Since Breanna’s birthday is tomorrow (and I’m trying not to think about it too much), today we braved the horror show of Toys R Us on a Sunday afternoon one month before Christmas. It was pretty packed but we survived. What helped a lot was that I had already found one idea online and then we just looked around for something else while we were there. In the end it took us less than ten minutes of looking around to get what we needed which isn’t bad at all.

The first thing we got was this shape sorting toy. As soon as I saw it on the website, I knew it would be a great gift for Breanna. She is all about putting toys into buckets, baskets, boxes, etc. She even likes putting paper into the garbage. A toy like this will keep her really entertained as soon as she figures out which shapes go into which holes.

I can’t even find the other one online, not on the Toys R Us site, Fisher Price, or Disney. That’s weird. Anyway, it’s a Winnie the Pooh bath playset that sticks to the side of the tub and has little figurines, a place to pour water, and a place to pump out bubbles. It’s really cute and I’m sure she’ll have fun with it (and so will Hayley).

Tonight after we had supper I baked a simple cake. It’s just a white cake and I’ll tint the white icing pink. I asked George to pick up a box of Smarties to put around the edge (even though Breanna won’t be able to eat them), and we’ll put a candle in it and have it after supper tomorrow night. It’s a plain cake because it’s just us and we just want to celebrate the day. I’ll do her fancier cake (I’m waffling between a ladybug and a butterfly motif) for her party in a couple of weeks.

I can’t believe that the baby I was so impatient for this time last year is going to be one year old in… hmmm, looking at the current time, just a little over 12 hours. Where has the past year gone?

At least she still looks small when she sleeps.

Note to self: Possible Xmas gift for Hayley.

I think that at some point before lunch I had an idea of something to write about when I got around to posting this evening. You know what though? Last night Breanna woke up around 10:15 or so and wouldn’t go back to sleep until 12:30 (at which point I had to stay up an extra half hour because by then I was halfway through a late-night rerun of an episode of CSI: Miami that I had never seen and I needed to see the end to find out if I was right. I was.). Tonight she was tired and went to sleep quite easily at 8 but inexplicably woke up by 9 and only just settled back down to sleep. Meanwhile, I can still hear Hayley rustling around in her bed and talking to Ernie. Between the two of them, this sleeping mutiny is wearing on my last nerve (ten straight days with Breanna, cripes) so whatever I was going to write about tonight is long forgotten. I should buy post-it notes for stuff like that.

So here. Let’s talk about the best pizza in the Montreal area. George seriously mocks me because I regularly take pictures of food so when he goes through my backups to see pictures he may have missed he always ends up with these random shots of dinner or breakfast or some sauce cooking on the stove. I don’t care. I like taking pictures of my food.

The other night I ate this. It’s a Tex-Mex pizza and I could just about die because it’s that good.

Instead of using sauce, the dough is covered with salsa. Then it’s layered with onions, mushrooms, peppers, black olives, mozzarella, and sliced grilled chicken. They throw in a container of sour cream which you then dump by heaping spoonfuls all over your slice.

It is insane. It is so good. It completely knocked my original Best Pizza Ever off the list. Which is okay because that one was up north near my grandmother’s place so it’s not like I ever get to have it regularly. At least this one is readily available.

I’m eating the last slice right now while typing this and what a shame that no one can taste it but me.

Is it a Dora toy for kids? Or a Dora dildo? You decide. I mean really, what the hell?! (Thanks Mar!)

This picture has nothing to do with the entry, exactly. It just makes me giggle to see how crazy Breanna’s hair gets after her bath if I don’t brush it right away. Apparently it makes her laugh too.

So it’s the weekend. Eh. As far as I know there’s nothing particularly interesting lined up so I’m neither looking forward to it nor dreading it. It’s really just another two days, that’s all. There are a few things I need to do though. Today Hayley found some of those temporary tattoos and wanted to put them on. We did but they were old enough that they didn’t stick very well so we told her that tomorrow we’ll take her to the dollar store to see if we can find new ones.

At some point we also have to suck it up and pick something for Breanna’s birthday present. I still really don’t know what we’ll get but we’ll try a few places, even if it means we have to end up in Toys R Us on a weekend (god). It shouldn’t be this complicated and I guess we should have looked harder sooner but I kept hoping I’d be really inspired. Alas. The biggest problem is that her birthday is just over a month before Christmas and a lot of the ideas we’ve come up with would be good gifts for both girls then. We’d like to get them one of those flip-out couches for the living room, and we’re also intrigued by the ginormous Aquadoodle sets. We’ll see what we can find and hopefully something in the stores will scream “I am a great first birthday present!”

Wow, I think that’s it. I have nothing. This time a year ago was much more exciting. This date a year ago was actually a Thursday so I don’t think much was happening, but I know that on the 18th I went to see George play in the hopes that the vibrations of the loud live music would break my water; in the end all it did was make Breanna move around a lot in there which then made me need to pee every fifteen seconds. Then on the 19th our friends had their daughter’s birthday party and I was over at their house for many hours, dancing to Latin music and having my belly jiggled maniacally by one of their friends. I still think that party was the reason that my water broke at 7 the next morning and it was also the reason Breanna shot out in less than four hours of labor.

So apparently my pregnant life was more interesting and eventful than my present day life. That’s okay though. Now I get to see my two girls playing together like they did for over an hour this afternoon, playing ball in the hallway. That beats partying.

Now let’s see if I can find something entertaining to do on a Friday night. I may have a glass of beer and some chips. Woo, alert the press!

Being Canadian it’s hard to keep getting bombarded with stuff about Thanksgiving. Why? Because I already celebrated it last month and it’s making me so hungry to see pictures of Thanksgiving food that I don’t get to enjoy! Wah! Take these Thanksgiving Treats for instance. I could totally go for some of that spiced eggnog cake. I mean really. Eggnog cake? Yes PLEASE. Or Drambuie cake. They sound so delicious my mouth is watering. Maybe I should order one and pretend to be American just so I can celebrate Thanksgiving with one of those cakes for dessert!

Having a lot of people reading your site sometimes means you’re a really interesting and/or talented blogger. Sometimes though, it just means that people are checking to see if you’ve said something mean about people who need a heads’ up about it. Kind of like the way some of the popular girls in school had people hang around them, not because they actually LIKED said girls, but because they wanted to make sure the stuck-up bitch wasn’t spreading rumors about them.

First of all, someone nominated me in several categories over at the Canadian Blog Awards. Woot. There are no prizes but it would be fun to say that I won something, so if you’re so inclined, go ahead and vote for me. Although the awards are Canadian, the voters don’t have to be, and you can vote once per day.

If you do I’ll… uhhh. I’ll do something really Canadian and eat some poutine in your honor and use Canadian Tire Money as napkins. Thanks.

In other news, it’s now 10:15 at night and Hayley is still awake. I know this because she has gotten up eleventy billion times and I can currently hear her chattering. I went in to ask her to please lower the volume on her voice (which she did) so that she wouldn’t wake Breanna up and I was informed that she was talking on her toy phone to “Yuckyman” which is a supervillian played by Pablo on the Backyardigans. It was so cute that I really didn’t know whether to continue to be annoyed that she has not fallen asleep despite being in bed for over two hours or whether to kiss her forehead for being so cute. The latter won.

It’s just that it seems like if one sleep battle gets ironed out another crops up. Breanna slept well last night, so well that I also slept well enough that I have no idea what time she woke up because I have no recollection of going to her crib, and then she slept until 9:30 this morning. Clearly she needed it. And so now Hayley is fighting insomnia (and Yuckyman). I figure at this rate I should get an entire week of decent sleep when the kids are in their teen years.

Just for fun, some other things that are annoying me right now:

• Insane cats chasing each other up and down the hall. Loudly.
• OCD hamster chewing so loudly on her bars that I can barely hear my own thoughts.
• Damn kitten thinking it’s fun to chase her tail on top of the chair on which I am sitting.
• My hair. I desperately need a hair cut. Tomorrow I am officially calling the hairdressing school nearby and finding out a) if they currently need anyone to come in for cheap cuts for the students and b) how soon can they take me and lop off my middle-of-my-back hair into something chin length. Or possibly shorter.
• “Six Degrees” isn’t on tonight. I think it was also not on last week. I am so intrigued by this show, I will be pissed off if it was canceled.
• Speaking of shows by J.J. Abrams, this 13-week hiatus with “Lost”? No new episodes now until the new year? Totally ticking me off.
• Almost a whole year post-partum (yeesh, four more days…) and my calves still ache the way they did during pregnancy. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. I wonder if doing yoga would help make the blood circulate better because that’s what I feel like the problem is. Another pregnancy would probably destroy my body what with the aching legs and the sciatic nerve crap. Good thing two was enough for me – if I get lonely for the baby days I’ll go buy some sort of needy plant.
• I have four days until Breanna’s birthday and although we’re not doing her party until December (too many other engagements this month and we want everyone to be able to come) we do still want to give her our present on Monday. I have NO idea what to get her. She’s very into music; if George goes down the hall and puts something on in the music room, she will charge down there as fast as those two little legs can carry her (and trust me, she’s moved from walking to almost running very well) and then she stands in the doorway and starts dancing. So a musical toy would be great but I don’t know what exactly would be best. We got Hayley her toy kitchen (which is also a big hit with Breanna) and that was easy. Breanna’s hard. Hmm.

There’s a cup of tea and a stack of brownie chocolate chip cookies waiting for me. I should go take care of them.

See? I need a haircut.

As much fun as the holidays can be, one nuisance always pops up at this time of year: The question “What the heck do I buy for people?” The answer? Holiday Gift Baskets, of course! These baskets can be filled with chocolates, liqueurs, candies, or snacks and are suitable for all ages. Holiday Gift Baskets are perfect for friends, clients, vendors, and just about anyone you can think of. Consider ordering some of these beautiful, tasteful baskets. Happy holidays!

Oh my god. Breanna will be one year old in five days and I think that to celebrate the end of the first year of her life she has decided to remind me of the newborn sleep deprivation days. First we had the nights where she would wake up just as I was heading for bed between 11:30 and midnight, and then keep me up until about 4 in the morning.

After four days of that, she had one good sleep but I didn’t get to enjoy it myself because I was so jittery from the lack of sleep that I actually couldn’t sleep much at all; the constant belief that she would wake up any minute now kept jerking me awake and I was too restless to rest.

The next night I was finally ready for some good old fashioned sleep but alas, although she slept through the dreaded witching hour, she then decided that 4 am was a fine wake up time. Yesterday she was up from 4 until about 7, after which we both fell asleep for awhile, and this morning my chances were shot when Hayley also woke up at 5:30. I gave up and just decided I was fated to hook up a heroin needle to feed coffee directly into my bloodstream. I spent most of today feeling woozy and fuzzy and just plain lost. Which is pretty much what the first part of newborn parenting feels like.

Today she was so tired that she took a two and a half hour nap, which is pretty unheard of these days. She then tried to resist bedtime but the music on “Dancing With the Stars” helped put her to sleep pretty quickly. (What? What are you looking at me like that for? It’s not the first time I’ve outed myself as being a fan of cheesy television. It’s not my fault, I am a prime target for that stuff. You know when you see these reality shows and scream, “augh, who watches this shit?!” Well. You’re welcome.)

I really seriously hope that there are no further occurrences of weird night wakings, early morning three-hours-before-the-sun wakeups, and no preschooler-playing-with-the-frickin’-kitten-at-5:30 incidents. I don’t think my body can take another day of that. I am so tired that it took me half an hour to motivate myself to put supper on the table and all I had to do was heat up the pre-cooked chicken, fries, and gravy in the microwave for two minutes.

Please cross your fingers that I get a decent sleep tonight. There is not enough coffee in the world to save me otherwise.

She’s not this cute at 4 in the morning.