poop

Having a baby has really changed the way I feel about things that used to gross me out.  Poop, for instance, has ceased to make me squeamish.  Well, at least my son's poop.  If poop makes you squeamish, you should probably not read the rest of this post.  It's not for everyone.  I was giving my son a bath this evening, when he unexpectedly shat in the tub.  IN the tub, DURING bath time.  Full-on poopy mess.  I had to take him out of the water, drain the tub, wash the tub, wash his little bath mat recliner contraption, refill the tub, and give him a whole new bath all over again.  Sounds disgusting, right? Wrong! It's really quite amazing, but my little guy's poops don't bother me in the least.  Dave has taken to calling me "the poopsmith".  Changing diapers does not set off a single ick sensor.  I am immune, and I find this fascinating.  Dave, on the other hand, holds his breath every time he's on diaper duty, handling the wipe like it's a mysterious, time-sensitive explosive.  He happened to be paying us a visit in the bathroom when this all went down, and he somehow managed to escape in a puff of smoke before I could even yell at him to help me instead of just standing there, watching me like I was an unfortunate character in a special private screening of some horror movie.  "That was gross," I heard him yell from somewhere on the direct opposite end of the house.  (He's breathing over my shoulder now, forcing me to explain to you that he was late for hockey and had to run.)  Anyway, I was struck by how not gross I thought it was.  Actually, I thought it was adorable.  Never in a million years would I have guessed that shit, in any capacity, could ever give me the warm fuzzies.  But there it is.  You have yourself a little one, and you're suddenly so in love that he could literally barf and shit all over you, and you just chuckle and pinch his cheek.

likey?

I got my hair cut today.  It's short (well, shorter), and I have bangs.  I've finally done it.  I was contemplating the move for a long time, and I decided I'd had enough of the contemplation.  Less because I got up the courage and more because I finally got time to actually make it to my hairdresser's.  It's not easy to schedule a pampering session with a little one at home and a husband who brings work home on weekends.  So here it is -

the new me:

     

Moments later, my boy melted down and that was the end of our little photo session.  He likes my new hair, though.  He giggled when I came home.  Teehee!

Give me a 2! Give me a D!

Is anyone else having internal dilemmas about this 3-D television phenomenon that's threatening to destroy TV as we know it? I know I sound apocalyptic, but it's really freaking me out! Is television not all-consuming enough as it is? You mean, now I can be bombarded with senseless advertisements (which will no doubt become inexplicably fascinating) in a whole new dimension? I was wondering what was missing in my life.  Thank you, 3-D TV engineers, for creating a whole new excuse for me to not read.

Hang on, more thoughts have surfaced: Will 3-D glasses just be implanted onto our retinas eventually?  Otherwise, will people just keep them on like bluetooth earbuds so they don't have to keep taking them off and putting them back on ten times a day? Will Ralph Lauren design a line of 3-D glasses? Will I be considered a dork if I just wear the ones the movie theatre gave me for free when I went to see Avatar? Do you see where I'm going with this? Oh my god.

The irony of the Food Network: A mathematical perspective from the opposite of a math person.

I've discovered an important mathematical equation that reliably predicts how much time per day I will spend in the kitchen preparing meals for myself and my family.  It's pretty groundbreaking, so hold onto your hats:

Amount of time spent in kitchen = 1 / amount of time spent watching the Food Network

The equation can be represented in graphical form as such:

where y = amount of time spent in kitchen
and x = amount of time spent watching the Food Network

Note: units are in minutes x 10

It's important to point out that while both factors can approach zero, neither will ever reach it.  Although I might sometimes aspire to watch zero Food Network, it is not possible for me, as it is an addictive source of entertainment, in addition to being a central source of inspiration for me to enter the kitchen in the first place.  Thankfully, the same can be said of how much time I spend in the kitchen.  Although I might wish to eat every meal out of a take-out container, I'm a mom now and it's just not an option.

Oh Food Network, with your merrily slick Ricardos and your curly-headed towers of Chefs at Home and your pleasantly plump Barefoot Contessas...  I want you to know that I'm working on a way to have it all.  I will figure out a way, damn it, to have my Cake Boss and eat it too.

My friend found love

and I feel magical about it!  She spent so long, so very very long, doing that dance that every single person does, growing weary of it with every month and man that passed.  She was disappearing in her sadness, believing that she would never meet a man who'd light up her heart.  I'm feeling the fireworks vicariously through her singsong stories and my heart is warmer than it was yesterday.  Isn't love a remarkable thing?

Let me count the ways I love thee, baguette.

I would just like to write for the record that Ace Bakery's bake-your-own demi baguettes are at once the most magnificent and the most evil things to have ever been invented.  It's downright dangerous to have ready to bake bread (especially BAGUETTES) in my freezer.  Gum-scratchingly crispy on the outside, meltingly (is that a word?) fluffy on the inside... Secretly, I have kept my money pit of a Costco membership until now, just so that I have an access point to these amazing little logs of frozen dough.

I am, by the way, painfully aware that this is now my second reference to Costco on this blog.  It's ok, though, because yesterday I spent most of the afternoon in Kensington Market....  That's logical to me, so don't worry about it.

Happy St. Patty's!

Absolutely glorious day out today! If I'm not mistaken, I think the temperature is still supposed to be hovering somewhere near zero this time of year, but today it was 17 degrees! After having lunch with my friend, Laura (no relation), I bumped around Trinity Bellwoods Park, willing Jacob to fall asleep, which he finally did, thankfully.  When he woke up, we sat on a bench together in the park and indulged in my fantasy that I still lived somewhere around the corner and could pop back home whenever the urge struck.  Then I tried to rationalize the situation by pretending that it's somehow better to live farther away because if I lived in the thick of it, I wouldn't appreciate it as much.  It worked for 5 minutes, then I began to have compulsive nostalgic flashbacks about my life as a downtown girl, and I felt like sobbing.  One day, I will have the courage to suggest to Dave that maybe (just maybe) we should move back south... hopefully by then he will have forgotten my hormone-induced pregnant urge to "move somewhere where I can take walks with my child without stepping over drunken vomit or wondering if that man approaching me in a trenchcoat is planning on flashing me." (me, last year)

On another note, Laura pointed me towards a cool blog - http://www.designspongeonline.com/ - where I found a reason today to maybe invest in a sewing machine.  I figure, if I plan on handcrafting my own duvet covers, then the thing will pay for itself in no time, right? Considering that I may be unemployed for an undetermined length of time, this might actually be an investment I have no choice but to make.  See how persuasive I am? I even fool myself.

Dear Annex, I miss you.

I just got back from a little trip with the babe to meet a friend for lunch at Saving Gigi.  I love that place.  It felt so nice to be back in the old hood.  The warmer it gets outside, the more I start to miss it.  I knew this would happen.  Wherever I end up, the Annex will always have a little piece of my heart.

Costco rewards

Last night, when Dave came home, I did a Costco run.  What can I say? Sometimes it's just exciting to leave the house by myself these days. It doesn't happen so often anymore, so even Costco can be an adventure. Actually, it turns out that going to Costco on a weekday, an hour before closing is, in fact, the absolute best (maybe even the only tolerable) time to be there. I felt like I had the place to myself, which was slightly surreal, considering the scene there on a Saturday afternoon. I got lots of stuff, among which was an absolutely giant bag of organic baby carrots. When I finally got it home, I almost regretted my purchase, except for the fact that Jacob now eats carrots and it makes sense to have lots of them so I don't have to keep running out to buy more. Still, I have A LOT of carrots now. I realized that if I didn't do something with them right away, they'd be wasted, so I suddenly found myself blanching several batches of carrots late at night. That was my first time ever blanching something. It's easy, let me tell you. All you have to do is drop them in boiling water for 3 minutes, then dump them in ice water and drain them. Piece of cake. Except now I have a freezer full of blanched carrots. How long can blanched carrots survive in the freezer, I wonder? When I was done with the carrots, I attacked my next new collection of perishables: the sweet potatoes. I baked off a couple of them in tinfoil, and by the time my blanching was done, I had two perfect sweet potato packages. I mashed one of them up with some water, and got three days worth of food for the kid. Not too shabby. The other one I ate this morning, and was floored by how delicious it was. I added nothing to it, and it was seriously one of the most enjoyable culinary experiences I've had in my own home. When I unwrapped it, there was a syrup sticking to the skin that tasted like maple syrup. ENOUGH SAID.

Cry it Out?

OK - I've got 15 minutes to do something that will distract me from my son's crying in the next room. Since he skipped his late afternoon nap today (because he had to poop, by the way - good to know his priorities), he quickly entered an alternate universe of crankiness. I decided that it was probably a good time to put him to bed when he keeled forward onto his face while sitting and playing with his toys. Normally, he'd take it in stride, but today he lost his marbles and wailed until I shoved my boob in his mouth. Anyway, I've decided that it's time to attempt to implement some variation of the "cry-it-out" techniques that have failed in the past. Bedtime for my son is a nightmare and I'm determined to put an end to that. I have tried it all, it seems like, and the only thing that really appears to work is when the stars have aligned and I have put him down when he has a) pooped, b) nursed to his satisfaction (obviously different every night), c) had just the right amount of napping during the day (also apparently different every day), c) not been riled up by his father or grandparents. There are also, I'm convinced, some other secret elements at play here. Like the number of steps I take walking towards the crib, or the colour of the pants I'm wearing when it's time to put him down. It's like a rubic's cube of criteria. Anyway, it HAS to stop!!! He needs to learn that bedtime is not negotiable. My parents would downright kill me if they heard what was going on his room right now and knew that I was letting him go on like that. I wonder if they would feel differently if they were the ones who had to go through this every single day (not to mention in the middle of the night, when he's decided it's time to get up and I have to do it all over again)....

Just went in 15 minutes later. No signs of him calming down. He's very tenacious. Very. It's now his usual bedtime, except today he's been up 5 hours straight since his last nap. Poor guy. 5 hours for him is like pulling an all-nighter and drinking a bunch of cups of coffee to get you through it. No wonder he's having trouble falling asleep, right? Maybe I should go pick him up and cuddle him.

Hello Holly

Some woman named Holly Burns just inspired me to scroll through every single one of her snapfish photos and pore over her blog for an hour. I don't even know this woman, and I was practically drooling over it all. I couldn't even really tell you why, exactly. I think it's because I love her hair and she throws parties like they're being staged for a magazine, and she wore green sandals on her wedding day. I guess there's no danger of anyone getting hooked on my blog. I have no bangs. Hm. I could use to go to the hairdresser's...