This girl named Rhonda used to babysit me growing up. She lived a few doors down. I don’t remember Rhonda too much, except she had blonde hair, and taught me how to make the best at-home caramel popcorn ever. Knowing this is the last time I’ll ever be pregnant and figuring this is the last time I can eat whatever I want, I’ve been eating this a lot. If you love sweet-salty, THIS IS FOR YOU.

First step: Assemble margarine/butter and brown sugar — the best combination of food substances EVER.

Next: dump an obscene amount of margarine in a small saucepan over low heat. I’m talking, like, a quarter or more of a cup. It’s not called obscene for nothing. After it’s melted, dump an equally obscene amount of brown sugar (a little less than margarine) into said pot, and stir-stir-stir to get it all melted and mixed. (Hopefully your kitchen is like mine, and your stove faces a wall, so your significant other can’t see how much you’re dumping in the pot.)

While that’s happening, pop your corn. Air popped is best, in my opinion, because it’s fresher. Oh, and it’s better for you. You know, ’cause you should save some calories what with all the obsceneness going on above.

If you can time it right, start drizzling the margarine/brown sugar mix over the popcorn as it comes falling out the popper. This makes for maximum stickability, and keeps everything hot and fresh. Adding it after it’s a big deal, though. You may need some practice to get it perfect. The last six weeks of gestating have made me an expert.

Finally, lean over the bowl of obscene deliciousness and inhale. Don’t let your eyes roll too far back in your head, ’cause you’ll need to see the way to the couch where you’ll stuff your face in bliss.

Enjoy!

• Lucy has an awful diaper rash. Like she’s crying out in pain when we try to wipe her. Poor thing. An early morning poop on a sleep-in day combined with all this heat and humidity created a bad environment. Luckily she’s doing better this morning, and we sent her to Julia’s with some zinc cream.
• Let us all send Jen O. some sympathy as she battles a belly measuring PAST her due date, and that time known as “None of my Clothes Fit the Belly Anymore,” also known as, “Why Can’t I Just Come to Work Nekkid?”
• Know what $213.07 will buy you at the vet’s office? An exam, thermometer up the (not mine, thankgoodness) butt, needle, heartworm treatment and every inch of your clothing covered in dog fur from one freaked-out, shaking Spencer Dog. I don’t blame him: The last time he was there, he earned the knickname The Baconator, came home comically stoned, and now all the vets know him as That Dog
• Driving home from the vet’s, Eric said the words French fries. Do you want to know what we had for lunch today? Peanut butter on toast, marble cheese, spicy oven French fries, fruit, and maple cookies. Pregnant women don’t joke about food. Ever. (upcoming story about this tomorrow…)
• Speaking of food, for dinner tonight we’re having pulled bbq chicken sandwiches with tangy cheese (ok, ok, it’s Cheez Whiz) on onion buns, with tomato and cucumber salad that includes herbed feta cheese and Greek dressing. I may have been thinking of this all day. Well, since the French fries, anyways…
  
• We were disappointed — but not terribly surprised — when our local Farmer’s Market was not yet open this Sunday, even though it’s opening is labeled as June. I can’t wait until we can walk over and get local produce again. Is anyone else counting down until strawberry season kicks in? Don’t forget you can find local retailers and markets on the Durham Farm Fresh website
• Do you know what third-party administrators do? Four interviews later, and I still don’t. Yargh. Also: help.
• Look! It’s my Golden Girls!
• Best sentence via email today: “Drunk monkeys randomly typing at a keyboard would require less editing.”

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 and I just got back from the doctor’s, where I’m happy to report she is 32 lbs. and 35″ tall, off the charts in health, and did not at ALL enjoy the last needles until she’s four. She’ll have you know that she went to the doctor and got “big ouchies,” Mama kissed them better, and she got Dora and Boots and Cinderella stickers, thankyouverymuch.

We also heard the baby’s heartbeat (hard to find among all the “swoosh” noises as the Parasite2 batted around) and discovered that I gained nary a pound in the last month.

Which means there is a tray of McCain Spicy French Fries cooking in the oven for my lunch. Just the French fries, let me clarify.

I don’t feel near as guilty now for consuming copious amounts of cheese- and mayonnaise-laden products at the shower yesterday (namely, Foster Family cheeseball that is never as good as my Mom’s, Other C’s deelish potato salad, and strawberry salad with homemade poppyseed dressing) and then again for dinner. And then for night time snack eating two bowls of cereal (one Corn Pops, one Multigrain Life), some bbq Lays chips and polishing off the shower punch between 9-9:30 p.m.

See, the Parasite2 is an appropriate name if I can consume all that and weigh the same. Obviously I s/he’s famished…you know, all 2.7 ounces of her/him.

When I worked at the paper, there was a woman from another department who was pregnant. She was only the second knocked-up woman I’d ever seen really up close, on a daily basis, and I found it fascinating to watch her grow.

One morning I was in the cafeteria making a tea when she came in carrying an apple. She reached into her lunch bag in the fridge, and pulled out this metal wheel-thingine, much like a wagon wheel but with plastic handles on the edges. And much smaller, of course.

She placed the apple on a plate, lined up the middle of the wagon thingie, and heaved her girth straight down on the handles (she was petite, and probably seven or eight months along, but lemme tell you — that apple gave, people).

I stared, open-mouthed. Not at the small woman who’d exerted so much force, but at the apple. It was cored. And in eight, tidy little sections.

I loved it. I wanted it. I had to have it.

So Eric bought me one for Christmas in 2005, and now I use it pretty much every single day. I have sensitive teeth and weak gums, and get slaps on the wrist by my dentist if he hears I’m biting into things such as fruit with my teeth. I love that the corer does all the work for me, and makes apples and pears perfectly proportioned.

It’s also a fabulous tool for slicing up fruit for babies and toddlers. When I was making Lucy’s baby food, I cut apples and pears up this way before peeling, chopping and pureeing them. Now, it creates pieces perfect for her hands and has helped teach her how to take proper-sized bites.

I used to see them only at specialty kitchen stores, but now they are all over major department stores such as Canadian Tire and Sears.

Pregnant lady, baby, toddler and mom approved. Best wagon thingie ever.

This evening, 8:30, our kitchen. I am baking Devil Cookies. Eric is sitting on the couch watching baseball.

“Mmmm, nom-nom-nom,” I exclaim, popping a milk chocolate chip in my mouth.

“Did it pass quality control?” Eric quips.

“Yep, the Pregnant Woman Taste Test.”

“What, it wasn’t moving?”

Oh, har-dee-har-har.

Being the short-term thinker I am, I have yet to fully comprehend that in less than six months there are going to be two children living in my house.

I’m firmly, obliviously entrenched in pregnancy survival mode. It’s sort of nice living in this state of denial.

But the odd time I do let my mind wander into the near future, these are the random things I worry about:

• learning to breastfeed again. My nipples cringe when I even look at nursing bras, remembering how utterly painful the first few weeks were
• sleep. Or better yet, lack thereof. We have been so blessed with Lucy and so comfortable in our freedom from 7:30 p.m. - 7 a.m. that I know this baby is going to kick our asses when s/he arrives. This turns into near panic when I read posts like Mary Lynn’s — then hear it again from Eric (he works with ML’s husband) in the form of Ed’s red, blurry eyes
• two children = four appendages each. Last I checked, despite wishes every night, I only have two hands *sigh*
• baby crap gear clogging up the house. It’s so nice now having Lucy’s toys tucked away beside the sofa out of sight. I think back to the early baby months of swing, bouncy chair, receiving blankets, small trippable toe-stubbing toys and say bye-bye living room
• oh, the screaming and crying around dinner time. Do you remember those?
• Spencer becoming a hermit when he realizes, “ohdeargod there’s another one.”
• Lucy’s reaction in general

But then this afternoon, at the grocery store? There was this frazzled-looking mom, hair in a sloppy pony tail, crusted spit-up down her back wearing mismatched socks, leaning into an infant seat and nibbling on the bare toes of her three-month-old to his gummy-mouthed delight, and I realized all the above doesn’t matter for moments like that one.

Is your head spinning with trying to figure out this bisephenol-A information? Wondering what bottles, sippy cups and water jugs are safe?

From what I’ve read, polycarbonate bottles are labeled with a 7 on the bottom, for other plastics. Unfortunately, some BPA-free plastics (such as single-use beverage bottles) are also labeled 7, so it can be confusing. But at least this is a guide.

Here are some excellent resources for making sense of it all:

Z Recommends: The Z Report on BPA in children’s feeding products, third edition — I cannot recommend this site enough. This guy has interviewed almost every major baby product manufacturer and ranked them, creating a massive, comprehensive list of safe (and not safe) products. Truly the best resource on the Internet, which is why so many people have linked to it.

Plastic labeling — wondering what each little number on the bottom of plastic means? Here’s a fabulous list.

Rubbermaid BPA list — now here’s a wonderful thing to see. Rubbermaid has a list of ALL it’s products (with photos, for handy reference) and whether they do or do not contain BPA. If only all corporations did this.

Playtex BPA list — just got this via email from Playtex yesterday, a pdf of all their products, too. They’re also offering free samples of their BPA-free Nurser Drop-in system. Keep in mind that the bottles themselves contain BPA (although the food does not touch them, it does not help the process) and this creates a lot of garbage.

CBC News in-depth on BSA — richly detailed.

I was at Once Upon a Child in Ajax today, and they are back-ordered on all their stainless steel sippy cups until the end of May. Has anyone found them in Durham?

If you ever needed a(nother) reason to stop using and throw out your hard plastic/polycarbonate sippy cups, baby and drinking bottles, you have it now: Health Canada on Friday OFFICIALLY labeled bisephenol A dangerous.

Hooray! This is huge, huge, huge. Canada is the first country in the world to take this drastic step. I am so proud to be a Canadian today.

I actually did not know that retailers other than Mountain Equipment Co-op had pulled polycarbonate bottles from its shelves, but it turns out there are an impressive list of powerhouse organizations who have banned BPA products, including Sears, Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian Tire (interestingly, CT was advertising some hard plastic water bottles on sale in this week’s flyer. Interesting to see if they are still in stores).

In case you were looking for more to worry about, my sister-in-law (hi Jenni!) shared this scary story about high levels of BPA in canned foods such as infant formula, chicken soup and ravioli. Many cans have a liner made of BPA, and the study found being exposed to it this way is even more dangerous than through bottles.

Seriously, just when you think you’ve conquered one, there is another to contend with. We don’t eat a ton of canned foods, but beans in tomato sauce and soups are consumed at Chez McDougall-Foster weekly.

*sigh* Now what?

Many of you asked for an update when we actually ate the free range chicken I picked up the other week.

The chicken breasts were delicious — cooked up nice and tender and juicy.

Tonight we made fajitas with the ground chicken. I was a little taken aback by how it cooked up: Sort of mushy, although the end result was the same. And much to my surprise, it turned white as it cooked. Which makes sense, because this is the colour chicken turns when it’s cooked. It tasted great.

Which now makes me totally disgusted with what we were eating before. Is the ground chicken and turkey in mainstream grocery stores dark meat? Or is it…messed up somehow? I am disturbed.

I have to admit, I was bothered by the white ground chicken. Mind you, it took me years to be able to eat ground chicken/turkey in the first place because of its resemblance to ground beef, so there are underlying issues there to begin with. I think I’m just going to have to get used to it all over again.

(Lucy gobbled it up, as did Eric. But Eric has been known to eat sour milk on cereal and shrug his shoulders at slightly mouldy cake — “Eh, it’s a little past its prime, but it’s still good.” — and my daughter this morning found a suspicious-looking blob under the kitchen table, and simultaneously said “Whassat?” and shoved it in her mouth, so do you really trust their palates?)

Verdict: Worth the extra money for both versions.