Wednesday 31 October 2012

Eating Local

We are crazy busy preparing for our annual Dia de los Muertos Feast and Poppet is busy ripping apart as many of my paper flowers as she can get her hands on, in Hallowe'en bat tights of course :D 

Tonight, we'll be Catherine the Great, the adorable version and the dead. Guess who is the adorable one?  Post, pics, and recipes from the party coming soon ...

Until then, Happy Hallowe'en! And a Blessed Samhain to those who are ringing in a new year! 

Remember, eat local!

Thursday 11 October 2012

(Almost) First Steps

At first I thought "squeeeee!" when my little girl took her first step. She stood up, arms outstretched, tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth, and steadied herself. The look on her face said "holy shit Mama! I can do this WITHOUT holding your hands!" It was a look of wonderment laced with mischief and crossed with determination. I'm in for a world of trouble with this newly almost toddling girl.

It was the second time she rose to standing that she decided to take it one step further (sorry, I'm a sucker for puns) and placed right foot in front of left, or was it left then right? I was too busy paying attention to the fact that my daughter was trying to WALK! I'm calling them the "almost first steps".



Since that video, she's worked up to 3 or 4 steps...

WALKIING!?!?! So exciting...

Wait. No. No it's not. 

I mean, yes it's exciting to see her develop and realize she can do something on her own without me. I know most people would insert a little sniffle here, about how their little girl is growing up so fast. My sniffle is for a selfish reason, I don't want her to walk. I want her to be as immobile for as long as possible. What? It's nice to be able to run down stairs and change the laundry over when she's playing in the living room.  She's pretty quick at crawling. Walking will lead to running and I don't know that I'm quite ready for that. Plus, walking leads to her standing more often, which means she's going to be able to reach the surfaces of everything. It's only a matter of time before she figures out the latch on the baby gate or learns to climb over it!

And then what happens?



Okay, it might have it's perks ;) 

Thursday 4 October 2012

Swearing at your child... in public

I grab a can from the overstocked shelf at the grocery store and place it in my cart. I head to the dairy section, grab my yogurt... place it in the cart. Through my series of pick item out, place it in cart and repeat routine, Penelope is throwing one of every five items onto the floor. It's not so bad. She's entertained and I get to do squats to help counteract the ass that you only seem to acquire by having a child.

As I do most trips to the bigger grocery store, I head to the clothing section on my way to the cash. I am eyeing an incredibly adorable faux leather jacket in size Lope, only to look back at my child to discover she has learned how to open a package of Soba noodles... and they are everywhere. Broken pieces scatter on the floor, some have landed in tiny baby shoes and one hits the leg of a lady perusing the adorable sleepers for newborns section.

My response? "Jesus Christ Penelope!" Not in a angry tone, but more exasperated, although still laughing, at the fact that she can't seem to sit in the cart and happily play with a frozen burrito. (Help me out here... how do you get your child to endure grocery shopping?) Now, this isn't the first time I've sworn at her, or around her. I've also told P to "f!*%-off". Just once (in public) and it was totally justified as she was punching me in the face. But even the other moms who witnessed that (and pretended like they've never sworn at their kids) didn't look at me like this woman. It was as though she would love nothing more than for me to cross the grocery store parking lot to Canadian Tire, buy a shovel,  and head to a lot to start digging my own grave. Wow. She actually scared me a little. I'm guessing devout Christian?
I understand that everything I say will soon be repeated. I know that both J and I need to curb the cursing. And we`re working on it but sometimes, well, sometimes your baby punches you in the face, and sometimes they dump pasta all over a grocery store floor.  

I give Brownie points to myself for how I handled it. Because not only did I have to clean up after her, while under the glare of a soon to be grandmother, but I didn't respond to the evil eye or even do retail therapy and buy the jacket! 
Talk about restraint. 

I think I'll go have that brownie now. 




Instagram