The good, the bad and the downright ugly

Today was, for the most part, a great day with my girls. Hope was in a reasonably good mood. She has been on the wrong side of cranky most of the week. This stems from two things: (1) I've started to refuse to breastfeed her in the night. She's almost 13 months old, for the love of Pete. I don't want to breastfeed her in the night anymore. So, I'm not. This is not translating into more sleep for either of us so far. It is translating into some heavy-duty crying and a pretty pissed-off little kid. It is slowly getting better however and she seems to get what's going on. She doesn't like it, but she gets it. She's also eating better during the day as a result. A definite plus. (2) She just got her sixth tooth.

That paragraph ended up much longer than I had planned. And so it goes.

Emily was absolutely perfect today. She was enthusiastic about everything, she was great with Hope, she was (as usual) very affectionate and just thoroughly happy about life. We got some time this morning just the two of us. We went grocery shopping, picked up some very cheap pumpkins and then came home and made homemade lemonade. She's been wanting to do this for a few days. It stems from a Barney episode she is currently obsessed with into.

I made a simple syrup. Emily squeezed the lemons. I finished squeezing the lemons. It turned out to be delicious. We poured two glasses, I retrieved Hope from her crib and we all went downstairs to watch Emily's favourite channel: Food Network. And I'm not even kidding.

So, that was the good. Now for the bad. I was walking down the basement stairs lemonade and Hope in hand. Emily was behind me by a few stairs. We were almost at the bottom when my feet went out from under me, my lemonade flew up in the air, Hope flew out of my arms (kind of) and I hit the stairs ass first, arms flailing, body twisting. It was a bad fall. I didn't completely drop Hope. I still had her by the bottom half of her body. Unfortunately (and that is a huge understatement) her head hit the corner of the wall pretty hard. My heart was pounding, my ass and arms were hurting but mostly I was really worried and scared and feeling so guilty (not that I could have done anything differently). Emily was crying and scared. Hope was screaming. A lot.

I took her upstairs and applied the miracle arnica gel to her forehead. It helped a lot but she has a pretty good red mark and bruise but little swelling. Emily recovered well. Hope did too after a few minutes. I'm still pretty shaken. It could have been a lot worse.

The wall looks like something out of CSI. The lemonade splatter is impressive. Up to the ceiling and covering two walls. The point of impact is clear. You don't need Grissam to point it out.

Onto the ugly. I was in Loblaws today, our local big grocery store, grabbing a couple of things when I spotted what I can only describe as a miracle in a shopping cart. I was walking to the cash when I happened by one of those carts full of discounted stuff. It was full of these:


Each package was $1. I'm not joking here. $1. I grabbed 8 packages. I'm not joking about that either. And you know what? I'm probably going to go back tomorrow and grab more. Maybe 8 more.

Don't know what these are? These are Tim Tams. A Tim Tam looks like this:


It is Australia's answer to all this is unholy and good. It is so decadent and will undoubtedly precipitate a very ugly period of gluttony in this house. And why? Aren't they just chocolate biscuits?

Oh, they are so much more. They are the beginnings of the Tim Tam slam, the only proper way to eat a Tim Tam. If you haven't experienced it, well, you think sex is good? Hah, you don't even know. Here's the thing though: you can't buy them at Loblaws. Or anywhere in Canada for that matter unless you happen into an import shop and there I have paid almost $7 for one package. I got 8 packages for $8. I don't know what gods were looking after me today but they somehow delivered cheap Tim Tams to my Loblaws where clearly no one knew what they were or the potential they held.

Maybe those gods new that my sore ass needs some more padding for the next time I'm headed to the basement.