NOW look what Neil has done- has he gone too far??

***He's sharpied 'Enno', the baby's precious Raggedy Anne. Enno was already getting pretty worn for wear, but really- give her a break, she's 25 years old. She has now been customized with stitches for a mouth, a large, black spiral around her heart and some age lines. Way to go, Neil. Eleanore's precious Enno now looks like something that Tim Burton would make at craft time. The sad fact is that we have to bring this doll everywhere we go if we value our lives. She is a vital component to our peace of mind and quiet-in-the-car-itude.

Is it creepier to photograph her in a sink full of water? I don't know... Enno isn't very modest these days. I worry. I think she's on the drugs. She hardly ever even wears clothes and now with these body modifications and tattoos, I wonder if she hung around the sock zombies for a little too long. I had to put her in the sink to try and sober her up. Get a hold of yourself, Enno!!

Honestly, just look at those empty, junky eyes. THIS is what William S. Burroughs was talking about you guys. This is what naked lunch means.

All I know is that I jeeee-ust can't wait to take my child out with this naked, Crystal-Methity-Anne doll gripped tightly in her pink little fingers. Thanks alot, NEIL.

***disclaimer- Neil might not actually be responsible for this. He claims he was on his way home from work when it happened- and Eleanore did have a permanent marker line that went from her eyebrow to her upper lip when she came around the corner with Enno... but who's to say that Neil didn't sneak home and sharpie the baby, too? Nobody is actually claiming responsibility here.

20 seconds in the life of Michelle.

Ben and I went for a spin down the hill.

The take off... this is gonna be awesome!

WheeEeeEEE!

Oh, didn't see that giant ice lump there...

Here is a nice close up of the moment. If the Titanic was tobogganing with it's kid, it would be me.

Brought to you by: Robaxacet Max.

Mullet in a baggie.

Eleanore/Relic/Eleanore. If only we had a mini tuque.

Yesterday was a pretty big event at our house. It was the cutting of the mullet ceremony. Eleanore's baby mullet is now tucked away in a ziplock baggie for when I want to cherish it. She no longer looks like Joe Dirt and is now a princess rainbow strawberry with her little bob.

It's bittersweet... but the mullet was getting less mulletish and more scraggly 'Relic' from 'The Beachcomers. I will always treasure the time in her life when I got to force her to have a mullet and she didn't even know it. Kind of like what I'm going to do to Neil if he ever goes senile or lands in a coma or something... What a hilarious trick! I can't even wait!

Silence of the Yams

*LOUD OMINOUS THUMP*

6 year old: Um... I need some paper towel.

Me: Hurgh?

6 year old: The watermelon broke and it's leaking.

Me: The watermelon BROKE? How did the watermelon break?

6yo: I was going to wake you up with it.

Me: With a GIANT WATERMELON? How was that going to go down?

6yo: I was going to surprise you.

*silence*

And there it is. A watermelon laying on the floor, cracked open like a giant, delicious skull. That could have been me....

So my son plots against me with produce. I guess it IS a bad idea to buy him a potato cannon after all... or is it? Maybe I should nurture his interests. Good moms do that, right? Maybe I should be encouraging him to be a produce villain, maybe we should put in a garden for the young Lord Vitamin C so that he can pursue his ultimate goal of ruling the world through fruit violence. Lord knows if I don't support him, I may wake up one morning, impaled by some celery & cheeze whiz. Messy messy business.

That freakshow, Captain Vegetable had better be looking over his freakin' shoulder from now on, that's all I know.

Undeniable Fact #1

"A dog's hearing is so good that if it was on the moon and there was like... a siren on earth or something..... It could hear it. THAT'S how good dogs can hear. "

This is the information I picked up today from my 10 year old. When I had suggested that his information miiight be slightly... um.. embroidered, he assured me that this is a true fact. He read it. In a book. Just try and debate it.

Ten year olds know things, man. So many things, that I intend to devote an entire new category to this sort of information. He's like a gold mine of lost truth and I'd hate to forget some of his fruitful insight into things.

This post brought to you by: Booze in my breakfast cereal.

Well. It's 8:06 am and I have had a most wonderful start to my day/continued day from yesterday- seeing as nobody got to sleep- thank you Eleanore's new tooth. We awoke to a chattering baby girl in her crib and an aroma resonating in through our nostrils and out through our ears. At first I thought it might have been my breath. Then I glared at Neil because surely it was HIS. Nope. It all registered in my brain too quickly.

Eleanore pooped the crib, then did some artwork. The little blessing from Heavenly Heaven who I love and adore and forgive and cherish from her piggy tails to her poop caked feet. If you could see the grin plastered across my face, you'd know how much I mean it.

The angel of reek.

Now I'm not going to be one of those parents who claims that the Virgin Mary appeared in the baby's poop-art but I'm telling you- it might have been the last supper (Get it? OH so FUNNY. No it wasn't. Sorry). No it was just the regular poop smears. Don't tell Neil, but so far she's no Picasso. Bev Doolittle maybe.... but not Picasso.

I'm delirious. I didn't sleep. It's not my fault that I am making vague-puns. I have acid reflux, too. I'm all out of rolaids. I woke up to a poopchild. I'm falling apart! Don't leave me.

A BeAutiFUl day at the park.

It's been a while since I've gotten some sun, so we went out in public.

The boy just after doing a flying lip-stand on the cement. What sort of sick & demented mother would take photos of her child's facial road rash while he's still crying, you ask? Me. Duh. Photographic moments have to be preserved in the pristine and fragile seconds that we have. If I'd have waited, I'd never have gotten a glorious bawling road rash picture. He would have already been up a tree, waving a giant stick at the teenagers who were thoughtfully smoking pot in the park and it would have been much, much, much too late. It's all about timing.


Incognito Mosquito


The children serenely watching a friendly ground hog as Ben prepares himself for a game of real life Whack-a-Mole.... Too bad we forgot our family mole-whacking mallet. That stick will do, though.


Get him Sull! HE IS RIGHT THERE! Easy pickins'. He doesn't even SEE you! Ha! Take that, Funtime Arcade. See who has a high score on Whack-a-mole NOW, eh?? They'd better give me that rubber Batman mask when I slap this sucker down on the prize counter.


I see you, Mr Squirrel.. slinking around my kid. You twisted little SOB. See how you feel when we're done playing Urban Park Whack-a-mole.


That's right, clever squirrel. You just watch your back. We'll release the deadly fishing-hat stick ninjas... We WILL DO IT.


Or perhaps we'll loose the heartless Squirrelshire Slasher on you. Eleanore feels no mercy toward the fluffy delicious squirrels. She is equipped with the ultimate secret weapon, too- squeakers in her shoes. They attract groundhogs and squirrels from MILES around... the little Squirrel Siren will suck you in with her irresistible, hypnotic 'squeaky-squeaky-squeaky' steps, Dastardly Squirrels- then seal your doom like the squeaking pied piper of cute rodentdom.

Mwahahahahahahahahahaha

Fur is out.

Now it's all the rage to wear babies, Fashionistas. Thank God, because I have an impressive selection. Take this babywearing vest, for example. Doesn't it look so practical? I can't really see a thing going wrong with this- a screaming, kicking child?... No.... A Child who is pooping inside of your clothes?... Nothing could go wrong there.... The fact that from a distance, your baby's head would look like one of your breasts had somehow poked it's way out of your fleecy garment (and heaven forbid the baby is prone to spitting up)?.. Nooo.... In fact, I am dying to order a retrofitted version for my 10 year old.

Maybe my entire family could each get one in order from largest to smallest. Neil could wear me, I could wear Sull... so on and so on until Fluffy Sparkles the cat is happily tucked away in Eleanore's very own cat-wearing snuggy vest, with just her little kitty head poking out of a little fleecy hole as we frolic along in the park.

But what really gets to me here is that I'm having some kind of dejavu from this baby-wearing photo... It's just that I TOTALLY can't RECALL where I've seen something like this before. If I could RECALL where I've seen this before, I TOTALLY would, but I'm drawing a TOTAL blank of the RECALLING of where I've seen a baby-wearing outfit like this in the past.......


Hold on a second...

*cough*

Let's not lose focus.

Gratuitous cuteness of the day.

Oh Eleanore.

:)

Winterlude!

Hijinks

So last night, I had just gotten off to sleep.  All was pretty much calmish.  Yadda. Yadda... when a light came on.  *blink*  Not like a great idea sort of light either, because then it went off.  *blink*  

"WTF?"  I thought.  Opened one eyeball.  *blink* On.  *blink* Off.  Whaaaat?  There is nobody in my room.  Just us and the baby in her crib.

Well.  I sat up *blink* and she saw me and took off to the other side of her crib, laughing.  Laughing AT ME.  Then she realized that the jig was up.  Her lightswitch caper was ending.  So she ran as fast as her little legs would allow to the switch before I could get her *blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink*, desperately trying to get as much switch flipping in as possible before she was shut down.

I fixed her biscuit, though.  I pulled the crib 4 inches from the wall.  HA.  Point for me.  That's using my finest problem solving skillz. Yep, she was pretty ticked.

Then, I only bashed my leg on the pulled-out crib twice while trying to ever so quietly get ready for boot camp this morning.  I'm like a silent whisper in the night.... wasping through the house undetected. Just ask the neighbors, they don't ever hear me.  Except Peggy.  But she's up anyway. 

My baby girl was on the news :)

Clapping away at the Rollbots premiere.
AwwWWWwW!


In other news, it's Groundhog day. Here in Canada, if the groundhog sees his shadow, we'll get 6 to 74 more weeks of winter. If he comes out of his hole, freezes up and dies, then we'll get 6 to 74 more weeks of winter and some groundhog stew.

More stuff we did.

Ooooh! The World Premiere!


Andy(?) from YTV. Good ol' Andy(?)

Dr Dastardly

Ooh! Dorksquad! I went on a date! I forgot to blog about it the other night. Went out with some friends of ours and discovered that we've all forgotten how to go on a date. So. We went for dinner at a little cajun place. Twas good. Then we decided karaoke would be the big ticket event of the night (because that is how awesome we are), ending up in a bizarre japanese sushi/private roomed, campy, sketchy, orange walled, karaoke joint with cucaracha & skiing movies playing during the karaoke. That was fun for an hour. I expected Uma Thurman to break in and kill us all.

Then off to see the saddest blues band I've ever seen. I don't mean sad like, "Hey, they've really got the blues!"- I mean sad like.. "OMG, the old guy is having a seizure, quick! Put your wallet in his mouth!" Yikes for them. However, the gaggle of aging ladies-of-the-night, as it were, were entertaining to watch from the balcony. They were spectacularly uncoordinated and playing air piano along with the band (who didn't have a piano). Hilarious. We did the walk of shame, averting our eyes from the band & ladies and got out of there, then home we went, another weird, romantical date night under our belts.

The End.

Happy Birthday, Eleanore!

Cakes with one little candle are the cutest things ever.


Almost.

Babyproofing against Jeff Bridges with Scott Tukwila

Sound the trumpets!

(Plug your ears if you want, but I'm blogging about this.)

Thank my luckiest stars. I am NOT pregnant. Happilluja! (You know what I'm talking about, prolific friends.)

There is nothing like a good old fashioned pregnancy scare to put the fear of God into you when you have already been blessed with 4 blessed blessings to feed, clean, referee, instill an appreciation of culture in, teach manners to, read to, clothe, chauffeur, be paranoid about, pay & soothe. Sometimes simultaneously... Sometimes with friends over. Bless their hearts.

PMS has never looked like such a wonderful, wonderful, glorious festival of sunshine. I can now resume drinking beer.

PHEW.

Dude...

You want me to eat that??

Like, seriously? 

*poke poke*

Oh my God.  You have got to be kidding me.

You first.