I guess it’s fitting to post this on the 4th of July. We may not be American, but we’re celebrating Independence Day in style over here. Well, okay, Breanna is. I’m cowering in the corner in utter fear.

Why sit when you can try to crawl? But really, why try to crawl when you can just stand up instead?

And if you’d like, you can watch her do it too.

She actually started last night, but the video’s a bit dark. You can go ahead and check it out anyway. What you don’t see in the video is that immediately after I stopped filming her, she plunged her hand directly into that bowl of applesauce on the table. NOTHING IS SAFE ANYMORE!

I need to go lie down.

Woot! Today I’m participating in the Blog Exchange, which means I have a guest blogger, the awesome J’s Mommy of Another Mommy Moment. This month, the topic was Freedom, interpreted any way you want. If you’d like, you can read mine over at her place too. While you’re there, be sure to check out more of her blog!

——————————————————–

For me, freedom is spelled C.A.R. The only time I feel truly relaxed is when I’m driving. If the conditions are right ~ sun shining, music pumping, windows open ~ I feel alive and powerful. I own the world.

I get my best ideas in the car too. I’ve often thought of stashing a journal in the glove box to jot down notes. Like the time I was sitting in the drive-thru waiting for J’s Happy Meal. My mind was wandering and I came up with the brilliant idea to start a blog.

I already had one but it was only for pictures. I would post photos of J for friends and family to enjoy. I never thought it could be used as an online journal. And having people comment, well that was just icing on the cake.

I’m not sure why, but I can think clearly in the car. There are always idle times when I’m alone with my thoughts. No one is yelling, no one is crying, no one needs me to refill their sippy cup. I’m all alone and I love it.

The ironic thing is, I’ve never been on a road trip. The only thing that comes close is the trip to Grandma’s house. It takes about an hour. In the summer we are there a lot. She has off on Mondays and so do I so J and I will go there to have fun and swim in the pool. It’s my favorite place to be.

After I finish this post, I have to get ready to leave for work. I’ll hop in the car, turn up the music and let my mind run free.

———————————

J’s Mommy can be found at Another Mommy Moment where she writes about her life as a mom, a wife, and a sister. She’s waiting patiently for the terrible two’s to pass (her daughter is 3) and her husband to start picking up his dirty clothes. Come on over and say hello!

Want to read even more great blog entries? Check out the other participants!

Cape Buffalo, Chelle, Soul Gardening, Mommy’s Dirty Secret, Chicken n Cheese, A Mommy Story, A Crack In Life,Divine Calm, Taste the World, Knitting Spells, Binkytown, Motherhood Uncensored, Zach’s Day, Her Bad Mother, Clueless In Carolina, Izzy Mom, Mother Goose Mouse, Bethiclaus

If you are interested in participating next month, email Kristen at kmei26 at yahoo dot com.

I just realized that I’m turning 32 in exactly one week. Time sure does go faster every year.

Apropos of nothing, at least as far as the rest of this entry is concerned, I have a very important observation to make. People (well, parents, mostly since no non-parent in their right mind would watch it) often complain about Caillou. Everyone mentions how incredibly whiney Caillou is and he drives them up the wall with it. True enough, Caillou is a bit whiney, though I’ve always said I find his friend Clementine to be worse. But, yes. I can see how Caillou is obnoxious.

HOWEVER, that being said, I would rather put on one of the Caillou DVDs and let it run for its entire two hours and listen to it with the volume jacked way up if it would mean that I would never ever have to listen to Angelina fuckin’ Ballerina again. That bitch is one big whinefest of a mouse. I haven’t seen such a big drama queen on television this side of Susan Lucci as Erica Kane on All My Children. Is that stupid mouse ever happy? Does she ever stop screeching and sobbing and flinging herself onto her bed to screech and sob into her pillows?

I’m so glad that Hayley is ambivalent about the show and the only reason we ever catch any of it is because we get the last little bit before Franklin comes on. Otherwise I would have to seriously consider blowing up the television.

To offset my irate feelings towards Angelina, here are the girls, all dressed up. Besides attending a BBQ on Saturday, which was a lot of fun, we also went to a baptism for the daughters of our friends, so Hayley and Breanna were all spiffed up for church. Never mind the fact that they spent little time IN the church due to Breanna’s loud protesting and Hayley’s penchant for running up to the front to see what was going on. At least they both looked pretty – when they were inside AND when we were lurking outside the side door!

You KNOW it’s a special occasion when I take the time to bother with putting shoes on Breanna’s feet.

Breanna hasn’t even been up a full two hours yet but she’s passed out over my shoulder right now. These teeth are completely destroying her. Getting her to smile or (*gasp*) laugh lately is on par with understanding nuclear physics.

Tempra and teething rings/toys aren’t doing much to help. (A big glass of beer helped ME last night after a full day of whining, moaning, and hair pulling.)

Even sleep isn’t peaceful apparently; if I stretch my neck I can see her face. Her eyes are scrunched up in a little scowl, her forehead is wrinkled up, and her lower lip is pouting heavily. And it’s breaking my heart. Poor baby.

I have some catching up to do but it’s bedtime crunch here so I’ll just give you three videos instead – they’re all pretty short.

Continue reading →

Any day – any minute, maybe – she’s going to take off and never look back. She is so close.

(Less than five minutes after this was taken yesterday, she lost her balance and landed on her face, getting rug burn on her cheek and chin. Poor baby.)

So podcasts are slowly popping up more and more. I’ll be honest – I’ve never even listened to one, though I intend to poke around and find some soon.

I always thought podcasts were themes, almost like on talk radio. Apparently though, some people are just podcasting about whatever’s on their mind, almost like the recorded version of a weblog. So now I’m curious about it. I mean, really, there’s an entire studio set up just down the hall in our music room. There’s really no excuse for not giving it a try. You know, other than the fact that I really hate listening to my voice to the point of cringing when I hear the recorded voice message on our phone.

So I need two types of input from you.

1. If you listen to podcasts, give me one or two that you think I should listen to. Let me know a rough idea as to what they’re about.

2. What would you want to listen to me babble on about if I really do get around to doing one of my own?

There’s no guarantee here. I may very well chicken out. You should have seen the way I used to freak out when they would get me to do a quick recording of something in the studio. Hell, even when I had to record the voice mail messages for the studio, I used to write it down exactly on a piece of paper and I would record it about five hundred times. We’ll see. I’m just curious right now as to whether anyone would actually want to listen to me drone on in my Canadian accent, eh.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Father’s Day was pretty low-key around here. Unfortunately George had to work that morning and he had also taken someone to the airport in the wee hours of the morning, so he pretty much spent most of the afternoon napping after he got home. Hayley gave him the best present by actually letting him sleep.

The day before we had gone to the store and we got him a card, Hayley picked out a shirt for him (and frankly she has excellent taste despite her penchant for wearing stripes and checkers together), and we also got him a stainless steel travel coffee mug to take to work since he had lost his. He seemed pretty happy with the things we got for him.

Unfortunately, my camera batteries were beyond dead so I don’t actually have a picture from Father’s Day itself, but this photo taken about a week or so earlier is pretty much what the day looked like when he was awake.

For supper I grilled up some filet mignon steaks and that was mighty tasty too, and when the kids went to bed we watched a movie. It was too bad that work factored into the day, but overall it was pretty good in the end.

Two tales from last night:

At about 10:15 last night, Breanna woke up hungry so I went in to feed her. After a few minutes she rolled away and I waited for a second to see if she was sleeping or just pausing. Then she turned back towards me and tried to latch on but her Elmo doll got in the way. She ended up latched on to Elmo’s eyeball instead, and started sucking away, expecting milk. I tried not to giggle and watched to see if she would drift off. Instead, realizing something was wrong, she opened up one eye. When she looked and saw that she was actually trying to nurse from Elmo’s eye, she got so enraged that she made some sort of “argh” sound, grabbed Elmo, and started pounding him angrily against the matress. Frustration vented, she then dropped him and inched close enough to me to finally get her milk properly and all was well with the world again. It was very hard to keep from laughing.

Last night Hayley was watching her hamster running in his wheel (I never mentioned it here, did I? Her first hamster died on Friday, less than a week after coming home with us; turns out he was taken from his mother too soon and the stress caused him to have a stroke and die. Poor little guy. We got a new, bigger hamster from another store and I’m going to call the other place today to complain. The new one is Big Henry.), and George and I were making loud noises for Breanna’s entertainment. After lots of fun roaring and whatnot, Hayley finally turned around, exasperated, and said to us, “Shhh! Be quiet! You’re scaring the shit out of my hamster!”

Yep, we still need to work on cleaning up our potty mouths over here. Oops. Again though, it’s hard not to laugh, especially when she uses it in the right context. As it was, I had to actually leave the room and go into the kitchen to giggle.