I don’t mean to be the sterotypical Canadian, always talking about (aboot?) the weather, but the wind is insane here right now. The wind is currently being clocked at 75 km per hour, with gusts up to 95 km per hour (that’s 47 mph and 60mph respectively, for non-metric folks). All our windows are rattling loudly, our DOOR (which is an apartment door, ie it opens into an enclosed hallway and not the street) is rattling back and forth, which freaks Hayley out because it sounds like someone is constantly trying to open it, and the exhaust fans are making a ton of noise in the bathroom and over the stove. In fact, the one over the stove is so drafty that it’s shaking the light bulb enough to make the light flicker. I finally turned the light off altogether once I had finished making my grilled cheese sandwiches because the flickering kept making me think the power was about to go off.

Even with the heat up and all the windows shut tight, the wind is still making enough of a draft that I bundled Breanna in a blanket, I’ve allowed no arguments from Hayley in regards to having to keep socks or slippers on, and all I want to do is sit and drink hot tea under a thick comforter all day.

On top of that the local news opened with stories of people actually putting cleats on over their boots in order to deal with the slippery sidewalks after the snow-turned-freezing rain-turned-rain. Some of the downtown sidewalks have actually been blocked off by the city because they’re too dangerous to walk on and pedestriians are walking along the streets to avoid falling down. Last night, before the salt trucks had made the rounds, it was slippery enough that a man was killed after an oil tanker lost control and slid into a car.

I know it’s February in Montreal and the weather can be a little crazy, but this is a bit ridiculous.

I haven’t seen my grandmother since July due to a variety of random circumstances. She’s never met Breanna at all. We have plans to go see her on Saturday (where I will try my best to keep from looking out the front windows towards the parking lot where her house used to be) and I called her yesterday to tell her. She is SO excited, especially since her current visit with my aunt and uncle got cut short when my aunt slipped and fell on the ice, breaking her ankle. It would be nice too because my parents will be there too, and I haven’t seen them since December 26th.

And so of course the weather is screwing around with me. According to our local forecast, we’re supposed to have the following weather:

If the freezing rain really does switch to rain and then sun by Saturday we should be okay. By then the rain and any salt put out on the highways will take care of the ice, but if we end up getting freezing rain too close to Saturday morning, we won’t be able to go. Also, George has something important to do on Saturday evening and he can’t miss it so we’ll have to stay home if the forecast for Saturday turns questionable because we can’t risk getting stuck up north.

Obviously neither of us is willing to risk the safety of the girls so icy roads will be a no-discussion cancellation factor but I will be pissed if we end up not going – especially since I have no idea when we’ll ever get another chance. We had almost no snow most of this winter with fairly bare roads and decent conditions. It HAS to turn back into typical Montreal winter NOW?!

If you’re one of those people that loves V-day, I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday. If you hate the Hallmark holiday, I hope you didn’t strangle anyone and that you’re now enjoying the fact that it’s Wednesday.

I’m neutral. I never went crazy about the whole valentine thing. Throughout most of high school I disliked it because I never got as many carnations as some other people, and the ones I did get were just from friends. In my graduating year I actually had a boyfriend so it was a little better, but not really any more special than any other day. The following year, I was single, but the year after that I wasn’t, and I’ve always been with someone ever since so it’s not that I’m bitter, I just don’t care for the sentiment of the whole day. I don’t like the idea that we apparently need a specific day to act mushy and romantic. I don’t like the way commercials imply that if someone isn’t giving you diamonds, expensive chocolates and a bouquet of roses, your day sucked. I don’t like the way society has made a pressure-filled day of romance out of a Roman martyr named Saint Valentine who was put to death. I can take it or leave it.

Ever since I met George, Valentine’s day has been secondary anyway since our anniversary falls on February 22nd. To me, that day is much more important and more worthy of celebration (seven years coming up, wow!).

However, I did discover one way to put a fun spark back into Valentine’s day – having kids. Yesterday was a fun day because of making it special for Hayley, and when Breanna is old enough to care, it will be double the fun. When she got up (at 8 am, which was MY gift, getting to sleep in a bit!), she found a chocolate heart and a Valentine-themed puzzle waiting on her table. The puzzle was a huge hit and she has put it together approximately 653 times in the past 24 hours.

I borrowed an idea from Heather and served up some pink milk, which Hayley thought was really neat. I also made her toast and spread the jam on in a heart shape. By the end of the day she had also polished off her chocolate heart.

Breanna got a liitle fairy bear too, but will have to wait until next year for any other treats. Hayley got dressed up in a pretty dress and Breanna wore pink. Meanwhile, I got festive by wearing the really bright red socks with pink hearts that George gave me. He made his yummy ravioli with rosé sauce, and it was a nice, simple celebration.

I don’t want big diamond pendants from Zales or chocolate truffles that cost more than a week’s worth of groceries. I’m happy with low-key celebrations, which is no surprise because my mother always made it a nice family celebration when I was growing up too.

Pretty in pink:

With her fairy bear (and not impressed with the flash):

All dressed up:

Feet!

TomKat Split!

Allegedly because they knew it wouldn’t work and they wanted to end it before they got to hate each other.

Really, that’s code for wanting to end it before Katie got to hate wearing her fake pregnancy belly and it wouldn’t work out because it would cramp Tom’s secret gay lifestyle.

Who’s he going to jump on Oprah’s couch about now?

I shouldn’t complain, because honestly this winter hasn’t been that bad at all for Montreal. We’ve had very few snowstorms, and there is currently so little snow outside that George wears shoes instead of boots. Even the temperatures haven’t been bad at all and I’ve only worn my real winter coat a handful of times.

But I still can’t wait for spring to get here. I know that spring leads to summer which brings about more humidity than you can shake a stick at, but spring will be nice. Even with the above-average temperatures, it’s still cold enough that I can’t take Breanna out for very long and even Hayley can’t go out and play because with the rain and whatnot, all the areas we would normally play in are covered in a sheet of ice. I’m getting a little bit of cabin fever at this point and I really need nicer weather to come around so I can bundle Breanna up and take both the girls outside where we can see something besides walls.

It’s bad enough that last Thursday, in desperation, I suggested we go to McDonalds for lunch just so that Hayley could run and jump and climb on all the stuff in the play area. She went and had fun for an hour and barely even ate anything; she ended up bringing almost all of her lunch home and eating it here. I didn’t care, I was just happy that she got a bit of an energy release.

In the meantime, we’re having a good time with crafts. I emptied out one cupboard in our buffet and put all of Hayley’s craft stuff (except for the paper which is on the shelves in the living room) in there. She loves being able to get her own stuff out and today she was randomly gluing foam animals to construction paper. She’s even pretty good about putting it all away. And on Saturday I cut out a bunch of paper hearts for her, which she then immediately covered in glue and glitter to make Valentines for all her friends. Today we put them in envelopes, I addressed them, and she signed her name on the back (I love how little kids write the letter Y backwards) and George delivered them to everyone after work.

Thank goodness she likes crafts otherwise she’d probably be losing her mind too over this winter crap.

Hayley: Mommy? Do you like weed?
Sherry: What?!
Hayley: DO YOU LIKE WEED?
*points to “Mighty Machines” on TV, where a farmer is plowing a field of WHEAT.*
Sherry: Wheat. It’s wheaT. Yes I like wheat.
Hayley: I like weed too.
Sherry: WHEAT!

Helloooo, CPS.

Today was one of those blah days where nothing actually goes wrong but it still feels like a crappy day.

And then it was saved by a wonderful moment.

I was changing Breanna’s diaper and just after wiping her, she peed mightily all over herself and her clothes. I reacted with mock horror, with wide eyes and I animatedly said, “Oh SHEESH! to her. She broke into a smile and laughed a little “huh huh” giggle, something she does regularly.

I repeated myself and she started cracking up. Every “sheesh!” from me made her laugh harder until she erupted into gales of baby belly laughter, punctuated by high-pitched shrieks of joy. I was crying from laughing so hard myself.

I don’t know how she knew I needed that, but it totally made my day.

This morning I wrestled Hayley to the floor in order to win control of the remote so I could watch Live with Regis & Kelly instead of some cartoon on Treehouse that she wasn’t even interested in. One of the topics they discussed was Britney Spears and how she was photographed with her baby sitting on her lap as she drove her car.

It’s difficult to find any photos online as they seem to have all been pulled (though I did see it in whatever paper Regis had on the show), but stories have now surfaced where Britney has defended her boneheaded decision by explaining they were being stalked by the paparazzi and she was fleeing them because she apparently feared for her son’s safety.

I remember a wonderful princess by the name of Diana who DIED while fleeing the paparazzi. Did Britney think that escaping some cameras (which she didn’t actually even do anyway) was worth the risk of losing control of her car, crashing, and having her baby’s neck snap? Or perhaps she didn’t think about how the airbag could deploy in a crash, rushing out of the steering wheel to completely smother and crush the baby seated on her lap.

I don’t care what her reason was, the truth is she didn’t take the half a second necessary to think about what she doing or what the cost of her choice might have been.

The sad thing is I really want to like Britney for some inexplicable reason. I felt bad for her when so many magazines gleefully printed pregnancy pictures while crowing about how “awful” she looked as though being a celebrity meant she wasn’t allowed to gain weight and have bad skin for a few months. I felt sorry for her when K-Fed proved to be just as much of a jackass as we all knew him to be and worried that her rumored second (current) pregnancy was a desperate attempt to hang on to a bad marriage (and if so, it’s not her swiftest move seeing as how he left his pregnant girlfriend FOR Britney in the first place). I really think that deep down she really does want to have a little family and be a good mother. So I do want to like her. She just makes it so damn hard sometimes.

(edited to add: Aha! Found one!)

Sigh. Oops, you did it again!

The other day I was quickly doing some cleaning up in Hayley’s disaster room and I put Breanna in her car seat. I asked Hayley to entertain her so I could finish, and she decided to teach Breanna how to hold a tea cup.

“Mom. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. What is up with this tea party stuff?”

Hayley thought it was pretty nifty that she got to have a tea party with her sister. I think she’s going to have so much fun as Breanna becomes more and more able to do things with her.

“Sorry Mom, no tea left for you, get back to cleaning!”

Tonight at about 7:30 I changed Breanna’s diaper and I went to change her into a fresh pair of pajamas. I tried and discarded THREE pairs that no longer fit. Three pairs that fit her perfectly as recently as last week. The fourth pair was a nice set of pink pajamas that fit up to 19-21 pounds, and when I tried them on her two weeks ago, they were floating on her. Now they’re only slightly loose.

It’s scary how fast babies grow.