Gym'n it!

So On Monday, I went to the gym. I know, A little late to be talking about it, but whatever. I went to the women's section, cuz on Mondays the regular section is Filled with big Muscular Boys, and girls with tiny waists, and the ability to run marathons, and frankly it's like being an In-valid on Gattaca, and so I go to the women's section with all the other old biddies, which is actually more depressing, because then I follow around 70 year old grandmas who could ALL kick my ass.
Anyways, I went on my aunt's favorite machine, the Road that goes Nowhere, or the Deathmill to Hell. I went on for a staggering 30 minutes, on a rising incline throughout, slowly turning a lovely shade of Pomegranate. Twice the employee who watches over the women's section to make sure none of us old biddies keel over, came by to ask how I was doing. If I was anywhere near capable of speech at the time, I would have told her that turning funny colours is sort of a family past-time when it comes to exercising, My aunt turning a pretty Poinsettia, my day almost a rusty beet. But I was trying to concentrate on panting evenly, so I just nodded and smiled while looking ahead, half-afraid that if I turned to look at her, my body would follow my head, as I was no longer able to move my body parts separately, and that could be Catastrophic to me. I'm clumsy enough as it is.

My deathmill faced a window at least, so I could imagine I was running on real ground, impervious to the biting cold, rain, and uber-slippery sidewalk. Of course, since I was staring at the crappy day instead of the mirrors on my backside, I didn't notice the little booger that was peeking out at every exhale like a ghostly jack-in-the-box waayyy too late for halloween. Thank goodness when the trainer came around the third time to see how my self-inflicted Cardiac Arrest was coming along, she got distracted by my peek-a-boo booger, and instead of telling my to get off before I fall off, she made nervous eyes at my nose, and made wiping motions. My intuitive self thought she looked about to sneeze, so I politely averted my eyes until she passed me a kleenex. I decided that it was about time to do something else, so I wandered around until I noticed the backwards ab machine that looks like this:

See the ones where his bum is in the air? That's what I decided to do. One set of 10. by the fifth time up I had to fart something fierce, and I thought I could get away with it if I let it out slowly the next time up. But while I was upside down formulating my plan of action, I was oblivious to the fact that the trainer had let two contractor guys in to look at a ceiling crack directly above my bum.

Needless to say the workout was over pretty much instantly. Though, all in all, it was one of my better workouts....

Jumpin' Jiminy!!!

We got a jolly Jumper for the youngest, since he wants to do nothing but stand, and he's a heavy bugger, so to save our arms, we got him one.

The first thing we did before buying it though, was to look up on the loverly internets what we would be getting ourselves into. And lo and behold, the Horror stories that have been tucked in the static-y folds of the internets... no sooner had we typed in, 'Is a Jolly Jumper Safe for my 4 month old?', than we were barraged with vengeful, worried, and misinformed mothers spewing forth tragic things that had happened to youngsters, or cautionary tales of what happened to a friend of a friend of a friend's kid. heads getting caught in the chain, the thing collapsing on the child, bowlegs and whiplash,tippy-toe walking and loss of balance in the stabilizer muscles, horribly bent and deformed spines as a product of bouncing like a maniac, etc. One woman stated that the jumper permanently damages the thoracic curve of the spine, showing her sources, and when we clicked on it, it came up as a Dr. Sears website(Don't know who that is, but assuming it's the Dr. Oz of the internets), and the website basically stated there was no proven risk of spine damage on the jumper, as long as a time limit was enforced. And common sense tells us that jumping is a stabilizing exercise, so this toy is pretty much Not a toy, but a baby exercise machine. After all, do adults and kids not have trampolines? Bungee cords? same dif. There was also one really good answer to the question on yahoo answers, basically saying, it's your kid, do what you think is right. Get your info from the source, that way you know it's true.  So we went to the source, and the Jolly Jumper website has multitudes of links on safety, it states all the safety measures you can take, and gives thorough instructions on how to put baby in a jolly jumper. they've also been making this product for about 60 years, so they must know what thy're doing by now. So we got him one. And as soon as we had attached him to the spring cord, he went NUTS.  Then he proceeded to crap himself so spectacularly, while jumping, that the force exerted by his spring caused his poo to jump itself. All the way up to his neck.  So after a thorough bathing, he went back in, and we took this.

p.s. whilst looking for a picture of the jolly jumper, I came across a picture of the only man I ever crushed on in daytime children's TV. Other moms might have their favorite Wiggle or some dirty fetish with one of those rainbow-coloured Doodlebops, but I was always, and will remain, a Huge fan of - Sportacus- *sigh*.

He had  arms you could eat, and a-maz-ing flexibility... drool. Even his name sounded like something out of a cheesy romance novel. For a while I wanted to be stephanie. *more dramatic sigh* Confused?    Here.        See for yourself. That is all.

Turkey day's A-Comin!

Every Year, since my oldest was in diapers, I've done a wandering Thanksgiving.

And yes, I live in Canada, so we do thanksgiving now, not right next to Christmas. That would be too much turkey all at once.
Anyways.
So Wandering Thanksgiving. I basically call everyone I know up, and let them know that I will have a huge meal waiting at my house, and that if they have no where else to go, or if they don't want to go where else, they can join me. Sometimes I don't get a big turn out, in fact once I had two people, and we each came away with about a weeks worth of food. Once I ran out, which was nice, and we ended up having to bake up a couple of frozen pizzas.
I also used to do this for Christmas, since at the time I was too poor to make it out to my folk's places, but since last year, the hubby and I kinda like it better just to hide in our hole until Santa Claus goes away.  but I like doing this.
Somewhere deep in the heart of me is a little old scandanavian grandma who just wants to stuff people until they explode, and besides, nothing rips the holiday spirit out like formal gathering. I prefer absolutely casual. As long as you wear pants.

So this year, I've got an extensive menu, as follows:
Turkey-18lbs
Ham-5lbs
Mashed Potato
Twice-baked Yams
Veggie Platter
Stuffed Mushrooms
Cream Cheese Roll-ups
Cranberry Sauce
Gravy
Green Bean Casserole
Pumpkin pie
Apple Pie

...so far.

And the head count as of last night? 6, including my family, but discluding my youngest, who can't eat yet...

hopefully a few more show up...

Mr. Burns's Revenge of the Poo..

my two month old has it out for me.

I don't know why, but I seem to be the only receiver of the "oh no, Cover it, Cover It! awww...." poops. I swear, he does it on purpose.

So I'm changing the diaper, thinking that the coast is clear, when he gives a massive grunt and a smile and this crazed almost religious glow comes into his eyes, and somewhere deep in the pit of your stomach you swear you can hear a deep and ominous voice crying VENGEANCE!!! and whoosh! boy can that kid project. and you know if it's comin from the back end, the front will surely follow. So this kid lays there all happy with his shit-eating grin on his face (sometimes literally) and pee all over himself, and poo all over mommy and the trail from him to me shining like the path to salvation...

I swear I've done this before. I've been a parent once already! Don't I know what I'm doing? I don't know if I was just more aware when my first one was in diapers, or if my kid really does have a price on my head. He probably consorts with his dad on the next move to crush my sanity and self-esteem.

Once, after a vigorous sneeze from him mid-change, and a shower and redress from me later (poo was everywhere.) I passed diapering and holding duties off to dad so I could escape from his clutches to grab something from the grocery store. While waiting in line to purchase my nessecities, I noticed a smell not unlike poo-cheese... I thought maybe myself or someone around me had bad breath, but I couldn't very well ask everyone to close their mouths while I weeded out the cause of the smell. It was only when I stepped up to the register and the cashier there pointed and then gave me a kleenex, did I realize that  in the midst of changing over from the poo laden clothes into cleaner ones, that somehow I must have dragged part of my stylish-yet-affordable t-shirt through the gobby mess in the laundry basket.

So My bright Blue T-shirt ( I don't know why I even think I can get away with colour. Black, girl, Black is the new whatever's going to get shit on..) had this Bright Greeny-Yellow mess leading from mid-back to upper rib-cage. And it was fresh. I can't get away from it. Back at home my son is probably losing his breath from newly formed maniacal laughter, while my poor naive husband is getting out the camera to capture baby's first laugh.

'Aww, cute', husband will say.

And in what I can only describe in my vivid imagination to be the voice of Mr. Burns, Baby's first word will be, 'Excellent'.

I have one of those pretty water features everyone raves about. Apparently.

My child's been singing 'I've got a moldy basement", to the tune of I've Got a Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which is funny cuz he's never seen the original movie with Gene Hackman, and he's only heard the South park and Family Guy Versions of the song.
And yes, our basement is moldy, we've had so much rain here that our ground is fully saturated and it just kinda pours through. We had a plumbing guy who came in when we first moved into the place, and he replaced the taps in our tub and tightened up the connection to the tap in the backyard because that's what the landlord said needed fixing. (I found a lot more stuff over the year, btw) So this spring, when the snow had thawed and the grass was green again, my son found the irresistible urge to play with his water guns, and tried to fill them with the tap in the backyard. (the first time we've used that tap since the guy came and "fixed" them) So he comes in the house, all happy and smiley and said,' hey mom, when you turn on the water in the backyard, it makes a waterfall!'
and I was all, whaaat?.....
So I go check, and sure enough, when the tap is turned on, the water drips down under the siding from one edge of our wall to the other, giving it a waterfall effect. And where does this water go? The Basement.  So the tap is not allowed to be used right now until the landlord gets it fixed properly.
And from the two of these things combined have left my basement wet and musty smelling, little white moldy patches sprouting up from cracks in the cement (at least the basement was mostly unfinished, if that'd been carpet, it would have really sucked) and The only three cardboard boxes in our plastic mounds of  storage, just happen to contain all the baby books and pictures. Which are now all grey and bubbly and before the time of digital so there's no backup shots and we just have to salvage what we can.
And since no one goes to that side of the basement, no one realized what had happened until a couple of weeks ago. so that sucks.

ps. oh and the bathroom taps gave on us a couple weeks ago, so until the plumber came last week to fix (different plumber this time, really yummy to look at too, you could tell he was fresh out of an apprenticeship and still full of hopes and dreams, not like those old experienced plumbers who are now wishing they'd chosen a different vocation, because at some point digging around in other people's Shit just isn't fun anymore) So for a coupla weeks we had to use a pair of pipe wrenches to turn the tiny little knob that's hidden inside the tap just so we could have a shower.


pps. what my son neglected to tell me until after I found the sopping mess that was my memories for when I get Alzheimer's, was the amount of time the water was on in the backyard that day. thinking a couple of minutes? try almost two hours, because my son thought it was pretty and didn't want to turn it off. heh heh...