Happy Halloween!

This was the first year that The Boy went trick-or-treating. Last year it was hard enough to get him to get his costume on. This year we thought we were in for more of the same, and were thinking that we weren't going to push it, but he WAS excited about putting out the jack-o-lantern that he and his dad had carved earlier in the day, and once I announced around 6 that it was time to put that out, he decided it was time to go trick or treating as well. Thank heavens he had an easy costume to put on.

(He went as Venom, which I'm not sure I mentioned here before. Yeah, I know -- a supervillain. I'm not entirely sure it was a good choice, since I'm supposed to be the guider of morals and all, but he did LOVE it and ... well, the costume was on sale at the local consignment store, $12!)

So off we went -- first to the neighbours, where he got his first treat, much to his surprise. I don't think he really believed us that people would just give him candy. And then we went to a small townhouse complex down the block -- I think we hit probably only 15 places in total -- and he was pumped.

"I LOVE this trick or treating!" he kept saying. "I LOVE all these treats! Let's try THAT house! They have pumpkins!" And on it went. The pitch and volume of his voice got louder and louder and more excited, and he was practically sparkling by the end of it all. He had to be reminded to say trick or treat, and reminded to say thank you, and a few times we had to help him remember to leave, because at a few places if he just stood there they would give him MORE CANDY, so each time he would lean further and further in the door, perhaps in the hopes that just round the corner there was some big vat into which he could simply dive. And he never managed to be able to tell people who he was dressed as, instead he would point at the spider on his chest and say "duh duh DUH" in that classic comic sign of evil arriving and bad things happening that we've taught him, which did at least give him a few laughs. (He had his own entrance music!)

By the end of it all he decided his bag was much too heavy for him to carry, so he would hand it to us as he turned around, his faithful baggage handlers, before racing off to the next stoop.

He was (surprisingly) pleased to go home, but I think that perhaps it was just because then he could look at all his loot and -- gasp! -- eat some.

And now it's 8:45, and despite the fact that we let him eat only three items from the loot bag, he is wired as sh*t and won't sleep. So I guess all in all we could call it a rousing success.

Randoms for a Saturday morning

One of the advantages of having a.) done this whole pregnancy thing before and b.) taking a while to get to this point in the process is that I have gotten to know my body far more well than I ever thought I might. But it has neat side effects -- this morning as I lay in bed, my abdomen relaxed , I reached down and felt, just below my belly button, my uterus, carrying this new child. The only thing I'm missing now is some quickening, but that too, I know, won't happen for a few more weeks. I've felt a few things here and there which don't feel like anything else, but I won't be sure what it is for a while. That more than anything is what I loved about pregnancy -- the baby squirming. Although I admit that The Boy was a squirmer, not a kicker, and I've heard that the kicking is not so pleasant. I guess I'll see.

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Yesterday was the daycare Halloween party, and the child was allowed to go in his costume, which naturally he refused to do. Upon arriving to the centre and seeing that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- was in costume, he promptly changed his mind. Luckily I had prepared for this. But interesting how in that way -- he's just like me. Let's not step out of line unless everyone else does too.

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This morning is clear and bright, the rain having gone through last night. Which would be good except for the fact that we had gotten out of the daycare yard cleaning on account of the fact it was to rain all weekend. Now that it's not raining, I feel obligated to go and sweep / rake / otherwise clean. Which is pretty much the last thing I feel like doing this morning.

On the bright side, if we do this, I might be able to stop by the quilting shop on the way home and get my batting / backing finally, which I meant to do all week from work and didn't manage to do. And this can turn back into a blog about something interesting and other than my swelling self.

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The Man usually does the grocery shopping in our home, but yesterday I had occasion to do so instead. It's not something I like to do when it's a forced weekly chore, but going out to wander the stores to look for yummy things is of course delightful. I am completely amazed by the number of gluten free products that there are out there. I bought frozen pizza which we had for dinner last night that was actually not too bad. I mean, it's frozen pizza, so there is a limit to how good it can be, but it was pretty nice to have something that easy again, just out of the freezer and heat.

Also I found brownies made with fruit puree, which were not nearly so tasty as they proclaimed on the box. To be fair they were indeed edible (which isn't always the case for gluten-free baked goods) but double chocolate nuggets of goodness they were not.

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Damn, I really am going to have to go sweep that darn yard. The day is gorgeous. All the better for trick or treating, I guess.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Pregnancy Honeymoon

It was cold and rainy this morning, and I dressed in cords, a mat shirt, and a large fuzzy warm shirt. I was still cold. And now that I'm entering the second trimester, I'm less nauseous than I used to be. Consequently I spent most of the day forgetting I'm pregnant. And wondering why. And then thinking ... shouldn't I be feeling something?

And then half an hour later thinking, why am I so tired, and why don't I have any appetite?

Clearly at least I have pregnancy brain.

What I did to make myself feel better

It's been one of those days. Well, mostly it's just one thing -- the flu. No, I don't have it. Neither does anyone I know. But it's ALL people can TALK about, especially when you're pregnant. Will you get the vaccine? Will you not? What's in it? What's not? What's best? What's going on? What the hell??

It's got me worried, which is silly: most cases here have been mild. As far as we can tell, anyone around here who HAS had complications or death has had some underlying health condition. The complications rate has been less than 1%, and 70% of those have been people with underlying issues.

So basically the chances of me getting life threatening complications (and that's IF I even get sick) are about one third of a percent (JS, if my math is off and I have a greater chance ... please don't tell me!) And the chances of my having a healthy baby at this point are 98%, and most pregnancy books and doctors treat that as close to a sure thing as you can get in pregnancy. Odds are greatly, greatly, greatly in my favour of getting through this flu season unscathed AND having a nice healthy baby in May.

But I admit I've been a little twisted in knots even so.

And so I sat down this afternoon and wrote nice things in my journal, and took it easy. Joked with a colleague. Relaxed. Reminded myself how lucky I am to be pregnant and how grateful I am. Reminded myself that I have a good plan in place for the flu if the worst does happen, and by the end of the month I'll be vaccinated and all set. Reminded myself of the odds that are in my favour.

And then I got some good -- great -- news from a friend back east, and THAT made my day. And I'm reminded that there's lots of good in the world.

My pleasure for the day

Pardon the spectacularly bad photo, but our real camera was dropped one too many times and is feeling poorly. But THIS is a finished quilt top, people.

Now all I have to do is get the batting and the backing and baste it together ... wish me luck!

Daycare Debauchery

This afternoon when I picked up my child, his shoes were on the wrong feet and his pants were on backwards.

Fifteen years from now, if I pick him up from a day out with friends and he's in a similarly disheveled state, I will be rather concerned.

And what did you do to make yourself feel better?

I read a lot of parenting stuff. It's a normal thing for me: before I got married I got a book about the first year of marriage (needless to say, THAT went out the window when the whole farce crumbled. It had a lot of good advice about how to avoid fights about money, children, and religion, but NO advice whatsoever on the "I'm sleeping with my co-worker" dilemma. Useless trash.)

Anyway. I read a lot, perhaps excessively, about topics I am interested in and about which I don't feel confident. And let's face it: there's so much information out there on parenting that I'm not sure how anyone feels confident, even if you have raised 18 children (although I for one think that that's actually bad parenting -- how awful will your kid feel when you can never remember their name and only spend 2 minutes with them each day?)

Have I digressed again?

This is a round about way of saying that I read something interesting today, but I can't remember where, and so I am not going to credit the author, for which I apologize.

Everyone wants to raise a happy and resilient child. I sure do, especially because I admit that I tend to be, when stressed, a bit of a pessimist. (Reading this right now, The Man is saying "A BIT???!!!) I'm reasonably resilient, though -- which I like -- but there's a big difference between being resilient and slogging through things, and being resilient and bouncing back. It's surviving vs living, and I'd really like to do more of the latter.

So this morning's article on raising resilient and happy children said the usual stuff, but one thing struck me: it's easy, they say, to tell your kid to buck up after a long day. As a parent you have the gift of hindsight and you know very well that no matter what Mary did in Math class, that pales in comparison to having your husband come home and tell you that your marriage is over because he's been screwing around in the stacks of the library.

But what you need to do is commiserate with your child and then ask the all important question:

"And then what did you do to make yourself feel better?"

Which gives your child the idea that a.) they have the power to do this, b.) that there's no sense in wallowing over it and c.) they should do something about it, they have the right and the personal obligation to treat themselves nicely if something bad happens in their lives. Or even if it doesn't.

And you know, I think that this isn't just good advice for your kid: it's good advice for us all. Adult lives are fraught with stress: work stress, relationship stress, kid-raising stress, commuting stress -- the list goes on. And we're often battered by not just our own lives but by the problems of those around us.

And yet for some reason there's this Puritanical expectation that we as adults must just buck up and carry on. Too much self-indulgence leads to ... I don't know. Slothfulness? Gluttony? Some other of the deadly sins?

I am definitely one of those people who does this. I was raised to do chores before pleasure, and if there were too many chores, then pleasure got sacrificed. And don't get me wrong: I'm not suddenly going to stop doing my dishes.

But I think going forward me and my family are going to be encouraged to find one nice thing for ourselves each day. Maybe more. But one little treat, one little joy, one kind thought. Simple pleasures, but a recognition of them, a moment to appreciate a little joy in life, to guard against the battering. A way to make ourselves feel better, to treat ourselves nicely, to give ourselves a little frisson of pleasure in the face of a world that isn't always kind and beautiful.

So tell me: What are YOU going to do for yourself today?