Toronto, Day 1

I’m here. In canada! It took us about 10 total hours including stops but as the kid was good and the ride was in a minivan where we could spread out it wasn’t so bad.

So far what’s weird is that Nicole went to bed at 10 (hour and a half late) and got up at 6:20 (40 min early) so I didn’t get to sleep in….. however, she’s now napping so we’re all here hanging out in the hotel room. We’re off to the zoo this afternoon and will be going to Los Lomos, the CN tower, a Blue Jays game, and the hockey hall of fame all by Wednesday.

More fun on the horizon and I’ll write if I get time.

What's Up

I started teaching on Tuesday - another full class of 30. It went pretty well except I misread the clock (thought it said 8:30 when really it only said 7:30) so I moved through my teaching quicker than normal and skipped an activity I really wanted to do because we were short on time. Turns out I planned right and we had plenty of time to do it. It was too late to call them back though and probably not a good impression on the first night. Ah well, now they have homework.

Jim and Nicole were at home that night and he actually got a few snaps of her which was great! Below is a shot of her preparing to give a real kiss (versus just putting your mouth on someone's cheek and making the sound). She hasn't grasped that you don't need to suction quite so hard before the "release".

• I have 2 problems with my outfit today. 1) I broke out a pair of my new $12 ON jeans and one leg is cut a little smaller in the thigh than the other. It’s not a huge difference but noticeable enough on a full-time basis when I sit or walk. 2) I do not understand side zippers on shirts. I get back zippers that totally open at the neck thus making the shirt/dress/whatever much looser to initially put on, but this zipper connects at the top and bottom so at no point is it really open. Most of the time I don’t even bother unzipping it at all because I don’t think they actually provide any functionality.
• I read People faithfully every week and feel that it keeps me relatively “in tune” with the "real" world. However, though I know of and have opinions about Amy Winehouse and the Jonas Brothers I’ve never actually heard a note of their music, which is of course what their careers are in. Today a radio station was giving away Cheetah Girls concert tickets. Who in the hell are they!?
• Lastly, Nicole can say a handful of words, one of which is shoe. It actually comes out more like “choo”, but she’s always holding or moving towards a shoe when she says it so I get it. I broke out slippers yesterday for the first time in a long time and she was very interested in touching them because they were fuzzy. I let her try them on and from there out she was quite content to walk around in her new “choos”.

Olympic Humor

First Picture of Michael Phelps

Weekend of 8/22/08

After jam-packed schedules for the last few weeks, Jim insisted on a weekend of no plans. We watched movies, hung out with the kid, ran errands, finished some house stuff. Some highlights:

1) Friday I took off work because our babysitter took a long weekend and the Gardners and I traded sitting services. I had 3 kids ages 1, 2, and 4 all day and not on the same nap schedule. I was worn out and had a huge headache by the end of the day. The kids were very very good all day, it’s just that I felt the need to entertain them with movies, painting, swimming, bubbles, pizza-making and paper dolls instead of just letting them hang out. I deserved the hot bath with jets that evening.

2) At 9:05am I arrived at Old Navy behind about 20 other, eager but polite women and their very patient husbands to buy $12 jeans. I got 3 pair for me, 2 for Nicole and 1 for Ryann (for Christmas).

3) Dad and I had our second of three ice skating lessons on Saturday afternoon. He won them at a blind auction held at his office and kindly split them with me for some father-daughter bonding time. The first lesson we learned stopping, swizzels (making figure eights with our ankles) forward and back, skating on one foot, turning and two-footed spins. On Saturday we did more backwards skating, practiced spinning and learned cross-overs. Wow do my feet hurt by the end of our lesson.

There is this super cute little girl, who I'm guessing is about 5, who has a lesson at the same time we do. I’ve determined that ice skaters have no future unless you’re really good. While she’s adorable to watch, at least gymnastics lessons have a practical bridge to cheerleading in the future. Ice skating – not something that lends itself to making you readily available to break out your skills in an emergency/talent competition/etc.

4) TMI Warning! The fam headed to the mall to use my VS free panty coupon and I decided I was going to actually use another coupon for $10 off a bra. In my whole life I’ve never bought a full-price, non-semi-annual-clearance bra from Victoria’s Secret. After going up to a 38DD while pregnant and then losing weight I’d noticed that my pre-prego bras weren’t fitting as nicely as they probably should. I had the saleslady measure me and I was shocked when she told me I was a 38B. A B!? I haven’t been a B since my sophomore year of high school! So I had her measure again… 36B. Yeahhhhhhhhh….. So I tried one of the new BioFit bras on and to my amazement I'm a B (at least in VS bras). "$37 is the sale price for a bra?!" Jim exclaimed as soon as we left the store. After I explained my new size he proceeded to tease me that he didn’t buy “this” (as he spun my engagement ring) to have a B cup wife.

5) Vantage Point was an interesting movie though I only give it a B. It follows the viewpoint of six different people involved in an event and lets you see all the angles so that you can piece together the “real” story.

6) Mark and I toured our neighborhood (he’s moving in in December) and gave our unsolicited opinions on homebuilding/decorating to each other. I can’t believe Ryan homes doesn’t consult with us on every floorplan they design.

Goodnight, Nicole

Tonight when I tucked Nicole in she was all smiley while I sang to her and started to join in. When we were done she sat sideways on my lap with her head on my chest. I stroked her legs and she held my other hand. We rocked for a long while together. I told her out loud, “The world isn’t perfect, but you’re going to make it a better place,” and though it might sound cheesy, it was one of the perfect moments where I had a lot of faith that I’ll be right.

Nicole's Activities as of late

Nicole has taken to climbing lately- stairs of course, but now her rocking horse and window sills. The ones in our family room work out quite conveniently for sitting, squatting and standing.

We have several animals that come to call- deer, cardinals, and butterflies are most common. The other day though we had a flock of 16 Canadian geese that landed and stayed for about an hour. Nic's watching them eat the neighbor's grass seed from our living room.

With one of her birthday gift certificates I bought her her first baby doll this morning. I sprung for the "upgrade" model that came with a stroller and pajamas. It was a hit!

She doesn't maneuver the stroller well yet and gets a bit feisty when things get in her way...

Thursday 13

First, a note from our sponsors....
I was QUITE happy to see Andy Martini’s return and to find out I have a new reader, Mark J, who googled himself and my blog came up as the third hit. He was surprised to see I even had a blog much less with him in it! :)

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Thirteen things I've changed in my "everyday" life in the last month

1) Decaf coffee
2) 1 dessert/day
3) TV Watching (Olympics)
4) Painting my fingernails
5) Not doing the dishes (Jim does them now almost all the time)
6) Entering vacation mode (leaving in a week and a half for Toronto)
7) Keeping REALLY busy at work
8) Staying in touch better with my new Blackberry
9) Evening work doing lesson plans
10) Exclusive Pandora listening at work ALL day
11) House projects (ok, maybe it’s not a change that I'm working on the house, but I’ve been working on different projects)
12) Chasing Nicole (she’s learning to “run”)
13) Slight change in the morning routine to shower before getting Nicole up

Bus Adventures

I wish I had a cute picture of me from 1985 to kick off this post, but I'm at work so a bit limited.

Yesterday and today are the first days back for most of the schools in our area. Half the kids at Nicole’s daycare will disappear to Pre-School through 6th grade so when I visited yesterday it was so quiet it was almost eerie (granted the most of little ones were taking a nap). This morning as I passed the high school on the way to work the lights were flashing and students were waiting at the street corner to head into school. Made me a bit nostalgic so I thought I’d jot down a few school bus memories of my own:

• Now I don’t actually remember this but my mom turns into my grandfather and starts repeating herself when it comes to this story…. Apparently my first day of kindergarten (which would have been August 1983, age 4) was my first experience riding a bus to school. I apparently firmly announced that I was very grown up and was going to go to the bus-stop alone, without my mother. She just as clearly told her that there was no way she wasn’t going to the bus-stop with me but she would let me walk ahead of her up the street.
• In gradeschool the bus-stop was at the foot of my aunt and uncle’s driveway which was 4 houses up the street on the opposite side. We’d watch out our family room window for the bus to pull in and then we’d start our walk up to the corner as the bus looped around the neighborhood on it’s way to us. This normally worked out okay but there were times we missed seeing it pull in and were startled by it’s journey up our length of the street. Those times we sprinted out the door and up Chagrin to the corner. The bus driver normally slowed way down so our little legs kept us ahead of her and allow us to “make it in time.”
• In the winter my dad would drive us the block and let us sit in the warm, running car until the bus came. He always had a cup of coffee “to go” but for some reason it made him salivate so inevitably he’d crack the window and spit out of it. I firmly remember the morning he didn’t roll the window down far enough and ended up putting a huge “loogey” on the glass.
• All the little kids “had to” sit up front as dictated by seniority rules. By the time I hit 7th grade I was in the second last row and thinking I was cool as shit. When spring hit Jonathan Baker started bringing his boom box on the bus and we’d jam out to Boys II Men’s Motownphilly.

Olympics

In the past week I have logged more television viewing hours on my TV than I think we did in the entire year of 2007. The Olympics go on the minute I get home and turn off last thing before I go to bed. Between Saturday and Sunday I think they were playing for about 15 hours which is an amazingly long amount of time for us to watch TV.

I’ve also determined that Nicole is going to take up diving. I figure she can train on the platform and springboard, individual and synchro. That way she has a lot of medal opportunities. She’ll probably be too tall for gymnastics and too short to be an excellent swimmer. Diving also has the advantage of being indoors so no bad weather soccer games to deal with! :) now if she’ll just cooperate….

Front Teeth

I would think it's hard for Nicole to eat a variety of food with only 6 teeth (4 front top, 2 bottom center) but she's more than willing to try just about anything. We hit the jackpot though the other night by feeding her corn on the cob - front teeth are the only things required to enjoy! You have to turn it up pretty loud to hear her crunch it off the cob...

In case you're wondering, the other stuff she's eating is part of a pork chop.

Soundtrack to Life

After nearly 3 decades of listening to the radio, especially pop and country in the past few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that you could write an entire life script through songs. I started one below and I know there are dozens more that could be added to the storyline, I just don’t have the time or energy at 8am to be creative with it.

So here goes:

Girl likes boy who doesn’t know she likes him: Teardrops on my Guitar by Taylor Swift
Boy and girl eventually get together: Next time I Fall by Peter Cetera
Boy and Girl Date: Come on Over by Jessica Simpson
Boy and Girl finally “do it”: I’ll Make Love to You by Boys 2 Men
Boy cheats on girl: Take a Bow by Rihanna
Boy is sorry he cheated on the girl: Best of Intentions by Travis Tritt
Girl tries to get over boy: Time, Love and Tenderness by Michael Bolton
Girl finds a new love interest: The First Cut is the Deepest by Sheryl Crow
Girl and New Boy get married: I Swear by All For One
Couple has a baby: A New Day has Come by Celine Dion
Daddy loves his daughter: Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle
Marriage lasts: Still the One by Shania Twain

And they lived happily ever after!

I could go on a whole other saga about their kid. I could do it in country songs alone, especially if the daughter and her love interests have a lot of fights!

Yeah, I listen to the radio an awful lot…

For Kathy and Martha

Weekend of 8-9-08

This weekend was EXHAUSTING. On Friday night 12 of Jim’s family members arrived at our house for the weekend. Friday wasn’t anything exciting, mostly wii playing, but Saturday came too early when Nicole woke up at her normal time, 6:45am to start the day. And what a full day it was.

Most of the clan headed to the zoo which was ½ off this weekend. I went with Jessica, Colton and my dad to the ice rink where Dad and I were supposed to be having an ice skating lesson. Turns out there was some hockey tournament thing going on and we couldn’t skate. Colton, 6, was so upset he started crying in the lobby and one of the parents (from NC no less) asked him if he wanted to meet a real hockey player which, with tears running down his cheek he nodded, he did. So, we met some 17 year old goalie who had his picture taken with Colton and gave him a real hockey puck. We stood at the glass for a while and watched them all play which was fun, but not as fun as…

The arcade that we went to in lieu of ice skating. Dad suggested that we hit up the Sports Plex which is a kid mecca with video games galore, a inline hockey rink and an ice rink. Colton got a $20 card to play and while we were watching him ride an indoor roller coaster a worker told the ride operator that the wifi was down and all the kids were playing for free (cards weren’t being charged). Tickets were pouring out of these machines as kids played and played and workers were trying to get to each game and empty them of tickets before the kids went too haywire. Colton had so much fun he told his mom he was going to take a bus to Cincinnati and come to the arcade all day, sleep at our house and play wii, and then come back the next day. She could pick him up at the bus station when he was ready to come home.

That night we had a big family dinner which everyone devoured and complimented me on (thank god, it’s hard to please 14 people). All the “kids” in our generation stayed up playing games and drinking until 2:30am.

They all left the next afternoon, Jim cleaned, and that night we hit up the Taste of Colerain with Mark and Caitlin which was nice.

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I did take about an hour and a half on Sunday to watch the Olympics (swimming and gymnastics). I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Olympics. I love the basic concept and I love all the elements: peaceful world interaction, national pride, competition, the pushing of the human body and spirit. In my short watching tenure I saw about 5 world records broken. It’s awesome to think I witness that in general- someone doing their sport better than anyone in the world EVER has. Absolutely amazing.

I just watched the 4X100 men's freestyle relay online (I went to bed before it aired) and literally, it gave me chills. The US won in an unbelievable bout and made up almost a half body-length to win. I feel so overwhelmed and proud it's pulsing through me. WOW.

I need to start training Nicole for the 2024 games - those are the first she'd be permitted to participate in.

In case you were wondering, my favorite summer Olympic sports are: swimming, gymnastics, and diving. Contrary to Jim’s desire, the Olympics are on my “bucket list”.

Sugar Baby

Generally speaking, I eat healthy. I won’t say “very healthy” because I have a nearly uncontrollable sweet tooth. In college I had a 3 dessert a day policy. That policy worked my waistline up to a size 12 (for reference I'm 5”6’) and ultimately made me embarrassed to take my cover-up off for long periods of time when I was in Daytona with my skinny classmates (including Viki who went the opposite direction of me in the months leading up to the trip).

Work is terrible because we have an ENTIRE CABINET dedicated to candy and inevitably there are some of my favorite things stashed in there – Take 5s, Twizzlers, Smarties, Hershey’s Cherry Cordial Kisses, etc. I normally allow myself 2 pieces when I get back from lunch and try to limit my sugar intake to that while I'm at work. 2 pieces might sound like a lot but if you’ve bought miniature candy bars lately it’s really not too bad because they’ve shrunk those suckers down to practically less than 1 bite’s worth each.

Some times, when I get home from work, like last night, I’ll have a little bowl of ice cream on top of my two afternoon treats. I feel sort of guilty about doing that but chocolate chip is so good it is hard to resist!!

I gained 37lbs. in my 9 months carrying Nicole which is only 2 lbs. higher than “average”. I was a size 8 or 10 before I got pregnant and now, a year after, I'm a typically a size 6, sometimes an 8. I had no qualms about walking without a cover-up in front of my co-workers a month ago. I actually LOST 2 lbs. on the cruise.

My eating (in general) policy is that if I don’t like something I won’t eat it. I will not take on extra calories of something I don’t even enjoy consuming. Therefore, on the cruise where dessert options were plentiful but bland, I ate less sugar than I do in Ohio. I think that my weight is consistent because even though I have dessert every day I eat very healthy breakfasts every day, and normally eat healthy lunches/dinners to make up for the sugar.

This is where Jim would say “just think what would happen if you worked out a little”. Bleh.

The DMB

The Dave Matthews Band is coming to Cincinnati today which is unfortunate as it’s pouring down rain and over half the seating is on the lawn.

Dave was actually the very first concert I ever attended. Susannah knew they were coming and bought a group of us tickets to go. When she called me up to say she’d gotten them my first thought was “who’s Dave Matthews?” So as not to be the loser who doesn’t even know who the frickin’ band whose concert I'm attending, I promptly went out and bought Under the Table and Dreaming and listened to songs on repeat on my brother's CD player so that I could sing along like everyone else. I remember sitting and studying that little lyric book from the case for hours. I don’t remember much about the actual concert at all.

But I still like the band.

In celebration of their concert tonight, 94.1 has turned into “Dave Radio”- they’ve only been playing DMB and will through the concert tonight, which makes 48 straight hours of only DMB. So I’ve tuned in. Eleven years after I attended that concert I know a surprising amount of the songs that they’re playing. Granted I heard “Satellite” both on the way and the way back from seeing Nicole yesterday at lunch so they aren’t playing too many “off” tracks, but overall the past day has confirmed that I still, really like the Dave Matthews Band. Enough to pay $80/ticket…. Maybe not. But they are one of only 5 artists noted on my Pandora to track.

Weekend of 8-1-08

Friday: After getting home from work, eating, taking Nicole to the park and putting her to bed, we watched The Bucket List (B+) which I enjoyed. There was more than one scene that I said to Jim “why wouldn’t you want to go there!?” as it’s my life ambition to thoroughly travel the world and his to stay in our time zone.

Saturday: Ignoring all the work around the house that we did in the afternoon, the highlight was, by far, the much-anticipated date night that we had. M, L & R gave us a gift card and babysitting for Christmas so Jim and I got all pretty (I wore my new dress with tasteful amounts of cleavage- it was a date afterall!) and headed to the #3 restaurant in Cincinnati, Nicola’s. We had overpriced haddock and ravioli and after entertainment coupon and gift card we escaped with a $34 bill including tip. Goettafest wrecked havoc on my Newport after-dinner plans so we headed to Fairfield to have Dairy Queen (bogo sundae coupon) and to watch The Dark Knight (A-). This was a good activity as it’s been over a year since my last first run movie, it was a hyped-up one that I wanted to see, and we used our Entertainment book to get tickets for $7/ea (regular price = $9.25). The movie was great but was a half hour too long (plot would have been better if they had stopped filming earlier). All in all we spent about $55 which I thought was TERRIFIC for 6 hours of QT with the hubby.

Sunday: Even though Nicole fell asleep at 7pm (an hour and a half early) at Lindsay’s, she slept in until 8:30am the next day. WA-HOO!!!!!!! Post church and errand running, she went down for what turned out to be a 4 hour nap (what the!?) and I sewed curtains. Meijer shopping was followed by tacos for dinner, school work, and then the first hour of Lean on Me which I have never seen. Jim helped me paint the white for my French manicure and though the quality wasn’t the greatest (sorry, dear) I liked watching him work so intently on my fingernails.

I had such a good 3 days I didn’t even mind coming back to the office!

Freaky Friday 4- Pot

Jim asked me the other night why marijuana is illegal.
My answer was “because it’s a mind-altering drug.”
His reply was, “how is that different than alcohol?”

I guess perhaps the logic here is that it’s a gateway drug. But then again, isn’t alcohol for many people?

I don’t know if I actually have a problem with marijuana being legal if there was a designated “appropriate” age (ie 21) for us all to ignore. I suspect the regulations around legalized marijuana would be similar to alcohol – no smoking on the job, no smoking and driving, scornful looks to those who smoke up before noon, etc.

Perhaps this could help Obama’s national healthcare plight- the government could fund our insurance by taxing the hell out of pot. ; )

Being more serious… Let’s face reality, if most of us wanted to get it illegally now we could with some amount of effort- everyone knows someone who knows someone. For those who want to try it I'm not sure the legal status of the plant is keeping them at bay.

I am admittedly critical about adults who smoke pot – in my mind it’s very much a high school / college thing to do. I went to a party a few years ago (host was ~35yo) where a guy I was talking to invited me outside. I didn’t realize “outside” was code for smoking up and was quite surprised to see the paraphernalia being pulled out once we sat down on the retaining wall. I think Jim was even more surprised to see his girlfriend sitting on the wall with some other guy, joint in hand (his, not mine, for the record). We left and had the "would you now?" talk.

If it was legal and people my parents’ age were just rolling joints on the living room table that’d be a big mental hurdle for me to jump.

After this little diddy I’ll admit that I'm “old school” in thinking that if I had to vote right this second I’d still keep it illegal based on the interpretation that it has to be illegal now for some good reason based on arguments and logic of people who’ve thought longer and harder on the issue than me. Before I could make an educated vote on this I’d need to do more research but I wouldn’t be close-minded to the possibility.