humidity. It was good times).

Since starting daycare, ToddlerL has had a number of colds and a couple of fevers, which I had completely expected. I also expect the diarrhea and vomiting. While worrisome and gross as these ordeals may be, I fully expect them at some point and will be (hopefully) prepare to nurse my son back to full health while undergoing a number of sleepless nights myself.

However, he also had some other illnesses which I had never heard of before having a kid. To date, he's had:

Roseola - He ended up getting spots on his extremities and not the trunk of his body.
Hand, foot, mouth disease - his spots haven't completely faded yet
Reactive airways disease - this is the most worrisome for me as this may develop into asthma later on

While I know many people have asthma, and they learn to deal with it and still live a normal life, I couldn't believe the types of emotions I had when I was told this this may be a possibility for ToddlerL. I mean, it's okay for everyone else's kid, but my own, and to have to acknowledge that my child may not be in perfect health, well, it's hard. Heart speaking over the head. I never thought I'd actually feel this way. Nonetheless, we have an appointment with the asthma clinic next week, so I will just have to learn to accept reality and move on. Baby steps, right?

The Last Eight Months

2010-10-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

Since going back to work, I haven't blogged at all. It's taken me a long while to get back into a new groove, and I still feel like I'm struggling. But enough whining for now, I will whine some more later. Now is the time to update you on the last eight months.

So I have a Facebook account. And I've discovered over time that my statuses tend to be stuff about my kid, practically a micro blog. Today is the day he turns 18 months old. No matter which way you measure it, he is now a full-fledged toddler. So without further ado, the last eight months of my kid's life (with some very minor editing):

Feb 8 - BabyL is 10 months old!!!! He's crawling up a storm and pulling himself up! Pictures are coming, promise...!

Feb 21 - Tooth #5 and #6 have arrived! Finally!

March 8 - Weed has a 11-month old! Pictures coming soon. Counting down to the big 1

March 10 - BabyL has cut tooth #7. Lower left, next to his middle teeth.

March 22 - BabyL got into the daycare centre that was #1 on my list. Yayayay! But I have to wait until July before he can start. But he got in!!! Such a relief!!!!

March 25 - Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!! It'll be BabyL's first birthday in exactly two weeks!

March 31 - Just wrote out a bunch of cheques to BabyL's new daycare. Bubye money... Wah...

April 1 - BabyL took his first steps today!!!!

April 6 - BabyL had a fun day with Grandma! Hubby is now back at work....

April 8 - One year ago today at 6.38pm, after almost 40 hours of labour, I gave birth to my awesome little dude! Happy Birthday BabyL! Pictures forthcoming, Mummy's been too busy planning the Birthday Party :D

April 10 - Weed made a lot of cupcakes last night for BabyL's birthday party! Yum! It's going to be beautiful day for a party. I hope my kid can nap after all that sugar.

April 17 - Weed hopes that she's not coming down the the cough that BabyL had all week! I'm beginning to get a tickle in my throat.

April 18 - BabyL cut tooth #8 today!

May 2 - We finally figured out what BabyL's first word is: mum mum. Not Mama. He also can sign "more". So it's more mum mum. More food. My kid's a walking stomach.

May 6 - Thinks that BabyL may be allergic to egg whites. Yay.

May 14 - So... when does the picky phase end?

May 19 - Reacted from his MMV/Chicken Pox shots. Spots all over. But he's doing better.

May 30 - BabyL's new bedtime routine: headbutting Mummy. Ouch!

June 6 - Cough + runny nose + bad nap weekend = One very grumpy little dude (and one very tired mummy!)

June 12 - Hubby thinks that BabyL has cut tooth #9, a molar! Or at least somewhere further back. I still have yet to see it myself...

June 13 - Apparently BabyL had cut tooth #9 & 10, both molars, in the past couple of weeks. I see lots of white back there!

June 19 - Weed just spent a LOT of money getting school uniforms for BabyL! For Daycare! Eeep!

June 20 - BabyL had a Pirate Pack in celebration of Father's Day! Yum!

June 26 - BabyL's just went to his first Star Trek Convention!

Jun 29 - BabyL's new favourite pasttime: breaking off mid-nurse to sing or make funny sounds, then continues nuring againg. Good times.

July 4 - BabyL had his first fast food burger today -- an A&W Baby burger

July 5 - "Boooot". That's the sound BabyL makes after he farts, or if he hears you fart

July 6 - BabyL had a great first day at school! And in other news, I noticed tooth #11 & #12. One just broke the gum, the other's been out for a while, but I didn't see it until today.

Aug 3 - BabyL's first piece of artwork from school -- a lovely piece of abstractness rendered in orange and brown crayon -- is now displayed on the refrigerator door.

Aug 12 - Weed wonders when BabyL will stop his transitioning to one nap and just start sleeping at a regular time. When...?

Aug 13 - The day I've been waiting for since BabyL was born: BabyL's favourite word now is "No!"

Aug 13 - #15 & #16 are now out! Finally, he's been a drool monster for the past few weeks!

Aug 22 - Weed has a little dude that LOVES rice.

Sept 2 - BabyL's new word is "more". He can say and sign "more" at the same time. More food. More of his favourite smiley crackers. More playing with Mama when she's tired. More singing Itsey Bitsy BabyL (Spider) for the 27th time...

Sept 3 - Weed is so not impressed that BabyL pushed his entire dinner onto the floor. Definitely not one of his cuter moments. Good times.

Sept 5 - Kale Chips: the only green vegetable that my kid will voluntarily eat.

Sept 12 - Weed will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER go to a mall without a stroller. Ever.

Sept 13 - BabyL's way of saying good night to Mama: "Bye-Bye"

Sept 20 - BabyL's new comfort pose: right index finger shoved in his mouth, left index finger shoved in your belly button.

Sept 26 - Not only does BabyL LOVES spinach, he asks for more!

Oct 1 - This mama experienced her first trip to the ER with BabyL. Let's hope it's the last time :( At least the little Dude is okay. (Thanks for the concern everyone. BabyL had a bad cold and a fever, which is why we went to the doctor. The doctor heard wheezing and sent him straight to the hospital. In the end, the doctor said it's reactive airways disease, which shows itself as asthma-like symptoms. He too young right now to tell if he will have asthma, we have to wait a few more years before they can run test, I think. He's on some meds to help clear the wheezing, and we're going to an asthma clinic eventually. Other than that, he's back to his old self.)

Oct 7 - My kid had ketchup for dinner.

Oct 8 - Weed has an 18-month old. No more baby, but lots of toddler boy awesomeness! Bring on the good times!

Mud!!!

2010-02-09T20:46:00.000-08:00

So I've waited about 1.5 years to go to the fancy spa downtown. I actually had about 5-6 hours to myself, without the kid for a change, and I was so looking forward to it! I had decided to do a full body massage (about 80 mins) and something else I'd never tried before.

Looking at the spa's website, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do, largely because the website was poorly laid out and the content didn't make a lick of sense to me. I decided on a mud bath because the person at the other end of the phone suggested it.

Entering the room, I saw a very large tub on one side filled with water. I got to pick between two scents: chocolate mud and pine mud. I chose chocolate because I didn't want to leave smelling like a tree! The spa lady told me to carefully sit myself in it, and of course, in true Irene fashion, I slipped while sitting down, but managed to catch myself myself.

Sitting in the tub was interesting. There were several rows of, what I will call "disco lights". Jets of water sprayed at me from my shoulders to my toes. The spa lady explained that the treatment was designed to stimulate my circulation and my lymphatic system, so I might feel warmer as the treatment progressed. Once the treatment started, the mud was dumped into the water, and the jets rotated being turned on, from my toes up to my neck. I figured it was to encourage my blood to flow to my heart. The disco lights alternated from a combination of yellow, green, blue, and red. I think it was to help you relax, but I don't see how that works. I just kept looking up expecting to see a disco ball.

I started getting overheated near the end of it, and even halfway, I was feeling quite warm. I told the spa lady this, and mentioned I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it again. She mentioned the next time I could ask for the water to be cooler, or to shorten the time I was in the water. I'm not certain that I would want to do another hydrotherapy treatment. While I see the detoxification potentials, it wasn't exactly relaxing. The jets, at best, was no better than a Swedish massage (which does squat to release the knots in my muscle). The foot bar that I was resting my feet on was a tad too far away for my feet to rest properly on and to prop my body up. I had to tense my body a bit to make certain I didn't feel like I was drowning.

All in all, it was an interesting experience, but I'm not certain if I'd do it again.

Article: Shopping Just For The Sake of Buying "Green"

2010-02-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

I ran across this article today, and I totally agree with the sentiment. All the greenwashing out there is really getting out of hand and has become a big booming business. I certainly try my best to think of alternatives, but it's hard when we live in a culture of "wants".

Shopping Just For The Sake of Buying "Green". | The Good Human

15 Days And Counting...

2010-01-31T20:47:00.000-08:00

I have 15 days left before I go back to work. I'm officially back as an employee February 8th, but I took that week off with my overabundance of holiday time that I've racked up. It's meant as a transition time for me and Hubby, but what it's turning into is a week of me trying to get last minute stuff done.

BabyL is growing by leaps and bounds. He's crawling faster each day, and is pushing himself up to sitting, kneeling, and if the prop is low enough (like my legs when I'm lying down), pushing himself on his feet. I don't think it'll be long before he learns how to pull himself up and starts cruising around furniture.

What I'm not looking forward to is not so much taking the bus to work, but the fact that I've chosen to go back to work at the beginning of Olympics. Where I work is actually an Olympic venue, so I really have no clue how nutso traffic will be taking the bus. We'll see what happens...

Book Review - Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

2010-01-17T20:58:00.000-08:00

I think I like this book more than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ). Like the predecessor, the author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (SSSM) takes a well knows Jane Austen novel and puts his own twist in it. I felt that the book's altered universe was better woven into the main plot of the story than PPZ. Certainly, despite the tongue-in-cheek nature of SSSM, the altered universe was much less awkwardly inserted into the story.

Sense and Sensibility is my least favourite Jane Austen novel, mostly because I can't stand Marianne's character.I still didn't like her very much in this novel; in fact, she was equally as annoying as her original. But that just meant that Ben H. Winters kept somewhat true to the characterisations in the novel and has a pretty good grasp of the novel's nuances and themes.

My only complaints about the novel are:

beyond a vague mention of a sea witch, we never find out exactly why Colonel Brandon received his affliction
Sub-Marine Station Beta is London, so mentioning that there is a city of London in the story makes it a tad more confusing. Why is it that people would want to go to London when there is Sub-Marine Station Beta?
Eliza William's ordeal, though the author tried to make it shocking and humourous, I actually thought it was sort of a let-down. I mean, I didn't find it all that villainous as compared to the events in the original book. Which made

If that wasn't exciting enough, Quirk Classics had also released a book trailer...

Tax-Free Savings Accounts Explained

2010-01-16T19:41:00.001-08:00

I ran across this series of articles written by a Financial Planner explaining how the Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSA) work. He goes into some depth with explaining misconceptions and reality of TFSAs and talks about different scenarios in which best to use the TFSA. I actually learn some things about TFSAs, so they are worth the read.

TFSA - Part I: Misconceptions

TFSA - Part II: Best Uses

TFSA - Part III: Strategies

My kid is 9 months old!

2010-01-08T21:12:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe that I have a 9 month old baby! My kid is growing into a really neat and fun little man. He loves jumping, jumping while being held, playing airplane, babbling, screeching and plain looking and touching EVERYTHING! One thing about BabyL is that whenever he's in a new environment, or encounters a new person, he will just sit there quietly and take everything in, process it, then get comfortable being himself.

So far he:

Can roll from back to belly and belly to back
Has four teeth
Can get on all fours, but only pushes himself backwards, so no crawling yet
Eats a lot of different types of solids foods
Babbles a lot
Screeches a lot
Is still teething like crazy.
Is a pretty good sleeper (so far, fingers crossed)
Loves bananas

It's neat to see the world from his point of view, but parenting is exhausting at the same time, and I already have lots of help. One of my biggest pet peeves when talking with other parents, especially when I want support and/or ideas of how to deal with something relating to BabyL is I get the response, "It's a phase, it will pass like all things." Yes, I know that, but I don't find that helpful at all, and I do find it extremely frustrating when told this. I need a sympathetic ear, and I would like ideas as to how to deal with it now. Telling me that it's a phase, just means, to me, that I need to to tough out. What I typically do is take in all the information and try to figure out what works best for us and for BabyL. Not having any good ideas as to what may work just makes it harder for me to make good choices as a parent, and makes me more frustrated and tired. A tired mama makes for a cranky mama, and not a very good parent to BabyL. Anyways, rant over.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been quite busy the last few weeks, hence, the lack of posts. 2009 has been quite busy, and 2010 will be even busier. To recap the last couple of months:

BabyL has been growing leaps and bounds. He has 4 teeth, and is still teething like mad, drooling and chewing everything. Last weighed in at 17.5 lbs and measured 68cm.
BabyL also has been a solids eating champ, has a repertoire of food he can eat (but still a short list of foods he can't eat yet, boo), and has graduated to lumpy food.
Christmas came and went. Gifts given were pretty much 99% for BabyL
Bought snowshoes, hopefully will get the rest of the gear soon so we can go snowshoing this winter!
FLIB-ur-tee-jib-it turned 4 on Dec 27th.
I still haven't found any daycare for BabyL. Will start to panic sometime early March.

I normally don't do resolutions at the beginning of the year. Instead, this is a list of goals I wish to achieve by the end of this year. Hopefully these will actually come to fruition.

Read the bible every day
Go to the gym at least twice during the weekdays, and once in the weekend
Blog at least once a week (I need a hobby after all!)
clean the toilets weekly (sounds easy, but more challenging than you think!)
eventually cook half the meals during the week - Hubby is really looking forward to this one!
Continue greening my household
Other than the exercise thing, take care of my body, both inside and out
Redo my wardrobe, it's just stuck. Sigh.
Get some regular couple time with Hubby, and without BabyL, at least once a month.
take up knitting (maybe)

Some things to look forward to in 2010:

Returning to work in Feb 2010
BabyL will learn to walk
BabyL will turn 1 in April!
Trying to achieve a good work/life balance, especially with BabyL in tow. Yikes!
Look for daycare.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

The Story of Stuff

2009-12-16T20:16:00.000-08:00

I heard about this video recently on one of the blogs that I subscribe to. As we approach the Christmas season, I'm once again reminded as to why I don't like the gift giving aspect of this holiday. The video is 20 minutes long, but well worth the watch.

Some interesting links:
The Story of Stuff Website

The Story of Cap and Trade

Article: What really happens with the plastics we send to the recycling depot

Lefty!

2009-12-15T20:14:00.000-08:00

We have noticed that BabyL has been using more of his left hand than his right hand, and think that he may be left-handed. Being a lefty myself, I'm perfectly okay with that. After all, I think that if I have to live with two males in the house, then Hubby gets to live with two lefties, ha.

Some interesting Lefty facts and myths (aka Why I'm so misunderstood)

A bunch of posts worth reading

2009-12-02T21:14:00.001-08:00

The posts here are partially for my reference and partially for your reading educational pleasure...

Top 10 Green Living Myths

The Serious Need For Play

How Dangerous is PVC In Toys

Eco-Friendly Cleaning

Where we went on our cruise

2009-11-29T16:24:00.001-08:00

This is a record more for myself than for anyone else.

Boston, Massachusetts:

Quincy Market
Old State House
Not much happened at this port. It was really cold, and it started snowing. Not a good combo with a baby

Portland, Maine:

Victoria Mansion
We left this port early, so we didn't see much. At least it didn't snow

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
Citadel Hill

Quebec City, Quebec

Chateau Frontenac
The Citadel
Basilique-cathedrale Notre-Dame-de-Quebec
Also snowed here and was very cold

Charlottetown, PEI

Founders Hall
Cavendish Beach and
Anne of Green Gables House (near Cavendish)
New Glasgow

Sydney, Nova Scotia

Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Park

Saint John, NB

Loyalist house

What's been happening lately...

2009-11-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

This past month has been interesting. Here's a lowdown of what's been happening.

Cruise

I was quite looking forward to the cruise. We visited New England and Eastern Canada. Specifically, Boston, Portland (Maine), Halifax, Charlottetown, Quebec City, Sidney (NS), St John (NB). We started and ended in New Jersey, with a quick stop into New York City for a few hours before heading back home.

Eating. Well, the day we left Vancouver to drive down to Seattle was the day BabyL decided to have teething issues. By that I mean his gums were so sore that he refused to suck. Period. He wouldn't suck on the boob, he wouldn't suck on the bottle and he wouldn't even suck his own finger. We ended up spoon feeding him breast milk, formula and solids. I think once or twice we even use a medical syringe. I was so stressed that this was going to go on for the rest of the vacation, that I wanted to cry. Fortunately, this only happened for two days. BabyL either got used to the pain or it had lessened, but he started sucking again.

Sleep. The plan was to keep BabyL on PST even though we were in EST/Atlantic time, because I'd realized that once BabyL went to bed, we had to go to bed. Sleep went into the toilet because BabyL was in a strange environment, and despite the fact that I tried to keep the same routine, it wasn't enough for him. For the entire trip, someone had to hold him to sleep, so Hubby and I didn't get as much sleep as we wanted to. My mom offered to switch rooms with us one night, and even though I ended up sleeping on a crappier bed, I had the best sleep during the whole trip that night.

Bingo. About the third or fourth day, I played bingo. And won the big prize. Normally when they play bingo, they allow all players to check their cards against the numbers, and not take the first person who yells bingo, so sometimes there are more than one bingo winner per game. Well, this time, we couldn't share the big prize, so we had to play a tie-breaker game between the five winners. You cannot believe the shock I felt when I was the only one standing. And the prize: a free upgrade to one of the Royal Suites on the ship (it's the second largest stateroom on the ship). So we went from a 200+ sq ft room to a 700+ sq ft room, with a separate large bedroom, walk-in closet, large bathroom with jacuzzi tub, living area, dining area, a balcony with yet another hot tub and a butler! Whoo hoo! However, as much as we enjoyed the suite, it really helped us out with the sleep situation. We could put BabyL down for naps or for bedtime, and still allowed us to move around the suite without waking him up.

Fame!
Although there were a few people on board under the age of 18, BabyL apparently was the only baby on board, so it's safe to say that EVERYONE noticed him, particularly since he's so cute! We had people come up to us to pinch his cheeks or play with him. Both crew and passengers alike recognized him. They only recognized us as "the family with the baby who one the Royal Suite at bingo" because I was asked a few times how the suite was. It was a constant "Hello Baby!" or "Hey BabyL!" from everyone. BabyL certainly loved the attention!

All in all, despite all that, and the semi-crappy weather we had in a few of the cities, we had a pretty good time. I swear that BabyL grew an inch during the trip, even one of the passengers who sat next at the table next to us at dinner commented on it. I can tell you though, I was never happier sleeping in my own bed, and BabyL didn't have any problems falling asleep on his own like I feared once we got back home. He also has a tooth to show for his teething pains too!

Illness

Unfortunately, after we got home, I got sick. I had some GI thing, and an ear infection. Both Hubby and I had a bit of a cold during our trip. Hubby was allowed to take drugs. I couldn't take drugs, except for regular Tylenol, because I was breastfeeding, so I was left to suffer. My ear infection was probably from the cold. It took close to a week for it to clear. In the meantime, I had to contend with puking, feeling rotten and having the room constantly spin.

While this was happening, life kept marching on outside of my little bubble I was apparently living in. We came back to news that they had already started H1N1 vaccinations. I was bombarded with news of ever shifting priority lists, and 3 hour waits at clinics. It took me a few days before I had gotten myself together enough to call BabyL's doctor; apparently he didn't have enough vaccines, so that meant I had to go to a clinic. I was prepared for the worst, but apparently, the big rush happened the first couple of days. We were in and out within 45 mins. I'm just glad that BabyL never got sick amidst all this craziness and people constantly touching him, I don't know how I would have handled a sick baby.

Life marches on...

6 months old!

2009-10-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Today my baby turned 6 months! I can't believe he's already half a year old! I could talk to you about how he loves to watch EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE. Or how he loves to jump. Or how blowing very wet raspberries is one of his favourite pastimes. Or how great it is to watch him giggle and laugh. Or how he's already a solid-feeding champ.

All those things are great, yes they are. But I will tell you how he decided to mark the occasion. He pooed. Now that's not a big deal in the long run, but this is solid-log-type poo. He pooed three times. The first and third time were little poos, and they didn't bother him. In fact, I didn't even know that he pooed until I opened the diaper.

However, the second poo was HUGE! I think because he was experiencing a big solid poo for the first time, and because he was tired (I was getting him ready for his nap), it scared him, and he cried and cried. He also peed, but he's already peed over everything. I was more worried about the poo as this was something new for me, and throwing in cloth diapers into the mix made it much more interesting.

I saw some poo in his bum, then he had a meltdown. As I was trying to take care of that poo, I dropped it on the floor. BabyL kept crying and pooing. Then he started peeing. And continue pooing. I grabbed the flushable bioliners that I had and just caught the poo that way. It was a lot of poo. Finally, when he slowed down, I flushed what I had in my hands down the toilet. Going back to BabyL, he was still at it! And crying. And there were little puddle of pee everywhere. I caught the rest of the poo, and flushed it down the toilet, washed my hands, then cleaned up BabyL and mopped up as much pee as I could, washed my hands again, and put him in a clean diaper. Then I proceeded to put him down for his nap. After that, I brought out my antibacterial cleaners and gave the floor a good scrub.

Priorities people!

Solid poo really changes everything now. Yikes!

Yet another article about BPA exposure and kids

2009-10-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

Do you think the media is making a big deal out of this whole BPA thing? After all, we keep seeing another report day after day after day....

Clicky!

Are household products making kids fat?

2009-10-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

I read this article and found it very interesting. Now not only do I have to worry about chemicals that will effeminate my son, but I have to try to have him avoid as many chemicals as he can so he doesn't get fat. Will this never end?

Toxic Baby Bibs

2009-10-01T21:09:00.001-07:00

I found this article about toxic baby bibs. BabyL loves to eat his bib. I looked up the bib that he's wearing right now, and according to their website, they've tested it and it's safe. The other two bibs I have for him are leather, and they're hard for him to put in his mouth, plus, they are CPSIA safety approved, so we should be okay (hopefully!).

Solids! Finally!!

2009-09-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

We've just started BabyL on solids. Yesterday was his first day on rice cereal. Organic at that. So far so good. Hubby tried a bit today, and he says it tastes like nothing. But BabyL is swallowing it. We know because it's showing up in his spit up, ha. In a couple more days, I'll introduce another food. Very exciting, and something I've been looking forward to for a long time (except for the solid poop that's going to come with it!)

In other news, my Grandma has been in the hospital for a few days. She had congestive heart failure due to a mini-heart attack that she had earlier. But she's on the mend and doing well. The doctors are amazed at her speedy recovery, especially considering that she's 96 years old. Go Grandma! Hopefully she will be discharged sometime this week.

Chemicals that may mimic estrogen

2009-09-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

I was reading this article, and what I found interesting about it--something I didn't know--was that there is evidence that phthalates and BPA may mimic the estrogen hormone. I'm not so worried about the essential oils, but I am more concerned about the phthalates and BPA, and will be more diligent in avoiding these chemicals where ever possible, particularly since I have a little dude to raise.

So I've been married...

2009-09-01T20:20:00.001-07:00

7 year. It seems like a long time, but now that BabyL's a part of the picture, I haven't given our anniversary too much thought. We had celebrated on Saturday with a nice meal out at The Cannery restaurant. Not doing much tonight. I think I might crash for a bit before giving BabyL his late evening feed, I'm wiped!

Thanks for almost ruining my Anniversary Dinner Critical Mass!!!

2009-08-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know what Critical Mass is, click here.

Last Friday, Hubby and I went for our 7th Anniversary Dinner. We wanted to go to the Fish House, but instead ended up going to The Cannary. While I have nothing against The Cannary, and we indeed had a very nice meal, we had a coupon to go to the Fish House, and I hadn't been to the Fish House in forever. Plus, this was our first night out ever since BabyL was born. So, yeah, I was really looking forward to the dinner.

Now that we have BabyL, it's quite difficult for us to go out whenever we want to, we have to arrange for babysitting well ahead of time. And because of last minute family obligations, we had to move the dinner to Friday night from Saturday night. Let me tell you this was headache enough as I had to do a lot of discussions and negotiations late Thursday night. It didn't help that because we moved the dinner night, we had a much narrower window to have our dinner.

During Friday morning, Hubby realized that the Critical Mass ride was that evening. To get to the Fish House, we would have to drive through downtown, and we never know where the bikers' route is. So we had to change our plans, because we didn't want to get held up in traffic and because of our narrow time window. I was really looking forward to this dinner because 1) it's our anniversary, 2) we very rarely get out, so my evenings out are more precious to me now and 3) I hadn't been to the Fish House for a very long time whereas I've been to The Cannary several times and just wanted a change.

Hubby is a road biker, and he bikes to work at least once a week. When the weather's good, he aims to get 3-5 rides in. And he's road biked around town for recreation plenty of times. So I think he should know and understand the frustrations that road bikers experience. He thinks this is the wrong approach as well.

As much as everyone would like to live in a utopia, the reality is that this city wasn't originally designed for bikes, and the city needs to spend money in other areas of the infrastructure. I would say that over the last decade, the Lower Mainland's bike paths have improved tremendously. Yes, there could be better improvements still, and perhaps things aren't laid out as well as they could be, but it's already pretty darn good from what it was 10 years ago.

Pissing people off every month doesn't get your point across. Wasting my tax money because the police need to get involved for traffic control doesn't get your point across. Having a business lose my patronage because I didn't have a large enough window to sit in traffic while I waited for a bunch of bikers block my path doesn't get your point across. You can't have everything, and frankly, I would like to see my tax money go to improvements to public transit.

So yeah, thanks for almost ruining my Anniversary, and almost ruining the first night I've had out without the kid since he was born. Thanks a lot.

Telogen Effluvium

2009-08-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

As this article states, it starts at three months postpartum. I started noticing a great abundance of hair loss around this time. I'm normally a hair shedder. Ask Hubby, my hair is normally everywhere, and most noticeably on the drain catcher in the bathtub. But this time around, I was literally getting a fistful of hair coming off my scalp every time I combed my hand through my hair. It's gotten to the point where I noticed (and at least one of my friends) that I was developing a bald spot.

My friend suggested I go for a haircut, so I did. I needed one anyways, as I'd probably had gone 5 months without one. As much as I love my hairstylist, this time, I think she may have missed on the style front. I have "mom hair". She cut my hair a little shorter than what I wanted. I suppose that it will grow back, but she at least helped me cover up the bald spot a bit. She also gave me "magic hair" powder (product review to follow) which I really like.

Hopefully this hair shedding business will stop soon, because along with the flabby belly and the spit-up stained clothing, this mom can only take so many blows to her self-image, ha.

Squirrel!

2009-08-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

Lots of Squirrels

The ABCs of Keeping Cool

2009-08-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

After last week's heat wave, I thought this article might give you some tips to keeping cool without having use more electricity.

The ABCs of Keeping Cool

Mr. Nosey

2009-08-06T21:27:00.000-07:00

I was going through some pictures of BabyL when he was just a newborn. BabyL was such a wee little thing. And with all newborns, he only expressed emotions through crying. I remember saying that wouldn't it be neat if he could at least smile so that I had some idea if I was doing things okay with him.

Well, BabyL's been smiling since after his 1 month birthday, and within the last month, has learned how to laugh. He also babbles a lot, and will give a very huffy sigh when he's bored. I also have a pretty good sense when he's frustrated with something. He still cries though, and with the crying, there are tears. He didn't have tears when he was born.

BabyL is also a very curious little boy. He likes to look at EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING. He will get distracted when he's feeding, when I'm trying to put him to sleep, when we're out and about. He's been like that since day one, but now that he's able to hold his head up pretty well, he will spin left and right and left again to look at EVERYTHING. He will tilt his head at the most uncomfortable positions (well, uncomfortable-looking to us) to see his world.

Sometimes we try to figure out what he's looking at. It could be a brightly-coloured object. It could be some interesting pattern. It could be the way that light shines on something. The other day, Hubby and my mom went for a quick walk before BabyL's bath. They noticed at one point that he kept on looking up, up, up. It turns out that he was looking at the tall trees that lined the trail where they were walking. Like I said, he looks at EVERYTHING!

(I would have entitled this Mr. Curious, but apparently the Little Men Series only has a Miss Curious, go figure. Mr. Nosey was the next best thing!)

Nursing pillows - a rant

2009-08-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

I would like for you to take a look at the images below and tell me what is wrong in the pictures:

Yes, all three women are cuddling their babies, bonding with them as they nurse, but that's not what the problem is.

The problem is that none of the nursing pillows on the market encourage proper posture! All three women are hunched over their babies! This encourages back problems. I mean, it is discouraged to sit like that when in front of a computer, so why is it okay to sit like that when nursing a baby? Their backs should be straight, shoulders back, chest out. They shouldn't be resembling hunchbacks.

Let me tell you that I have pretty bad neck, shoulder, upper back, middle back, lower back and hip pain before I got pregnant. Yes, I had back problems coming out of my ying-yang, so I know back problems. I went to countless chiropractic, massage therapy and gym training sessions to help fix the problem and strengthen my back. I also took regular baths and stretched as much as possible to help maintain good back health.

Since having BabyL, the nursing has not made it better. My neck upper shoulder and back and middle back problems have flared up again. Right now I'm seeing my chiropractor (for an unrelated matter, but he still fixes my back) to help alleviate the problem. I also need to stretch the muscles out regularly. There are days when I'm clenching my teeth because of the back pain. Let me tell you I'm very much looking forward to not having to nurse any longer.

My other rant is that I actually need my hands free when I'm nursing. Sometimes when I'm nursing, that's the only time I get to eat. My baby tends to fuss at the breast, so I also need free hands to deal with him, I can't always be holding him. As much as you can say otherwise, this is my reality.

So you product manufactures out there listen up: make a pillow that is

height adjustable (I have the last pillow, and while I like it, I still need to prop it up with a small pillow underneath so that BabyL can reach my boob),
allow my hands to be free,
not allow my baby to roll off, ever.I've had to catch BabyL more times than I can count
I can easily use with one hand, as the other hand is holding the baby or doing something else
is eco-friendly, meaning that you make it out of organic, bio-degradable and sustainable materials, or it can be easily recycled. This includes the process of manufacturing it. No waste people! Plus there shouldn't be any toxic substances that my baby can inhale or ingest and most importantly,
promotes proper posture.

Once you have all that in one nursing pillow, then you will have created the perfect nursing pillow for me. I have yet to find one pillow that meets all my criteria.

"I hate breastfeeding"

2009-08-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

I read this article from the Globe and Mail a little while ago. While I'm finally out of the Newborn Hell, I certainly can relate to this woman's emotions. She has it tougher because she has no one, other than her husband, to help her, but only when he's not working. I had lots of helping hands around the clock, and I still had several meltdowns and dark moments, so I can only imagine what it was like for her.

The reason why I'd posted this was because there are so many rosy pictures out there about the first month with a newborn, especially if it's your first one. No one knows how hard the adjustment is like until you actually go through it yourself. I don't think she hates the act of breastfeeding itself; it may be the sleep deprivation talking. But I recall resenting the fact that I was 1) healing from the delivery 2) trying to figure everything out 3) feeling like I was chained to this kid and resenting the feeling, 4) resenting the fact that I was so sleep deprived that I couldn't even enjoy my baby, even if it was only for a little while, and not being able to sleep when I wanted so desperately to, and 5) not given the time to adjust properly to this change in my life, or the rest to heal like I wanted to.

BabyL now takes only 5-20-ish minutes to feed, and his naps can be as long as 3 hours (one day he napped 4.5 hours, and he would have slept longer, but I woke him up. It probably was the heat wave we were experiencing), so things have gotten better. My nipples aren't hamburger meat any longer once I knew it was my forceful letdown that was causing the problem and I knew what to do to remedy that. However, breastfeeding is still a struggle for me because of the constant backaches of being hunched over, I still have forceful letdown issues which means that the kid won't always want to eat, and the sheer boredom of sitting there for many, many minutes.

So yeah, I still hate breastfeeding.

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-08-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

So I'd managed to have some non-BabyL time last weekend, and without Hubby. Hubby stayed at home to take care of BabyL (and did a spendid job), while I went with a a friend to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

My friend whom I went with only read the first book and watched the first movie, so she really has no idea as to what was going to happen. I did encourage her to read the synopsis of all the books, but I think she'd only gotten through the synopsis for this movie and that was about it: she was watching this movie more or less blind. From that point of view, she did say that the movie was enjoyable and she was able to more or less follow the plot.

I have some major quibbles myself about the movie:

Other than reveling who the Half-Blood Prince was, there was no other explanation as to why this person was the Half-Blood Prince, and more importantly, the significance of it
The girl who played Lavender Brown over-acted
Although they included the big scene near the end of the book about finding the third Horcrux, I felt that the significance of Horcruxes themselves were kind of glossed over in the movie -- trust me when I say Horcruxes are much more significant than you realise (if you haven't read the books)
I still feel that they didn't emphasize that Snape was very reluctant to kill Dumbledore
There was a lot of other significant detail in Book 6 that is very important in Book 7 that they completely left out.

Having said that, I still enjoyed the movie for what it was. Book 6 gets darker still and the overall mood of the movie reflected that. To be fair to the movie producers, I felt that Book 6 was overly long and that J.K Rowling didn't have to put in a big epic scene of Harry and Dumbledore looking for the third Horcrux in the book. Of course, at the end of this movie, it was clearly set up for the next two and final movies in the series.

I feel what will happen for Movie 7a is that a lot of the significant detail that was missing from the previous movies will be added and fleshed out. And Movie 7b will pretty much be the fight to the finish. I think it was a good decision on Paramount's part to split the last book into two movies because of the tremendous amount of detail that shows up in the book. Not only will this finally satisfy the book lovers, but Paramount will milk this francise for what it's worth (no cynasim, really!)

I give this 3.5 out of 5.

The Mompreneur

2009-07-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Since becoming pregnant, I have learned a new term: "Mompreneurs".

What is a Mompreneur? From what I can observe, a Mompreneur is a woman who is a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) and who tends to fall into one of four loose categories, or combinations thereof:

Those who make and sell their own products
Those who resell or redistribute products
Those who review products
Those who post other relevent information that many parents may find interesting.

Now, before I go on any further, I want to mention that I personally know several Mompreneurs, and this is in no way a slag on them, or what they are doing. After all, they are trying to make some extra income and raise a family, no mean feat. The fact that they're able to stay at home and take care of the kids while running a business is actually quite incredible, and I applaude any parent who is able to pull it off, it's not easy.

Having said that, I have a bit of a quibble with those in the third category, and this is a general quibble, not aimed at anyone in particular. From what I've observed, many of these Mompreneurs make their money reviewing product items, sponsoring giveaways and passing on discounts codes for said products. Basically, being a internet marketing affiliate.

Here are my quibbles:

I do not need more stuff. Those of you who pass yourself off as being "green" or "environmentally friendly" should not be convincing the rest of us to buy more stuff. Every product sold eventually lands up in the landfill, you can only re-use it so many times. Never mind the fact that energy, water and other toxic chemicals have been used to create said products. Plus, shipping the product to the winner only adds to your carbon footprint. The first of the 3 R's that we all learn is to "Reduce". Yes, reduce the number of products that you use. Our parents, grandparents and ancestors managed to raise babies with very little, we certainly don't need the same sort of stuff to do the same. I feel a lot of times the products are more of a "want" for parents than anything really beneficial for the child.
I always wonder about how objective the review of the product is. Sure once in a while I read a review that has a sentence or two "cons" against the product, but really, the reviews are there to drive traffic to the product's website and have people buying their products, after all, that is the real objective of the whole exercise. I really don't know if I'll be doing such a thing on this blog. I'd rather be honest and say that "Product X sucks, and here's why". I'd rather be honest than lie through my teeth about something I really don't like. After all, people are looking for that sort of information too. I know I wouldn't feel right if I was putting forth a positive review of a product when it really doesn't deserve it, that's just not me.
Many times, the person doing the review gets a free product sample to try out, before writing their review (which makes sense). They also get to keep the sample product. Not a bad gig, all things considered, even if they don't get monetary compensation. Just don't pass yourself off as being "environmentally friendly" because you're not, you're accumulating stuff (see point above).
I feel that this really is a big marketing ploy, because to get extra entries to these contests, the website (usually a blog), asks the entrants to sign up for their newsletter, Tweet about the giveaway, blog about the giveaway, email others about the giveaway, post about the giveaway on Facebook, join a Facebook Fan page, buy a product from the company's website that is being showcased, etc. You can see where this is going. I simply don't have the time to tell everyone about the giveaway, and quite honestly, I don't like endorsing products that I haven't tried out for myself, and I certainly don't like bombarding people with useless information It's also a really good tactic to drive more internet traffic to the blogger's website as well as to the company. And by the way, I hate Twitter. I don't like having information bombarding me, and I don't have time to read a lot of it as I have to take care of a baby.
I actually care where you, the reviewer, live. If you're not Canadian, I'm less apt to want to go to your blog on a regular basis. And frankly, if you're reviewing a product that is sold mainly in the US, I really don't want to buy it that badly, not unless the product is really WOW! or if you manage to ship to Canada using a reasonable shipping rate, or I can purchase the same item on a Canadian website or store. In tough economic times like these, I'm keeping my pennies a little closer to my chest. Plus, if I want multiples of the same product, I would think twice about buying it the first time if the only way to purchase it would be at a US online store, the exchange alone could kill me.
Don't believe me? This has been a topic that was brought up at the last BlogHer conference.

Plus, for the companies who give products to these SAHM for review, guess what: I very rarely read what was written, I simply don't have the time or the inclination. Most people simply aren't great writers, and even if they are, they don't post information that I really want to know about the product. The internet's partially about looking for information, and fast, and if I'm pretty certain that the reviewer only really gives it a good to glowing review, I don't read, it's pointless and a waste of my time. I certainly wouldn't promote the product just because someone said it's the best thing since sliced bread. I'd rather be honest, and if I am negative about a product, you companies, listen up, if I don't like it because of certain things, you will bet that other people won't like it. Reading a glowing review of your product just make me feel like I've been ripped off even more, and I certainly don't care for the blogger's review in the future, never mind your product. Fix what the problem is if you really want to give people a product they will like.

Having said all that, I am one of those people who enters these contests, after all, if they are willing to give it away for free, I am willing to take it, I don't say no to handouts. So far, I've managed to win a couple of prizes, one which I just received recently. It's a toy, but the toy will remain nameless for some time, I don't think Baby L is old enough for it yet. I may write a review about it when the time comes, but it will be an honest review.

Movie Review: The Hangover

2009-07-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

A bunch of dudes go to Las Vegas for a stag. Dudes wake up the next morning, hotel room trashed, and discover that they've lost the groom. Dudes also can't remember what happens the night before. They have two days to figure it out what had happened and more importantly, where the groom went to, before the wedding. The Dudes spend the entire movie piecing together the events from the previous night and retracing their steps in the hopes of finding the groom before said wedding.

It's rude. It's vulgar. It's sexist. It's got stereotypes coming out of it's yin yang. It's a very non Politically Correct Movie. There is full frontal nudity, both male and female. It has a tiger. And a baby. And a rooster. And a big Vegas windfall.

Despite all the cliches, this is one hilarious movie! Non-stop laughter. Yes, there are minor plot holes, and yes, things don't always make sense (probably not the best editing job), but this movie definitely keeps guessing as to what happens next, and slowly, the events from the previous night unfolds.

I give this movie two thumbs up. And yes, they're already planning a sequel.

Movie Review: Star Trek XI

2009-07-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW!

Hubby and I saw this movie a few weeks ago on our first non-Baby L outing. I was dying to see this moving last Christmas, but when I had found out that Paramount had pushed back the release of this movie to May 2009, I was a little upset. After all, I would have had a one-month old by then. Nonetheless, Hubby and I managed to swing a date-afternoon, and went. I had high hopes for this movie because JJ Abrams directed this movie, and it was a fresh new angle to a franchise that has been around for decades.

In short, I loved the movie! Great action, great acting, believable plot, despite the fact that they used the time travel shtick yet again. Karl Urban and Simon Pegg I feel were by far the best at imitating the original Bones and Scotty characters. I also like how they gave Kirk`s character more depth. It`s mostly true that you don`t need to be a Star Trek fan to follow along with the movie, you won`t be able to pick up on the subtle references to the Star Trek series, but you can still enjoy the movie for what it is.

While I questioned allowing Spock to show some emotions and having Spock`s mother die (she`s still alive and kicking in an alternate timeline as shown in TNG), I was willing to overlook these discrepancies from the Star Trek series. I know that some die hard Trekkers probably balked at these obvious discrepancies, but I chalk it down to the producers wanting to explore an alternate timeline and possibilities (and my cynical side says to create an excuse for a sequel. As I write, I see an untitled sequel entry in IMDB).

Nonetheless, I give this movie two thumbs up!

New Emma coming out this Fall

2009-07-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited! I heard about the BBC filming a new Emma this year. Here is a teaser that someone found on YouTube. I am a little wary of the casting though, I think there are too many big name UK actors this time around, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm also willing to give Romola Garai (who is playing Emma) the benefit of the doubt as well, I don't particularly like her as an actress, but we'll see...

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-07-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

I finished reading this book a while ago, but I didn't get much chance to put up a review until now.

Meryton has been taken over by zombies and it's up to the Bennet family to keep them at bay.

This book is hilarious! Yes, the author uses about 75% of Jane Austen's original text from Pride and Prejudice, but the alterations that he makes with the storyline makes it for a good read. There are even illustrations which I really enjoyed and compliment the story.

There are brain-eating zombies. There are ninjas. There is sword fighting. And most importantly, there is romance.

The story in P&P&Z follows the same plotline as the original, but there are some modifications that I really like. In particular, what happens with Wickham. I really like what the author has done with Wickham, it's definitely an ending that is fitting for him. I'm not so certain as to how I feel about Charlotte Lucas' alterations, but it affects Mr. Collins in the end, in an also fitting and satisfying ending for him. Lady Catherine also get her just desserts, ninja style.

I know I sound cryptic about the modifications in the storyline, but I don't want to give too much away. If you're a purist Jane Austen fan, you may not like what the author has done with the plot and character modifications. However, if you like a light read and something tongue-in-cheek, this is definitely it. I definitely give this book two thumbs up!

Happy Canada Day!!!

2009-07-01T17:58:00.001-07:00

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Today, my kid is also 12 weeks old! He will be 3 months old as of next Wednesday, but since we're counting weeks, it's week 12. Since my post yesterday was such a downer, I've decided to post a couple things about my kid that I find fascinating:

Sometimes when he poos, you can actually hear it in the next room
He has changed and grown so much these first 3 months. He definitely doesn't look like a newborn any more!
Baby L now coos, which is pretty cool!
Cradle cap is a very interesting phenomenon, yet weird at the same time.
Cloth diapering is an interesting adventure (more on that later!)

I'm hoping going forward to be able to post at least once a week. Stay tuned!

Crawling out of Newborn Hell

2009-06-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

As you can see, I haven't been blogging here for almost 3 months. Baby L has been keeping me busy. While it has gotten easier being a sleep-deprived mom, I wanted to jot some things down that have been rattling in my head before I forgot. I've labelled the period between the time Baby L was born and about the time when he was about 2 months as "Newborn Hell". This was my Newborn Hell as I remember it.

I was told that before the baby starts crawling was a great time to go out and bring the baby with you, as he's "very portable". This is sort of true. However, no one told me about feedings or more precisely, when babies are to feed. I knew that babies fed all the time, but before having Baby L, it was a fuzzy notion at best.

A typical textbook baby would feed once every three hours. What that means that if the baby starts feeding at 12pm and feeds until 12.30pm, the next feed is at 3 pm, not at 3.30 pm. They time feeds by the beginning, and not the end. My kid for the first 6 weeks fed from 1.5-2.5 hours. He also took about 45-60 mins for one boob. Keep in mind, that this is within a 24 hour period. Newborns don't have an idea of what day and night are, so they will wake and sleep whenever they darn well feel like it.

Cluster Feeding. If you don't know what that is, look it up. The longest cluster feed the kid had to date was one Friday evening during Week 6 where he fed for seven hours straight. I kid you not. What they say about cluster feeding, when it starts in the evening, it's only an average, and keep in mind that every kid is different. My nipples were also raw meat afterwards.

Sleep. My kid also was not a great sleeper at the beginning, he still isn't. The only way he would be put to sleep is if he's held and patted to sleep. It took a while for us to even put the bugger to sleep, let alone have him sleep for more than 1-1.5 hours. I was told that all I had to do was "put him down" when I saw signs of tiredness, and the baby should fall asleep. Well, I saw signs of tiredness all right, but my kid is also vastly curious abut his environment, and will not sleep on his own if put in his crib. For a while, he wouldn't sleep anywhere except in someone's arms, or on a flat surface (like his crib or our bed) if I was nearby. Let me tell you my kid is somewhat high maintenance from the get-go. He still needs to be patted to sleep.

Anyways, if you put the comments so far about sleep and about feeding together and do the math, I maybe got 1.5 hours sleep at any one stretch. Sleep deprivation at its finest. They say that I should nap when he naps. What if he never napped? or if he was sleeping when I was holding him? Needless to say I wasn't sleeping very much. It was also quite hard to go out as I had to plan everything around his feeds, plus I had to bring out a whole whackload of baby stuff.

I was also told that they could sleep in the car seat, or a sling/wrap, in a swing or bouncy chair, or give them a pacifier to soothe themselves to sleep. My kid has good days and bad days with the car seat, and when we do go out, he's too busy looking around everywhere to sleep. I've also learned that if we bring him to a very stimulating environment, he may not sleep in the car seat, even if it's a long car ride. My kid also hated being squished, so slings and wraps were out, and he hates being too hot, so wraps were again out. To date, I've bought four different pacifiers, and he hates all of them. I think he just hates the taste of cold plastic in his mouth. He will take a bottle, thank goodness. He still isn't fond of the swing, and for almost the first two months, he hated the bouncy chair, mostly because I think he was such a wee little guy and the bouncy chair was just a vast thing for him to sit on. That and it didn't provide the same comforts as a human body.

Breastfeeding. Let me tell you, I hate, hate, hate breastfeeding. I will do it because I want my kid to have the best, but up until a few weeks ago, I was really struggling. Breastfeeding was something that I thought I wouldn't hate, but I do. I had popped about 10 blisters up to that point. Yes, ouch! you can get blisters on your nipples. Breastfeeding was very painful (I still have my moments). Then I finally found out about the free breastfeeding clinic my community had and I went right away. I found out (or had confirmed) that I have a forceful letdown, and probably an oversupply of milk, which probably was causing a lot of the problems. Baby L instinctively was trying to adjust to this, which led to the blistering and callouses on my nipples. The other reason why I hate breastfeeding is because I'm force to sit in one location for almost an hour. Not fun. By day three, I was so bored that I asked Hubby to buy me an iPod Touch. I wanted it mainly for the Wi-Fi capabilities, and so I can feel at least connected to the outside world.

I suppose it was a combination of all of the above that really drove me up the wall, that and the sleep deprivation didn't help me cope well. Also, I feel that much of my own identity has been stripped away. What I used to rely on to be self-confident, well, that's pretty much gone. I felt very trapped, still do some days. Trying to get an infant to sleep when he won't and when you're so sleep deprived is very hard. I've had several meltdowns, and I even once called Hubby sobbing on the phone, telling him to come home instead of going somewhere else he was planning on going to after work. I'm always trying to think and plan ahead, hard to do when you have a demanding infant whose schedule is still a little loosey goosey. I sometimes still need to plan when to brush my teeth or eat breakfast.

It was very hard to hear that some people's babies were sleeping through the night already, or they were able to go to the gym, or they could still do this and that, and I wasn't able to do any of that, not without feeling sleep deprived or that I couldn't pull myself away for too long. My time is definitely not my own right now, not until he start being a little more independent. The loss of my independence is really tough on me.

People tell you that it "gets easier". I have no idea what that means, and for me, it was a very empty platitude. I'm a big picture kinda person, and I at least needed to know what the end result may look like, even if it may not be true for my baby. So here's how it's "gotten easier" for me from 2 months onwards:

It's easier to put him down for naps, most times, and he will sleep for 30 mins and often longer. On his longer stretches, I actually nap with him. His longest nap to date has been for 3 hours, although he's averaging about an hour or so for naps.
He now eats off of both boobs in the same time it took for one boob at the beginning, in that he's a more efficient eater.
Even if he's hungry, I can make him wait to be fed for at least one-half hour or more, and he won't cry (at least not too much). I can get some stuff done, like eat or go pee.
He sleeps longer stretches at night (2-4 hours between feeds). And on a very rare occasion, more than 4 hours!
I'm actually able to get in a bit of exercise and am able to pump some days. For me, this a big thing.
I can actually take a shower most days (if I remember)

Some things I've learned since then:

It's okay for me to put my kid down and pee, especially if he's crying his head off. The kid won't remember it and certainly won't be scarred for life.
Always let other people take care of your kid if they offer. I know I did at every opportunity. I love my kid, but I value my personal space very much, so having even an hour reprieve was a godsend. Hubby and I already went on one non-Baby L afternoon date, so to speak. We're aiming to do this at least once per month, and more as he gets older.
I had to learn about my little dude's likes and dislikes, preferences and whatnot. He is, after all, another human being. Hence the reason why he likes being held, hates the bouncy chair, hates the swing, hates the wrap, hates the sling, and hates pacifiers is because he's got discerning tastes. I think he's picky like his father, ha.
Just like an adult, his preferences and tastes can and do change, so what may work now may not work a few months down the road. Especially since he still physically changing and developing all the time.
If I want to get anything done, I'd have to make a list. And it will get done, just at different times throughout the day. I'm lucky if I can even check one thing off of my to-do list each day.
This parenting thing is really, really, really hard. I knew it would be hard, but it's harder than I thought.

Do I like being a mom? Ask me again in 18 year's time.

Baby L is Here!

2009-04-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

So on April 8th, I became a mummy to Baby L! I wanted to record the events and my thoughts surrounding all of it before I forget.

April 4-6
I first noticed that I started losing my mucous plug. This went on for the next couple of days. It turns out that it was my cervix that was being effaced, or starting to thin out.

Monday April 6th
Started to feel unwell in the early evening. I tried to go to bed later, but was feeling quite uncomfortable and getting painful localised abdominal pains, and got no sleep that night.

Tuesday April 7th ~ 3am
I felt a sharp pain in pevic area and contractions started. My contractions felt like really, really bad menstrual gas pains. The contractions were already lasting a minute, but were irregular. The contractions lasted through the night and into Tuesday all day and night and Wednesday morning. The midwife told us previously not to call until the contractions were fairly regular, and about 3 minutes apart from each other. My contractions never made a steady progress like many w omen's do, so there were times when it was 10 min apart and other times when it was as close to 4-5 mins apart. But my contractions fluctuated the whole time, they were never regular. Eventually, I could feel the labour pains in my lower back. I'd called my midwife close to Tuesday evening when I was worried it wasn't progressing the way it should have.

Wednesday April 8th
After another sleepless night and a couple more calls to the midwife, she told me to head to the hospital. I had been labouring at home about 30 hours at this point, and had no sleep for the last couple of nights. Because she was already with another patient at a different hospital than where I was going, she asked if I wanted her to find a bed at the hospital where she was at, or to go to my original hospital, but have another midwife (whom I had never met), do the delivery. I chose to go where my midwife was.

We got to the hospital at around 9am, and got admitted. My midwife assessed me, and told me I was only 1 cm dilated. I was about to cry at this point because I'd been labouring for so long already, and I thought for sure I was further along. My midwife decided to break my water and do a bit of a stretch and sweep to help speed things along. She commented that the membrane sac was thick as she had a bit of trouble breaking it. A nurse, who was showing Hubby and my mum the placenta afterwards, noticed the same thing, LOL! After the midwife did the stretch and sweep, I was 3-4 cm dilated. My midwife was very encouraging about the effaced cervix, she told me that it's in a good place as it's like wet tissue paper and it would be much easier for me to dilate. Because I was GBS positive, I was put on antibiotic IV right away. I sat in a bath for about a 1/2 hour. Although we got one of the nicely renovated rooms at the hospital, because some moron was doing some drilling in the floor below us, we had to move rooms.

My midwife still wanted to wait for my contractions to become more regular and become closer together. That never happened, although we waited several more hours. They then gave me some saline with sugar water (I think) to give me some more energy, especially I had been up the previous two night without sleep. After a couple more hours, my midwife could see that things weren't progressing as it should, I was only 6-7 cm dilated, so she suggested that we do an augmentation (similar to an induction, both procedures uses pitocin), to speed things along. Because my midwife couldn't prescribe the pitocin, she had to find an OB to do so, and I guess it was policy that the OB come in to do consult. I had asked my midwife how much longer it would take, and she said it can be anywhere from 1/2 hour onwards before I become fully dialated. This OB woman came in to talk to me about the pitocin prescription, I had no idea why she was even there. I asked her how long it would take for me to be fully dialated, and she said 3-4 hours or longer, it was pretty demoralizing to hear. My midwife was annoyed and cut her off, and pretty much pushed her out of the room. Hubby was ready to strangle her.

So I was on the pitocin for maybe 1-2 hours, and things were progressing a lot faster. I found it really hard to handle the contractions at this point as they were coming on strong and increasing frequency, and I was really getting tired and unable to handle the pain coming on so quickly and intensly. The nurse that was with us suggested laughing gas, which I gladly took. It was hard to deal with the laughing gas as it started making me feel ill as I was breathing more and more of it because of the increased frequency of the contractions and there was less time for it to disperse from my body. And although I was getting ill from the laughing gas, I stuck with it because the alternative was to have an epidural, and I didn't want to go down that road. I was actually cracking jokes at this point. I think I remember saying at the beginning "Boy this stuff's good. Is this what it feels like when you smoke pot?" and "After this is done, I want chocolate ice cream!". I also asked if they were going to check me to see how far dilated I was (Hubby still makes fun of me about that comment!)

Finally, I was 9 centimeters, and my midwife suggested that I go pee. I had been pumped with a lot of fluids by now, so it should have been easy for me to go pee, but I was so exhausted that I couldn't go pee. I think I told Hubby at that point that I couldn't do it any more, I was so tired and exhausted. At this point, my midwife told me to come out and I would start pushing. I was to lie back, with my legs up in the air and towards my chest (there were people there to help me push my legs back), pelvis down and start pushing with the contractions. Let me tell you that was the hardest thing in the world to do. Not only was this not one of the positions that they had taught us in our prenatal class as one of the better ways for delivery, but I found out later, from my aunt who is a community nurse, that this is how they did things in the "old days". I was too exhausted to care any longer, I just wanted this kid outta me! So I focused all my energies on pushing.

My midwife was encouraging me, and letting me know how far along the head was coming out. Hubby was sitting beside me and encouraging me, which helped tremendously. My mom (who came to the hospital with us) was actually pushing one of my legs, the nurse was pushing the other leg. I remember thinking at one point that I could feel myself tearing, and I thought, screw the "no tearing" thing, I want this kid outta me! I think everyone refers to it as the ring of fire. All I could think and focus on was getting the head out, so I put my pelvis down, and pushed hard with each contraction. I swear, it was like having the biggest poo of your life, only I could tell it was coming out of the wrong hole. But that's how I was treating it. It started annoying me how everyone was talking about the head was "almost" out, and I was thinking (and I
may have vocalised it) to stop telling me that it's almost out and to tell me when it's actually out! So this went on for about 45 mins, and Baby L's head popped out eventually.

The rest of his body slid out quite quickly after that. Once Baby L was out, I looked over to my right, I could see Hubby tearing up, and my mum already had her camera out and taking pictures! They had placed Baby L on my chest, and I asked if it was a boy or a girl. My midwife picked him up and show me his boy bits. Finally they delivered the placenta. The midwife told me that I had a couple of small tears that she had to sew up. I actually wowed my midwives. They were so impressed that I'd managed to push well and have the baby out quickly without an epidural, and despite the fact that I had no sleep for two nights straight. I told them that I had two thoughts in my mind: tenacity - I really, really wanted this baby out, so I focused on that and nothing else. And because I'd be doing all the exercising during my pregnancy, I actually focused on using those particular muscles to push. Even then I was thinking how glad I was that I did all that exercising and allowing myself to really be in tune with my body. I think that helped the pushing a lot, that and I didn't have an epidural to interfere with the pushing. The whole labour and delivery was about 40 hours in total.

Afterwards, I was talking with my midwife, and she told me that Baby L's umbilical cord was wrapped very tightly around his neck, and that the cord was shorter than usual. She surmised that was the reason why my body had such a hard time progressing forward through the labour, and if the labour had proceeded as it normally should have, Baby L could have been in serious trouble. I suppose that our bodies just sometimes know what to do, even if we don't always understand why it's doing what it's doing. In any case, this experience had validated our decision to go with midwifery care, I suspect that it may have gone very differently if I went with my GP or an OB. I probably would have had a C-section, which was the absolute last thing I wanted. Hubby and I were very glad that things turned out well, despite all the chaos, and confusion.

My midwife was awesome, and she made me feel that I could do this from the very beginning. Hubby was also a huge help, I don't think that I would have been able to last the 40+ hours without his help and encouragement.

Thoughts on Pregnancy - Part 2

2009-04-05T21:13:00.001-07:00

If you know me in real life, you know that I never once enjoyed being pregnant. Well, here is a list of things that I went through in my pregnancy. This is more to remind myself than anything else. Everyone tells me that you will "forget" afterwords. I don't know if I will forget a lot of this.

1st trimester nausea. It started at about week 8-9 and lasted until about week 15. I was turned off by anything that was animal flesh: chicken, beef, seafood. One night, Hubby had made salmon, and the moment I smelled it, which was at the kitchen door, I felt a wall go up. I couldn't even step into the kitchen. It was frustrating for both Hubby and myself because I literally didn't know what I could and couldn't eat until it was placed in front of me. My only saving grace was that the pregnancy sickness didn't kick in until later afternoon/early evening, so I was at least able to eat something during the day. The nausea took time to subside however, it didn't go away instantaneously overnight. I also developed a phobia for the foods I couldn't eat, and it was some time before I could re-introduce those foods back into my diet. Thank goodness I never threw up once.
There are certain things that I wasn't allowed to eat during pregnancy, mostly either uncooked foods, unpasteurized foods, or foods that had the potential for being contaminated by bacteria, like deli meats. Fortunately for me, I hate sushi, but I did miss eating some foods.
The constant tiredness. This is something that I've always had to deal with, pre-pregnancy. I operate best with 9 hours of deep, uninterrupted, tension-free sleep. If I don't get all three elements, I don't function well the next day. The fatigue during the first trimester was also very hard. Going to bed at 7pm was not fun, and despite the fact that I got tons of sleep, I was still tired the next day. Please don't tell me that this is to prepare me for the sleepless nights afterwords, I've heard it enough times from everyone.
Right SI joint pain from month 3 onward. My chiropractor tried his best to fix it, but nothing he could do would make the pain go away. It went away on it's on at about week 30 when I noticed the Relaxin hormone kick in (it's the hormone that loosens the joints, to prepare your body for labour).
Peeing 4 times during the night. Not only does this interrupt my sleep, but it was frustrating when you only pee just a little bit out, despite the feeling that your bladder's about to burst
Constant kicking from the kid. Baby kicks really only had so much novelty for me. The baby was most active at night, which also didn't help with the sleep. What was worse though was when the baby wasn't kicking. I was worried that something had happened, which meant even less sleep. The best part is when the baby was pushing a foot into my diaphragm. Apparently, I didn't need to breathe.
Constant neck, shoulder, upper, middle, lower back and hip pain. This is something that I've dealt with for 4 years prior to being pregnant. I was really hoping that I would have some time to fix my back problems after finishing school and before becoming pregnant, but God apparently has a sense of humour and had other ideas for me. Getting pregnant while trying to finish up a paper was not fun. Anyways, the back pain I experience normally, I need to keep under control by exercise, regular stretching and taking hot baths, otherwise, I sleep very tensely, even if it's a 9 hour sleep, and I looked totally bagged the next day.
The fact that I couldn't sleep on my back after a certain stage. I'm a back sleeper, and my back pain is diminished when I sleep on my back. I was told that sleeping on my back while pregnant wasn't good for me as it could cut circulation off to the lower half of my body. Also side sleeping is better as it encourages the baby to be bettered position for birth, which is what I am equally paranoid about. No breeching or back labour please!
Constipation and hemorrhoids. I've backed up the toilet many, many times. Nuff said.
Constant indigestion, acid reflux and heartburn. It mild to moderate most of the time, and Tums is my saviour for the most part, but still not fun. I've dealt with indigestion most of my life, so this is something I won't forget the feeling of quickly.
I couldn't take hot baths. I did take baths, but not hot, hot baths like I normally do. It's not good for the baby to raise my core temperature so high. I needed the hot baths for my back pains, so it was hard not being able to treat my back pains properly
Constantly aching feet. Every time the baby grows, I know because I can feel my feet aching and adjusting to the weight. It was worse in the third trimester as that's when the baby puts on the most weight.
The skin on my belly being stretched to death. I'm carrying completely in the front, and my belly looks like a basketball right now. Every time I got bigger, my tummy grew. Every time my tummy grew, my skin, tendons and muscles on my stomach had to stretch to accommodate. There were days when I thought my belly button was going to spit into two. It was a lot of discomfort bordering on me wanting to cry or rip my skin off from the pain. I really hope that my tummy will eventually flatten out. I'm still aiming to have that bikini body.
Not being able to bend down or bend over properly. I couldn't clip my toenails after a while, and one finds very creative ways to putting on shoes or picking something off of the floor. Sometimes I'd just leave the thing on the floor.
Night leg cramps. I had a few of them, and they hurt like the mofo. I've had them many times before, since I was a teenager, but adding a belly into the mix didn't make it any easier for me to deal with it.

I think that what kept my sanity was the fact that I went to the massage therapist and chiropractor regularly. They both helped me manage my pain with all my body changes. I also continued going to Pilate's until about week 33 and going to the gym until week 38. I feel that it really staved off a lot of other pregnancy symptoms, like water retention. My wedding rings are a bit tight, but that due more to the bit of body fat I've gained over the last month. I thankfully don't have swollen feet, or swollen anything. I suppose that I should be thankful that my pregnancy for the most part has been fairly uneventful.

I also have to thank my long-suffering Hubby for putting up with all my whining, cooking for me, and doing all the toilet unplugging. I don't think I would have survived this far without his help and understanding.

But pregnancy still isn't fun.

Thoughts on Pregnancy - Part 1

2009-04-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

So sorry, I haven't been updating my blog. March was a very busy month for me.

My last day of work was actually yesterday. I had to interview, hire and train my replacement, which takes time. During that process, I was frantically trying to get as much done at work (I was working evenings and weekends), and doing a mind-meld with a newbie is time consuming. Yesterday, things were blowing up left, right and centre, but my replacement seemed to handle it well. At least he took it in stride, so I was pretty confident that he could handle the job. I could only sit back and watch in amusement at all the drama everyone else was causing my staff. Ah, I will miss all the work drama.

That coupled with trying to finish off the baby room, it was pretty hectic. Hubby had to put together the crib, the dresser and hang the curtains. But the baby's room is finally ready! At least the baby finally has a place to sleep. I couldn't say that even just two weeks ago. It was nice though, we received a lot of gifts from friends, so that help a bit, especially the clothing.

For a while there, I was worried that the kid wouldn't have enough clothing. While many people have been promising to give us hand-me-downs, I hadn't seen anything come our way. I'm certain that those people will hold true to their promise, but the kid actually needs some clothing as soon as he's born, and not 2 months down the road. Up until the point where I bit the bullet and bought a few more items, I think the kid had a grand total of three outfits. Any parent will tell you that I would have probably gone through that many outfits in one day! I also bought a whole whack load of cloth diapers. Someone gave me a little stuffed animal as a gift, and I'll be using it to practice swaddling, diapering, putting the kid in the infant carrier and into the car seat. So much to get a handle of!

A part of me was a little loathe to be spending so much money in the last three months, and we've probably spent a little more than we should have on some baby stuff, but we're new at this, and I had to keep reminding myself that start up costs always tend to put a dent into any bank accounts financially, no matter how much you try to plan. The trick for me was to figure out what was a need and what was a want. Plus, a lot of experienced moms told me not to buy too much before the baby was born, because things like clothing sizes, colour, and whether or not the baby will like certain toys like swings, will depend on the baby's preferences/fussiness. So it's been really tough trying to figure these things out, but I think we've done okay and haven't overspent too much.

Around my birthday, which was last week, I discovered the one, and only, thing that I found cool about pregnancy: baby hiccups.

Now I knew about the baby's ability to hiccup while in the womb, and it doesn't hurt the baby. However, it didn't even occur to me that my baby was hiccupping until someone asked me last week. Then, that very night, at about 1.30 am, I realised that the rhythmic kicking was actually the baby hiccuping, and not just the baby actively kicking and doing it's darnedest to keeping me awake. I had felt it before, but never had put two and two together until someone pointed it out to me.

I knew where the head and the rest of the body was, and I could actually feel the body jump up and down inside, like most people do when they hiccup. It was actually a neat experience, and I had to wake Hubby up so he can feel too. I think this was the one time that Hubby didn't mind me waking him up.

Prenatal Classes

2009-03-01T21:16:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, we attended a 3-day weekend prenatal session. On the recommendation of our midwife, instead of going to one put on by the hospitals, we opted to go with a private company. We were told that it would cover the normal stuff -- "plus more", whatever that meant.

I was a little skeptical at first on the first session. The approach was quite different than just a pure clinical "this is what happens in labour and this is what you should expect" approach. It definitely was a little more granola than I expected, particularly as by the end of the evening, we had produced some artwork. But I kept an opened mind throughout the weekend.

The approach that was used was called "Birthing from Within". I will let you readers read the website for a better idea of what it's all about, but I've listed a few points of what I found valuable from the sessions:

We (mothers and fathers) went through some pain coping techniques. I really appreciated it because it gave me something right away to use, and is something that won't be too hard to forget.
They taught the fathers how to help the mothers to with the pain, different labour positions, etc. In other words, the fathers were just as much a part of the whole birthing process. I think Hubby liked that aspect as he has tools help me through the labour process instead just sitting at the sideline not knowing what to do.
The fathers in the class were very much involved with the discussions as much as the mothers were. I think they also felt like they were a part of the the birthing experience.
They took a different approach to explaining cesareans to us, while still covering all the basics. I think this different point of view was great because it makes it less of a clinical approach to giving birth, and strangely, made it less scary sounding for me, even if I still don't want to go through with a cesarean.
While they talked about epidurals and other drugs you could use, they gave different things to think about regard drugs and how it may affect the baby's bonding process with the mother. One thing I learned is that epidurals do affect the baby, even though the effects are temporary.
I like the fact that they emphasized on how important it was for the baby to bond with both mother and father. They also spoke briefly about co-sleeping, while I'm not a big fan of it, a lot of what they said did make sense to me.
Most importantly, I didn't realise how absolutely scare I was about the whole labour thing until we went to the prenatal class. I actually was petrified, and at some level refused to acknowledge it to myself. After the class, I felt more prepared, and a lot more at peace with the whole labouring processes. Sure, things will still happen which I may not want to happen, and there really is no way to predict what will happen, and a part of me is still apprehensive, but I'm in a better place for it.

Despite the granola aspects, I really recommend Birthing From Within classes, so if you can find one in your area, I encourage you to go.

Toxic Pregnancies

2009-02-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe I just read too much, but this article and this article really worries me. Does my bebe even have a fighting chance before it's even born? Maybe I should just stop reading this stuff all together, after all, they say that ignorance is bliss.

I do like the second article's tips of what we can do for living a healthier lifestyle. I think a lot of those items are doable. However, going green can cost money, especially if you're buying organic, toxic-free everything. There are plenty of green products on the market, but it's still a bigger cost than the non-green items.

I'm still researching how else I can go green, but I'm finding it pretty draining even trying to focus on things that are non-baby right now. My biggest obsession is finding the perfect cloth diaper, but I do have a desire to slowly green other parts of my life and our household, not just for the bebe, but for ourselves as well, while being mindful of the environment. And on a budget too.

I've managed to bookmark a bunch of sites, but there is so much information out there that it's hard to filter it out the real information from the noise. And if even if I am able to do so, trying to find what works best for our family takes time, research and experimentation.

Baby steps, Weed, baby steps.

Flushable Diapers?

2009-02-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard about flushable diapers, there is one on the market. I won't identify the brand, but the name will be in this article. As much as the makers of this brand tout this as the best of both worlds between disposables and cloth, and an "eco-friendly" option, there are a lot of things that people don't think about that are pointed out in the article. The article also points out that it's still cheaper to use real cloth diapers.

Again, there is a price for convenience. If it's not on your pocketbook, it's on the environment, or your health, or something else. I have lately been questioning if things that are advertised as being "green" or "organic" or "eco-friendly" really are. It's easy to take things at face value, especially since the green movement has really picked up over the last few years. However, people are lazy, or they are misinformed, or they are uneducated, and don't always realise the impact of their choices. And people will buy just about anything as long as they feel that the work is done for them.

To be fair, we all don't have enough time during the day. I for one am finding it more and more difficult to balance my work-life situation, how more difficult will it be to balance everything out when the bebe comes. But I suppose everyone dictates how they will run their own life and what they choose to spend their time on.

However, you must be somewhat informed and consumer savvy. For instance, I've seen "organic" mandarin oranges in our grocery stores. Not only was there no "certified organic" label on the box, but even better, these oranges were imported from China! Had we not taken the 2 minutes to even look at the label, we may have been duped into believing that they really were organic.

My point: do you homework people. This green movement is confusing enough as it is, but at least be educated in what you're buying. If you choose to buy the product even after weighing the pros and cons, that's your prerogative. As they always say, cavet emptor, let the buyer beware!

Early Retirement.

2009-02-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

I've been reading some blogs lately in the hopes to learn tips and tricks on how to be a little more frugal with our own money, especially in light of the fact that my income will be chopped in half for a good part of my mat leave. However, lot of financial/money type blogs out there tend to be a little t0o technical for my tastes. While I commend the fact that people are taking the time to educating themselves and others about how the markets, the economy and investments really work, the time they put into researching the topic tends to boarders on a part-time job. They are passionate (or obsessive, whichever way you want to look at it) about their hobby the same way I am looking for the perfect cloth diaper.

So what I like particularly about this blog is that this guy writes in a matter-of-fact kind of way, in language that most people can follow (plus, it's Canadian, an added bonus for me as it makes it even more relevant). His goal in life is by the age of 45 (he's 31 now) is to retire. He's even recently written a series on an update of his road map to retiring by age 45. It's interesting to see the assumptions and decisions that he's made for his plan.

But whether right or wrong (after all no one can predict what the future will hold, either for the financial markets or what sort of tomfoolery the government will come up with next), he at least has a plan, which is more than most of us have. Keeping a pulse on how much your net worth is and actually coming up with a plan for the short, medium and long term is always good personal financial acumen for anyone, no matter how much or how little you make.

I find it interesting that he's figured to retire at 45 and to live off of the money for the next 30 years, he needed close to $1 million between himself and his wife, and he's already taken into account inflation. I feel that his numbers are conservative at best, but I also feel that it's a reality that most of us have to live with when we retire. I also feel a little more justified as I have had other people scoff at me when I mentioned such a large dollar amount is needed for retirement.

This is why Hubby and I are adamant about not touching our retirement savings for anything (except for a last, last resort, which I hope we will never get to), and that includes for the Home Buyer's Plan and for the Life Long Learning Plan (to pay for a house down payment and for post-secondary education respectively). Once you dip into the retirement savings, any tax-sheltered compounding gains you've earned is lost, and to reach that lofty $1 million goal takes that much longer. But to each their own, everyone's comfort level is different. This is simply our attitudes towards money.

Goodbye Baby!

2009-02-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

No, not the alien in my belly kicking at my bladder. My electric bass. After about 10 years, I've decided to sell my bass? Why? Well, I wanted to pick up the bass and the piano again, but now that plan's pretty much gone out the window with an addition of another warm body in less than 8 weeks!

Since I had bought a fairly expensive electronic weighted keyboard and hauled it all the way back from Calgary last summer, I really should be at least banging on that. Plus, I still remember how to play the piano, the bass, not so much, so the piano won out. Finally, my poor bass was sitting at a friend's place for over a year, untouched, and unloved. I thought it was high time I gave it a better home.

After a lot of reflection, I figured it would be better if I gave my bass a new home, with someone who would use it more than I have the last few years. It was a hard, hard decision to give it up. I love playing the bass, but I had to be realistic: I have no time to pick it up again within the next few years, and no space to really store it. This house will be littered with baby paraphernalia soon enough.

So last week, my friend finally returned my bass, my other friend, who is also an avid bassist, picked it up and brought it to its new home, and I made a few bucks out of the deal (not that I was needing the money). As sensible as my decision was, I can't feel that I've lost a good friend.

Finally, furniture in the baby room!

2009-02-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, we finally picked up furniture for the baby's room. Only it's not for the baby, not really. It's for me. When I'm nursing the baby at 3am. We picked it up today after looking around everywhere! You'll be surprised how expensive a new glider can be, this isn't priced too badly. The brand is also fairly reputable, and it's made in Canada, so I know it'll last a long time.

And to match the chair, a nursing pillow, but in blue with alphabet patterns. If anyone really knows me, I would never buy anything pink, even if I do end up with a girl. Pink is horrid, and I refuse to clad my child in such a vile colour.

And I don't think I've posted this yet, but we got this stroller a few weeks ago. The thing I love about it the most is that it's got the big bad-ass 16"wheels on the back. For about $100 more, you can get a 12" wheel version with aluminum spokes, but I like the 16" one better. It says, "I'm here, now get outta my way!". This thing is not any bigger than most other strollers on the market, and it's only a tiny bit longer, so I don't know why people think it's big. It maneuvers like a dream, and can do very tight turns one-handed, something that the cheaper and "smaller" strollers can't all do.

8 more weeks!

2009-02-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

I won't post too much today, as I had a pretty hellish week at work (more like month), which ended up me crying myself to sleep last night, and waking up in the middle of the night praying and reflecting on things. Nonetheless, I must keep moving forward. I was hoping to take a belly pic tonight, but I'm just not in the mood for it. Happy 32 weeks to me!

I just wanted to post this article about the importance of children's play more so that I don't lose the article than for anything else, although parents out there may find it interesting too.

SGS: Electricity Vampires

2009-02-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, one of my friends and avid readers of this blog mentioned that he's going to learn how to be green from my posts. As this friend of mine is an avid computer geek, I think that this post will be interesting to him.

This article tells you some ways in which you may be using extra electricity and not even realize it. Did you know that such things as the clock on your microwave uses more electricity than you using to heat up food. These sort of Energy Vampires can represent a significant part of your electricity bill, up to 20% in the article posted.

For a while, we had a hot water thermos that was always plugged into the wall. It's a device that you plug in, you put water into it, and it boils and keeps the water hot indefinitely (as long as it's plugged in). Instant hot water when we needed it. We got it as a gift from one of Hubby's friends. Well, within a month or so of using it, I noticed that our Hydro bill shooting up significantly. We finally figured it was the thermos and have kept it unplugged ever since. In fact, we now use a stainless steel kettle on the stove to heat any water we need. It takes some time to get the water heated, but it's well worth it in my mind, and after a while, I don't notice the wait.

Some other things that we have done to lower the Energy Vampires around our house:

Our cell phone chargers are left unplugged unless we need to use them.
We have also identified a number of other adapters which we have unplugged or shut off. The adapters are essentially transformers, and actually suck a bit of electricity whenever it's plugged in and not charging anything.
We had three appliances in our kitchen, right next to each other, which told the time and heat food. We've since unplugged one of the them when not in use, after all, we don't need three clocks.
Except for our PVR, our entertainment centre (TV, DVD player, receiver, etc) gets switched off during the day when we're out of the house.
I actually unplug my work laptop adaptor when I'm not using it at home. No small feat for me as it requires a pregnant woman to crawl under her desk each time she wants to plug and unplug the adaptor.

I'm hoping in the future to arrange all the things that we keep plugged into walls and that are in a standby mode onto a power bar and to turn off the power bars when we are out of the house, or at least somehow get them off the grid when not in use. But baby steps is better than nothing at this point.

Some Green Stuff: Plastics

2009-02-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

One of my original intentions before I got all knocked up was to green myself and my household as much as I could, lighten my "carbon footprint", and somehow be frugal while doing it. And to that end, create a separate green blog to document my thoughts, struggles, frustrations and triumphs. Well, that idea pretty much flew out the window because, frankly, I don't have the time and energy right now, or for the next few years to do so. So I've decided to stick these topics on this blog. I'm naming this series "Some Green Stuff".

Today's topic is plastics. I've been doing a fair bit of reading about plastics. Plastics are everywhere. Plastics are in places where you least expect them. And plastics can be toxic, to both you and the environment.

This article has a good summary of the most common types of plastics out there, what kind of harm it can do to the environment and to your body, and lists some alternatives that you can try out. I'm certain that there are nay-sayers out there who don't believe in this stuff, and that's fine, that's your opinion. However, the evidence is growing that plastics in general are not good.

I will admit that even within my own household, I haven't really taken a lot of steps to reducing my plastic consumption. What steps I have taken, I will blog about at a later date and time. I figured for myself, it will be baby steps, reduce plastic items slowly, one item at a time.

A couple of blogs that I read:

Fake Plastic Fish: I one thing I like about this blog is that the blogger shows all the plastic she encounters in her life. And it's surprising where some of the plastics she finds.

Life Less Plastic: Another person's quest to de-plasticise her life.

A Girl's Life in IT

2009-02-03T21:35:00.000-08:00

I actually work with someone named Doug. Only he's 60. And gay. And you don't want to piss him off. I'd managed to piss him off today. Sigh. He's also not very technically savvy, but more so than many end users that we support.

10 more weeks to go!

2009-01-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

Today I am exactly 30 weeks. I have 10 weeks left to go. I seriously can't wait for this bebe to come out. I never enjoyed being pregnant, and now that I'm getting to the point where I'm supposed to be gaining a bit more weight, I'm definitely feeling like a beached whale, and feeling more uncomfortable by the day. Lying on my stomach seems to be a distant memory. My back and hips are constantly hurting, despite the fact that I see my chiropractor and massage therapist on a regular basis, stretch and try to maintain good posture. I have mild to medium heartburn and acid reflux, which is not a pleasant thing to deal with already. My stomach seems to be sore all the time from all the stretching and growing my baby does.

Life has been quite busy for me. Every weekend (and many days during the week), I'm still trying to figure this whole baby thing out. I still don't complete have my head wrapped around the basics of changing a dirty diaper, and that I mean from the time you take a diaper off to the time you put a new one on. I may be just making things more confusing for myself by over thinking about it. I also don't know how to clothe a baby properly (although I bought a few cute clothing), and it never occurred to me that the you can layer clothing on a baby until a few days ago. I worry that the breastfeeding thing may not work out for me. I pretty much don't know anything!

The baby's been kicking quite a bit, definitely when I want to sleep or if I wake in the middle of the night, but it's doing more karate chops during the day as well. We went to the midwife's today and I asked how big my uterus is. Apparently everything that's sticking out, which is pretty amazing. And the kid's only taking up half the space still, so the rest is filled with amniotic fluid I imagine. I definitely notice sometimes when the kid does somersaults because I feel kicking going around in a circle.

I notice that my appetite has increase, and I want to eat more stuff. I'm trying to stay away from eating junk, but it's really hard sometimes! Never mind the foods that I'm not supposed to eat! I really miss those foods too. There is also a misconception that I should be eating for two. Technically, I only need an extra 300 calories per day, and that really amounts to one or two healthy snacks, not three extra meals. I definitely don't want pregnancy as a license to eat whatever I want and whenever I want. It's not healthy for me or the bebe. Yet my family insists that I'm not eating enough. Sigh.

I get stared at quite a bit at the gym. People wonder if I should still be exercising, and sometimes they ask. Today at my step class, the substitute instructor that I had was 5 months pregnant with her second one, and while she had to take frequent breaks, she was still able to jump around like crazy (I think was able to be as energetic as her when I was 5 months along, not anymore though). I'm also still doing weight training (at a much, much lower intensity and weights) to keep my body strong, and I have to say that I'm probably stronger now because I'm going to the gym more often, than I was even a year ago. Some women in some countries work hard labour in fields up until the time they give birth, I certainly think that my body can withstand a bit of exercise. By the way, I'm still doing Pilates, but that'll probably end by the end of February. I definitely have much less control over my ab muscles as I get bigger. If you watch me trying to do a roll up, it's, well, pretty much comical.

People also tell me the oddest things, and I feel there is so much misconception about the fragility of pregnant women and babies that I almost think people make it up. For instance:

I shouldn't be moving so fast, the jiggling may hurt the baby.
I shouldn't bounce up and down when doing step class or going up stairs, the bouncing motion may hurt the baby.
I normally wear a set of keys around my neck at work, and the key chain is long enough so that the keys constantly hit my tummy. I shouldn't be doing that as that may hurt the baby. You should see how hard the midwife presses her fingers into my tummy when she's checking me out, and that doesn't hurt the baby one bit, so I don't think a bit of tapping against the stomach will affect it in any way.
I've been told that I should stop exercising, I may hurt the baby. This was from someone who doesn't exercise.
My favourite from my 95 year old grandmother: I shouldn't be wearing constricting clothing (I was wearing maternity clothing at the time), I may harm the baby by squeezing it too much: I shouldn't be wearing looser clothing and let everything hang, you know so the baby has more room to move. Gee, I wonder how my baby likes it every time I cough or sneeze, because my stomach muscles squeezes the baby like crazy. I'm definitely not telling her that I still do crunches.

My other biggest headache right now is figuring out my maternity leave. I wanted to give myself the flexibility of returning to work early if I wanted to, but which ended up complicating things. That turned out to be a lot of emails back and forth between myself and the HR lady. I'd managed to corner my boss today so that he can check over my job description, and in his typical fashion, he rearranged, added and chopped the entire thing, which means another edit. I need to submit it soon as HR has go through it's own rigmarole before it's even posted. Hiring at work is at least a 6 week process, if I'm lucky, so I need to get on this pronto!

My other headache is trying to figure out daycare, but that's another post unto itself. Sigh.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-01-27T20:59:00.001-08:00

Okay, I've read a lot of different Pride and Prejudice spin-off/fan fiction/whatever you want to call them. I'm actually not a big fan of Elizabeth Bennet because I find her too self-righteous and annoying, and sadly enough, I'm okay if I read a story where Darcy ends up with a different heroine. That's how much Elizabeth annoys me.

But I simply have to read this book! I don't think I've ever heard of a plot line quite like this, I think it's hilarious! And the book has illustrations too, how awesome is that?!?!

A synopsis can be found here.

Happy Robbie Burns Day!

2009-01-26T20:55:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm one day late technically, but I was super busy yesterday, and had no time to blog! Although he's more famous for writing Auld Lang Syne, I will leave you with my favourite poem by Robbie, To A Louse. If you don't know what a louse is, it's singular for lice. The poem is brilliant, you must read it!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2009-01-26T20:48:00.000-08:00

Today is the beginning of the new Chinese New Year! My sister pointed out that not only is she an Ox, but so is my grandmother (she'll be 96 this year!), and so will the bebe. She was very chuffed when she realised that her niece/nephew will be the same zodiac sign as her. I think if they're so similar, then my sister can babysit lots for me, she'll get along great with the kid. Ha.

I want to hire this guy

2009-01-23T21:38:00.001-08:00

Mordac rules. Someone at work pointed out that our office managers should hire the cow, he's smarter. I agree.

I had a week from hell, and I knew it would be a week from hell, I just didn't anticipate it would turn out to be something that blew up on the server. The person at work who solved the problem can never leave our group or retire. Seriously. He's not supposed to be doing the low level technical stuff any longer, but quite honestly, he revels in it. I've spent many a late night with him in the past. The man is brilliant. He's been promoted to an Architect level, but doing the low level techie stuff is where his passions really is.

Third Trimester!

2009-01-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

So today is the start of my Third Trimester! Yes, I'm finally 28 weeks and can hardly believe that I've made it this far!. I'm starting to get a little heavier, and starting to feel a little more miserable. My back hurts more, and I can never find a comfortable enough of a position to sleep in, although I'm still able to sleep on my back. I'm also back in the routine of stretching before going to bed, I need it to ward off the back pain somehow. The SI joint pain, I've given up on ages ago. I really look forward to my massage therapy and chiropractor visits.

I've caught a cold, and was very unhappy that I wasn't able to take anything for it. Fortunately, I hydrated like crazy and tried to sleep as much as I could, that seemed to do the trick. But this perpetual dry cough that I've had for about a month just won't quite go away. Sigh. I'm still going to my doctor's for my flu shot sometime soon.

I'm definitely huffing and puffing going up stairs. Apparently from this point onwards, I'm going to gain about 1/2 pound a week. I'm really hoping I don't go above 20 lbs, last I weighed myself, I was about 12-13 lbs over my pre-pregnancy weight. I already feel like a beached whale.

Nonetheless, we had moved my due date, I am now due April 9th. But anything can still happen between now and when the bebe decides to finally pop out. A lady at my gym today told me that her second child came about a month early. We still haven't moved out the old furniture from the bedroom, I've hardly bought anything that we need, and I just don't feel ready yet. I'm hoping by this time next month we'd be a little closer to being prepared for this kid.

Frankly, while I'm grudgingly getting used to the changes in my body, it still hasn't hit me yet that I'm going to have a baby. Or that my life is forever going to change. Overall, I still go about doing my own thing, and albeit my life is taken over by planning, doing and buying baby stuff, I still treat it as another hobby, or just another thing to do. And of course, there is that lingering resentment that I'm going to be giving up a lot of my independence for a good long time. Hey, I'm just being honest. I know I am not the only parent-to-be to feel this way.

Yes, I know I'm in for quite a shock.

Cloth Diapers

2009-01-10T21:32:00.000-08:00

In an effort to reduce costs and to be somewhat more environmentally friendly, Hubby and I will be trying to use cloth diapers for the bebe. Today, we went to a diapering clinic to help us understand a bit more about what cloth diapering is all about. I had done a ton of research on cloth diapers, but until we actually held the different ones in our hands, it was hard to conceptualise all the different choices out there.

And there are a lot of different choices! I'm not even going to get into all the differences you can have with diapers, diaper covers, liners, doublers, and inserts. You can read this Cloth Diapering Guide here, and more Diapering 101 info here.

I will tell you that there is a bit of experimentation, and trial and error; that's what I've heard from a lot of people. So that may be a bit of frustration, patience and endurance to go getting it to work. But if I can reuse my diapers, or even have them recycled, biodegrade or reused by someone else, I'm going with this option. Or at least try. I definitely will try not to let the lure of convenience with disposables be my scape goat (by the way, I lot of people also tell me that you need to sometimes experiment with different brands of diapers, and they are notorious for leaking as well).

Will I never use disposables? I'm not naive enough to think that will never happen. But I'm at least willing to give the cloth diapering thing a good college try. Some of my friends have looked at me like I'm crazy when I mention using cloth diapers. Some things I've heard is that "they leak" (so do disposables), or "you'll have to do a lot of washing" (still costs less over time than buying disposable diapers), or "you'll get diaper rash" (you get them more with disposables).

My stance on this is that, like everything else with the baby, you need to figure out how things are going to work, yes it takes time and perseverance, and yes, it's going to be frustrating. However, there are lots of resources online, if you're patient enough to look for them. I've already bookmarked a number of diapering reference sites. And it never hurts to ask people for advice, that is sometimes the best source of information.

Often convenience comes at a heavy price on the environment, and I feel that this compromise isn't good enough for me. So cloth diapers, here I come!

Trying to be greener...

2009-01-04T18:21:00.000-08:00

This is a very familiar symbol to most of us: reduce, reuse, recycle. This is certainly not a new concept; I was taught the 3 R's from an early age. But as we live in an ever-increasing world of instant gratification and disposible materialism, I think many of us (including myself) have forgotten this lesson in favour of getting what you want, now! and convenience.

One of my goals this year is to green my household more. I feel this is a ongoing work-in-progress, because as I do more to green myself, I also learn more. But for the basics, I try to think about the 3 Rs with any product that I use day-to-day:

Reduce

Do I really need to buy this item? Perhaps I can think about buying it, or find a better/cheaper/more environmental option out there.
Does the item really need all that packaging that gets thrown into the garbage right away?

Reuse

Can I reuse this item in a different way?
Can someone else reuse this item after I've been done with it?

Recycle

If you really think about it, everything, and I do mean everything, eventually has an end-of-life: in other words, it will end up being thrown out. So, is there another way the item can reincarnate itself without having to end up in the dump?

This past month it really hit home how much crap we had. We actually threw out, sold, gave away or recycled a good portion of what we had. I normally insist on doing a major purge every year, but Evil Homework took up all of my spare time over the last three years, so we didn't purge and we accumulated stuff. However, with the bebe coming, it really put the purge in a much different perspective, mostly because we really don't have a lot of storage space and we're introducing a third warm body into the house who will be a big magnet for lots of baby stuff.

You'll be surprised at what you can recycle or give away nowadays. Some things that we sold, recycled, or gave away included:

CD-R/CD-RW: we had about 50 or so, and it was really hard finding a place who would take them. Fortunately, Future Shop and Best Buy has bins that will take this stuff
Old electronics, including cell phones
Batteries
Paper (a lot which we shred as it confidential information)
Books: given to the library where they turn around and sell them for a profit. The monies then go back into the library to fund their book circulation supply
DVD/VHS tapes/CDs: also to the library
Clothing: went to the shelter
Older cameras: Hubby sold them on Craigslist. There are still people who like and use film cameras, go figure
Furniture (still yet to be gotten rid of): it will go to a good home as soon as it stops snowing and we can move them out of our house
Computer parts: At one point, we had about 6-7 computers between the two of us, never mind all the miscellaneous computer parts floating around. Most of these have been disassembled, and the parts brought to the recycling depot
Misc electronics, including adapters: to the recycling depot

Don't get me wrong, we are still guilty of throwing things out, we just trying to do less of it. And we will still buy things that are not reusable nor recyclable. We are, after all, the product of this materialistic society that we live in.

It's also getting difficult to figure out what we need for the baby, and what is deemed "nice-to-have", mostly because I've never done this baby thing myself yet. I'm not trying to reduce the number of things just because I'm trying to be more environmentally friendly, it's also easier on the pocketbook as well. I've managed to source out some baby consignment stores around town, and I'm hoping to use Craiglist, UsedVancouver, Kijiji and eBay to keep costs down. But I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't buy things that were frivolous for myself, my household, or for the baby. Trying to figure these things out, especially for the baby, is a hard task, and one way to do so is by doing research and reading what others have to say.

Wish me luck for a greener year!

Happy 2009!

2009-01-01T19:49:00.001-08:00

Happy New Years Everyone!

I normally never make New Year Resolutions, one doesn't always tend to keep them. Instead, I thought I would make a list of things I would like to do. They aren't goals per se, just things I'm hoping to do or look forward to this year.

1. Learn to be a good mummy!

Yes, the kid will be coming sometime early spring, and with that, a lot of adjustments. Over the years, I've learned to be a much more patient person, but I think learning to be a parent will stretch my limits even further. Many people have said so.

I think I will stretch and grow in other ways as well. If you know me well enough, you know that I tend to be a very anal and organised person. I'm a planner. I like to make lists. I like to know that everything is in it's place before I start anything. The kid's going to throw everything in for the loop, I won't have time to plan and organise, much less execute these tasks. Let's just see how much of my old ways I'm going to have to either let go or at least modify.

2. Greening my home

Hubby and I have spent a portion of 2008 greening our household, but we could do better. To learn to be green takes a lot of research: there so much information out there and so many products touting to be "green" that one really needs to sit down and determine for themselves if it's doable for their lifestyle. When I mean green, I mean not just things that we buy and the environment (which are important), but overall lifestyle, the foods that we eat and how we take care of our bodies as well.

Another challenge of course is tied with #1, greening the household with the kid. I've been telling everyone that I'll be trying to use cloth diapers over the disposable ones when the kid comes, and all the responses that I've gotten so far were pretty negative: they either laugh or someone would tell me that they've either tried it themselves or know someone who did, and failed at it. Only one of my co-workers told me that he and his wife successfully used cloth diapers for almost two years with their son. My usual retort is that convenience has a high price and a high toll on the environment, and to do something like this takes time to research, asking people for advice, and lots of perseverance. I have no illusions that this is going to be easy, but I have to at least give it the good old college try.

I've also been thinking for some time about starting my own green blog, separate from this one, but threw in the towel when I found out I was knocked up. It was too much for me to assimilate at once, and to set up a blog like that properly takes a lot of effort and research. I only have energy for one thing right now, and that's the kid. But that doesn't mean I won't be blogging about all things green here.

3. Spend less money

Going on mat leave is a bit worrisome financially. Even though I've been saving like mad, it's a little disconcerting not knowing how much the kid's really going to cost. We'll be going down from two incomes to about 1.25, so it'll have to be an adjustment on our expenses as well as our savings.

The big question a year from now is daycare costs. One of the things that I will need to really get my butt in gear with is signing up for several daycares. Nonetheless, I anticipate that full-time daycare will cost over $1,000! Eeep!

There also a temptation to buy stuff (and less than necessary stuff) for the kid. It's hard to figure out what you need and what you don't need when there are some many more baby and kid products out in the market nowadays.

4. Start re-learning the piano again.

I purposely went out and bought a weighted electronic full-keyboard piano last year and lugged it all the way back from Calgary, so I could re-learn the piano. I really like playing, but it does take a bit of time and discipline to even be passable.

I also made a very tough decision to sell my bass guitar. I love playing the bass, but I've forgotten how to. After some thought, I knew it would be simpler for me to re-learn the piano than the bass (as I still remember the basics and had 10 years of piano lessons), and the kid's not going to give me time for both. I'm still hoping that some time in the future, I will pick up the bass again, but for now the bass has gotta go. A friend of my said that he'd find it a good home for me. Sob.

5. Learn to cook!

This is for the benefit of Hubby, who has been bugging me to learn how to cook for some time now. I was going to start once Evil Homework was finally done, but by the time EV was done, I was about 2 months pregnant and fighting nausea and fatigue, so that went out the window. Here's hoping for a better year for this particular goal.

6. Blog at least once a week.

We'll see how much time the kid lets me blog this upcoming year. I'm still hoping to put something up once a week if possible.

Ringing in the New Year!

2008-12-31T07:42:00.001-08:00

I just realized that FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) turned three years old on Dec 27th. My only excuse is that I've been a tad busy. And tired. And overwhelmed.

Highlights of this year:

May: Going to Rome/Southern UK (pictures are still not up!)
July: Getting knocked up
Aug: Finding out I was knocked up
Sept: Finally finishing my Evil School

This whole baby thing has really taken over my life. So far, we've managed to mostly re-organize the house, purge I would say about one-sixth of what was originally there and clean out most of the baby's room.

There's still some large furniture in the baby's room that needs to be moved out, and we were prevented mainly from the four large snowfalls we had within a span of two weeks! This is the most snow I've seen ever fall on Lotusland! Nonetheless, it doesn't mean we haven't made great headway in the the baby-front. I've been doing a lot of reading on what the baby needs before I go out and buy things like strollers, car-seats, clothing, baby's development, etc.

We did buy a little bit of stuff: a swaddling blanket, two organic cotton onesies and an organic cotton sleep sack. The biggest purchase so far was the Natural Rubber crib mattress. A regular crib mattress costs anywhere from $80-100. This one was significantly more, but we feel it's worth it. Why a Natural Rubber mattress? I'll be answering that question in a later post, but here's something to get you started.

What to look forward to in 2009:

Well, I'm still pregnant, so you'll be hearing a lot about that. A cloth diapering session and prenatal classes are on the calendar
I'm giving birth to a baby! Enough said. Being a mother should be interesting....
We're slowly greening our house. I was going to start up a separate green blog, but then I got knocked up, and quickly realised that maintaining yet another blog won't be feasible.
And other things as they come along...

I am determined to post at least once a week in 2009, even it is only "My baby won't sleep and mummy is sleep-deprived.". But you'll definitely see a bit of a shift with FLIB-ur-teejib-it (n.) next year as I go through my own life changes.

Repeat after me...

2008-12-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

SNOW BELONGS ON MOUNTAINS AND ONLY MOUNTAINS!

So within a week's time, we got about 30cm of snow dumped on us. This is the most snow that I've ever seen fall in Lotusland. Ever.

For those of you who are enamored with snow, you cannot say that love snow only when it's convenient for you. If snow becomes an inconvenience, you still must love it, and can never change your mind about not loving it later on. Or else you become a hypocrite.

I hate snow. Refer to first sentence of this post.

This picture was taken today. The big piles of snow is our front yard, and the trees beyond that is our neighbour's yards. Hubby and my mom spend a fair number of hours this past week just shovelling and shovelling and shovelling and shovelling...

Never mind the stoopid people on the road who are scared, can't drive in the snow, get their cars stuck because they have bald summer tires on or their cars just isn't powerful enough, whatever. People become very selfish when it comes to winter driving around these parts. It's every person, or vehicle, for himself. A passerby told Hubby today that there were actually people down the street from us who were getting into a big fight. While he didn't have full details, we could probably guess that people were getting very frustrated by the snow and not being able to go or get around anyone else.

It will be one of the few Christmases when it's actually a White Christmas, but honestly, white Christmases are so over-rated. Forecast says it should be raining later this weekend. I can't wait for that.

It's a BOY!!!.... Maybe....

2008-12-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, I really don't know the sex of the baby, even though we wanted to find out. Alas, we went to the detailed ultrasound a few weeks too early, and the policy of the ultrasound clinic was that they didn't tell, period, until 20 weeks. I was 17.5 weeks at that point. We were a tad disappointed, but had since gotten over it.

Really, the only real reason I wanted to know was so I could focus on choosing one name instead of two. I'm not a fan of choosing a name that you can change from male to female (eg from William to Willamina). I also want a name that was clearly male or clearly female, and not something androgynous, like Jamie. Not that Jamie, William or Willamina are bad names, but they just not my cup of tea. (We have other criteria too, but I won't get into that right now).

So who has been telling me it's a boy? Well, pretty much everyone. This Chinese Birth Chart, also predicts that it's a boy. I'd conceived in July, so you can guess how old I am.

Here are some other predictions, all by people I know. It's a boy because:

I'm carrying high (whatever that means, when you pat the top of my belly, that's not baby, that all my organs and guts being pushed aside because the baby is taking up all the space in the rest of my belly. In fact, the baby is sitting fairly low)
I'm carrying low
If you look at me from behind, I don't look pregnant
It kicks a lot (I'm not certain if this kid kicks more than average, this is my first time I'm pregnant, and I think it kicks loads!)
I have tons of acne, and in places where I normally never had any. This is my personal favourite prediction. My mother looked at me one day, and declared me to have an ugly face (in Chinese), then proceeded to tell me it was because of my acne. With her years of motherly sage advice, she told me I have acne because I have male hormones running through my body, and If I had a girl, my skin would be clear. (My mother has had only myself and my sister, so of course she would know!) One of my staff also said similar to me. A friend of mine who had a baby this year, had lots of acne, and she ended up with a girl.

I do have some mixed feelings if it is a boy. Growing up, it was just me and my sister. I really don't know what boys do or are interested in: I can't relate. A part of me was hoping to give my kid a copy of Anne of Green Gables: after all, all Canadian girls must read it, it's practically a rite of passage. Boys generally tend to be more of a handful, and generally noisier and less gentle than girls. On the other hand, I hate, hate, hate! with a passion the colour pink, and would simply die if my kid would insist on wearing pink all the time. And boys tend to play the cooler sports and play cars, and not with Barbies.

We'll see in 16.5 more weeks what pops out....

A quick update on moi

2008-12-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

Today I'm 22 weeks (about 5.5 months for those who can't convert quickly). I'm doing well overall. The kid's been kicking up a storm this past week. Hubby finally felt the kid kick the first time last night. Not once, not twice, but several times. The kid has been keeping me from sleeping well, I'm so not used to all that movement in my belly, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep. That I can still sleep on my back helps though.

I'm definitely getting bigger. Both my SI joint hurt now because the weight of the baby against my pelvis, and my feet feel like they're taking a beating. Last weekend, I tried picking up a semi-heavy box, and boy, did my SI joint scream back at me. I guess my hips aren't as wide as I first thought, ha.

In the next few weeks, I will be going in for my glucose test, which diagnoses for Gestational Diabetes. This is one of the things that I'm really worried about. While I feel that I'm a fairly healthy person, I eat pretty well, I exercise about 5 times a week and I try to get as much sleep as possible, I've already started cutting back my sugar intake, which includes pop and juice. I know I can cut back on more, but it's already so frustrating eating already. I've always been a picky eater, but now my food choices are more limited, I feel. Everything's beginning to taste bland, and find that there are times when I don't feel like eating simply because my food choices are getting bland and repetitive. I know that GD isn't selective, and you can do everything right and still get it. And with some (yet again) lifestyle changes, it's possible to keep it under control. It's really something that I'd rather not think about or have to deal with, so hence, this is making me a tad more miserable being pregnant.

We're almost finished cleaning out the baby's room, although you couldn't tell if you saw it, there is a ton of furniture in the room still. My goal is to have this room completely empty before Christmas, save for the baby stuff that's coming in, of course. This weekend, we'll be purchasing a new desk and I'll be moving my office space in with Hubby's. This will be an interesting arrangement, because if there's one thing I've found, Hubby and I don't share office space well.

New Star Trek Movie! EEEEEEEE!

2008-11-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

I know some of you may have seen this trailer already, but I'm putting it up anyways. I CAN'T WAIT for this movie to come out! I think the cast is terrific, but I have no idea who the Kirk actor is. I've seen Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho and Zoe Saldana before, but never even heard of Chris Pine. Apparently, I don't get out often enough any more.

My one beef with this movie is with Paramount. Up until quite recently, I thought that this movie was to be released Christmas 2008, and was all geared up to go and watch opening night. Now I find out it's being released May 8, 2009. I'm going to have a 1-month old baby by then! Boooooo on Paramount! They should have consulted me first!

Chistmas Tree!!

2008-11-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, we bought a tree and put it up, and decorated it. It's hard to see but all the ornaments except for the balls and one Christmas angel (that I friend of mine made for me years ago) are all handmade and bought from a Ten Thousand Villages store. This is the first Christmas tree in probably at least 10 years I've put up, and definitely the first since getting married.

I'm quite a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas. As and adult, all I could see were people getting stressed out, people spending way too much on things that other people didn't particularly liked, and a general expectation of people having to buy gifts for others, etc. Generally, this holiday was getting too materialistic and too wasteful for my tastes.

I mean, how many times you were given something, and while you were taught to be gracious and accepting, deep down inside, you didn't like it, it was going to go into a regift pile, put aside to be forgotten, or eventually, just thrown away (and then in my mind, I cringe at the thought of yet another item going into our landfill). I've been through all these things with my gifts, which is why as a general rule I don't give gifts any longer unless it cash or a gift card, or something that's consumable or recyclable.

However, I'd found myself this year reflecting on my stance on Christmas, and thinking to Christmases past when I was a child. Christmas was fun, magical and wonderous. I don't know if it's the preggo hormones in me, but I was becoming somewhat sentimental, and discovered that I wanted to at least recapture that for the kid, and also teach him/her a little of what Christmas is really about. The practical side of me said that since I had pretty much no ornaments, it would be easier for me and more economical if I bought them this year, and re-engage my tree trimming skills now than a year from now when I have figure all this out and keep an eye open for a crawling baby that was going to threaten to tip the tree over.

I also wanted to be more environmentally friendly with the tree, hence we trudged down to our local garden centre and bought a real tree, one that can be recycled. The ornaments that I'd picked from Ten Thousand Villages, I wanted to make certain that they would last us for a while (we also spent wayyyy more than I was intending, oops!, but it's promoting sustainability for others, which is a good thing). It's not very big (it's probaby not quite 6 feet tall), and it partially blocks the view of the TV, but I love my little tree. I'm starting to get excited about Christmas again.

Halfway!

2008-11-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

I'm 20 weeks today! I have to say that other than the nausea (no actual throwing up thank goodness!) and the SI joint pain, which comes and goes, I've had a relatively smooth pregnancy. Everything looks good so far with bebe, and I haven't had too many other pregnancy symptoms (cross fingers). I still get slightly nauseated in the evenings when I'm tired. I still have some food aversions when I eat (which may be psychological at this point because I was so scare before that some foods would kick the nausea into high gear). But no hemorrhoids (cross fingers), no constipation (cross fingers), and any heartburn I experience is very mild, and typically disappears in an hour or so (cross fingers). I still have upper back pain, but a large part of it I think is because I'm still sitting in front of the computer for many hours of the day, and I can't sleep on my back, so my shoulders are also in the same slumped position as if I was sitting in a chair.

The most uncomfortable thing for me right now is that my belly apparently doesn't like to be confined. Even when wearing my mat pants, which are very comfy, it squeezes my belly just enough so that not only is my belly uncomfortable, but it triggers a weird gagging sensation. If it's not constricting clothing, then it's either the baby shifting or growing that will trigger the gag reflex. I gag several times a day, every day now. Hubby's gotten used to it, but he's still waiting for the day when I actually up-chuck. So not fun.

I'm also starting to feel the baby move. I've probably been able to feel it move for some time. I've been told it's been told that it's either a fluttery feeling or it feels like gas bubbles. The fluttering I've been feeling more of. The gas bubbles, harder to tell, not certain if it's the baby or my body passing gas. Ha. Can't wait for the kid to start kicking me in the ribs.

Anyways, I've started up a baby blog, so if you want to view it, email or message me! I'll post a belly pic up there too!

My new mattress!

2008-11-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

This mattress (not the bed frame or the pillows) finally arrived a few weeks ago after waiting almost four weeks for it. Let me tell you that the moment it arrived, my back was in bliss!

I blame the origins of my current SI joint problems on our old, soft, lumpy mattress. I think sleeping on that thing had put my hips out of alignment. And of course, sleeping on a sloping mattress didn't help my sleep at all.

My mid-and lower back pain have pretty much disappeared, thank goodness! My SI joint problems still persist unfortunately, because now I'm about 5 months along in my pregnancy, and I think the baby's sitting on a nerve or something. Sigh.

For those of you who don't recognize the bed, it's a Tempurpedic Rhapsody. It's somewhat more firmer than the Classic bed. It didn't take me very long to get used to it. Hubby took a bit longer, and even though he feels that his sleep isn't any different, we both have noticed that we don't feel the other move any more, and even hubby has noticed that he sleeps a little deeper now.

My only beef right now is that I'm a back sleeper, and I shouldn't be lying on my back for too long. I've been told that the weight of the baby may cut off some of the circulation to my lower body. But I've still found that I wake up on my back, and hubby's found me lying asleep on my back more than once. Old habits die hard! It's too bad I can't enjoy my bed properly for a few month more. Sigh.

Pregnancy and Exercise

2008-11-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

When I told some people that I fully intend on continuing my regular exercise routine while pregnant (with the blessing of my caregiver of course), they gave me a look of disbelief. I haven't stopped exercising since I had gotten pregnant, and since I didn't even find out that I was pregnant until I was pretty much in my eighth week, I had been exercising for at least half my first trimester.

I'm still doing step class and cardio machines. I'm still doing strength training with machine and free weights. My trainer even has me working out on a Bosu to help me with my balance. I still do core exercises, sit ups, and even Pilate's.

However, the intensity has been brought down quite a bit. For instance, I used to do step class with one riser level under the step. This has been removed because I want to keep my heart rate down. I've also lowered the intensity while I do step. Many of the moves I do in Pilate's have been modified, or eliminated entirely. I'm not trying to increase my strength with the weight training so much so as to just keep what I have now, especially since I've been told I'd need that strength to push the baby out and when I have to lug around a 10lb kid for half the day. And as some have pointed out, the continual exercise is to help me maintain my health and not let it deteriorate. It's not the time for me right now to lose the weight, just to stay healthy.

This article also outlines some benefits and exercising mummy has for the baby. Research has shown that for the babies of moderately exercising mothers:

Infants are less cranky and less likely to have colic.
Infants have less body fat at birth. Some early research suggests that the benefits of lower body fat may translate into a reduction in the incidence of heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.
Children have greater neurodevelopment scores in oral language and motor areas when tested at age five.

Believe it or not, I found exercising helped stave off the nausea, even if was only for an hour or so. I still feel like a lump of lard if I don't regularly exercise. And besides the health benefits to myself and for the baby, I still covet and strive for the bikini body. Hopefully by this time next year....

My thoughts on being pregnant... so far

2008-11-09T08:55:00.000-08:00

For the record, I hate being pregnant.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm happy about having the kid, it's the whole pregnancy thing that I hate. While I know logically that being pregnant is part of the journey of having the kid, in my mind, they are two completely separate events. I wish babies are like sea monkeys: add some water to the eggs and within a few days, out pops a baby. None of this 9 months of incubation in my belly stuff.

Right now, I'm at 18 weeks 3 days (about 4.5 months), firmly entrenched in the beginning part of my second trimester, and I'm probably the least miserable to date. I normally don't like being uncomfortable, even slightly uncomfortable. Being pregnant has made me very uncomfortable. Not only uncomfortable, but incredibly frustrated.

I've always had my own bodily limitations that I've had to learn how to deal with over time. My entire life has revolved around making myself feel more comfortable so I can do things and function normally. But it's my body, and I've accepted that this is how I am, and have learned to work around its limitations. But as someone has put it, my body is not my own any more. For 9 months, it's the baby's. This is the root of my frustration: I can't treat my body as my own any more, and the uncomfortableness is something that I have to more or less put up with.

For instance, I've dealt with back pain for about 3-4 years now. Typically, after I go see my massage therapist (twice a month) or my chiropractor (at least once a month, sometimes more if I have a problem), I need to take a hot bath afterwords to soak away the soreness. This is the only guaranteed way I can feel better, and that includes getting a good night's sleep. I can't take hot baths right now, it's bad for the baby (and may cause a miscarriage, even in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters). So I have to put up with being sore, cranky, and not getting very restful sleep, which again, isn't good for the baby. It's even worse for me as my nausea still kicks in during the evenings if I'm tired enough.

My first taste of misery is what most people call "morning sickness", which is a total misnomer as my sickness reared it's ugly head late in the afternoon or early evening. Because of this, and from other women experiences, I've relabeled it to "pregnancy sickness". Fortunately for me, because my pregnancy sickness hit me late in the day, I was able to still be semi-functional at work, which made this really easy to hide from pretty much everyone at work. It also allowed me to eat enough during the day so that I wouldn't lose too much weight.

Not so fortunate was the feelings and experience of pregnancy sickness. You know when you have the flu, all you can focus on is how absolutely miserable you feel and that you want to throw up and die all the time? That feeling? Yes, that's what it was like for me from about weeks 7-8 to about week 15-16. There is a slight difference though, I ended up feeling absolutely nauseated and hungry at the same time, which was a bizarre feeling for me, and not one that I wish on any one, yet I know a lot of women can relate. During that time, all I was doing was going to work, maybe going to the gym, trying to eat dinner (and failing miserably), then just going to bed. I was so frustrated because I couldn't get anything done in the evening, and I'm a doer, I don't like not getting things done, I feel like a useless doorknob when that happens. And what I need to do still needs to get done, and I get frustrated.

Another victim of my pregnancy sickness was my poor hubby. I'm married to a really great guy who can pull his weight around the house, and who does pretty much all of the cooking right now. It was super hard for him to try to plan on what to cook for dinner since I was pretty much revolted by any form of animal flesh: beef, pork, fish, chicken, etc. There were days when I wouldn't know if I could eat something or not until it was set down before me. While I realised that it was the smell that was putting me off, I thankfully didn't toss my cookies. However, I would get this weird mental block, and I just "knew" that I couldn't eat it. Period. Didn't even have to try. Or the one time hubby made fish for dinner, and I couldn't even physically walk into kitchen, it revolted me so much. Hubby had to eat the whole dinner by himself. I still can't look at pictures of food or watch the Food Network, that's how much turned off from food I am. While the intensity of my nausea has finally subsided, my aversion to certain food stuff have not. I still have great difficulty eating some things like chicken and lamb, and it's so tough on hubby to try to be even more creative with the daily meals. Poor guy.

Then there's the gagging. I'm finding that when the belly is going through even a slight growth spurt, if there is even a little bit of pressure on my belly (aka pregnancy pants), I don't feel like I can breathe properly and causes a short bout of gagging, which, if you ask hubby, sound like I'm going to throw up. Now I'm not blaming the pregnancy pants, they're actually very comfy, and they are actually not that tight on my body; in fact the band around the belly is still a bit loose. It's just that my body does like any sort of pressure or slight feeling of being constricted by clothing: my belly wants to hang free. I'm finding that I'm gagging a lot and have to pull the band on the pants to have it stop and so that I can breathe semi-properly again. Trust me, neither sensation is comfortable.

Now I know I'm luckier than most who have been in my shoes: I haven't actually once thrown up, I was still able to eat some of the time, and I haven't had any real back pain yet (except for my SI joint, but I still think it's the result of a lumpy mattress and not my pregnancy). So all in all, my pregnancy's been better than most.

But that doesn't mean that I have to like being pregnant, nor enjoy not having much control over my own body any longer. I don't like the changes that my body is going through, and that I would have a different body that I would have to get used to all over again after this pregnancy thing is done and over with. I don't want to buy more clothing because my hips and butt has gotten bigger and my boobs have gone up a cup size. I want to have the bikini body still, and there is the constant resentment that I may never achieve that ideal. I am frustrated that I have to pretty much put my regular exercise routine on hold and alter what I do so it's best for the baby. And I live in constant fear of getting stretch marks. Knowing that it's a genetic thing and pretty much the luck of the draw hasn't stopped me from slathering my belly with rich moisturizer cream.

I don't enjoy being tired all the time. Whomever said that your energy returns during the second trimester lies. My energy hasn't returned to pre-pregnancy levels. I'm just not nauseated as much anymore so that I have enough energy to stay awake longer. I find that I still need to go to bed at an earlier time than normal. I constantly have to watch for signs that I'm not overtaxing myself, because I will pay for it later on, usually in the form of overtiredness, which leads to another bout of evening nausea, which leads to me having to go to bed early, and getting frustrated that I got nothing done again.

So yeah, I hate being pregnant.

(Sorry that this is such a negative rant, but I've been holding in these feelings for about 4 months now, and I had to get them out. Disagree with me if you want, but these are my feelings, and don't bother trying to change my mind, people have already tried. I'm determined to be miserable.)

The Great Purge

2008-11-08T17:41:00.000-08:00

The Great Purge is something that we do every year. Typically, we look through every single item (and I do mean every single item), that is in our house and garage and make a decision to either keep it, donate it, recycle it, or throw it out.

The Great Purge is normally done once a year, but we haven't done one in about 3-4 years because all my previous free time was devoted to Evil Homework. If you think that The Great Purge is a mere afternoon's worth of work, you are sadly mistaken. The Great Purge take typically four full afternoons. This time around Saturdays in November have been devoted to The Great Purge.

Because we haven't done a proper purge in a few years, we have a lot of things to get rid of. I'm surprised at the amount of stuff we're getting rid of, especially if you've been to our house before, it ain't that big. Plus the fact that we need to make more room for the bebe, we are being less sentimental and more discriminatory when we make our decisions to keep or purge. Hubby's also managed to find a few things that he thought he'd lost or had thrown out.

So far so go, we're more than halfway through our house, although the piles of stuff is making it difficult to shuffle things around. Next week will be the kitchen, downstairs bathroom and the storage area. But the most difficult part (and this tends to be the most difficult part every time we do this) will actually be our two-drawer filing cabinet. There has been a constant debate in this household as to how much paper records to keep. Hubby wants to keep more, I want to keep less. Nonetheless, this particular part of The Great Purge, can cause marital discord if we don't set ground rules up first. And you'd never thought people would fight over a bunch of pieces of paper.

Anyways, wish us luck. I'm really hoping (crossing fingers) that we'd be done by next weekend, but history has shown that this is rarely the case.

(As a Public Service Announcement, I've found out that Future Shop actually take old CDs in for recycling. This is awesome news because when we went through our pile of media CDs (non-music, computer software CDs), we found about 50 or so that we had to throw out. Anything that we can recycle is better than throwing it in the land fill.)

The REAL reason why I've gone AWOL

2008-11-02T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm hell bent and determined to start blogging again. But first to catch you guys up on what's been happening in my life for the past few months.

April

Wrote up my report for Evil Homework. This was to be the final piece of my schooling for my bachelor's degree.
Handed in report May 1

Second Half May

Went on our Southern England-Rome trip. Yes, I still have post up reviews and pictures of the trip. It will happen. Promise.

June

Found out I failed my big project (aka the report, Evil Homework and three years of my life down the drain).
Talked with my advisor about my options. Was told that I had to do a rewrite.

Rest of June, July, and most of August

Great efforts undertaken to re-write my report.
Handed in report near the end of August. I also had a bit of a minor shock when I handed it in, but will not get into the details as everything ended up working out in the end. But still not happy with how it was handled.

Sometime mid-July

I got knocked up. Yes, here is the real reason why I took a hiatus from blogging. More to come...

August

I'd actually missed my period near the beginning of August, but I tend to be notoriously late, so didn't think much of it. I was under a certain amount of stress and despondency because of Evil Homework, so thought that was the cause of my period being late.
Mid-August, started noticing signs of pregnancy eg I didn't want to eat foods I had no trouble eating before, was tired, feeling sick, my boobs were getting bigger, I peed a lot, etc. I decided not to pee on a stick yet because I knew if I did test positive, I would have immediately stopped focusing on said report, which would not bode well.
Late August: I was just finishing my report. Hubby was a trooper and helped me with the final edits, which was awesome, because I by that time was so nauseous and tired that I'd pretty much stopped focusing on it. Finally handed in report.
August 27th: Finally peed on a stick. It came out positive right away. The box said I would have to wait up to 2 mins to get a result. I think because I was now about 8 weeks along that my hormone levels were pretty high. And thus, my test show positive the moment it hit the right spot on the test.
End of Aug beginning of Sept: Went to Calgary.

September

Finally saw the doctor after coming back from Calgary
Sept 6: Went for a dating ultrasound. Radiologist said that I was 9 weeks, 2 days by then. Also went to a wedding that day, and it was a huge challenge to hide the fact that I was pregnant. Nausea was hitting me big time by the time the main course came around.
Mid-Sept: received noticed that I'd passed Evil Homework and finally have all my credits for graduation. Yay!

Rest of September - October

Other than work and started reading up on baby stuff, mostly slept and felt nauseous. Went to the gym when I could.
Nausea mostly disappeared later in October.

So there you have it. What I've been doing for the last 6 months or so. I decided long before we had even started trying that I wanted to go the midwife route. So far, the experience has been okay, but nothing stellar, but that will be a separate blog post. I'm also looking into cloth diapers and yes, I've been exercising pretty much my entire pregnancy. Also will be separate blog posts going forward.

So far, other than the nausea and the tiredness, it hasn't been a very exciting pregnancy, which I suppose is a good thing. I did injure my right SI joint, and while I know this is sometime common in pregnancies, I don't think the main reason why it was injured was because I was pregnant. It has something to do with a soft, lumpy mattress. Again, another future blog post.

I will be starting up a separate blog for the bebe, so all pictures, including ultrasound and belly pics, will be posted there. I had finally scanned my dating ultrasound picture a while ago, but was too ill and too tired to do more than that.

Going forward, my blog will probably be a lot of ranting, random thoughts and information about being pregnant, having a baby, and being a parent. I'm still hoping that my thoughts will be a little more than just that, but I can only focus on so many things right now.

10 Reasons Not to Talk to Irene

2008-09-10T19:59:00.001-07:00

A co-worker sent this to me. I found this hilarious as my name is Irene. So here's 10 big reasons why you shouldn't talk to me:

And only because I was really curious, I'd managed to find the film trailer. Looks interesting...

Happy Anniversary to Me!

2008-09-01T21:52:00.001-07:00

Today is Hubby and my 6th wedding anniversary. Wow!

So we celebrated by going to watch Tropic Thunder last night. It was an okay movie, and although a satire, not as funny as I thought it was going to be. But the two that I thought shone in the movie were Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise. Robert Downey Jr. was very good, as a direct quote from the movie "I'm a dude pretending to be a dude playing another dude!", which is exactly what he did. The picture shows how much you can transform someone when the makeup job is good. It took me a while to figure out that Tom Cruise was in the movie, I thought he did a really good job with his character (the makeup for both actors helped them keep in character), but I didn't recognise him at first. High acolades from me as I'm not a huge Tom Cruise fan. I give the movie 7 out of 10. It could have been higher, but some of the humour was a little too base for me, in particular the scene where Ben Stiler holds up the head. And that's all I'll say.

Tonight we went out for dinner with a bunch of friends at this trendy restaurant on 17th Ave in Calgary call The Living Room. The restaurant was definitely one of the better restaurants I've ever been too, and although it was a bit pricy, it was really good food. I can understand the price because they used high quality ingredients, and more black truffle than I've ever seen in one meal. I'll post up pictures when we download them. But definitely two thumbs up!

AWOL again

2008-08-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I've gone AWOL again. I really apologise but I felt that I had to ignore some parts of my life for the time being in order to get my Evil Homework done. Evil Homework is done and handed in. While that is a big sigh of relief, I have still yet to pass my project. Apparently, there may be a slight hiccup that may prevent me from passing, but I'm hoping that I will still be able to get the Pass I've been waiting for for three long years and just completely move on with my life.

Coming up soon will be a summary of our London/Rome trip that we took in May, and pictures to follow shortly after that. Plus other things that are happening in my life. More to come this week, I promise!

Corteo!

2008-07-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

This afternoon we went to go see Cirque du Soleil's Corteo. This was by far one of the better tent shows that I've seen. While "O" still remains my favourite out of the five shows I've seen to date, this was really good in it's own right. The acrobatics were certainly different from the other shows I've seen.

My favourite acts where the latter, (shown left), the balloons (that actually is a person attached to the balloons, and not a doll), and the duo acrobatics with the straps. When the woman first came out for the straps act, she had the largest upper arm muscles I have ever seen on a woman, and thought at first that she was on steroids. But as the act progressed, I understood why: she needed tremendous upper body strength, more so then even some of the men in the show. I won't spoil what happened during the act, but it was quite amazing what this duo could do. Those who have seen he show will know what I'm talking of. Awesome show, you definitely should go see it if you have the chance to.

Happy Canada Day!

2008-07-01T20:10:00.001-07:00

Hello fellow readers! I really apologise for not keeping a consistent posting schedule. June was a pretty rough month for me. After coming home from our vacation, I was hit with catching up on work, still working on Evil Homework, getting over jet lag, and healing my ankle that I had twisted right in the middle of the vacation. While that was going on, I somehow managed to come down with a medium-grade fever (it went up to 102F at one point), had a trip to the local ER (and never going back if I can help it), all while trying to get back into my regular routine.

Now I more or less feel like I'm back to the regular routine. As already alluded to, I'm still dealing with Evil Homework, and my back is still killing me because of all this sitting in frot of the computer for 12 hours every day. Including weekends. Sigh.

However, I've been making a better effort to not trying not to ignore the rest of my life. I've seen three movies since coming back: Iron Man (for hubby's birthday), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and KungFu Panda. All very good movies and worth seeing.

Now that we have started the second half of 2008, I am really hoping to get back on the blogging wagon. Some of you had already asked me: WHERE ARE THE VACATION PICTUES?!?! Please note that hubby and I (mostly hubby) had taken over 600 pictures. They are online, but not properly labelled. I esitmate that I'm about 1/8th the way through the process, and considering how busy I am with life, it will take a while. But my goal is to get them completed by end of July. Same with Evil Homework. Wish me luck.

Anyways, have a Happy Canada Day everyone!

London/Rome Vacation - Part 1 - Itinerary

2008-06-04T20:55:00.000-07:00

I really apologise that this post has taken awhile to write. I find that the jet-lag is taking a while to get over. Anyways, here is an itinerary of our trip. My favourite places are marked with a red *

Thur May 15
Fly to London

Friday May 16
Greenwich day trip

Royal Observatory - For those of you who don't know, the Prime Meridian, which Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is measured from, actually goes through London. I, like so many others, had one foot in the Western Hemisphere and one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere
Queen's House
National Maritime Museum *

O2 - Apparently, this is Europe's largest entertainment centre. We wanted to see this place because we've seen it several times on TV shows and we heard so much about it. The place is huge!

Sat May 17
Leeds Castle* - Kent County - Really cool castle

Sunday May 18
Bath day trip

Jane Austen Centre
Pultney Bridge
Fashion Museum and Assembly Rooms * - the museum was cool, but what was really neat was to see the Upper Assembly Rooms as described in Jane Austen's novels
Royal Crescent and the Circus - more interesting architecturally than anything else
Number 1, Royal Crescent
Building of Bath Museum - a mildly interesting museum that describes the architectural development of Bath as a city.

Monday May 19
- Stratford-Upon-Avon day trip - Where Shakespeare was born, lived and buried (if you are going to visit, I suggest you start at Shakespeare's grave and work your way back to Shakespeare's birthplace). Stratford-Upon-Avon is also a pretty town to hang out

- Warwick Castle * - another really cool castle
- Jack the Ripper London Walk * - I've always wanted to go on this walk. It's also a nice way to learn more about London's social history in during the Victorian era, and presented in a way that you wouldn't normally see in a museum or in a history book.

Tuesday May 20
Fly to Rome - Stansted Airport was very nice. RyanAir is really no frills, but you can't beat the price

Wednesday May 21 (also know as the 24 hours of hell)

Roman Forum (Foro Romano) *
Palatine Hill (Monte Palatino) * - This place is massive, but very interesting
Colosseum (Colosseo)
Arch of Constantine
Trajan's Column, Market & Forum - (Colonna, Foro, e Mercati de Traiano)
Mamertine Prison - Where St. Paul and St Peter were imprisoned for a time
Capitoline Hill Square (Campidoglio)
St. Peter In Chains (San Pietro in Vincoli) - Displays the chains that held St. Peter

Thursday May 22

Trevi Fountain
Pantheon
Castel Sant'Angelo
St. Peter's Basilica* (Basilica San Pietro), Dome (Cupola), and Pope's tombs - yes, we climbed up the dome, and we saw dead popes

Friday May 23

National Museum of Rome * (Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo alle Terme)
Baths of Diocletian (Terme di Diocleziano) - No longer Roman Baths, it was converted into a church sometime during it's history
Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna)
Alter of Peace (Ara Pacis)
Capitoline Museum * (Musei Capitolini) - great view of the Roman Forums as well as lots of interesting artifacts

Saturday May 24
Via Appia Antica tour - good stretch of road for biking

Tomb of Cecilia Metella (Mausoleo di Cecilia Metalla)
Circus & Villa of Maxentius (Circo e Villa di Massenzio)
Catacombs of San Callisto *
Domine Quo Vadis Church

- Galleria Doria Pamphilj * - lots of interesting artwork collected by the Doria Pamphilj family. The house is really nice too

Sunday May 25
Ostia Antica * - Ruins of what used to be a major port city near Rome. Our guidebook said the tour would take about 2 hours, we were there for 5 hours, the place is massive. We only left because we were getting really hot and sunburnt.

Monday May 26

Vatican Museum * - my favourite part was actually watching someone do restoration work
Sistine Chapel *

Tuesday May 27
- Fly back to London
- Wallace Collection * - Lots of cool armour and weaponry
- Watched Indiana Jones movie at the O2

Wednesday May 28

Museum in Docklands* - This is a cool place because it shows yet a different perspective of London's history. They also had a Jack the Ripper exhibit. I found it interesting that the opinions of the murders varied somewhat between the exhibit and the London Walk, but still a fascinating look at life in the East End during the Victorian era. The Docklands area is super nice, lots of modern office buildings and flats.
Apsley House - the First Duke of Wellington lived here
London Ghost Walk

Thursday May 29
Fly back to Vancouver!

Pictures and other comments forthcoming! Dave took over 600 pictures, so it may be a while before you see them.

Back home!

2008-05-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

Hubby and I got back home from our vacation yesterday afternoon. We're severely jet-lagged, but we had a fun time. I'll be posting my vacation comments shortly, probably in about 4 parts, including the pictures.

I've spent some of today getting stuff done, and most of today (like about 10 hours worth) catching up on work email. I probably need another couple of hours tomorrow to be really caught up; I need to hit the ground running come Monday when I go back to work.

Although we did have a nice time, there was about a 24 hour period where it was very stressful. In order of appearance, on the first full day in Rome:

It was raining very, very hard, and we were outside most of that day. Think of someone pouring water out of a bucket on your head, that was our day (no joke);
Hubby had his wallet stolen. We spent a lot of time calling Canada to cancel cards and such. Our cell phone bills will be huge;
Someone called me at 2am, on my cell, to tell me that the house alarm on my mom's house was set off, and the alarm company couldn't get a hold of anyone. Lots of panic calls back to North America ensued, again our cell phone bill will be huge. After several calls, I had managed to reach my sister in Seattle. Fortunately, it was a false alarm.
I sprained my ankle and shin muscles. Found out today that I wasn't suppose to walk long distances on it. This happened smack in the middle of my vacation, so naturally, I kept walking long distances; it is vacation after all. I won't be going to my step class for a little while.

Off to Europe!!!

2008-05-15T10:47:00.001-07:00

Yayay! We're going to Europe! I may post, but it'll be highly doubtful that this will happen. Definitely will when I return end of this month or in early June!

Off to Europe!!!

2008-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yayay! We're going to Europe! I may post, but it'll be highly doubtful that this will happen. Definitely will when I return end of this month or in early June!

For all the geeks out there

2008-05-11T20:21:00.001-07:00

Sadly, I want the projector, and I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan.

http://www.nikkor2d2.com/

So here's the scoop....

2008-05-11T19:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, I had promised that I would update my readers as to the status of my school thing once I found out what was going on with it. I've had a very busy and exhausting week, so that was my only excuse, and not a good one at that.

So here's the scoop. I didn't get a pass, but I didn't get a fail either. They (being the committee of people who looks over and grades these reports) didn't feel that there was enough substance in my report to warrant a pass. I had a very long talk with my advisor, and she felt it was partially her fault for trying to push me into finishing too soon. She didn't take into consideration the rest of my life (ie that I work full-time, and that am a manager who needs to work outside of work hours to get things done, and that I have a life outside of all that). To her credit, she was trying to help me finish quickly, there wasn't any malicious intent, just some misjudgment on her part.

So the bottom line is I need to do a major rewrite and add lots more information to the report. She's given me more time, but I really want to get this done by the end of July. She did a lot of brainstorming as to how I could improve my report, so I now have lots of fodder to work with.

In other news: work has been very stressful for me. I had someone leave, and haven't had a chance to replace her properly. The big problem is that this position is needed by a very large project that we are doing at work, and schedules keep slipping, and people keep breathing down my neck to hire someone else. Easier said than done. While that is mostly resolved, it's not completely. Without getting into too many details, there's a lot of pressure of getting this positions filled permanently. Sigh. There are other things going on at work too that is sucking up a lot of my time and attention, so I've been coming home every day last week completely exhausted.

Life: I'm going to Europe in 4 days! These last few days have been very busy with trip planning as well. Even though we've been in London a couple of times already, I'm still amazed at how much stuff there is to do in that city! I did a bit of a search as to what else there is to do and there are a ton of stuff that are not on the top 10 tourist attraction list! What we will be this time around is three out of town trips: Bath, Strafford-Upon-Avon/Warwick Castle and Leeds Castle. As well, we'll be hitting a few of the lesser known sites in London. I'll definitely post a full itinerary and pictures after we come back. But this is why I love London so much, there is always something to do.

Rome was a bit of a challenge to plan out, mostly because I'm not that familiar with it. What I did was print out weekly calendars and listed everything that I wanted to see, and planned out the trip that way. It's a bit of a juggle as there were several things I had to take into consideration, but I won't bore you with the details just yet, they are for a different post. I'll let you know if all my plotting has worked out. Needless to say, we will be doing lots of walking! I really hope that the weather will be good.

We still have some part of the trip that needs planning out (for instance, we still don't have a hotel for the last part of our trip), but things are coming together... I can't wait!

Rest of my life: well, somewhere amongst all the busyness, I need to go to see my chiropractor. Apparently my lower back is slightly out of alignment. My massage therapist caught it last week, but she wasn't able to fix it (the feeling of someone trying to push at your vertebrae is very weird). Part of the problem is that I physically need to be at work to get certain things done, like interviews, so it's been near impossible to go see my chiropractor. I definitely need to see him before I go on my trip, my lower back is warring with my upper back as to which part wants to cause me more pain an misery. Sigh.

Sigh...

2008-05-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

So I had handed in my report on May 1. Although I told people that I was done, there is always a risk that I may need to tweak my report or some other such horrors to be had before I actually pass and get my credits.

My adviser had informed me today that she had to talk to me about my report. It's probably nothing more than I need to flesh out a couple parts of my report, but of course, I'm thinking worse case scenario, so I've been stressed all afternoon. I will find out tomorrow what the status is.

On top of all that, there is still trip planning and work is crazy busy. I need to get a certain amount done before I leave. This isn't a good time for my free time to be eaten up (yet again) with school work. Please just let me pass this thing.

Plus, my massage therapist told me today that my lower back is out of alignment. Which means another trip to the chiropractor, and I don't have time as it is. Stupid body, I'm not suppose to age.

It was also bad enough that I got to listen to our neighbour's dumb-ass kids (who are high school aged) get drunk and high on pot. With about 50 of their friends. And no parents. Two nights in a row. In the middle of the night. Two nights of calling the cops, and two nights of no cops showing up.

Sigh.

Going AWOL

2008-04-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

(You know, I'd always thought that the term meant that the person went crazy. Not completely off the mark with my life right now).

Sorry, I haven't been posting for a while. It's not like I don't have things to say, I always do. However, I'm up to my neck with:
- Schoolwork - Due April 30th, so it's really the home stretch for me, I need to buckle down, focus and bang out a 100+ page report (plus peripherals) by my deadline. Cross your fingers for me!
- Work-work- I'm about 2-3 weeks behind on some of my email, bad me, and it takes me about an hour just to compose my daily to-do list. Sigh. One day I'll be caught up, just not today.
- The rest of my life.

As much as I would like to blog about my musings, honestly, it sometimes take me a hour or more to properly post something up. I can barely keep up with laundry, dishes and cleaning my toilet as it is (no joke). Never mind the fact that we still have trip planning to do.

You will hear more from me at the beginning of May, promise!

Dear Passport Canada

2008-04-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

I will be going on a big European adventure in six weeks time. My passport will be expiring within 6 months by the time I start my grand tour, and thus, being the good citizen that I am, and knowing that it would be easier on me to cross international borders if I had a newly-issued passport rather than an almost expired passport, I am going to renew my passport.

Since January of this year, I have been trying to figure out your extremely complicated, non-explicative, new "simplified" process for renewing my passport. Your rules, I must tell you, are not simple.

First, I am puzzled and dismayed by your new rules for the passport photo. I understand that you need to scan the photo and you need to set it up so that it is easier to scan. However, those rules also ended up making me look like a washed-up bag lady. I also understand that you prefer that people have a neutral expression, in other words, no smiling. In my picture, I look like a pissed-off, washed-up bag lady. I also don't understand how my own dear mother managed to smirk in her photo, and you allowed it through.

Second, your instructions for the Simplified Renewal Form are not explanatory enough. Do I need to have my photo endorsed by a sponsor? Can I use the online form to do the simplified renewal process, or do I still need to bring in my form or mail it to the Passport Office? Do my references need to be passport holders as well?

Third, nowhere on your website did it explain that I could use the online form as part of the simplified renewal process. First of all, your ePass user account creation was horrible. Why would you get people to create a username that they won't remember is beyond me. I think I've already created three different accounts. Next, after somehow going through the entire process of filling in the form online, I had deduced on my own that this wasn't the simplified renewal process. I had just wasted 2 hours of my time. You need to inform people that the online form is the full form. But as it stands, I don't know what time I will save by filling in the online form, I still need to send in the application. I refused to do so as mail has been known to be stolen before, and I am not mailing sensitive information about my identity. My only other option is to stand in a queue, so I might as well just fill the regular form in the first place and saved myself the hassle and frustrations.

Fourth, I went to the closest Passport office, spent $2 on parking, on my day off (which I will waste in a passport lineup, and note, that I needed take this day off because I'm working on a very time-sensitive project), only to be told that they don't process passport applications for people who are travelling within 6 weeks. That would be me. I was also told at that office that I had to go to one of three offices that did process passports immediately for traveling citizens, none which are close, none which are opened on weekends or holidays. However, there is one opened until later in the evening, and that's the one I'll be going to, even if I have to fight traffic and cross a bridge to get there. Because I need to pick it up for fastest receipt, and I really don't have the luxury to take more time off during work hours to fart around in a queue.

So here is my advice on how you can better spend my tax money:

Hire a content writer for your website. I always say if someone has to ask a question about it, your communication was not clear enough. Plus, this person should also be able to lay the content out in a more searchable format.
Hire a usability or process expert to go through your very poor processes, which includes the really hard to use online form. Sure it may cost a lot at the beginning to set up proper processes, but in the long run, it will save you time, and save my tax money for more important spending.
If you are going to turn away passport photos because they do not conform to your guidelines, you should have an on-site service to have the photo retaken, if a sponsor doesn't need to sign the photo (I am assuming this as per my first point above). Trust me, I am willing to pay for less of a hassle.

If you have already implemented the first two points, you are still wasting my money. Fix your problems now.

Signed,
Weed, a disgruntled citizen who pays way to much taxes into an inefficient system.

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!

2008-03-25T21:18:00.001-07:00

Yayayayayayayay!!! It's my birthday again!!! Here's what I did to celebrate my birthday:

Went to the Hart House on Friday for dinner. Went out for Chinese food Monday night for dinner with the parents. Saturday, got my annual birthday hairdo. Check out the purpley! This also freaked out my mum, she couldn't understand why I wasted money dyeing my hair purple. I actually came this close to getting hot pink but I a) hate all things pink and refuse to wear that colour (makeup being the sole exception) and b) found the purple to be a little more subtle, but I was able to keep it fun.

Movie Review: Jumper -- Ug

2008-03-23T20:51:00.001-07:00

Today, Hubby and I went to see Jumper. I will write about why I went to go see this movie in a separate post. However, I'm not even going to write a proper review of this movie because, quite frankly, this movie stank. Big time. At the time of writing this blog post, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 16%. If you want to read a synopsis, check out Wikipedia.

I know that the main weakness was the script. The premise was interesting, but the execution was lousy. They needed to develop the whole concept of jumping further; instead, we're left to piece together how jumping may work through side comments and events in the movie. Not a bad way of doing things per se, but it lacked any organization and cohesion in the movie, and I was left with more questions and a feeling of dissatisfaction. I would have liked to see a little more of the history of the Palidins more, it would have at least made me understand their motivation better.

I certainly didn't feel any sympathy for the main character in the story, nor did I care either way for the "bad guys". All the relationships between the characters were very poorly scripted out. It's such a shame because there were some great actors, like Jamie Bell, who performed spectacularly in Nicholas Nickleby, and whose acting I really admire.

I'm still sitting on the fence about Hayden Christensen. The only other movie I've seen him in were the Star Wars movies. Hayden, in my opinion, can't act. He delivers his lines with a monotone voice, and always seem like an emotionless block of wood; he is part of the reason why I feel nothing but apathy for the main character. Most of the other actors, as bad as the movie was, at least put in a passable amount of acting. I even felt more for the Young David Rice than the Adult David Rice, because I felt the young actor did a better job than Hayden. I'm hoping that Hayden will improve in his other movies, but frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

I give this 3 out of 10, and it only even deserved such a high rating because, as a friend of mine who saw it said, "The movie was lousy, but the scenery was great!"

Update on me....

2008-03-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy. Busy being sick that is. The last few day I've been preoccupied with hacking up a lung. I think that there's a nasty flu bug that's been going around, and it was my turn to get it. I've called in sick two days in a row. It's rare that I even call in sick, never mind two day. And last week, I was also not feeling too swell either, I had to leave work early. I think I've been fighting the flu bug for a while now.

Work. Work is... busy. It's tough being a manager. I don't mind juggling 10 billion things. It's the people factor that I'm scratching my head on. Mainly, those who work under me. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, they do a good job. But there's something... lacking. I don't know if it's me, or the people I work with, if it's my style of management, or their style (or lack of it) of doing the job well, or a combination of everything. The project manager tends to measure how well a project is doing by the "nag factor". I seem to be nagging a lot with okay results, but I feel many times that I'm herding children along. This managing people business is hard. However, I will be getting my raise shortly. My manager actually asked me what I wanted. I had to think about it. (Okay, I did say 1 Billion Dollars, and he laughed and cried at the same time).

School. Less than two months to go. And the less said on that subject, the better. Sigh.

What's been occupying a great deal of my time is planning our trip to Roma! Yay! We almost have everything booked. I'll leave the actual planning of the trip itinerary until after May Day. Since we're also going to be spending a few days in London, I've picked up Frommer's Best Day Trips from London. I really want to go back to Bath, but there's a few other interesting side trips I would like to take as well.

I've just gotten my Visa bill for part of our trip purchases for flights and hotels, and yikes! But this will probably be our last kick of Europe for a long while, so might as well spend the money while we can.

Going back to hack up my other lung...

Geeks!!!

2008-03-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

Today I went to this Microsoft bru-ha-ha event. Cheesy marketing, MS propaganda everywhere, but the best part: being in a room with 14,000 other geeks with bad haircuts and questionable fashion sense. Sadly, not unlike the picture posted here.

Well, I was somewhat interested in what they had to say in their new product offerings, and while I picked up on a few interesting points, it on the whole was not too thrilling. Of course I go for the free lunch (it was meh) and the shwag, but they make you sit through most of the session--pounding your every auditory and visual nerve endings with how wonderful Microsoft's products are, and how they can completely change your life around--before they give you your bag of goodies. Sadly, a string of emails about Tiramisu--that was being sent amongst my colleagues through the day--that I was reading on my Crackberry was equally as riveting, if not even more so...

To be fair to them, they are trying to sell a product, and have to do a credible job to suck us in. And because we're an MS shop, we'll be using those products. Eventually.

(BTW, Bill's the guy in the bottom row, far left with the blue shirt. His eyes are really crooked!)

Garfield Minus Garfield

2008-03-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

Someone on my chatboard had posted this site for our amusement. This is the funniest thing ever! The Garfield comic strip, with Garfield take out. Who knew Jon could be so funny!

Garfield Minus Garfield

KOOKY: Mountains!

2008-03-02T21:03:00.001-08:00

I thought I'd share this with you. I took this picture on Feb 21st, on my way back to my office from a meeting I had across campus. The gardens in the picture are the Rose Gardens, and while it's difficult to see in the picture, I saw green flowers shooting up in the soil, so Spring is slowly making it's way here.

I actually can see bits of mountains on campus on a good day, and that day it was glorious!

Shamrock Shakes are back!

2008-03-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

One of my fondest memories of my childhood is having a McDonald's Shamrock Shake. I loved Shamrock Shakes because they are made with the magic of 1000 leprechauns and kissed with Irish luck.

Just kidding. I think the main reason why I liked the minty goodness was mainly because they were only around for a short time (usually around St. Patrick's Day) and then they would disappear, never to be seen again until the next year. But I think there may be some leprechaun magic blended in as I was drawn to it quite often.

Imagine my surprise then when I found out that they were re-introducing them after not a hair to be seen for so many years. Last Tuesday was the first day of their introduction back in the mortal realm. I, of course, made a beeline to the closest McDonald's at lunch time. Here's what happened:

Me: Walks into the restaurant, and noted that there were no advertisements or pictures of any Shamrock Shakes. Confused, I asked the cashier.

Me: Excuse me, but do you have any shakes?

McD: Yes, we have Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry

Me: Do you have any Shamrock Shakes?

McD: What?

Me: Shamrock Shakes (says this very slowly). You know, the green one.

McD (looking very confused): No. We have Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry only. No green one. (Way to go McDonald's for informing your staff!)

Me (very disappointed and trying to figure out what I wanted to eat): Well, I'll have...

McD (looking at her screen): Wait. Sham-rock Shakes. Yes, I think we have them. (Now turns to her superior, whom looks like a Junior Manager). Hey Junior, do we have the Shamrock Shakes?

Junior: What?

McD: You know, the green one?

Junior (walks over to the area where the shakes are located): No. Wait, yes, we have some left.

Some left? You weren't even suppose to have any before today, so how could you have some left? Anyways, to make a long story short, I don't think they were prepared for the onslaught of Shamrock Shake fans (ie me!). My shake turned out too sweet and too watery, and nothing how I'd expected it to be. It definitely was the first one out of the machine.

Very disappointing.

I, however, was rewarded on Friday. One of my staff happened to make a trip to McDonald's so I asked her to bring me back another Shamrock Shake. After one sip of that baby and I was in minty heaven once again. Yum!

Air Poo

2008-02-18T18:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know if this is a hoax or if it's real, but it's an interesting concept nonetheless. The Mac Air won't ever be the same again....

Air Poo

This is wrong in so many ways...

2008-02-15T18:41:00.000-08:00

A co-worker sent the linked article below around today. I am flabbergasted. Two things that jumped out after I read it:

The last time I'd checked, exchanging money for sex is considered to be prostitution
Why the heck wasn't the guy wearing a condom? Do people really not care about getting sexually transmitted diseases? Apparently not.

Click here to be just as horrified. Trust me, it gets better...

Music

2008-02-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

I've been finding that my taste in music has been tending towards Alternative/Indie/Rock. To this end, I've been listening to a local station that plays more of this genre of music. The one I could find locally is Evolution 107.9, which is actually a student-run radio station. The students are part of the radio & television broadcasting program at a poly-technical school in town. Let me tell you that I don't tune in for the witty banter. However, I've hear some great music, and some great bands, who, for whatever reason, don't get very much, if any, air time on most other local stations.

However, I feel that there is also a lot of good music that comes out from Europe, and after a bit of searching, I found this London station that plays the same genre of music. The interesting thing is since I'm 8 hours behind London, I hear their late afternoon, evening and late night programming. There is one particular late night segment that features interviews with groups or artists who just so happen to be in London. It's really cool because I get to hear music that I wouldn't normally get to hear. Some of these people have such a small following that I'd doubt the music even gets heard outside of the UK.

Anyways, I've recently become a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, a band from the UK. Here they are performing Teddy Pickers:

Happy Chinese New Year!

2008-02-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone! It's the Year of the Rat, and it's my year!

Here's some stuff I found out about Rats, with my comments in italics:

Years
1912, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020

Rat personality traits
People born in the Year of the Rat are one of the most industrious and hardest working in the zodiac. [That's me!]

Forever busy in pursuit of an ambitious personal goal, at times they may become difficult to work with since they are born perfectionists. [Yup, I'm a perfectionist!] Rats must ensure that every "i" is dotted before completing an assigned task. As a result, they are often successful financially, and are good providers for their family and those they cherish most dearly.

Loyal and loving, Rat people inspire loyalty in others who are close to them. They are essentially honest individuals and loath to betray a confidence. However, their quick wit and restlessness [yes and yes!] can sometimes lead to chattiness, and they can often be relied upon at large social gatherings for a good story or a juicy bit of gossip. [I love gossip!]

Their energy levels and expert organizational talents are such that it is a rare thing to see a Rat person sitting idly by with nothing to do. [Yes, I need to be organized, and I hate sitting around doing nothing!]

They may even sometimes be viewed as opportunists who cajole others into helping them accomplish a great ambition. In their careers, Rat people can find much success as business leaders or politicians.

Rats are most compatible with : Dragon, Monkey, Ox

Famous people born in the Year of the Rat : Charlotte Bronte, Truman Capote, Catherine I, Prince Charles, Sasha Cohen, Eminem, Peter the Great, Mata Hari, Scarlett Johansson, Wolfgang Mozart, Plato, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, George Washington

[Source]

KOOKY: So not amused

2008-02-05T21:51:00.000-08:00

This really gives me the rage!

Another UBC threat has put RCMP on alert

Book Review: Stardust

2008-02-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

After watching the movie Stardust, I was compelled to read the book on which the movie was based on. Neil Gaiman, from the extras that were on the DVD, came up with the premise of the novel one day while travelling in Ireland. He saw a wall with a hole in it, and began thinking what would be on the other side of that wall... and the land of Faerie was born.

I really like Gaiman's style of writing. The narration flows quite easily, and the worlds of Faerie and Wall are developed through his descriptions and dialogue, warmth and humour. It's an easy read, and it reads like a fairy tale. In fact, if you took out the three or so not-so-suitable-for-children references, you definitely can read this to a child, although, it is clearly an adult-fairy tale. I definitely could imagine everything in my mind while reading Gaiman's prose, even if the images rendered were from the movie, for the most part.

I won't explain the plot, but you can read it on Wikipedia if you're curious. But I have to say that looking for a fallen star (in the form of an adult woman) was certainly a very interesting and fresh premise, and that helped make this story unique. Well unique to me as my exposure to fantasy novels are almost nil. In any case, I don't think I've ever run across a premise like this in either books or film.

There are some similarities and differences between the book and the movie, but I don't know if I really could say if I preferred one over the other. I do feel that both the book and the movie can stand on its own. The movie has a Hollywood bent, and that is very apparent when compared to the book, but both have their own charms. The adventures that Tristan and Yvaine experience in the book were very different, but this allowed for a better and satisfactory plot development and the eventual blossoming of their relationship. Lilim (the witch), doesn't die at the end, but neither can she touch Yvaine's heart, because Yvaine had given it to Tristan by that point; it's no longer Lilim's (or anyone else's) to take as Tristan now owns the heart. Very clever.

I liked Tristan and Yvaine just as much in the book. There were also some characters in the book that didn't show up in the movie, but this is typical of most movie adaptations. And even though some of the character portrayal were different from the movie, I was satisfied with the different fates of the characters. I was sad in the end though, because Tristan, being mortal, does die, and Yvaine, unable to return to the sky, is left all alone. Babylon Candles aren't able to solve Yvaine's dilemma this time around, but I still liked the ending, because life isn't always fair, which makes it believable.

But still, Gaiman has made a fan of me. Two thumbs up!

A little spoof I found, for your entertainment...

KOOKY: Some excitement today...

2008-01-30T21:43:00.000-08:00

Police evacuate UBC building after lockdown

Not certain what happened yet, and although I was concerned for other people's lives -- and fortunately I heard that no one was hurt -- I was dealing with putting out my own fires and was more preoccupied with that.

Mansfield Park -- wha?

2008-01-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, where to start? I normally try to view adaptations with an objective eye, after all, most film versions are never true copies, just (hopefully) faithful representations. Plus, many times, people have never even read the book, so hopefully there is enough to whet people's appetites and actually induce them to pick up the written original.

I won't even go into what a train wreck this adaptation was, or I'd be going on forever, and I'd rather let other people do the work. You can read a well written opinion here (the title's pretty apt).

Okay, my attempts at finding something positive about this adaptation:

Tom is a scoundrel, as he should be
Mr. Rushworth is stupid, as he should be
The pug was cute
Edmund was how I pictured him: a geeky looking clergyman
It was nice when they showed the moment when Edmund finally realised that he was in love with Fanny (but the stuff after that was horrid)

Did I say that the pug was cute?

But as I am sadly obsessed, I've already put in an order for my DVD. Sigh. Onwards...