totally unrelated

i did this on saturday. 7 inches gone.
it was time for a big change & i love it.

...

having a sick kid & not being able to parent them because its not your week... it really, really blows. as a parent you live with the guilt every second of every day. you constantly worry about them. you think of them continually. you hope they are okay & not missing you. worse, you allow your guilt at not being there for them to consume you & cloud your days & nights causing you to cry helplessly from being so damn helpless.

liam was incredibly ill starting thursday night last & had a fever hovering between 103.5 and 104 for over 24 hours. it was incredibly upsetting for everyone including liam, his dad & myself. there were motrin runs, tylenol runs, urine analysis runs, doctor visits & phone calls & lots of "please drink this liam, please!" understandable emotions were high, but things were said that shouldn't have been said & much worse - things things were done that should never have been done.

i have to wonder what the point of my blog is now ... it was originally created to recount my experiences as a first time mom. since my separation i've only been blogging about my 'happy' experiences, not the rest. even though good & bad go hand in hand.

what is the point of having a blog about my life when i'm not allowed to blog about my life?
why am i still even bothering to blog?

dead until dark

opposite land today. no baby talk. momma needs a break from the fever & he just fell asleep so lets go with this...

-this weekend we're getting book 1 of the southern vampire mysteries called 'dead until dark' whose cover i already love because:

a) they're floating. or levitating. or flying? hovering? (mmm flying is good. it makes my top 5-list of 'super powers i wish i had'. sometimes when i'm really lucky i have this dream where i'm flying across cities or meadows with trees [gag] and its always a blast). points

b) visible fang. points

c) flaming house fire. points

d) the font in the title is a bit arty without being pretentious. but its a little childish... it loses points for that... but the little font really works. points. a tie. 

e) the girl reminds me of buffy. points

f) i want to be her.  POINTS

so, after judging this book by its cover, i am going to love reading it. if the words and the sentence structure and the content are anything like the HBO series 'true blood' you know we will rip through this series like a tornado in a trailer park (admit you love the reference) 

i will hop from book to book and dream sweet dreams of vampires who are mainstream. 

right now i have to hop to put laundry in the dryer. yes, my life is thrilling. 

hi, i'm cute

yes you are, baby boy

without photos you wouldn't believe me

how much urine is considered normal for a 16 month old baby to expel in one night? honestly i'm asking this question. i'm serious. how much?

i'm asking you because i don't know. how could i possibly? liam is my first child. this is all new for me.

on the weekend liam woke up at 6:30 am on saturday. i believe he woke so early because he was cold. his diaper had leaked up his front and his pajamas were wet (ha! this is for bex: 'what are you wearing?' 'my pajamas!').

his front was soaked and his hands were freezing. his nose was also cold. diagnosis: cold from urine. as well, when i took the diaper off it was soggy, wet and freezing. his butt cheeks were cold. aw. i know. how sad is that? cold little butt cheekers.

this wasn't the only sucky thing. it also didn't bruck with momz that he was going through 2 pairs of pajamas per night. i do not have 12-14 pairs of pajamas set aside for my week. i also do not have enough dollar coins and quarters to do laundry every single day (nor time, nor inclination). i had to figure something out because this is starting to happen more and more on my nights ...

that day during grocery shopping i remembered some September Mommies had mentioned trying Pull-Ups at night. i wasn't sure how they were better or if they would even work but i figured there is nothing to lose in trying... right? (by the way, choosing Pull-Ups when you've never shopped for them before is a bit daunting.)

come night time i tricked my kid out in his usual 2 pairs of pajamas. don't look at me like that, you remember me posting about this. you don't? okay... recap: liam is still not old enough to know how to pull blankets up to cover himself at night which means he sleeps on or beside his blankets but not under them.
we live in ottawa = cold.
we live in a drafty old tri-plex building = cold.
i have mean druggie neighbors who sometimes punish me by not allowing us to have heat = cold.
liam has a fan in his room to drown out the background noise made by the rude inconsiderates downstairs and street traffic = contributes to the cold.
my boss Shannon (love, love her) mentions in passing that she tried 2 pairs of PJ's and, miracle, her daughter slept in. i try putting him in 2 pairs of pajamas at night and, so far, its been working a dream.

back on point: 2 pairs of pajamas and, now, 2 pairs of underpants (1 diaper + 1 pull up).

this deserves visual documentation if only because its such an unbelievably crazy process to get liam ready for bed.

i give you: bedtime at my house.

diaper...

pull-up over diaper...

onesie, leggings and socks...

full feety-pajamas over everything ...

so we get to the money question: did it work? you bet your sweet ass it did! he slept until 7:30am on sunday morning and when i got him out of his crib he was warm in hands and nose regions. his diaper was still very full, but his butt cheeks were warm. i noticed today (getting him changed) that the Pull-Up had caught a good tablespoon of urine from spilling into his pajamas.

Pull-Ups you are my new best friend. anything that allows me to sleep in is Aces and Pull-Ups, you are ACES.

its in his DNA

his dad is a DJ, his mom is a classically trained pianist, his nanners is an opera singer, his gramps plays electric guitar, his aunt bex went to queens university for music composition, his aunt kim is also a classically trained pianist... 

is it any wonder he loves this toy? 

it really IS in his DNA.

you'll eat it & you'll like it

last night i had my little man for the weekly sleep over (i get him back on friday for my week) and i thought i had enough gluten free food in the freezer to stuff his little tummy full. which i did. however, i did not have enough gluten free food in my freezer to stuff my tummy along with his. since i do not have the desire/time/mothering attitude to make two separate meals i did what any good momma would do: i figured something out.

rummaging through my fridge and freezer i found:

- 1 pkg frozen lean ground beef;
- 1 pkg frozen potato gnocchi;
- 1/4 jar of pasta sauce;
- 1 big ass tin of tomatoes in sauce;
- 1 open but 3/4 full jar of pizza sauce;
- 1 almost empty container of parmesean cheese; and,
- 1 ass end of a brick of real parm cheese.

[i didn't have enough pasta sauce so i used the tin of tomatoes with the pizza sauce and added a butt load of spices while not really knowing which would be good - it was a crap shoot people. a crap shoot.]

you see where this is going, right? you're thinking "mmmm tomato saucy gnocchi" and you're thinking right.

what you're not thinking is what i was thinking, which is this:

"the last time i made liam pasta with tomato sauce he hated it. then over christmas my mom made lasagna with tomatoes and he threw it on the floor and ate shredded deli ham instead. i guess he hates tomato sauce. hopefully he'll at least eat the gnocchi since its the perfect size for his little fingers and is pretty damn bland."

so i slave, toil, boil, stir, chop, shred, serve and cross my fingers. it looks good. it smells good. does it pass the test?

heck no! he hated the gnocchi. observed it with disgust. poked at it with a horrified look on his face as if to say "you want me to eat these larva looking lumps of what exactly?"

then he did this...

then he slowed down enough to actually taste the food at which point he decided that although he didn't like the gnocchi part of the meal he actually did like the sauce part. which is ironically the part i was worrying about the most while making the meal.

he liked that tomatoe meat sauce so much that i fed him - get ready for it - three bowls. i'm not talking about little baby/toddler bowls. these were full-on adult sized bowls. of sauce. meat sauce. three bowls of meat sauce.

he got that sauce everywhere. all over the floor, the table, the highchair ....

and all over his face....

lord love him. for real. because sometimes i don't get it. what kid eats three bowls of meat sauce? how is that okay??

all i could think was "i am so glad he takes his daily crap at daycare".

TFOC twitter has gone private

that's right folks, in the interest of keeping my friends list private and in order to decrease the amount of cross-contamination, TFOC twitter has gone private.

when i first joined twitter, the purpose was social networking for my blog, bringing more traffic through the little status updates.

as of today TFOC has 56 readers on twitter. pathetic if you consider that Tina Fey has something like 10,000... anyway.... the mini-status updates have proven to be a great way to chronical the little things i love about being Liam's mom - but the TFOC twitter also left a little whole in my soul.

on TFOC twitter i haven't really felt comfortable being "me" - Jenny/Momz. events conspired so that every time i twittered about my life outside of being a mom, a shit storm rained down upon me from various sources. everyone was so used to TFOC twitter being specifically about mom stuff that i felt like my creative juices were stifled and i wasn't allowed to twitter about anything else. rediculous right? i know, i'm too nice. as if i let people make me feel like that... welcome to my guilt!

then it occured to me that i could have as many twitter accounts as i wanted. so to give myself an outlet, i created "Jennerific" which is up to 23 readers. obviously i called myself Jennerific because i'm super terrific and my name is Jennifer. hello.

to follow TFOC twitter all you have to do it click on the "follow me" link to the left & request to be added. you can also join me at Jennerific by clicking right here.

happy tweeting tweeters.

twilight or 'let me act like a stupid teen for a day'

twilight is about teen love. angst. emo stuff right? i don't care. 

when i first heard about twilight it was in reference to the movie that just came out. of course i was interested because - as most of you know - there lurks inside Momz a serious, slightly sick vampire obsession. 

when i discovered that twilight was based on a series of books i had a mini heart attack. when i found out that the series was written for a "teen" audience i spent 10 minutes wondering if i could live down the shame of purchasing them at chapters. those 10 minutes were a serious waste of time.

after i brought the books home i drank them in one after the next until all four lay strewn around my bedroom floor (where most of my books go to recover after i break their spines and turn down their pages and spill juice on them in the middle of the night. sometimes its peanut butter. i digress). 

since then i've looked forward with much anticipation to the movie release. why then haven't i seen it? its been out for months. ages. however i just can't bring myself to do it. 

part of me is worried the movie is going to stink like so many people have said. another part of me is worried the theater is going to be filled with tweens. tweens loving on twilight. ack. a really big part of me is just a cheap skate who is too used to watching DVD rips from the comfort of my couch to pay to squeeze into a tiny seat in a freezing theatre where i will (inevitably) end up behind the guy with egg farts. 

so, until i find that perfect copy of the movie on the internet i have to amuse myself with doing silly quizzes like this one:

Take the Quiz and Share Your Results!

and adding "twilight quotes" to my facebook profile.

like my obsession with gossip girl and 90210 - i am not ashamed!

more things i am not ashamed of:

- 'true blood' - the vampire tv series - is amazing and i am watching it again, for the 3rd time. yep. the 3rd time. 

- on facebook i am playing an embarrassingly engrossing  vampire RPG called 'bloodlust'. currently i am stuck in 'the hall of mirrors'. there are 4 people in my bloodlust blood-line and i shamelessly invite 4 friends each day to max out my stamina so i can keep winning blood-duels and leveling up. 

- i can quote almost any buffy episode from beginning to end between seasons 1 to 4. for a few months in the last seasons about 10 of us from the old raver scene would meet at each other's houses every tuesday night for 'buffy nights' where we would frantically talk and speculate about the story line during commercials and spend another hour together watching angel. 

- the most dirty little vampire secret of all my vampire secrets...  there was a group of us in 12th grade spare class that sat it the upstairs library back room. we used to smoke weed at lunch then read and trade the Anne Rice vampire series. we made a very serious life time pact that if one of us becomes a vampire we'll hunt the others down and bite them too.  

national de-lurker week

as posted on my sister Kim's blog - this week is national de-luker week. since TFOC get hundreds of hits a day and currently has 21 followers (only 8 of which are public), i kindly ask that you de-lurk and make your precence known.

who are you? where are you from? do you have your own blog that i can stalk in return? let me know who are you if you're not too afraid to publically admit (via comment) you read a mommy blog about babies ...

wowee

in december TFOC had 8,104 visitors earning liam $15.00

thanks clickers. you rock

its on. oh yes, its on

i am at war with my downstairs neighbors and they are anything but neighborly; they are mean, rude 50 year old weed addicts who are self absorbed and unapologetic about it. moving out my now ex-marital home was hard, moving into a beautiful affordable 2 bedroom close to Liam's daycare made it easier. realizing that i live above cheech & chong has made the transition unbearable. 

so far i've placed more phone calls than i care to admit to my landlord, who has been doing his best to work the situation as any good landlord should. however, his hands are tied. what my downstairs door knobs do in the apartment is not his business legally as long as they continue to pay their rent. so my weeks here have gone something like this: i call to complain, he calls them, they get mad at me, they turn off the heat/snow mine or my friend's cars in/play loud music in the middle of the night/bang a broom on their ceiling randomly (last time was because bex was playing the dog too loud - my dog is about 15 pounds. there is nothing even remotely loud about him) etc

i will then call the landlord - again - and he will get frustrated and tell me to speak to them personally. so i will. downstairs i go to tap on their door and feel utterly horrible about asking them to please not smoke weed while my kid is home. they agree and the next morning i wake up at 6am or 8am to the horrible smell wafting up from the bedroom below. nothing like a wake and bake right? i cry. i sit in bed and literally cry

then me+landlord+downstairs dick heads decide that i will stop by the day i get liam to let them know he'll be with me for the week to follow. while its a good idea in theory its not working out that well because a) i am having a really hard time being the constant bad guy and b) they don't care & smoke anyway. they say they understand, they glare but agree. then they light up again

mostly i've been worried about the effects this would have on liam's development. speaking with a friend of mine who is a bit of an expert and having done some research online myself, i now know that it would take an exorbitant amount of the sweet mary jane to affect my son or myself in any kind of negative aspect and there is no way that they are smoking that amount. however, it doesn't really matter does it? should we have to suffer through the constant reek of grass because they are too immature to take it outside?

i'm not really sure where this post is going. when i left after lunch, having wrote the earlier paragraphs, i was going into the office then to pick up my son. i was thinking all afternoon that when i got home it would be to the cloying stink of skunk weed. even stopping at walmart for some scented candles and spray, i still didn't feel armed to deal with the issue - again.

however when i walked in the house it didn't smell like anything. it wasn't freezing cold. the snow wasn't piled high in my parking spot. no one glared at me from semi-drawn blinds. 

is this the beginning of a truce? guess we'll see. for me at least i'm done fighting. i smell it one more time while my son is here and the cops will be called. really, i have no other choice.

do i?