I watched the special edition of 20/20 tonight. It was about Steve Irwin – not just his death but his life as well. Barbara Walters interviewed Terri and it was unbelievably sad because at just three weeks since his death, she is far from cool and collected and I pretty much sobbed from 10 pm straight through until 11 pm, pausing long enough to catch my breath and blow my nose during commercial breaks. Seriously, I went into the bathroom after it was over and my eyes were all red and puffy.

I’m glad I watched it though. Seeing how they got together, the way that they lived their lives, and the incredible love and passion Steve had for his family and his wildlife conservation was wonderful. Also, although there will never be another Steve Irwin, I can really see his daughter Bindi following in his footsteps. They showed her performing and singing at the zoo, a little clip of her upcoming Animal Planet show (titled Bindi, the Jungle Girl) and it’s uncanny to see how comfortable and in tune with that way of life she is at only eight years of age. Her speech at his memorial nearly destroyed me.

Terri said that she believes that Steve isn’t really gone that some spirit of him is still here and that now it’s our turn, now it’s time for us all to take our turn as “wildlife warriors”. Her words and his life make me want to take my turn too, even if it’s not in such a dramatic way as he did. For years I put something on my Christmas list and no one ever did it for me, I guess because it’s not a tangible gift to me, but year after year I wanted someone to make a donation in my name to the World Wildlife Fund or one of the Save the Whales organizations. Maybe I should put it back on my list again.

I’d love to visit the Australia Zoo some day too, especially after seeing how incredibly open it is and how healthy and happy the animals seem. If I win the lottery, I’ll book my trip!

I’m still so sad about his death. The world – and the animals – lost a great champion this year.

For months, Hayley has woken Breanna up at least once every day or two (either in the morning or while she’s trying to nap), and sometimes in their playing Hayley gets a bit too over-zealous and knocks Breanna over.

Breanna got her revenge. Hayley was lying on the floor and Breanna stood over her, looked down, smiled and laughed, then barfed in Hayley’s hair.

I tried very hard to keep from laughing hysterically, but alas I was unsuccessful. I even giggled while I poured shampoo in Hayley’s hair at bath time.

In other news, I wonder if Breanna was German in a past life. Whenever she gets upset about something she doesn’t want to deal with – such as a diaper change or being picked up when she really wants to walk out the front door – she starts thrashing and yelling, “Nein! Nein!”

Today my grandmother (or “Aggie” as Hayley would say) turned 92 years old. A small party was held in her honor in the community room at the nursing home she now lives in. I haven’t been able to see her since Easter which makes me very sad, but I was so happy to get there today and celebrate the day with her for a couple of hours. I can’t even imagine going through the sheer number of changes in daily life she has seen since her birth in 1914.

It was a really great day.

As much as I love that picture up top, I think my favorite is this candid shot I got of my grandmother with my uncle – I just love the way they are looking at each other, waiting for the singing to start.

Happy birthday, Aggie. I’m glad we got to be there.

You know what makes me laugh? The little legal disclaimer on YouTube that states you should only be uploading your own video content and not copyrighted things from television, movies, etc. It makes me laugh because you can find and watch almost anything, from music videos to television commercials to entire episodes of many TV shows. And for that, I say thank you. On the other hand it can lead to the sort of embarrassing confession that I feel the need to make right now.

I spent a great deal of time last night and this morning watching New Kids on the Block videos and reliving my teen years. Hey, don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault. I blame it completely on Heather because she linked to the Step by Step video and it just kind of spiraled out of control from there as I clicked and clicked and searched for more. If you type in NKOTB over there you will get thousands and thousands of results. Scary, yet satisfying.

And as though that isn’t embarrassing enough, I also discovered that I still remember about 95% of the words to all their damn songs. Perhaps equally embarrassing was that I still took the time to notice that poor Jon Knight couldn’t dance to save his own life, always looking stiff and awkward next to the other four.

I was a hardcore fan. You would have been hard pressed to figure out what color paint I had on my walls as a teenager because my room was pretty much papered in their posters. I even had some posters of Donnie Wahlberg – my favorite of the five – on the ceiling. I had the t-shirts, jewelry, even a pillow case and I owned every tape and video that they put out. I may or may not have been a little pathetic, but I was 15 and 16 years old, what do you expect?

Luckily my kids don’t have much discriminating taste, as long as it’s music of some sort they’re generally happy so they tolerated the videos I played today.

Remind me to scan and post some of my old pictures. If you could see what I did to my hair in grade 11, you’d understand.

I haven’t been reading like I used to. Part of it is because I’m still so busy with the girls but really, I could still find SOME time to read stuff other than blog posts and magazines. Thus, I found the Fall Into Reading Challenge at a great time. Here is my list of books I would like to at least try to read by December 21st, all books that I have lying around at home.

In no particular order:

The Red Tent by Anita Diamont, which I also never finished for unknown reasons.

Okay, let’s get reading!

Dear Hayley,

Please tell me how you did it. Please explain how someone who is still “little” in the grand scheme of things was able to invent some sort of device that makes time speed up. Really, such an invention is the only way I could possibly make sense of the fact that in the blink of an eye, you have grown from a tiny baby to a very determined four-year-old child.

Brand new:

One year old:

Two years old:

Three years old:

This morning, a whole four years old:

I don’t know how it happened and I’m not sure I signed any sort of consent form, and yet here you are, growing up day after day. You’ve changed so much and in other ways you’re still the same. You’re still the same very determined girl who knows exactly what she wants from life (or from us) and refuses to quietly accept substitutes. When it comes to bargaining for things like what time is appropriate for a cookie that is a frustrating quality, but when you grow up even more I know you will be destined for success because of it.

You’ve become somewhat picky about food, but you’ll eat more things than you’ll refuse. You still love fruits and vegetables, and you enjoy chicken and sausages, as well as a bit of pork. You’d rather pass on beef but that’s not so bad. You finally decided you love pasta but you’re very strange in your approach: You MUST have sauce on the plate, but it must NOT touch the noodles, and in the end you won’t even eat any of the damn sauce anyway, but it must be served nonetheless.

You love to sing songs and not only songs that we know from television shows (especially from the Backyardigans repertoire), but also songs from my own CDs (the sheer horror for you poor father to have to hear you singing along with the Buffy musical soundtrack or my Duran Duran CDs), most of the songs that play on the Country station, and also songs that you make up and sing to narrate your day. You’re a very enthusiastic dancer too. As far as playing music is concerned, it’s practically in your genetic code thanks to your father, but we still don’t know if you’ll play guitar like he does or perhaps drums since you seem to have a freakish natural sense of rhythm (according to Jules the drummer, so it’s not just parental bias). Then again, sometimes you still say you want to play violin like Kalan Porter (who is still your imaginary music boyfriend, but that’s okay, Mommy has an imaginary television show boyfriend too so I understand) and you really like playing Daddy’s keyboard too.

You are a computer geek like both your parents so you enjoy playing a variety of online games on the Treehouse and PBS Kids websites, and you can also navigate my own web stuff so more than once I’ve caught you clicking away through my Flickr photostream. When you aren’t hogging the computers, you like to color, do random crafts, and play with Playdoh. You love to help me in the kitchen whenever you have a chance (ah, the cooking gene from me!), and you enjoy a good game of Snakes & Ladders or Go Fish.

For your birthday today, we took you to the store and bought you a big girl bike. You had been asking for one for months; the tricycle we got for you earlier this summer was just a temporary thing and we were so excited to get a real bike for you. You saw the one you wanted immediately and were so beside yourself about it that I thought you might explode in utter joy right there in the bike aisle. You looked so cute when you got to try it out after Daddy put the training wheels on. You looked like such a big kid in your little pink Princess helmet with the matching knee and elbow pads.

Tonight, after supper, I took out the last bit of the leftover cake from your party and I stuck some candles in it again, and Daddy and I sang “Happy Birthday” to you (Breanna clapped), and I wondered for the umpteenth time today how you could possibly be four already.

I hope you had a wonderful birthday. I thought back to how you were so small as you laid there in the hospital after you were born and how I never could have pictured you at this age now. I was wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with you as I sat there in my hospital bed, staring at this beautiful tiny baby beside me, and now I wonder if you’ll ever slow down and let me just watch you again. Take your time. You don’t have to grow up overnight, okay?

I love you. Happy birthday Princess MonkeyButt.

Love,
Mommy xoxoxo

Riding her bike for the first time:

Getting used to it:

Looking like a big girl in the booster seat she got from her grandparents:

She couldn’t even take off her helmet for her cake:

“Happy birthday to my big sister!”

So yes, we had Hayley’s birthday party this past Saturday. I had originally intended to have it NEXT Saturday on the 23rd, but someone else was having a party that day too and too many of Hayley’s friends would have been missing, so I bumped it up one week. That gave me only one week to organize everything and I was a little high-strung because of it, but in the end it all worked out. To add to my stress, at first we had said that we’d start around 6 pm and make it a dessert and coffee (well, coffee for the adults, that is) party but then George suggested we start it around 4 and we’d serve lasagna. I’m glad we did though, even if it was a crazy Friday because of the additional cooking.

On the Friday we sent Hayley over to George’s parents’ house because his sister was in town for the party and that gave her something fun to do instead of being bored at home while I was busy. I made my sauce in the early afternoon in between cleaning up, and then I stuck it in the fridge while we went shopping. We hit three stores – including a party and costume specialty store – in the hopes of finding a Red Riding Hood costume for Hayley’s small gift from us (she’s getting a bike tomorrow for her actual birthday) and came up empty. Then we went to the Dollar store to get party supplies (how did anyone EVER afford to do anything before Dollar Stores? Seriously.), and it was in the same strip mall as another small store that has a tiny selection of Halloween costumes each year so I stopped in quickly. I didn’t expect anything, especially when I saw they only had about 15 costumes in total, but to my surprise and delight they had an actual Red Riding Hood costume – not just the hooded cape but a dress too. On top of that it was only about ten bucks so I ripped it off the rack like a crazy person and clutched it tight until we paid for it, as though some other nutjob might try to take it from me.

I ended up not even getting around to having supper that night. By the time I got home, it was already 6:30 and I immediately got started with assembling and baking the lasagnas. Then it was time for the bedtime routines, followed by making Rice Krispie squares and baking the birthday cake. I think it was about 10 pm when I realized I was starving so I ate a bowl of cereal which wouldn’t have been so bad except that I had two beautiful and wonderful-smelling lasagnas cooling on the counter.

I fell into bed after the cake had cooled enough to be wrapped up in the fridge and slept like the dead until we got going by 8 Saturday morning. I then used nothing more than a cup of coffee and adrenaline to propel myself through the remaining duties to get set. You’d think I was organizing the Queen’s coronation but no matter how much I remind myself to relax, I am ALWAYS like that when I’m throwing a party. Still, I managed to do the last-minute cleaning and decorate the cake with enough time to actually take a decent shower and to get myself ready in a fairly relaxed manner. It also helped that we took Hayley to see her grandparents again so that she was occupied and not undoing all my cleaning.

People started to show up around 4:30 and it was a lot of fun. We certainly had no shortage of food. We had crackers with cheese and paté, vegetables and dip, tomato pizza, chips and cheesies, lasagna times two, Caesar salad, loaves of garlic bread, marinated olives and roasted peppers, the birthday cake, Oreo cheesecake, a fruit platter, and the squares. On top of that there were different juices for the kids and for the adults there was a wide variety of red wine, beer, and a few harder things. Don’t you wish you were here? 🙂

The kids all had a great time and completley destroyed the pristine state of Hayley’s room in under one hour but that was to be expected. Hayley was so excited to have her friends over and everyone seemed to have a good time. The kids and at least one parent each left by 10 pm and everyone was gone by midnight.

Hayley got great gifts. I know ours was a hit (and I know she can’t wait for her bike). George’s parents got her a booster seat for the car since she’s just over 40 pounds now (!) and it’s good timing since Breanna needs to move out of the carrier and into a bigger seat, so she can use Hayley’s old one. His sister got her a neat Playdoh kitchen set and some light-up Dora shoes. From everyone else she got a V-Tech learning globe (it is SO COOL), lots of pajamas, and some money to pick out her own stuff. Unfortunately, my parents couldn’t be here but we’ll see them on Sunday; my mom asked what they could get and I suggested some board games because she loved the Snakes & Ladders game they gave her at Easter.

Anyway, it was all great. Even Breanna did well. I think it was because although there were a lot of people, everyone showed up a few at a time so she had the chance to adapt. Also, she enjoyed having the kids here. At one point a good song came on and George’s sister got all the kids to go dance and Breanna walked down the hall and got right in the middle and started dancing too – it was so cute.

There are always two great bonuses to parties; the next day you actually want to clean so it looks as good as it did beforehand, and also you end up with a fridge full of leftovers, which is great!

Of course I took pictures too, so if you’d like to see them, here you go; my dad requested an uncomplicated way to see them, so I did my best! Enjoy!

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We had Hayley’s birthday party on Saturday (her actual birthday is this coming Wednesday and I am in total denial over the fact that she will be FOUR years old). I have a whack of pictures to resize and upload and I want to write about it a bit more in-depth because it was a lot of fun with a lot of good food and crazy kids having a blast, but I think I might just wait on that a bit. I spent the whole week getting ready, ran around shopping on Friday, then came home at 6 pm when I then baked two lasagnas, made Rice Krispie squares, and baked a cake. Then I got up at 8 am on Saturday and imitated a hurricane while I got everything ready. So I’m a little tired right now. However, I did want to share the cake.

Princess cake, originally uploaded by sherina.

I made Hayley a princess cake and she loved it. I baked a regular white cake in a bundt pan and frosted it – it was originally supposed to be red like Red Riding Hood, but dude, it is hard to make white icing red. Once that was done, I took a piece of cardboard and made a funnel. I placed the funnel on top of the cake and iced that too. Once that was all done, I removed the poor doll’s legs and stuck her torso inside the funnel, and iced a little bustier on her. For decorations, I used Smarties all around the funnel area, and trimmed the bottom with those little candy necklaces.

It was a huge hit and honestly, it was practically no work at all. Also, I must say that slicing a bundt cake is so much easier for sizing and without the mess; I’ve always hated cutting and serving cake but this was simple. I think I’m going to get a bundt pan for my collection of kitchen items (I borrowed one for the party) and make all my cakes that way!

I really had a good time and I think everyone else did too, especially Hayley. FOUR. In THREE MORE DAYS. Good lord.

The CBC website has a pretty in-depth story about the shooting at Dawson College yesterday. A name has finally been released and the gunman has been identified as 25-year-old Laval resident Kimveer Gill. It’s interesting how eyewitness accounts can be off sometimes – yesterday afternoon they were saying he was a blond man with a mohawk.

In further updates, although yesterday it was believed that no one had died other than the gunman himself, who was shot by police, this morning they confirmed that an 18-year-old girl, Anastasia de Souza was also killed in the shooting. There was a press conference this morning about the 19 other victims who were in varying conditions, some critical. There were at least eight people who required surgery, including one boy who had been shot in the neck.

On Canada AM this morning, they mentioned that Kimveer had a blog which had been taken down by police. They said he wrote about his loathing of “jocks” as well as posted pictures of himself with knives and guns. According to the story above on CBC, the last handful of images showed him in the black trench coat that witnesses had described, with the final image showing him with a gun and the caption “ready for action”. Despite the claim of deletion, there does appear to be a feed of the website, at least the blog entries. I looked a few of them over and eventually decided I don’t really care about how he felt because he certainly didn’t care about anyone else, and I clicked away.

It’s funny how stories like this make you want – need – to personalize the details. I didn’t go to Dawson and I dont think I know anyone who is a student there now (though one of my co-bloggers on Montreal Metroblogs works at Dawson and he posted his personal account of the day’s events). But it’s like we need to personalize it anyway to try to understand it or to try to cope with the feelings of helplessness. I didn’t go there, but Amanda did. I also know the layout of the school quite well because I visited a couple of times years ago when a group of student newspapers – I was a part of the paper at Champlain College – did a collaboration issue and the meetings were at Dawson’s paper. I once sat in the same cafeteria which was yesteday’s crime scene – I was there to audition for the school’s theater program and I sat at one of the tables to go over my monologues one last time. I ended up being accepted into the program but ultimately turned it down.

But you also personalize it when you have kids. I look at Hayley and I know she will be starting school next year. a year from now she’ll already be attending kindergarten. You sort of think to yourself, “Well, another kindergarten student isn’t going to open fire in the middle of storytime” but you can’t help but worry a little. How many other mothers and fathers were terrified yesterday amid all the broken and inconclusive news feeds, wondering if their child was one of the victims? It makes me want to hide away in a cabin in the woods (with high speed internet access, naturally) and homeschool the girls and never send them off to a school where some crazed person with a pissy attitude and a lack of respect for human life thinks that it’s okay to open fire on innocent students during lunch. How do you ever recover from something like that? I don’t want to have to figure that out.

I’ve been a bit of a news junkie for awhile now, but I know that I look at the news differently now and I have since September of 2002 when Hayley was born. Every tragedy becomes personal as I think, “What if that was MY kid?”

I know there’s no real way to protect your kids from everything. You do the best you can, you teach them safety rules and guidelines, you offer up a prayer to whoever you believe in, and you cross your fingers and hope for the best. There’s not much else you can do. Because the truth is you can’t really hide out from the world forever, even if you might want to sometimes. Danger will always be there and you have to send your kids out into the world eventually.

But today, on a rainy day less than 24 hours after a horrible school shooting where not much makes sense, it’s probably okay to just stay inside. And while you do, it’s definitely okay to take your kids and hug them just a little closer, because somewhere in Montreal, an 18-year-old girl’s parents can’t.

Christ. For the past hour and a half I’ve been watching the news. Someone opened fire on students at Dawson College, a Montreal CEGEP*.

So far the only person who has died is the gunman, who was “neutralized” by police. However, many people have been taken to the hospital, some in critical condition or requiring surgery for life-threatening injuries.

I didn’t go to Dawson but my sister did, and I spent enough time there on several occasions for student paper events and also to audition for their Theater program, so I know the layout enough to know he picked the best time of day (lunch) and the best location (cafeteria) to make the maximum impact.

I can’t believe this happened.

*For non-Montreal folks, CEGEP is similar to a prep school for university. We only go to grade 11 in high school here, then you go to CEGEP/college where you can take a two-year program to prepare for university or a three-year technical program that includes internship and leads straight to the work force.