March Moment Day 25 or another reason to keep him around

My morning is deep, deep, deep within a rut. The rut I'm in is so big it would take a LAV3 to get me out of there. And even then it would likely be with me kicking and screaming and scraping my fingernails along the sides of the rut.

I really like my rut.

It goes like this: Emily comes into my room and says something along the lines of "Get up you hosehead. Get me my morning juice and turn on the t.v. and then leave me to the subtle nuances of Curious George." I comply. After she's settled in front of the t.v., I go back to the kitchen, start getting her toast ready and, more importantly, fire up the old cappuccino machine. I deliver Emily's breakfast to her. Normally by then Hope has woken up so I get her, change the old bum, get her some juice and toast and then settle her in beside Emily. By then my best friend the cappuccino machine is ready to go. I make my coffee, toast and then settle in to read the paper. Hope usually wanders up after a few minutes. Her attention span for anything other than Veggie Tales is short. She plays on her own while I keep soaking up the news from in town and out. After that it is in the shower, blah, blah, blah and on with the day.

John knows I read the paper every morning, and usually thoroughly. And so he left me a wee gift this morning. A subtle gift, meant to give me a laugh, but also based on our totally parallel opinions on our current government, our love of politics (not to the point where we ever want to join in but certainly where we follow and comment and complain and maybe, just maybe, one of us has joined a certain left-leaning - okay, very left-leaning - federal party) and our oh-so-similar and therefore cockeyed senses of humour. So, there I was this morning reading through the paper when I found this:


For most of you who likely don't recognize Jim Flaherty, he is Canada's federal Minister of Finance and esteemed member of the ruling Conservative Party, which to my ears is like living in Dog River and hearing mention of Wullerton.

I have strong feelings about Jim Flaherty but John's eclipse mine. Which I suppose is obvious by his graffiti above.

All this to say that my husband knows how to lift my spirits in the morning without even being home.

March Moments Day 17 and 18

At least I'm consistent in not getting my tiny moments up every day. Now you know to expect inconsistency, which is consistent, right? See what I did there?

We've been dying a lot of Easter eggs. A lot. And a lot of fingers, too. Hope was not invited to participate this year because I prefer our floors, chairs and table to stay the colours that they are. She'll be in for next year. For now, we dye while she naps.


Emily is the resident pizza topper in our house. We make mini-pizzas about once a week for lunch. Emily has developed a very specific technique for the toppings, which are always the same: pepperoni, pineapple and cheese. She loves to make them. I love to eat them.


Hope gets the short end today but I'll make it up to her with an all-Hope day very soon.

We're off to Kitchener tomorrow afternoon for Easter weekend. We're staying with our very good friends Tamara and Greg who we see too infrequently. We'll be home on Sunday night late, I expect. Reports to follow on Monday amidst laundry, cleaning and all the rest of it.

Joyeuses Pâques, tout le monde!

March Moment Day 17

Here are several tiny moments from the last few days since I wasn't exactly on top of the blog this weekend. Old news, I know.

On Friday night I reintroduced the bath tub crayons and it was the whole "everything old is new again" routine. It re-energized bath time for sure. I had a hard time getting them out of there.


Today was paska-making day as Easter is almost upon us and me being the good Mennonite, well, I can't have me Easter without having me some Paska. It turned out really well. Hope and Emily helped with the sprinkles and with dragging their fingers through the tops of the loaves.


And back to the bath... Emily and Hope at the end of every bath flip over, pretend to swim for a while and usually end up hugging and kissing for a while which is absolutely heart-melting and I tend to really focus on it because I know from experience that when they're about 16 and 14 the idea of kissing each other will make them each want to vomit. So, I burn it into my brain (and blog) now.


I just had to add this little moment from tonight. Emily and wet hair - always entertaining - those ears... usually very red after a bath and they never cease to amaze me in their sticky-outiness. I blame myself for some awkward breastfeeding holds. Sorry Emmy. You can blame me if you are ever teased. I think they're adorable though.


Hope has this tendency to pee right after her bath (and because we're a little slow on the uptake, it is often without a diaper on) so tonight we stuck her on the toilet right after she got out. But of course the little bugger held it. She was still thrilled to be there being the big girl though.


And to end on an extra-adorable note, just before Emily climbed into bed tonight she gave me one last gargantuan hug and said: "Mummy, I love you sooooo much. I'm going to keep you."

Whatever else that happened today that might have made me grumpy or annoyed, that erased it all.

March Moment Day 13

I meant to get this up last night. I meant, I meant, I meant.... those words are starting to sound too familiar.

However, I wasn't mentally prepared to write about my day last night. It was still too fresh. I needed time to compose myself.

You see, it has been almost a year to the day that I experienced poop spread so willy-nilly around the house. In fact, on Wednesday I was checking back to the post I wrote last year on that day and it was all about Emily pooping in her underwear, refusing to go on the toilet or potty, blah, blah, blah. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll remember all too well.

Yesterday morning was like most mornings. I was having breakfast. Hope, all done hers, stripped out of her jammies and diaper and was marching around naked while I finished. The thought crossed my mind that I should put something on her bum. If air hits that child's nether regions, it's like Manneken Pis is on travelling exhibition. But, I didn't. I sat there drinking my cappucino, reading the paper and ignoring the little world around me.

And then I smelled something.

I found Hope in the kitchen. There were poop tracks on her legs. Poop tracks. A sure sign that there is poop somewhere on the floor. I found the poop - I'd seen worse - cleaned it up, took her upstairs and cleaned her up. I went downstairs to clean the poop off the living room floor rug. Anyone know how to get poop residue off of a rug fringe short of cutting the fringe off? She's got aim, that one.

Hope was still playing upstairs and then she started to cry. I told her that she was fine. (You can just award me that Mother-of-the-Year award right now, thanks.) She stopped crying. A few minutes later I went upstairs. I saw why she'd been crying. Now there was poop all over the upstairs carpet, all over her legs, feet and hands. A poopy handprint was firmly place on the bars of the gate where she been hanging on, crying, asking me to come and clean the damn poop off of her. Did I feel bad? Yeah, but karma got me with the shear amount of poop and the breadth of its reach.

It was, in a word, icky. Really, really icky.

Hope laughed. She thought it was really funny. In fact, it took her a while to stop laughing as I cleaned every inch of her body and then put her in the bath tub for 20 minutes while I scrubbed each and every inch of the carpet that had anything remotely poop-looking on it.

After that I was in a bad mood. It was 7:00 am and I was cleaning shit off of most surfaces of my child and my house. Things didn't really improve until about 3:00 when John walked in, the girls started listening better, I relaxed.

The evening got better and better as the girls got into their typical routine of dancing, playing, fooling around while John and I watched, read to them, played restaurant, etc. Emily was naked as usual. Hope, not surprisingly, had a diaper on. I thought the small moment below was the best way to sum up yesterday. If only I'd thought to do that around 7:15 am.


Today was much better. John played hooky. I enjoyed almost every moment of my day including that hour or so when I got to go out on my own. Lovely.

And today is only Friday! Which means two more days of John at home. I love the weekends.

You'll have to wait for tomorrow for today's small moment. All that poop talk wore me out. It seems that I'm out of practice.

March Moment Day 10

Today wasn't a great day around this house. It started off on a good note but was downright sour by about 4:00. I, admittedly, lost it on Emily at least twice, maybe three times and I was really ashamed of myself. Hope was great, as she has been the last few days. She turned 18 months old and decided to celebrate by becoming perfect. She really summed up the day though at dinner when she decided to do most of it laying down:


Here's to a better day tomorrow.

Small Moment Day 10

After sharing her room with her cousins all weekend, Emily is back in her bed tonight (she slept on a little mattress on the floor and her cousins slept in her bed). The bed rail was off the bed all weekend as her older cousins didn't need it (although Kennedy did fall off the bed one night and landed on top of Emily so maybe it would have been useful). Tonight I asked Emily if she wanted it back on. She completely surprised me when she said "no." I've been working on convincing her to try it for a couple of months now. She had no interest but now that she knows that Kennedy and Claire don't sleep with one? Well, she wants to be the big girl, too. I left the little mattress there just in case she rolls out. I want her to have a soft landing.

Small Moment Day 9

I'm slowly catching up in my small moments. You knew, of course, that yesterday's small moment would be of snow, shoveling, digging, getting stuck or some snow-related activity. I won't disappoint.


That's John just starting to shovel the driveway. As I mentioned in an earlier post today, we got 56 cm of snow from Friday night to Sunday morning, with a brief reprieve during Saturday afternoon. We're a mere 33 cm away from the all-time record of snowfall in Ottawa, which occurred in 1970-71. It is definitely within our grasp.

Take note of the large divet at the bottom centre of the photo. John dug out a small area at the bottom of the stairs. It gives a good idea of how deep this snow was. And, we had just shovelled the night before. Holy smokes.

Small Moment Day 8

We're skipping Days 6 and 7 because I don't have anything I want to record about those days at the moment. Also, I took no photos so onto Day 8 which was Saturday.

Saturday was Storm Day and Baby Shower Day. It was my sister-in-law Cibele's baby shower (that is John's brother's wife), at her house which should generally be easy to get to from ours, about a 15 minute drive. It took a bit longer what with all the snow and blowing and white-outs. It was worth it however as I've never been to a Martha Stewart shower before. Check out these decorations:





There were many fun moments during the shower but my favourite was Emily's helping with the gift opening. She was supposed to be the helper. Watching, you would have thought the shower was for her. I made a few interventions to try to keep her under control. It had a marginal affect. And with that, here is the small moment of that day:


I do also have to add one more small moment from later that night when John's sister Sue and I shoveled the driveway just before building a luge in the backyard (I'm not kidding, we really did that and it was AWESOME):


And this is not the full amount of snow we received by the end of the storm. The paper this morning said 56 centimetres and I believe it. I'll have pictures of that later when I post a fuller account of our family weekend.

What's cooking Wednesday and March Moment Day 5

Yeah, so I missed March Moment Day 4. I took the girls to the Farm yesterday and hauled the camera all over the place and only realized as we were nearing the parking lot to leave that I hadn't taken it out of my bag once. So, while there were many tiny moments, none was caught on film.

Today I could just post a photo of white for our small moment. Just white and that would represent today because again Ottawa got slammed with another big snow. Officially, this is now the second snowiest winter on record in Ottawa. If we get 100 more cm of snow (within the realm of possibility) then it will be the snowiest. What an achievement. We received an email this afternoon from our city councillor. She forwarded an update from the city snow plough manager guy. Here is what Mr Plough wrote:

Sidewalk clearing is ongoing however will be delayed due to snowfall levels. Our sidewalk machines are now using snow blowers. Due to the ongoing demand for salt we are using grit/salt mixture on the main roadways.

Nothing mind-blowing or earth-shattering, I know, but notice the second sentence. They are now using snow blowers instead of the little tiny ploughs that do the sidewalks. Know why? Because the snow is so high beside the sidewalks, the little ploughs have nowhere to put it so they have to blow it up over the big high snow banks. Here is the most recent photo of our yard. John took it this morning (the pile is bigger now) to send to a friend in Vancouver who intelligently moved there from Ottawa last year.


Here is today's small moment:

Hope loves to play with these bingo dauber markers. Her game is to put the lids back on. I noticed today for the first time that she perfectly matched the right lid with the proper marker. I was so impressed. Another baby genius.

And now onto the recipe for this week's What's Cooking Wednesday. My month into The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines kind of fizzled out. I love that cookbook but I realized what I love about it is just browsing through it, learning some new things, but not actually cooking out of it too often. So, unward and upward. As a bridge into a new cookbook next week, I'm offering up an oldie but a goodie. This recipe is from Jean Pare's original Company's Coming 150 Delicious Squares, her original cookbook. My mum used to make this a lot and I do too.

Peanut Krispie Squares

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter (I used natural crunchy)
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 tsp butter

Melt above ingredients over low heat and stir. Combine 2 cups rice krispies and 1 cup peanuts in a large bowl. Pour hot mixture over top. Stir well to coat evenly. Press in greased 8x8 inch pan. Let it firm up then eat.

March Moments Day 3

Today's small moment is brought to you by Emily, who took up my camera after dinner tonight. This is pretty much the only time I am caught on film since I'm normally the one behind the lens. I imagine that when the girls are older they'll be very happy that I let them play with my camera so that they would have some record of what I looked like back in the 00s.

Our after-supper routine is for them to play in the living room while John and I read book after book to them. We keep a giant basket of library books in the living room that is refilled weekly.

This is me having my dessert (and very delicious Bosc pear) and getting ready to read The Three Bears for the nth time today.

March Moments Day 2

I realized as I was choosing today's photo that it is going to be more difficult with two great kids to choose one photo each day, so some days, like today, there will be two photos. I caught two great moments with them and couldn't decide which would go up. So, here we are.

Emily and Hope love to "play" the piano. Today Emily sat there for quite a while making up words to mal-melodious songs. Check out that reach with those freaky fingers: almost an octave already!

Hope decided she would revert to previous behaviour and start drinking the bath water again. So gross because we all know she is peeing in there. John said it is like having to watch Waterworld all over again. And who wants to do that?

A desperately needed break

Tonight John and I are going out. Without the kids. For supper. For spicy Sri Lankan food at what was once our favourite restaurant in Ottawa, and probably still would be if we ever, ever, ever went out without the kids.

Mike and Cibele are looking after the kids tonight so we can get a night out and after the past three weeks, but mostly this past week, I've never needed a night out more than I do right now.

The last three weeks have been tough. Sinus infection for me, bad colds for both the kids and more GD snow than I can shake a shovel at. Five more centimetres today. Just what we need on March 1... more snow. And we all know that there is a lot more still to come before that first crocus makes what will certainly be a celebrated appearance.

The last week has been the worst of my life. Okay, not the worst. The worst was the week after my mum died. That was, and possibly will always be, the worst. This is the second worst. Not just because of the colds although that has made it that much more difficult. I'll likely never get into why this week has been so bad but just for myself I wanted it noted so I can look back and hopefully be proud of the decision I made or at least proud of how I handled it all. It's very likely that this next week will be even worse. After that it will get better.

For now, I'm going to dwell on dinner with my wonderful husband. I'm also going to try to make this month, my least favourite of all months, a little better by stealing an idea from my friend Julie and posting a photo of a small moment from everyday in March. I think this will be a constant reminder of how great my life is, really, and how much I have, and even though it is grey and probably snowy outside, life is generally pretty damn good.

My first small moment is Emily. She is in love with t.v. so much so that I have become very strict about how much she watches. She hasn't watched any since yesterday morning so when I wanted to take a photo of her just now, she posed, but without taking her eyes of the beloved tube, my mortal enemy now.