Day 26: 29 Days of the Everyday

Day 25: 29 Days of the Everyday

As a parent, I have begrudgingly accepted routine. As a parent, you really have no choice in the matter, if you want some semblance of a happy child and home.

And while I am not one to want to be away from home (and the routine) for very long — even pre-Lucy, a week’s vacation was borderline more than enough — I get bored easily. It’s a rather frustrating existence, really. Being married to a man that thrives on routine, who gets a indigestion when he’s away from home for more than two days, who lives for the comfortableness in the same, can be challenging. Throw in a child, and well, jeez.

So I break things up with small indulgences: The colour and length of my hair. New shampoos and body and hand wash and dish soap. Seeking out new friends. Visiting new stores. Purposely NOT cleaning the house exactly every week or 10 days or *gasp* three weeks. Trying new foods and restaurants.

But some parts of the routine we cannot escape, can we? Dishes are ingrained in our family’s routine. Every night after dinner, after Lucy is in bed, they beckon. They line the countertops: Plastic sippy cups, the booster seat chair, favourite spoons that can’t be missed for as often as the dishwasher is run, pots and pans and cooking utensils from tonight’s dinner, Tupperware that must be hand washed.

Because they are here, I’ve come to rely on them as part of the process to unwind from the day. I enjoy the act of filling the sink with hot soapy water and scrubbing each piece with the yellow and green sponge. There is something…fresh about dishes, something clean as they drop into the drying rack sudsy and warm.

No matter what the day has brought or tomorrow will bring, they are a constant. And I like that.

(Don’t tell Eric.)

Day 24: 29 Days of the Everyday

Day 23: 29 Days of the Everyday

You know it’s been a great party when the guest of honour ends up half-nekkid at the end of the night in a Benny Hill montage.

Pics and post to come soon.

Day 22: 29 Days of the Everyday
Lucy, Doggie, Boo-Boo and Elephant kickin’ back with Elmo.

I am so far behind on, well, everything right now. But it’s all going to have to wait, because it’s my little girl’s birthday weekend!

Eric’s mom arrived just before lunch. Lucy spent the morning talking about the “big hugs” she was going to give her Gramie.

Tomorrow our immediate family is here for a little birthday dinner party. Lucy knows she’s turning 2, and is currently 1. She’s also well knowledged on cake. Actually, this morning she was licking the television screen when a cake came on.

The fingerprints of babyhood have been replaced by the lickprints of toddlerhood. Our poor television. (Just watch — Eric will use this as yet another reason for a wall-mounted, flat screen television.)

Lucy’s birthday celebrations continue next weekend when Jen O. and I have the Durham Mom’s Night Out ladies and their babies out for a joint Lucy-Eirinn play party. Can’t wait for that.

Hope you all have an excellent weekend. I am bursting with posts and will (need to!) get them out next week.

I went upstairs around 9 last night to check on Lucy after she took a long time to get to sleep.

This is what I saw:

Day 20: 29 Days of the Everyday

Lucy, you see, is going through the toddler phase of “Lucy do.” She wants to put on her own — and our, on us — boots and socks, and also wants to do snap buttons and zippers. We always let her try until she invariably gives up and comes to us for help. We usually just have to start the zipper or slip a sock over her toes, then she finishes.

Well.

We’ve been encouraging her to help zip up her sleeper when getting ready for bed. This, obviously, has backfired. Because now she’s discovered how to undo that little snap button at the top of sleepers — specifically put there to prevent wee fingers from grasping the zipper pull! — and un zzzzzip herself. After which she can get her appendages out until she is, in her own words, “nayyyy-kid.”

Thank goodness she’s keeping the diaper on.

p.s.: This better not continue when she becomes a teenager. 

Day 19: 29 Days of the Everyday

There are six of us.

Eric and I. Mark (Eric’s brother) and his wife, Jenni. Ted (Eric’s cousin) and his wife Shannon. We’re all pretty much the same age, give or take a few years.

A few years ago, we decided to get together for a low-maintenance game night where we’d bring booze and snacks to whosever house was hosting, and order in some food. We did it once, loved it, and now meet regularly every few months, taking turns at hosting. Through moves and babies (OK, just one) and career changes and struggles, we make time for Game Night, now capitalized.

The nights have blossomed into home cooked meals, once-in-a-while-as-a-treat snacks such as mega size bags of chips and gummi worms and chocolate almonds, and a whole history for us to draw on and laugh about each time we are reunited.

(oh, my oats!)

We play Pictionary, Cranium (although everyone is denying me this one now, jerks), Rumoli, Trival Pursuit, Balderdash, Uno, Clue, Family Feud, Sequence and more. Jenni is our referee and rule decipherer.

We laugh and gossip about family and share snippets of our lives and plan for the future and listen to cool tracks and bitch about work and eat until we’re all moaning and sick.

And they we say goodnight and count down the days until we do it again.

(For you, my sweet sugary Shannon, who hates my ketchup but loves my jellybeans. Sorry for the rindy orange ones. Also: You are sober in the photo! I said I would…)

Lucy woke up from her nap today asking for popcorn.

Since she was a first born, she’s always been quite scared of loud noises such as the vacuum, electric beaters and hair dryer. It’s only been in the past two months or so that we can even use said objects — which Lucy calls “no noise” — while she’s awake or in the house.

We make our popcorn with an authentic air popping machine which makes its own level of racket. Lucy was understandably terrified of it when we first turned it on, but once the popcorn started flying out, she was so excited. Now she sits in our arms, leaning over the clear hard plastic cover to watch the kernels circle around in the hot air before popping.

So today, on our first Family Day, we had to do what has become a weekend tradition. Here, Lucy explains how it’s made:

Day 18: 29 Days of the Everyday

Day 17: 29 Days of the Everyday

Lucy brings home piles of art work and crafts from Julia and my Mom’s each week. Each creation takes a turn on our fridge before joining the rest in a pile in the office. I’ve bought a binder to store them all in.

Whenever she sees something she’s made, she gets all excited, brings us said art and says, “Oh, make!” Because we always ask her “What did Lucy make today?”

I had to take a pic of our fridge before de-Valentining it this afternoon.

I make my own chicken stock. It’s not hard (although pretty grody): Boil up a chicken carcass along with some onion, carrots, celery, salt, pepper and a bay leaf. Drain hunks of chicken and soggy veggies, and you’re left with stock so yummy you’ll never buy it in a can or powder again.

The first time I did this, I was a bit of an idiot and froze all the stock in a giant freezer bag. So when I needed just a small amount of it, I had to defrost the entire bag. Duh. This method is great for soup, though.

This past time, I decided to be smart: I measured a cup of stock into a bunch o’ little sandwich bags, zipped ‘em up, put them in a giant freezer bag. So that, like last night when I needed one cup of stock to make the best ever Shepherd’s Pie, I could just whip out a bag. I even labeled and dated each bag. Seriously, I patted myself on the back when it was all done, proud as a peacock over my ingenuity.

*sigh*

Day 16: 29 Days of the Everyday

Do you know that when you put a bunch of small bags of liquid into a bigger bag and smoosh them all together, they freeze into a hard puzzle of bags THAT WILL NOT COME APART?

Now you do.