Bye Bye Super Pake

Hi there folkie folks.  Quick turnaround between posts – only 2 days.  Don’t get used to it, we’re not getting any better, just had a lucky lull. 

Friday night, one of the first really nice evenings we’ve had this spring, we got home from work, and decided to go for a nice walk out along the river valley – take advantage of the sun & relative warm weather.  Meals was pretty pumped, she got plenty of swing & slide time at the park as well as the requisite puddle stomping time, in her lovely Blundstones which are the best puddling boots in the history of puddles, it would seem.  Once we got home, we fired up some steaks for dinner and watched The Departed.  Meals squeezed in some excellent potty time and playdoh time (no they were not at the same time you sicko) in before a nice 8pm bedtime.  Split decision on The Departed, by the way – Alicia didn’t like it and I did, though I don’t really think it was the BEST picture I’ve seen this year.  Whatever, my membership with the Academy expired several years ago, hence my dissention has been restricted to this forum.

Saturday, Alicia had a bit of a sleep in, she’s feeling under it these days, hopefully she can pull herself out of whatever she’s got soon, before I catch it.  Meals spent the better part of Saturday playing in the basement, she is going nutso for her new table and the artsy craftsy stuff (markers, playdoh, stickystuff (floam) and stickers).  The old standbys of books and mardi gras beads are still key but the stickystuff and playdoh are making a hard charge towards ‘favoured status’.  Saturday night, the three of us made the trek out west to Caledonia to visit Chris Fralick (friend of ours from Waterloo) along with his lovely wife Julie and their daughter Ella, who’s like 5 months old (ish).  Suffice to say that Caledonia is beautiful, the drive was a bit long but well worth it.  We had a great time and didn’t just sit around telling “remember that time…” stories, a good sign to be sure.  Meals was on fire and managed to go full-speed until 9.00 when we left.  We managed to get home by about 10.15, and as a bonus didn’t have any issues with the development-occupying First Nations band.

Sunday, it was my turn for a bit of a snooze, Amelia was in fine form as usual but Alicia was still sick so the gym was a no-go.  In lieu, and expecting warm wonderful +15C weather, we trundled off to High Park for a yuppie walk with our stroller and lattés from Timothy’s.  Alas it was drizzly and 3C, but we had Wendy as well as Leigh & Ronan along for the walk so it was heart-warming (with love) and belly-warming (with laughter and latté) in lieu of real (useful) warming of say, the sun.  Regardless, everyone else made the same wrong assumption about the weather that we did, and the Park was teeming with joggers and dog walkers and infants in fancy strollers.  Ronan and Amelia did lots of running and dog looking and puddle splashing, the walk took a very long time at their pace but it was really fun anyhow and we met up with lots of dog owners and infant owners like ourselves and compared notes.  Success!  Sunday during the day, Alicia went off shopping with Heather while I plumbed away – fixing the leaky shut-off valve in our basement.  Even busted out my renovation overalls.  Amelia was wrecked from a shortish night on Saturday and all her jumping and running in the morning, she slept for over 3 hours.  Sunday night, off to Wendy & Daryl’s place for chicken tamale pie along with quasi-family Heather and Adam.  Great success!

Alas, some bad news to share, my grandfather, the venerable SuperPake, passed away on Sunday.  He’d been having mini-strokes for a while (several years) and a big one finally hit him on Thursday.  This was followed up with other complications on the weekend, Sunday he passed away at about 4.30pm.  We’re going to be off to Cornwall tonight and will be there for the services through Thursday.  My view on things is that it was just his time and luckily doesn’t seem to have suffered much.  Obviously we’re sad and will miss him, but I’m at peace with things, as far as I can tell.  Mainly I am looking to try my best to be supportive of my Dad and the various aunts & uncles through a much harder time (relatively) for them.  Anyhow, we’ll be back Friday and will be back being zany soon enough, I’m sure.

Tonight I have my last hockey game of the season, and we’re going to try and get the home-made roti I got started Sunday done and into our bellies (VINDALOO).  Then pack up around 9ish and off to Brockville to Bill & Betty’s.  Should be a long night but that’s nothing that large coffees can’t fix.  As an aside, Roll up the Rim to Win is fixed, officially.  I have one donut to show for my daily patronage.  BAH.

Wook Mommy, Wook!!!

Between Wook or “look mommy, look” and “Zat, Mommy?” (translated “what’s that, Mommy”) Amelia’s mouth rarely stops moving. I think Amelia has got a head start on the 5yrs “why?” with these two phases.  Amelia loves attention and she has learned that these two phases get her some. Her fav is when we are driving around she loves the “look mommy, look” and when I ask her look at what she looks are me and goes “ummm, ahhhh….hmmmm” *scans out the window for some random thing*…

Last night Jeff and I took Mia (yes no Meals or Melie… Meals has proclaimed herself Mia) to IKEA and Mastermind, we got her some early birthday pressies of a little table and chair and some arts and craft supplies. There was much excitement at Mastermind and once her goodies were purchase she wouldn’t let go of the bag, she was quite adamant.  Once we got home she proceeded to push her table and chair all over the room testing it out in each location then muttering to herself and pushing it somewhere new, it was rather entertaining.   This morning she was quite determined that she didn’t want to leave and she wanted to go downstairs to the basement, I think the new furniture had something to do with that. I had to bribe her to leave this morning telling her that Raphael might be there.  Raphael, is Heather’s helper, Larissa, husband. Both Amelia and her partner in crime, Macy, tell everyone that Raphael is their boyfriend. I think Jeff’s blood pressure rises with just the mention of the word boyfriend, I think it is hilarious and us it to my advantage J We have also been informed that Amelia would like to invite Raphael to her birthday party. 

So this week has been pretty good. This past weekend, Jeff and I headed out for some St. Patties day pints and lunch with Heather, Adam, Danielle and Rory while Mini took pity on us and babysat.


Saturday morning, Jeff took Mia out to shovel the snow, Jeff shovelled and Amelia helped by shovelling snow into her mouth… This weekend I am praying for a change of pace/season and I am hoping to start some gardening, we’ll see.  Sunday we just did stuff around the house and Julie and her Man came for Roti (very yummy but very hot and it took a toll on my insides).

This weekend has been pretty good.  Monday, Jeff had hockey and Mia and I were home alone.  We were playing and I was watching TV when Amelia demanded that we do exercises… I thought she meant her daycare kind but when I started she started going “NO Mommy NO” and I got the usual wave of the hand in my face.  She started point at the TV going “TV,TV” turned out she wanted to do my yoga DVD.  I put it in and for the next 10 min Amelia did downward dogs and corba poses, what a nut.  She lost interest but I figured I would finish.  I finished off and decided to try to do my oh so hated plank pose for a minute (we do it in the spinning class and I always bail before everyone else so I am trying to get better), well after about 15mins Meals thought it would be fun to lie on me… Plank pose ended very quickly but I got an ab work out giggling with my daughter. Oh this past weekend I tried to teach her how to summersault, it was interesting, she hasn’t quite got it but I found out that even after 10yrs I can still do one, I’ll have to see if I can still do a backward one this weekend.  I hope Amelia doesn’t have my issue with cartwheels I always dreaded gymnastics because I could never do one… Ah childhood emotional scaring.

This weekend should be good, they are predicting spring-like weather, yipeee!!! Melie’s should get some good yards out of her Carhards work overalls, poppy and uncle rich will be so proud.

Long Over Due

Sorry no posts from me in awhile, I’m abit crazy at work these days and just can’t being myself to sit back down at the computer once I get home.

 

As Jeff said we all had a wonderful trip to Mexico for some much needed R&R but it did take some adjustment for us all when we returned. Amelia has finally adjusted to life in the real world and has returned to her fairly easygoing disposition.

 

The last couple weeks have been full of outings and visits, last Friday my mom joined us for Friday night dinner a Deep was away AGAIN this time to New Zealand. We had a nice traditional Friday night pizza while Meals got a few round of her favourite saying in…”Look Mini LOOK”. That weekend we took it easy with some errands complete with a fun filled trip to IKEA and Costco.  While at Ikea Amelia was DESPERATE for milk so on our way out we picked up a little carton and a straw. I was so proud of herm she sat in her car seat with her carton sucking away and not a drop was spilt.  Saturday night Jeff and Meals had a night of bonding while I went out for dinner and drinkie-poos with Julie, Andrea and Jess.  The night had the makings of a big night but I rained it in a drove us home.

 

Sunday morning we had a leisurely morning hanging out with meals in the basement. We did toddler exercise, which she loves, and involves crazy dancing and twirling around the basement like a snow flake and the occasional touch of the toes.  Mid morning Jeff, Meals and I walked into Bloor West to meet Danielle and Steve for a nice brunch. Danielle is 7 months pregnant and she is feeling fine, how JEALOUS was I!!! I think I was hitting shamoo status by 7 months Meals was very good, she nibbled on my hash browns and begrudgingly tasted some melon. Just like the old days, Meals passed out on her stroller on the walk home.  The rest of the day was spent doing some cooking for the week and Julie came over and helped us cook and kept us company. I baked a ham for sandwiches and we all nibbled on it, I found out Amelia is addicted to ham and downed a fair amount. That night Sunday dinner was at my parents.

 

Last week was pretty good.  Jeff was out every night except Thursday, which was the night I was out at spinning.  It made for a hectic week but it made the weekend all that much sweeter Friday night Jeff had poker our in Burlington so Meals and I headed out to Mississauga to John and Denise’s for dinner.  Meals put on an impressive show of insanity running around like a crazy kid and pressing her face up against the glass doors (leaving her little mark for Denise to clean I tried putting Meals to bed there but she would have none of it.  Amelia usually loves to go to bed and has never had a problem going to bed at John and Denise’s but about 2min after I put her to bed with no fuss she was screaming blood murder!! She was totally freaked when I got up stairs, I don’t know what set her off…

 

Saturday, Jeff, Meals and I met John, Denise, Julie and Jeff’s cousin Michelle at Sherway.  Saturday morning while we were all lying in bed trying to get abit more sleep while Amelia sang to us, Amelia told us she was hungry and wanted sushi, so Saturday night we decided to indulge her (not the mention the fact that we both love sushi too).  We went to our favourite place that doesn’t have the best sushi but they are very nice and they know Amelia and it is close. As usual we got Amelia her gyoza dumpling and some yam tampura but this time we also got some eddemame to snack on which she also loved (and made me feel like a better mom cause she was actually having something green).  I think one of our proudest moments in Amelia’s life so far was when she actually managed to use the chopsticks, well maybe not the proudest but it was pretty friggin’ funny and cool (mind you they hadn’t been broken apart but she did manage to pinch a dumping between them and get to her mouth).  She had a few bites with them then gave up and went back to the finger method.

 

Sunday, we had everyone over to our place for dinner. Turned out well but took much longer to prepare then expected. WE had a nice night full of laughs and Amelia sign and dancing with her grandmothers, the best was her attempting to do the chicken dance. Unfortunately the night ended on a less than wonderful note when my naked-ish (she likes ripping open her snapped pjs when she has an audience and running around in her diaper) was standing on our chair saying by to Mini and Topo when she lost her balance and went backwards over the arm of the chair and landed on her head on the hardwood floor. I watched this but was not fast enough to catch her but I did get the pleasure of seeing the angle that her neck bent at and had flashes of her paralysed which continued into my dreams that night. In the end she cried and yelled at me (how could you let this happen to me mommy, screams in my face) but she was fine and within a couple minutes and a half a verse of (Papa’s going to by you a mockingbird she was fine) I of course freaked out all night and the next day which resulted in MANY calls and progress reports from Heather the next day (I have to stop watching House, I am much more creative in the weird side effects and ailment I imagine for Amelia now). 

 

Monday was Heather’s (of Amelia’s Daycare fame) birthday and Adam invited us for dinner.  We had a very nice time but yet again Amelia would not go down in her playpen that she naps in every day and she also put on her Superman pj ripping off show and ran around in her diaper (rather embarrassing but totally uncontrollable when you don’t have another pj option on hand).

 

This week the weather started warming up again and Tuesday night Jeff and I went for a run and took Meals in the Red Rocket (the running stroller). She hasn’t been since the fall and she sat there with a combination of dumbfounded and massive grin on her face, I think she enjoyed it… Yesterday I was in Thunder Bay for the day for meeting, I left before Amelia got up and got home after she was in bed, I miss her… I did get to see her this morning and I forced snuggles and kisses on her.

 

Amelia has now cracked out “No way Jose”, she has actually been doing it since just before Mexico, I just forgot to write about it.  It is pretty hilarious which isn’t so good when you are trying to be a parent and not laugh when trying to make her do something.

 

This week at daycare Amelia has been her usual goofy self, one day Amelia was bingo dobber painting (green and pink) and decided her face needed abit of colour. I arrived to pick up my daughter and instead found a green nosed clown, three days of scrubbing later and she has returned to normal colour.  She was very annoyed with us for trying to remove it according to Heather she quite enjoyed going to look in the mirror and declared “Green, ha ha funny”.  Also Heather has decided to get a turtle for daycare, one morning Heather asked Amelia what the turtle should be named and after abit of contemplation (involving “hmmm, ummmm”) she proclaimed the turtle “TORILLA”, the next day she was asked again though and it was changed to “roast beef”…