Month: March 2010

Because baby M naps in Sym’s room, separately from the other kids, at lunchtime I asked Sym to go pick out the toys and things she wanted to bring out to the living room for the afternoon. Today she chose a pillow from her bed, a My Little Pony book, and three toys: the tadpole mascot pictured above, a different tadpole mascot that has legs (both from the Aranzi Aronzo Cute Book, although I altered the legged tadpole pattern slightly), and her favorite stuffed puppy from when she was a baby.

It’s very hard to get a picture of her not moving and/or making a weird face, so I gave up and gave her this rainbow-ribbon-stick thing. Her grandma gave us six of them and so far they have proved very useful for entertaining little kids, playing with the cat and also just being rainbows.

Just for Symphony though, I’m still working. Right now all the daycare kids are napping so she and I watched The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning and then I helped her build a hedge maze on Farmville. And YES, I said ALL the daycare kids are napping, even M, the new baby who started last week and cried all day every day. Her mom spent the whole weekend working on getting M to nap by herself and I don’t know what she did or how she did it, but it WORKED. Amazing! She definitely deserves a Mom Medal!

You can also kind of see in that picture that I’m wearing earrings (which I usually don’t). I just got these in the mail today from my mom as a belated birthday gift. She got them in Guadalajara and forgot to give them to me in person when she visited the other week. I think they are amethyst, which would make sense since it’s my birthstone.

We had a pretty fun weekend around here. On Saturday morning it was really sunny so we went to the park to play badminton until it got too windy. After lunch we went shopping for some shorts for Sym and myself since we’ve both outgrown all of last summer’s and we need them to wear in Hawaii in A WEEK AND A HALF. Later Sym went to her dad’s and Taylor and I read (me) and napped (him). Once I was able to wake him up we went out for Mongolian BBQ and after, came home and watched Weird Science, a movie that is definitely not as awesome as it was when I was ten!

Love this sequined dress and enormous hair combination though.

On Sunday we had a few more errands to run but I got totally distracted in Winners looking at RAINBOW KNIVES. “Rainbow” is the theme in our kitchen and most of our knives were super old, cheap and not particularly sharp so I ended up replacing them all (except for two inexplicable Henkel knives Taylor had).

(also pictured, Sharky the Shark Knife, which I got at Target last year)

I also got these salad hands, which make me feel like a Muppet Babies version of Wolverine.

thank you card from Secret Leaves Paperworks

I just want to give a big Thank You! from Symphony and myself to
Tanya
Anne
Lindsay
Karra
Sinead
and
Kaitlin
… who bought fawn and unicorn prints this week.
You guys are the best!!!

It’s really been a while since I made one of these posts! I was so busy with painting pictures and ugh work that I’ve been slacking on reading, which is no good, since I’m currently behind last year’s pace. Last year I read 87 books so if I want to reach 104 I need to pick it up!

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter 14/104, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom 15/104, The Basic Eight 16/104

Last year my two favorite new books were both short story collections, which is unusually since I don’t usually like short stories. One was The Secrets of a Fire King, by Kim Edwards, and it made me want to read me to read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I promptly forgot about it until a few weeks ago when one of my clients suggested I read it. I was apprehensive because I know how much she loved Twilight, but I bought it in spite of my reservations and I really liked it.

Taylor downloaded Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom since it’s free, and I basically read it just because it was there. I guess I liked it well enough but I don’t think it’s going to be a rereader for me, unlike…

… The Basic Eight is one of my favorite books of all time, I’ve read it probably dozens of times and I never get sick of it. Originally I borrowed-slash-stole it from my mom, but she eventually took it back and I had to go buy my own copy. I took a break from my kindle to read it (mostly in the bath). It’s funny and weird and horrifying and tragic. Have you read this book? Why or why not? Would you read it now that I’ve recommended it? Why or why not? WHY OR WHY NOT?

taniewanie = me, simian = my husband

We did this independently of one another.

I fell asleep with wet, unbrushed hair and now it looks crazy, but I had to take out all the recycling this morning so I didn’t have time to fix it before work. The childcare is technically open now, but luckily I don’t have any clients who show up before 8:05.

As you can see (or maybe you can’t if you’ve never seen my fine Photobooth photography before) but I just moved my computer out into the library. Before it was in the bedroom, but there was no room for a desk in there so I had the computer on the dresser and I had to sit on the end of the bed to use it. It was super uncomfortable and annoying, and I was sick of living with crippling internet-related back pain. I just made the move yesterday and my back is already feeling better. I guess it’s just a new start for a new month!

This is my new, current set up:

The desk is Symphony’s old one, I just had to scrape the layers of tape and stickers off the underside and magic eraser the markers off the rest and it’s basically good as new. The chair is from my dining room, but since the library and dining room are actually the same room it’s easy enough to move it back and forth. I can’t fit this chair at the dining table when I have the babies in high chairs at it anyway.

The library is totally unfinished and undecorated so it doesn’t really look that great in here right now- the little table with my printer on it is inside an unfinished bookshelf that I’m in the middle of building- but maybe if I’m out here more during non-work and break time to use the computer I’ll be more inclined to decorate in here!

Taylor put the pictures he took on Sunday afternoon up on his flickr so I want to share them with everyone.

Claire & I liveblogging the game. As you can see I’m 2 beers in (I was drinking cans of Stella) so this must have been the first period. I killed the battery on that netbook and had to run and get Taylor’s Macbook instead.

The sea of face paint, flags, jerseys and spontaneous high fives in astounding.

You can see the rest here.

Bonus picture: My real, highly defined face, no makeup, after a six-pack and three hours of screaming my head off.

Please visit my etsy to get your very own fawn or unicorn print.

I have two new kids starting at the child care this week: a 3 1/2-year-old boy, and a 1-year-old baby. Sooooo basically my entire day has been a combination of “Why this? Why that? Why the other thing? Why this again?? Why??? WHYYYYY??????” and this:

Now this is all normal; preschoolers want to know “why?” about everything and babies… well, babies cry, especially when I am not their mom! I knew today would be a challenge and I accept it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I’m really looking forward to five o’clock today.

Yesterday, though, was AWESOME. Taylor and I watched the men’s hockey gold medal game at home and then met up with Rich and Jenn and their friends Shelley and Joel to go down to Robson St and join the celebration, because TEAM CANADA WON GOLD. It was amazing, the whole city was at a standstill and you could hear the cheering of the crowd all the way at our house. My hands are sore from high-fiving so many people and my throat is sore from screaming my head off and singing O Canada at the top of my voice half a dozen times. Taylor took a bunch of pictures of the crowd so maybe I’ll get to share some when he wakes up, although I don’t know when that will be. He stayed up until almost seven last night (normally on Sundays he goes to bed around three) and then he was stuck at work this morning until almost noon. Ouch!