I'm not sure what it is but I have this strange desire to cook rabbit stew. Oh, wait....maybe it's the 3 hours of Max and Ruby that I was forced to endure yesterday on the way to Lac la Biche. Yes, that must be it.

I survived. To be honest, I wasn't sure that I would. T has been gone for the last week on another one of his work holidays. He tries to tell me that it's work but I tend to disagree. In my world to be considered a holiday, the event must meet the following criteria:

1. Sleeping must be done in a bed other than your own. Setting up a tent the basement does not count.

2. Housework is not necessary and does not involve cleaning dog slime from the walls or cheerios from the vents.

3. Intelligent conversation with other adults must be had.- At this point though, I would settle for any conversation. In the last few days I have found myself saying things like "I really don't think that it's a good idea to lick the cheese grater....I understand that you like cheese, but I can't see this going well for you." and "Please stop carrying your sister around by her head....she doesn't like it" or even "Someone hand your sister the puke bucket....please!!!"

4. Any trips to the bathroom are done without an audience. Most people take this one for granted, I don't.

See, he's totally on a holiday. I am however going to look at a horse on the way home from picking T up. I realize that I could be setting myself up for some monumental disappointment but the opportunity was too good to pass up. If we move, I will have the money to put towards riding, if not, I will have to content myself with playing with yanna's collection of plastic horses. She's only a yearling at this point but seems quite promising. We'll have to see what happens I guess.

Yanna has always been a rather perceptive sort of kid. For all her outward, bull-in-a-china shopness, she can be pretty tuned in to the feelings of those around her. Yesterday, i was upset and frustrated for most of the day. I thought I was hiding it pretty well from the kids but Yanna found me, gave me a hug and asked what was wrong. After I explained to her that grown-ups have bad days too, she smiled and asked "you need penis mommy?"* and then offered me a tissue. How can you not smile after that? I think I will miss the "Yannish" once the speech therapist starts working with her.

*In Yannish, all hard c/k sounds are p's and x's are s's...thereby making the word kleenex sound...much more entertaining

Nostomania - noun; an overwhelming homesickness; a desire to return home or to a place of familiarity

I can't say that I'm homesick exactly. To be honest, there are aspects of returning home that would be extremely difficult (read: there is a distinct lack of decent sushi places) I'm not sure what it is. There seems to be a general sense of angst and unrest lately. Perhaps it's the months of living in limbo and the uncertainty of whether we are going or staying. We have done all we can to improve the situation here to no avail and while moving back seems to be the best solution, it is also proving to be impossible. Any jobs that we apply for compete with the local population....people who are available for interviews and can start immediately. Needless to say, this is making the whole process that much more difficult. I applied for 4 jobs at the hospital but can't imagine that I will hear anything. We extended our "moving deadline" to the end of the month. After that, I'm not sure what will happen.....we can't really stay here but don't really want to move the kids mid-school year. One kid wants to move, one doesn't. The younger two are too young to care. Moving would free up money we have in the house....money for T to get his education...for me to get back into riding. We even found a decent house, with enough room for a family of 6 and a mortgage that would be half of what we currently pay. It seems like the ideal solution and yet we can't seem to make it happen.

I came across this site the other day. By the time T and I got to the bottom of the page we were both laughing so hard that our sides hurt and we couldn't breathe. Interestingly, we had just found out that our child tax credit monthly amount was decreased by $500 (very not good!!!) and still we laughed. Good times.

I always find it funny when people make comments like "Wow, you handled that so well. My hat's off to you!" Yesterday I was the recipient of comments like that on 4 separate occasions. What they don't know is that after all the kids were in bed I hit the wall hard enough to put a big dent in it and cried. I never cry.If yesterday is any indication of how the week is going to progress, it's going to be a very long week! It was one of those parenting nightmare kind of days. In the morning I dropped T off for his yearly week long work "holiday". He calls it work but anything that involves having time to oneself, the ability to sleep uninterrupted as well as staying in a hotel, eating food that someone else cooks and not having to clean anything is a holiday in my books. The day itself was not so bad, and left me feeling optimistic about the rest of the week but around 4:00 it all went drastically downhill. Yanna has had a rash for the last several weeks. I have tried every natural treatment that I can think of with no success. She was getting to the point where she was scratching her skin raw. I, feeling good about the day, decided that enough was enough and perhaps it was time to consider seeing a regular doctor (blech) I called health link to determine if there was anyone close taking new patients and was given a list of names to chose from. Dr. Adams. I figured that it sounded like a pronounceable sort of name and was optimistic that perhaps he spoke English and drove the 30 minutes to the west end to see him. 2 hours. I waited in a crowded waiting room with 4 kids for 2 hours. It was NOT fun. Yanna kept trying to take her clothes off (because they were itchy) and make "snow angels" on the floor. We read every book in the waiting room, played eye spy with the older two, pretended she was a bear in a cave under the chair and counted everything we could think of. I used all of the usual tricks and then some but after two hours nothing works. By the time we got to enter phase two, aka known as waiting in the actual office, I was peeling her off the walls. At this point I was thinking that the change of scenery was nice and kept Yanna busy looking at the bone charts and things on the walls. Then Lex, who never spits up, puked all over my foot. I was wearing sandals. Once the doctor came in, it was obvious that English was not his first language (the name Moufasa on the wall gave me the heads up)....or even his second. He barely understood me and didn't understand Yanna at all. I still felt ok about the whole thing...until he started sporadically saying "help me!" and pretending to cry throughout the conversation. Apparently he got a kick out of the baby's horrified expression. After a bizarre checkup, he announced that it was either ringworm or eczema. Excuse me what??!! As someone who grew up on a farm, I'm pretty familiar with ringworm...and as someone who also suffers from eczema, I'm pretty familiar with that too. I felt that given the fact that we currently live in a city and have not been near any animals other than the dog in a very long time, that the latter diagnosis was probably more correct. I suggested that too him and he agreed. A prescription for cortisone cream (which may or may not get used) and a few more rounds of "help me" and we were out of there. Once at the medication counter, Yanna decides that she's had enough and starts alternately trying to bite me and scratch Lex. I put her down and ask K and S to watch her. She bolts, forcing me to leave my place in line and chase her down. Fortunately she is predictable and we find her in toys. Once home, the older two kids decide that they no longer like each other and resume their regularly scheduled routine of incessant bickering. I finally got them in bed and had to try for another several hours to get the the younger two to settle down for the night . It was a very late night. T called to see how we were doing and told me how he had spent his evening watching TV and practicing his kanji. I was very happy for him.I did however buy a new book that I hope to actually read. It's called The Birth House and I am optimistic that it will be as good as I think it is. It doesn't have any pictures so that's a good start. I'm hoping that today will go somewhat more smoothly. There is an attachment parent discussion group that I plan on going to and I am way to excite about the prospect of adult conversation with like minded people.

You know it's time to cut the husband off when:

a) he starts talking with an Irish accent...and we've never been to Ireland...nor is there any Irish in his gene pool

b)he asks "how'd the baby get in the living room?" when he had put her there 2 minutes earlier. At this point I took up 100% of the kid duties

c) something to do with pirouetting across the kitchen floor and talking about pickles....neither of these things are remotely normal.Yup, time to hide the whiskey.

This was way more fun in days gone by when we had friends to have a good time with. Although, I am finding tormenting him highly amusing.

"I was the perfect mother...until I had kids"

Last night T and I managed to completely traumatize 2 out of 4 kids. Apparently we don't know them nearly as well as we had thought, or, perhaps it was simply the inherently flaky nature of kids. What was intended to be a fun and harmless practical joke completely backfired. Yanna ran crying out of the room asking us to put the "puter to bed" and K stormed out yelling the usual angsty pre-adolescent stuff - "I hate you...you guys are horrible!!!!" You know the the stuff that makes parents feel really good about themselves.? I have to admit though, normally I would have felt guilty at this point, but I was trying way too hard not to keep on laughing as that would have made the situation much worse. What was the joke you ask? We went to www.buzzme.ca and made videos using pics of the kids...and had a good time doing it I might add. In our, don't-get-out-much world it was really quite humorous. In the kids world....notsomuch. Normally they would get a kick out of that sort of thing but not this time...perhaps it was the eggplant casserole that I made for dinner.*sigh* I guess I'd better go toss another loonie in the kids therapy fund.

As many people know I am no domestic diva. I have never been admired for my culinary prowess and have, on more occasions than I'd like to admit, made huge fiascoes of seemingly simple dishes. Chef Ramsey would never be proud of me. Last night however, it all turned around....could this be a new leaf or was I just lucky?? In what can only be described as a lapse in sanity, I volunteered to host an early Christmas with T's family. This meant that I had to plan and prepare the requisite turkey dinner. To be honest, as a vegetarian, I don't understand why everyone expects some sort of meat on a bone and all the fixings on special occasions, but I was game to try. And in the spirit of a little healthy (and private) competition, I decided that this could not be the simple dinner of days gone by. No, this dinner had to rival even my own grandma's turkey dinner. Those are some pretty lofty expectations as my grandma could kick Martha's ass in the kitchen. I made a list, went to the store, planned and prepared and in the end, I think I pulled it off. The 18 pound turkey was stuffed and cooked to perfection. Nothing came out of a box, even the salad dressing was made from scratch! I'm sure there are people out there who can recall my very first attempt at making a Christmas dinner in 2001. The poor chicken was so dry that there were concerns that the friction from the carving knife would some how cause it to self ignite. Copious amounts of wine were needed to choke back that meal. I'd love to say that I'm sitting here all pleased with my accomplishment, but to be honest, I'm waiting for someone to call saying they've come down with food poisoning.

You can play with her....but never invite her in

We have new neighbors, nothing out of the ordinary given that we live in a new development, but these ones are kind of odd. We never see them.....ever. Their lights are usually off and they don't seem to come or go. In fact, if they didn't continually send their daughter out to play after dark, I probably wouldn't have realized that anyone moved in at all. We never see her before dark, but frequently, after 8pm she comes out to skip or ride her bike on the driveway. It's kind of strange. Skylar was hopeful that maybe they could play together someday as they seem to be of similar age. That would be nice.....I think I will start cooking with more garlic.I wish that I had more time for a real update, but alas it will have to wait....

Sweet justice

My oldest daughter has been obsessed with going to Calaway Park all summer. Ever since the flyer came in the mail depicting throngs of smiling children merrily walking the midway and going on rides she has been talking about Calaway Park and it's "all you can ride buffet". Interestingly the frazzled parents carrying bags laden with sunscreen, bugspray, ritz bits etc and covered in sticky cotton candy/candy apple finger prints are somehow left out of the advertisement. Since then she has taken to writing the words "all you can ride buffet" on various paper like surfaces. When I was cleaning the kitchen the other day I noticed her childlike printing scrawled on the back of a photo. Sure enough, it was the aforementioned phrase. Curious, I turned the photo over and there centred in the middle and taking up most of the space was the well endowed derriere of my ex-mother-in-law. (The kids had taken a disposable camera with them on their last trip to MB and for some bizarre reason thought they needed a picture of their grandmother's butt)It was one of those sort of satisfying moments, so much so that I had to keep the picture. Now, if things get nasty with my ex-in-laws as they so often seem to, I can pull out that photo with the words printed on the back and smile.

She's here!!!

It's kind of been a surreal sort of week. Last Thursday I was enduring the sympathetic comments of T's co-workers and trying to do anything possible to bring on labour in order to avoid an artificial induction (can anyone see the irony there?), this Thursday I take my almost week old baby girl for her one week check-up. Apparently all my efforts Thursday past were not in vain. By midnight I was in labour and by 3am I was bailing on a conversation with a friend and debating whether or not to make the 40 min drive out to Stony Plain. I'll save the gory details for another time and just keep to the basics. After a relatively easy labour and delivery we welcomed Alexandria Elizabeth Katrine to the world at 11am on July 15. Interestingly, she was not as pleased with this event as we were and was declared to be one of the most pissed of babies ever delivered in that location . She weighed 9lbs 9oz which was significantly more than I was expecting and made stepping on the scale the next morning all the more fun. I've got to hand it to midwives, they really know their job. By 4:00 that day, we were headed for home -baby in the backseat, well earned tim hortens iced cappuccino in hand. All in all, I felt pretty good. Since then, the baby's mellowed significantly and life has sort of settled into a slightly elevated state of choas.

One down, two to go

Well, the due date has come and gone, the eviction notice has been posted and still there is no indication that this baby would like to make her appearance any time soon. I'm not at all surprised but I am getting tired of well meaning strangers making comments like "oh my god...when are you due?" and "is that really a baby...i've never seen anyone with a belly so perfectly round before"The midwife's orders this morning were to go home and have sex 3X in the next 24 hours and then take a specified homeopathic tincture every 5 min for the 2 hours following with the hope that it will induce labour. It's going to be a very long night. You all really wanted to know that didn't you?

It's amazing how far away the floor can seem when you're only 5'2 (and 3/4). I've adopted a new policy. If it can't be picked up with my toes, it was never meant to be off the floor.