Brick Lane

Not one of my talents

I did the one thing I vowed I would never do. I cut Deaglan's hair last night. It was a trainwreck. For weeks I knew I would have to do something about his bangs in his eyes. How hard could it be I asked myself. We put him in the highchair and Shaune sprayed down his hair while I cut a straight line across his forehead. Well the results couldn't be any worse - I guess if I closed my eyes while cutting maybe. Shaune called him everything from Friar Tuck to Spock's mini-me to muffin head (I don't even know what that means). Anyway, I spent the evening full of guilt and shame not to mention annoyance at Shaune for coming up with all these names. I even dreamed about the bad haircut I gave to my baby boy. This morning I called the children's hair salon down on the corner and made an appointment to remedy this debacle.

He does look really cute but I'm sad that his baby hair which I loved long is gone. I didn't want to pull a Celine Dion or anything - her kid (who is a boy) hasn't had a haircut yet and he's seven. But I did want to keep his hair long for a little while longer. Oh and by the way, the big bruisey scab on the bridge of his nose also happened on my watch.

Sabina

I don't want to come off as a solicitor on my own blog. Well maybe a little bit. This is Sabina Mosammat our sponsored child. She's almost nine and lives in Dhaka Bangladesh. That's where my sister Tara and I were in the orphanage before we were adopted by Joe and Randi. Anyway I wanted to mention how easy it is to sponsor a kid. Easier than volunteering somewhere. Easier than going through your closets and finding stuff you want to give away to the local women's shelter. Definitely easier than changing Deaglan's diapers everyday. We went to the World Vision website: http://www.worldvision.ca/Pages/Home.aspx and clicked through some pages and then we were officially helping someone. We haven't noticed it come off of our credit card except that now we are using that one again whereas before I always forgot to.

World Vision has been around forever and has a really good honest reputation. The money does get to the person you sponsor. The goal of the program is to make the family self-sufficient. I used to sponsor someone several years ago before Sabina and one day I received a letter saying that I no longer needed to sponsor the child I had been because her family became self-sufficient.

It's $35.00 a month. Nothing. You can't even buy a nice sweater at H&M or fill up your tank for that much. Once you sign on you kind of feel good that you did something. It makes those commercials with the hungry kids a lot easier to watch! That's the end of my solicitation.

I want to remember

I believe that I really learned to recognize joy when Deaglan came into my life. There were probably many instances prior to his arrival but I didn't look for them or know how to cherish them. Sometimes these days I find myself feeling bittersweet when I notice something. Like when he's sitting on my lap and I look closely at his tiny feet and legs. Someday he will be a grown man I think to myself and these feet will be enormous and these legs covered with hair. Here are some of the things I hope I will always have within reach in my memory bank:-The way he pinches my neck and burrows his hands into my armpits right before he falls asleep-The space between his two front teeth- His grunt of approval when he's eating something he likes- That he is unapologetic when he's doing something wrong (in my eyes) like pulling on Crash's tail or emptying out my organized baskets if he gets the chance.-His hair when he wakes up in the morning-His sweet baby smell-The few times he actually gives me a kiss after I ask him to give me a kiss a thousand times-How he hugs me when he's sick-How his face lights up when he laughs-How breathtakingly cute he is when he is sleeping - bum up in the air - arms tucked under himAnd so many other moments of sheer delight he makes me feel!

Bargain!

Irrestibly cute kid!

Our new table $200!

Tepperman's $1399.00

This spring one of our big purchases was going to be a kitchen table. Our old one was a mish-mash of a hand-me-down table and our old wobbly chairs. Shaune and I enjoy having family and friends over for dinner or lunch and we've often felt slightly embarrassed about our dining room set. I've been doing some online window shopping and the set pictured here is from Tepperman's where we bought our living room set as well as our bed. This past weekend while I was checking out kijiji to see if anyone was selling a train table for Deaglan's future trainset, I clicked on dining room furniture just to see what people were trying to get rid of. I found the set we now have in our kitchen for $250.00 and was able to talk him down to $200.00. While it's not perfect upon close inspection, it has character and it looks absolutely lovely in our home. Everyday Shaune and I declare a new reason why we love it even more:

• it looks great against the mossy green walls (Monday - me and Shaune)
• it is solid and there is some great architectural detail (Tuesday me then Shaune agreed)
• we don't care if it gets chipped because we only paid $200! (Wednesday morning - can't remember who said it)
• we saved $1200!!!! (because we were considering buying something similar to the Tepperman's set) (everyday since we bought it - usually me)
• we recycled! (Last night - Shaune)

Kijiji has been such an excellent resource for us. Over the past year or so we also bought a jogging stroller, a bike trailer, a sewing machine, some kids' toys and a zoom lens for our camera.

I included the picture of Deaglan in this post only because I can't resist and I still can't get over how cute he is!

Happiness is Family Day!

Today has been a wonderful lazy day for the three of us. What a great holiday - I think we need a few more of these during the year.

Thomas

Finally we've started our Thomas and Friends collection. This past summer during my mat leave we (Deaglan and I) often walked to Chapter's where there was a complete set-up in the children's area. I wanted to start buying pieces so that by the time Deaglan was old enough to enjoy it, we would have a good start to a Thomas and Friends train set. I've been paying a lot of lip-service to the idea and today Shaune said: Let's just go and buy a piece already! I was so excited that I just had to blog about it. It is a good purchase to start with. Compared to all the other pieces they had at Toys R Us, this one was less expensive and it came with two engines (Thomas and Percy) plus some tracks for only $20.00! I hope that Deaglan gets as excited about it someday as I am today. I also hope that he will one day be able to pass it on to his kids.

LOVE

What more could a girl want? Happy Valentine's Day!

Ready or not...here I come!

I love that our camera enables me to continuously shoot in order to catch moments like these.

Lost for good

In preparation for Deaglan's birth we had bought several soothers. Through trial and error we found that only one really did the trick. It is the red one with the helicopter on it photographed so many times on this blog. Between Shaune and I, we have lost it a dozen times at least but have always managed to find it. Two weeks ago I came home to Shaune blurting out this statement...You're gonna be really mad at me when you find out what I did. After asking him a few questions I was able to find the soother. This past Friday he said the same thing only this time instead of waiting til I got home, he called me at work. I could tell by the tone of his voice that this time was different. He and Deaglan were running some errands and as far as Shaune could gather the baby must have dropped it in the stroller while they waited in line at the MTO. Then when Shaune was folding up the stroller to put it into the back of the vehicle it must have dropped out in the parking lot. My reaction surprised even me. I told him it was fine and that Deaglan would get used to a new one. Still Shaune was upset and insisted we go back to the MTO parking lot and look for it. Of course we didn't find it. When we finally got home this array of soothers sat on our kitchen table. I bit my tongue from commenting because I knew Shaune was genuinely upset by losing the soother. We both were thinking the same thing - it would have been nice to keep for memories sake. It's been several days and Deaglan has been fine without his red helicopter soother.