Tomorrow Alice and I start a stroller fit class.

I’ve always wanted to take one, but never knew of one close enough, or with good timing. This one will criss-cross the beautiful trails up here, and include some yoga (not my fave, but maybe outdoors with baby will be better?) and pilates (dying to try). It also starts at 11 a.m. — perfect for us Moms with babies that still nap in the morning.

I can’t think of a better way to enjoy my hometown and the sunshine, expose Alice to nature, and get expedite the shedding of this baby weight all at once. And the class is super cheap: Just $55 for eight weeks, or less than $7/class.

My friend Rachael from high school (hi Rach!) is joining me with her son.

I’m going to write about our adventures, take some photos and document any weight loss.

A similar class is running in Ajax starting July 8, and there’s still room in both locations to register. Visit www.balancedlifeyoga.ca (then select: buy passes/pre-registered classes/8-week stroller fit) for more details.

Yesterday afternoon went in to get Alice up from her nap, and found her rocking on all fours.

(As soon as I turned the light on, she immediately flopped on her belly and smiled mischievously at me. Pretending I didn’t just bust her. Do you see the mischievous glint in that eye?)

May I remind you that she is not even seven months old. And you may recall that Lucy was 11 months old before she crawled.

Send help.

We are in trouble.

I found out yesterday that my friend Jodi is expecting her first baby in late November.

I met Jodes in journalism school at Ryerson, and she was always adament that she did not want kids (were any of you this way?). I always hoped the sentiment would change as she got older and her clock started clanging…so was just floored when her email arrived yesterday.

Hooray, Jodi! I’m so damn excited.

Colleen, a frequent commenter here and the sweetest girl, is due with her second (a brother for Brady!) in September. And my long-distance Internet girlfriend, Kathi, is due in July with her second — a sister for brother Jacob.

(Say hi, you three.)

Oh, and Lauren just had a darling little boy named Benjamin — a wee brother for Owen.

(Seems I’ve written about this before…)

Anyone else expecting out there?

Lucy spent a lot of time at the cottage like this:

Not just standing on the bench exclaiming, “Look, Mommy, grass! Look, Daddy, water! Look, Spence-ah, sand!” but wearing big girl underwear (with no pants, of course).

Operation Get The Child Potty Trained Before the Next One Arrives has begun.

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Our week goes like this:

• Monday-Wednesday, Lucy is at Julia’s (our home daycare provider) from 8-4:30-ish
• Thursday, Lucy is at my Mom and Dad’s
• Friday she is home with me (and, currently, Eric)

By the time mid-morning Thursday comes — especially since I’ve been out Wednesday night with the girls and only see Lucy for a few hours — I’m really missing my daughter. I’m aching for her to arrive home from her Nana’s, and for Friday morning to come so we can start our day.

Except Thursday nights are often…difficult. Lucy is almost always riled up, high on grandparent love and attention and treats, and also excited to be reunited with us. So she usually comes back to Chez McDougall-Foster blazing around like she’s got a fire cracker up her arse, running and yelling and squealing and laughing and not listening.

I’ve dubbed this time Thursday Night Toddler Terror.

Did I mention this is almost always around 7-ish? The time that we’re normally getting her ready for bed? Hahahaaaaa, *sob*

I don’t for a milisecond blame my parents, nor would I ever want to change the Thursday arrangement. All three of them adore their day together, look forward to it all week, and are quite literally squirming in anticipation by Wednesday evening. (Me, too, ’cause Thursday is my not-working-at-the-paying-job day where I work on the site, get caught up on email, do housewifey things and garden and shop and sometimes meet friends for lunch.)

Plus, it’s Grandparent Right #1 to be able to hype up a child, then leave. After the trials and tribulations of raising your own children and setting them free on the planet to explore and grow and love and breed, damn right you should get to spoil your grandchildren and not have to suffer any of the resulting meltdowns (see TNTT, above).

Do you hear the snorts and cackling? Those are our parents, being smug.

So Thursday comes, and I’m so excited to see my Goose, and we manically laugh and giggle and kiss and nuzzle, and then after 10 minutes of her rampage through the house, I count down the seconds and nighttime tasks until I can literally throw her in her crib and collapse on the couch, gasping for air.

And then Friday morning comes and she is sane once more, divulged of the grandparent-induced high, and we have a fabulous day.

From the time Lucy was three months old, she’s been out in the garden with me.

We’d strap her in her bouncy seat, and stuff abandon place her gently under a tree or in the shade, and chat to her as I dug and planted and weeded and Eric did man-chores such as mowing, edging and mulching.

The early influence — combined with similar experiences in my parents’ beautiful gardens — means Lucy now loves dirt and flowers and stomping around in her rubber boots. Any time we read a book that features any sort of growing, she says, “Cee-Cee help Mama in the garden!”

I recently spent a morning filling our planters at the front of the house, and Lucy was practically exploding with excitement to help. Wearing a pair of my garden gloves, she carried plants, dumped soil and poured water, and was quite proud of herself when we nestled them on the porch.

I hope she continues to love gardening as she gets older, that it’s not just a passing adoration because her mummy likes doing it. With that in mind, I’m enjoying every second we dig around in the dirt together.

All of you, for the most part, have at least one child. Some, I know, have more, or know they want more, or are pregnant with subsequent kids.

So I’m really curious to know — being pregnant with our second, and last, child — how will you, or did you, decide the age spacing of your children?

We always knew Lucy would be at least 2 before we’d want to be pregnant again. “At least” turned out to be “within days of her second birthday,” but I am loving how it turned out. At 27 months, Lucy is just adorable right now. She’s still controllable, she’s a cute chatterbox, she listens and plays make believe and generally is completely edible. Lately I’ve been saying if I wasn’t already pregnant, I’d want to be.

I’m also loving the seasons of this pregnancy: I went through the real crappy times when it was still cold out, and am now in the energized second trimester in late spring/early summer when I can still easily run after Lucy and garden and paint and travel in the nice weather. This *should* also play out well with transitioning Lucy into a big girl bed, and potty training her this summer.

I also needed to make sure that life could — and would — return to some semblance of normalcy, even if it is a “new normal.” You know, that our evenings would once again be free (Lucy now goes to bed around 7:30 p.m., and sleeps until 7 a.m.), that we could do stuff with and without her, that my sense of self wasn’t lost (just altered) and that the world really does continue to exist and function after kids.

Finally, from a completely selfish, body perspective, I got tired of being in limbo: Knowing that I’d be pregnant and breastfeeding again, that my body would change again, that my boobs would change again. I felt like I couldn’t invest in nice clothes or bras knowing that my body wasn’t done morphing. And working out, in some respects, began to feel a little pointless knowing what was (hopefully) right around the corner.

But I think even if you aren’t able to plan your pregnancies — either they’re surprises or take longer than expected — or you adopt or whatever, whatever the age spacing turns out to be is the right one for your family.

Discuss.

Enough people have emailed and written about this now that it must be true: Zellers is giving store credit if you return any Avent products because of the issues surrounding BPA. You don’t need a receipt or packaging or anything.

Rumour has it the store is only doing this until Friday.

Has anyone done this yet? And what are your thoughts on breast pumps? I have an Avent one, and really liked it for what small pumping I did (and plan to do after the Parasite2 arrives). I plan to just pump into a bottle, then transfer straight into freezer bags or BPA-free bottles for feeding. I don’t know if it’s worth it to find and adjust to a brand new one for the few minutes the milk will be in the bottle?

Lucy has never been a big fan of loud noises such as blenders, the hairdryer or electric beaters. When she was a newborn and we used one of these, her eyes would literally bulge out of her skull, her head would start frantically shaking side-to-side, her tiny fists clenched in terror.

It didn’t get any easier as she got older, and we just adapted: I’d only blow dry my hair if she was downstairs with someone, or I pureed her baby food when she was out of the house.

The one task that was always difficult, however, was vacuuming. We did a lot of it when she was sleeping at night, but it made it very difficult to do the upstairs carpets. We usually resorted to taking her all the way to the basement or out of the house while the other did housework.

Now that Lucy is older, more rational (hahaha…she IS a toddler, after all) and can understand us better, we’ve been introducing loud objects in her presence. She can’t hide from them forever, and has to learn that they aren’t going to hurt her. So as long as we give her some notice (”Mummy’s going to use the beaters now and it might be loud!” Lucy: “Big noise!”), she is much better.

The vacuum, however, has been more problematic. She’s still quite wary of it (must pick it up from Spencer Dog, whose ear press down as soon as the “whoooosss” of the central vac starts, and bolts to whichever floor you’re not on) and was still getting quite upset when she saw it come out. One afternoon I had an inspiration that I thought might ease her: I asked if Dora or Elmo wanted to help.

This, I do say so myself, was a brilliant idea. Both stuffed dolls took turns holding the power head while I pushed it, all the while calmly telling Lucy how easy it was, how much they were enjoying it, how it wasn’t hurting them, and just making a lot of noise while it made everything all clean. She cautiously followed along, trading dolls with each room, but happily chatting.

Yesterday morning, I was vacuuming the house getting ready for Jen O.’s shower, when Lucy suddenly appeared from the living room. Without saying a word, she climbed all the way up the stairs, rifled around in her bedroom, then came back down with…Dora.

“Dora help?” she asked, handing her to me.

And so it was that if you peeked in my dining room window around 10 a.m., you saw a pajama-clad, wild-haired woman swishing the vacuum across the hardwood floors with a 2′ Dora doll clutching the handle. Grinning, of course, at the absurdity of it all, but also bursting with pride that my wee girl is getting over her fear.

While at the Green Living Show this weekend, I picked up several cards that list cosmetic and personal care ingredients in big and little kid products to avoid. These are synthetics that are potentially harmful — especially to vulnerable, developing babies.

(For the record, I’m SO not saying these ARE harmful or cause cancer or make your arms fall off or or will kill us all tomorrow. They are thought to be harsh or not environmentally-friendly or come from nonrenewable resources. And yes, this information comes from companies that sell naturally-based products with their own agendas. Which is why I’m linking to Wikipedia or Google for definitions, where you can find all sorts of links on your own.)

While I knew of some of these (parabens and phthalates) I thought you might like to see what other things to look for on an ingredient list. As with food, if you can’t pronounce it, it’s probably not good for you…

• sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate — a cleansing agent that creates foam and suds (which is why many natural products are not near as “soapy” as we’re used to)
• parabens — preservatives used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Controversial studies have linked it to cancer and increased estrogen.
• phthalates — used in plastics to make them more elastic, and found in everything from shower curtains to sex toys to nail polish and perfume and iPods. Controversial studies have linked it to hormonal imbalances (especially in fetuses) and allergies.
• petrolatum — a greasy, film-building skin protector widely used in cosmetics. Byproduct of petroleum (duh).
• phenylenediamine (PPD) — used in hair and textile dyes, printer ink and photographic products. A known allergen.
• coal-tar colours (FD&C or D&C) — synthetic food and cosmetic colour dye.
• diethanolamine (DEA) — used to create a creamy texture and foaming action. Linked to cancer, decreased brain development and miscarriages.
• dimethicone — a silicone oil used in shampoo to make hair slippery and shiny.
• formaldehyde — too. much. to. process.
• phosphate — commonly added to dishwasher detergent to help soften water and boost cleaning power. Excessive amounts in our water can create excess algae.
• oxybenzone — organic compound used in sunscreen and cosmetics as it absorbs UVA rays. A known carcinogen that penetrates the skin and creates free radicals (this one scares me, because I’ve been wearing sunscreen cream for years, and regularly slather it on Lucy. Need to look into it more and find alternatives.)

FYI, two of my favourite Durham retailers (who also happen to advertise, yes) carry wonderful natural baby bath products. Tamarra of Lollipops & Lizards (online) now carries the Little Twig line, and Shelby of Natural Earth Tones (Oshawa) has the All Things Jill line. Both are great priced (the higher cost of natural and organic products is always an impediment for people, myself included, which is why these are great).

President’s Choice had a HUGE booth at the show and was really promoting its Green products. We got a free, full-size sample of their floor cleaner and cleaning putty. Currently, we use the laundry soap, toilet paper and paper towels, and will switch to the dishwasher detergent when our stock is up. I love that these are so accessible and reasonably priced.

A company called Live Clean gave away tons of mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner to promote their eco-friendly body care line. Their stuff is 96% plant derived, and they gave out this neat bookmark that you can plant to make a wildflower garden (what clever, clever marketing).

This post is huge, so I’d better stop before your eyes roll back in your head from too much info or you click screaming away from the hippie-ness. Hope it all helps!