Yesterday, George took Hayley over to our friends’ house to go swimming in their pool. Unfortunately, they were leaving right at the time Breanna needs her nap. I was momentarily tempted to go anyway but I know what happens when she doesn’t nap – she freaks out and falls asleep at 5 or 6 for a few minutes, gets really cranky, and then she gets so overtired that her night time sleep is crap. So, in order to be responsible, I stayed home.

When she woke up an hour later, it was really hot in here even with the A/C blasting. We shared a popsicle to cool off a bit.

That was only a temporary relief though, so then I took one of our big Rubbermaid containers, dumped all the toys into another toy box, and filled it halfway with cool water. I carried it out onto the balcony, coated Breanna with sunscreen, and voila, apartment-sized toddler swimming pool.

Sometimes it just takes a bit of creativity when you live in an apartment, you know? And even when Hayley’s here I could still do it and they could at least play in it with cups since they can’t both fit in it together.

And me? Well, I stuck my feet in for a bit, and then I sat and enjoyed the breeze like the dork I am:

Yay, wireless.

(Psst, I’d love if my Blogathon monitor would say hi so I know who you are!)

I’ve already given some thought to what I’ll do tonight in the later hours. After George goes to bed I’m on my own to keep myself awake. I can’t let myself get too comfortable or I risk falling asleep, so I’ll stick with using my desktop since my office chair is okay but not super cushy, or I’ll take my laptop over to the dining room table. That gives me the bonus of a hard chair plus the A/C blowing straight at me.

I’m also going to make myself a coffee sometime in the wee hours, and I’m going to either get George to pick me up some chocolate later or I’ll go get some myself (I can walk to the store and back in 15 minutes so no worries about missing a post!). I’ve also debated putting the Harry Potter movies on which will be entertaining.

If you’re also ‘thonning, how are you going to force yourself to stay awake tonight?

Yawn. Good morning! I’m up. Actually, here’s Murphy’s Law for you – some days both kids sleep in a bit and let ME sleep until 8:30. This morning they both woke me up a little before 7:30. It may be a long 24 hours!

Still, I’m here with my cup of coffee and a bit of breakfast and I’m ready to go!

Right. So the Blogathon starts on Saturday morning (at 9 am my time, which is Eastern time, Canada) and I suddenly realized I have NO idea what to post about. I’ve been having trouble posting regularly here some days, how am I going to post every half hour for 24 hours straight?

Good thing I at least made out our grocery list which now includes coffee and chocolate. That’s better than nothing.

That being said though, I am now opening up the opportunity to make this really interactive. I may occasionally post something about my chosen charity (the UNHCR, that is) but beyond that, what would you like me to write/post about? This is a chance to ask me questions or request photos of things you would like to see. Keep in mind that I reserve the right to refuse to answer questions if they’re too uncomfortable, and if you’re making a photo post request, remember I have to be here to post every half hour without fail so it can’t be something too far from home. Photos of stuff you might find indoors would be best.

In the meantime, as you may know, I write for PittWatch, a Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie fansite, and I mentioned the Blogathon over there as well. As a result, considering it’s a fairly popular site, I am currently extremely grateful to have over $1200 in pledges. Seriously. However, if you’d also like to sponsor me (even a dollar is fine and it never comes to me in any circumstance, always directly to the UNHCR), you can do so here. And if not, please keep me company when you can by leaving comments and sending emails. They will be much appreciated!

In the meantime, ask and request away and I’ll file them away for use during the Blogathon!

Fun! A simple three-step tutorial for using photoshop to turn your family photos into a personalized colouring book for your kids!

I’ve done the water in two pots transferred with a ladle thing on the balcony and Hayley is a big fan of playing in the sink, but I love this idea for setting up a water play area for people like myself who don’t have a yard.

1. I am getting the redesign bug again and have uploaded several new themes to play with so if you come by and everything looks all crazy, don’t panic. This is a good time to be reading me via feed reader so you don’t have to see any explosions.
2. A kind, wonderful, amazing reader sent me – no kidding – a laptop that she no longer used. Tonight, a fairly hot and humid night, I am not sitting in my corner at my desk, sweating. Instead I am sitting directly in front of the air conditioner that sits over the dining room table and I am quite comfortable. Laptops are the bomb. I still can not express enough thanks to the wishes-to-be-anonymous person who actually gifted me with this. Because I am an enormous DORK, my shiny black laptop is called Severus Snape. No, seriously.
   
3. I am seriously considering re-reading the last Harry Potter just because I read it too quickly.
4. I wrote up a book review on my review site that you should check out if you are a parent with an alienated relationship with your older teen/adult child.
5. It is amazing the weird and funny stuff that you can find on the Internet, but it has been a long time since I have been so in awe of something as I was when I saw the 1500 Filipino prisoners re-enacting the dance sequence to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Holy crap it is awesome.

I believe that is all.

After much anticipation, I spent the vast majority of my weekend reading the last – very last, sniff – Harry Potter book. Although I’m sad that the series has come to an end, I totally loved the book and was very satisfied with how JK Rowling wrapped everything up. I was pretty tired today because I was up late on Saturday night reading and then last night I had to stop reading at 3:30 am or risk falling asleep in mid-sentence. I only had a hundred pages to go but there was no way I could hold out so I finished them today.

Now I’m debating how long I should wait to re-read it. I’m sure I read it a bit too fast (though I find that I’m not as fast a reader as I used to be, likely due to having kids!) and missed stuff.

Now I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to read now.

No, no. I’m not closing up shop or anything. I am, however, pretty much staying offline for the next 48 hours. I’ll be online briefly to do about one hour of data entry work today and another half hour tomorrow night, but other than that, there will be no email checking, no blog browsing, no updating, nothing.

Right now I’m not even really looking while I type because I keep looking out the window every ten seconds to see if any of the vehicles driving by might happen to be the Canada Post truck stopping to drop off my much-anticipated copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which my sister bought for my birthday.

As soon as it arrives I may as well cease to exist as everything other than reading will be done on auto-pilot. I’m going to find out if I can still walk around doing stuff with my nose buried in a book without tripping like I used to do when I was a kid.

I have to stay offline because I have done everything possible to avoid spoilers and I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk being spoiled now (and I don’t intend to ruin it for anyone else when I finish it). I didn’t even go online last night, choosing instead to finish re-reading book six to remind myself of all the details.

And so on that note, I’m off to quickly do my work so that I can get down to business whenever my book arrives. See you on the other side!

Growing up, my sister and I were just far enough apart in age to have trouble getting along. With five years between us, we had a whole world between us. We had our great moments too, of course, but we also fought pretty much daily. By the time I was a full-blown teenager she was at an age where she wanted to copy all that I did, said, and wore and I was at an age where imitation WAS not flattery.

It wasn’t until we were much older that those five years didn’t seem to matter anymore. Then we got along, talking about anything and everything, borrowing clothes (I borrowed every sun dress she owned when I went to Mexico, for instance), and doing fun stuff like the time my friends and I snuck her into a goth club when she was still only 17 years old.

Now she’s one of my best friends. Even though she lives two provinces away and I can’t just call her anymore to ask her if she wants to come over on a boring Saturday afternoon, it hasn’t changed anything else. We still talk on the phone even if it’s not as frequently as it used to be, we email each other several times a week, and she’s still the first blog I race to when I see in Google Reader that there’s a new update. It makes me frustrated now, to think of all the time we wasted growing up, blowing time on yelling at each other, throwing cups full of dishwater at each other, and carefully laying down masking tape on the floor to divide the shared bedroom at my grandmother’s in the summer while screaming at each other to “get off my side of the room!” every ten seconds.

We were lucky in that we actually spent a lot of our weekends and summers together in the same circle of friends, sort of. My best friend up north had a sister the same age as Amanda so ironically we did spend a great deal of time together. We just bickered a lot while doing it. Every once in awhile, we’d have a great moment like the clear night one summer down in Vermont on vacation when we both sat on the rocks beside Lake Champlain and I told her everything I knew about astronomy and she asked more questions, and it was so nice. The next day we probably threw rocks at each other. If only we had had more of the good moments instead of fighting with the person who was so important.

Hayley and Breanna have a little over three years between them. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to have even less time between them in the hopes that there would be more camaraderie and less fighting. I doubt it though. I guess it’s just part of two people being forced to grow up with each other in one small space. I still hope though that as they get older they’ll be close enough in age to be, well, close.

They have days where I am amazed I’m not bald what with all the hair-pulling I do in frustration as they poke and prod each other, scream and cry, throw things, hit each other, and drive me up one wall and down the other. Some days it seems like every single time I leave the room to do something frivolous like wash the dishes or cook supper the two kids who were miraculously quiet two seconds ago are suddenly both screaming at each other – and for me.

But they have their great moments too. Times when Hayley shares her food or toys without prompting, times when Hayley asks Breanna to come play in the ball tent with her, times when Breanna walks over to Hayley and gives her a big hug, and times when they are just so damn cute my head could explode.

Hayley loves to “put Breanna to bed” and playing Mom. She’ll give Breanna a pillow, a stuffed animal, and cover her with a blanket (which is how you know Breanna’s not actually going to sleep because GOD FORBID you cover her up if she’s going to bed). Sometimes she’ll sing a lullaby to her, other times she’ll climb in beside her and snuggle her.

I hold on to those moments because these days they’re fleeting. We’ll see if they become more common when they’re older. It’s my big hope that they realize what a great friend they have long before my sister and I clued in.

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I have two reviews up today. I did a book review for a great fiction novel called Lost and Found and I also did a review of one of our favorite toys around here, some of the animals from the Noah’s Pals playset. Go check them out!