Today is my birthday and I am now 33 years old. I figure it has to be some kind of good omen because I turn an age with lucky number 3 in it twice, and also it is 7/7/07, with 7 also being a lucky number. Er, or something like that. I’m not about to go spend every penny I have on lottery tickets or go gamble the big blackjack tables at the casino or anything, but hopefully it will just be a good year all-around.

Anyway, I am not really here right now, this post is coming to you with the magic of WordPress’ future posting capabilities. I am having some family fun for my birthday. At least I hope I’m having some fun by the time this post materializes across the internet.

If you’d like to do something nice for my birthday, I’m participating in this year’s Blogathon where basically, crazy people like me stay up for 24 hours and post every half hour for charity. I’ll be posting from 9 am Eastern on Saturday the 28th of July until 9 am Sunday. I’m raising money for The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

If you’d like to consider sponsoring me, you can go here (you need to make an account). You can sponsor me for as little or as much as you want, and all your money gets sent directly to the UNHCR, not a penny comes through me. I am very fond of this organization and it would mean a lot to me, especially since I’ll be posting every half hour to 24 hours straight (I apologize in advance for how much my posts will deteriorate after 4 am – I’ve done this before). Next week I’ll tell you more about it and why it’s important to me, but you can start sponsoring now. I’ve already gotten $20 in pledges and I’m hoping for at least $150. The first year I made over $300 for them, so if I can break that it would be even better!

Have a wonderful weekend, I’ll be back post-birthday with lots of pictures!

That was the question I hated more than anything with both my kids. “Is she a good baby?” Well, I don’t know, define “good”. Was Hayley a good sleeper? No, absolutely not. But she was a GOOD baby. Because she was, you know, a BABY. How bad can they be? Even when she had colic and spit up like whatsherface in The Exorcist, she was still a good baby, because she didn’t have the mental ability to be bad.

Breanna was a great sleeper. I still remember the time our friend came to see her for the first time and his two daughters and Hayley ran around and around, screaming like crazy people, and Breanna slept for an hour in the bassinet right there in the middle of it all. She was a great sleeper, and she didn’t have colic. Did that make her a good baby, a better baby than Hayley? No, she was just a good baby by default because again, hello, BABY.

So yeah. I have issues with that question and I’ve always hated it tremendously. When people would ask if either one was a good baby, I would always seethe on the inside, fantasize about setting something on fire with my anger alone, and then I’d flash a tired, sleep-deprived new mom smile and say, “Oh yes! Yes, she is!”

Of course, that was a bit of a mistake because then people would inevitably end up saying, “Oh so she’s sleeping through the night for you?” And I’d be all, “Uh no, she’s three weeks old and wakes up with a wet diaper and a need for breastmilk, but uh, anyway… Hey, look a blimp up in the sky!”

I probably should have answered the way I really wanted to, especially when it was a total stranger that I’d never have to see again so I wouldn’t have to be ashamed of being rude later. Just once, I wish I had glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were alone and then I should have confessed:

“Sigh. No. She’s a terrible baby. She’s a BAD baby. I think she’s on drugs. She said she was just tired from staying up late and studying for midterms, but her pupils were so dilated. I can’t tell if it’s weed or meth though. And the other day I saw her rooting through my purse; she said she was looking for gum but I KNOW there was a twenty dollar bill missing. It’s that damn 3-year-old down the street. That damn Jimmy with his badass tricycle, I know he’s a bad influence on her and I told her that he’s way too old for her, but what can I do? She just sneaks out to see him if I don’t let her hang out with him, so it’s a losing battle. Frankly, I’m ready to ship her off to a boarding school.

“Got any advice for me on how to deal with it?

“What? You meant sleeping? Oh, yeah, she sleeps about three to four hours at a time, she’s a great baby.”

I would pay good money for a time machine that could take me back to just one opportunity to do that.

Have you been asked that before? Because I complained about it a few times and it seems pretty common. Don’t you wish you could have just handed them this?

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This post was part of another great Parent Bloggers Network blog blast asking for what we wish we had said when asked stupid or annoying questions while pregnant or as a new mom.

And it was hard, by the way. I had to choose between this question and the eight billion times I as asked if I was SURE I wasn’t having twins with my pregnancy with Breanna. Augh.

I don’t know what’s going on with my weird kids and their sleeping habits lately. Once again, Breanna passed out asleep in her little plush Caillou chair. She was sitting there, listening to music and eating a snack. She finished up, and conked right out. She was using the chair as a mini recliner, leaning back all comfortable.

In the close-up, you can see that she still had crumbs all over her face from her snack.

And then the hilarity continued because she kept leaning further and further back in her sleep until she was essentially sleeping inverted.

She slept like that for another five minutes before she finally flipped over sideways and woke herself up. I was ready for her though and before she could really cry, I swooped her up and took her down the hall. She had already fallen asleep again and she continued her nap in the crib for another half hour.

Then, that same day we went to a soccer game, which was short-lived because the sky looked like this:

Once it started to thunder and lightning, we were out of there quickly. Despite the fact that Hayley only ran around for about ten minutes, she was obviously tired; when I came out from putting Breanna to bed, I was surprised to find Hayley’s bed was empty. Thinking she was in the bathroom, I came out to the living room to turn on the baby monitor, and found this:

Crazy, funny sleepers.

I can not express strongly enough how much I would love to do this on my living room wall behind the couch. Seriously.

I love long weekends. Speaking of which, I hope all my fellow Canadians enjoyed a lovely Canada Day. We didn’t do anything in particular for the holiday itself but George did play at a Canada Day celebration in Ottawa on Saturday, and then yesterday our friends Dean and Joanne came over to visit and for supper.

Today George is sleeping in a bit and then when he gets up we have to head to the store for a few things. I’ve lived in this apartment for a damn long time now (we moved in seven years ago yesterday!) and I have always said that I wanted to do something with our balcony and every year has come and gone with pretty much nothing happening out there. I think the most exciting decor out there was last year when Hayley’s bird feeder broke so I quickly dumped the falling birdseed into a dirt-filled pot and it sprouted really tall green grass. I don’t think accidental planting counts, though.

I always said that I would never want to live in an apartment that didn’t have a balcony but I’m not sure why since we don’t spend much time out there right now anyway. Part of the reason for that is that it’s just unappealing. We’re on the top floor so we have no shade, we’re on a busy street so we get all the street dust and everyone can see us, and it’s just not nice. To fix that I have plans to acquire the following:

• A privacy screen to weave in and out of the balcony rungs. This will accomplish three things. It will cut down on the dust that gets kicked up here. Also, it will make it so that no one can see us as they go by which is really nice. And finally, it will make it so that if I sit down I won’t be able to see the street at all, I’ll only be able to see tree tops and the sky, so it will make it more peaceful for me.
• A big bag of potting soil.
• Hooks for flower boxes. I have two long flower boxes that I bought years ago and never used because I had no way to hang them.
• Some sturdy flowers. They have to be able to handle a lot of direct sun since we have the sun on our balcony from about noon until sunset. They also have to be able to stand up to strong winds. I have no idea what I’m getting. I’ll ask when I get there. I don’t have much of a green thumb so I’m clueless but I’m determined to try.
• A basil plant for one of my terra cotta plant pots because oh my lord, fresh basil is the bomb.
• A tomato plant. I can not tell you how long I have wanted to grow fresh tomatoes. Our friend always gives us a bunch from his garden but it would be so much fun to grow my own too. If one plant goes well, next year I’ll get a few. I’m going to stick it in the planter that Joanne gave me.
• Possibly a cheap square plastic table just to have a place to put the phone and a cup or two.

We already have an umbrella, although it doesn’t actually provide full shade – it just diffuses the sun, but it’s better than nothing. I just have to get George to hook up the base to the balcony railing again since we had to take it off last year when the building people repainted everyone’s railings.

I’m just really excited about it. Someone else in our building has a ton of plants on their balcony, some flowering and some just big green plants, there’s a little table, and a couple of chairs, and that balcony is so inviting that I’d love to sit out there. I don’t think I’ll have as much greenery going as that one does, but it will be a start and it will certainly be an improvement. I don’t expect that we’ll spend a ton of our time out there during the day because the kids just don’t get the appeal of sitting and relaxing on a balcony (phooey, darn kids who always want to go to the park!), but I look forward to sitting out there in the evenings, and maybe even having a morning coffee out there some day. WITHOUT all of the passersby looking up at me while I do!

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Also, speaking of fixing things up and making them look nice, today in my review blog I reviewed a couple of Kaboom cleaning products which made my bathroom nice too. Go check it out!

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Happy long weekend to the Canadians, happy Monday to the rest of you!

I love this site, it’s full of fun projects for gardening, decorating, crafting, and cooking/baking.

I should probably do this. It’s either that or just start pitching stuff off the balcony.

I’ve come to a conclusion. Doing all my work would be infinitely easier if I could actually afford a laptop. It would be so nice to be able to work from anywhere in the apartment so that I wouldn’t be chained to this desk when I need to get some work done. Alas. Got a spare laptop lying around? Didn’t think so!

Ah yes, good old hot and overly humid summer days. The utter joy. That’s today’s weather forecast. Nice isn’t it? For non-metric readers, that would be only 87F but with humidity it feels more like 104F. Hayley has soccer tonight too. There’s a 60% chance of thunderstorms and can I just confess that I truly hope it starts to POUR later so that the game is canceled so we don’t have to go out? There’s a high heat and humidity warning for the Montreal region, telling people not to go out unless they absolutely have to, so the idea of having Hayley running around a soccer field while George and I take turns walking around and around and around with Breanna is less than appealing.

The thunderstorms themselves come with warnings of severity, including hail, high and damaging winds, and strong lightning. Woo! I want to be inside my living room watching that instead of sweating and melting into a pool of goo on the grass at the park.

You know that it’s hot when you have your window unit air conditioner running, along with a ceiling fan and a table fan to help it out, and the room has still only cooled down to 28C (81F).

Pass me a cold and fruity beverage please. And an icepack. Who’s bright idea WAS it to move into the top floor apartment facing the blazing sun anyway?! I wonder if it’s too late to move into a nice, cool ground floor apartment at the back.

Big honkin’ note to self.