Be careful what you wish for.../kid update

So far this "Suck-vember" has been flying by...I'm so busy I feel like I don't know what's what. It's a good thing though, as Martha would say.

The Seth-meister is pulling up on everything now...he is just SUPER proud of himself, it's so cute. James and I always say that Seth "really thinks he's somethin' somethin'". Which he *is*, of course, but it's always better to keep that ego at a reasonable level.

Emmett is really getting better at telling us what he wants, and he's not afraid to try and "trick" you to get it. For example:

Emmett: Yogurt?
Me: No, you've had enough yogurt today...how about an apple?
Emmett: (Thoughtfully) Apple....aaaaaaaaaaand yogurt!

Because hey, maybe mom won't remember she said no to yogurt five seconds ago. It could happen!

We've also started having him do some chores around the house...we get him to help pick up his toys, and he's sort of getting the hang of setting the table (which consists of everything just sort of getting plopped on one spot because he's still too short to really see over the table, but he gets an A+ for effort!). He even put his own laundry away yesterday (after much tears and complaint, according to James!).

He's also started talking about his feelings, which is SO huge for him...the other day he came up to me and said "Mommy, I SO HAPPY!" Talk about a heart melter! He is talking a lot about Christmas as well...he's loving all the Christmas decorations in stores. DO NOT bring up Santa though...Santa is a creepy, evil old man and not all the presents in the world could persuade Emmett otherwise. We went to the holiday light up downtown, and even though we were approximately 300 feet away from Santa that was NOT far enough. It's kind of weird, but at least it gives me a great opportunity to focus on teaching him the real meaning of Christmas instead. I'm going to try and find an unbreakable nativity set that we can play with together...I think he's old enough this year to grasp the basics of the story.

This just in...

Parenting little kids is hard. They don't sleep when you want them to (and they're too little to be left to their own devices when awake so YOU can finally get some sleep), they make messes faster than you can clean them up, and going anywhere with them involves so much packing and planning you sometimes wonder if you're actually going on a week long trip rather than just running a couple of errands.

Case in point: my oldest is a FANTASTIC shopper. You could run errands all day with him and he'd be happy as a clam. My 9 month old, however, can't stand more than about 20 minutes in a shopping cart. Going to more than one store at a time is absolutely out of the question. The longest I'm ever out with him is for the weekly grocery shopping trip. I'm always very prepared...I always go right after nap, feed him first, bring toys and have a detailed list organized by section of the store. Still, by the time I hit produce a certain someone is throwing himself back in the cart in true "drama llama" fashion and sobbing like his whole world is ending. Usually while I'm bagging up the groceries Emmett finally gets sick of his brother's shenanigans and starts punching him in the face. Oh yeah, I'm sure Superstore just loooooooooves it when we show up.

Yesterday I had to do a HUGE shop (I'm putting on my big lunch this Saturday and had to buy all that stuff as well as our groceries), so I brought James with me and put Sethers in the sling my sis in law gave me (thanks Brit!)...this solved the cart conundrum (all he really wants is to be held while we shop, but good luck doing that while pushing a full cart with a 33 lb preschooler in it), but I was so weighed down by the chubster I could barely pick things off the shelf. And today my shoulders are killing me...I can't win! I guess I'm going to have to add grocery shopping to the list of stuff that has to wait until James gets home to help me. Seth, you are about to be banned from Superstore.

Sorry this is so long and ranty, I'm running on way too little sleep and just having one of those "baby for sale" mornings. I really do love my kidlets (and tell them so everyday), I just need a hot bath and a 3 hour nap. Neither of those things appear to be forthcoming, so a ranty blog entry will have to do. ;)

Suck-vember

Well, it's that time of year again...the pumpkins are slowly rotting on their doorsteps, my jeans are tight following a major Halloween week (yes, I said week) candy binge, and Christmas is still like 7 weeks away. November just sort of sucks any way you look at it...I mean, there's Rememberance Day, but that's not really in the category of Fun Festivities, now is it? I'm sure all of the stores are in full on Christmas mode, but I know if it I start getting into the holiday spirit now I'll be fully burnt out a full week before Christmas actually arrives. I always feel like I'm just trying to get through November so the good stuff can start.

I'm changing my strategy this year...I'm going to cram November so full of stuff I won't even notice it flying by (I hope). Looking at the calendar, my strategy looks promising. This week we've got to deal with the flu shot fiasco (whenever they decide to open up the clinics again), then next week I'm putting on lunch for 50 at a church thing (if you're going to quarterly enrichment...hope you like chili! ;)). After that I'm planning a hawaiian luau themed preschool activity, and somewhere in all of that will be Christmas on the Square - fireworks and the big Turning on of Downtown Christmas Lights. Doing this in November totally goes against my policy of no Christmas until December 1, but Mayor Mandel isn't taking my calls. So, I'll have to once again make an exception.

Also on the docket this month...finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I'm right in the thick of it right now...sorry Langstons, I broke down and borrowed a copy from the library!), do some knitting, finish my Christmas shopping (oh yeah, that's right, I said FINISH) and hopefully sneak a date night in with James, too. Anyone feel like babysitting? ;)

My New Toy

I mentioned awhile ago that I love indexing and all things history related in general. When it comes to doing my own family history, I haven't done much. Most of my dad's line is done, and my mom and grandma are working on my mom's line. So, I decided a couple of years ago to start working on James' family tree...armed only with a few names, dates and places written in his baby book, I set off to see what I could find. I found his great grandmother on a census from 1911, but I didn't get any further than that. Well, on Monday night I decided to try again - ancestry.ca has a 2 week free trial so I signed up and started searching names.

That great grandmother I couldn't find anymore information about...I found her marriage certificate! Her name was slightly different, which is probably why I couldn't find her before. Anyways, I noticed that someone had a family tree connected to James' great grandfather - lo and behold, someone has done a TON of family history work on one of James' lines! Not only did I find lots of full names, dates, and places, I found pictures too! I have pictures going 5 generations back, but this one was my favorite - this guy's name was also James Johnson, and I think he was James' great great uncle:

The first time I saw this picture I thought "Hey look, someone put my husband in old timey clothes!" The face shape, nose, stature...clearly James is a Johnson through and through!

So, I've officially got the bug now...all of my precious TV time has been cut out in favour of going through this public family tree and recording every bit of information I can. I've found a lot of info but there is so much more to do!

Stuff I Waste Time On!

Here's a bunch of my favorite blogs:

http://www.lovelylisting.com/

Lovely Listing has all sorts of interesting/creepy/weird/eye bleed inducingly ugly photos from real estate listings. People have some weeeeeeeeird houses. Like this one:





Yep, that's an aquarium floor. I'm pretty sure this is James' dream home. Well, we ARE saving up our downpayment right now...quick, what's 5% of 29 million?













And then there's Cake Wrecks:

http://www.cakewrecks.com/

Like cakes with obvious spelling errors? Cakes with instructions like "I want sprinkles" written out? Cakes with random, unexplained piles of dog poo icing? Cake Wrecks is the place to go. One of my personal favorites:








Now really, how could you NOT have a happle birthday with a cake like this? Man, I can't wait until I'm fithy years. plus Nine...that's gonna be awesome.





This next one comes with an assignment:

http://www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

No picture, but see if you can find the one of the nude couple posing with their very annoyed looking cats. Don't worry, the cats are covering all of the essentials...I want the back story on that one, bad.

And a couple for the members reading:

http://www.whatmormonslike.blogspot.com/

This guy hasn't updated for awhile, but this blog is well worth a read through...hee-larious!

http://www.overheardintheward.com/

Lots of funny stuff heard at church - not surprisingly a good chunk of it comes from sunbeam classes. This one's my favorite:

Mom: How was Primary today?
Son: Good.
Mom: What did you do?
Son: Well, they told us Jesus was coming but he never showed up… so we just colored.

And finally...

http://www.sexypeople-blog.com/

I'm not brave enough to scan my grade 7 picture, but believe me, they'd post it.

My Office has "Es-ploded"

It's been teething hell-week for poor Mr. Seth...he's cut 3 top teeth in the last 7 days, and #4 isn't far behind. Little man and I were up at 4am this morning, so I thought I would get some much needed paperwork done while he was distracted with his "baby genius" DVD and we waited for the baby Tylenol to kick in.

About an hour later, piles of various papers all around me, I gave up. Half the stuff I needed was buried who knows where. I'm normally an organized person - I seem to do well everywhere else in the house but papers just pile up like crazy. For the past year or so whenever I'd have to hunt for something I would swear up and down that I was going to straighten this mess out Once. And. For. All. Then I'd find what I needed, and that plan promptly went out the window.

No more...I'm gonna get me wunna them there offices in a box today, and then the Great Office Organziation of '09 is ON. Seems like the only solution now that my desk file drawer only opens half way and my hanging file folders have literally fallen apart. It's like an ancient ruin of what was once a great filing system, pre-children. Now Emmett plays mailman with said broken drawer (if James or I ask the other if we've seen some small item, the first reply is usually "check the mailbox"...and at least half the time, we're right) and one of the Seth's favorite pasttimes is tipping over my office garbage can and diving head first into the balled up paper and candy wrappers.

The real heart of the problem is we have just plain run out of space. We live in a basement apartment, which by anyone's basement apartment standards is pretty nice and very liveable, but even as a rather minimalist family of 4 we are really crammed in here. Our christmas decorations live in the boys' closet, along with kid clothes of every season and size (properly boxed and labelled...go me!). James' tools are hanging out in the pantry. My griddle is hanging off a coat hanger on a pipe in the laundry room. My mother in law gave us their wok yesterday and I honestly haven't the faintest idea of where it's going to live.

A basement, a basement, my kindgom for a basement! (That we, uh, don't have to live in too.) Hopefully we'll be buying our first place next spring/summer...then my office in a box can get to know its friends Christmas Tree and 0-3 month Boy's Sleepers better in a cozy dark little corner far away from my line of sight. ;)

I want chicken, I want liver...or maybe just some tofurkey.

I caught a bit of The View today as I was folding Mt. Washmore (aka a long weekend's worth of laundry for a family of 4) - Alicia Silverstone was on promoting some new vegan diet book she's putting out. She spoke about how "nasty" foods like meat and dairy are "unkind" and make you feel bad. Ok, I can be on board with that...downing tons of meat and dairy probably isn't the best for you. There is definitely something to be said for a (mostly) plant based diet, and if someone feels the need to be vegetarian or vegan, I can totally respect that. I could go veggie, but avoiding anywhere that bacon was being fried up would be tantamount to my success. I don't think I could handle vegan (if my life had a subtitle it would be "A Life Without Cheese isn't a Life Worth Living"), but to each their own, right?

But you know what part really stuck with me? Alicia Silverstone's DOG is vegan too. The thought of a vegan dog manages to both amuse and annoy me simulateously. Some argue that humans aren't meant to consume animal products, and while I don't agree, I can accept that argument. But dogs? What exactly does Ms. Silverstone think her dog would be eating if left to its own devices? Perhaps she imagines it would hit Trader Joe's and Whole Foods begging for kelp "meat"balls (kelpballs?) like that scene in Lady and the Tramp. Come on...has Hollywood really reached the point that even naturally carnivorus animals can't enjoy a little Iams the way nature intended?

As The View's co-hosts ooh and aahed over the guacamole (vegan cheese and sour cream, natch) and aformentioned kelpballs, one mentioned her sister and five kids...where were they to find the super special calcium rich seaweed used in the kelpball dish? "Oh", Alicia replied "you could order it online, or just pick it up at (insert overpriced specialty hippie store of your choosing here)." Yep, I can just see it now...Joe Six Pack driving right on past Wal-Mart to the local hipster hangout to pick up the kids' favorite vegan cheese-whiz. It's just not dinner without it, you know?

It's a personal pet peeve of mine to see celebs hawking the latest "miracle diet" calling for weird, inexpensive, hard to find ingredients and insisting that evvvvvvvvvvvvvvverybody would just feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel so much better it they only tried it! Tell that to the majority of people out there whose monthly grocery budget would be busted after one trip to the store.

/End Rant

On a completely unrelated subject, Em had his first trip to the dentist today...we've been reading Just Going to the Dentist (Oh how I love Mercer Mayer!!) all week and talking about how the dentist was going to look at his teeth with a mirror on a stick, which he seemed to think was moderately cool. Still, Emmett is Emmett, and things went about as well as could be expected. The dentist said Emmett was the first kid he's ever seen that could cry and scream with his mouth closed...LOL, classic Em! The new dental hygenist there also spoke and acted exactly like Kelly from The Office, which was highly amusing. She was great though, super gentle. Hopefully Em's a little more cooperative next year, otherwise we may have to talk alternative measures - maybe The Big Book of British Smiles and then "hold still while I gas you!!" ;)