Category Archives: Birthdays

I have a bad case of the Fridays!

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Which is to say I’m kind of tired. It has been a long and disjointed week, ending with the kids out of school today due to parent/teacher interviews. My husband was out of town for a couple of days, which always makes for a long, disjointed week. When he told me he was going out of town, my mental reactions were threefold: a) Nooooo…it’s Jake’s birthday, you can’t be away for Jake’s birthday, b) Nooooo…I’m going to miss yoga, and c) Ooh, I can watch When Harry Met Sally and repeat all the dialogue without someone complaining about this being “annoying”. Solo bedtime is not at all difficult these days, with the grave exception of lecturing Mark on rinsing out the giant handful of shampoo he uses for his half-inch long hair, but I still found myself tired out by the end of it.

Also tiring was my attempt at domestic goddess-hood. I just completed baking and frosting two dozen cupcakes for tomorrow’s party. Besides those, in the past five days I have made the following: banana muffins, zucchini loaf, sugar cookies, bread dough, and a birthday cake. My whole life is revolving around baked goods, plus my regular meal preparation. In addition, I have made three separate trips for groceries, including an anxiety attack-inducing trip to Costco. It’s all about food around here, apparently.

Then, there was today’s extremely misguided shopping trip at Wal-Mart. As I mentioned, tomorrow is Jake’s birthday party, and since September is a time of new friendships and classmates, I decided to invite his entire kindergarten class – which sounds more magnanimous than it is, given his small class size. However, not everyone RSVP’d, which is irritating. Still, I felt like that should not bother me – although I did list my email address in the scenario that someone, god forbid, didn’t want to actually speak to me on the phone. I just assumed the non-RSVPers were not attending, but according to Jake, some of them ARE. People! Passing messages through kindergarteners is not a reliable or acceptable method of RSVP. PICK UP THE PHONE. I don’t know their parents or phone numbers, so I can’t check. However, I realized that if those children are attending, then I needed to get a few more environmentally friendly paper bags to make goody bags out of. Hence the last-minute trip to Wal-Mart. At two o’clock in the afternoon on a day where there is no school.

The parking lot was insane. The crowds were insane. When I discovered that they were all out of little paper bags, I felt that the best possible scenario was for me to just lie down on the floor in the aisle and stare at the ceiling for a while. If it were not for the fact that the floor is likely swarming with germs and that I would probably cause some sort of violent shopping-cart rage and get seriously injured, I would have done just that. Instead, I herded my extremely irritable self and my extremely irritable children through the soul-destroying aisles and past the crabby and smelly shoppers to the checkout. In the lineup, I tried hard to breathe deeply and not be bothered by the guy behind me who kept, despite the fact that there was no place to move, inching his cart forward until it was actually touching me. Don’t be upset, I said to myself zen-ly, you’ll be out of here soon, and does it really matter if some mullet-wearing guy who reeks of garlic and cigarettes is invading your personal space? In the grand scheme of things, does it matter? Then I came home and stared blankly at the wall for a while.

Fortunately my neighbour is celebrating her birthday tonight and has invited me over for a margarita (or several). I could really use one, it would seem.

Hey, check out the guy who’s FIVE.

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Those were his first words to me this morning. I should teach him the old “What has two thumbs and is FIVE today? This guy!”


We baked cookies to take to his class yesterday. They turned out not too bad, considering I was frosting them and Jake was in charge of sprinkles.

I wrote about my labour stories last year, here here and here, so if you’re interested in labour stories, click on the links. Or, I can sum it up for you: I was crazy and cried a lot (unlike every single other blog post I have ever written), I had the world’s least engaged labour and delivery nurse, and my husband complained of being tired. During my labour. Uh huh.

Wow, you’re huge! That’s what I heard for approximately 5 months of my pregnancy.


Look at his squishy little face! Awww! He essentially didn’t wake up for our entire 24 hour hospital stay, even while being bathed, spurring our nurse to tell me how lucky I was to have such a mellow baby, which ended up being the falsest sentence ever uttered.


Mark gave him a Ben 10 Ultimate Alien, after which Jake stated that this was the best birthday ever!


I baked – and decorated – this cake and I think it turned out pretty well, considering my lack of talent and all. I didn’t even cry while decorating this, which is a first.


What has two thumbs and a brand new five year old? This girl!

Hardwood, birthday prep, smoking

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Pictures! Hardwood! Don’t worry, they are G-rated.


My husband also painted that lovely burnt orange colour this weekend.


The remainder of the house has yet to be painted – and I’m anxious to get the kitchen painted, as its current yellow clashes weirdly with the orange – and baseboards have yet to be repainted and attached, but the home renovation is coming along nicely, with my sanity mainly intact. Of course, I’ve turned into Lady Macbeth, except with dust, but that was to be expected.

Other than dusting – and laundering my dusty panty drawer – I have been busy preparing for Jake’s birthday, which is two days from now. I feel like I should be nostalgically mooning around, remembering things like “Five years ago today I was waddling around like an obese penguin. Five years ago today I was bursting into tears about nothing. Five years ago today I consumed half a loaf of bread, toasted with Cheez Whiz.” For some reason I’m not doing that. I am, however, obsessing over goody bags to give his little friends. I have a problem with goody bags. For one thing, I don’t like all the typical goody bag crap that eventually ends up in the landfill, but I don’t want to NOT give goody bags. What I end up doing is filling them with one small toy – a bouncy ball – a sheet of stickers, and a whole bunch of mini chocolate bars. This gives me pause. I think it’s better to give something consumable, rather than something landfill-ish, but will the high sugar content render me unpopular with the parents? Warning: if you’re reading this and your child is coming to Jake’s party, you are going to have lots of chocolate to deal with.

In other news, I ran to the grocery today to pick up cake mix – don’t judge, I have a LOT of things to bake this week – and birthday candles, and at the checkout I asked the cashier if they sold lighters. “Lighters?” she asked “Like to light cigarettes?” No, I explained, to light birthday candles. She appeared not to hear me and then launched into this incredibly long and bitter monologue about not being able to sell cigarettes or smoking related paraphernalia in the grocery, because there is an anti-smoking conspiracy around and smokers – like her– were essentially pariahs in this society. I listened to this with a polite, nervous smile – fortunately there was no lineup behind me – and wondered where I COULD buy a lighter, or even a book of matches, but I didn’t want to ask because the cashier was getting really agitated by her own conversation. Finally I left with my one small bag and she called out after me, ominously, “We smokers pay a LOT of taxes.” On my way out a carry out guy tapped me on the shoulder to inform me that lighters were available at the gas station.

It’s my dog’s birthday!

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I used to think that people who celebrated their pets’ birthdays were, how shall I say, a little bit lame. But! That was before we had Barkley, the wonder dog.


Mark is presenting him with his birthday treat. I tried to manually take out Barkley’s red eyes because the photo made him look like a one-headed Cerberus.


What a cute little treat for our little doggie-woggie.

So I also baked a cake. Not for the dog, obviously. The kids were adamant that birthday cake MUST be had. What kind of birthday is celebrated cakelessly? No kind of birthday, that’s what. So yesterday I baked a chocolate layer cake while the snow covered the grass and the wind blew and I wondered if all my flowers would survive or would I be making another trip to the garden center? It turns out they did survive but I was surrounded by a gloomy feeling all day, greatly exacerbated by walking the birthday boy in the blowing cold wearing my winter coat and boots on May 29.

In my twenties, I had a friend who was always sure she never wanted children and she would give her reasons for that decision at the drop of a hat, and one of those reasons was that once a person has children, they become very very boring. They talk about diapers and poop and all the non-unique things that their children do and say. This is probably true of me. I have been known to discuss diapers and poop and hey, I have a blog about my children, so I guess I am fairly dull. I do like being fairly dull, I prefer it to a more dramatic life, it seems.

One of the reasons I know I am fairly dull is that during yesterday’s snowstorm, I had a grand old time cleaning the house. My husband was out running errands, my children were very happily and peacefully (this is relative: they were playing predator and prey with dinosaurs) playing and instead of relaxing with some coffee and a book, I decided the entire house must be cleaned and all bedding must be laundered. How’s that for dramatic thrills and spills? When life gives me lemons, apparently I make lemon-scented disinfectant and scrub the kitchen cupboards. Woot! Anyone want to come over? The house smells like chocolate cake and Mr. Clean. It’s lovely.

Halfway to 70, or Taking the A Train to Cougarville

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Tomorrow is my birthday! I am not at all shy about telling people it is my birthday. If it didn’t make me look like I have a mental illness, I would walk around with a tiara and a “Birthday Girl” button, or possibly even a sandwich board. I love my birthday. I don’t mind the whole “getting older” part because hey, who wants to be dead? Not me. So here I am, a day away from being halfway to 70, which is pretty much taking the A Train to Cougarville.

Obviously I am on that train because yesterday I was a volunteer with Jake’s class for their field trip to the firehall! The firehall! Nicole likes firefighters! A friend was telling me about her daughter’s field trip and how great it was with the female firefighter leading the tour; inwardly I was like I am going to be so ripped off if the tour is led by a female firefighter. I mean, girl power and everything, but come on. And what do you know? The firefighters were all male and attractive, which makes for a happy field trip. Also I got to live out my lifelong fantasy of putting on the outfit – is it called an outfit? I don’t know. The boots and pants and coat and things. You know what I’m saying. – plus the oxygen tank, all of which gave me even more respect for the firefighters, male and female, because that gear is HEAVY. I could not take five steps in all that gear let alone RESCUE PEOPLE and carry those heavy hoses and whatnot. I actually said, yes I did, that the firefighters must be in good shape. I said this out loud to a firefighter, which really puts me on Destination Cougarville.

It’s a good thing my loving husband is such a confident man, to withstand my chatter about the firehall. For the record, he is way more attractive than a thousand firefighters put together, firefighting gear notwithstanding. I’m a lucky girl. Or lucky middle aged woman, whichever.

Oh yes, and the kids learned about fire safety.

Ah, but for every high there must be a come down, and so after the firehall visit I had a dentist appointment. A friend posted a poll recently: what would you rather do, have a pap test or go to the dentist. I will tell you, people, I would much rather put my feet in the stirrups with one of those awkward paper gowns on than have my teeth scraped for thirty minutes. Yikes! My very sweet hygienist said, at one point, “You really love that red wine, don’t you?” Yes. I do.

So, it’s a busy busy week, what with MY BIRTHDAY, and a firehall visit, and the dentist, and now tonight is the start of soccer season! It’s actually warm and sunny which feels strange – where is the snow? Where are the gale force winds? So I had better look out my turquoise windbreaker track suit and hop on the train to Soccer Mom Town. I have a lot of cheering to do.

Actually, I prefer the term "Big Fat Whore"

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After I posted the pictures of my sad little flat cake, a friend suggested I cut it in half and make a mini layer cake out of it, which struck me, quite frankly, as brilliant. It worked perfectly, although Jake and I went a little crazy with the confetti sprinkles.

Don’t I look relieved? The cake isn’t ruined after all.


Mark loved it.
I rarely read any of those “Fame Baby” articles, mostly because I couldn’t care less about what Suri Cruise is wearing these days or what kind of stroller some celebrity I vaguely recognize purchased. However, I was drawn to a blurb about the Brady/Bundchen baby, mainly because my husband is a New England Patriots fan, meaning that to maintain marital harmony I am as well, and although Tom Brady is a little young for my tastes he sure is a tasty slice of rye.

I immediately wished I hadn’t been so eager to see #12 because the latter half of the blurb focused on the return of Giselle Bundchen’s glorious figure mere months after giving birth. Giselle herself was quoted as follows, “I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals. I was mindful of what I ate and only gained 30 pounds.”

I felt about this comment the same way I feel when someone boasts about their six week old baby sleeping through the night, or their child who eats everything set in front of him, or their toddler who was toilet trained at eighteen months: that is, efforts in that direction are helpful, but there is some kind of underlying genetic code that makes this possible. If your newborn sleeps through the night, that does not necessarily mean that it is because of your superior parenting skills – although you may have superior parenting skills, don’t get me wrong – but it is more to do with your individual child than anything else. The implication to Giselle’s comment is that if we all weren’t such disgusting garbage disposals, perhaps we too could be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which is, of course, not possible. I am not denying that I actually was a garbage disposal during my first pregnancy: you do not gain as much junk in the trunk as I did without some serious gorging. However, not counting my gross Cheez Whiz on toast addiction during my second pregnancy, I did watch what I ate and I did gain only 32 pounds, which was significantly, significantly less than my first, and even still I was not a contender for a Victoria’s Secret spread. That is because I am not Giselle Bundchen. I could put all my best efforts into it and there is no way that I could ever become a supermodel.

Do you know what I’m saying here? Mindful eating is a huge part of maintaining your figure before and after childbirth, yes, of course. But boasting about your amazing willpower without laying any credit on personal genetics, not to mention the childcare, personal chefs, nutritionists, and trainers available to someone of Giselle Bundchen’s income bracket is not helpful to the rest of us.

I eat sweets very rarely, I eat desserts even less, for a variety of reasons, not all of them to do with weight. After I read this blurb I enjoyed a delicious slice of Mark’s birthday cake. And I was mindful of every bite.