Dear Jacqui,
The mere thought of you having a dog makes me insane.
You are amazing!
Love, Jen
Monday, 17 December 2012
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Christmas Miracle
Dear Jen,
Perhaps you remember last year when I said I would not get chickens till we had a larger property. And then I said not till the spring. And then I agreed to January. So we got them in November.
Well, perhaps I have also told you my rule about dogs: no dogs till we have a property big enough for it to get its exercise out there if needed. And not till the kids are old enough to share the responsibility for the care of the pet. "I am the one who is always home, and I will not be roped into doing everything like my mother was!"
That's my rule about dogs.
So true to form we are getting a dog next week (just after I drive Brad home from his surgery! How you say..."Stop the madness"?).
But you should have seen how giddy Brad was (and is)! Like a kid at Christmas! "I don't even care about Christmas presents!" he said. I have to admit I got a little emotional myself interacting with her. She is so very much like Brad's old dog Sierra that my family owned for a year before we left her with a good friend in Montreal, that Brad still carries a picture of in his wallet! She is docile and sweet and cuddly and short haired and medium sized and so so very gentle.
It's what I get for agreeing to accompany the family to the SPCA. I knew better. I'll let you know how her first introduction to the chickens goes!
Oy.
How's your Christmas looking?
Love,
Jacqui
Perhaps you remember last year when I said I would not get chickens till we had a larger property. And then I said not till the spring. And then I agreed to January. So we got them in November.
Well, perhaps I have also told you my rule about dogs: no dogs till we have a property big enough for it to get its exercise out there if needed. And not till the kids are old enough to share the responsibility for the care of the pet. "I am the one who is always home, and I will not be roped into doing everything like my mother was!"
That's my rule about dogs.
So true to form we are getting a dog next week (just after I drive Brad home from his surgery! How you say..."Stop the madness"?).
But you should have seen how giddy Brad was (and is)! Like a kid at Christmas! "I don't even care about Christmas presents!" he said. I have to admit I got a little emotional myself interacting with her. She is so very much like Brad's old dog Sierra that my family owned for a year before we left her with a good friend in Montreal, that Brad still carries a picture of in his wallet! She is docile and sweet and cuddly and short haired and medium sized and so so very gentle.
It's what I get for agreeing to accompany the family to the SPCA. I knew better. I'll let you know how her first introduction to the chickens goes!
Oy.
How's your Christmas looking?
Love,
Jacqui
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Dear Jacqui,
I didn't forget... I'm just on "Mommy Time"...
Happy Birthday to my friend who would help me move a body.
Love, Jen
P.S. If I ever see this on Facebook, I will terminate the above said "body moving" friendship.
Monday, 29 October 2012
Party in the Hizouse!
Dear Jen,
So usually when I come home from rehearsal the house is dark and silent. Brad is upstairs in his office studiously working on some homework assignment and the children are peacefully nuzzled all snug in their beds, with no evidence whatsoever of whatever chaotic goings on no doubt transpired when Brad first put them down.
Tonight, however...
Well, immediately upon entering the house things seemed normal enough. Quiet. Dark. But as I approached the stairs my ears began to pick up a faint vibrating sound. Standing at the base of the stairs I realized it was coming from the floor vent. I thought, "Sounds like heating." But I was pretty sure we hadn't turned the heat on yet. The only other explanation was "power tools", but as I peered up the stairs I saw lights on, as though Brad was where he always was, working away in his office. Confused, I called out, "BRAD?" to which I got the gleeful response, "MOMMY!"
"Uh oh," thought I, "Trouble."
So I cautiously ventured upstairs, and you know what I found? Evelyn hanging out in the hall with an excavator toy talking my ear off, and Gavin sitting in Brad's office, bare bum, colouring on a note pad with a pink pen.
"Gavin pooped in his potty, mom! Gavin pooped in his potty! See? Right there! He pooped in his potty! Isn't that good, mom? He pooped in his potty! Right there!"
So, I gathered what happened here, is that Gavin pooped in his potty. I dumped the thing out (poor kids, it was stinking up their room!), then spent five minutes repeatedly asking where his pants were before Gavin finally was so kind as to retrieve them for me--with more poop in them. So I went to dump that out and returned to the hallway to find Gavin had magically procured a push toy out of nowhere that he'd begun running along the hallway, and Evelyn, clearly the Queen of the Upstairs, led me into my bedroom to show me the slippers she'd left on my bed as she was freely roaming her domain this evening. Well, I finally convinced them to get into their room, and to get Gavin's pants back on, when I noticed that their curtain had been pulled off the window. WHAT KIND OF PARTIES HAVE THEY BEEN HAVING UP HERE??? Aaanyway, so I fixed that, got them into their beds, gave hugs and kisses, said goodnight, shut the door, and went straight to the basement to find Brad working away at some wooden toys.
So it was the power tools after all.
Kids are nuts. Good thing this scenario didn't play out at like 3 in the morning or something or I might have actually been a wee bit annoyed!
So usually when I come home from rehearsal the house is dark and silent. Brad is upstairs in his office studiously working on some homework assignment and the children are peacefully nuzzled all snug in their beds, with no evidence whatsoever of whatever chaotic goings on no doubt transpired when Brad first put them down.
Tonight, however...
Well, immediately upon entering the house things seemed normal enough. Quiet. Dark. But as I approached the stairs my ears began to pick up a faint vibrating sound. Standing at the base of the stairs I realized it was coming from the floor vent. I thought, "Sounds like heating." But I was pretty sure we hadn't turned the heat on yet. The only other explanation was "power tools", but as I peered up the stairs I saw lights on, as though Brad was where he always was, working away in his office. Confused, I called out, "BRAD?" to which I got the gleeful response, "MOMMY!"
"Uh oh," thought I, "Trouble."
So I cautiously ventured upstairs, and you know what I found? Evelyn hanging out in the hall with an excavator toy talking my ear off, and Gavin sitting in Brad's office, bare bum, colouring on a note pad with a pink pen.
"Gavin pooped in his potty, mom! Gavin pooped in his potty! See? Right there! He pooped in his potty! Isn't that good, mom? He pooped in his potty! Right there!"
So, I gathered what happened here, is that Gavin pooped in his potty. I dumped the thing out (poor kids, it was stinking up their room!), then spent five minutes repeatedly asking where his pants were before Gavin finally was so kind as to retrieve them for me--with more poop in them. So I went to dump that out and returned to the hallway to find Gavin had magically procured a push toy out of nowhere that he'd begun running along the hallway, and Evelyn, clearly the Queen of the Upstairs, led me into my bedroom to show me the slippers she'd left on my bed as she was freely roaming her domain this evening. Well, I finally convinced them to get into their room, and to get Gavin's pants back on, when I noticed that their curtain had been pulled off the window. WHAT KIND OF PARTIES HAVE THEY BEEN HAVING UP HERE??? Aaanyway, so I fixed that, got them into their beds, gave hugs and kisses, said goodnight, shut the door, and went straight to the basement to find Brad working away at some wooden toys.
So it was the power tools after all.
Kids are nuts. Good thing this scenario didn't play out at like 3 in the morning or something or I might have actually been a wee bit annoyed!
 |
Oy.
|
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Mini Muk Luks
Dear Jen,
I've decided that if our money-saving heating tactics are going to be successful this winter, the entire family must be fitted with cozy slippers. This morning I completed my first set--Gavin's. He loves them! He is pretty much as excited about a pair of hand-made slippers as a two-year-old boy can get. He wore them all day long; wouldn't take them off. So of course he peed all over them.
I mean, what else would you do with newly-completed hand-made custom slippers? Of course you would urinate all over them. Don't be silly.
I shouldn't make this sound worse than it is. To be fair, it's not like he singled them out. He also peed all over his pants and underwear, and then it dribbled down to his newly-completed hand-made custom slippers. Because, you know, walking five feet to the potty is an outrageous thing to expect from a two-year-old boy who has purportedly been going pee in the potty for nine months.
Outrageous.
I was going to take a picture of them, but of course now that will have to wait. I have instead provided the sample picture from the pattern so that you can comprehend what a true tragedy any sort of abuse of these too-cute-for-life slippers is. Try not to cry.
I've decided that if our money-saving heating tactics are going to be successful this winter, the entire family must be fitted with cozy slippers. This morning I completed my first set--Gavin's. He loves them! He is pretty much as excited about a pair of hand-made slippers as a two-year-old boy can get. He wore them all day long; wouldn't take them off. So of course he peed all over them.
I mean, what else would you do with newly-completed hand-made custom slippers? Of course you would urinate all over them. Don't be silly.
I shouldn't make this sound worse than it is. To be fair, it's not like he singled them out. He also peed all over his pants and underwear, and then it dribbled down to his newly-completed hand-made custom slippers. Because, you know, walking five feet to the potty is an outrageous thing to expect from a two-year-old boy who has purportedly been going pee in the potty for nine months.
Outrageous.
I was going to take a picture of them, but of course now that will have to wait. I have instead provided the sample picture from the pattern so that you can comprehend what a true tragedy any sort of abuse of these too-cute-for-life slippers is. Try not to cry.
 |
| |
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Life Double
Dear Jen,
Every time I think about how your baby was born on his due date that was the same due date for Gavin which was also the day he was born, I cannot get over the awesomeness.
Seriously, I just cannot.
Love, Jacqui
ps I don't think I have ever been so excited about someone else having a baby before! Maybe it's because this time I had the advanced pleasure of having my own baby to love these past couple months and I'm just so excited for you to enjoy your own little guy too! It must be like when I was a kid and I would get so excited for other people's birthdays I'd get sick to my stomach. True story. Anyway, hope you're getting lots of support so you can really love it!
Every time I think about how your baby was born on his due date that was the same due date for Gavin which was also the day he was born, I cannot get over the awesomeness.
Seriously, I just cannot.
Love, Jacqui
ps I don't think I have ever been so excited about someone else having a baby before! Maybe it's because this time I had the advanced pleasure of having my own baby to love these past couple months and I'm just so excited for you to enjoy your own little guy too! It must be like when I was a kid and I would get so excited for other people's birthdays I'd get sick to my stomach. True story. Anyway, hope you're getting lots of support so you can really love it!
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Fly Lady
Dear Jen,
I have come upon a new and exciting idea, and I thought I'd better write it down somewhere, so I have selected here.
Yes you should feel honoured.
Okay so this morning, at some random point of thinking about who knows what, a solution to my house tidiness problem came to me. It's actually a slightly more complex problem than that. The other component to it is that I've started feeling a little bad about how many days we spend just hanging around the house. Wednesdays we go to the park, and Tuesdays we go grocery shopping. Aside from that, I will on occasion take the children to the library, and actually starting probably next week I think Maggie's Place playgroups will be started up again. But anyway, probably too many days we lounge around, eat a slow breakfast, take a long bath, and I fret about the filthiness of the house, tidying here and there until suddenly it's lunch, and then naps, and then we're practically at supper and the day is virtually over.
So do you remember how this one time you lent me that Fly Lady book? I'll bet you thought I was horribly offended by it and never picked it up except to angrily peruse and then hand it back, didn't you? How wrong you were! She's got some good ideas! I'll admit, I mostly skimmed, and skipped over the parts I thought didn't apply to me--like, I am capable of cleaning my house, and I do clean my kitchen on a regular basis, and I don't get so depressed I can barely pull myself out of bed, and I am moderately acceptably skilled at motivating myself to tidy, you know. There are also a few things in her system that I already naturally do--like wiping out the sink. But I read enough to get the gist of what her system is, and I applied one or two things right away: remember my room basket? I had this wicker basket in my livingroom whose entire purpose was to deposit mess that would be dealt with later. It was actually a very effective tool for that space. Doesn't work so well for this very broken up space, however.
Anyway, the other things I picked up from the book I stored somewhere in the back of my brain as interesting information I felt didn't apply to me at the time.
SO, that information turned out to be the root of my epiphany. I am experimenting on a new system and I am very excited about it! Just started an hour ago. In a few weeks I'll let you know how it went. Here it is: Every day just after Gavin goes down for his nap I'll put the timer on for ten minutes, and do a quick tidy of the whole main floor. Then after supper we'll start doing our "After Supper Cleaner Upper" again, and that will finish up whatever I didn't manage in the afternoon. Hopefully it will create this beautiful cycle of general tidiness, in which the afternoon clean up makes it so there isn't too much to do in the evening, and the evening tidy makes it so that I can actually get most of the mess cleaned up in just ten minutes. And hopefully all of this makes it so that there is no need to look around at my house in the morning and think, "Guess this is going to be a stay at home and tidy up day", and instead I can think, "Nothing to do here--what can the kids and I do together this morning?" Extra bonus I just thought of: the more mornings we spend out of the house, the less mess there is to deal with in the afternoon!
See how it all could work together symbiotically to create a CLEAN environment forever after? See how this system, if it is successful, could revolutionize my life???
I'm kind of pretty stinking excited about it.
Doesn't solve the upstairs, or the playroom, and doesn't clean my bathrooms, but lately I've been having trouble ever getting to those issues because I'm too tied up spending the entire day tidying this stinking house (side note: I mean "stinking" in terms of an expression of my disgust, not "stinking" in terms of actual smell), so this should actually improve that situation too.
So just an hour ago to kick it off I did a special extra clean up. I gave myself ten minutes per room and did the kitchen (which I cheated to about 17 minutes), the dining room, and the living room. It was encouragingly successful. And in about an hour's time I'll have another ten minutes to do a bit more, and let the fun begin!
Be excited for me. I'm just dying for this to actually work out.
Love Jacqui
I have come upon a new and exciting idea, and I thought I'd better write it down somewhere, so I have selected here.
Yes you should feel honoured.
Okay so this morning, at some random point of thinking about who knows what, a solution to my house tidiness problem came to me. It's actually a slightly more complex problem than that. The other component to it is that I've started feeling a little bad about how many days we spend just hanging around the house. Wednesdays we go to the park, and Tuesdays we go grocery shopping. Aside from that, I will on occasion take the children to the library, and actually starting probably next week I think Maggie's Place playgroups will be started up again. But anyway, probably too many days we lounge around, eat a slow breakfast, take a long bath, and I fret about the filthiness of the house, tidying here and there until suddenly it's lunch, and then naps, and then we're practically at supper and the day is virtually over.
So do you remember how this one time you lent me that Fly Lady book? I'll bet you thought I was horribly offended by it and never picked it up except to angrily peruse and then hand it back, didn't you? How wrong you were! She's got some good ideas! I'll admit, I mostly skimmed, and skipped over the parts I thought didn't apply to me--like, I am capable of cleaning my house, and I do clean my kitchen on a regular basis, and I don't get so depressed I can barely pull myself out of bed, and I am moderately acceptably skilled at motivating myself to tidy, you know. There are also a few things in her system that I already naturally do--like wiping out the sink. But I read enough to get the gist of what her system is, and I applied one or two things right away: remember my room basket? I had this wicker basket in my livingroom whose entire purpose was to deposit mess that would be dealt with later. It was actually a very effective tool for that space. Doesn't work so well for this very broken up space, however.
Anyway, the other things I picked up from the book I stored somewhere in the back of my brain as interesting information I felt didn't apply to me at the time.
SO, that information turned out to be the root of my epiphany. I am experimenting on a new system and I am very excited about it! Just started an hour ago. In a few weeks I'll let you know how it went. Here it is: Every day just after Gavin goes down for his nap I'll put the timer on for ten minutes, and do a quick tidy of the whole main floor. Then after supper we'll start doing our "After Supper Cleaner Upper" again, and that will finish up whatever I didn't manage in the afternoon. Hopefully it will create this beautiful cycle of general tidiness, in which the afternoon clean up makes it so there isn't too much to do in the evening, and the evening tidy makes it so that I can actually get most of the mess cleaned up in just ten minutes. And hopefully all of this makes it so that there is no need to look around at my house in the morning and think, "Guess this is going to be a stay at home and tidy up day", and instead I can think, "Nothing to do here--what can the kids and I do together this morning?" Extra bonus I just thought of: the more mornings we spend out of the house, the less mess there is to deal with in the afternoon!
See how it all could work together symbiotically to create a CLEAN environment forever after? See how this system, if it is successful, could revolutionize my life???
I'm kind of pretty stinking excited about it.
Doesn't solve the upstairs, or the playroom, and doesn't clean my bathrooms, but lately I've been having trouble ever getting to those issues because I'm too tied up spending the entire day tidying this stinking house (side note: I mean "stinking" in terms of an expression of my disgust, not "stinking" in terms of actual smell), so this should actually improve that situation too.
So just an hour ago to kick it off I did a special extra clean up. I gave myself ten minutes per room and did the kitchen (which I cheated to about 17 minutes), the dining room, and the living room. It was encouragingly successful. And in about an hour's time I'll have another ten minutes to do a bit more, and let the fun begin!
Be excited for me. I'm just dying for this to actually work out.
Love Jacqui
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