Hockeeeee

I'm not Canadian. I don't have any interest in hockey... Not one little bit. Dan is Canadian but his interest levels are only slightly higher than mine. We don't have cable. In fact we don't even have normal, free tv.

What's my point? Well K loves loves loves hockey, or 'hock' as he calls it.

He runs around with his kiddie hockey stick, pushing a ball around (sometime on purpose, sometimes not) and yells 'hock hock hock'. It's by far his favourite game.

So where did this love come from?

Daycare.

Gail (his sitter) has a son called Micheal, and Michael is a hockey fanatic. Michael is also K's hero, so K now is a hockey fanatic too!

I guess that everyone needs a hero, and we're just lucky that K's hero is the 'sports-loving, go out and do stuff' kind of hero, instead of the 'smash stuff up and be a tennage lout' kind of hero.

For now anyway.

Winter Predictions

A wise woman (Dan's mum) once told me, that if all the berries on a dogberry tree (that's a rowan tree for any non-Newfoundlander's reading this), are eaten by the birds, then winter will be cold and long and miserable.  If the birds don't eat all the berries, then it's going to be a mild winter.

Walking along the trail with Jazzy, I noticed this ...

which if you can't quite make out, is a dogberry tree with no berries on it.

"Poo bum wee smelly turd face" I said to myself, "Winter is going to suck".

Jazzy and I kept going, and I was becoming more and more depressed about the thought of a long, cold, miserable winter, and then I saw this fine specimen of a tree ...

Worry over.  Obviously we're going to have an easy-peasy warm winter.

Fingers crossed.

Walks with Jazz

A few days ago, I took Jazz for a walk along a really lovely little trail close to where we live.  The trail runs by a little stream the whole way, and it's really beautiful.  Jazzy stopped for a drink at his usual watering hole ..

and I looked down the stream ...

.. and wished that I could just leave everything behind and follow the stream to wherever it ends up.  I don't mean this literally obviously, because this stream will quite shortly end up in the Atlantic, and that's just cold and wet and miserable and not fun at all.

I love my life and I love my family, but sometimes, wouldn't it be nice to just sail away and please yourself?  I think so.

Countdown

In 12 days and 15 hours time our little family (minus the pets) is headed to Australia.

I'm so excited about so many aspects of the holiday - mostly to do with family and seeing them again, but also to do with all the new experiences Kalani will have while we're there.  Beach, ocean, sun, outdoor swimming pools, sand, being naked and not freezing important parts of your body off.

I'm also looking forward to cafe's.  Somewhere you can for a coffee, or a wine, or a beer, or a meal, or a snack, or anything.  I love cafe's.

I'm looking forward to being warm.  In fact, I'll probably be far too warm the entire time we're there, but I don't care.  It's going to beat the bejesus out of being here in the cold, damp, dark dankness.

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait.

In fact, I'm so excited about the whole holiday, that I'm blanking out the beginning and end parts from my mind.  The 'getting there' and 'getting home' parts, which are probably going to be horrendous.

How do you keep an active 1 year old on his mother's lap for 14 hours straight?  On 2 consecutive days each way?  Well you're right - it's not possible.  At least we won't get DVT.

There's a quote about focusing on the journey and not the destination.  Hmmm.... I don't think so.  For my sanity I'm going to focus on the destination, and my family, and the cafe's, and the warmth, and the beach, and just being on holiday.

Anyway, enough about that, only 12 days, 14 hours and 23 minutes to go.

Say cheese .... CHEEEEEESE

After reading this http://myclockisyellow.blogspot.com/2011/11/public-service-announcement.html I realized that Melanie is right, we should take more pictures of ourselves as a family.  We have millions... maybe zillions of piccies of K, but hardly any of the 3 of us, and when Dan and I are gone Kalani might want to have some pictures to remember us by.

So with that in mind we spent a couple of minutes this evening taking some pictures of ourselves.  Rough start, but showing potential ...

Halloween

Here's how Halloween played out at our house this evening ...

Scary hairdresser

My hairdresser is a bodybuilder. Do you know how intimidating that is? Not only do I have to deal with the normal scary "going to the hairdresser" stuff (leaving with an 80's Banarama-esque hairstyle; dealing with loads of glamorous women; having to stare at myself in the mirror for hours on end). I also have to pretend that I'm at least half as healthy as the Intimidating Bodybuilder Hairdresser. Here's a summary of our conversation ...

• IBH works out 5 times a week for 2 hours at a time. I work out once a month for around 30 minutes (and that's a pretty good month).
• IBH goes on 5 hour mountain biking sessions. It takes me at least 5 hours to get through the mountain of laundry each week. 
• IBH eats 6 small meals a day to keep up her energy because she has so much muscle mass to keep going. I eat 6 meals a day because I need food energy to stay awake. (hmmm... maybe I'm not doing so badly!)
• IBH only eats organic, doesn't eat chocolate or ice-cream or any food that she hasn't freshly prepared herself. I had to hide my muffin that I'd brought along as a snack.
• IBH has an amazing body. I have a muffin top, saggy boobs, a ginormous bum and flabby everything. 

On the up side though, IBH is really nice, looks around 30 though she's actually 48 and she gave me a kick-ass haircut to take home with me..... where I ate my muffin in guiltless peace.

Lights Out

This morning we had a power outage.  At 5.50am.  It doesn't get light until 7ish.

So what?

Well, we also have a toddler.

I brought K into our bed since it was freezing, and to begin with it was lovely.  We snuggled down under the covers and stayed warm.

But then, Ta Da, it was time to get up.  I don't know if all kids are like this, but K doesn't seem to gradually wake up in the mornings, it's more of a quick BANG and he's up and rearing to go.  It was the same this morning.  He sat up, started waving his arms around like a helicopter, bounced around on his bum a few times and then tried to launch himself off the bed head first.

Since it was pitch black (and still technically night-time ... grrrr...  ) I put on a torch so he could see his way to walk around Jazzy.  Big mistake.  K saw the vacuum cleaner (which he's besotted with) and promptly started vacuuming the floor, the air and then the walls.  Much as I like to foster this love of cleaning (which hopefully stays around until he's a teenager), he nearly vacuumed a mirror right off the wall, so it was time to get up.  *sigh*

It was worth getting up though.  I think it was probably K's best morning ever!  We had candles, which he's never seen before and was immediately fascinated by; a fire which he has seen before, but love, love, loves AND a camp-like breakfast with lots and lots of puffed wheat (<-- favourite food of the week).

I didn't realise that power outages could be so much fun.

Next time I'd like to stay in bed though.

Why I like Autumn (that's "Fall" to all you North American-ers)

I love this time of year. Not because I particularly like autumn (though the colours are lovely), or the prospect of snow (eeek), or even because Christmas is getting closer (double eek). No, I like this time of year because in the evening when we take jazzy for a walk, it's getting dark. Not "draw the curtains" dark, but just a nice "turn the light on" dark. Perfect for my favourite pastime - room voyeurisming (yeh, yeh, I know it's not a word).

I love looking into other people's houses and seeing how they live.  I love to see what their furniture looks like, whether they have pictures on the wall (and if so, are they hideous or steal-worthy), how they've positioned their chairs/couch in relation to the TV, how big IS the TV ....  You get the idea!

If I had more time I'd go to open houses every Sunday and be oh so happy to snoop around other peoples homes.

Yours truly
Nosy and proud

Firsts ...

A few days ago I was changing K's nappy (which can sometimes be a mammoth feat of patience and octopus-like acrobatics) and he was surprisingly good, and quiet, and still.

When I finished I kissed one of his feet.

He giggled and said "Kiss my foot".

:)  His first sentence.

Today I took K to the doctors office (he's fine, I was just being paranoid and imagining ear infections, leading to hearing loss, which would result in him being kept back in Grade 1 etc. etc).

We had a long wait and while waiting a very very very large man sat down on a chair/chairs just next to us and started to tap his feet.  K tapped his feet.  Very large man then folded his arms across his chest.  So did K!   Very large man then looked grumpy.  K looked like a little imp!

Bwahahaha - we're in trouble.