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.

Amid the political blogs and the travel blogs lies a huge community: The mommyblog. Some writers of such blogs cringe at the name. Some people who aren’t parents (or who aren’t bloggers, or who simply aren’t parents who blog about being parents) scoff at the mommyblog.

And I think it’s incredibly important.

If you rewind several decades, maybe several centuries, you would see where the term “it takes a village to raise a child” comes from. It’s not just a cliché, though in this day and age it probably sounds like one as much as it sounds like a foreign concept. But back in them thar olden days, a mother raised her child with the help of her mother, her mother-in-law, her sisters, her aunts, the women in her community around her. Other women helped with the errands, the housework, the food, the older children. It was a genuine communal effort.

What do we have today? If you’re a stay at home mother, you’re judged for being a lazy, kept woman (you don’t even have to use your brain anymore and it must be so nice to just sit around playing with crayons all day) and you’re isolated unless you actively seek out friends for playdates. Even with the playdates, you’re still on your own for the most part. If you’re a working mother, aside from being judged (why did you have kids if you aren’t going to stay home with them?), you have the help of a daycare while you’re out of the house but you have to pay for someone else to have the privilege of caring for your child.

On top of that we have the utterly ridiculous competitive nature of parenting in this era. Everyone is perfect. Except YOU. Everyone else is able to juggle the kids, the housework, and bringing in a salary. If you peeped into someone else’s house – anyone else’s house – you would see that the house is immaculately clean, the kids are dressed in pressed clothes, their hair is combed, the MOM’S hair is coifed, a four-course meal is steaming hot on the table, and everyone is sitting around laughing and having another fantabulous day.

Oh wait. Except this isn’t “Leave It To Beaver”. I’ll tell you something about the perfect mom – it’s a lie. No one is perfect, everyone has done something stupid or embarrassing or regretful in regards to their kids. Even Miss Prim and Proper with her nose so high in the air that she may very well trip over the sidewalk.

So why does all this make the mommyblog so important? Simple. It’s because we tell truths. The problem with the Perfect Mom Syndrome is that no one wants to talk about the fuck-ups. Good lord, no. We can’t sit in the park with some mom we’ve just met and admit to doing anything less than perfect, because then we would be showing that we’re human. The thing is, everyone else is doing it too. The perky, smiling mom with the cute matching shoes and handbag with the water bottle (gasp, not JUICE) for Junior in one hand while she cheerfully pushes him on the swing with the other is hiding the fact that just that very morning she was so tired from a lousy sleep and a lack of a cup of coffee that she yelled at her precious son for purposely throwing Cheerios all over the floor.

But on mommyblogs it’s somehow easier isn’t it? Here on the Internet we can confide in others about the things we do – the mistakes we’ve made, the choices we’re unsure of because they’re surrounded in controversy, the utter cluelessness we feel from time to time – and our imaginary friends who live inside the computer will help us. Sometimes we might get slammed by a troll who mocks us or vilifies us for something, but more often than not, we get people who say “Oh my GOD, me too, thank you for speaking up!” or “I’m sorry you’re having trouble, let me tell you what worked for us” and it makes us feel better.

Being honest online about the real trials and tribulations of parenting, and especially motherhood because of the ridiculous expectations (both from others and the self-imposed expectations), means that we suddenly feel just a little less isolated. It’s like the virtual version of that old community. Maybe we can’t bake a casserole and take it to our favorite blogger when she’s having a hellish day, but we can leave a sympathetic comment or fire off a “cheer up!” email.

It’s somehow safer online than in the park, in the doctor’s waiting room, at the church picnic, even at your good friend’s BBQ. Online, a mom can admit to things like dropping her baby when she accidentally fell asleep on the couch at 3 in the morning; having her baby fall off the bed after quietly waking up from a nap; bribing her pre-schooler with chocolate while fussing in line at the bank; giving her kid more juice than is suggested by dentists because that little girl is so stubborn she’d probably dehydrate herself otherwise; losing her cool and yelling at her daughter in public; losing one of her kids for a terrifying minute while at an outdoor party near a source of water; hiding in the bathroom with the shower running so that she can only hear her own screaming instead of that of the sleepless baby down the hall in the crib because she desperately needed to step away and calm down, and god knows what else.

(And by the way, all those examples come directly from me. The first one? The dropping-the-baby-off-the-couch thing? I not only did that but I did it TWICE. I did it when Hayley was six weeks old and I did it when Breanna was three months old. Both times I was running on fumes of sleep deprivation and I had settled down on the couch to nurse, only to startle awake to the scary *thud* “wahhhh!” of a baby on the floor.)

The mythical Perfect Mother would be horrified to hear those types of tales. She would run home and hug her Perfect Children before cooking her Perfect Dinner for her Perfect Husband, perhaps ironing Perfect Creases into her Perfect Pants in between chopping and stirring.

Luckily, she doesn’t really exist. And maybe the mom who looks so perfect would be relieved to hear that you’ve had your own dumbass parenting moment and would regale you with the story about how she once forgot to pick up Junior from daycare. But until we get comfortable with face-to-face honesty about how hard and scary and insane parenting is, at least we have the mommyblogs to help us to remember that we aren’t alone.

Cause for rejoicing = my sister is in town. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen Amanda since December. It was so great to have eher and my mom over for supper last night (and a shame my dad couldn’t make it). I’m going to see her again on Sunday and then she’s back on a plane to Halifax.

If I don’t write about the weekend soon, I’ll never get around to it and I don’t want to forget it. There were some rough moments, and let me just say that camping with two young children is not what anyone would call relaxing in any way, but it was fun overall and I’m glad we went.

George was playing at a party up north, a friend of a friend. The guy has a beautiful house on the edge of the Maskinongé River, about two hours north of Montreal. He also owns the field across the road and so anyone who wanted to camp out was able to do so. In fact, although we only showed up on Saturday morning and left by about 10 am on Sunday, there were other people who had been there partying since Thursday evening!

We got up there bright and early with our friends Dean and Joanne; Dean and George set up the stage area and I took the girls down to the river bank to “skip rocks” as Hayley said (and requested over and over and over ad nauseum for 24 straight hours), though it was more like wading into the water and chucking rocks straight in.

There was no shortage of food since Joanne had brought tons of sandwiches and we had also picked up fruit and cheese and juice boxes for our cooler. They served supper – burgers or hot dogs on the BBQ with several different salads, and then the band started up. It wasn’t the first time Hayley had experienced the rock and roll lifestyle but it was Breanna’s first encounter with loud music. I sat on the grass, holding her hands, and she stood up, bouncing up and down with a big smile on her face. I guess she enjoyed it.

Eventually Breanna fell asleep in my wrap carrier, and even Hayley fell asleep on a patio chair for awhile. We had no bug spray because we couldn’t find any that would be safe for both kids. We settled on long pants, socks, and sweaters/jackets for Hayley and myself, and I put Breanna in footed pajamas and a hat. In the end, despite an utter deluge of mosquitos, Hayley had a grand total of ONE bite near her elbow, Breanna had none at all, and I got devoured by the little bastards – they bit me THROUGH MY JEANS. I have tons of bites all over my knees and legs. Gah!

I was a little apprehensive about the tent situation. I have no issues with sleeping in a tent and actually enjoy it, but I didn’t know how the girls would do. It helped that although they had woken up, they were still tired. Hayley had one moment of panic when a car drove by and the headlights lit up the shadows of some trees on the side of the tent, but I think she actually fell asleep before I finished explaining what it was. Breanna cried for 30 seconds and fell asleep shortly after having some milk.

Breanna woke up way more frequently than she does at home, but it was no big deal to get her back to sleep. Hayley never woke up until morning. She didn’t even wake up when Spike, a friendly lab mix dog, came sniffing around our tent, barked playfully, and then stuck his entire face up under the fly so that the outline of his nose actually protruded into the tent, directly over Hayley’s head.

I had a hard time sleeping because despite the incredible heat that day, it got ridiculously cold and damp overnight and I was freezing. Also, I’ve gone and developed later-in-life allergies (gosh, THANKS for that) and whatever I’m allergic to was running rampant in that field. I could hardly breathe all night. The irony was that I later discovered I had a box of Breathe Right strips (that work really well, by the way) in my jacket pocket, right next to my head but I forgot they were there.

The one thing with tent sleeping is that there is no such thing as sleeping in because once the sun starts to come up, you start to bake. It got hot pretty quickly and I think we were up by 7 or so. The guy throwing the party had set up a giant coffee maker, so that was appreciated. He also had bagels, a toaster, loaves of bread, lots of spreads, juice, and cereal. It was awesome. Apparently he was going to do up some eggs later but we had to get going. George was really tired and we didn’t want to keep the kids out in the sun and heat much longer because even by 10 am it was gearing up to be really hot and humid.

It was definitely fun. Hayley had a blast and I know she’ll be talking about it for a long time. Breanna won’t remember of course, but I’LL remember that my little baby went camping like a trooper at 7.5 months.

The band, doing a quick sound check. (It’s a bit hard to see, so that’s George on the far right with the guitar for those of you who are new around here.)

Someone was nice enough to take this picture of me with the girls.

Our tent in the field.

My view as I stepped out of the tent. It was such a nice place.

George and Breanna, early in the morning.

Hayley the rockstar, early in the morning.

What? A picture of me in the morning? HAHAHA. Uh, no. Just look at the picture of me above and picture me with combination hat hair and bed head, glasses, a couple of visible mosquito bites, and generally looking like tired crap. That would be me.

I enjoyed it. I think I would even go again.

As promised, the video of Breanna crawling last Thursday.

There is no such thing as staying still these days, not unless she’s asleep.

I want to update, I really do. But I can’t because I think I’m getting a glass of water and heading to bed even if it’s only 9:30 pm. I’m so tired because yesterday we went up north and spent the day outside splashing in a river, eating a lot, listening to George’s band, and then we camped out in a tent, followed by early morning river-splashing again, breakfast, and an accumulation of too much sun and heat.

So I’ll just update tomorrow. I’ll leave you with my favorite view of the scenery from yesterday afternoon instead.

I turn 32 years old in just under two hours. No big deal, I suppose. But you know you’re getting older when it’s the day before your birthday and:

1. First thing in the morning, while turning my head like any normal human being, I snapped something. I had to get Hayley to sit and make sure Breanna didn’t throw herself off the bed and it took me almost ten minutes to get up, the pain was THAT bad. It’s a little better but I still can’t look completely left.

2. I’m seriously considering going to bed. The kids are asleep, George is exhausted, and I’m thinking my pillow sounds like a fine idea.

In other news, Breanna decided the day before my birthday was a great day to finally learn to crawl after so many flubbed attempts. I have a great video of it but YouTube is being putzy tonight and it’s taking forever to process so I can’t share it until tomorrow. Almost all day, when she wasn’t napping, she was either crawling across the living room in search of toys (especially Hayley’s “Lucky Ducks” game) or standing and starting to cruise.

What the hell? Who told her she could get teeth, learn to get up to a sitting position, pull herself up to standing, crawl, and start cruising all in the same month?

I haven’t decided whether all this mobility will make me extra vigilant, extra paranoid, or a raging alcoholic. All three sound appealing right now.

In the meantime, I offer up my proof that cookies will make any kid calm down.

(Just kidding, the bag was empty. Forget the kids, those cookies calm ME down.)

Also, note the HUGE bags under her eyes. Those aren’t bruises – they’re circles from not napping enough because who has time to sleep when there is crawling to do? Gah!

Good night. I need my rest for my birthday, right?