Getting Ready To Say Goodbye

So we had H over for a last playdate as neighbours yesterday. We also invited A and the girls hung out for a good 5 hours playing and making their memory photo albums.


Cathy (oh wonderful Cathy) sent us a box full of wonderful craft supplies so the girls took the foam sheets and decorated them with foamies and I printed out pics of them to put inside.

The girls wanted to also dress up so I got a really nice shot of Chloe in the pretty dress.

This is Sarah in the same dress though a little older than Chloe is now:

We did find out that the couple moving in have no children yet and are expecting their first in the fall. That'll be 4 new babies on this street in October. We're definitely going to start having to rent halls for our annual Christmas parties.

I will miss the family next door so much. They are quite wonderful and I can't believe they're leaving so soon. I know I've had months to get ready but I'm not. I wish they didn't have to go. Change sucks.

Moving

My next door neighbours are moving away this w/end. They're not moving far and Sarah and H will still be at the same school together, but they're moving far enough that I honestly doubt I'll see much of them after this w/end. This makes me rather sad as I like them very much.

I'm also feeling a little anxious about the new neighbours who are coming to join our street. We have a great group of people and we often get together for birthday parties, BBQs, holiday parties etc. I hope they have nice kids in our age groups though I suspect their kids will likely be younger than mine.. I don't know why, I just have that feeling.

I personally don't plan on moving away from here EVER. I had once thought that we'd downsize when the kids were grown and had left home but as Gunther pointed out, once they're grown and gone the cleaning will go way down and why not enjoy all the work we've put into the house for as long as we can? Since much of what we do is self-sustaining or low-maintenance he certainly puts forth a valid point.

Still, I hope they don't mind too much that G will be out there with his tile saw for the rest of the summer or that the kids will likely run through their lawns.

We're going to miss H and K so much though :(

First Haircut

My wonderful sister and her family came to visit yesterday as my niece was heading off to Nottingham for a month's stay with her aunt and flying out of Toronto International. Well, it was a lovely visit aside from the fact that it was brought to my attention that Chloe (and Sarah to a lesser degree but I'm not going to go there) was sporting a mullet.

ARGH

Now I've never cut a hair on her head so that's just how it grew it but mullets are mullets and I simply can't have that on my child. The trauma! Imagine.

So I asked Chloe if we could cut her hair. She said no. I asked if the hairdresser could cut her hair, she said no. I asked if L could cut her hair and she said o.k. so off we went to L's house.



Rather than scared Chloe seemed anxious to get started. She was a bit fidgety so I had to read her a book to keep her still. L was wonderful chatting away at her as she snipped here and there.



Finally it was done (honestly was super fast) and the mullet and scraggly hair was gone. Chloe looks super cute with her new do if I do say so myself :)





Thanks L!!!!

I have a crush

I have a crush on a TV character named Dean Winchester. His character is one of the two main guys in a show called Supernatural. The funny thing is that I vacillate between lusting after him and after his younger brother Sam though I'm usually in the Dean corner (though the whole chewing with the mouth open is an instant turn off). You see I'm quite sure that I think Dean is rather cute and funny and sexy and totally imaginary. Being a slayer of supernatural critters was one of the first clues.

Now I confess that in this world of multimedia and accessibility I once blurred the lines behind a character and the actor who plays the character not in a stalker fan kind of way but in an "oh.. well he's nothing like the guy he plays on T.V. and while there's nothing wrong with him he's kinda lame really so I'm not going to be his myspace friend anymore because I really don't care when he updates his blog" way.  In all honesty I'm kind of old and housewifey to be anyone's myspace friend based solely on the fact that they're hot.  Oh the joys.

I also learned that even stars that I thought were cool on their blog or myspace pages are fallible people too (tsk tsk Stephen... really???) and sadly I no longer want to have them over to my house for BBQ because they'd be super cool.  I'm still kind of holding out hope for Dave Foley because really a girl's gotta hold on to something... but it's not looking good for teenage crushes.  I confess, the men keep getting younger and I keep getting older and this new crush feels just a wee bit pervy.  

I really am getting old I fear...

Snapping

My kids bickered and fought with each other all day yesterday. Chloe would burst into angry tears at least twice every quarter hour, Sarah pulled the bossy old sister crap, both of them physically attacked the other one and all in all it was a horrid horrid day.

We made an attempt to go shopping and I suggested we go to the Surefit factory as my dining room chairs have been water damaged and I like the look of covered chairs. Gunther does not. We drove through back streets and dirt roads because our iDrive seems to have also been in a spiteful mood and directed us here there and everywhere and then arrived only to have G say "you know I always thought those looked like in the movies when they cover all the furniture after the London Season is over and all the ton are heading off to their country estates." Ok he didn't say it exactly like that but that was the idea and I of course pouted and walked away because really if he wasn't even going to consider it why'd he drive us all this way?

So of course we bought a matching set and then bought some of the ones he liked (which as it turns out look awesome on my kitchen chairs tho I don't need to cover those) and then we made the ill-thought-out decision to go look at the bedroom set I like. I like it, I do not love it. I've been looking for a bedroom set I love for oh about 10 years. Still nothing. THIS is the closest I've come yet. I'm actually only ok with the bed though I like the dresser of that set rather much. Still, not sure if I want to commit to it yet though I'm awfully tired of keeping my undergarments in a hanging shoe organizer.

Of course the girls being in fine form complained about being hungry, ran through the store, kept playing with the stupid knick knacks and insisted on trying out every single piece of furniture. Never again. Bedroom shopping is going to have to wait until Chloe's in JK because I won't be doing that again!

By the end of the day Gunther and I were snapping at each other too, tired of the constant bickering, he was peeved because of the screws he needed was missing and we were both exhausted from having to separate the girls every 5 minutes. They lost their privilege to watch a movie and still fought. They lost their privilege to have a bedtime story and they still fought. They were sent to bed early and yes.. they STILL fought. And of course the fighting began again this morning...

It's going to be a LONNNNNG summer :( Days that like make me really miss being single and spending my Sunday sitting in my Laze-Y-Boy reading books and drinking coffee all day. Sigh.

She didn't sleep over

In the end I decided it was for the best that she didn't. I have never met these parents before so I feel justified in thinking that it might be a fun thing to do when both families know each other a little better. As it turns out, there was no way that Chloe was going to go to bed until her sister got home (at 10:30 p.m. so yes I did let her stay for a pajama party just not the actual sleepover and the party was still going strong so I doubt she'd have been put to bed until after midnight which would have resulted in a very grumpy Sarah the next morning). Sadly they did get rained out and missed a lot of the attractions but Sarah still said she had a great time and we'll all be looking forward to having the little girl over for a playdate in the near future.

I don't think I'm one of THOSE mothers, but I'm not one of "those" mothers either if you get my meaning...

For Di -- or How My Best Friend Became My Best Friend

My friend Di has a blog.  She kept it hidden.  She had written a post where she vented some negative feelings and she was worried that if we read it we wouldn't like her anymore.  It's strange how we women do that to ourselves -- constantly second guess relationships and constantly worry about our footing with our female peers.  A lot of it has to do with High School I guess and all the petty crappy evil stuff that went down then.  Sad how 4 (in my case 5 as we had Grade 13 back then) years can totally skew your view about friendship.

Anyhow, this post is my post for Di because if Di can let us look into a dark part of her personality then I feel it's only fair to share a little bit of the ick in mine.  So be forewarned, I do not come off as likeable in this post.  It's honest, but it ain't pretty.

This all happened back in late 2004 around November or so.  Chloe was about 5 months old and a very fussy baby.  She didn't seem to like other people and she was FAR more demanding than Sarah had ever been.  I had expected a quiet, easy sleepy baby much like my first and instead, after 20 months of TTC during which time I suffered both a miscarriage and a chemical pregnancy I got a colicy fussy baby who didn't sleep through the night, demanded to be nursed exclusively every 3 hours and both feared and hated her older sister.

So anyhow, it came to pass that I fell in love with a Gymboree Christmas dress that was a crushed velvet dress with a black fur collar.  I had bought the same dress for Sarah the year before on eBay because we were way too poor to shop gymbo back then and discovered much to my horror that the dress couldn't get wet without being ruined (yeah guess how I figured that out?).  Still, I was determined that I would get both my girls in said dress for their first Christmas photo together where they would shine Holiday cheer and prove to the world what a great and wonderful family we were because look!  Two beautiful girls in matching dresses -- what could be cuter?

I scrimped, I saved, I sold off some old CDs and hunted down the right sizes on eBay until I had them, one in sized 6-12 months and one in size 5 which was a little big but did the trick.  I booked my portrait session in mid November to avoid the worst of the Christmas rush and armed with candy canes and my husband I set off to capture what would be our perfect Holiday Portrait.  It was a disaster.

Chloe wouldn't stop crying big fat wet tears that left horrible discolorations on her beautiful dress, the part-time ijit who was working the camera was completely useless, Sarah kept insisting that she wanted her candy cane and throwing impossible tantrums and Gunther in his infinite wisdom kept trying to suggest that they should maybe take individual portraits (if I wanted individual portraits I wouldn't have bought them matching dresses you moron!!!!!)

The topper was when one of the 15 people cramped into the waiting room suggested that maybe things might work better another time when the girls weren't so obviously exhausted.  I confess I tore this man a new one and then stuffed his head into the new orifice before blasting the "photographer" and promptly stomping out of the portrait studio and leaving everyone behind me.  Gunther grabbed the girls and tried to run after me but I was LIVID and there was no way I was going back to THEM.

For 15 minutes I stomped away from them in a temper tantrum any two year old would be awed by.  In those black minutes I honestly had thoughts of just going home (to Ottawa -- there was still a part of me that thought of Ottawa as home back then)  and leaving them forever.  Never have I been so close to understanding how a parent can leave their child.  Fortunately, I've never again gotten so overwhelmed with parental despair.

Anyhow, I finally stormed back to the car and got in warning Gunther not to say a single word and we drove home while the girls cried in the back seat.  I came into the house and picked up the phone to call my friend Lisa and tell her that I wasn't going to be going out that night -- we had scheduled a Mommy's night with a few friends -- and was instead going to go drown myself in the tub because I'm a bit melodramatic that way.  She told me that she'd come kidnap me if I didn't get out and that being with other moms was just what I needed so reluctantly I re-applied my make-up and headed out 45 mins early.

In the end making that decision to go and to leave right away changed my life.  When I got the restaurant Jenn was there though I have no idea why she showed up when she did but I will be forever grateful that she was.  She took one look at my tear stained face, asked what was wrong and then, braying through big gobfulls of breaths I confessed:  I didn't like Chloe.

OMG I couldn't believe I'd said it out loud much less said it to someone who was in a position to judge me for it!  This woman not only had a child the same age as Chloe but she had one in between too and here I was complaining about having two kids when she had 3!!!  And then the guilt hit.  Guilt because it was true.  I loved Chloe with all my heart and I would gladly have thrown myself under a truck for her, but man she was SO much work and she was SO cranky and she was just SO hard and how could I feel anything but blessed after all I'd gone through to have her.  How could I really be laying awake nights in bed thinking that I would be happier if we had given up trying for a second baby before she'd been conceived?  What kind of mother was I???

In the end, as Jenn, who will forever be my best friend after that fateful night, explained ever so patiently to me, I was a human one.  I was a tired one and unbeknownst to me I was a hormonal one - PPD can sneak up on you anytime in the first year after delivery so it's not just something that hits you on your way home from the hospital as I'd previously believed.  I was not alone.  I was not a monster.  And yes, being a parent was freaking HARD and no I didn't have to pretend that I had it together all the time.

In the end we did go back and try again:

but rather than being proof of my incredible motherhood and superior organizational skills this pic reminds me that motherhood isn't about being perfect. Some days it's just about getting through to the next stage with your sanity intact.