Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'm a slacker...

I wish I could blame my blog silence on being extremely busy, but I think the truth is that I've been pretty lazy about writing. I keep composing blog entries in my head, but when it comes to actually typing them in, I tend to lose focus and start surfing for new blogs to read and get addicted to. One of the problems is that I rarely have long stretches of uninterrupted time, as Bunny naps are getting shorter and shorter and less frequent... It took me two days to compose this post...

On the good news front:
I am very impressed with the power company. Monday night, when BR woke us up for her 2AM feeding, we noticed we had no power. Then we noticed a pikc-up truck idling on our strret in front of our house. Turns out the storm that night had broken a branch of one of our poplars, which most likely did some damage to the power lines, taking out power on the whole street. By 6AM it was all fixed and back to normal. I suspect no one actually called them to report the outage, since it happened in the middle of the night, so I am very impressed with the speed of the detection/diagnosis/fix of the problem. Just a few years ago it would have taken them a few days to get this all sorted out!

Also good news: BR cut her first tooth without too much fuss. She's been fighting a cold all week, which makes her a little less smiley than usual, but she certainly hasn't been complaining much, or crying, or having problems sleeping. I'm thanking my lucky stars. I knew her teeth were going to come early, as she's been drooling profusely for quite a while, and MIL had warned me that all three of her kids got their first tooth at 4 months. Now as long as I can convince her to not chomp down at feeding time, all is good :)

Lastly, I am so glad I decided to give Google reader a try. Combined with high speed internet, it turned the 45 minutes it used to take me to catch up on the blogs I follow into a 5-10 minute update in the morning. Now I keep adding new blogs to follow :)

In other news, we're flying to Poland in less than a week. I'm driving to Montreal with BR, and then we're flying KLM to Schiphol, and on to Warsaw. I am so glad my Mom is coming with us, I don't think I would want to do the trip on my own. I've been slowly packing for weeks, and I'm beginning to feel like I'm almost set. Just a few last minute details to take care of. Which is good, because we have a busy weekend coming up, with not one but two birthday parties to attend, so not much packing or trip planning will be happening then.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Mother's day weekend

And what a busy weekend this was. I had a dentist appointment, a birthday party for a 1 year old son of friends, and a trip to Montreal with the Bunny Rabbit. All went well, but I am a bit exhausted.

A few things worth noting though. Don't have much time, so I'll just do a bullet-form list.

The good:
  • BR laughing out loud for several people. She thought my Mom's friend E was hilarious when she was telling her what a beautiful baby she was (laughing mostly at how she said it, not what she said I'm sure). She found my sister's boyfriend's smile just unbelievably funny, laughing loudly whenever he smiled at her. And when my sister did funny dances in front of her, she just could not stop giggling. It was so great to see my child respond so happily to other people. She's such a great kid!
  • My middle sister went above and beyond the call of duty. She got a great present for my Mom (a GPS for the woman who gets lost a lot), she got flowers both for Mom and me for Mother's day (yay!). And she got a gift for BR as well! And she looked nice and healthy (she's on a anti-inflammatory diet), and she was in a great mood - always good to see.
  • My little sister is going to Spain on Tuesday, and getting all excited about. We managed to convince her she needs travel health insurance, and that she needs to worry about thieves... She should be alright, she's got a good head.

Now for the bad. Finally, after 4 months, I got more opinions/advice about BR than I was prepared for:
  • I was told multiple times that BR is too young to be sitting up in a stroller (half-reclined), or worse yet sitting on the potty for 2 minutes. Apparently I am destroying her spine! Never mind that her doctor told me she was ready for more vertical time, since she's a big and strong baby, and 4 months old to boot!
  • I was also told multiple times within a span of 5 minutes, that I was freezing my baby. "She's cold". "Poor baby, she's all blue, she must be freezing". "Look at the poor frozen baby". "OMG, her hands are so cold" (they were warmer than mine just for the record). Etc, etc. All from the same person. And that despite the fact that I 1) acknowledged their concern and told them I was going to put a sweater on her in 5 minutes and 2) BR was just happy as a clam, smiling and laughing and kicking off any blankets that we would put on her. I did appreciate it the first time he mentioned that she might be cold, as I did not notice right away that the weather was getting cooler (I have a tendency to respond slowly to changes in temperature), but after a while I was getting ready to pummel him. Grr.
The "shake your head" moments:
  • Being told about BR that "she looks intelligent, not like one of those idiot babies". Hmm, thanks, I guess?
  • The following exchange:
"When is the baptism?"
"Oh, there isn't one"
"You mean later?"
"No, I mean there isn't one"
after a few more iterations of the above:
"You mean it's an option? I didn't think it was actually possible not to baptize your child".
I guess I better get used to that, as I will get royally grilled about this when we go to Poland next month...


All in all, a great weekend. Now I need to get some sleep :)