Breanna has her one year check-up tomorrow at the doctor’s office. Obviously, it’s a little late but it couldn’t really be helped. I thought she could also see a nurse like most of the other appointments, but for some reason they only book you with a doctor for the one year. In order to get an appointment with our actual doctor, I would have needed to book it at least three months ahead of time. I called at the beginning of November and he wasn’t available at all and I couldn’t see my favorite nurse either.

At first she managed to get me in with one of the other doctors for last Monday. It’s a team family clinic, so you can easily be switched from one doctor or nurse to another if the need arises, so it was no big deal. Unfortunately, both kids came down with the Plague cold that weekend and I canceled the appointment because there was no way I was taking two kids who were already leaking bodily fluids into a doctor’s office; they don’t have separate waiting rooms for well vs sick visits so I didn’t want them making anyone else sick and I also didn’t want them to get something worse from having weakened immune systems and being around other germs.

Of course, it doesn’t help that there has been a major outbreak of a gastro virus at several Montreal hospitals lately. Joy. If either of them touches anything, I may freak right out.

I’m not looking forward to the check-up. I do want to know how much she weighs and how she’s doing, and I look forward to sharing all the milestones she’s met and the things that she does. However, tomorrow is the MMR vaccination and I remember that one well. The after-effects are not fun. We’ll have the Infant Motrin lined up and waiting for her but it still sucks.

The other reason I’m not thrilled is because when we had to re-schedule, we got shoved in at 1:30 which is just a bad time*. She often goes down for a nap around 1:30 or 2 and I’m worried that she’ll be cranky and overtired. I’m hoping that she’ll get up early enough that she can take a short nap at least in the morning before we leave. Then maybe she’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home. You never realize how much effort it is to schedule things around your kid’s naps before they get here.

Either way, it will be good to have confirmation that – as we already know – she’s doing just fine. And hey, the bonus of the wonky time is that there won’t be any traffic on the way there and we should (hopefully) be done early enough to avoid traffic on the way home.

(*secretly, I’m also bummed that I’ll miss my soap opera but I can’t complain about it because it will help perpetuate the rumor that stay at home moms eat bonbons and watch soaps all day.)

No really. Santa really is a woman.

On Wednesday night I got an email through my contact form (up top there) and it was from a wonderful reader who has been reading my site since the days before Hayley was even born. She told me that she had gotten herself a very nice new camera and had a digital camera that would be neglected as a result, and would I be interested in giving it a good and loving home.

Once I re-read it eight times to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood, I told her that yes I would love to adopt a new-to-me camera.

On Friday evening, when I had finally assumed that the package would arrive on Monday (and probably while I would be gone to take Breanna to her one-year check-up, thus meaning I’d have to wait and pick it up at the post office on Tuesday), the doorbell rang at 7:30 pm and a surly mailman arrived at our door. He was probably just less than thrilled about stairs at the end of a long day but I didn’t care, I was ecstatic.

I am now the proud – and very happy – owner of a very sleek, shiny, Fuji Finepix A345 camera. I have occasionally referred to it as “my preciousssssssssssss” in a very Lord of the Rings way.

Obviously I still have some playing around to do to make the absolute most of it, but I’ve had fun shooting some random test images with it for now. I have the PDF of the user’s manual sitting on my desktop to look through again and of course, practice makes perfect! I’m hoping to get out for a little walk tomorrow if I can dodge the snow, and take some more then. If not, well I have plenty of photo ops what with my two lunatics.

The optical zoom is particularly nice. It’s great to zoom in on this pretty face.

A million thank yous again SueEllen – Christmas came early this year!

Normally bedtime is at 8 for the girls because by then Breanna is usually getting run down and Hayley wakes up early but never naps so it’s a good time.

Tonight Hayley got to stay up late though. Tonight CBS ran the original Rudolph the Reindeer special, followed by Frost the Snowman. I remember every year as a kid I looked forward to those, especially Rudolph. I was always just a little afraid of the “abominable” even though I knew he was good in the end; all those teeth and the creepy way his fur blew in the wind… But when the end would come I was always so happy to see that everyone was singing Christmas songs together and decorating the tree, with the abominable putting the star on top.

Hayley said she really liked Rudolph, and although she said Frosty was good too, I think she only thought it was okay because she got a little bored; I guess she prefers the reindeer to the snowman, just like me.

Right now she’s watching some other special called Frosty Returns, a special I never saw before but even though you could never get her to admit to it, she’s running out of steam. She’s lying on the couch, looking pretty tired, and when it’s over in five minutes I’ll get her (protesting, I’m sure) into the bathroom to brush her teeth and then shoo her into bed.

It’s nice, though, to see traditions you enjoyed being passed on to your kids.

Anyone reading my blog for awhile has heard me practically write poetry about a Quebec delicacy, poutine. When I was pregnant with Breanna I made my own for “snacks” and ate about triple my weight in poutine during that first trimester when it was one of the few things that didn’t make me want to hurl.

Tonight, since we all still felt a little less than enthused about anything, George suggested poutine for supper. Easy, fast, and tasty. Plus it’s not exactly nutritious so that makes it fun too. Unfortunately, our grocery store was out of cheese curds which is really important for making it, but mozzarella cheese sticks that we buy for the kids can work in a pinch so that’s what we did. And because I’m a huge dork I thought I’d bring you all into my kitchen for the prep work.

Step one: Bake some fries. Any fries. Crinkle cut work well but I prefer the straight cut.

Step two: Open a can or two of poutine sauce. Yes, you can actually buy it here. If you can’t find it, BBQ chicken sauce works quite well too. Just avoid brown gravy because… no.

Step three: While everything is heating, chop up a bunch of cheese sticks into tiny pieces.

Step four: Make a mountain of fries on your plate.

Step five: Dump a good load of cheese pieces all over the fries.

Step six: Drown the cheese and fries in the heated sauce.

The sauce HAS to be hot because it needs to melt the cheese so that by the time you start to eat it, it’s basically a big gooey mess on top of the fries. I like to cover mine liberally in black pepper. Goes well with beer, even the Heineken that I had tonight.

It looks disgusting, but I swear to you, it is so damn good.

First and most important things first: Today Montrealers remember that 17 years ago Marc Lepine killed 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique for no other reason than they were women and he hated that they were in his Engineering courses where women “didn’t” belong.

***

Last night, when Hayley FINALLY fell asleep (and it was an ordeal and a half, what with repeatedly getting up to ask me how Saint Nicholas would get in and wasn’t I going to bed so he could come, blablabla), I set up the loot in both kids’ shoes. I really love this tradition.

In Breanna’s we put two cute pairs of socks with the little grippy treads on the bottom, a soft stuffed cow, two lollipops, and an Aero chocolate bar; obviously she won’t get to actually eat the last two, but she can have a small taste of each before they’re passed over. In fact, the chocolate bar will be eaten by ME as soon as this entry is done, other than one small square that I’ll save for her.

In Hayley’s shoes, we squeezed in two pairs of socks (specifically chosen because they look like George’s socks so that she would actually consent to wearing them), a Disney Princess lip gloss, Princess hair elastics, and also the two lollipops and Aero bar. She also had a dinosaur coloring set with markers that didn’t fit.

This morning, apparently Hayley woke George up at 4:30 because she was so excited. I feel fortunate that I missed out on it. He managed to convince her to watch some Treehouse in the living room for a few more hours and to give her credit, although I know she looked at the shoes she never touched them and didn’t take anything out of them which is pretty good.

Once she was sent off to get me up (and Breanna by default), they both checked out their gifts.

You can see the set on Flickr – there are only six but they’re cute.

And that was pretty much the highlight of an other wise dreary day. Well that, and two funny anecdotes:

An exchange between myself and Hayley:

Hayley: Look Mommy! There are Christmas lights outside!
Sherry: Out front? But there are no buildings out there.
Hayley: No look hard Mommy! They’re red! And now they’re green.
Sherry: … Red and … green? (looking) Hayley! That’s the traffic light!
Hayley: Oh!

And Breanna’s contribution to the humour of the day:

What with having this obnoxious cold, Breanna has seen me blow my nose a lot (as well as Hayley and now George). As mentioned, she HATES the bulb. I guess she’s trying to solve that problem because she pointed at the box of kleenex and grunted “ah. ah. ah.” at me (which is becoming increasingly common, translating to “I want, I want, I want”). I took one out and handed it to her, to see what she would do, since she currently had a very leaky nose anyway.

She took it, looked at it, and wadded it up carefully.

Then she stuck it to the side of her head and blew her nose all over herself.

But you know, at least the idea is there!

It’s been a long time since a news story made me cry as much as finding out that the missing San Francisco man was found dead. That poor family.

It always fascinates me to watch the way that Breanna mimics so much of what Hayley does. Today Hayley was climbing up over one of the little chairs she has and jumping over on to the couch. I asked her to please stop because her sister was watching and I didn’t want her to get any big ideas since she tries to copy her so much. Hayley said, “no, she doesn’t copy me!” but it’s not true.

Take the image above, for instance. Hayley was sitting up on the couch with George, having a yogurt tube. George had one too but Breanna ended up finishing it off because she wanted to sit up there beside her big sister and eat the same thing.

Or brushing her teeth. With Hayley it was a nightmare when she was little, but now it’s not so bad. Breanna saw Hayley getting her teeth brushed all the time so when her first ones popped out, it was no big deal at all getting her to let me stick the toothbrush in there to clean them. All she knew was that she was doing the same thing as her big important sister. The image may be grainy (camera phone at night = grain) but it still shows how much she enjoys doing anything that Hayley does.

More than once I’ve caught Breanna standing on Hayley’s stool, and today I came out from flipping the fish and chips I was making for supper and I found Breanna was standing on an upside-down toy bucket, hanging on to the end table, just like she sees Hayley doing all the time. I’m going to wind up with a full head of grey hair within the next six months, I am almost positive.

I hope some day Hayley realizes how amazing it is that she is a constant role model right now for her little sister.

***

In other news…

Before you’re a mother, no one ever tells you that some day you’ll have to (gently) sit on top of your baby to keep her still and keep her arms pinned beneath your legs and her head trapped between your knee caps so that you can suction snot out of her nose with a bulb aspirator while she screams. Fun times!

For the record, I never had to do that with Hayley because she was WEIRD and liked it. But I did have to pin her down like that three times a day (including in the middle of the night) to put the antibiotic gel in her eyes after her first eye surgery. And that was fun too.

I have read a lot of parenting books. A LOT. Where is the chapter on tackling and pinning down your children in all those damn books? I’m starting to think I should write my own.

Breanna’s in the music room right now, dancing like a little wild woman to Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”. I think that if she grows up to be that girl who dances on top of the speakers in bars I will not be surprised at all.

Everyone always seems to think that Breanna is short. I guess it’s because Hayley is so tall that Breanna seems that way, and we forget what Hayley was like as a baby, but it’s not true.

I think Breanna’s destined to be fairly tall as well. I’ve measured both girls on the door frame of Hayley’s room and Breanna is roughly the same height as her sister was at the same age, maybe half an inch shorter.

My mother-in-law bought her clothes for her birthday and the outfit is 12 months and the tights only 6-9 months because she was afraid anything else would be too big for her. Luckily the outfit should last a little while but the tights just barely stretched over her legs and butt because she’s taller than people think; we told her to go ahead and buy 12+ in tights next time and that almost all her outfits are 18 months now.

I really think that picture sums it up. Hayley is four years old but look how high Breanna reaches on her when they’re walking around together. She’s also gone through a bit of a growth spurt (actually they both have, and thank God I know Hayley’s bound to get clothes as gifts in a few weeks because she has a sudden shortage of pants that are long enough!) and she suddenly looks so BIG every time we look at her. It’s almost creepy how kids do that, how they just grow overnight and look different all of a sudden.

Of course, she’s still little enough to get into this sort of trouble and still get away with it.

This neat little flickr tool is wicked. You draw a little sketch and it calls up random images that bear some resemblance to what you drew. Addictive and fun!