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This is what Breanna’s been practicing lately.

In case it’s not totally clear, that would be my eight-month-old BABY standing. Unassisted. And she’s good at it. See?

The hand in the background is not hanging onto George at all. That hand is actually blurry because while she was standing ALL ALONE she was also waving her hand around, trying to grab George’s Freezie.

What is with all these crazy over-achiever babies? It’s like they read the books and see the average age for a skill is X months old and they take it as a personal challenge. “Oh yeah?! Pffft, I’ll do that by the end of the day!”

Yeesh.

Oh, and yeah. She got that Freezie too.

Luckily I didn’t have any work to do last night since I had finished up the work on a client’s site as much as I could until I hear back from her. This was good since I wouldn’t have been able to get anything done because of the weather. I had gotten Breanna to sleep but Hayley was still tossing and turning when the wind abruptly picked up to very fast gusts, rattling windows and doors. Then the lightning started up. The wind woke Breanna up and I was just soothing her back to sleep when a few loud cracks of thunder sent Hayley running into the bedroom.

Since Hayley was scared and Breanna had been startled back to being awake by Hayley’s screeching, I brought them both out to the living room and pulled the hide-a-bed out. I figured the best cure for Hayley’s fears was exposure, so I turned out all but one lamp in the living room and opened the blinds, and we watched the storm together. In fact, I have a few awesome video clips of the flashing and occasional forked lightning (I’m not completely insane – I shot the video through the window, not standing out on the balcony). Eventually I hope to get them up on YouTube but I was hoping someone could suggest a very simple video editing program. I don’t want to do anything fancy, I just want to be able to cut it so that I only have the first five seconds of a 29-second clip. And when I say simple, I really mean “DUDE this is so easy a newborn could do it.” Anyone?

When the thunder finally stopped (though the lightning flashed like a strobe light for a good hour afterward), I got Hayley back in bed and she fell asleep within five minutes. Breanna was harder. She was wired so she crawled around the living room for another 45 minutets before she was finally ready for bed.

It was fun though. I love a good storm and last night nature put on one hell of a show. At one point the flashing was so spectacular and blue that it reminded me of seeing the Northern Lights. I’m glad I was able to get Hayley past her fears so I could get her to enjoy it asd much as I do.

I frequently complain about our apartment, not solely because it IS an apartment, but because of the lack of space. It seemed pretty spacious when George and I moved in six (!) years ago, but with the addition of two kids and all their stuff, plus things that we acquired along the way, I must say that it’s getting a little cramped in here. Every once in awhile I have to talk myself down from a ledge – a ledge that would see me violently pitching random belongings over our fourth-floor balcony.

But tonight I was a little bored and poking around ye olde internet, and I came across a fascinating photo essay of 100 flats in Hong Kong – each of them is a one-room flat measuring a mere 100 by 100 feet. Having everything you own so close together makes me appreciate our apartment a little more. I will vow to stop complaining. At least not for a few days.

Apparently today’s weather forecast is don’t leave the house. *sweating*

This morning at 8 am it was so hot that between the heat outside and our air conditioner inside, our sliding doors were fogged up, the same way a car’s windshield will fog up when you turn on the heat in the throes of winter.

On top of that, the janitor called 15 minutes ago and told me that apparently our air conditioner isn’t tilted outwards enough and so the condensation is causing water to run into the living room below ours. I don’t really understand this since a) it IS angled out and if we tilt it anymore it would probably fall out (and it weighs about eleventy billion tons so it would KILL someone if it fell on them), b) we’ve had it in for about two months, it runs most days, and it has never done this before or else I assume we would have heard about it already, c) our wall, floor, and the window frame/window sill, and the piece of wood we have to seal the window are all dry, so where the hell is it dripping then? I turned it off but after only 15 minutes it’s already starting to get really warm in here and although I understand the problem with dripping water, I’m going to have to put it back on. I can’t have it going up to 45 degrees in here with two young kids.

And I know we’re nothing special, it’s the same overheated crap everywhere in Canada, the U.S., and even overseas. It still sucks.

Al Gore must be sitting at home, shaking his head and thinking, “I TOLD you fuckers.”

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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.