Mortimer's Mom

Finally, 2007 is over!

The last day of 2007 ended up summing up the entire year so well.... We spent 4 + hours at the ER with both kids.... Seems BB came down with a pretty bad case of conjunctivitis, so her eyes are pretty much glued shut by green goop. And we are not in the city, so no family doctor, no walk-in clinic. It had to be the ER, and it was long, boring, excruciating on the kids and frankly, on mom and dad too. She is miserable right now, wants to rub her eyes, can't open them properly, and somehow, we have to try to keep it from spreading to Dumpling. Isn't this the perfect ending for this sucky year? Just in case, let me remind you.....

January: Met Sprout! Best moment of the year by far. Quickly renamed her Beach Ball... you all know why! (And side note, they are both 34 lbs as of today. A little tidbit we found out while at the ER)

February: the month I spent not leaving my house. The month from HELL when BB tried everything to keep me away from her, the month I suddenly required both Iron and B12.

March: Things get back to normal, slowly. Dumpling turned 4 and I decided to cut off my hair.

April: The only non-exciting month of the entire year. Not one piece of drama or excitement.

May: I somehow bust my knee and Mortimer's Dad gets sick and spends his first stint in the hospital. The only bright spot in May is that we finally found a great babysitter, the amazing M, and not a minute too soon!

June: Mortimer's Dad spends a total of 27 days in and out of the hospital, on IVs and scares the sh*t out of everyone with a Super Bug that had specialists baffled. I take a beating from all the wife-ing and mothering. June ends on a high note, with Mortimer's Dad finally getting better and The Urbans flying up for StratFest 2007. We finally manage to have a little fun and have a fabulous time!

July: After the Urban's departure, I have my knee surgery. Oh and Mortimer manages to attempt doggy-suicide TWICE in one month, first by eating an obscene amount of raisins and then by eating all of the other dog's arthritis meds, on the very day he came home from having his stomach pumped! (which happened to be the day I got my knee surgery....)

August: BB turns 2 and we take a lovely mini-vacation with the kids on our way to Toronto for work.

September: Dumpling starts pre-K, BB starts nursery school and the Jewish holidays create an endless steam of 5 day-weekends that make me want to pull my hair out!

October, November and December were much more uneventful. I did meet Gail Simmons of Top Chef and we went to Disney for Halloween. But just to make sure we remembered 2007, we ended it with the aforementioned ER visit.

I don't want to leave you on a whiny note, so here is another review of the year, this time, in pictures. See you next year!

photoblog: fun in the snow

I was going to make a photo album, but I'm too tired. So instead, you'll get the raggedy layout of typepad photos. I promise you my annual year-in-review photo album by the weekend, but here is the last 3 days, in pictures.

In the city, I am not a playdate mommy. I don't like them, don't enjoy most of the moms, don't get the point of the playdates. But in the country, with nothing much to do, playdates are turning out to be fabulous. They are really more visits than playdates, but you get the drift.

Yesterday morning, we met up at the ski hill with Dumpling's best boy-buddy from school I tried to get a good picture of them together, but have you ever tried to get to silly 4 and 3/4 year olds to take a not silly picture? Dumpling is skiing all by herself and goes on the chairlift. BB is just starting to be able to push the back of her skis open, following her first lesson with the bunny.

Then last night, friends of ours from Toronto came to spend the night with their own 2 year old. We had a lovely Sabbath dinner, where Dumpling regaled us with all the proper Brachas, and then, we finished it off with our traditional country house dessert, Oooey-Gooey. (wonton wrappers, PB, banana, chocolate chips, deep fried). I'd say BB enjoyed it!

  This morning, we headed back to the hill, where BB and her little friend R had a ball with the sled at the bottom of the ski hill.  When you are 2 and the big girl and the adults want to ski, the sled is just as much fun! Especially when BB decided she didn't need a grown up and would just pull R herself! They were just a little bit tired by the end!

After a nice long afternoon nap, it was time for yet another playdate! My friend Susan from Our Journey to Mei Mei came over to introduce us to their new arrival. We had a lovely dinner with great conversation. It's amazing our a plain pasta dinner can be so great after a day in the fresh air. Their oldest daughter is from the same orphanage as Dumpling and is one year older. It took her a few minutes to warm up, but by the end of the evening, they were getting along like a house on fire! I have some amazing pictures of the two big girls together, but it doesn't feel right to post them without asking Susan first, so you'll have to wait and see.

In the mean time, I'll leave you with 2 more. They are really meant for Auntie K. in Vancouver. Thanks for the dress-up boxes Auntie K! they are being put to good use! I call the first one Arabian Nights and the second one Channeling the Bratz Dolls!

She's four and three-quarters!!!! What on earth am I going to do when she's 14 and 3/4!!!!!!! The poses were all hers, BTW.

And then, there was CSI....

We are all tucked in, cozy and warm at the Kibbutz, and there is absolutely nothing to do after the kids go to bed. There is nothing on TV, I have watched everything I have downloaded, the local video store has crap to offer... I forgot to bring a book, and the local availability of anything in English is non-existant. Also, noone online is really updating much, so after 15 minutes of reading my peeps blogs, I am done. I could do some sort of crafting, but I'm not feeling very creative.....

So tonight, I vacuumed. The entire house. This is MAJOR people! I do not clean. Repairs, painting, DYI, cooking, no problem, I'm your gal. Cleaning, no way! But tonight, I became one with the bagless monster and boy, we had a lot of dog hair lying around!

And now that I got that out of my system for the next.... 3 years, I'm sitting here channel surfing and it seems that CSI NY and CSI Miami are both on tonight. I gave on on the regular CSI about 2 seasons ago, only saw a handlful of episodes of Miami, and never was able to get into NY.... but now, here I am, settled in for the night, with my glass of wine and a CSI marathon.

Oh, and I'm sending out my New Years Cards! So if you are wondering why I didn't send you one yet, as per last year's new tradition, I am sending my cards out during our break up north, and since they are in fact New Years cards, I am not breaking any etiquette rules!

Merry Snow Day

We have settled into the Kibbutz. The girls were spoiled rotten last night by their grandparents, and yes, by their non-christmas celebrating jewish parent.... Shame on me! But it does mean I got my new Rebel....

Mortimer's Mom stabs annoying customer with scissors over wrapping critique

The scene: Mortimer's Mom store, a week before Christmas. MM herself is behing the counter, wrapping purchases for the customers, so make the line-up move along faster.

Customer: How much is wrapping?

MM (points to the free gift wrapping sign and says) : It's free! Just chose your paper and we'll take care of it right away (points to selection of 8 wrapping papers prominently diplayed behind the counter)

Customer: That's all you have? I want Santas.

MM: I'm sorry, we pick modern festive designs that can be used for several occasions. We're happy to wrap your present in any of our paper, or a plain gift bag with tissue, or you can take it home and wrap it in your own paper.

Customer: But it's free, so I want you to do it, but I want Santas.

...... time passes. Line gets longer, MM tries to serve other customers, but this particular lady is sort of hogging the counter....

MM: So, have you made a choice?

Customer:  Fine. I'll take the red and gold.

MM proceeds to cut the paper to the perfect size, an art she has perfected over the last 6 years of wrapping presents at the store she owns....

Customer: that piece is much too small! You need a lot more paper than that!

MM: Actually, it should be fine, I put the box in the vertical direction. (proceeds to quietly turn the box, fold neatly and place the "seam" smack in the front of the present.

Customer: That's Wrong! You CAN'T put the seam in the front! Turn it around!

MM (taking a deep breath, plastering a smile on her face): You see, we make the seam part of the wrapping. We fold it over and make it part of the look. We put our sticker on top to hold it without tape and it makes the present look very sharp and *professional* (emphasis on professional, without sounding too snarky)

Customer: Well, I don't want your sticker! Take it off!

MM: I'm sorry. This is part of the FREE wrapping, we put our sticker on as advertising. You are welcomed to wrap it yourself at home, but if you take our FREE wrapping, we put our sticker on.

Customer attempts to rip the sticker off the gift, thereby ripping the paper.

MM doens't loose her cool, she repositions everything so the tear in 100% not visible and passes the gift to the cashier to ring it up.

Customer: That is the worst wrapping job I have ever seen! I'm going to call your boss to complain!

World's Most Amazing Manager slowly moves the scissors away from MM's hand, thereby saving Customer's life.........

Jaimie Lynn Spears pisses off Infertiles everywhere

Seriously? Jaimie Lynn Spears, 16, is knocked up. Are you kidding  me? Your sister had 2 kids in her early 20s and can't seem to manage taking care of them, yet somehow, the pill didn't seem like a good idea? Don't they have a patch now, so you don't have to remember everyday..... The best part of the story is that she met the Babby-daddy at Church! At Church! Where I am almost certain, they preached abstinence...... but frowned upon teaching birth control!!!!!

Oh, and gays can't marry, but Pamela Anderson just filed for her 3rd divorce...... This one lasting apparently less than 3 months..... Call me crazy, but I'd rather see two guys who've been together for 25 years walk down the aisle then let that crazy women do this again next year with some other idiot.

I think I need to go to the kitchen and fetch me one of them wine-juice-boxes.....

Mommy's juicebox

No good can come of this. Wine, conveniently packaged in 4 single person servings. And its not even as bad as you would think. I guess they expexct you to be civilized and use a glass, because it doesn't come with a straw!

Email on the go, sent by TELUS

Let it snow!

For the second time this month, we are getting pummeled by a winter snow storm. Before it's over, there should be 40 cm of snow on the ground, that's 16 inches to you people..... That's a lot of snow, even for the winter wonderland that is Canada!

Employees called in "not coming" today, too scared to drive in, or not to be able to make it home at the end of their shift. But the shoppers, they are not deterred! The second store is in a suburban, village-like setting, and the people, they are walking in! So Hubs and I are at work. Seriously, I don't know what we would do without the readily available grandparents to take the kiddos off our hands in such emergencies. Dumpling was already there, having requested a sleep over yesterday. So BB joined her in haste just before lunch and here we are, just like the old days, serving customers and wrapping! I can't even remember the last time we both worked at the same store at the same time!

Air Canada hates kids!

So I have been thinking about this since our Halloween trip to Florida, but I'm finally ready to put it out there....

Air Canada has a new stroller policy. you can read it here. But basically, the allow umbrella strollers up to the gate, all other strollers must be checked as baggage and count as part of you allowed 2 pieces per person. I for one don't have a problem with the latter part of the policy, I understand about weight limitations on planes and I have no problem, when a family of 4 with 4 fully paid tickets has to use 1 of their 8 allowed pieces for the stroller.

My beef is with the checked luggage. Not being able to bring the stroller to the gate.... Take for example a 7:30 am flight from Montreal to Orlando. That means you have to be at the airport by 6 am. With 2 woken-from-their-sleep kids. And no stroller. We had to drag Dumpling and BB through security and then down to our gate. We were denied cart-transportation because they felt our gate wasn't far enough. At 6 am, with a 2 and a 4 year old, even a hundred feet is far! At our gate, there were several other families, I mean, it's a flight to Disney! Not one of them had a stroller. Because if you are going to walk around Disney for a week, you aren't bringing a crappy umbrella stroller, you are bringing your "good" stroller. So everyone was left without a means of restraining their kids. BB was sleepy and probably would have been quite content to nap in her stroller... it wasn't to be.

When we got to Orlando, no stroller until we got to baggage claim. So now we have 2 travel-weary kids to schlep through the Orlando airport. On the way back, the Orlando gate was a disaster. There was one mother, with a grandmother, and 3 kiddos, a 3 year old and 1 year old twins. They were all over the place, tired, cranky, bickering. I know she wanted nothing more than to put them in the stroller and walk around, lull them to sleep, but they made her check both of her strollers, because her double-Joovy doesn't meet the requirements (and her single stroller didn't either, because they have a length limit, and hers was too long). (For the record, if we hadn't take the Bugaboo, we also would have taken the Joovy, which is our version of the umbrella stroller, but would not have been allowed).

I wrote to Air Canada to express how unrealistic their policy was and this is the response I got:

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new stroller policy

Discussion Thread
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Response (Marianne Rowland) - 12/13/2007 04:51 PM
Ms. XXXX,

Thank you for your email.  We were sorry to hear that you were surprised to learn of the recent changes to our policy on allowing strollers to the door of the aircraft.

Air Canada continually reviews its procedures and services to ensure that our product offer responds to customer demand while keeping pace with industry standards and economic realities.    We continue to offer a generous checked baggage allotment, however, in the current environment of enhanced security requirements, customers have been checking more baggage than ever before.  In order to continue offering everyday low fares against a backdrop of record high fuel costs, we found it necessary to make some changes.  Our goal is to always have baggage arrive on the same flight as the customer, and our priority is to ensure that we can effectively handle the high volume of baggage while meeting the needs of the vast majority of our passengers.

In recent years the design of baby carriages has been enhanced, resulting in much larger models on the market than were available in the past.  Our official policy has always been to allow umbrella-type strollers to go to the aircraft door in addition to the regular free checked baggage allowance, but airport practices were very relaxed in that regard and more bulky models have been allowed to go unchallenged for quite some time.  Umbrella-type strollers are relatively inexpensive and many parents prefer them when traveling, as they are much more lightweight and portable than the heavy-duty variety.

Ms. XXXX, customer feedback is extremely valuable to us and we appreciate you taking the time to share your impressions.  We do hope that you will come to understand our position and that, in time to come,you will offer us an opportunity to serve your family's travel needs.

Sincerely,
Marianne Rowland
Customer Relations

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Here is the thing that makes absolutely no sense. As per their policy, we could have brought 2 small umbrella strollers to the gate and gate-checked them, AND brought our Bugaboo and checked it as part of our allowed luggage. So in fact, the way to get around the policy is to bring MORE strollers. Which completely defeats the purpose of their policy.....

I've been googling this and lots of the responses from Air Canada include the recommendation to bring a sling to carry your child. While that might work for an infant, tell me, which one of you wants to carry BB on your hip, all 38 pounds of her, through the airport? Yeah, I didn't think so!

So we won't be flying Air Canada, and if you have kids, I recommend you find another airline, because although their policy page starts with "Air Canada Loves Kids!", I beg to differ.

Loving a Serial Killer

I actually started writing a post about nutty holiday shoppers, but then I thought, don't bite the hand.... so instead, I will tell you about me and Dexter... A few weeks ago, when the writers' strike started and the 2007-08 TV season became doomed, I asked for TV recommendations for shows I missed the first time around. A bunch of your recommended Gilmour Girls, which I am still uncertain I can get into (though I guess if I want to start with season 7, there is a DVD set available in Herbsylvania....)

Someone did recommend Dexter, and I was able to grab the entire first season already formatted for my ipod.... don't ask me how! I watched the first episode, and I was really unsure... I mean, the guy is a serial killer who kills other bad people, under the guise of ridding the world of evil. But he's evil! Anyhow, I had a really hard time with the first episode, because I kept confusing him for the gay undertaker from 6 feet under. And also, while I can wrap my head around the concept of a hooker with a heart of gold, a killer who gets rid of other killers, that one was a tad harder to enjoy.

But a combination of my insomnia and a lack of other stuff to watch** lead me to attempt episodes 2 and 3, and now... HOOKED! Dexter, he is sooooooo weird, and empty inside, and mechanical, but trying to pass as real... I'm loving this show. Even though it is a bit gory.... So if you are a TV addict like me, entering a major withdrawal period, with nothing on the horizon but a new season of Big Brother, give Dexter a try.

** Seriously, networks! Pay the writers! I can only survive so long on BBC home decorating shows and 4-year-old reality shows (check out LOST, a British reality show where people were dropped in the middle of nowhere and had to make their way back to London on 100$. BRILLIANT! too bad there was only 1 season, though they did come through Montreal!)

Well, Rebel it is then!

Who knew? turns out my readers are all avid amateur photographers with real cameras! I mean, I knew a few, like Shelba and Amy and Mrs. Figby... having seen them in action in person. But so many of you! I'm pretty sure this is the most-responded-to entry ever!

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions. Hubs has been duly informed and is now on the hunt for a good deal. But we won't go by price alone. My dad recommended a good camera shop where he can go and get some good advice as well, so he's just got to make the time. Guess what I'm getting under the holiday tree (located at my parents house, not mine!)

And speaking of holidays, BB met the big guy in red at the mall yesterday, thanks to grandma and grandpa. I was a bit weary. She has no idea who/what Santa is all about. No clue whatsoever. But she wasn't scared, didn't hesitate one second and even smiled for the overpriced mall photographer! Dumpling told him what she wanted, which I'm pretty sure was something like "Princess, princess and princess" I did hear Santa ask her if the princesses had a boyfriend, to which she responded "Duh! A PRINCE!!!" Man! Doesn't Santa know anything?

And since I brought up Santa, let me explain how we make this work at our house, for our family. We are Jewish, the kids are Jewish, they go to Jewish school and are learning Jewish values. My parents are not. My parents celebrate Christmas, tough in a completely non-religious, gift-giving kind of way. My mother LOVES the decorating, the tree, the baking, etc. So even before the kids were in the picture, hubs and I agreed: the kids can do Christmas with the grandparents, at their house. Dumpling understands that Santa doesn't come to our house because we are Jewish, but she is very very lucky because grandma put her name on the list and Santa leaves something for her at their house.  It's not exactly what the Rabbi at the conversion program would want (actually, it's TOTALLY not what he would want) but they are my parents and I will not deny them the pleasure of spoiling their grandkids. So now you know how we work it out.And if it means I get a nice camera......

Help me graduate to a "real" camera

Last night, Dumpling had her last session of her gymnastics class for this year. She was marvelous. The pictures I took of the event are mostly sucky. The gym is big, the lighting is low, and my little point-and-shoot Canon works great for everyday stuff, but I couldn't get a decent shot from the bleachers. It was either too slow, too dim or too far. I can take a good picture up close, but slowly. I can take fast pictures by using the continuous setting, but it doesn't work with the zoom.  I ended up mostly using the video function, because at least I could get the combo of zoom and action.

But all this has me thinking that it's time to start thinking about graduating from point-and-click to a more serious camera. I think they are called SLR cameras, but I know nothing. Wouldn't know where to start. they scare me because the thought of having to lug around a big'ol thing is daunting. But then again, I always have a good size bag with me, or , if I'm doing pockets only, I could always get a nifty camera pack.

So. I know plenty of you are into photography and took classes, which should mean you know what a good camera is. What are your recommendations. Please remember I am a total novice. I understand certain principals, my dad used to have a nice 35 mm thing he took on vacations, so I know the basics about speed and exposure and lenses, but really, I know I will have to take some sort of class. I'm hoping there is something online.

Tell me: what camera would be good for a beginner who wants to  move up from point-and-click? Do you have a good class to recommend? Leave comments or email me. Comments are probably better, since my husband can read them. (hint hint... holiday gift suggestion.....)

Snow Day - Updated! With kid pictures!

When the first snow came 2 weeks ago, I was excited and a little sceptical. I mean, snow in November? not since my youth! I was certian it would melt away and we would wait til late December for a proper wallop. You  know what? We got walloped, but walloped good! 20 cms so far (about 8-9 inches) and there is more on the way.

It was supposed to be a crazy day with hannukah Pre-K extravaganza this morning, child therapy appointment at lunch and holidya pictures in the afternoon. Now, we have the whole day to get ready for our photo op, though we will have to allow plenty of time to get there. We already spent  more than an hour playing in the snow, building a pile high enough to slide on in the middle of the front yard. Dumpling loved it, BB is still not a snow-bunny. I have lots of pictures, I'll upload them during their much-needed nap!

BTW, I am suffering from major post NaPoBloMo withdrawal.... I have nothing to read!

Update:

so we are now under 30 cm (1 foot)  of snow..... we did make it out of the house for the annual holiday photos, but that's it. Here are the snow bunnies in their adorable cuteness: