Owner: Postcards from the Mothership URL:http://danigirl.ca/blog/ Join Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:48:30 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Now new and improved!
Canadian working mom of two preschool boys. Sometimes thoughtful, often witty, always verbose. Site statistics:Click here
The Birth Announcement 2007-08-17 07:02:02 Tristan, Simon, Beloved and especially DaniGirl are pleased to announce the arrival of their brand new baby blog, the newly independent Postcards from the Mothership on Danigirl.ca.
This version of blog was delivered after more than a week of hard labour on the part of DaniGirl, with extensive coaching by Beloved.
Special thanks to:
Tech Support at Namespro.ca, for extraordinary customer service and at Hostingplex for having the patience of Job while walking me through the initial set-up;
Tom at One Hertz, for designing the Mandigo theme, and for actually answering my questions about how to tweak it (after deciphering my awkward attempt to ask for assistance in French!) and Suze, where I first admired a variation on the theme;
An 18 year old amateur photographer from Israel named Michelle, who gave me permission to adapt her lovely Flickr image for my new header.
Urban Fonts for the funky handwriting font in the header. (Beloved says it’s too thin, but I love it!)
Marla for her Read more:Announcement
The 16 week update: Wherein I let out this breath I’ve been holding 2007-08-16 10:12:54 Just been for my 16 week OB appointment. Let me tell you, it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than the last time I had a 16 week appointment, and did not live up in any way, shape or form to the “oh no, not again” anxiety dreams that haunted me all last night.
The whole thing lasted - I kid you not - maybe seven minutes. She checked my blood pressure (110 / 60) and asked how I was doing, and pulled out her doppler. Just because my life is not complete without some moments of heart-stopping drama, we didn’t hear the heartbeat on the first side she tried - and my heart shrunk down to the size of a pea. And then, when she pressed her doppler to the left side of my abdomen, there it was: whoosha whoosha whoosha, that beautiful baby music. And my heart grew to the size of an elephant.
And that was it, the appointment in its entirety. The IPS results aren’t in yet, so I’ll have to check back early next week. But I’ll happily celebrate good news when I can Read more:holding
Blog woes redux - the one where I whine 2007-08-15 19:08:00 Ugh! I had no idea there would be so many major and minor complications in the set-up and transfer to my own domain!
It ended up being rather easy to set up the domain and web host, and relatively inexpensive. It took maybe an hour or so, plus a few hours of shopping around.
Designing the new blog banner took up the better part of a Saturday, but I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a good start, anyway.
Choosing a “theme” for WordPress continues to be an ongoing drama. Unfortunately, I have some vague and some specific ideas of what I want, and I must have looked at 300 or more themes trying to find one that was just right. Relatively minimalistic, single sidebar; how difficult could the choice be? Don’t get me started.
Finally, I downloaded one, and to my great shock, it’s coded in PHP instead of the CSS/HTML combination that my Blogger template is written in. So in order to customize it at all, I’ve been teaching myself PHP. Did I mention ugh???
I
Information overload 2007-08-15 06:50:00 As usual, I consumed most of the newspaper on the bus on my ride to work this morning, and I have to tell you that the news was not good.
Aside from the fact that I now have a new big boss (holding off judgement on that for the time being) I read that Mattel has announced another massive toy recall for lead paint and dangerous toys. Then I read an article that says out of 250,000 births in Canada every year, as many as 1,700 babies suffer skull fractures or other traumatic injuries during birth. And to completely wreck my morning, a new study confirms that “eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring.”
Sigh. It’s enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and hide there for a day or two, isn’t it?
Since I went looking for it and you might want to do the same, here’s the Mattel recalled toys list. It mostly affects Sarge from Read more:overload
Survey question 2007-08-14 14:18:00 So, if this blog were to mysteriously reinvent itself in a new home, would you want all the original posts to move with it? Or would you expect a fresh start in the new location, assuming the old posts will be archived here for eternity and beyond?
And what if it were possible but intimidatingly difficult to shuffle almost 10,000 (!!!) comments from HaloScan to the new location… would the old posts be worth having in the new location, but stripped of their comments? Or would it be worth the extra chunks of pulled-out hair and special favours begged of tech support to get those comments over there, too.
What say ye, bloggy peeps?
(Don’t worry, Mom. I promise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to the new blog location!)
Sonic booms are cool 2007-08-14 07:01:00 I first read this story in the newspaper on Sunday morning, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Everyone I’ve spoken to in the last couple of days has been subjected to this story, so fascinated by it am I.
Did you hear about the 62 year old French guy who’s about to be launched to a height of 40 km (25 miles) and do a seven minute free fall on to a Saskatchewan field, exceeding Mach 1 and creating a sonic boom with only his body in the process?
I’m honestly torn between “how wicked cool is that?” and “what kind of suicidal dumbass is he, anyway?”
From the canada.com article:
At 40,000 metres, temperatures are around -100 C and the air is so thin he will have to spend hours beforehand inhaling pure oxygen to remove all traces of nitrogen from his blood. He must nose-dive out of the pop-can-shaped capsule, freefalling for seven minutes before pulling his chute 1,000 metres from landing for an eight-minute descent to the ground. But if he g Read more:Sonic
, booms
Tristan’s big splash 2007-08-13 06:53:00 It’s been such a lovely summer so far, full of sunshine and traveling and beaches and pools and water parks. I know we’ve had a good summer because we’re on our fourth package of swim diapers… that’s a lot of fun in the water!
Over the course of the summer, Tristan
has gone from not quite being able to swim the width of the pool with a float to being able to swim very short stretches unassisted in a panicky sort of dog paddle. He’s shown a lot of improvement with all the time we’ve spent in the water lately, and has taken great delight in being able to jump off the side of the pool and “cannonball” into the shallow end.
Yesterday, we spend an unexpected but lovely four hours or so splashing about and lounging on the deck of our friends’ new pool. Despite Tristan’s improvement through the summer, I had serious reservations when my friend UberGeek asked Tristan if he’d like to jump off the diving board and UG would
The one with the naked princess, of course 2007-08-11 17:26:00 The boys have been running around all day, and we all need some quiet time. I ask Simon what he wants to watch. Quelle surprise, he wants to watch Star Wars.
“Which one do you want to watch,” I ask. “The one with the Jawas, the one where Han gets frozen in carbonite, or the one with the Ewoks?”
“No,” clarifies Simon, “I want the one with the naked princess with the gun.”
He’s THREE, for chrissake. THREE!!
(Okay, so I don’t know a single guy born between 1965 and 1985 who didn’t have the same crush, but I had no idea Leia’s Metal Bikini had its own fan site, let alone an episode of Friends.)
(Edited to add: this exists, with more than 7000 threads and 125000 posts, and yet *I’m* the strangest place on the Internet?!?!?) Read more:course
My Internet Legacy 2007-08-10 07:32:00 I never get tired of playing in the referral logs, speculating on the search terms that bring people here. I see some search terms over and over again (gift ideas for two year olds is a perennial favourite, as is cavities in a three year old, and I’m mystified by the sheer number of people - sometimes 10 a day - looking for a variation on lactating or lactation blog.)
Some are a little more obscure. I’m sure I was no help to the guy who wondered “how do i know my piranha is pregnant.” Maybe we should get them together with the guy who asked “why is my sperm bigger.” Bigger than what, I couldn’t help but wonder. And, erm, how exactly did you know?
I’ll have to try a little harder to boost myself up the page on the search return for “canadian child care sucks“, but with the new nanny starting next week, my fingers are crossed for a good outcome at last.
My mother is endlessly tickled about my noteriety as the number one search r Read more:Internet
, Legacy
Almost 15 weeks update: the midwife question 2007-08-09 06:38:00 See, bloggy peeps? I take your advice! I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the midwife, just so I could keep my options open for a little while longer.
First, I have to tell you that I heard the baby’s heartbeat, and all seems fine. What, you haven’t been obsessing over it, thinking of it every two hours half hour six minutes like I’ve been? Heck, it took me until I was on the bus on the way to the appointment to figure out that I wasn’t having heart palpitations and trouble breathing because of any larger fear of the midwife herself, but over knowing she would have a doppler and I was afraid to face the possible silence like last time.
The bad news is, I really liked the midwife and the whole philosophy of midwifery care. I mean, that’s bad news because if I had hated her on sight, it would have been a lot easier to simply go back to my OB and carry on.
There are a handful of concerns that I can’t quite shake, mostly having to do with sce Read more:Almost
The one where the nanny didn’t quit 2007-08-20 07:06:21 So, it’s the nanny’s third day today, and she didn’t quit yet. I’m so happy! (Amazing how my standards have dropped, isn’t it?)
Seriously, though, even beyond her not quitting, I’m thrilled with the new nanny. The boys ask every day whether Jen and Jordan (her one year old son) are coming today. She brings them to the park; she plays games with them; last Friday, she brought them to her house for the afternoon and they did fingerpainting and came home with home-made, car-shaped cookies. She’s got Simon on the potty a couple of times a day. She even emptied the clean dishwasher so she could put the lunch dishes in it. Really, I love her!
I’m not the only one who loves her. Friday night at dinnertime, Tristan had just finished telling us all the fun things they did with Jen that day. He asked if she would be coming back the next day, but I told him that Mummy and Daddy don’t have to work on Saturdays or Sundays, so we’d
A very expensive (but fun!) Saturday 2007-08-19 08:08:24 We had a fun and adventure-filled but ghastly expensive day on Saturday
.
In the morning, we visited the Ottawa debut of A Day Out With Thomas. Those of you who have been around for a while will remember the absolute magic of our first adventure with the Very Useful Engine, two years ago in St Thomas, Ontario.
Our latest adventure was not quite so magical, but a fun morning for the boys. In addition to a rather uninspired 30 minute train ride through some scrub and industrial land, there were train tables, temporary tatoos, arts and crafts, and of course, a giant gift shop filled with all things Thomas and Friends. Tristan’s waning interest in the big blue engine was rekindled, but Simon has always been less of a fan than his brother. In the gift shop, he looked around for a while before asking, “But where are all the Star Wars toys?”
In the afternoon, we went with Granny and Papa Lou to one of my favourite summer traditions, the Ottawa SuperEx. While the SuperEx
10 pixels in - my first video game review 2007-08-24 07:30:00 Not too long after my recent post talking about how the boys have transitioned from a TV addiction to a computer game addiction, I got an e-mail from a nice lady offering me a sneak preview
of “the first video
game made for kids 3-6 on Nintendo DS.” The boilerplate advertised that “Storybook DS features skill-based mini-games and read-aloud fairy tale adventures for shared play and interaction between mom and child.” I wrote back to say thanks for the offer, but we only play games on the PC and we don’t have any game consoles. She wrote back to say, “No problem, we’ll loan you a DS console for a while to play to the game. You can keep the game cartridge, and send back the console when you’re done.”
Hard to say no to an offer like that, isn’t it? And that’s how someone who doesn’t really like video games becomes a video game reviewer - or at least whores her children out as video game reviewers. Let the record
Yay Day! 2007-08-23 08:59:48 It’s a dreary kind of day here, grey and threatening rain - not that I can see a window from here. And I have a cold that kept me up all night and so I might have otherwise been tempted to be a little cranky and feel just a little bit sorry for myself.
But then I started thinking about all the things that I have to be grateful about these days:
a healthy, happy pregnancy. (What they say about the second trimester being the “honeymoon trimester” really is true, isn’t it?)
the new nanny. I don’t know who is happier, the boys or Beloved and I. Not once has Simon said, “I don’t want Jen to come over today” whereas he complained endlessly about going to the previous caregivers’ houses.
a four-day weekend this weekend, and a four-day weekend next weekend. Yay!
as if a four-day Labour Day weekend weren’t enough to celebrate all on its own, we’re going on a mostly FREE weekend getaway to Smuggler’s Notch resort in
Administrative notes 2007-08-22 07:25:36 So it’s been almost a week, and I am getting comfy in my new bloggy home. There are still boxes of clutter everywhere and I’m still tinkering with where I want to keep the blogroll and whether I like the sofa under that window and whether I should plaster all my categories on the wall beside the Green Day poster or tuck them away in a dropdown box. But in general, it’s starting to feel like home.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how the look of a blog and the voice of the blogger are so intertwined? Or is that just me? It took me weeks to get used to seeing my words in a new font last time I changed it back on the old site, so I think it’s going to take a while for me to get used to all this happy yellow and fanciness. (No joke, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I fixed the columns so they were left-justified instead of centred yesterday.) Do you think the new look suits the overall character of the blog?
I’m pretty happy with WordPress over Blo Read more:Administrative
Happy dance! 2007-08-21 11:07:35 The Integrated Prenatal Screening test results are in: chance of Down Syndrome is less than 1 in 42,000. Chance of neural tube defect is less than 1 in 11,000.
Plus, baby’s heartbeat is a strong and vibrant 150 bpm today.
This is me dancing around my cubicle. Happy
happy joy joy!!
Random bullets to banish the brain clutter 2007-08-21 07:45:56 Blogging really is a feast-or-famine kind of thing, isn’t it? There are times when your brain is empty, and you go days fearing you may never be graced with an inspiring idea again.
And then other times, your brain is so busy blogging all.the.time that at any given time, you have half-composed posts oozing out of your brain, begging you to get to a keyboard and release them to the Interwebs. This is one of those times. I have a lot of ideas rattling around, but nothing cogent enough to form a full post.
Thank goodness for the existence of random bullets!
We woke up this morning to what appears to be a brand new double mattress delivered to our front lawn. Problem is we didn’t order a new mattress. I have no idea where it came from or, more importantly, what to do with it. It’s garbage day today, so maybe one of the neighbours put it out and some prankster dragged it down the block to our lawn? But seriously, have you ever dragged a full-sized mattress anywhe Read more:Random
, clutter
Pink or blue? Lay your bets! 2007-08-28 07:11:36 One more sleep! Wednesday morning at 9:00 is the big reveal, assuming baby is amenable to the exposure. (And you know I come from a long line of exhibitionists.) We finally get to find out whether baby has indoor or outdoor plumbing.
I swear, never in my whole life have I expended so much energy in not thinking about something. For weeks, I’ve been careful not to speculate, not to wonder, and certainly not to hope. But despite my best efforts, I’m now emotionally and intellectually engaged in this pregnancy. I can feel the baby moving almost every day, and a couple of people in my office have tentatively approached me and asked if maybe I had some good news I wanted to share while looking pointedly at my no-longer-subtle belly. (Seriously, people, unless a woman has another human being dangling from between her legs, “Are you pregnant?” is still one of the most dangerous questions on the planet!) So I’ve let go of the fear and given myself over to
Best quiz result ever! 2007-08-27 17:15:57 As seen at Expectant Waiting.
You’re Catch-22!
by Joseph Heller
Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You could coin a phrase that replaces the word "paradox" for millions of people.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Is that not the best quiz result ever? I read Catch 22 when I was a kid and loved it even then. I should crack it open again.
***
Speaking of books, it’s back to school time, and Andrea over in the Fishbowl has a great back-to-school photo contest. You can win an HP Photosmart C5280 printer/scanner! Click over to Andrea’s place for details and some good photography tips, too.
Pregnancy songs 2007-08-27 06:42:31 You remember how it is with your first pregnancy, when you actually buy the pregnancy magazines, and hang out on the message boards at iVillage comparing each twitch and twang with 600 other pregnant mothers due in the same month as you, and you spend months agonizing over the nursery decorating scheme and hours browsing baby gear at Babys R Us and have the baby’s whole wardrobe picked out and washed and folded and carefully placed in drawers when you’re still only six months along?
*snicker* Ah, I remember those days… barely!
Ahem, anyway, back when I was still all dewey-eyed with the idea of being pregnant with Tristan, I invested hours searching the Internet and local record stores for a copy of one of my all-time favourite soundtrack albums, She’s Having a Baby. Way before I had kids, I loved that album, and practically wore out my cassette copy in the early 1990s - and not entirely because I’ve always had a wicked crush on Kevin Bacon.
Alas, desp Read more:Pregnancy
, songs
Send paper towels and carpet cleaner! 2007-08-26 08:16:56 After struggling for more than a month trying to encourage Simon to use the potty with bribes of various sorts, potty training was still not really progressing. He’s only pooped once on the potty, just this past week, and it’s becoming a bit of a power struggle. He simply doesn’t want to give up the convenience and comfort (?) of his diaper, Queen Amidala or no.
It’s time to fish or cut bait. This morning, it’s all underwear all the time. I figured he’s fastidious enough that the leaking and mess alone would be all the encouragement he needed. It worked for Tristan, and Simon’s plenty old enough at three and a half.
It’s not quite 9 am and we’re on our third pair of underwear. I’ve given up on shorts entirely. Send cleaning supplies and fresh tighty-whities, please!
He’s peed in the potty at least five times today, and still leaked three times. I can’t figure out how to encourage him to empty his bladder, i Read more:paper
, cleaner
The end of Storyland? 2007-08-25 06:54:45 I read in yesterday’s paper that Storyland, near Renfrew, will likely be closing at the end of this season, and the news made me sad. First the Hershey chocolate factory in Smith’s Falls; now this.
Storyland is truly one of Ottawa’s hidden gems, tucked away in the woods near a scenic overlook on the Ottawa River, 40 minutes from the city. We paid our first and now maybe only visit to Storyland last summer, and I found it a sweet and nostalgic place; a downmarket cousin to the fancy and expensive theme parks in most metropolitan areas.
There were two things I loved about Storyland. First, it appealed to me because it reminded me of my own childhood favourite places, where the slides were metal and coated in chipped (and likely lead-based) paint instead of modular plastic in primary colours. Like this!
The other thing I loved about Storyland was its simple and authentic charm, and its inherent lack of glitz, loud music or moving parts. If Disneyland is a $200 c
Insight into the teenage mind? 2007-08-31 06:41:09 Hey bloggy peeps, I need your help. (Again.)
Next week, I’ll be doing a presentation about social media, and more specifically, blogs, at the CEGEP were Beloved teaches. (CEGEP is creation of the Quebec school system, sort of like a middle school between high school and university or college. The kids will be in the 16 to 18 year old age range.)
I’ve done a few presentations on social media to groups of public servants, but I have to tell you I’m a lot more intimidated by this group of teenage
rs! With public servants, I am usually pretty confident that I know more about social media and blogs than at least the majority of the people in the room; maybe not so much with the teenagers! The prof insists that I should start with Blogs 101, and that in her new media classes, only one of two of the kids actually have a blog.
So what I’m asking you, bloggy peeps, is this: what blogs would be interesting to the average teenager? I’m planning on walking them Read more:Insight
The other men in my life 2007-08-30 07:29:43 So while we’ve been paying so much attention to the little man I’m busy gestating, the other men in my life have been busy with their own milestones.
Can I please have a round of applause for Simon, who has remained in DRY underwear all day long for the past two days? YAY Simon! It took him maybe two days to catch on, and yesterday was a completely accident-free day. The nanny said she had put him in a pull-up to go to the park (just in case) and he told her he had to go and then even held it for the 10-minute trip home.
What’s been really adorable, though, is listening to Tristan coach Simon. Now, Tristan has a personal investment in Simon’s toilet habits on two fronts. First, he was benefitting from our bribes to Simon. He too watched Queen Amidala on Sunday afternoon, and he too has received a steady stream of ju-ju-beans when Simon successfully voided his bladder. But more than that, Tristan seems to be extremely phobic about Simon’s bodily flui
The big reveal 2007-08-29 09:19:23 The ultrasound appointment went very well this morning. Beloved was teaching and couldn’t make it, but my lovely Mom accompanied me. She was there for Simon’s big reveal, too. What a great thing to be able to share with Granny!
Baby was sleepy, not moving around too much. The technician knew I was squirrelly to find out the gender so that was her first stop, but Baby’s legs were tightly clenched together. She did a few more measurements, and exclaimed with delight about how healthy all of Baby’s parts are. The organs, the spine, the brain stem, the heart - they all look perfect. The placenta is on the low side and near the cervix, but nothing to yet be concerned about.
And then she scanned back up to Baby’s bits and Baby’s legs were splayed wide open. Turns out just like Tristan and Simon, this Baby is an exhibitionist after all. No doubt about it, for the next five months or so I have a penis.
It’s a boy!!!
Ottawa’s Hidden Treasures - Hogs Back Falls 2007-09-23 14:22:26 I love the light in September. It’s warm and golden, and instead of glaring overhead it comes dappled through the leaves at a gentle angle. And then, of course, the trees are starting to change colours, green giving way to gold and even scarlet.
Every year in September, when the light gets like this, I get drawn to Hogs Back Falls
. It’s one of my favourite places to go for an easy hike right in the city, a little oasis of trees and rough-hewn paths along side the Rideau River where it splits from the canal at Mooney’s Bay. I was telling the boys this morning that I’ve been drawn there in every season, but I never miss a walk at Hogs Back Falls in September, and I usually can’t resist bringing my camera along with me.
This was the boys two years ago, in September 2005.
We forgot to bring birdseed to feed the nuthatches and peanuts to feed the chipmunks today.
Back in the day, we’d walk along the wide gravel path at a snail’s pace, fir Read more:Ottawa
, Hidden
I heart Geddy Lee 2007-09-22 18:48:34 I danced.
I screamed.
Okay, truthfully? When the house lights went dimmed, and the crowd started to scream, and the band came on stage, and the lights came up as Rush crashed into the first few bars of Limelight, and they were RIGHT THERE less than 100 ft from me, my barely repressed inner 14 year old girl and my inner geek rose up and took over in one hormonal moment of overload.
I wept.
It was, in short, a concert worthy of waiting a lifetime for. Three hours (minus a short intermission, thank the gods who watch over pregnant bladders) of solid, grooving, driving rock. Almost all my favourites, plus guest appearances by Bob and Doug McKenzie (does it get any more Canadian than that?) and the kids from South Park (!) and the Best Drum Sole EVER, even according to my father, the former professional drummer. You can read the Citizen’s slightly more objective but no less favourable review of the concert here.
I’m sure the Player to be Named Later was completely perplexed&
RUSHing 2007-09-21 07:46:41 I’m *so* excited!
I bought my tickets back in April, but I swear, I have been waiting to see this concert since I was ten years old. Finally, tonight, we’re going to see Rush! With 100-level seats, no less! I’m beside myself with anticipation.
I’ve always loved Rush.
For my 12th birthday, my folks replaced my little suitcase record player with an actual real stereo - the kind with the smoked plastic box lid, and honest-to-goodness speakers. And they gave me two albums, AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (I still remember my mother blanching when she read the lyrics on the liner) and Rush’s Moving Pictures. I’ve long since outgrown my AC/DC phase, but Moving Pictures is still one of my favourite albums of all time.
When I was in high school, my first serious, painful and perhaps even partially requited crush was on a boy named Greg who played the clarinet in my music class. While I remained a band-class geeky good girl, Greg went from cla
Technical difficulties 2007-09-20 08:34:01 I seem to be having a lot of server issues this week. I’m sorry - I have no idea what’s going on. If you get an error message, please keep trying!
Read more:Technical
Yay day - the maternity clothes edition 2007-09-20 07:34:09 Today is definitely a Yay Day kind of day. First of all, Tristan’s follow-up with Dr House at the children’s hospital went extremely well yesterday. Although Tristan panicked a little bit when he figured out that the doctors were planning on actually removing his ugly little mole, instead of simply poking at it and annoying the snot out of him, he toughed it out in a way that made me proud and a little bit sad at the same time. Five year olds shouldn’t try so hard to be brave, yanno? Anyway, although I was a little freaked out by it, Tristan’s favourite part of the whole experience was seeing the excised mole floating in a small container of some sort of fluid, ready to be sent off for biopsy.
“It’s like a part of my body went swimming without me!” he told me later in the car with obvious delight. I shuddered, but he recounted the story with glee many times throughout the day, so I guess - as usual - the residual trauma is mine and mine al
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