Murder and Otis?

Tags

animals, cruelty, cruelty to animals, milo and otis, movies, reviews, videos

So, I was trawling through Netflix on my day off and spotted Milo and Otis.

Remember that film?

Admit it, you think about it every time you see a pug, and you can’t hear one of those names without thinking of the other.

I adored the movie as the kid. It had talking animals and British accents, and who could ask for more?

Plus, I loved that it gave such a… graphic depiction of live mammalian birth.

Nothing like a bit of sex ed in your children’s family viewing.

I’m starting to keep an eye out for movies that would be good for Owl to watch when he’s older, so I pressed play.

Aw, it’s so cute! With the British voices, and little animal antics! How did they get that mother cat to swim after her kitten like that?

Awww.

Ahhh…

Uh…?

After twenty minutes I turned it off because… I was beginning to feel disturbed.

Sleeping Baby? Does Not Compute

Tags

babies, colic, crying, parenting

When your experience of parenthood was one of constant screaming and struggle, sometimes the experiences of other parents can be a little baffling.

Me: “I went to see Pug Mama last night. Her new baby was awake and not crying.”

PH: “I don’t understand. Is that possible?”

Me: “And then I held her for a while and she just fell asleep.”

PH: “That sentence doesn’t make sense.”

Me: “Wait, it gets better – then, I put her down, and she didn’t wake up.”

PH: “YOU’RE SPEAKING GIBBERISH.”

Me: “And then, and then, when she DID wake up, she just opened her eyes and started watching the boys play. She didn’t cry or anything.”

PH: “I know you think you’re speaking normally, but your words are garbled and nonsensical. Do you have aphasia?”

Life’s Little Losses

Tags

babies, balloons, death, goodbye, loss, parenting, toddlers

For the last couple of months, Owl has really latched onto the concept of “broken”. He attaches the term to anything that is not as it should be in his little toddler eyes. He announces it in a shrill little voice, preceded by a worried “uh oh!”

Shoelace untied?

“Uh oh, BROKEN!!”

Blanket came off in the night?

“Uh oh, BROKEN!!”

Toy train track got disconnected?

“Uh oh, BROKEN!!”

So then, the other day, he started playing with the balloon that he brought home from The Hair Cut Incident, batting it around the room. Beloved Dog began batting it around, too, which Owl thought was just hilarious. I watched them playing keep-it-up together, warning off the dog when he got over enthusiastic.

Eventually the inevitable happened – The dog’s paw hit it too hard and…

POP!

The balloon disappeared, leaving a few shattered fragments of blue latex in its wake.

“Uh oh, BROKEN!”

Owl ran over and picked it up.

“Oh, honey,” I said, “it popped. Balloon’s all gone now.”

“No, fix! Mama fix!”

“You can’t fix a balloon once it’s broken,” I explained gently, as he clutched the limp  bits of balloon. I pried the balloon from his fingers. “It’s garbage now. I’ll go throw it away.”

“No!! Broken! Mama fix it! ME FIX IT!”

I relented and let him reclaim his bits of balloon, and he spent a good two minutes desperately putting them to his lips one by one and making puffing air noises, as he tried to breathe life into them the way he has seen me do with balloons in the past.

“That won’t work, honey,” I said, “once balloons are broken they can’t be fixed.”

Eventually, wiping tears from his face, he consented to my throwing away his balloon. I felt like I should be holding a funeral service.

“Bye, balloon.”

“Bye, bye, bayoon.”

I think we have some leftover balloons from the birthday party around somewhere. I should blow another one up for him. It’s good to move on.

No More Purple Pills

Tags

anxiety, busy, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, motherhood, stress, time management, welbutrin, work

I have been off of my Welbutrin for about three months now. I started to wean myself off in June, skipping the occasional day, until I actually forgot to take it at all for a week.

Then, when we went the the states, I left the pills behind, and I haven’t touched them since.

I’ve been doing fine.

I had a happy summer, loving my husband, liking my job, training dogs, writing on Elance.

I’ve been very tired. I feel very extroverted out.

I wish that I didn’t have to juggle work AND dog training AND Elance, but I’m not willing to give up any of these. I need them.

I need the work, the dog training is my insurance for the future when we have a second kid and full time work will no longer cover daycare costs, and Elance is extra money in my pocket while building my writing credits, which is REALLY part of my long term plan.

I spend my mornings trying to shepherd Owl into his clothes and into the car, I work for 9 hours with no break, and then I pick Owl up and entertain him while PH makes dinner. By the time we get Owl to sleep it’s 9 pm and I’m exhausted.

PH wants me to take more time to myself, to hand him the baby and say “YOU deal with it, I’m out of touch for an hour” but I rarely take him up on it. First of all, because I hand him Owl and then disappear training dogs a couple times a week as it is, and second of all because I want to spend time with my husband and son.

But PH thinks all this work is adding to my anxiety.

I haven’t really noticed it (maybe fish don’t notice water, much) but PH thinks it has been worse lately. I don’t know if fall coming on is beginning to activate my SAD, but that seems hard to believe, because it’s been warm and sunny an gorgeous outside lately.

So maybe it’s just all too much.

But I’m not quite sure what to do about it. We need money, and I need to make money while building a way to make money with fewer hours in the future. So I think this is just how it is right now, and I’m not unhappy or miserable.

Just a little stressed.

That’s within normal range, right?

Making Friends With The Night

Tags

dark, kids, night, sleep, toddlers

So, thanks to summer long days, I guess it’s been a while since Owl was outside at night. I took him to a friend’s house and left her house late.

When I went to carry Owl into the house he suddenly looked up, then clutched my neck tightly in fear and cried out,

“Sun OFF! SUN OFF!” and pointed at the dark sky.

I wonder what it’s like to suddenly realize that the sun has gone out.

“No, no, honey,” I said, “The sun just went to sleep. It’s night time. See? It’s dark out.”

“Sun aseep. Dark out.” He took a moment to chew on that. Then he pointed again. “A plane!”

“No, honey, those are stars. The stars are out, because it’s night time.”

“Stars out. Night time. Dark.”

“Yes, it’s dark because it’s night time.”

He thought about this for a minute, and then cheered right up.

“Hi, stars! HI, DARK!”

The Hair Affair, Or, In Which My Toddler Is Turned Into A Nazi Against My Will

Tags

anxiety, bad haircuts, hair, haircuts, kids, parenting, toddlers

How do you feel about your hair?

I hate mine.

It’s fine, it’s thin, it never has any body. Even hair spray makes it sag. I could spray it with shellac and it would droop against my face after an hour.

My mother learned early on that I couldn’t have the long french braids that my friends all got to have. Barettes slid out within minutes. So did elastics. Any additional length to my hair just made it hang down heavier, so that if it grew much past my ears it simply became a curtain of greasy locks that clung to itself in strings.

So she settled on a pageboy bob for me, and it worked pretty well, and I’ve never really strayed far from it.

Then

Now

Except for one unfortunate incident.

It happened when we lived in Dutch Caribbean.

It started out so innocently. My mother and I were out, doing some shopping, and my hair had grown a little long over vacation so my mother decided to have it trimmed. She walked me into a salon, sat me down in the barber’s chair, and said to the Dutch hair dresser, “The same cut, only shorter.” She demonstrated a few times with hand signals that she wanted a trim of around an inch or so.

Then she patted me on the shoulder and went to do some shopping.

When she returned, she found her daughter staring in silent, polite horror while the barber carefully applied gel to her hair and massaged the remaining two inches into Bart Simpson style spikes.

TRUE STORY.

THE GUY CUT MY HAIR TO TWO INCHES LONG ON TOP, SHAVED ME AROUND THE EARS, AND THEN SPIKED WHAT WAS LEFT.

In Which Owl Discovers The Fair

Tags

animals, pacific national exhibition, parenting, Playland, PNE, the fair, toddlers, tourism, travel, Vancouver

Every year we go to the Fair at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition).

It happens in August, and I remember going the day before Owl’s due date, so it really helps me mark the years. Last year Owl was a somewhat passive participant, although he enjoyed patting the slimy cow noses.

He still loves that part.

But this year was even better. 

He had a blast, extrovert that he is. 

Plus, I discovered that a friend of mine had decided to go with her family the same day, so we met up. She directed me to a section that I didn’t even know existed, where there they had a competition for best playground set-up.

AMAZING.

Owl revelled in the ball pit (of course), and then in the hexagonal play house with the slide, and then he disappeared into this crazy rabbit-warren of construction where he (according to my friend’s teenage son, who attempted to follow him) “took ridiculous angles”.

Basically, he ran totally amok, ate all my popcorn and generally had a glorious day.

Now we just have to help him understand that he has to wait until next year to do it all over again.

Owl Is Officially Apple. I Mean, 2 Years Old.

Tags

parenting, parties, toddlers, turning 2

Well, I don’t think Owl’s birthday party could have gone much better.

We ended up deciding to go with the miniature railway in Burnaby, since it was a cost efficient option (the party space and tokens for our train rides, as well as our guests’ train rides came to a grand total of $80) and we’re glad we did because the weather was gorgeous.

I admit I was a little worried because we had 4 families drop out at the last minute (two due to illness, one because of a changed work schedule, and the last because they had a vet appointment for their rabbit scheduled smack in the middle of the party times). We went from expecting 13 kids to expecting 5 all in the space of 24 hours.

 

But on  the bright side, the kids who could come all happened to be ones who were in Owl’s age range (a 2.5 year old, a 4 year old, two 15 month olds, and a newborn who doesn’t count because she slept through the entire party).

Even better, one of PH’s old friends who lives at an awkward distance and tends to drop out of our lives for several years at a time actually came, giving us a chance to meet her 15 month old.

The kids enjoyed the food, the balloons, and the trains, and Owl had a blast.

He was so worked up from his extroverted day that he roared around with his new toys for an hour and eventually went to sleep with a toy train clutched in his fist.

I officially have a two year old. 

He knows his colours (although he still gets yellow and white mixed up at times).

He can recognize certain written words (update on that later).

He speaks in 4 and 5 word sentences (although they’re sometimes unintelligible).

He wanders far from us (but always stops and comes back when we tell him to).

He is occasionally susceptible to logic.

He is starting to say funny things.

He is his own little human being person.

And he had a great 2nd birthday.

If I Had 100 Million Dollars…

Tags

dreaming, lottery, wishing

The Barenaked Ladies had some good ideas about what to do with a million dollars, but PH and I go even further when dreaming about what we would do if we won the lottery.

I’m naturally a dreamer and a what-if type person (this blog is If By Yes for a reason), so this is one of my favourite types of conversation.

What would we do if we won big money?

• Pay off the mortgage is first on the list, obviously, because WE DREAM BIG.

• Sharing a certain amount with family and friends, of course, because if you’re rich but your family and friends hate you, your life is not better.

• Invest a sizable portion of it, to get the interest yearly.

• Set aside a bunch for our children’s education/weddings, naturally.

Mostly boring stuff, because when it comes down to it, a tidied life with no mortgage and no worries about saving would be a huge boon just as it is.

We’re not big-house-fancy-car folks, so a lack of debt is a real dream for us just as it is.

For us, the real dreaming starts past the 5 million mark.

A Moment In The Life Of An Almost-Two Year Old

Tags

babies, humor, parenthood, toddlers

Me: “Owl, I have to use the potty. Do you want to come upstairs with me, or stay here and play with your cars?”

Owl: “Play with cars!”

Me: “Okay, I’ll be back in a minute”.

Just as I flush the toilet, I hear an outburst of wailing from downstairs. I rush down expecting to find him hurt. He is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, still wailing miserably.

Me: “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

Owl: “No…”

Me: “What happened?”

Owl: “THIS happened!”

He gestures dramatically to his pyjamas, and as I approach I see that an epic sneeze has sent a long string of snot across his face and all down his pyjamas, right down to his navel. 

I got him a Kleenex and peace was restored.

I wonder what it’s like to be so helpless you can’t even reach the Kleenex when you need it.