Proof that there can be feminine tomboys.

I changed Breanna’s diaper on the floor and left her lying on her back to go wash my hands. I came back and she had flipped to her stomach, which is normal for her, and she was moving in arcs, not crawling, just moving about. Fine, nothing unusual.

I just left the room for a second to put something in Hayley’s room and Breanna was ALL ALONE in the living room. I came in, looked down, and she is SITTING UP.

Holy shit. And also, oh my god I need to do more childproofing.

Last month I wrote a Mother’s Day entry after hearing about how Kara organized a group project. It was fun. I like these sorts of gorup projects more than the ones we had to do in high school. So when I got an email from her telling me there would be one for Father’s Day too, I jumped on board.

They say that most little girls are “Daddy’s little girl” and I was no exception. I loved playing with my mom too, and as I got into the later teen years, I sought out my mom’s advice more and more. I have many wonderful memories of times with my mom.

But oh, there are so many fun memories with my dad too. Let me share some of them with you.

We used to go cross-country skiing just about every weekend where it was even remotely possible. If we had a chance to plan things out we would go to Mont-Tremblant park and do a day trip, have lunch at the halfway point, ski back, and then drive an hour home to my grandmother’s house. If we didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it and we just needed to get out and ski we’d either go skiing around the bush up where our friend Donald lived, or we’d even go to the golf course and ski there for a few hours. Hell, I would ski in my grandmother’s backyard if worst came to worst, doing laps.

My dad was an excellent skier and I learned to be one too through his coaching. My only complaint was that he and Donald would often ski leisurely along, looking at the scenery whereas I would take off with Donald’s daughter Paula and see how far we could get in ten minutes of heavy “kick and glide” skiing; we usually got far enough to be a little ticked off when they’d finally catch up.

My dad also taught me the “poles between your legs” maneuver that he and Donald used whenever they hit a hill that was too steep to attack straight on; you took both poles, put them between your legs the way a witch does on a broom and you used the baskets as a brake to slow you down. I can still remember screaming “WOOOOHOOO!” all the way down one particularly long and crazy hill we had to take when we used to come back from the 20-person overnight ski trip at Mont-Tremblant park. Fun.

My favorite thing about my dad and skiing was that he was so good at it that he never fell. As long as he was actually SKIING. More times than I can recall, I watched him stop to take a cigarette break, take a puff, and fall on his ass. Hee. Proof that smoking is bad for you I guess!

In the summer when we couldn’t ski, we’d try to go camping. I’m a fairly serious camper. To me, a cabin is vacationing, not camping. Camping means a tent and a walk to the outhouse down the trail (or the closest bush) and no showers. Camping is ROUGHING it. We went a few times back to the same park we skied in, and we’d camp out on Lac Herman. We’d try to catch fish while my dad frantically rowed our raft out of the bullrushes and back to the middle of the lake (and though we never caught a damn thing it was still fun), walk to the other swimming-friendly lake for a dip, grill venison steaks for supper, and listen to wolves howl across the lake at night. I miss camping.

He was a fan of target shooting and as a young teen I was up at the sand pit shooting at bulls-eyes or sometimes up on Donald’s farm doing the same. We entered in a turkey shoot once; no you don’t actually shoot the turkey although that might have been, uh, interesting. The best shooter in different age categories wins a turkey, next best wins a chicken. I won the booby prize, a can of cranberry sauce, but I didn’t even care that I was the worst in my bracket, I just had a load of fun firing a .22 with my dad.

I’ve told this story before I think but it seriously bears mentioning again because it never fails to make me laugh. Hopefully the humor translates in writing. My dad snores. My dad snores like someone is driving an 18-wheeler through the house. So you can imagine how loud it was when you were stuck in a tent with him.

(Tangent – on one of those overnight ski trips, I woke up to use the bathroom and I swear to GOD, every last person but me was snoring in that bloody cabin. It was like the 1812 Overtures being played with bandsaws. Insanity. I never got back to sleep that night.)

Anyway, usually I managed to deal and if it got bad enough I would just nudge him with one foot and he’d stop long enough for me to fall asleep. One night though, nothing worked. We were in Vermont, Alburg to be precise and we were visiting my aunt and uncle’s trailer in the rec park they stayed in each summer. Although there was room in the trailer for all of us, my dad and I set up the tent for fun. That particular night, he was snoring like the apocalypse was going to rain down. I nudged him. No. I kicked him. Still nothing. I yelled, “Daddy! Stop snoring!” Each time he would wake up, apologize and IMMEDIATELY return to snoring. I could not sleep and I was exhausted. In desperation and frustration, I grabbed my pillow and whacked him three times across the head saying, “StopItStopItSTOPIT!” through gritted teeth. He sat up wildly, confused and asked, “Wha? What? What’s happening?” I innocently said, “Oh nothing, you were just snoring a bit, go to sleep.” He blinked a few times, apologized, rolled over and went to sleep. Quietly.

(Sorry Dad.)

I know my dad is reading this and I’m sure he remembers all of them (except perhaps the aforementioned pillow fight when he was sleeping), but I think my favorite memory of him may surprise him. The summer I turned 16, I was dating a guy I had known in high school. He and I dated all through our final year. That summer, for the first time ever, I didn’t want to go to Vermont for the week. I wanted to stay home alone, like I had done on weekends from time to time so that I could hang out with my friends and see my boyfriend. With some reluctance my parents agreed (I don’t know why they were concerned, it’s not like I could have a wild keg party with the landlady living right downstairs), especially once I landed a job interview one day that week. So off they went, driving the 2-2.5 hour drive from Montreal to Alburg.

The VERY NEXT DAY, jackass boyfriend dumps me. By phone. CLASSY. He was my first boyfriend. We were planning a movie date one minute and the next he was telling me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. Come on, I was 16, I thought my world was falling apart. So I called the park office, my parents called me back, and my dad hopped in the car and drove all the way back to Montreal. I sobbed and bawled and sobbed some more, then I went to bed. The next morning, I threw some stuff in a suitcase and my dad drove us back to Vermont again.

The entire time I was so upset, either crying or just staring out the window. I think it had been at least 24 hours since I had smiled at all. As we got close enough to tune into the Alburg country music radio station, my dad switched it over. At one point, a brand new song came on by a singer that I had never heard of at the time. It was Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s In Love With the Boy”. When it got to the line, “Her Daddy says he ain’t worth a lick, when it came to brains he got the short end of the stick” I started to giggle. My dad laughed, then I laughed more, and every time she hit the chorus and sang that line, we laughed.

Sitting in the car, broken-hearted with my dad who had driven so far to come and get me so I wouldn’t be all alone for a week, listening to a funny song was one of the best moments with my father. To this day, as soon as I hear that song, I think of my dad.

I could write so many more things, like how he always played with my Hot Wheels cars after supper whenever I asked. Or how he built that log cabin in my grandmother’s back yard for me. I could write about how we share a similar sense of humor for certain movies (especially slapstick) which would lead to the two of us crying from hysterical laughter while my mother wondered why we thought “Home Alone” was THAT funny. I could also explain how many times we played Scattergories as a family and my father would make up answers and deliver them straight-faced to see if we would believe that there was really a book called “The Cowboy From Cambridge” or whatnot. But you know what? It’s midnight and the more I keep writing the more I remember and I need to wrap this up at some point so I can get to sleep to prepare for the inevitable early wake-up tomorrow morning.

Happy Father’s Day.

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Honestly, I am such a loser. And clearly I am getting old. Ever since I saw the first commercial for the Swiffer Carpet Flick, I have wanted one. Loblaws was having a sale on them today and George has been doing a lot of overtime and extra jobs so he got me one, knowing how much I wanted one (he calls me a total fish since I always get reeled in by ads).

And I am EXCITED. Hayley wanted to try it and I actually said, “Hang on, this is MOMMY’S toy.” When did I grow up? 😛

It’s really nifty though and it actually does work. Hayley only eats supper at the big table regularly. For breakfast, lunch, and all snacks, she eats at her own table. I have to vacuum every.damn.day between her, my own late night snacks, and the cat. It’s a pain in the arse getting the vacuum out for a little area under her table or near my desk, but it’s also annoying to have crumbs. This thing actually works really well for picking up the crumbs with no noise and no hassle. I figure if I can cut down the full vacuuming to once or twice a week, I can use the carpet flick in between and the regular Swiffer for fluff and dust bunnies on the wood floors. If I can get George to fix my knock-off Swiffer Wet Jet, I’ll be all set.

Why yes, I do love Swiffer, how did you guess? I would totally use the dusters too, but in the meantime I do quick spot dusting with the Swiffer cloths.

See what I mean? OLD AND DORKY.

Seriously, this is just hilarious, especially if you’re like me and don’t understand why anyone is still resisting switching to Firefox. If you’re still using Internet Exploder or another inferior browser, go watch and then go download Firefox. You won’t regret it.

(Hayley has asked to see that link eight billion times so far today. She cracks up.)

Teething with Breanna is a killer. Hayley had horrible teething days but they were generally short-lived, whereas this time it’s dragging. Breanna has had the same super-sharp corner sticking out from her gums for days now and the damn thing won’t come in. It’s making her (understandably) cranky and sometimes I forget what her happy mood is. I gave her Tempra 15 minutes ago and now she’s snoring on my shoulder. If that tooth doesn’t come all the way in soon, I’m going to poke something sharp directly into my skull. Or buy a bottle of tequila; both sound equally painful.

So anyway, do you know what happens when your baby finally decides that food isn’t so bad, and hey this squash is really tasty? What happens is you wonder why you thought it was a good idea to introduce food, and you wonder if you can get a garden hose installed in your kitchen.

Mmm, squash.

In other news, thanks to Hayley, our family is bigger again. This is Henry, our Syrian hamster. He’s still very shy and hasn’t quite gotten used to his new environment yet, but he is very cute and soft, and last night he let me pet him for quite awhile; I think it was in thanks for replacing the box in this picture with a margarine container to use as a house.

“Show me how excited you are about Henry, Hayley.”
“Okay – Eeeeeee!”

And for no real reason, Breanna looking happy in between fits of being cranky over the tooth situation, and also the fact that she still can’t crawl or walk despite her incredible desire to do so.

What Breanna loves best: Breast milk.

What Breanna dislikes: Mashed banana, rice cereal, sweet potato.

What Breanna will ingest if I don’t stop her: Bath water, sand at the park.

What Breanna finally settled on eating: Mashed potatoes, squash.

Hoo.ray.

Like I said in my previous post, I really wasn’t concerned. I know that at this point the bulk of her nutrition comes from the milk she drinks and that food is just for fun and experimentation. Mostly I just wanted to find something that she liked because it is infinitely easier for everyone to eat supper together if Breanna is sitting in her high chair and eating too. I wasn’t sure if the squash would go over well but she was all smiles, opening her mouth wide, and occasionally grabbing the spoon out of my hand to feed herself. She also ate a few small bites of mashed potato while we were having supper at George’s parents’ house last night and that went down fairly well. I’m looking forward to trying the squash again tomorrow to see if it was a fluke or not.

It will make dinner time more pleasant and more of a family event if we all sit down together. Even if it does mean washing squash out of her hair and ears at bath time.

Due to the ambivalence Breanna has demonstrated towards both mashed banana and rice cereal, last night I moved on and tried some warm sweet potato.

And another one bites the dust. As with all the other attempts with solids, she was a little frantic to have me nurse her when supper was over, almost as though she wants to reassure herself that the milk is still there and that pureed crap is not the only thing she’ll ever get from now on.

We’ll try it a couple more days, then we’ll try the squash and the applesauce. I’m not holding my breath. I think she’s going to be that kid who only eats grilled cheese sandwiches three meals a day, seven days a week.

It’s okay though; as long as she has breastmilk to drink and her own toes to gnaw on, she’s happy.

(edited to add: someone is bound to reassure me that she’ll be okay; I know, I’m not the least bit worried. I just feel sorry for her because she’s so damn EAGER to eat stuff but then the reality of the food totally lets her down. It’s actually pretty funny to see her facial expressions.)

For reasons I am totally unaware of, my USB cable stopped working with my camera. The camera itself works just fine but even when the screen says it’s connected to the computer, it isn’t and as a result I couldn’t dump my pictures. It was frustrating to have pictures I couldn’t access but even worse was when I would hit 65 or so pictures and then my card would be full. George had been taking the camera over to our friend’s house to dump them directly from the card through his photo printer but today he got me a USB card reader and it’s awesome.

I dumped 63 pictures and two videos, yay. Luckily for you, you don’t have to see all of them, just some of the ones I really loved. It will be so great to be able to take pictures tomorrow without seeing if there’s anything I can delete; my card is empty!

On to the pictures!

What bed head looks like around these parts.

A pretty Breebles in a pretty dress.

We’re buying shotguns as soon as we get wind they’re even considering dating.

Click to see the rest!

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Conversation tonight, while eating the leftovers from the ham I made* the other night:

Sherry: I’m so happy you’re eating all those vegetables. Are you going to eat some ham too? It’s really good, even when it’s cold!
Hayley: Yes, it’s good.
Sherry: I know.
Hayley: But is it a Maple Leaf ham?
Sherry: What?!

A Maple Leaf ham?! Since when does she know her brands?

Sherry: Uh, actually I think it was. Why did you ask that? here did you hear that?
Hayley: I don’t know.
Sherry: Where the heck do you come from?
Hayley: Where do YOU come from?
Sherry: From my Mommy!
Hayley: I come from my Mommy too!
Sherry: Yes, you do.
Hayley: How did you make me?
Sherry: Uhhh. (crap.) Hey, are you done? Want some dessert?

Whew. Dodged a bullet long enough to figure out an age-appropriate way to explain that one. Oy.

*Easiest and most delicious ham I have ever made. I threw a bone-in smoked, uncooked picnic ham into the crockpot, dumped two small cans of quartered pineapple slices with the juice on top, added about half a can of water to that, and covered it an cooked it on low for about 9 hours or so. It was amazing. It was so tender that it started falling apart when George tried to move it from the crockpot to the serving tray, and when I went to pack up the leftovers that night, the bone fell out, completely clean. It was awesome and I am really looking forward to trying that again.