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A quick shot of myself and Hayley while we were out visiting friends. Shortly after this was taken, Dean set up the sprinkler and Hayley ran through it for an hour, soaking herself to get relief from the heat. At least it was just hot and not ridiculously humid.

I wish I could have gotten some good sprinkler shots but I was afraid of getting my camera wet. Even I went through it a few times, running through the spray with Breanna in my arms so she could experience some of the fun too.

Sprinklers are really almost as much fun as a swimming pool (and like George said, the bonus is that you don’t have to worry about people drowning).

This morning my ovaries exploded from the unbearable cuteness that went on in the bedroom. Hayley woke up as George was getting ready to head out to work at 5:45, so after he left she came and got into bed with me. Breanna woke up at about 6:15 as well so we all stretched out in bed watching the morning news (what a fantastically depressing way to start the day lately). Then by the time we switched over to PBS Kids, Breanna was rubbing her eyes and whining a bit because even though she hadn’t been up for very long, she still hadn’t gotten enough sleep and she was really tired.

She wasn’t hungry so she wasn’t interested in nursing down for a snooze, so she flopped onto her stomach, laid her head down, and started to cry. Hayley immediately went and laid down beside her and started rubbing her back and Breanna stopped crying. Then Hayley held her hand and sang a lullabye over and over, very softly, until Breanna closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. She slept very peacefully for an hour and a half thanks to her big sister.

It was quite possibly the sweetest thing I have ever seen in my life.

After the crazy heat and humidity (we wilted through dinner at George’s parents’ house last night), today has been awesome so far. ForecastFox says it’s only 17 degrees out there (62F) and it feels true. We actually turned off the air conditioners and the sliding door beside me is wide open. As wonderful as A/C may be, it’s always so nice to let some actual air through to freshen things up. In fact, it’s actually just the slightest bit chilly right here next to the screen door, and I’m ecstatic. Being anything other than hot and sweaty is a relief right now.

It’s only supposed to go up to 26C (79F) later today and hopefully the humidity will stay just as low. We could really use it.

As many people know, today is the Blogathon, where bloggers everywhere commit to updating their blogs every half hour for a 24-hour period, and sponsors agree to donate various sums of money to a specific charity. I did the Blogathon – and perhaps I was crazy, because Hayley was only ten months old at the time – and I did it to raise money for the United Nations High Council for Refugees, a charitable organization that I am overwhelmingly supportive of.

I really wanted to do it this year again, even with Breanna being only eight months old, and I was really excited when the emails started coming around for Blogathon. Unfortunately, when I checked the calendar, I realized that it was going to fall on a Saturday where George’s band would be playing. I knew that if he got in at 3:30 or 4 in the morning, I wasn’t going to have my back-up on Sunday morning when I would be finishing up the ‘thon at 9 am and desperately wanting to get a bit of a snooze in.

It turns out I could have done it after all because the gig got cancelled. Sign-ups for Blogathon finished on the 21st and we only found out he wouldn’t be playing a few days ago so it was too late for me to join up. I’m pretty disappointed this morning that I’m not taking part. It was exhausting but a lot of fun – especially around 4:30 or 5 am when the total loopiness hits. I remember a few years ago that by the time the sun was coming up I was so damn tired that everything was funny.

However, here’s the deal. If you would have sponsored me to do the Blogathon, please consider donating to one of the other bloggers out there. Heather has re-opened Smattering to raise money for the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and is offering tarot readings to sponsors. Alicia and Melanie are blogging for Full Moon Wolfdog Sanctuary and they have some nice gifts courtesy of Melanie’s artistic prowess for sponsers; as an extra incentive, Alicia is promising to match whatever donations she gets. Also, if she needs me while I’m still up, I may pop over for a guest post! Dreama is blogging for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and has promised amusing photoblog pictures of herself, modelling hats at Walmart until she gets kicked out. And Kathy is blogging for the Innocence Project.

Drop by, support them with your wallet, if you can. Or if you can’t afford it, then at least drop some encouragement on them. It’s a lot of fun but it’s harder than it sounds. Half an hour is not long enough to get out and do much unless you can do some mo’blogging, but at the same time half an hour DRAAAAAGS in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. Keep them going!

And in the meantime I’ll figure out what my game plan can be for the UNHCR next year. (And if you think the UNHCR is as important as I do, you can certainly donate to them at any time of year too!)

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I guess it’s time to start childproofing beyond the basic electrical socket protectors. Breanna’s a little too fond of opening this door and you know, no one wants to be the one to call Poison Control and say, “My 8-month-old just drank a shot of Malibu rum and passed out, should I make her puke?”

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Breanna was really bummed that I wouldn’t let her explore the bottles of booze.

I ruin all her fun. But I mean really, I’m still in my pajamas in that picture, so clearly it was too early for drinking anyway.

Busy aside from the normal parenting, I mean, and aside from the neverending Battle Of The Laundry (why do I always lose?). I’ve been busy writing. Writing “stuff”.

I’m now writing for the incredibly vast Metroblogging network with a great team over at Metroblogging Montreal. I’m supposed to post at least three times per week, but I’m aiming for at least five. If you’re interested in reading, you can see when I make a new post by checking out that very nifty “recent posts” box over in the top left sidebar.

I just had my first article published at Imperfect Parent*. As of right now you can actually see it splashed right across the front page, which took me by (pleasant) surprise this morning; I knew it was going in today, I just didn’t expect to see it so… gigantic and header-like. Very exciting! You can read the entire article at its permanent location here.

Finally, I had another piece accepted at Mom Writers’ Lit Mag, and it will be published in their December 2006 issue, which I’m also very excited about.

Since I got so many acceptances one after the other, I decided I may as well be ballsy and I went and pitched an idea for regular writing work elsewhere – paying, as in a holy-shit-I-get-a-salary-to-write! position and hopefully that will work out too. In the meantime, I have a few other ideas swimming around in my head too, ideas that I would have never entertained in the past, but it’s almost as though writing a few things here and there went and unblocked something, making me want to write more and more. If only there were more hours in a day. Preferably, hours where children are SOUND ASLEEP, unlike a certain little puffin who is wide awake on my lap right now, staring trance-like at the monitor.

So that’s what i’ve been doing.

*Every time I go to write Imperfect Parent, I start writing Imperfect Partner. That would probably be a great site too, full of humourous tales.

Breanna turned eight months old today. To celebrate, she decided to leave home. Kids are so independent these days.

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(George was heading out and Breanna crawled straight out the front door and down the hall. Hayley then immediately ran in front of her and started egging her on, saying, “Come on Breebles!”)

It’s hard to believe she’s eight months, but it’s also unbelievable how quickly she’s growing. I have no idea what she weighs, but my left arm says A LOT. In the space of one month she has learned how to get up into a sitting position by herself, how to pull up to standing, how to crawl, and a bit of how to cruise. She also learned the concept of jumping on the bed (THANKS George), and I have a cute video of that, whenever I get it up and processed on youtube.

She sleeps in the crib for about half the night and although it was a bit rough for the transition at first, more often than not she sleeps very well in there. Of course, some nights she’s not so keen on sleeping and would rather stand there and mock me with her laughing and her crazy hair.

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She still has little interest in food beyond initial curiosity. Actual food in her mouth tends to make her recoil with so much horror you would think I was feeding her bleach. Applesauce and squash were the only things that seemed to be acceptable but even those are touch and go. It’s not much of a big deal, I know she’ll eat eventually and maybe she’s just waiting for real table food instead of the mushy crap. It would just be nice if she was interested for the simple sake of having all four of us eat dinner together, but it will happen one day.

She gets very frustrated these days. I think she wants to walk and doesn’t know how yet so she has a tendency to scream with a lot of anger when she’s standing up and holding onto something with one hand. She also gets stressed because although she can get up, she doesn’t know how to get back down gently, so she eventually ends up thudding unceremoniously on her butt and she cries sadly about that each time. Her top teeth are also giving her a lot of grief and neither Tempra nor Hyland’s teething tablets seem to help much (I think we’ll try Motrin next) with the pain. Teething is making her suffer from a diaper rash too, which makes me feel terrible for her; last night it was so bad even that she started to cry when I put her in the bath, which she never does. On top of the frustration and the teeth, she’s developed separation anxiety so if I disappear from the room, even for 30 seconds to grab a glass of water – and especially if she SEES me leave – she starts to cry hysterically. More than once I’ve come back into the room to find a little red-faced Breanna crawling madly towards the doorway, wailing for me to come back. Heartbreaking.

So with those three things, the past few days have been, uh, hectic. But we’re surviving. Luckily, in between she still laughs like a loon. If you want a smile, you can tickle her, blow raspberries on her neck or stomach, throw her in the air, hang her upside down, or sing the “what do you do with a scurvy pirate” song from the Backyardigans.

Speaking of which, she doesn’t actually *watch* television but she does catch bits of Hayley’s shows. If she hears Elmo’s voice, she will nearly give herself whiplash to turn around to see him. Then today she was standing up by holding onto Hayley’s table and the Backyardigans came on and she laughed so hard during the intro song that I’m surprised she didn’t fall down.

Happy eight months, Breanna.

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See? Total Elmo love-fest.

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So what do you do when you have day after day of high heat and humidity? Well on the day with the heat and humidity warning from Environment Canada (that was yesterday – with humidity it got up to 42C/107F), you hide inside by the air conditioner. But if it’s just a disgustingly overheated Sunday?

You go to visit the park down the street from your parents and let your monkey dangle from the bars.

And you let your little puffin play in the sand.

(And you can even send your sister down the slide for fun!)

And then when the advisory breaks and it’s Tuesday and the incessant thunderstorms from the night before haven’t done all that much to break the haze, you decide “screw this, I have cabin fever” and you go outside anyway, choosing the semi-shaded courtyard of the building complex over the blazing sun-drenched park.

And you blow bubbles.

And drink water in the shade on the grass.

Then you come inside, drink a gallon of water and hope tomorrow will cool off just a little bit.

Tonight as George was heading out, he called me from downstairs. He had forgotten his nose decongestant spray and asked me to come out to the balcony and throw it down for him. I went out, tossed it, and he shouted “thanks!” and started to walk away. I stood watching, waiting to see if he’d turn around and look up.

He did. And at the exact same time we both gave each other the finger. We are so perfectly suited for each other.

And apparently Hayley is a perfect match to the family too. Tonight we had tacos and she wanted to know what the tortillas were.

George: Say “tortillas”.
Hayley: No.
George: Say “tortillas”!
Hayley: NO!
George: Say “I suck really bad.”
Hayley: You suck really bad.

HA! I nearly choked on my food.

Back when we were being drowned by one rainy day after another, Hayley and I quickly got bored of the usual ways to pass the time, such as coloring, playing Snakes and Ladders, and playing Backyardigans-style games. When I looked at the weather channel that evening and realized that we were going to have yet another day of downpours the next day, I had a mild panic attack and then I announced, “Tomorrow is Monkey Butt Day.”

What?

Yes, we invented a holiday. I’ve called Hayley Monkey Butt for years now and it just popped into my head out of sheer desperation. I asked her what we could do to celebrate the day. We bantered back and forth and came up with a festive holiday that made the crappy weather just a little easier to bear.

In the morning, I greeted her with a very cheery “Happy Monkey Butt Day!” which she echoed back to me five hundred times that day. For breakfast she had chocolate milk (I don’t know, it made sense) and I made her cinnamon toast with thinly sliced banana on top. We called it Monkey Toast and she loved it. (I elected to have a bagel with my coffee but it smelled good and she ate every last crumb so it was apparently delicious.)

We pretended to be monkeys playing in the jungle, with the couch being a tree and twisted towels being vines. We also spread a blue blanket on the floor for a lovely pond to splash in.

Later in the day, when Breanna was napping, we made some monkey decorations to hang on the wall.

I also made her a mask, which she thought was hilarious.

For supper, we didn’t have anything terribly out of the ordinary but we managed to bring some of the festivities to the table. I had wanted to make Monkey Bread for dessert but our grocery store didn’t have any refrigerated biscuits (what the hell?) so George picked up crescent rolls instead. I was disappointed at first, since you can’t make Monkey Bread out of crescent rolls. Then, I said, “Let’s make them anyway! We can call them Monkey tails and eat them with our supper!”

Hey, it convinced her. Also, she did an excellent job making them; I made two and she did the rest. All I had to do was actually put them in the oven to bake. She was very proud of them.

It was a huge hit and it was such a simple thing. For days and days afterwards, she kept talking about it and the monkey decorations are still on the wall. I’ll have to think of a new holiday soon.