Oh yeah?

Actual dialogue

"I said, 'No videos until the living room is tidy.' "

"Okay, we'll wait until you're done tidying."

*eye twitch* [I might have flipped someone the bird while his back was turned.]

Followed by internal monologue

"Fine. The living room just went to the bottom of my list, after the kitchen, bathrooms, closets, laundry room, and storage locker."




Ed note: this got drafted quite a while ago but not posted for some reason.

Weigh Ins

John is growing like a weed! a weed, I tell you. And that's making me really hungry. all the time. all the time, I tell you.

age	WEIGHT			HEIGHT
mos	lb,oz	%ile		in	%ile
0*	7,13	60**
2 d	7,10			20.25	80
8 d	8,6	75
1	11,4	80		22.75	94

* If you notice discrepancies from earlier posts, you might just have too much time on your hands. I recalculated his birth weight, which was measured in grams but incorrectly converted to pounds. And the student who measured his length at the hospital was all thumbs. I'm going with our paed's measurement from 2 days.
** very approx. I'm nixing the CDC tables and using the WHO tables, like our paed, but I haven't found one with much granularity. 7,13 is between the 50th to 75th percentile and I'm eye-balling it to 60th.

What John really looks like.

This photo may not have lots of visual or artistic interest but I can't take my eyes off it because it's just so right.

I often find with portraits that the photo just doesn't look like the subject. not completely. And in the 100s I've taken of John, none of them has matched my mental image of him as completely as this one does. I haven't read enough about photography to explain it in technical terms but I'm guessing it has something to with the combination of
- focal length (49.0mm, 35mm equivalent: 78 mm)
- depth of field
- ambient lighting (diffuse natural lighting late in the afternoon, 1/60 sec, f/5.6)
The only digital altering I did here is cropping and retouching a few teeny tiny blemishes.

Some "candids" and "not-so-candids" of John

A dozen of my favourites from John's 300+ first month portraits in chronological order. Sorry, purists, several have been retouched. Mainly for lighting.

one week old

two weeks old

three weeks old

John is a tummy time star. Good staying power and surprising head control.

See what I mean ...

about the room shredding? Naomi alone managed all this mess (we'd just tidied in the morning) and to fall asleep, wearing Adam's dress shoes, in the time it took me to feed John.

But there's no getting mad at this bundle of cuteness, is there?

fun in the tub! (and bedtime woes!)

See how happy they are? That's 'cuz Dion was out of the house. I'm only half-joking, too.

The regular routine is that Dion starts Naomi's tooth-brushing and bath and Adam goes to brush his teeth and have bath 7 minutes later. Naomi gets dried and moisturised and is sent on her way to drop her laundry in the basket, get a pull-up, and read a story with me in the kids' room. If Adam has a "good bath," he gets 1o minutes of an activity of his choice before being sent on his way to bed.

And if Dion is doing bath, there is a good chance of one meltdown or blow-up in there somewhere. Sometimes Dion's, or even mine if I can't bear the arguing emanating from the bathroom. But if Dion is out, and I do bath, it usually goes swimmingly, so to speak.

On the other hand, once the kids are in their room, things usually go great if I'm out of the house and usually not-so-great if I'm home.

Things have been much less predicatable in the past two months, and unsurprisingly, especially since John was born. Not worse, actually better, just less predictable. In the first week, Adam was extra cooperative and agreeable and we had a week of respite from the great limit-testing war of 2011. Then for a week, he swung the other way. Naomi is hot and cold day-to-day. Many nights, I've had to go lie down with them or sit in their room until they settled enough to fall asleep. We're on Adam's fourth good-bedtime-bribery-chart. He's had 4 good nights out of 5 and now I think he's demonstrating to himself that bedtime isn't so bad after all. And whereas, it is very rare that Naomi struggles at naptime (as in just goes into her room on her own and lies down), today, she absolutely lost it. Lost it, I tell you. I had to rock her to sleep as she struggled for breath through sobs and a quivering chin until 30 seconds later she was fast asleep. I think it was just one bad nap.

If anything, I think things are gradually getting better since the worst, which was about 6 weeks ago. One thing that is helping is that in the past 2 or 3 months, Adam and Naomi are getting along with each other better. Adam seems to have developed enough of a conscience to stop using the tactic of attacking Naomi to force our hand in providing attention/intervention. And luckily, he rarely retalliates when she is aggressive with him. He folds. Tonight Dion despaired, "Maybe hockey really is out for Adam."

Perhaps they're even getting along too much better. They can now play together without much help from us and they're even collaborating together - or should I say conspiring? A few weeks ago, they shredded, shredded!, their bedroom together. Over the course of about 3 nights, they had created such a mess (that we didn't make time to tidy immediately) that I pulled Adam from daycare one afternoon to help me clean it up. We got in there and it was so bad that I didn't even know where to begin for a while. Adam's contribution was somewhat symbolic. I had him taking books and toys back to the living room, pretty much one by one, to keep him busy the whole time I was putting everything else back together. I wish I'd thought to get some snapshots. One upside to the room shredding was that Adam introduced Naomi to the potty he found in their closet (though she has yet to use it correctly) and he also found his new favourite book, a Curious George collection, given to us by Karl for Adam's baby shower.

To those of you unfamiliar with young children: Please do not construe any of this as cause for concern. It's all healthy, developmentally/age-appropriate behaviour that is, as a matter of course, improving. And while they are gaining skill at pushing our buttons, I can usually see the humour in all of it, if not immediately then soon after. Most people would never believe Adam and Naomi are capable of any of this. They are amazingly well-behaved in public. We get tons of compliments. They save this stuff especially for us (thanks!), when they feel safest (thanks, I guess). And, we've been at Poh-Poh and Gung-Gung's house so much lately that they're limit-testing there, too. One bedtime was such a disaster, that, as I had warned I would, I packed them into the car and drove them home, somehow, managing to do so without waking P and G!

Anyone wanna babysit? Muhahahahahahah.

See? It ain't all bad.

Saying Goodbye to the Echo

How sad is it that Adam's one shot of me turned out better than any of the three I took of him?

And how cool is it that there is a reflection of the licence plate on my shirt.
And now, a few words about our dearly departed dark red 2003 4-door manual-transmission Echo. Our first car. It was a lovely little car. It will be missed. It served us so well and I wish we could have kept it. But, alas, it would not hold three car seats and we have only one parking space. It had surprising get-up-and-go and surprisingly abundant cargo space - certainly more cargo space than its successor, our new (to us) Mazda 5, when it's configured to seat 5. It was great on gas, inexpensive to insure, and did not need any repairs in the 4.5 years/35 000 km we used it. Yes, it was overdue for a new battery (causing some inconvenience and concern late in my pregnancy when it wouldn't always hold a charge) and the dealer/wholesaler who bought it will need to do some cosmetic work and repair the radio but otherwise, the Echo was in great shape and had less than 100 000 km on the odometer. By my calculations, the capital cost to us was under $1600/year (not much more than one Metropass subscription!) or just over 20 cents/km. I think that's really good; correct me if I'm wrong. Farewell Echo, I hope your next owner appreciates you!

I got a lot of things done between the time school ended (notably, trading in the Echo) and John was born but one of the things I didn't get to was a photo record of my third-trimester belly, like the ones I posted two years ago. The one above will have to do. It's from 17 hours before John was born, at 38 weeks, 5 days.

Ed Note: I have literally 100's of photos to sort through because I've had lots of photo-taking occasions since June and just got a working computer. Luckily I have a 4 GB flash card for my camera. So, I'll be posting in semi-random order. I'll probably start with the least daunting topics. Patience, please.