No use trying to be inconspicuous

Okay so I'm writing the posts. Just not getting them up. From last week:

So we went to Church this weekend. We haven’t been in a LONG time. Probably since the summer and then not to our “normal” church but to the one a few blocks from home. We technically belong to two parishes, an English one and a French one. The French one is an easy walk from home but I don’t like it. The church itself is dark and uninviting and has a barn/storage shed like feel to it. The community seems uninvolved and annoyed. The moment mass is over they bolt from their seats like their hair is on fire. The priest doesn’t even have a chance to get off the altar. So we don’t go often. When we went regularly (pre-Sam we went every week). We went to the Church where I grew up (technically – the parish since the Church is only 8 years old). We were married their. Both kids were baptized we feel like it’s our parish.

We haven’t been going regularly for a while. Sam is more than a pain in Church. He’s an exhausting handful and a half. He’s embarrassing. He makes church “not fun.” If Daniel can’t come with me (because he is working) I don’t go. Lately he’s worked a lot of weekends. When he’s not working, often we’re just not up to it. But this weekend was thanksgiving so it was important to me that we made the effort.

We made special plans on Sunday to make sure to attend the Children’s mass so that Kamryn could go to the Children’s liturgy. They take all the elementary school aged children in a back room and they have the readings and gospel on a kid level. Kamryn had never participated before but I thought she might enjoy it now that she’s old enough. When the time came for the children to go up, she didn’t want to go. She was getting all whiney and clingy so I told her I would go up with her. When she got to the top of the aisle and saw all the other children she willingly went on her own. There had to have been twenty children standing in front of the altar all of them a good foot taller than Kamryn (she looked SO tiny!) when she got there. Then the priest (who Kamryn worships in a super hero sort of way) started asking who wanted to carry “the book” and lead the other children out. All the other children have there arms in the air waving madly à la Horshack. Kamryn is standing in the back looking small. I am way at the back of the Church watching like a mother hen and happy that there is no way she will be noticed for this task. The priest is miked and I hear him say “Kamryn would you like to carry the book.” I see the nod and she goes forward. Yikes! I know stuff the priest probably doesn’t.

1) Kamryn has never participated before so she has no idea what is happening.
2) Kamryn has no idea where to go with the book.
3) Kamryn is clueless.

So he gives her the book and shows her that she must hold it over her head. She stands there with the book over her head motionless. He tells her she must turn around. She stands there staring him, motionless. He physically turns her around. He tells her she should go forward to that the other kids can follow her. She stands there looking a little crazed with a grin plastered on her face – motionless. He tell the kids to open up a path to let Kamryn through. Thank the Lord. Now she can see (as can all the other parishioners) her crazy Mother standing at the back of the Church frantically gesturing for her to walk forward. Ah we have lift-off and Kamryn successfully leads all the other children out of the Worship Hall and back to the sacristy for what every secret rites they perform. ;) Exit stage left beamingly proud mother. No worries, Sam was able to bring me back to humiliating reality in a few short seconds. It was almost like we had brought monkey high on amphetamines to Church with us – a VERY noisy monkey. A very noisy monkey that would die if it stopped moving for even a millisecond and knew it. Ahhhh…. Children….. :)

So I'm selling Gymboree stuff on E-bay...

First time I've tried to help moderate my Gymboree obsession. I have 3 auctions going. 2 Gymboree outfits and one Children's Place. One of the Gymboree outfits isn't going particularly well but that's because I had it in the completely wrong category for 3 days - oops!

If you're interested ...

Children's Place Holiday Dress


Adorable Little suit that I accidently put in "Girls' Dresses."

Cute coat that was kind of a dumb purchase for Canada where fall lasts about a week and a half before it's colder than Antartica.

I have $200 in Gymbucks

Those of you who know me from Friends by Adoption won't be surprised here.

It is, in my humble opinion insanely funny (and a little insane period).

Okay, okay, okay... I'm not keeping them or the clothes (well not all of them) for that matter.

I wasn't going to buy Christmas stuff from Gymboree this year. I wasn't! I spent way to much on Christmas stuff last year and Kamryn's black velvet Gymboree jumper from last year still fits fine! So what if she wore it last Christmas. She isn't royalty and I don't own a kingdom.

Then I saw the new line...

Okay - so I bent a little.

Sam didn't get a new outfit for Christmas last year (he wore the same suit he wore for his Christening). I thought the little red vest and red plaid shirt in the new Gymboree line would look nice on him AND I had $25 in Gymbucks that I figured I could spend on him. But, I had to go and look at them in person. This was a mistake. The dresses.... oh the dresses.

I left the store with a plan to return when Gymbucks started next week JUST to buy a vest and shirt for Sam. Mmmmmm ... but the call of the dress. Silk... plaid... they would match so adorably.

Sigh. So I went back (I work just across the street from a store) to buy JUST the little red sweater that went with the dress. That and a pair of socks would give me $25 in Gymbucks which would help with the purchase of the whole bleeping ensemble (Sam's outfit and a dress fo Kamryn) NEXT week.

Yikes - their stock was not looking at all robust. Would everything last until next week? Panic! Ummm... so I bought everything.

Wait, it gets worse. I bought everything in two seperate sizes for both children so I can go home and see what size they really fit into. So that's TWO beautiful silk plaid dresses, TWO little red sweaters with knit bow, TWO little red and grey vests, TWO little red plaid shirts and then I tossed in a pair of argyle socks because I could (hanging my head in mock shame here).

$200 in Gymnbucks later. How will I explain this to Daniel? Somehow he might not think this is as hilarious as I'm finding it. * evil grin *

So I converted this blog ...

to be all handy-dandy and modern and well I discovered (not unexpectedly) that what it did was make it impossible for me to blog from work. Thus my silence over the past little while. I often blogged during a spare moment here or there at work -- no more. :( Well I can blog. I just can't actually post to my blog. So I wote this a few days ago and I'm just getting around to posting it now.

I am a professional writer. Something I have always wanted to be. Somedays, like yesterday, I am a VERY good professional writer. Somedays, like last week a pretty bad one. There is nothing to indicate which one you will get though. Doesn’t matter the topic, doesn’t matter my knowledge level or even how I am feeling.

I wrote a really good speech this week, well last week actually. It was horrible to write. I volunteered to write that particular speech because I thought the topic would be interesting – it wasn’t. It was painfully boring (to me! The audience will probably be interested) after about the first page. It took me forever to write, not because I was working so hard, but because I spent much of last week procrastinating and surfing the web rather than writing. The final product though will make people laugh and will make people cry. That’s something that I’ve learned, over the short while that I have been doing this, you can’t purposefully try to do. You just have to write honest speeches and if the spark is there is will be there. This speech hums, I’m proud of it.

So here I sit waiting for the critics to tear it apart. After we write a speech, because we aren’t experts in everything or anything for that matter, we send it out to the experts to vet it and make sure we aren’t saying anything wrong or anything that will have Islamic militants putting a price on our heads (take note Pope Benedict!). Apparently, my speech, brilliant as it is, is FULL of factual errors. Don’t blame me, blame our Chief of the Defence Staff as he pretty much dictated the speech to me (I just made it pretty). He’s a big cheese though and I’m not going to tell him he was wrong. I’m letting the experts do that directly (there were many fireworks set off yesterday. I lit the fuse and then went home). So as I said here I sit. I have nothing to do until the fireworks are finished. I’m somewhat nervous since the critics (I mean vetters) didn’t say what was wrong with my speech just that it was full of errors.

In my spare time I figured it was time to write Sam “his story.” I wrote one for Kamryn as a present for her first birthday. Sam’s will be a present for Christmas. I will also redo Kamryn’s at that time as hers is a flimsy laminated book and technology has advanced somewhat since I made it. It also has some pictures in it that I don’t want to use anymore for various reasons.

Okay now back to all my bragging about being a professional writer. I have no idea how to go about writing my wee son’s story. It’s so complicated and kind of depressing and it can’t be. It has to be something he is proud of. His beginnings. His origins. How much he was wanted and loved. Ugh! How do I convey that? I’m going to stop procrastinating here now and go and stare at a blank screen instead. Wish me luck.

So this is the part where I teach my daughter about community responsibility

Only I'm failing miserably. For the last two years Kamryn and I have walked in the Mother Daughter Walk Heart and Stroke. I started with a neighbour who dropped out after the first year and have continued on my own (with Kamryn of course). I saw it as a good way to be a little active, have some fun but most importantly teach Kamryn about community responsibility.

Okay there is a slight problem here. I like walking. I love doing stuff with Kamryn and I am community minded. The problem -- I HATE asking people for anything much less money. So I dread it every year. But I made this pledge you see. To do it for Kamryn.

So this year's walk rolled around -- they've changed it to a "family" walk now. and back in August I dutifully signed up and began to dread asking for pledges when I saw an out and leapt at it. I signed Kamryn up for swimming lessons and her first lesson clashed with the walk. I seriously considered having her skip that first lesson but I had specifically siged her up for this session because they had 12 classes in a row and I thought with this good block of classes there was a small chance of her learning how to swim. So I decided we would forgo the walk this year (yay! no asking for pledges!!!!) and find something else equally civic minded to do later in the year. Today they called to tell me that the first swimming class is cancelled. My excuse vanished.

So here I am 1 week to go before the walk with no excuse not to participate and exactly $0 in pledges. Pathetic. Actually I have $50 in pledges because I'm about to go and sponsor myself. Truly pathetic. Last year we raised $530 which I was proud of until I saw that the two people I sponsored for the Breast Cancer Run for the Cure both collected pledges in excess of $1000. Obviously I need to get over my problems with asking for money.

Everywhere I look in our family (and both kids birthfamilies) there is heart disease so there is personal link here. Okay I'm off to pledge some money to myself. If you are interested in doing likewise (for which I would be eternally grateful) here is the link to the Heart and Stroke pledge form.

Well, I dropped my baby off at “big girl school” this morning.

It was sooooooooooo much harder than I thought it would be. I think my heart is broken.

I was so excited for her right up until about 5:00 pm last night and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. She was going out into the world without me and she would be just fine (at least I keep telling myself that).

On the way home from work last night, as I cut across the mall to my car I had a small panic attack over the fact that we had chosen not to buy her a fleece as part of her uniform. They didn’t have one her size for us to sample when we were buying uniforms so we figured we would just wait until the fall order. I never thought we would have such a cold September.

It was a good place to panic over that though because there was a Children’s Place right there and I popped in and bought her a nice thick cable knit sweater that looks good with her uniform. I don’t think they are allowed to wear “no uniform” apparel inside the school but I think it would take a really heartless teacher to let a four year old sit there and freeze (I think it’s probably warm inside the school anyways). Anyway so she has the sweater.

Last night I made her try on her entire uniform (for the gazzillionth time) just to make sure it was set for this morning. (I went though a similar routine with Sam who started preschool today but I was less anxious).

Last night around 9:30 and long after I had tucked Kamryn away in bed she came wandering downstairs, blanket in hand and a little sobby/sniffly to tell me she wanted to go to [her school]. I expect she had had a dream — as excited and anxious as she was. I don’t think she slept at all well last night. Excitement, anticipation, nerves and the beginnings of a cold did nothing to help her. I actually had to wake her this morning which is almost unheard of.

She did tell me she wasn’t feeling particularly well and didn’t eat all that wonderfully at breakfast. I took her temperature and luckily it was normal. I think the cold was getting to her but so were nerves. Poor kid. Regardless, we managed to get dressed, snap a bunch of photos and get out of the house somewhat on time.

Got to the school and her teacher was outside waiting for her surrounded by a cluster of 4 year olds, most of whom looked a great deal happier than Kamryn to be there (although going through my pictures this afternoon I see that she was pretty typical). She wasn’t sad per se but much more nervous than I expected her to be. More pictures and then lots of hanging around then they did a train to go into the school.

I made her a Sunbutter sandwich, with a Nutrigrain bar and raisins for lunch and an apple for a snack. She did feel it necessary to describe this in intimate detail to her teacher. :) She has a little surprise as I slipped chocolate milk in her lunch bag without her knowing. She really loves chocolate milk.

I had a hard time not crying when leaving her at the school (totally unlike me!). Hell, I’m having a hard time not crying just writing about it. There has been much blinking this morning and looking down. Now I’m not trying to be tough and suck it up. I just didn’t want to have to explain to Daniel why I was in tears and well… crying at work would be bad. Lol

After dropping Kamryn at school, just to make matters a little worse, we had to drop Sam off for his first day at pre-school. He’s done summer camp so it doesn’t feel so “first dayish” but really it is his first day too and he shouldn’t be jipped. Summer camp and preschool follow somewhat different routines and he’s all by himself without his big sis to look out for him. So that made me all teary as well. All in all – good morning for the kids, not to good morning for Mom.

I have pictures though...

Before leaving the house:









Arriving at the school:







Off to class:

I'm buying stock in Lego...

Kamryn and Sam have been playing quietly (everything being relative) all morning with some old lego that I dragged up from the basement. Minimal fighting or trying to kill each another. Why didn't I do this sooner. To inifinity and beyond ...

On a completely unrelated not but bizarrely embarassing reason for not posting longer, I seem to have wrenched my right shoulder while (don't ask!) positioning myself on the ummm... commode last night. Ah well. Lord I'm old. Ít's not all that bad but kind of funny, doncha think? I'd laugh but -- wince -- ouch. :)

My "Before" Pics

There isn't much to say here, except that it was ugly and I hated it and I'm a little embarassed by the pictures.







La pièce de la résistance:

So I have "After" pictures too... and a whine. :)

Who would have thought getting glorious new furniture would be SOOOOOO much work?

I called the furniture store on Friday afternoon to see if I could get an ETA on my furniture's arrival and was delighted to find out that everything was in. Woohoo! Me. They said they could deliver it on Saturday - perfect. Daniel was working Saturday and I was likely going to be stuck at home anyways. I was very pleased. I got home and hit my pace nagging poor Daniel. The existing dinning room -- awful as it was -- needed to be completely packed up. Not and easy task. Lord do we have a lot of "cochonrie" (Creole for junk!) I never would have believed it. Packing up the contents of the dining room and finally getting the chandelier hung took the better part of the night. Of course the eletrical box for the chandelier is no where NEAR the centre of the room. Sigh, new reason to curse my builder -- lazy sots. The chandelier came with handy hooks though so while not perfect it will do. So Friday afternoon doing muckity muck work.

Saturday, the delivery guys arrived at around 11:30. It took them three-quarters of an hour to get everything unloaded, assembled etc. In the middle of it all my mother appeared. Once she left and I got the kids fed and into bed for their naps (you would have thought the delivery guys had delivered a pony as excited and Sam and Kamryn were) I started working again. The shelves for the hutch had to be unloaded and assembled and all the glass had to be cleaned. So I did that. I dusted everything and then I swept up endless styrofoam that I STILL keep finding. Then I started putting dishes and dining room stuff away in the hutch. Who would have thought I had so much crystal. Okay I knew I had it, it's just I hadn't seen most of it in a while. It was scattered in various nooks and crannies in the kitchen and in our family room wall unit. Most of it was dusty and needed to be washed before being placed in a glass display case. Scarily at least 50% of it still had price tags on it. Ouch! These were ALL wedding gifts and we love the pattern which has now been dicontinued but we've been married 8 years and we still have tons o' glasses with the price tags attached. Nine years ago EACH glass was $36. I keep imagining what I could do with all that money now. lol Ungrateful git that I am... Anyway to took forver to get the hutch organized. Then I was Martha Stewart and cooked a good homecooked meal for the family. I really felt like Suzy Homemaker.

Today, I zinged out to Home Depot for Scotch Guard (we got a deal on the set and the white chairs aren't Scotch Guarded). Okay the furniture assembler's in their wisdom attached the seats of the chairs onto the frames without taking off the plastic bag that covered them. Getting the plastic off took forever and there are still little tell tale strings of plastic in places where I just couldn't tug it off. Then I scotch guarded all the chairs - that got old fast. The manufacturer (of the Scoth Guard) recommends up to two coats. I was going to do two coats until I got to about chair number 4. One good coat better be enough. Okay so then we were finally done (while I was Scotch Guarding chairs, Daniel was moving the Chandelier so it hung approximately in the middle of the table and I could take pictures ...

Okay I'm trying something new...

I'm always pleased to receive comments on my enteries. It bolsters my ego (which needs constant stroking or it gets cranky) and makes me feel loved. :) So thank you to those that post. Thank you to to those that read and do not post; I'm actually guilty of doing that on far to many people's blogs.

I do however feel quite guilty that people ask me things and make suggestions and I appear to ignore them. I'm not ignoring you at all I just don't always figure out how to respond appropriately. I could just make seperate enteries but I have a small brain that is very cluttered with important worries (like how to make lunch for a child and when to eat my own lunch. Sigh it's 2 pm and I have again forgotten to eat lunch and will now ruin my dinner). I often forget to make said important enteries and then weeks have gone by and it seems pointless since no one will have any idea what I am talking about.

It was easy on TLOL because I would get an e-mail with someone's comment and I could just reply to the e-mail. Not so easy here. Except I do have an easy mechanism that if I had a bigger brain I would have figured out sooner - make a comment of my own.

So I'm making comments on my own blog which not only lets people know that I appreciate them and care about what they have to say but also has the added advantage of building my comment numbers. lol

Okay now I'm worrying that those I don't respond to will think I don't like them...

I'm getting an ulcer. I do like you. I just didn't have anything intelligent to say except thank you. :)

Is it bad to have peanuts and diet coke for lunch?

I'm laughing at myself (just a little) and completely panicking

Over school lunches of all things. Yesterday, at the orientation interview for Kamryn, who starts “big girl” school next Wednesday, I found out that I had misunderstood the whole staggered start thing they are doing. I THOUGHT that the two days she was going next week (Wednesday and Friday) were half days. Seems reasonable since they are gradually introducing them supposedly. Nope – it’s a full day 8:30 – 3:00 pm. The whole “staggered start” seems a lot more useless to me now. But what has been slammed home to me is that I have to send her with a lunch on Wednesday! I think it’s the immediacy of it all that is getting to me.

I just called Daniel from work in a complete panic that he go to the store immediately and start buying up truckloads of peanut-free merchandise:

- Chewy Granola bars (what?!? You only bought a normal sized box; why not an econo box?!? Those will never last!!!!)
- Nutragrain bars
- Yogurt – ummm get little yogurts rather than the family sized jobbers we normally get. No wait get little ziplock plastic throw aways. Ummm – what if those pop open. No wait get the little yogurts AND the normal family sized ones.
- Cold meats we need cold meats lots and lots of cold meats.

Pretty obvious we’ve been married awhile. He listened on the other end of the phone as I rattled stuff off, talking mostly to myself. Then when I realized how silly I sounded AND the fact that I need to pack exactly two lunches total next week and kind of petered off and told him to ignore everything I just said he said “okay, honey”.

I am so stressed out about lunches. Lol

My kid won’t eat eggs or cheese and isn’t a huge fan of sandwiches. She’s also a messy eater and I worry what her uniforms will look like after I send her to school with thermoses full of pasta and soup (I’ll do it but it scares me). Also (just to stress me out because I am above all else a rule follower) the school has made it quite clear that only “healthy lunches” are acceptable. I stood in the hall yesterday and listened to a teacher tell her kindergartners to go to their lunch boxes and get a piece of fruit, a vegetable or some cheese to have for their snacks – yikes – she made no mention of Nutragrain Bars or muffins or cookies (my mom had it so easy!)

Sigh. This really isn’t a huge problem I’m sure. I have loads of stuff I can feed her. Daniel bought a teeny weeny bottle of sunbutter for 9 bucks – so I have that. He swears he won’t buy it ever again. I pointed out that a bottle of Scotch is $60; he got quiet. I feed her healthy stuff at home for lunch every day. She LOVES fruit and vegetables.

I’m panicking mostly I think because I need something to panic over. I’m a goof. Just thought I would share that with you all.

We're all going to be blind as bats.

Also today, we had both kids eyes checked. Oi! What an appointment. Sam and Kamryn spent last night with my parents so that Claude and I could celebrate our 8th Anniversary of not trying to kill each other with forks. :) I know that when they stay with their grandparents sleep isn’t to be had in mass quantities. They manipulate my parents. They go down late and get up early. My kids, neither of them, do particularly well without their normal quota of sleep. Kamryn gets hyper and annoying; Sam whiney and tantrumy. It was one of those appointments where you know the staff would be talking about you when you left. I was certain Kamryn was going to break something expensive. Sam had a meltdown over giving back the doctor the little toy she used to test his eye movement. Sigh. Both kids are eventually going to end up bespectacled. I guess not a huge surprise because both birthmoms wear glasses (the optometrist doesn’t know either kid is adopted).

Let me preface this explanation of why my kids are going to need to eat A LOT of carrots not to end up in little horn rimmed glasses with the fact that I can never remember which terms mean which (i.e. nearsighted, farsighted, short-sighted etc.). I’ve thrown the terms in here from what I thought the doctor said but I may have mixed them up. So if you’re not suffering from the same mental block I am and I seem not to be making coherent sense, substitute the opposite of what I’m saying and it will probably work.

Kamryn has developed a slight astigmatism that isn’t bad enough to need correction yet and may disappear on its own. The doctor told me that astigmatisms can appear and disappear as the eye changes with growth. She’s also LESS farsighted than she should be at this point in her development, which means she may end up nearsighted in the end. We’ll watch it she said; no worries (or glasses) until next year.

Her first comment on Sam was that he had really big eyes. Duh tell me something I don’t know. What I didn’t know, but what she explained, was that people with really big eyes tend to be far-sighted. So we’ll be watching him too.

It does though look like in a few short years our entire family will be decked out in what will be expensive eyewear. Ah well. No REAL problems have been identified and that’s a good thing.

School Interview

Well this morning we had an interview at Kamryn's school with her new teacher. She has a morning teacher and an afternoon "early childhood education specialist" (read: daycare provider although they do do a little more than a daycare would). Both of them are named Julie. Too easy. She will attend school full-time but her afternoons are supposed to more play-based and focused almost exclusively on developnig language. This is because many of her classmates will be going to school in their second language and it is intended as a catch-up. My friend who has had her child already go through this program and is a teacher herself tells me in the end they end up well ahead of their peers in other programmes. This isn't why we are doing this but that's a nice fringe benefit I guess. We are enrolled in this programme because there isn't another option. All french language schools structure their pre-K and Kindergarten programmes this way.

So we had our first meeting this morning. Kamryn looked very cute in the same dress I sent her to preschool in and a nice white blouse with her new blue shoes (school shoes must be blue or black) and some aqua socks. I describe her outfit in such detail because:

a) I forgot my camera and took no pictures.
b) She was the only child in the school dressed that way - oops!

All the other children were in uniforms (school started yesterday for all grades except pre-K). The child who had the interview before Kamryn was wearing her uniform. The child who had the interview after Kamryn was wearing her uniform. Okay I figured that it was a 45 minute get to know you interview and that it didn't make much sense to waste a perfectly clean uniform on 45 minutes. I guess I fugred wrong. No one said anything though. * shrug * Although I guess there was a casual remark made to Kamryn with a quick glance at her delinquent parents that when she came for "real" next week she would be wearing her uniform.

Kamryn didn't really participate all that much in this interview. She played with a puzzle with ECE (early childhood ed ...) Julie while we met teacher Julie and then she joined us in the classroom and checked out the doll house and the play kitchen while we chatted with Julies squared.

We answered a host of VERY boring questions about Kamryn's completely typical development and generallly accomodating and independent nature. We smiled to ourselves as the Julies worried about Kamryn suffering any separation anxiety. Daniel commented later that he's pretty certain he could put Kamryn on a plane with a flight attendant she had never laid eyes on and leave her with no concerns. I we discussed her development I was waiting, hackles already up, indignant reply playing through my head about why they needed to know, for "is the child adopted." I know that for a lot of schools that is a standard question. It's not a secret, it's just not an appropriate question in my opinion. The question never came. All that choler wasted.

I found out that nap time is 12:15 - 1:00 (I think they nap instead of a noon recess but I didn't ask further). I'm thinking unless they REALLY work them in the morning there is no way Kamryn will nap during that period but I guess we'll see. I know she will want to nap before the school day is over. I also found out that she has 16 children in her class which is at least 4 fewer than I thought there would be and which makes me happy. It looks like one of her "friends" from preschool will be in her class which has its advantages in at least she will know someone else and its disadvantages in that the little girl isn't the best influence (if she is any influence at all) on Kamryn in my opinion again we will see.

The biggest revelation of the meeting was that school next Wednesday is ALL day. I though it started as a half day; I don't know where I got that idea. So she is right into it next Wednesday.

We found her cubby in which she stowed her shoes and her blanket for nap time. There are no other Kamryn's in Pre-K although there are at least two in Kindergarten (this we discovered by reading the names of all the children outside the various classrooms).

We talked a bit about their teaching methods and Kamryn's sometime reluctance to try new things and/or to give up immediately when encountering any difficulty or missing perfection on her first try. We also discussed Kamryn's tendancy towards excitability when pair with another child (she is quite calm without an audience/accomplice). Part of the educational approach is teaching children to work calmly and quietly on their own - oh that will teach her LOADS!

All in all a good meeting. Kamryn is now very excited to return to school. It feels nice to see her looking forward to it.

My Across the Street Neighbour

Some may remember my posts about my neighbour who has waited it seems FOREVER to adopt a baby from Russia. Well, they left this morning to go and bring Maxime (pronounced Max-eem, we have another french Canadian on our street lol) home. He's 16 months old and just adorable. White blond hair and blue eyes and a little moon face. Can't wait to meet him. They are going to have so much fun.

I've never known a "real-life" contemporary who has adopted before (I've met many online friends that have been down that path but it's different when the person lives across the street). All my adoption experience have been friends that were adopted or friends of my parents who were adopting. This is the first time I have "seen it all go down." You know, I'm more excited for them than I was for friends who have been pregnant (even those who have undergone infertility treatments). I think it's because I understand how bad the ache and despair is and I know how much fun they are going to have. I'm just giddy for them.

Maxime may be the last addition to our street for a long while. I do have a neighbour who's daughter was tragically born stillborn this spring but I don't know what there plans are (I think they MIGHT try again but I know her heart is hurting :(). I think pretty much all of my other neighbours families are complete. It's been a 6 year cycle of babies, babies and more babies and now everyone's house is full :).

Last Day of Preschool

Thursday was Kamryn’s last day of preschool. Left me feeling all gooey inside.

I dressed her in the same dress she wore when she started preschool in January 2005! lol I guess I bought it a little big. I can remember looking at the shots I took back then and thinking how very grown up she looked. Looking back at them she was sooooooo very little.

She starts "big girl" school on 6 Sept and keeps asking me when she's going to be big like me. I get the idea that she thinks she will go to bed one night and wake up the next morning 5'9" and way too many pounds.

I'm sad that I won't be taking her to preschool anymore. She really enjoyed her time there. She's psyched to start school though and I'm very excited for her. She's ready and it's pretty obvious that she's outgrown her current school and needs more of a challenge. Bring on elementary school. Yikes!

We go into her school on Wednesday to meet her teacher and have a little pre-school interview. Her first day is September 6th.

Yadda-yadda-yadda...

Some Mom I am... I told you all about my new dining room and not at all about my "new" son. I thought I had; I honestly did. My excuse is that work is CRAZY right now. I've written 6 speeches in the last 8 days during a period that is supposed to be the quiestest of the year (ya right!)

Okay back to Sam. We can't shut him up. He talks constantly, has an opinion on everything and wants you to hear it. This summer has been phenominal for him he has just exploded linguistically. That's how it was with Kamryn to some extent but she was just silent and then talked. Sam was unintelligible for so long and then I guess something just clicked. He, interestingly, speaks MUCH more French than English. Odd.

Anyway, despite having most of our worries about his language development assuaged Daniel insisted we go forward with the appointment we made to have his language formally evaluated. The speech pathologist came to our home last Thursday for the evaluation. I couldn't have been prouder of Sam. You never know which little boy will show up (or stay!) - cooperative, happy boy or miserable, tantruming, you can't make me boy. For a two year old, Sam couldn't have behaved better.

The speech pathologist told us that she planned to start off with her regular test and see how long he would tolerate the formal test but that at his age children normally couldn't do it. Ha! Sam was cooperative from start to finish. He was even having fun. The good thing about the test was that by being forced to say specific words/sounds, we got a very good picture of what he could and couldn't say. I was really surprised at some of the things I didn't think he could do that he did fine when pushed. I think he might be a "lazy" ennunciator. Why try if gobbledegook works? he was nailing complicated words AND he was doing a lot of them in English which truly is his second language (she brought the wrong test along with her). It was funny at one point she pointed to the duck on her flashcard and asked Sam what it was. He told her "canard" (duck in french). She was trying to see if he could say the "Du - ck" sound and told him it was "duck in english" he looked at her like she was from Mars and said "no! Canard!" I cracked up.

He did very well with the flash cards, describing things he wasn't even asked to descibe. He was using 3 word sentences. He was flying. She did four different tests and then skipped the last one because she told us he was definitely on track and maybe even ahead and she didn't feel it necessary to waste our time and money further. In truth he was using sounds that he shouldn't be able to do for a few years. I was very proud of him.

We're waiting for the report to be written up, but honestly all concerns are completely gone. Now our only concern is how we will survive two non-stop chatterboxes in the house. Poor Daniel, the only quiet one in the family, he will never get a moment's silence.

A really important post (tongue firmly in cheek)

Okay don’t get me wrong – I have a nice house. It’s big, not as big as some but plenty for a family our size. It’s got some really nice touches. For instance we have a good sized family room off the kitchen which has some great advantages. The kids can destroy it/play while I cook dinner for instance. I also have a small laundry room off the kitchen which makes doing laundry a little less of a chore (although my family room is often full of laundry needing folding lol). Still, I’m often a little embarrassed when people come to visit.

We built this home in 2000. RIGHT in the middle of our infertility woes. If you didn’t know that we’d wasted (read:spent) an obscene amount of money on infertility treatments followed by two reasonable priced but still expensive adoptions you’d really wonder whey we wasted our money on such a large house that we couldn’t afford to furnish. We’ve been working on things. Slowly. We’ve gone room by room and done what we could afford. Family room — check. Nursery — check. Kitchen — check. Big girl room — check (Sam inherited the nursery). Living room — getting there. Our bedroom well – we’ll just close the door. Dinning room — maybe we should install doors or perhaps just seal it off.

When we moved in everyone in my family HATED the light fixture in our kitchen. As a housewarming gift my parents bought us a new fixture. We took the hated lighting fixture and hung it in the dining room where there was nothing, temporarily. Ya. It’s been six years. It gets worse. For our formal dinning room table we used the table my father’s friend had given me when I moved out of my parents’ house. Okay, it’s the one he had when he himself had gotten married 40 years ago, an old brown melamine table, nothing special. When you use your knife at this table, the entire table shakes. My father re-upholstered the four wooden chairs for me. The re-upholstered part is quite nice. The chairs, well they need a good coat of paint. They are after all 40 years old. We took the Ikea book cases from Claude’s old apartment, the one’s he used as a TV stand to use in place of a buffet and/or hutch. It was better than an empty room.

When more than 4 people came for dinner I would use our old kitchen table on little wooden blocks (so the tables were the same height) and cover them with a tablecloth.
I stored my good dishes and crystal in my kitchen pantry. I tried to be casual with guests about not finding just the right set yet. If I get a chance this week I’ll take a picture and let you drink all the luxury in.

So a friend came to hang out last week. They just built a new house down the road from us last fall. When they moved they left ALL their old furniture behind and bought all new stuff for their new house. Their home is devine. As we sat using the computer in our dinning room (might as well dump the computer there as we aren’t affecting the decor any). I commented that I had finally found a light fixture for the dinning room and that maybe it would give me the incentive to finish off the whole room. She giggled a little too politely at my little joke. Sigh.

Anyway I bought the “chandelier” the next day. Without telling my husband. It really is a temporary chandelier but definitely less temporary and embarrassing looking as what we have there now. I pulled out the new Ikea catalogue when he got home and told him I was sick of waiting to buy a dining room set that we liked AND could afford and that maybe we should get something serviceable and just live with that for awhile. The next day he showed me a furniture flyer that had a set that looked all right in the ad on sale. It was a going out of business sale. I acquiesced to going down and looking although I had no real intention of buying anything. We’ve looked for years and NEVER purchased. Only dreamt. On Saturday, 2 seconds after walking in the door, we had a new dining room set. We got home an on checking out our dining room and imagining the set in place (it won’t be delivered for 3 weeks) I decided that we needed to take better advantage of the sale that the Bombay Company was having and that I also needed a new clock. Ta da! Off to the store on yesterday to buy a new clock and just like that we now have a formal dining room. Although I still need window treatments and I guess I have to find somewhere else for the computer or at least a nicer desk.

I’m giddy with excitement and keep looking into the room longingly. Okay it’s a silly thing to be excited about but what I’m really excited about is living in a grown-ups house after living like a student for so very long. I have a good job. I’m careful with my money. This shouldn’t have taken so long. Infertility affects us in so many ways. If I could pop kids out like the next guy well this would have been done years ago and then some.

Ah well — Off to look at roll top desks.

On the Kids' Birthfamilies

Okay this is going to be disjointed. Sorry, I’m throwing up on paper. Lol

I’ve been reading kind of off and on of late, the Naked Ovary. I’m insanely jealous of the fact that hundreds/thousands(?) of people read her blog and about 20 read mine lol. She is much more interesting and funny than I am. I don’t spend a lot of time reading it though because she generally is writing about where I’ve already been and while interesting isn’t adding much to my life except voyeuristic glee (lots of that lately since she has just been matched :)) Anyway, recently – big controversy – on her opinions or, for some, apparent lack there of on her daughter’s birthmother. Started me thinking a little of Kamryn and Sam’s birthfamilies.

I think about their birthparents a lot. Probably daily. It’s part of raising the adoptive kid. There are adoptive parents out there who I know like to pretend the birthparents don’t exist. Sadly many more than you’d expect. I can’t. Kamryn will proudly tell you that she has gorgeous curly hair – just like her birthmom Sarah. Sam has a collage on his wall of his birth family that we go through each night in the hopes that he will not forget the family he spent the first year of his life with but now never sees. Anyway we think about them and talk about them a lot. It’s not always easy.

About a year ago I wrote about ending the monthly updates with Kamryn’s birthparents. A distance has developed there. I don’t know if it’s because I chose not to write as often and they were waiting for permission to step back a bit or if it is just circumstances. Kamryn’s birthdad moved to Kenya in January and technology makes it harder for him to stay in contact. When I do send out e-mails I may or may not get a response from Kamryn’s birthmother. If I do get a response it could be WEEKS later. From her birthdad we hear very little. Never an e-mail (he does have e-mail access I think). He’s called three times – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Kamryn’s birthday. Dunno. Contact is good just not often.

Sam’s birthfamily is sporadic as well. Nana, claims she doesn’t get my e-mails. Well I can’t fix whatever filter she has accidentally put on her e-mail account from here. She calls but not very often – once every two months or so, maybe. She was supposed to visit in May (for his birthday) but had to cancel (pretty typical of her) and has finally rescheduled for the end of August but I’m not holding my breath. She last visited (her only time) in November 2005. She is afraid he will have forgotten her – so now I’m anxious that he has. We show him her picture nightly (as I mentioned above) but there isn’t much more than we can do. Also – he used to call Kamryn, Nana (I understand this only makes sense to those of you who know Kamryn’s real name). That’s how he said her name. After months of repeating “not Nana, say Kamryn” he finally got it. About two weeks ago. So I told him to say goodbye to Nana on the phone last week and he says, you guessed it, good-bye Kamryn. So now part of our nighttime routine is reinforcing the word “Nana.” He now thinks it's a big joke and this kid LOVES to clown. God only knows what he will say when he actually sees her. She won't think it's funny if he doesn't call her Nana.

Anyway, contact with Sam’s birthmother has been weird but that’s not unusual either. As our relationship “develops” her developmental delays are more and more apparent. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not dealing with an adult but, mentally in a lot of ways, a pre-teenager. When she sends an e-mail I need to respond immediately or she panics that we are somehow hiding from her. No matter that she doesn’t respond to an e-mail from us for months if at all. She needs that reassurance that we haven’t disappeared with her boy. I understand that little but she panics after hours not days. She might send us 12 e-mails in a week. She may not send us any e-mails for months and months. We worry when she disappears because we seriously worry about losing her someday (as does her own family). Anyway… nothing we can do there. She’s had serious difficulties of late that I can’t get into but at least would make her easier to find. Sigh.

Okay all that ramble brings me to who I’m really thinking about and the serious repercussions -- Sam’s birthfather. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t; no one knows but we spent a lot of money terminating his parental rights because he wasn’t cooperating. He was happy to interfere just enough to slow the adoption down but not enough to actually get involved (i.e. show up at court or even answer the phone). He never stated anything about wanting Sam by the way. There never really was a chance of him getting him. If Sam hadn't been adopted by us or another family he would have become a permanent ward of the state. Before the adoption was finalized the adoption agency counseled that we have no contact with him whatsoever. He’s kind of a scary guy so I’m not sure I want any contact with him. I would like to know for sure whether he is Sam’s birthfather though for several reasons most predominant of which is that Sam’s going to want to know and I want to be able to tell him.

I have this man's last known address, his grandmother’s house, so conceivably if I sent something there it would eventually make it’s way to her. I don’t want him to have our address though (although if he is Sam's birthfather I wouldn't be adverse to letting him know about this great little boy). I need to look into maybe renting a PO Box. I don’t know if he’d write back. I don’t know how long I’d have to keep the PO Box. Perhaps I should write him through the adoption agency. I don’t know if they’d help or if have to pay for that kind of help. Lots of I don’t knows. It makes it easier to procrastinate. The longer I procrastinate though the greater the likelihood that I will lose this man who right now is just a name and the nasty things we’ve been told.

I am so dreading the questions that will come from Sam on his birthfamily. They are going to be VERY tough to answer. In this case I wish I knew less because “I don’t know” would be the easy answer. But I do know, and because of that I need to know more. It's all very depressing.

Wanna know a secret?

I don’t miss my husband.

Okay I do miss him but not in the way I expected to miss him. I miss his company, not his help. I was thinking this morning as I walked into work that this is not at all as hard as I thought being alone was going to be. I’m quite competent and kind of enjoying the simplicity of doing things on my own – my way.

Now I’ve cut some corners in the past few days but not that many. I actually had to edit this paragraph because I was listing the corners that I was cutting and I could only really come up with one thing. They’ve eaten (for some strange reason) a lot of hot dogs. Oh and I haven’t put the laundry away – I just keeping moving it back and forth from the big chair in my bedroom to the bed and back again. Last night, (at midnight!) I at least folded a bunch of it.

The kids have had their normal number of baths and showers. I’ve been grocery shopping with them. They’ve had a playdate that included dinner – hotdogs! They’ve been to a picnic – more hot dogs! Tonight, if it doesn’t rain I’m going to take them to this new and wonderful park that the Kiwanis Club has built a short drive from our house. We will have something for dinner that isn’t composed of spare beef bits grinded up. The house (except to the laundry, hidden in my bedroom since the playdate on Friday (when I moved it from the couch in the playroom lol) is neat and picked up. I’ve ordered a new chandelier for the dinning room that I haven’t even mentioned to Daniel (it was on sale and there were only a “limited number” (fifty-six) available so I had to act fast lol).

It’s just so much easier to say wash the dishes when I know I’m the one who dirtied them. I feel responsible for making sure they get washed immediately. I get my dérrière out of bed in the morning to get everyone washed and fed because there isn’t anyone else to do it. It’s much easier to pull up your socks when you know that if you don’t then your ankles will just get cold – no one else is going to do anything about it. I feel less guilty when I hop on to the computer after the kids have gone to bed instead of spending “quality time” gazing at the TV and drooling next to Daniel on the couch.

Okay sleep isn’t going well at all – for me though, not the kids. They are sleeping fine. I haven’t managed to close my eyes much before 1 am yet. I hate sleeping alone. Last night was the best but that’s because the exhaustion is catching up on me. Tonight will hopefully be easier still and tomorrow, late, he will be home. Got to get the laundry away.

The kids seem to be doing fine as well. They ask about Daniel but more in a matter of fact, accepting way and MUCH less than I thought they would. I have told them both that Daniel is on vacation visiting his “Maman and Papa.” Kamryn gets this and asked me this morning how much longer we were going to wait for him (like we were sitting pining by the window lol). :) Sam seems to equate the word “vacation” with his grandparents (who were on vacation for the better part of this summer) and golf (also a grandparent thing) so he thinks his dad is out playing a very long game of golf I guess. Lol They’re doing fine but will be thrilled to see their father on Wednesday morning.

So we are all holding it together. I think much longer than a week and what would get to me would be the loneliness. Competency is fine. Having time to do what I want to do instead of lining things up with Daniel – nice, but when the kids go down it is AWFUL quiet in the house. I couldn’t handle much more the 6 days of it I think. That and while it’s Monday morning I can’t say I feel particularly rested. I feel like I spent ALL weekend running - hard. Every joint and muscle in my body is actually sore. I think I’m actually a little exhausted and it’s only been 5 days. Egads. I am spoiled.

My Sunday at the beach (not really a day at the beach)

I'm so punny. :) lol

I've always been of the mind that at 2 discipline is pretty hit and miss. You try to discipline because well you can't let your kids run wild (or can you?). Anyway you do your best and just hope. I expect that everything I say remains in Sam's little head for about 2.3 minutes - about the length of a time-out. I am sooooo wrong about that.

Yesterday, I took Kamryn and Same to a big family picnic that friends of my parents hold every year. It was VERY close to home. My plan had been to take the kids in the morning and let them play, feed them lunch at the picnic and then run them home for naps around 2. That meant pushing nap time for Sam by just a little (on a normal morning where he hasn't been playing hard he goes down around 1:30).

So at around 1:00 I sat them down to give them lunch. My four year old sits down happily to eat. The moment Sam sees her get food, he starts to freak out that he wants some to. Okay give me a sec kid I have yours all ready I just got Kamryn set up first because she's easier. I take him by the hand and lead him to the other side of the picnic table. Sit him down and give him his little styrofoam plate of cut up hot-dog and bread. I got back around the other side to open up the cooler and get them their milk. In the cooler were juice boxes. I very rarely let my kids have juice - no better than liquid candy. Special occasions (like picnics in the park) are the rule. We don't even buy juice at home. Earlier I had given them both a juice box with their snack. He knows the juice is in the cooler and IMMEDIATELY refuses to eat and demands juice. I told him there was no juice for him and to eat his lunch and that I had milk for him. He looks me in the face, scowls and sweeps his hand rapidly across the table, flinging his food to the dirt below.

I, calmly, (quite proud of myself here - nothing like having a battle of wills with a two-year old in front of at least 30 people who knew you when you were two-years old!) asked my mother if she would keep my Kamryn for the afternoon - why should she have to leave the picnic early because he brother was in a snit - left instructions on the food in the cooler that Kamryn could have. Picked Sam up and left - all within 3 minutes. The entire time he is screaming at the top of his little lungs and as highly pitched as possible "manger picnic" (eat picnic). I walked to the car - he is screaming. I strap him in - he is screaming. I drive home (5 minutes) he is screaming. I even stopped along the way to give my parking pass to a shocked family that was just arriving - he is screaming. I unstrap him - he is screaming. I carried him upstairs and changed his diaper. Screaming. Put him in his crib screaming. The same phrase over and over and over again - "manger picnic." He is screaming this desperate, high pitched, "you will listen to me or else" way. I never said a word to him after my initial calm reproach that his behaviour was unacceptable. I closed the door and walked downstairs, screaming STOPPED -- like someone turned a switch. I waited 3 minutes and went back upstairs and he was sound asleep. Exhaustion is ALWAYS a bad deal with Sam. He's not giving up naps anytime soon. He slept for exactly 3 hours.

When he got up I changed him, fed him and put him in the car to go back to the picnic. We get about half way there and he keeps saying "ecouter" (listen). So I finally asked "ecouter what" Sam. He says to his stunned mother: "Ecouter Maman. Ecouter Granddad. Ecouter Grandma. Ecouter Kamryn" I laughed at the last one and told him he didn't have to listen to his sister. He went on. "Manger. Pas dégât" (Eat no mess). "Picnic."

Lordy - 4 hours later. He remembered why we had left. He understood the consequences. I never thought it possible.