You're F'ing Kidding Me.

So, last night, Ian goes to take the kids to swimming lessons. A moment after he goes outside, he comes back in, finds me in the bedroom getting into my workout clothes, and he throws something at me.

My keys.

Apparently, they were on the passenger seat in the van all along. I swear, I looked there. Twice.

Jeeeez.

Well, on the plus side - BENIGN, eh? Whew.

Here's some hilarious pictures to celebrate. Yes, that last one is being saved for his wedding ;)

A Trip to the Doctor's Office... or: I must be INSANE

I planned ahead. A lot. I put the kids' clothes out before we went to sleep. I packed some snacks in the event of a long wait. I set my alarm for 6am! for a 9:30 appointment. Here's how it turned out:

6am - alarm goes off. apparently. i never heard it.
7:25am - i wake up, cursing. for once, all three kids have slept in.
7:30am - shower
7:40am - get dressed
7:45am - nurse luci
8:00am - wake up Lili, practically carry her into the bathroom, and shower her. not sure she ever woke up during this process.
8:15am - wake up Cohen, no time for a shower, make kids cereal, manage to wolf down a few bites myself
8:30am - get kids dressed, nurse Luci. Notice she smells like sour milk.
8:40am - give Luci a bath
8:45am - pack up the bag - proud of myself for remembering snacks.
8:50am - load everyone into the van
8:51am - frantically search for keys. i check my bag, my other bag, the van, the table in the foyer, the kitchen, the dining room, my bedroom. no luck. remember that i took said keys to the park yesterday, and that my bag fell over not once but three times. keys are probably at the park.
8:55am - phone my brother in a panic. ask if he can come by and loan me his car. i had to make these dr appointments 3 months in advance. no way am i missing them.
9:00am - brother arrives, we load everyone into HIS car, drop him off, and we're on our way.
9:15am - arrive at Dr office downtown. as usual, there is no parking. we circle the block once, twice, three times, four times. i finally spot an open parking meter, and we swoop in. i check my wallet - no change. luckily i spot a toonie on the floor of my brothers car.
9:20am - put toonie into meter. meter makes satisfying "clink" sound, but the minutes do not appear. meter is in fact taunting me with flashing zeros. i expand my childrens' vocabulary by introducing them to some new and exotic curse words. decide that we'll take our chances and leave the car parked by the evil meter.
9:25am - we're in the waiting room, 5 minutes early. i heave a huge sigh of relief, and settle in to read a book to the kids. Luci is sleeping. all is well.
9:30am - (right on time, how often does THAT happen?) my doc comes out to gather us up. we enter what must be the worlds smallest and HOTTEST examination room. the kids are immediately cranky. luci starts to cry. doc is trying to catch up by asking me a zillion questions about their lastest viral infection. i'm trying to remember everything i wanted to ask him. he wants to chat about luci's birth. i want him to examine cohen and lili and get us the hell outta there.
9:35am - luci starts making really great faces. everyone laughs but me - i know what the faces mean
9:40am - luci starts to cry. i take her out of the carseat, and try and calm her, which i already know will do no good. the sweetie has pooped (i'd know her poop faces anywhere), and hates sitting in it. i mentally review everything i put in the bag: i know i threw in a diaper at the last minute, but it is unlikely that i remembered wipes. she pooped yesterday, you see, and typically only poops once per week.
9:45am - doc asks me to get lili undressed. i put luci down in her carseat. glance down at my pristine white skirt... which is now covered in 5-6 spots of luci poop. i restrain myself this time, and curse silently. i can now feel the sweat trickling down my back. grab some paper towels with one hand, and tug at lili's pants with the other.
9:50am - doc casually mentions that my u/s results came back - the tumour is benign. !!!!!!! i will have to have a CAT scan once every year, but other than that, i'm clear.
10:00am - doc proclaims the kids are healthy. i change luci's diaper (no wipes - but paper towels + water do the job), grab the kids their suckers, and we're off.

no ticket on my brothers windsheild - hurray.

10:30am - arrive home, with healthy kids and a headache and a benign tumour but still no keys (I checked the park).

note to self: ask mom or friend to accompany me to the next dr appointment. an extra set of hands will come in handy!

I heart Rock Band

Last night we had our annual summer BBQ (also meet Luci party). After spending the entire day preparing (Luci was super-fussy, so I was only able to do things in 5 minute spurts) and shopping (I also heart Costco and my mom for braving the crowds with me), I was exhausted by the time 6pm arrived.

NOTE TO SELF: Stop planning parties on days that Ian works, so that I can actually not be completely responsible for planning/prepping!

Anyways, very few people showed up. Which turned out to be ok, but I'll admit I was dissapointed. I know - it's summer, everyone is busy. I totally understand. I will say - it felt pretty weird without my favourite girls there - Alison was camping, Heidi had family in town, and Karmen... I don't know where Karm was!

It turned out to be a couples party, after all, except for Andre, but he left early. We had Dave & Elaine and Lee and Andy, and Don and his lovely wife came later. After chilling outside and eating mucho BBQ'd hot dogs, pasta salad (thanks Elaine), drumsticks (thanks Andre) and Kettle corn (OH MY GOD thank you Lee!), once the kids were safely in bed we couldn't resist all piling into the living room for an hour or 4 of Rock Band.

So. Much. Fun. If you haven't tried this game, I highly recommend it. Ian and I are actually going to be holding monthly Rock Band parties. Stay Tuned.

I will admit, when Ian bought this game a few months ago, I was skeptical. I had played (and enjoyed) Guitar Hero, but for me, the luster had worn off after a few weeks. I feared the same would occur with Rock Band...

I was so wrong. Turns out, I LOVE to drum. And - even though my voice is awful, I can easily keep the pitch (thank you, 4 years of musicianship classes), and now I love to sing too. Ian still loves to play the guitar, so we have ourselves a nice little band. Did I mention the kids love to play as well? Although it will never replace formal music lessons in our house, I will admit that the drumming helps them learn to keep the beat, and the singing helps them with pitch recognition. Also, it's pretty damn adorable.

All in all, fun for the whole family. Last night was especially fun, considering our guests: Elaine is unafraid to get crazy on vocals (love it), Lee is a singer/songwriter and also unafraid to go crazy with the cheezwiz, Andy is a notorious musician in Calgary with crazy skills on vocals and guitar and he was picking up the drums pretty damn well too. Ian is a psycho-guitarist/drummer (it amazes me, he plays circles around all of us musician types), and Dave and I were our normal reserved-yet-enthusiastic selves.

The best part was when Cohen got out of bed to sing Blitzkreig Bop for everyone (for everyone! my little shy one!) and achieved 99% - one of the highest scores of the evening.

Anyways, we had a great time, and still managed to be in bed by midnight (ok, 12:30, Ian and I couldn't resist doing a few extra songs on our own once everyone left). I was smart and cleaned up before we went to bed, so today I'm enjoying the post-party bliss - relaxing on the couch, nursing a lot, and eating leftovers.

Here's a few shots of the kids rocking out a while ago:

damn those shots

poor luci had her 2 month immunizations this afternoon. i knew it would be a traumatic experience with her - cohen cried for a few minutes, lili didn't even cry at all (i would say she pretty much just glared at the nurse)... but luci, little luci is a crier.

sure enough, the little one screamed bloody murder for about 30 minutes. of course, i'm used to it (although my heart was breaking, i do know for a fact that they recover from this stuff) as she cries often. i thought the nurse was going to cry though.

other than sore little legs, she's doing great - she's in the 95th percentile for height at 75th for weight. not surprising - everyone was SO surprised at her weight when she was born, because she was such a skinny little thing. but the girl inherited her daddy's height, so far anyway.

i'm glad that is over though. i always dread it - more because of the 8 million questions (rate how capable you feel as a mother this week between 1 - 10... i would have said 9 but i had just finished yelling at cohen and lili in the van, so i went with 7.5). i get it - i do - and i even support what they are trying to prevent. but i really want to say "hey, i get it, but let's skip this part, we're fine, everything is fine, i'm not going to drown my kids! and my husband doesn't hit any of us cause if he did he'd find himself castrated!".

i don't think they'd go for it though. just like, that time that we took lili to the hospital when i was pregnant with luci and the nurse asked (once ian had left the room to get me some water) if there was any abuse in the home... i said "only when he's really drunk, which is only twice a week so it's really ok". she didn't find it funny for some reason. i only did it because she knew ian from work... lol. took me forever to convince her i was joking.

i guess that's like joking about carrying a bomb on board a plane these days.

well, the first immunization day is a marker for other reasons too - this was the night that Cohen first slept through the night. i remember waking up in the morning thinking he was dead! nope - just sleeping. after that he slept for 12 hours at night for a long time (i think until he was about 3, which is when we started experiencing some really fun bedtime problems). lili slept through the night from day 1 - 12 hours on the dot, and she hasn't strayed from that at all. knock on wood!

luci sleeps the least out of any baby i've had! she sleeps from about 10 or 11pm until 3:30ish, then does a power feed (5-10 minutes), sleeps again until 6, another feed and if i'm lucky she'll sleep again until around 9, but 50% of the time she's up and then doesn't sleep again until around 8:30. she dozes all day, but never longer than 30 minutes or so.

if she isn't sleeping through the night by 4 months, we'll probably start letting her cry. i know it seems like such an awful thing, but in my experience, if you do it right, it only takes about a week. my feeling is that most babies pick up on the anxiety and guilt of the mother, and this makes them cry more. i won't have much guilt nor anxiety - one thing i've learned, babies cry, and it doesn't hurt them. some of the nights we went through with cohen... good god. and he's perfectly fine now.

of course, this means that i have to get luci into the crib soon. she's still in the cradle next to our bed. in the last few weeks, she's actually spent all night in the cradle (i used to start here there but bring her into the bed with us after the 3:30 feeding). i've also been trying to put her down between 10pm-11pm while she's still awake, so she becomes used to putting herself to sleep.

here's hoping.

well, best go fold laundry while i have the chance!

m.

Math 30... uh huh

Ok, so just for kicks, I went to the library today to check out some of this silly "Pure Math 30" stuff (it's a prerequisite for the degree I'm looking into).

I almost peed myself laughing. Now, it has been 12 years since I was in high school (holy f-word). Add to that the fact that I didn't really study during school, and math was the only subject I struggled with (hmm, perhaps the not studying had something to do with that?). I was fabulous at it up until grade 10, when I had the worst, asshole-jock teacher who treated all music students like crap. And he HATED me.

So, long story short, I have Math 33 (now called "applied Math 30" - basically, enough math to help you pay your bills every month, not much more). I can barely remember my multiplication tables (which is probably all right, apparently it's all done by calculator now)...

So, today I went online and ordered myself a Grade 7 math textbook. And I'm gonna do it from page 1. Hopefully I can manage the grade 7 stuff. Seriously - they say that the curiculum these days is about 2 years more advanced than it was a decade ago.

Man.

I am also having to do Bio 30. At least I have Science 30, so I'm hoping Bio 30 won't be such a stretch for me. I took out a Bio 30 book from the library, and will probably start my online course in September. Did I mention that? I have to actually take Bio 30 and Pure Math 30 STARTING IN SEPTEMBER if I want to make the application deadline to the program I'm looking into.

Geezus.

So, these evenings, you'll find me pouring over Biology and Math textbooks...