Question of the week

Should I pretend to care about hockey in order to bolster my sense of civic pride?

More Tulip Fest pics

Posted here.

Henry actually asked to go to the Tulip Festival last Sunday. I'm not sure how he even heard of it, but it sounded like a good plan. Tom had work to do, so it was just me and the boy and a long, sunny walk around the flower beds. We had milkshakes at Dairy Queen before heading home. Not a bad way to spend Mother's Day at all.

The Home Front gets results!

Take a look at my site meter. Someone at Target saw my snide comment about their "walrus" maternity dress. And now the product description has been changed! I'm impressed.

Target people--if you're still reading, please listen to me: I forgive you for the Walrus maternity dress. COME TO CANADA! And not just Toronto! Open TONS of stores! I need you! Please! Please!

Tulip Festival

The big birthday extravaganza

9 kids. 14 grownups. 2 baby siblings. A little over 2 hours of well-supervised mayhem. Yep, today was Henry's 3rd birthday party, and it was great. The guest list was a mix of kids from the preschool and the neighborhood, plus the preschool-age children of Tom's colleagues. Everyone had a lot of fun, including the parents. Even the cake decorating project I planned went off without a hitch. The kids did a great job sticking Smarties and marshmallows on their trains, and weren't really messy at all. Things got a bit loud at times, but nothing unbearable. In summary, the adults weren't bored, there were no major fights, tantrums or injuries on the part of the kids, and we don't have to powerwash the inside of the house. As third birthday parties go, you can't ask for much better.

It's interesting to mark Henry's development by the way his birthday parties have gone off. His first birthday party was pretty much for the grownups, with booze and a full spread of food. Henry was just the overstimulated center of attention. His second birthday party was much more kid-centric, but I remember it being a lot of shy toddlers sticking close to their moms while we coaxed them to have fun. Today, the kids played really well together with almost no intervention from their parents. Especially the kids who go to preschool together. When I watch them interact, it's clear that they have genuine relationships with each other as little individuals. They have conversations, pull each other into activities, and find ways to have fun. They're no longer just kids thrown together in a room because they're around the same age and their parents know each other. I guess next year's party, and every party after that, will show the continuation of this trend.

On Henry's actual birthday, Tom and I brought cupcakes to school for all the kids. The cupcakes were a real Working Mom Wonder Woman moment for me, as I had come home at lunch the day before to bake them from scratch. Eat your heart out, June Cleaver!

I'll post photos to my Flickr account ASAP. Between the new camera, all the software drivers for the new camera, and some new photo editing software I got, I've managed to really screw up my PC when it comes to photo management. I've got quite a backlog of images to work through. . .

Why not just go with "Beached Whale"?

As both a copywriter and a pregnant lady, I have to say that my beloved Target missed the mark badly with this attempt to come up with a new word for "brown" in their marketing of an otherwise cute maternity dress.

Update!

Just a whole bunch of regular life

Not much going on around here the past couple weeks. Yesterday was the official start of the third trimester for me, and between being evermore pregnant, taking care of Henry, and heading to work 5 days a week, I haven't had much energy for extracurricular activities. Today was a fun day, though. It's been sunny for the last few days, but several degrees below warm. But finally, we got to the point where shorts were an option. We put Henry in the stroller and walked over to Bank Street to get milkshakes and enjoy a beautiful day. It's a very nice walk to take. And we decided to add a degree of serious excitement to the day by letting Henry go the preschool equivalent of going commando, i.e. No Diaper! The big toilet training project hasn't amounted to much yet, so I decided we need to start forcing the issue a bit more. The results were mixed, at best. No accidents while we were out and about, but three "accidents" once we got home (including one when he was standing literally 6 inches from his potty. Very frustrating). I'm not confident we'll get him out of diapers for good before Little Deuce arrives on the scene. As I said, progress has been spotty, but things are getting a bit better, so I haven't completely given up hope that it could happen soon. Then again, most of the other 3 year-old boys we know are still in diapers, and I've heard plenty of horror stories about the struggle to get them out of the paper underpants for good. Sigh.

In other Henry news, we're rapidly closing in on the big 3rd birthday extravaganza. We're having a party on next weekend, featuring a combination that could prove fatal to what little home decor we have: 10 preschoolers, and individual cake decorating. See, we bought this cool train cake pan in New York, and I think the kids will enjoy throwing sprinkles and the like on their own train car. Maybe it will be a nice day and we can do it outside. Maybe I'll just lay plastic sheeting over the entire house. Whatever. You only turn 3 once. Might as well make it memorable.

H. continues full throttle with his dinosaur obsession. Lately he's taken to acting like a T.Rex, which involves stomping around, his hands formed into "claws", making roaring sounds and play-biting us on the legs. I've put the dinosaur angle to good use in my parenting techniques by using the line that "dinosaurs love to (X)," whenever I'm trying to get Henry to do something he doesn't want to do. I've also improved his general hygiene by suggesting that if he doesn't let me wash off whatever crust of food and gunk has formed on his face or hands, a predator dinosaur will smell it and come after him. Not the kind of line you find in parenting manuals, but it works! And really, it doesn't scare him, since he thinks of himself as a predator dinosaur.

Finally, he's running an experiment to see if he can get all the nutrients and energy he needs from one food: plain spaghetti. He asks for it every night. I dress it up with egg and cheese, but all other sauce is out of the question.

And that's the news, such as it is, from around here. I was attempting to make mango chutney from scratch as I wrote this, and it was a total failure. I have a potful of scorched sugar goo. Delightful. Oh well--hopefully tonight's tamarind and yogurt-marinated chicken will do fine without it.