the art of baby feeding

I was thinking last nite that I haven't posted anything here for a while -- busy busy busy! But whilst feeding my child, I was struck by the fact that there truly is an art to feeding a baby. Not nursing (although that, in itself, is an art form -- I'm sure most of you will agree) but spoon feeding.

It's not just shoveling in food into an open mouth; first you have to wait for the open mouth. And then the adult involved must endeavour to get the spoon into the appropriate orifice; eyes, ears and noses are just not effective at ingesting sweet potatoes. Ok -- mission one accomplished; the FOOD IS IN THE MOUTH .... and it's back out again. Now comes the chin-scrape; one must scoop the food off the chin/cheek/nose/forehead or where ever it ended up using the side of the spoon. Keep in mind you have a VERY wiggly baby in front of you, who is eagerly "helping" the process. She also wants desperately to grab that spoon. You're dodging hands (there must be at LEAST 12 of them) and avoiding eyes and hair while trying to grab that dollop of orange stuff before it adds yet another stain to the third dirty bib of the day.

Oh oh -- took too long -- those loud screeching noises mean MORE FOOD NOW DAMMIT! And the process is repeated until a) the bottom of the food bowl is found, or b) I'm wearing more of the flavour of the day than she is.

Now who would want to miss out on an experience like this?

everybody play!

got this from Naked Bootleg (who got it from a bunch of other people...)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"13. Sketch a rough graph of the outdoor temperature as a function of time during a typical spring day." -- Single Variable Calculus, Fourth Edition by James Stewart (not mine, it's Joe's, honest!)

I'm gonna do this again with the nearest of MY books...

"Men in masks. Can you believe that?" -- Small Gods, by Terry Pratchet (just enough of an excerpt to leave you guessing)

Also from the same website, a link to Blame Canada lyrics :-)

a match for dar...

Did you guys hear about our "famous" city councillor, Dar Heatherington?
Well, I guess she has found her match in Svend!
News story here ...

this is a problem...

Ok, I'd heard of weird things like this happening in the US, but in CALGARY? We're normal, here! Or so I thought (except for the tendency to wear cowboy hats a lot of the time). I guess not -- see the CBC news story here.

would you go?

As part of my job I have to travel to various conferences; of course, having a new baby has put a bit of a crimp in things. So I'm looking for some place to go to this year. I've missed a lot of deadlines, so my choices are a little more limited than usual. Calcutta, Tel Aviv, Saudi Arabia, San Jose California and somewhere in Eastern Florida are pretty much what I've narrowed it down to.

Of course, there are other issues to consider other than just where is the coolest place to visit, but all that aside, here's the question: would you go to Calcutta? on your own? if you were a woman? How 'bout Tel Aviv? Saudi Arabia? I'm finding that there are quite a few places I'm extremely nervous about visiting, particularly on my own. If I am meeting up with someone then it's not quite so intimidating a trip, but if I have little to no prospect of knowing someone on the other end then I find myself quite leery of traveling, even to Europe. And I've been THERE a few times, and there's not quite so much culture shock as, say, Saudi Arabia might offer. Hell, I'm nervous even going to Seattle!

Not to mention the fact that let's face it, women truly are second-class citizens in some of these places. (not seattle. I don't think so, anyway.)

So I think it's gonna be a choice between San Jose and Florida. Not that this is any hardship (poor me, do I go to Florida or San Jose -- sun, sun, or more sun??) but I can see Joe going nuts that I am turning some of these places down just because I'm worried about traveling on my own (e.g. past options have been Bangkok, Peking, Kobe, Hiroshima ...). So what would you do?

There's my thought for the day. To dan and tina -- good luck with the deck!

culture shock

It's such a weird thing. I've done a bit of travel in my life, mainly in the Western Hemisphere, but let's just say I've left Canada once or twice. So you'd think I'd be fairly used to the idea of culture shock. I mean, travelling to the US is always an eye-opener, despite the fact that in many cases Canadians and Americans are less than an hour apart by car.

So to encounter some serious culture shock when we moved to Southern Alberta shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was. Canada is Canada, right? We're all pretty much the same, I figured. Except the folks in Quebec, cuz they speak French. And the folks in the Maritimes, cuz they talk funny (well, you do, Ken!). Oh, and people in Vancouver are snobs, and seriously unfriendly, and people in Calgary don't stop for pedestrians... Ok, so my point is that I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

Wow, two whole paragraphs and I haven't yet got to the point! The biggest shock was the size of people's families. Most of our friends have one or two kids, and they're done. I have two brothers, and in BC this was a fairly large family. Well, ladies and gents, in Southern Alberta you haven't even started unless you have three kids. We went to BK one day and I sat there feeling inadequate for only having one (at the time) child! Very odd. People talk about 5-children families and don't even
flinch. One lady that Joe talked to when I was in the hospital with Andra had just had twins. Joe said "that must be exciting" and she said "No, not really; it's my third set." Plus she had two (or three? I can't remember) other children. And it's not unusual to be in the grocery store and see a lady shopping with 4 or 5 kids hanging off her skirts. Of course, it IS unusual to see a MAN shopping with 4 or 5 children, but that's another post.

So there are my thoughts for today (actually that was yesterday's thought, I just never got round to posting it).

Here's a link that I found that might be fun: web tickle. I haven't tried it yet, so don't blame me it if is lame!

Success - a deep thought

Had a "deep thought" -- imagine a rich, deep voice saying each word in a long, drawn out fashion, please -- that I meant to post this a.m., but the day started out hectic (darn that daylight savings time) and stayed that way and I never got around to it.

And now I've forgotten it!

HAH! I know what it was: I heard a broadcast on CBC not too long ago about how studies have shown that middle children are statistically less successful than first, last, or only children. So of course, I worried about having another child, and about all my friends' middle children, being the chronic worrier that I am.

But it got me to thinking about what is a good measure of "success". Financial stability? That's fairly easy to measure, but I don't know if it is a GOOD measure. How about success in a career? Well, what is success in a career? Being in one job for a long time? Making lots of money? Or reaching a high rank, e.g. President of a company or Chair of the board, etc. etc. Again, it's a nice, easy-to-measure indicator, but is it truly success?

For instance, if two partners decide to have children, and one partner (note the truly pc terms -- not husband and wife, but partners :-) decides to stay home to care for children, what measures his or her success in their chosen profession? Is there such a rank as full professor of stay-at-home caregiver? Or is that otherwise known as SUPERMOM/SUPERDAD? And who decides when you qualify for that? I sure hope it's not our kids, otherwise I'm guessing we don't get promoted until our kids move out. Or maybe when they have kids of their own!

A better measure of this odd thing called "success" may be happiness, but who can measure that? Are you happy? Am I happy? Well, sometimes, but on any given day I could be frustrated/angry/furious/guilty/confused and deliriously happy. No, I'm not manic depressive. Well, not much, anyway :-) So it may be more accurate, but way harder to measure.

All in all, I decided that however the researchers came up with their stats, one just can't measure success the same way for everyone, and so the study is bogus (IMHO). And I stopped worrying.

Next post: man, I had this other deeep thought, and again, it's gone! Mind of a gnat these days, I swear. oh well!

My friends and I have started a weekly ladies' night out. I'm really looking forward to it! I find it difficult to get out of the house and do things on my own (except for work and that doesn't count); there's always at least one kid wanting or needing to tag along, or hubby is out somewhere so I have to look after the kids. Not that I don't enjoy spending time with my kids, it's just that having some adult, and lately, female adult conversation has been lacking in my life.

Let's face it, there are just some things that the girls understand, and the guys don't. Most guys. Well, maybe they pretend not to.

So last week we went to see the movie Calendar Girls. Great flick! Must see. Here's the trailer if you want a preview. I laughed, I cried, etc. I found it took me a little to get used to the Yorkshire accent, but my friend who I was with had no troubles with it, so maybe that's just me. The ladies in the movie are part of the WI (Women's Institute); it seemed like a kind of girl guides for grown-ups. I've never had a lot of really close female friends, and this WI seemed a neat way for the women in the community to stay close. I don't think our little night out makes us a WI, but it's got similarities.

So, I was born on a thursday -- you can probably tell by the title of my blog. I've always felt I had "far to go", and still do. HOWEVER, I now feel at least I'm on the right road! It's kind of nice to know that the journey is taking me somewhere I want to be, even if I don't know where that is.

How deep! Very unlike me ;-)

Both my babies were born on sundays, oddly enough. So was my husband. Fair and wise, good and gay. Hmmm. I don't think so!

BTW, all you pregnant women out there, I have a guaranteed foolproof way of getting your baby to arrive on a certain day. Just make sure there is ONE day, fairly close to your due date, that has a history of some sort... like, let's say, hypothetically of course, an ex-boyfriend's birthday. Then your child is certain to decide to be born on that date. Guaranteed. :-)

Ok, let me elaborate on yesterday's posting -- I don't mind a good joke, but April 1 brings out all these people writing really sad parodies of things, and they're just not funny. But they have to forward (or post) them to everyone in the world, unfortunately. I have to be honest, though; the real reason I don't like April Fool's Day is because at least half the time I'm not sure if it's a joke or not.

I hate that. Back to working on my template, now (that's the real reason for starting a blog, IMHO -- wink).

blah some more -- my comments don't work. I'll work on 'em later, gotta get home and feed the little ones!

Blah blah blah. The only reason I created this blog spot was so that I could vent about how much I DETEST April Fool's day! It brings out the worst in everyone, IMHO. Sigh...