Corner of Bourbon & Division

Last night my brain decided that I should stay up and Worry About All The Things™. So I was up until at least after 2:30, which was the last time I remember looking at the clock before falling asleep. The good side to that was that I was awake at midnight when Bean woke up screaming bloody murder because he had to go to the bathroom. He's been getting up almost every night now to pee, and that has resulted in dry diapers in the morning. So we're well on our way to having him be completely diaper-free at this rate. It's very exciting!

Bean was also up promptly at 6:20, and since he came into our room to ask his mother if he could watch television, that was loud enough to wake me as well (mostly because he started whining and then screaming when she said no), although I had set my alarm for 6:30. So I got up then too, much to Bean's befuddlement. He's not used to my getting up at the same time as him and Mama.

We got Bean fed, dressed and out the door on time (three tantrums, four instances of whining and fussing, and two instances of running away and giggling instead of doing what he was told, all in the space of an hour and fifteen minutes), and I set about trying to be productive for the rest of the day.

My first stop was at the bank (though I did call to make an appointment to get my car tires changed, finally). I took the dog with me because he needed the exercise and because he was so excited when he saw me put on my running shoes to go to the bank that I didn't have the heart to tell him that I hadn't planned on taking him with me. So, happy dog was happy. I managed to straighten out the problem of the daycare check that the bank bounced, and was very pleased with the prompt, efficient service I received from the teller. They apologised (sort of), reversed all the charges and covered the fee the daycare will charge for a returned check, no muss, no fuss. If only all my problems were so easily solved.

I got home and cleaned the bathroom, and was about to start on the kitchen when pdaughter came back from school to wait for the Avon ladies to show up for their 14:30 meeting. As an aside, pdaughter is starting up her own Avon business again, so if anyone local wants the flyers for the current or future campaigns, by all means look us up! Avon has some really neat stuff, not just makeup and skin care products. You can look it up specifically on Facebook, where I encourage you to at least "like" her page, just in case. Father's Day is just around the corner, and there are all sorts of fun products and swag you can get for a very reasonable price!

Anyway, back to the exciting recounting of my day. :P I did a pretty thorough cleaning of the kitchen while we waited for the Avon ladies (they were well over an hour late due to traffic), including scrubbing down the cabinet under the kitchen sink, which had grown super scungy over the winter. We've been having trouble with ants for a few weeks, and I figured that cleaning things out down there certainly couldn't hurt. We have ant traps set up strategically, but we can't work out where they're coming from, cheeky little buggers. So right now we're mostly engaged in guerrilla warfare against the little formicidae foot soldiers. Ugh. If we knew where they were coming from we'd be able to put down corn starch and have done, but not dice. It's rather frustrating.

I headed out to do some last-minute grocery shopping before the Avon ladies arrived, but everyone was gone by the time I got home again. Despite getting caught in some pretty gnarly traffic I was still able to get dinner in the oven in a timely fashion. I don't think I've ever cleaned and chopped vegetables that fast in my whole life. I made chicken with roasted vegetables and made baked tomatoes as a side dish. Very paleo, I'm sure fearsclave would approve. ;)

Predictably, Bean's first reaction was: "But me not like that!" He demanded to have macaroni, then demanded "leftover pizza," and was upset when he was not presented with either of those options. I hadn't bothered giving him one of the baked tomatoes, figuring it would be met with shrieks of horror, but when he saw the one I'd given pdaughter he immediately insisted on having some, spurning the chicken, potatoes, carrots and green pepper already on his plate. After two small servings of tomato he then threw himself on the floor and wailed about being thirsty, and then whined and fussed and kicked at the nearest piece of furniture when he was instructed to eat a bit more before he'd be given more milk. It took some doing, but eventually we got him back into his chair, and after a bit more fussing he ate all his carrots, then tried the chicken and promptly finished that, and even managed a good number of his potatoes.

A pyrrhic victory, but one I'll take nonetheless.

Bean took a bath while I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and put away the rest of dinner into Tupperware containers. We have enough for at least one other meal, which is nice. The food turned out delicious, if I do say so myself. The chicken was moist, the veggies crisp and savoury (though the carrots were a tad too crunchy for my liking—I'll try cutting them thinner the next time I make this dish).

Although he was wound tighter than a spring factory, Bean actually settled relatively quickly once he was properly in bed (there were a lot of false starts to that), and so we were actually able to start Game of Thrones at a decent hour, and now we're going crazy and watching CSI as well. Two TV shows in the same evening! Unheard of!

Tomorrow it's meant to rain, which will put a damper on my plans to do yard work. I may try to organise my paperwork instead, depending on the weather. I have been very bad about keeping my papers in any kind of semblance of order, and it's my newest May project, to get it all sorted out properly into my filing cabinet. That will definitely help when it comes time to sell the house/do my taxes/that sort of thing. If I have time I'm also going to head to Home Depot. I am determined to get the garden ship-shape this weekend and next weekend so that we can take advantage of it during the summer months.

And now, to finish CSI and pray that I'll actually be able to sleep tonight. Obviously when I mentioned almost wishing for insomnia the other day, I should have been more careful about what I wished for. :P

Forgot to post today, and it's almost bedtime. I am 2000% done with today anyway. There were two days last week during which I got less than two hours' sleep, and the other days I got six hours or less sleep. That's roughly 28 hours of sleep over the past seven days.

So, yes, done. So very done.

I spent the morning alone with Bean, who was not exactly on his best behaviour, so even though I love him to death, it was very wearing chasing after him and having him fight me on everything that didn't entail letting him do exactly as he pleased. I am totally the worst person ever for not letting him snatch knives off the counter, jump on the stairs with his eyes closed, and shove my cup of boiling hot coffee aside because it was "in his way" (i.e. on the table right next to my computer, well away from all the places he'd been previously playing but in a spot he decided he needed to play right then and there). The theme of the entire morning was that I was not Mama, was a shitty substitute for Mama, was generally an awful person, and why wasn't Mama home and when was Mama coming back?

He then refused to give me a hug and kiss goodbye before I left for work, because he didn't want to get off the sofa where he was watching TV. He grudgingly allowed me to go to him and give him a hug and kiss, but didn't actually look away from the TV while this happened. I felt really special, let me tell you.

I skipped dinner tonight so I wouldn't have to interact with my landlords, that's how done I am. On top of that there was driving and grocery shopping and *shudder* Walmart. Long story short, I am done. Also? Done.

I am going to bed, and hopefully this week will be less shitty than last week.

I made it home safe and sound yesterday, before the snow started to fall. I stopped at an En Route halfway home to take a nap in the car, which is what I usually end up doing when I try to drive straight home after work. I got home and took another half-hour nap, so I got over an hour's sleep yesterday after all, instead of none! Very exciting. The snow started to fall about an hour or so after I got home, and I was very glad not to be driving in the disgusting mess of a snowstorm we ended up having.

Technically the schools didn't close today, but we called it a snow day anyway, because there was about seventeen feet of the stuff outside and no one wanted to go anywhere today. So, cosy day at home it was.

Snow Day meant, as promise, that Bean got to have a makeover! (After he spent part of the morning doing pdaughter's hair, using a lot more clips than was probably necessary) He opted do get a Monster High makeover, which is his latest Thing. I must say that MH is pretty neat. The music is catchy, the messages are positive, and the characters are a lot of fun. It's not the sort of thing I would have sought out on my own, but now that it has entered the household I am happy enough to watch the videos or occasionally play the games on the website when Bean wants to watch.

( Our day behind the cut, with pictures )

pdaughter has been taking a cake decorating class given by Wilton at Michael's Stores (the one in Vaudreuil). It's every Sunday, which means that it's been tricky to schedule babysitting for Bean on the Sundays I'm not home, 50% of the time. Unfortunately the class doesn't appear to be held on weekdays, when Bean is in daycare, because that would make it easier for everyone.

Still, today I am home until the afternoon, so Bean and I will be spending some quality time together over the course of the morning. The last few times we've watched videos on my computer, but I'm hoping that we can find something with less screen time to do. Or at least something that doesn't involve my computer. He has his LeapPad, and if worse comes to worst I'll suggest a movie. We never did finish Sleeping Beauty the other night, so perhaps we shall do that today.

( Picture-heavy recap of yesterday under the cut )

Okay, not that late, but late by my standards. It's almost bedtime, though Bean is chattering loudly to himself in bed.

We had a long, exciting day at a school friend's birthday party at the Musée Pour Enfants in Laval, where they have a really cool two-storey exhibit of various career paths you can follow. The kids can pilot a rocket ship and an airplane, investigate a real live police car, ride a horse (fake), milk a cow (also fake), check out all the different aspects of a grocery store, serve lunch in a café, and a bunch of other activities tailored for ages 3-8 (or maybe 10).

It was a lot of fun. Bean ran around like a mad running thing, so fast that most of my pictures of him are blurs. One day, when I have some spare cash, I am going to get myself a proper camera that will be able to accommodate action shots, because all photos of Bean end up being action shots. ;)

We had one sour moment right at the beginning. Bean ran off without listening to us, so pdaughter ran after him, brought him back and scolded him loudly for doing something so dangerous. (Running off and not listening is Bean's favourite pastime. We're a little at our wits' end as to how to keep him by our side in public) So as this happened, another mother who didn't know us from a hole in the ground came up and told me that it was a terrible thing to speak to a child like that because he was scared and she felt so awful listening to it.

I politely—if sarcastically—thanked her for volunteering her unsolicited opinion, and explained I'd rather Bean be frightened for 30 seconds and learn not to run off, than not be scared and get himself lost or hurt or taken by a child molester or all three, thank you. She took her judgey self off back to her own kid, and I patted myself on the back for not telling her to take her opinion and shove it up her ass.

On the plus side, the parents of Bean's friends were all horrified at this woman's intervention, and so there was a chorus of parental indignation on our behalf all around. Who did this woman think she was, to judge other people's parenting? Didn't she have kids of her own to tend to? Why couldn't she mind her own business? Which was gratifying and oddly cathartic. ;)

Otherwise, the day was overall a good one. Bean got overstimulated and overtired, so by the end there were tears and histrionics about leaving, but a lot of the other kids were in the same state. One little girl flailed so hard she kicked her father in the crotch, making all of us wince in sympathy.

This was the first birthday party I'd ever been to for a child who wasn't one of my friends' kids, and it was great to finally see some of Bean's classmates and talk to their parents. I'm never the one who drops him off or picks him up (because pdaughter has the carseat in her car, and because she's in school right nearby it makes more sense for her to bring him back and forth, rather than switch out the car seat and making things way more complicated), so I interact little to not at all with anyone at the school, and that's one of my biggest regrets about this whole situation.

The evening was spent quietly at home. We played some computer games, and then Bean pulled every stalling tactic in the book before bed, only ending up actually in bed an hour after his usual bedtime. He fell asleep in the car on the way home, which gave him an extra boost of energy this evening. Naps inevitably ruin bedtime, alas.

He's finally gone quiet in the last five minutes, though that's not necessarily an indicator that he's actually asleep. Time will tell. Soon it will be bedtime for us, too. My eyes are burning, so I can't say it will be unwelcome. :)

Tomorrow pdaughter is going to her cake decorating class, so it'll be just me and Bean together for most of the morning and part of the afternoon. She's made industrial quantities of buttercream and baked her cake already today (there will be so much cake this weekend, OMG), and I can't wait to see the end result. The cupcakes she decorated last week were gorgeous, and she gets better every time she practices. When she finally starts her own business, people will be flocking to her door, mark my words. <3

:::ETA:::

Bean has resumed singing to himself. It's 21:35. GO TO SLEEP, CHILD, YOU WILL BE TIRED AND CRANKY TOMORROW. (Seriously, where is Samuel L. Jackson when you need him?)