Did you just hear that loud whooshing noise? That was Breanna sighing with immense relief. She finally figured out how to roll from her stomach onto her back so she never needs to suffer the indignity of being trapped on her tummy again.

I don’t know whether it’s showing in the U.S. at all or if it’s only up here in Canada, in honor of MTV returning to the airwaves up here (big deal), but they’ve had a campaign running with the theme being the “drought” since MTV has been gone. It showed various ads that were often a little gross like an athlete wringing out his sweaty sports sock into his mouth because he was so thirsty, or a housewife licking the inside of her dishwasher to quench her thirst. The tag line was always “The drought is almost over”.

And now it is. Apparently MTV is back. Without much fanfare in my home, I might add, since I don’t believe we have it in our current package. The new ad horrified me.

It shows humans dressed in blue jeans and white MTV t-shirts, falling from the sky, in the imitation of rain, with the slogan “Something in the water”. They don’t fall gracefully from the sky like the people in that sports drink commercial; they fall heavily, landing with thuds on the pavement. Eventually, the camera pans up and people are just falling endlessly from the sky.

The first time I saw it tonight, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about the commercial that bothered me so much but I knew something about it disturbed me. When it aired a second time during my television show, I realized what the problem was.

It reminded me of September 11th. The entire attack on and consequential collapse of the World Trade Centers was appalling and terrifying and horrifying beyond words. Obviously. But you know what image remains burned in my brain to this day, so fresh it’s like I just saw it? The image of people who were so desperate and afraid that they jumped out of the buildings, falling to their deaths. It took me weeks to stop seeing that in my head. The first night I saw it on the news, I saw it every time I closed my eyes. Maybe it’s because of my immense fear of heights. Maybe it’s because I can’t – thank God – imagine being in a situation where jumping out of an 80th floor window seems like a better choice than staying put. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all of that plus the sheer horror of that day. All I know is that the MTV commercial brought it right back and I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thought of that when it aired.

I fully plan to change the channel the next time it comes on. And I’m still deciding whether it’s a waste of my time to write a letter to MTV.

I think that a lot of (pergaps even most) parents occasionally take chances and do things they know they aren’t supposed to do. For me, it was using the buckles on the bouncy seat when Breanna was a baby. Once she started wriggling around, I buckled her in so that she wouldn’t slide off and onto the floor, but when she was just a twitchy blob of a baby who couldn’t move much, I only strapped her in about half the time. If I was going to be across the room or if I had to run to another room for a second (or if I was showering or she was sleeping of course) I did. If I was peeing or standing right beside her, I didn’t. I know the safety sticker says to always use the buckles, but there you have it: I didn’t always listen.

For about three weeks now, I always strap her in, no matter how close I am. Even though the seat is directly at my feet and within arm’s reach when I sit down to pee, I still make sure she is firmly and safely buckled in. Why? Because three weeks ago she decided that sitting back in the bouncy seat is for pussies and that although she hasn’t even mastered rolling yet, she’s going to practice sitting up.

And so buckles it is, lest she topple over onto the floor.

(That title should bring in the Google perverts, eh?)

Last night I was pacing the living room with a fussy Breanna, watching “Desperate Housewives” on television. I haven’t watched it religiously this season because I find it’s gotten a little dull compared to last year. Still, I see it fairly regularly.

Last night, Lynette was trying to hire a woman named Veronica to work at her office. The offer wasn’t that great but in the end Lynette convinced her by showing her the great on-site daycare facility and assuring Veronica that the company would be very supportive of her taking breaks to breastfeed her son.

And then everyone found out Veronica’s son was five years old.

I nursed Hayley until a few months shy of three years old. Obviously I am pro-breastfeeding when it’s possible, and obviously I have no problems with extended breastfeeding either. However, even I get a little uncomfortable at the thought of a five-year-old nursing, especially if it’s frequent enough that she would need to do it several times during the work day; with Hayley it was generally only at night with rare mornings here and there.

It wasn’t the age that bothered me about the episode though. What bothered me was the end result. At first, when confronted, Veronica defended her choice with explanations that breast milk continues to offer vitamins, antibodies, and all sorts of benefits, including possible higher IQ levels. These are all things that you can learn if you read about breastfeeding at the World Health Organization website. Although I wouldn’t be comfortable to extend it to that age, I applauded her choice.

Then Lynette pulled a fast one on her; when the little boy came looking for Mom and her milk, Lynette said she was in a meeting and then co-erced him into trying some of her chocolate milk. Just like that, bam, he self-weaned because Mom’s breasts don’t produce chocolate milk!

At first I was annoyed with Lynette; sure, maybe I’d feel awkward seeing someone breastfeed a child of his age, but it was seriously undermining Veronica, and as a mother herself, Lynette should know being undermined is frustrating and rude.

In the end though, I wound up annoyed at the show – because when Lynette stumbled across a crying Veronica later that day, she wasn’t sobbing because a long-time bond had been severed. No, she was distraught because breastfeeding was the only way that she had been able to eat whatever she wanted while keeping the weight off. “I’ll have to join a gym!” she wailed.

It just seemed like such a disservice to breastfeeding. First of all it made breastfeeding past the age of saying first words seem freakish by choosing a particularly higher age for shock value. Then it made somewhat of a mockery of the whole thing by showing that it wasn’t really about the continued value of breastmilk, but rather as a weight loss tool for yet another vain woman.

I guess I just wish that they had chosen less of an “Oh my God!” age, like two, an age that isn’t unusual but that is still seen as odd by many people, and that they had shown Veronica sticking to her guns and educating people as to the benefits of breastfeeding for so long.

Then again, maybe I should just stop expecting prime time television to educate the masses.

I spoke (wrote?) too soon with that entry last night. George got home around 11pm, and I had just finished telling him Hayley was sleeping soundly, not coughing, and feeling cool to the touch. No more than three minutes later, we heard wailing from her room. She was burning up and coughing so hard that she was gagging and choking. We got her cleaned up, took her temperature and saw it was pretty high (39.8C), and gave her more medicine. She wanted to be a big girl and go back to bed but I told her even big girls are allowed to sleep in the big bed when they’re scared or sick. She went off to sleep under George’s watchful eye and I took care of a hungry, waking Breanna.

And then this morning I wondered why someone would not only run me over, but look in their rearview mirror and back over me too, just for good measure. Holy crap. Coughing, fever, chills, aching head, severely aching legs, and a desire to crawl into a cupboard and die.

Luckily Breanna passed out around noon and I laid on the couch with her. I didn’t sleep much, but I dozed a bit and at least I was flat. She had the best nap in over a week, sleeping on me for over two hours, so that was great.

Hayley’s fever shot back up and she could barely blink so we dosed her up again and I sat on the floor while she took a lukewarm bath which helped temporarily. George is gone for a couple of hours to do some work and I’m considering it practice for being sick and alone with the kids tomorrow. Supper will just be some soup and maybe leftover chicken from last night’s supper if anyone is hungry.

I took regular Tylenol and it helped my head and toned down the ridiculous pain in my legs by a notch or two; it seems to have done nothing at all for my fever as I am currently sweating profusely.

I’ve warned Breanna that she’s grounded from her first high school dance if she dares to catch this. I’ve been nursing her as much as I can and praying that she doesn’t get sick. The way we’ve all felt, I can only imagine this would land her in the hospital. If you could think good no-flu thoughts for her, that would be great.

I am so lost as to what day it is. It started on Wednesday night. George was playing at the usual bar that night for a memorial of a girl who worked there who had died recently. He never plays in the middle of the week. Therefore, I immediately thought that Wednesday was actually Friday, especially when he came home at 3 am. Then he ended up staying home on Thursday and Friday because he was sick with the Cold And Flu Plague Of 2006 – complete with scary coughing, fever, congestion, and basically feeling like he had been run over by a fleet of tanks. In any case, although he essentially spent those two days in bed with only very infrequent trips out to the living room, I still knew he was home and that made it feel like those days were the weekend. To top off the confusion, he worked for a few hours this morning, so I felt like we were back at Monday. I kept wondering why there were so few updates anywhere online only to remember that this is actually the weekend.

This is what happens when you don’t work outside the home: You lose all sense of the days of the week unless you can rely on someone else’s work schedule (or in my case, my must-see-tv schedule) to tell you where you fall in the calendar.

Luckily George is better today. He’s still coughing and sneezing but he’s alive and able to function and eat again. The downside is that Hayley woke up at 1:15 in the morning, coming to tell me that she was really thirsty and needed some water. She never goes through the entire cup of water I give her at bedtime so I had a bad feeling that this meant her throat was a bit sore. Also a bad sign (though a good thing overall at the time) was that she went straight back to bed and to sleep, whereas she would normally feel like it was a fine time to have a big conversation about everything under the sun.

This morning she unfortunately woke up at 5:30. She came out to the living room, groggy and staggering. Every night I lay down a thick blanket on the floor and place her special quilt on top and she often sits there to eat her breakfast and watch a show or two on Treehouse while I feed Breanna and struggle to wake up. Today, she sank down on the blankets, moaning that she was dizzy. She felt pretty warm too. although a quick temperature check showed she was still under fever levels. Then she let out a god-awful hacking cough that sounds like it should come from a 90-year-old two-pack a day smoker, not a three-year-old child. She laid down on the floor with her pillow and I crashed on the couch with a drowsily nursing Breanna; Hayley reached up to hold my hand, stared blankly at the ceiling, and then fell asleep for about an hour and a half or so.

The sleep didn’t help much. Her cough was worse and she did get a fever. Since George was at work, his sister came by with some Tylenol cold meds for her. I normally don’t give cough medicine during the day, believing it’s better to get it out and save the meds for night time, but she was just so pathetically miserable that I gave her a dose. She was quiet all morning, eating little more than a bag of raisins and a pudding cup. When George came home, they laid on the bed for awhile and she fell asleep for over an hour in there, something that never happens when Daddy is home.

She continued with the non-eating through lunch and supper, not even eating her greatly loved mashed potatoes. After supper I made her a batch of applesauce and she finally ate that, devouring the entire thing. She was mildly feverish by then so we dosed her up again, got her into pajamas and I read her and Breanna a story in bed. She seemed reluctant to go to sleep but it took less than five minutes for her to conk out. I went to check on her half an hour ago and she looks like she hasn’t moved an inch since she passed out. I hope she manages to sleep all night, though I’m doubtful. At least the cough suppressant seems to be working thus far, since I haven’t heard her cough in her sleep at all.

And of course, I’m sitting here, drinking a hot cup of tea to try to soothe an ache in my throat. I’m trying to ignore the coughing that I keep feeling the need to do, and the slight sniffling in my nose. The headache is harder to ignore, but I’m a long-time headache girl so I can still function for now. It’s just rotten timing (is there ever GOOD timing to get sick?). If it hits me tomorrow, at least George will be here to help me, but he has to work on Monday and I’ll be here, sick with one recovering pre-schooler and one baby. I really hope that I don’t get it as badly as George did or I’m going to be so screwed.

Still, I’d rather get it now so that my body starts fighting it off and passes the antibodies in my milk to Breanna. It’s bad enough that Hayley is sick, but at least she can take something for it. I can’t take anything other than throat lozenges, tea, and steam, but I’m an adult. A baby can’t take anything nor can she understand what the hell is going on. Please don’t let Breanna get sick.

And there is your really long holy-shit-she-IS-verbose Saturday update.

I completely forgot to post about this the other day, and I don’t want to ever forget this funny little gem that came out of Hayley’s mouth.

I put her to bed two nights ago, read to her, kissed her, tucked her in, and wished her good night. I turned on the night light, turned out the overhead light, and left the door open for the light from the hall. I went out to the living room to get Breanna ready for bed, and no more than two minutes had passed when Hayley wandered out to the living room and stood there. This isn’t all that unusual – she does that once or twice about 3 out of 5 nights.

Sherry: What are you doing out of bed?
Hayley: Um. Oh. I must have been sleepwalking.
Sherry: Nice try. Go to bed.
Hayley: Oh. Okay, Mommy.

Sleepwalking?!

(Okay, it’s not really a dirty little secret, sorry to disappoint you.)

Hayley is three. Or, as she will now tell anyone with ears, she is three and a half. She loves to watch cartoons. Some of them are either boring or annoying (Thomas, Barney, Rolie Polie Olie, etc.). The vast majority of them are tolerable or actually quite decent (Little Bear, Franklin, Pocoyo, etc.). Then there is that one show. One of her shows is so enjoyable that I honestly really like it.

A lot. As in, I’ll watch it even if no one else is in the room.

The Backyardigans. Oh my god, I love The Backyardigans.

The other day they came on and Hayley was down the hall pestering her father and I laid on the couch with a sleeping Breanna and I watched the whole thing. Yesterday I caught myself singing “I love being a Princess” while washing the dishes (which is a little ironic if you think about it). This morning I was disappointed it wasn’t on and used the onscreen guide to look ahead where I found out it was on at 5:30 this evening. It was a little embarrassing to realize that I was really happy about that.

Maybe I need to get out more.

Seriously though. I love the idea of five little friends who live on the same block and go in their back yards to have glorious imaginary adventures. The things they do are pretty sophisticated for their age, from racing to an ancient Mayan pyramid in order to locate a magical flying rock, to hunting down a Soccer Monster who steals everyone’s soccer balls (only to discover that he steals them because he’s lonely and hopes someone will just come play soccer with him), to staging an elaborate ghost game of “hide and go boo” in a haunted house.

I enjoy the stories, and I adore the characters. I like them all for different reasons. My favorite is little Uniqua the unknown creature who may not actually be from this planet, and her enthusiasm for anything. I like Tasha the hippo and the way she says “oh for goodness sake” in total exasperation. I like Tyrone the moose with his levelheaded behaviour. I like Pablo the penguin because he’s so darn cute and goes with the flow. And I like little Austin the kangaroo with his shy “new kid in town” manner.

I also love the songs. My favorite is the “float, flutter, fly” song from the flying rock episode but I’ll sing along to any of them. I try to avoid singing the “Yeti Stomp” song too often, especially if anyone downstairs may be asleep, because Hayley pounds her feet loudly on the floor when I get to the part that goes, “stomp, stomp, stomp, doing that Yeti Stomp”.

I think my favorite part is the end. It seems that as the adventure wraps up (as neatly and tidily as any 30-minute sitcom would), someone’s stomach always growls, prompting someone else to invite the gang over for a snack. As the background scenery slowly morphs back into the yards, they run off to the back door and discuss what mom and dad are serving up for snacks today: Will it be chocolate chip cookies or vegetables with hummus?

I feel like a dork, but I can’t help myself. It really is a great show. It prompts so much imagination. Often I hear Hayley playing in her room, talking to her “backyard friends”. She talks about them regularly. I was so excited when I went over the the Nick Jr. site and found some printout activities from the show. One pack includes five or six scenes from different episodes, two pages of cut-out paper dolls of each character, and a slew of cut-out accessories. I printed the whole thing, put the scenes inside page protectors, slapped it all into a binder, and cut out all the pieces.

It’s been a big hit with Hayley.

(And it’s a big hit with me too.)

Here with your friends, the Backyardigans…

Breanna is four months old today. As of now, four months ago she was about an hour and a half old and we were settling into our room. Right now I’m really hungry and I wish I could rewind four months back so a nice orderly could bring me my lunch.

When I realized that my baby is exactly four months old AND my big girl is exactly three and a half on this day I actually started to cry. I guess I still have a lot of hormones. I’m sure Tom Cruise would just tell me to pop a multi-vitamin and go for a jog. In all honesty though, I want to look into some fish oil (yum, blurgh) since I hear that’s good for anxiety, and I swear that some day I will use one of my yoga videos or that pilates DVD that came free in some cereal.

In the meantime, let me distract myself from my “wah, they’re growing up!” tears and my anxiety by sharing some recent pictures.

I drew some festive pictures, cut them out, and had Hayley color them for St Patrick’s day decorations. It freaks me out a little that she colors so much inside the lines for a 3-year-old. I have no idea why, I’ve never once told her to do that.

Pretty princess.

What do you do when you need to clean up and have nowhere safe for your baby? Laundry basket to the rescue!

Breanna wiggles in the infant tub so much that it’s hard to rinse her hair after I wash it, so I usually finish up by rinsing her hair in the kitchen sink. She never cries but she makes hilarious faces.

Something had been bothering me since Breanna was born (almost four months ago, hard to believe!). I finally mentioned it to George a few weeks ago in the hopes that saying it out loud would make it go away, but it hasn’t so maybe “typing it out loud” will help.

I’m sad. Actually, that’s not really accurate. That makes it sound like I’m sad because I wanted a cookie and there are none left, or it might give the impression that I am depressed, and those aren’t true (though honestly, I wouldn’t mind a cookie if anyone has some to spare).

To be more accurate, I should say that my uterus is sad. And it’s a very strange thing.

When I was a kid I briefly thought it would be amusing to some day have triplets, all girls, and name them Faith, Hope, and Charity. Aside from the fact that naming my children like that would have guaranteed that they would kill me in my sleep, I started babysitting soon after coming up with this brilliant idea and quickly realized that triplets might be, you know, a lot of freakin’ work.

Aside from that temporary insanity, I only ever wanted two children. I didn’t care if they were girls or boys, though I did hope to have at least one girl. I just knew that I wanted more than one but that two would be enough. Right up until I had Hayley, I continued to state that I only wanted two children.

Now I have two and the family is complete. I have what I wanted and that makes me happy, especially when I know how many people wish they could have a child of their own. Having two beautiful girls is absolutely a blessing and I don’t take that for granted.

I know you think you know where this is going, but no. I haven’t changed my mind. I don’t suddenly want a third child. For one thing, I’m not the best pregnant person in the world. As much as I may be fascinated by the miraculous way my body can grow a baby, I hate a lot of the side effects and tend to be pretty damn grouchy about a lot of it. Also, I don’t know if I could be a good mother to three children. Sometimes I have so much trouble managing the two that I have now that I think a third could cause my brain (or the apartment) to completely implode. I already find myself needing to write notes to myself so I remember to feed the fish or fill up Hayley’s sippy cup for the next morning. I have four proper-sized diapers left because I didn’t write down that we were running out so I forgot to tell George, and so I have to use the next size up and hope we aren’t plagued by leaks until George can bring a new pack home. If I’m this scattered now, one more child might push my poor brain too far and I’ll have to walk around with a post-it note reminding me to breathe and pee.

I have my two kids and I love them fiercely and I’m very happy with my now-complete family. I do not actually want another one.

And yet.

Breanna is growing so quickly. Every week she outgrows something else and so I fold it for the last time and place it in a bag which will eventually be given to some charity. Two days ago I found a bag with a pair of pink sheep pajamas that Hayley had worn, pajamas that were my absolute favorite and when I finally found them I nearly cried because I’m almost sure that they won’t fit Breanna and she never even got to wear them. Each time she does something new, some milestone or just something awe-inspiring, I feel so proud and then I feel a little melancholy that I will never again see my own child do ___ for the very first time.

Hayley is three and a half and already practicing to be a teenager. I don’t know how or when she got so big but I look at her baby pictures and can barely grasp that they are the same person. I listen to her talk in long, rambling paragraphs about everything from dinosaurs to her television shows to what happened in her dreams last night and I wonder when she stopped saying “mamamamamamama”. How did my first baby become big enough to tell me knock-knock jokes?

It’s the finality that makes me sad. Although I don’t want more children, I’m sad that I’ll never have a newborn again, that I’ll never lie awake in a hospital bed watching a brand new baby’s eyelashes flutter against her cheeks as she sleeps. Although I don’t love pregnancy, I love birth. I wish I could rewind and re-live both births at will just to experience it once more.

It has nothing to do with numbers. I could have seven kids running around and I’d still feel this way. It’s not the number, it’s the never.

I mentioned it to a friend of ours and he said he had often felt the same way and that he made it stop by telling himself that instead of feeling sad that he’d never experience something again, that he should try to remember to be happy that he had experienced it at all. He’s right, and I’ve been trying, and often it does work. But sometimes it strikes out of nowhere: That onesie that doesn’t fit and doesn’t need to be packed away for the next one. Seeing Hayley get into her own bed in her own room and going to sleep all alone and realizing she’ll never get smaller, only bigger. Hearing Breanna have a fit of belly laughs over the screensaver on our television. It’s those times that make something primal deep inside my uterus not only ache, but scream. I guess it’s this screaming that helped humans to reproduce in the first place.

In the meantime I’ll just hang on to the memories of all the firsts we’ve gone through and be grateful for everything that I have. Then I’ll look forward to all the firsts that still lie ahead. And hopefully one day at least one of them will have children of their own and I can live vicariously through all their parental firsts too.