Yesterday, the fog here in Montreal was nuts. I guess that it’s a positive sign of nice warm temperatures to come. I like fog, to be honest. I would probably do really well in London. On our way back from the dollar store (seriously, the laundry detergent at the dollar store works just as well as the expensive brands and it’s a BUCK), I stopped for a minute to take a couple of pictures.

It looks like the clouds fell right out of the sky and landed in this field.

And I just loved how eerie this looked, with no one around, a layer of fog everywhere, and a lone bright red umbrella stuck in the fence. It was almost creepy.

Last night the fog got much thicker. I wish I could have taken a shot of it. You couldn’t see more than a few feet in the distance. When I peered out our front sliding doors, you could barely see the railing of our balcony and nothing else, as though our apartment was floating up in the sky. Crazy fog.

It kind of works out well because today it’s my head that is foggy. For no apparent reason, Breanna has woken up for four nights in a row, around 4 am, and has kept me up for hours. Last night – or should I say this morning? – she had me awake from 4 until 7 am. I wish I knew why because at least if I knew there was a good reason it might make it easier. As a result, I am really tired and my brain feels like it’s wrapped up in some of that fog too. I’ve already had two cups of coffee and I just want to go make another one. Or maybe take a nap.

Alas, there is no such thing as napping with these two kids of mine. Maybe I’ll have some tea for a tiny bit of caffeine but without having enough to screw me up royally.

You know, I know it’s been almost a week now but I’m still totally blaming the time change. Breanna’s teething is on hold right now, she wasn’t upset at all on any of her late nights, and there’s nothing else I can think of. Hayley has been going to sleep well past 10 each night (last night it was about 11!), and we’ve all been sleeping in in the mornings because we’re so tired from staying up too late. I hate time changes, they should seriously be outlawed.

Yawn.

Thinkgeek always has wicked things, but then yesterday I found this t-shirt and I am freaking out. You have no idea how ridiculously happy I would be to wear a t-shirt that actually has an animated PONG game on it. I squealed like a little girl and then I sent the link to a friend of ours who probably also squealed like a little girl. And I keep thinking, “why didn’t anyone think of an animated t-shirt before?!” I want one so badly that it’s not even funny. And you know, if you were ever sitting around thinking, “jeez I should get Sherry a random gift” size medium is just right.

ANIMATED Pong shirt, be still my geeky little heart! (And no, this isn’t a sponsored post, this is a totally dorky Sherry post)

Viacom is suing Google/YouTube for one billion dollars for intentional copyright infringement. Seriously? Seriously?! (Thanks, Dreama)

Hayley and I were playing with some Barbies earlier. I had Ken give her Barbie a rose. “Here’s a flower for you, Barbie,” I had him say.

And Hayley lifted Barbie’s dress and made her loudly fart at him and run away.

If we encourage this, we won’t ever have to worry about Hayley dating.

Sometimes I look at my kids and I wonder if they really came from me. A handful of people always said Hayley looked like me but I didn’t really see it, thinking she looked more like George. As for Breanna, I often joked that when I delivered, they pulled another baby out from under the bed and did a switch because she didn’t look like anyone.

Then on Sunday we went to see my parents. I pulled out my baby book because I wanted to see a few of my milestones in comparison to Hayley and Breanna. I found some pictures and was a little stunned to see that although my girls may not look like me right now, there’s a little bit of them in old pictures of me.

My poor mother must have been disappointed that she gave birth to an alien. Someone alert the Scientologists!

Luckily for her – and me! – I then morphed into an actual human child. In this picture at age two I can finally see a bit of Breanna in me.

(Actually, I had to turn that picture over to read whose name was on the back, because at first I was sure it had to be my sister. Which I guess reinforces what George’s dad said a year ago, when he looked at Breanna and said he thought she looked a bit like Amanda.)

But then in this picture, at 2 1/2 years, I see Hayley.

Then I found some dorky school pictures, grade one and grade two (ages 6 and 7) respectively.

(You know, you’d think the teacher would have maybe fixed my barrettes so that they were even first.)

(And that one just makes me shake my head sadly at the GINORMOUS glasses.)

So I guess I really am their mother and I didn’t just imagine all that pregnancy and labour.

Apropos of nothing to do with me (imagine that!), I also took a picture of my grandmother and her family way back when. That’s my grandmother right in the middle and that’s my mother as a little girl way down in the bottom corner. I love old pictures like this.

In other news, on Friday night I took the girls down the street to a magic show at the church. Hayley really enjoyed it. The magician invited all the kids to come and sit on the floor in front of him. Breanna obviously wasn’t interested in the show at all but she had fun running all around the room, peeking under the pews and chasing another kid around. Because I was following her around to make sure she didn’t tip over the holy water or sneak into the other side of the church, I didn’t see much of the show, but Hayley said it was fun. I kept peeking down the aisle every time I walked past to make sure she was okay and because I had just cut her hair that day I only recognized her because of her red shirt and her overalls.

She was really excited to get a purple balloon animal cat at intermission. Then, as we were getting our coats on to come home, she dropped it just as someone turned around and they stepped on it. There was a brief flood of tears but we went back in and the magician was nice enough to make her a new one, so that was a good save.

He had made a mouse for Breanna. As you can see, she was completely unimpressed.

Of course, then she started pulling it apart, and then she tried to bite it so I took it away, “lost” it, and then distracted her so that she wouldn’t keep looking for it. There’s a reason Breanna didn’t have any balloons at her birthday party, it was because she’s not getting any until she stops trying to eat them.

It was a pretty good weekend overall, between the magic show, Hayley getting to visit with George’s sister, and then seeing my parents. Compared to some other weekends where we’ve all just sort of looked at the walls, it was nice to have a few things to do.

If you like to read and never know what to crack open when you’re finished a book, you can go to What Should I Read Next? for advice. Enter the title and/or author of a book that you enjoyed and it will scour a database of favourite books that have been entered by real people, and it will give you some suggestions of new books you may enjoy reading.

Turn your favorite t-shirts into a pair of underwear! (thanks to Oh My Stinkin’ Heck for the link!

No, not the blog. Hayley’s hair – so LONG. And then I snapped and it was farewell.

I’ve said I was going to do it but I always shied away in the end, but last night was the final straw for me, and for her too, apparently. I washed it and then I loaded it up with conditioner and when I tried to untangle it, there was a lot of screaming involved and crying. I’ve often been afraid of having the cops knock on our door because the knots were always so bad – no matter how many times I brushed them out – that she would end up screaming, “stop it Mommy! Please Mommy, please don’t! Not so hard, Mommy STOP!” I swear, it must have sounded like I was in here beating her senseless and I’m surprised the neighbors never ever called the cops on us.

Last night I imagined doing the same fight every single day and imagined trying to do it at 7 am before school and that was when I snapped. I asked, “Do you want me to CUT YOUR HAIR?!”

And with a dramatic sniffle she answered, “Yes.”

It wasn’t the first time she had said yes, so I said, “Okay. Tomorrow, we cut it.”

I reminded her today and she really wanted to do it so we got all set up.

All.that.freakin’.hair.

Gathered up:

Snippity snip!

Ta-da!

She’s actually thrilled with her new hair – the only reason she looks unimpressed in this shot is because I dared to interrupt her movie with a photo request. Please pretend her lips aren’t blue, I have no idea why there was a blue lipstick in her play makeup set.

I know that so many people loved her hair. I heard it all the time, how beautiful her hair was, how incredible it was. And it WAS. But it was an enormous pain in the ass for me and it was just painful for Hayley. After I cut it I wet it and then blow dried it. Then I ran a brush through it and it offered no resistance at all. Not one knot. And tonight she went to bed without braids for the first time in ages. She’s so happy to be able to leave her hair down if she wants now; before it had to stay braided or it got tangled if the breeze blew.

I love it. You know, except for the fact that she looks so much older all of a sudden.

Okay so I asked you guys for questions and now I have to actually think and come up with answers. Sheesh.

1. Chantal asked: Who is your favourite Beatle?

Answer: Paul. That’s probably predictable, but true. I love his voice, I like his position on a lot of things, and I am so dreadfully sorry that he was insane enough to marry someone without a pre-nuptial agreement because I think Heather Mills is a lying bitch. I hope she falls flat on her face on Dancing With the Stars.

2. Closs asked: What do you like best about where you live?

Answer: I like Montreal’s diversity and multicultural atmosphere. It’s a great place to immerse yourself in a lot of different ethnic ways of life without even leaving your home city. I particularly love our Chinatown. It’s nowhere near as big as the one in Toronto (you can walk from one end to the other in under ten minutes) but the food is good, the prices are ridiculously awesome, and the atmosphere is great.

3. Liz asked: Just curious….how do you plan your day around blogging?

Answer: I don’t really. I do it when I can. If there’s something I really want to write, I try to do it when I get the chance. If it seems like it’s not going to happen because my blogging bug has bad timing, I at least try to jot the topic down on a paper – I have tons of old envelopes and post-it notes with little scrawls about this blog topic or that blog topic. Then I go and write about it later. The easiest time is first thing in the morning when the kids are in their best mood or at night when they’re in bed. And any design stuff generally happens at night.

Whew, lots of fun questions, keep reading…

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