Year: 2014

this tree is snowing petals all over the yard today




I had to trim her bangs myself, good thing her hair is always wild or you might be able to see if they’re crooked




cheers!

Long weekend starts now.

Last week Taylor bought himself some new clothing, including a gross shirt that looked like the uniform of the workers for some dystopic future totalitarian regime. After some gentle encouragement from me (“I JUST DON’T LIKE IT! TAKE IT BACK!”), he exchanged it for these AWESOME space shoes for Gwen.

I was dubious about the laces, and the first time I put the shoes on her she immediately untied them. I tried double-knotting them but it was impractical- when I tried untying them she squirmed so much they ended up in a horrible tangled knot that was almost impossible to undo. I knew if the shoes were such a hassle all the time she’d never wear them, so to solve the problem I replaced the laces with elastic to make them into super easy slip-ons. Here’s how:

supplies & equipment:

• 1 pair of lace-up shoes with laces removed
• 1/4″ braided elastic in the colour of your choice
• thread to match the elastic
• needle
• scissors

click image for full size

1. With the shoe facing you, thread the elastic through the bottom righthand eyelet, leaving only a short length (approximate 3/4″) within the shoe.

2. Line up this short length with the elastic on the outside of the shoe. Sew vertically through both layers of elastic. You’ll probably want to go over the seam a couple times to make sure it is secure. Knot the thread & trim excess thread and elastic.

3. Thread the elastic up the shoes in an alternating horizontal/vertical pattern, as pictured in the diagram:
-horizontal from bottom right to bottom left
-vertical from bottom left to center left
-horizontal from center left to center right
-vertical from center right to top right
-horizontal from top right to top left
For shoes with more eyelets simply continue the alternating horizontal/vertical lacing until you reach the top of the shoe. You want the horizontal lacings to be on the outside and the vertical laces to be on the inside. Pull the elastic through the eyelets tight enough that it lays flat and holds the two sides of the shoe in place, but not so tight that it is stretched out and causes the two sides to pull together or overlap.

4. When you reach the top of the shoe, line up the two thicknesses of elastic (on the inside & outside of the shoe, as in step two) and sew vertically up & down through both layers of elastic. Knot the thread & trim excess thread and elastic.

Repeat steps 1-4 for the second shoe.

Gwen wore these out for walks & to play on Sunday and they were a huge success- easy to get on and off, but stayed on her feet while we were out and she had zero interest in playing with the elastic. When they had the laces she just sat and pulled at them, so this made a big difference. You can try out different lacing techniques with the elastic to get different looks; I like this simple, clean style with the colourful galaxy-print shoes. This technique is also suitable for shoes with both even and odd numbers of eyelets. I used black elastic since the shoes came with black laces but you could use any colour to match, contrast or compliment your little one’s shoes.

this was the first time she willingly held my hand while we were out walking, normally she wants to walk independently OR be carried


Taylor also got some hand-holding










LOOK AT MY HAIR O____O

Gwen’s current faves, How to Catch a Star & Sesame Street phone

my garbage garden; the morning glories are staging a comeback so I REALLY need to do some weeding like, now

baby eats: beans, cheese, tomatoes & rice cakes



this clematis is a testament to the efficacy of my “set it & forget it” gardening style




Sym said my vintage typewriter made me a creep like Ezra on Pretty Little Liars so I typed up some notes & slid them under her door. she was not impressed.

How was your Mother’s Day? Mine was great JUST GREAT let me tell you. Gwen spiked a fever on Friday night and was sick all weekend with snot and sneezes. I’m sure Taylor would have let me sleep in on Sunday but Ms Babyface had other ideas, and getting all the crusted boogers off her face/out of her hair, taking her temperature and giving her Advil are so much easier as two-person operations. Happily it seemed to be a short-lived sickness and by Sunday evening the fever & sneezes were gone, and now only the boogers remain. This is especially good for Taylor since he is sick now as well.

In spite of the gross, cranky baby I had a pretty good weekend. Sym got me flowers and made me a card, actually two cards as Taylor hired her to make one from him & Gwen as well. On Sunday morning Taylor made brunch for everyone: scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, strawberry pancakes and crescent rolls. Afterwards we took Gwen for a walk and in the afternoon I forced Taylor and Sym to help me move some furniture around the house. I still haven’t finished building the new dressers we bought Easter weekend, how sad is that?

we’ve now reached the time of year when all we wanna eat is watermelon // Gwen’s office // lil fern, struggling to be free // indestructible Claire, it’s so weird that Ophie, who was in great health until recently passed away first, while this diabetic old dingbat keeps on keepin’ on // what are they looking at? // I maxed out my unicorns in Disco Zoo // green // fashion // I had to put the tray back on her highchair because she started pushing away from the table during meals

I hate confrontation. Haaaaaaate it. When I get into facebook or twitter arguments (actually have I ever been in a twitter fight? I don’t think so. My twitter is public; my facebook is locked, maybe that’s why, haha) I get super stressed out and dread logging back in. Usually I end up just blocking people who anger me, block everyone, that’s my motto. If I disagree with a blog post I usually just quit reading rather than comment with a dissenting opinion because my actual opinion is “What is the point? They aren’t going to change their mind, and they’ll probably edit the post so I look like a lunatic” (re: the pregnancy arms debacle).

I think part of the reason I hate confrontation is that I’m not great at express thoughts with word forms (ha ha). In person during a confrontation I get so frustrated and angry that I start crying, which doesn’t help my cause. On the internet I find myself coming across as inarticulate and foolish and I usually just end up capslock yelling a sarcastic joke about the topic, like the time I posted the George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished!” picture with a link to an article about how the anti-vax movement was found to be the cause of the infant whooping cough deaths in California last year. I was like “GOOD JOB, ANTI-VAXXERS, YOU DID IT, YOU KILLED THOSE BABIES.” Truly, one of my finer moments.

I even get anxious about confrontational things when I don’t really think anyone who is invested in it will even see it. Yesterday I pent my entire break (ie naptime) drafting a blog post about my thoughts on the blatant & disgusting commercialization attempts by some online retailers in the #redballoonsforryan hashtag (for the record, I’m against using the tragic death of a child to drive traffic and sales BUT HEY THAT’S JUST ME) and literally one second after I hit publish I panicked and deleted it, just in case someone who I was calling out somehow managed to find this nobody blog and yell at me.

I have some theories why & because of who (whom?) I’m like this but I don’t want to get into it in case those people yell at me too, haha. But IRONICALLY I wrote this while simultaneously arguing on facebook about something idiotic and I haven’t blocked anyone yet so maybe the tide is turning?

In related-to-online-fights news, yesterday I FINALLY received the balance of my refund from notorious etsy grifters Indie Nook. If you recall they refunded me for the one item they never sent and promised to refund the rest once I sent back the incorrect items I had received. I did, and it had been a couple of weeks so two days ago I sent them an email saying “You can go ahead and refund me the $51 for the rest of my cancelled order now, as you’ve received the items I returned. Order #128418099, good grief.” In a shocking twist that will surprise no one, they were completely disorganized and stupid about it! First they said they DID refund me. I pointed out that they had refunded me only $23 and still owned me $51. In response I got this weird mess:

“We refunded you for $73.10 and $23.00 was that not for your total. I cannot see your order anymore because it was cancelled.”

WHAT. WHAT. WHAT DOES ANY OF THAT EVEN MEAN???????? We refunded you for $73.10 and $23.00 was that not for your total????? THIS MAKES NO SENSE, except their product listings also have garbled language, misused words and other errors so I guess it does. And for the record you CAN see your cancelled transactions on etsy- if you are the seller they are on your sold orders page, under the (plot twist!) “Cancelled” tab. Cancelled orders aren’t searchable though, and they probably have a ton since they seem to cancel orders at the drop of a hat (if you look at their reviews, any that aren’t accompanied by a product photo have been cancelled). Anyway, I responded to this nonsense message with my secret weapon: SCREENCAPS. Screencaps of their refund offer, screencaps of the partial refund I received on the 16th of April, screencaps of my original order and screencaps of my original payment. Unsurprisingly I received no response until last night when the $51 appeared in my paypal with no message.

I’m still blocked from their instagram (I wonder how many dissatisfied customers are) but it seems they’ve moved off of etsy to their own site, which means no more bad etsy reviews & even less accountability. Hopefully they’ve taken my SUPER AMAZING advice to heart and will no longer be wasting people’s time with shirts that never ship, but most of their items still say they take up to 4 weeks (or 4-6 weeks) to ship so probably not. I just hope that maybe by sharing the story of how I dealt with them I might be able to help other people who’ve been scammed by these ripoff artists who care more about being popular with cool bloggers than with providing adequate customer service.

My old cat Ophelia passed away yesterday. She was 16 years old and her mental health had been in decline for a few months. Yesterday her owner, Colter, was taking her to the vet and she died on the way there.

In mid-March I went to visit Ophie at Colter’s place, as he was worried she wouldn’t be around much longer, so I was able to say goodbye.

I adopted Ophelia from the SPCA in Coquitlam in August of 1998. My then-boyfriend and I went together to pick out a kitten, and after looking at them all we were stuck trying to decide between a silver-tabby Persian and this tiny little speck of black fur. I put my hand in the black kitten’s cage and she curled up against it, started purring and almost immediately fell asleep and my decision was made. This little black cat was mine.

Ophie lived with me mostly until 2006. I had to rehome her temporarily a few times but she always came back to me, which unfortunately wasn’t the best for her. She didn’t like being around kids or dogs or other cats so she spent all her time alone, hiding in Sym’s room. She was a very sweet and affectionate cat who loved being around people so I could tell she wasn’t happy. I also didn’t think boomeranging her from me to other people back to me was good, so I didn’t want to try and find her another home, but serendipitously, a new home found us.

A few years ago Ophie went to live with my hairstylist’s roommate Colter. He missed his old cat and wanted another, but not a kitten, an adult cat. As soon as I met him I knew he was the best owner for her, and I was right. With Colter Ophie thrived, she was so happy and that made me happy since I had been feeling guilty about rehoming her so many times. I’m so grateful that he was able to provide a wonderful, loving home for her to live out the last years of her life.

These pictures are from the summer of 2011, Colter was in the hospital so Ophie stayed with us for a couple of months. I remember the day Colter was discharged he called and asked me to meet him behind the hospital (it’s near my house) so he could take Ophie home with him straight away because he’d missed her.

Goodbye, Ophie.

Spring is here, for really real this time. The transition from winter to spring is so weird, baby clothes-wise. I never know what to dress Gwen in, like is she really okay with just a dress and a jean jacket or does she need tights? Is a sweater too much? Will she even keep a sweater on (the answer is no)? I think that with little kids a lot of people overkill it on the warm dressing, like I used to know a family who dressed their daughter in fleece-lined jeans over tights all the way through June! When they are a baby they need that extra layer but once they are toddlers/preschoolers it’s not necessary. Or maybe sometimes it is? These sunny but windy but maybe cloudy but warm but it might rain spring days are a challenge.

It’s time for a goal update, my last one was March 31st.

I’m going to stop updating on my quitting potato chips & putting my laundry away goals because I feel they are done. I’ve accomplished them. Instead I added a new goal: quitting drinking pop except for one can on Thursdays. It’s actually been a lot harder than say, quitting chips was. I think I started this a few days into April and while I didn’t buy any pop for myself I did drink some gingerale of Taylor’s and some Coke that was leftover from a sleepover Sym had. I think if it’s in the house, I’ll drink it. Terrible! This is definitely going to be a challenge.

I also did a crap job with my sunscreen goal. After a strong start it kind of petered out. I find it hard to break out of the mindset of “oh, I’m only going to be outside for 20/30/45 minutes, do I really need to put sunscreen on?” YES. YES YOU DO, especially if you’re going to be wearing Birkenstocks because you’ll get an even stupider tanline on your feet than usual. Also, because I was out of the habit of thinking about sunscreen I forgot to put any on when we went to the beach on Good Friday, AND I forgot to put any on Gwen! Not good. Do better, me.

As for my final goal (growing out my hair) it’s still going. I had it cleaned up at the neck (where it was starting to look mullet-y) last weekend but that’s all. It’s actually an honest-to-goodness bob now, and looks alright if I take the time to blowdry it (except I almost never do). I’m not in love with it though; anything above the shoulders is an annoying length on me. Grow faster! Do better, hair.

she’s really into little pom-poms and this jean jacket from Jenn // skinned knees are easily fixed by hugs from daddy // pizza also helps // Sally Hansen in Eel Skin // last summer Gwen had these polka dot chambray romperalls that I LOVED; I dressed her in them constantly and was so sad when she outgrew them. this year they have a nearly identical pair in an anchor print and I can already tell we’re going to get a lot of use out of them

I think I might have mentioned before that Gwen is tall. She’s just SO TALL, idek. I measured her the other day and she’s closer to the average height for a 22-month-old, which I think is pretty impressive for someone who isn’t quite 18 months yet.

One thing I’ve noticed about this is I sometimes have trouble finding jeans that fit her well. In leggings and sweatpants a 2T size fits her fine, but the jeans are almost always too tight. Most toddler jeans don’t fit her still-chubby baby body, but baby jeans are usually too short. She only has one pair of jeans right now (from The Gap) and so she hardly wears them. When I do dress her in them she is baffled and stares at her legs like “What the heck???”

It’s actually been a pretty rough couple of days in baby land. On Friday she looked super-cute playing in the backyard in her little jean shorts, but after falling down on the flagstone path a few times her exposed knees were good and skinned. She also ended up with a fat lip. That was nothing tho, compared to last night when Gwen and I both fell down and got hurt. I can barely even explain what happened, other than it was an accident and it was my fault. I can already tell this is something I’ll feel bad about for the rest of my life. We were a worried she might have a serious injury so Taylor and I spent a fun evening in the emergency room with her. Happily, outside of some superficial scrapes, a couple of bruises and a re-fattening of her previous fat lip she’s fine. I’m also scraped and bruised, but mostly just INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY guilty.

Our trip to the beach on Good Friday…








“I hate seashells and I hate the beach!”

Wow what a terrible blogger I am! In my defence, I PLANNED on posting days ago but I got Taylor to take a bunch of pictures for me and he hasn’t uploaded them yet. IT’S BEEN A WEEK, WTH MAN.

Over the long weekend I…

Took the baby to the beach, which she HATED almost as much as the playground we took her too the other weekend. BABIES, idek.

Had a totally chill Easter- the girls got baskets with a little candy, new outfits and stuffed lambs. I made nutella stuffed french toast with berries, bacon, and fried potatoes for brunch. I also drank most of a bottle of champagne’s worth of mimosas, oops.

Went to Ikea on Monday, which was a sort of holiday and therefore a TOTAL NIGHTMARE omg. We even got there super early and it was still insane, especially in the kids’ section of the showroom. TOTAL CHAOS. We managed to get everything we needed and even though we went a little off list we also came in under budget. The entertainment stand we chose turned out to be $100 less than the price on the website, and I decided that instead of buying a new lil drawer unit for Sym’s new desk/vanity I’d just give her mine (even with childlocks it’s not safe from a certain Ms Baby Face so my new plan is to make space in one of the closets for all my craft stuff) so that saved us an additional $70.

Of course, I’m an idiot so after we got home I helped Sym pack up a bunch of her toys and moved some furniture & boxes in her room to get ready to make the new desk when everything was delivered on Tuesday. I managed to hurt by back and my wrist, which sucked, I had to wear a wrist brace all day Tuesday which was a huge pain because I need to wash my hands about fifty times a day.

By Wednesday I was feeling better so I decided that during nap time I’d start building the new entertainment stand. I was like “it’ll be so easy, it’s just like four pieces!” AHAHHAHAHAHA no. It was literally the worst Ikea building experience I’ve ever had, and I have built A LOT of Ikea. In the end I was screwing pieces together as quickly as possible because I could hear Gwen starting to wake up and there were still bits of metal strewn everywhere!

Anyway it is pretty much done and ready for Taylor to move everything onto it (which he refuses to do until the weekend, ugh Taylor whyyyyyyyyy). Sym’s desk is also built and ready to me to set up her computer and mirror and everything. Next I’m going to start building the dressers, which is going to be the tedious worst.

OH AND since I’ve been feeling so sick and crummy recently (seriously, I can BARELY function most days) I’ve been able to make a serious commitment to marathoning Keeping Up With the Kardashians/Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami and watched six seasons in a week. NOT TOO SHABBY, SUCH AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, WHERE’S MY PRIZE, etc etc. Anyway there are no more episodes on Netflix so now I’m at a loss for what to waste my time on.

Well, after that last post I feel compelled to post something a little less… ranty. Tragically I took literally zero pics all week so it’s just going to be more words SORRY I’M NOT SORRY.

I’m very excited for this four day weekend I have coming up. Symphony spends Easter with us every year (Thanksgiving she spends with her dad and we alternate Christmas and NYE), and in spite of my not having the gifts I ordered for the girls seven frigging week ago (OK I’M DONE NOW) and the fact it’s supposed to rain all weekend, I think it will be very fun. Because of the dogs we can’t actually have an Easter egg hunt or have candy hidden around the house, but the girls will get baskets. I think Gwen might even get a little candy this year! I don’t know yet if I’m going to be making Easter dinner; if Taylor works on Monday he’ll have to go to bed on Sunday afternoon. He MIGHT take it off, but who knows. I think I’ll focus all my energy on an Easter brunch instead.

One thing we ARE doing is going to Ikea to get NEW DRESSERS for the bedroom and I am super excited about it. I recently read an article, or rather, a slideshow because it was on Refinery29 and they deal exclusively in slideshows, about how to tell if you are a grown up based on your interior design or something. I actually met most of their arbitrary adult criteria, I mean I am a 37-year-old mother of two, but the slide on which I failed most spectacularly was MALMS. Sorry Malm haters of the world, but a small-ish, awkwardly shaped bedroom that contains a queen-sized bed, has a tiny closet, and is shared by two people means MALMS, MALMS EVERYWHERE. I have a whole wall of Malms, but the nine full-sized drawers in 2 half-sized drawer in my Malm wall AREN’T ENOUGH DRAWERS so I’m buying BIGGER Malms with MORE DRAWERS.

Also on the list are the pieces to make a long desk-slash-vanity for Sym’s room, a new entertainment stand, and FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND CHILDLOCKS FOR DRAWERS & CUPBOARDS. Gwen is like a whirlwind of destruction, we have to put locks on EVERYTHING. Someone recently suggested I “tell her no” where she starts tearing it up and like wow, what a brilliant idea, why hadn’t I ever thought of that? The thing is, I do tell her no, I redirect her, I do everything you do to stop a toddler from tearing everything up and then the second I turn my back to make dinner or answer the door or just go to the bathroom, IT’S WHIRLWINDING TIME. She’s tall, she’s strong, she’s sneaky and she’s into everything. I actually have a furniture wall barring her from the couch/tv part of the living room right now because the other day she pulled the center speaker far forward enough that she could turn it around and tear the wires out of the back of it. And last week she and her baby friends turned the receiver on and off so many times they managed to reset it to factory settings and Taylor had to reprogram the whole thing, and he changed how the Chromecast is set up and NOW I CAN’T TROLLCAST HIM ANYMORE. Ugh, thanks a lot baby. Anyway that’s why we’re getting a new entertainment center, we need one with doors all the way across and that I can force Taylor to put EVERY SINGLE MEDIA DEVICE INSIDE IT I MEAN SERIOUSLY.

I promised Sym that we would redecorate her room this year, and the new desk/vanity is just part of it. She wants to paint the walls white (currently they are green) and to accommodate the new, larger desk I’m cruelly forcing her to pack away all her Playmobils. She just has SO MUCH, and she really doesn’t play with it anymore so the hospital-turned-school and giant Victorian mansion are messy and dusty and end up with garbage and other, non-Playmobil toys piled on them.

Twelve is just such a weird and difficult age, like she’s still a kid and into toys, but she’s also on the cusp of becoming a teen and leaving all that behind. My hairstylist told me that when she was Sym’s age she just came home one day and her mom had given away all her Barbies, and she’s STILL mad about it. I don’t want to do anything like that, and anyway I want to save all her toys for Gwen, so my plan is to get some storage bins that will fit under her bed and keep the Playmobils in there, as well as other toys like My Little Ponies and Littlest Pet Shops.

What else? Well, I still have Graves’ disease, and it’s still a bummer. I had been feeling alright for months but in the past few weeks my insomnia has come back with a vengeance, and I’m so tired all the time now! Like not just lack-of-sleep tired, but also physically exhausted. It makes doing everything so hard, and I’ve really been slacking on stuff like housework and making dinners that don’t suck because I just caaaaaaan’t. It’s funny, Taylor told me the other day that the same way I fantasize about coming into a bunch of money and being able to pay off all his debts for him, he fantasizes about being able to cure all my ills. Through stuff like magic and voodoo though, since he’s not a doctor and anyway there isn’t really a CURE cure for Graves’ (outside of like… scorched earth-type surgeries or radioactive treatments).

ANOTHER THING about being sick which sucks is I recently discovered I’m not supposed to have grapefruit! Apparently it interferes with the absorption of Synthroid, which is a problem because my endo has me on a suppress-and-replace regimen, where I take an anti-thyroid medication to stop my out-of-control gland from spewing out hormones, and a synthetic hormone (Synthroid) to make up for what my thyroid isn’t producing. Apparently doing it this way is easier and keeps my hormone levels on an even keel, so I don’t need to adjust my doses all the time. Fine, whatever, but as soon as I read that I couldn’t have them ALL I WANTED WAS GRAPEFRUITS. I actually had a 5-pound bag of them in the fridge 🙁 I juiced them all and then I DON’T EVEN CARE, I DRANK ALL THAT JUICE. Oops. Anyway it’s done now, so I guess I’ll just live in a grapefruit-less world.

Oh and to make up for two giant wall-of-text posts in a row here’s some pics of Gwen & Dougal I literally just took right now. You’re welcome.





That dog has the patience of a saint.