The littlest baby is now 1.5 months old, and things are settling to a calmer routine. We're getting relatively more sleep and my thoughts are turning from a constant and desperate need for zzzzs to other, more pleasant, things...

... like JFK for some strange reason. I caught the tail-end of some movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis and found the Kennedys pretty intriguing. Jack and Bobby. I read more on Wikipedia and asked my knowledgeable sister-in-law to source some biographies. Didn't know that Bobby Kennedy had eleven children.

In other domestic news, I created some fake Pad Thai with Knorr Sinigang broth and ketchup. Pretty close to what I've tasted in other places. Just needed some shrimp and peanuts for authenticity.

Miko. 2006. Acrylic on Canvas board. 24" x 30".


Very exciting stuff! Launched a website featuring his artwork, complete with portfolio and downloads:

http://www.vincentcruz.ca

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Lemon Tree, very pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the poor, little lemon
Is impossible to eat.

Lolo used to sing that. Now the girls are singing it. Well, at least the older one is. The little one dances to it. The older one also used to be able to sing Bahay Kubo (just by rote, without any understanding) but I think she's forgotten that trick now.

M's headed to a school in September that does everything in French. Pretty exciting and scary. She can sing some songs and say some rhymes but, for the most part, doesn't speak a word. Everyone reassures me that it'll take her until December to get the hang of it. Meanwhile, I'm taking a course for the non-French-speaking parent with the cutest lady on the planet. She speaks a mile a minute and hardly speaks English. I think it'll all come back.

Tagalog has definitely taken the cultural back seat. My only hope is for my parents to have a change of heart and speak to the girls in tagalog. For some reason, it embarrasses them... I think. Either that, or they're just not comfortable speaking to little kids in tagalog. I don't remember them speaking to us in it when we were young either. This might be why my tagalog is incompetent, too. The girls will have to manage with peripheral conversations with me and my parents, their friends, and the occasional nursery rhyme.

Our song list grows: Bahay Kubo, Leron Leron Sinta, Mayroon Akong Lobo, Pen Pen De Sarapen...

Meanwhile, number three is showing partiality to judo. Sigh. Can't wait until June.

I woke up early today, before the girls. Took all my strength of will. Managed to take a shower, clean the kitchen and start a load of laundry. Now I'm having a cup of coffee and spending a minute updating this journal. Maybe I can even squeeze in some end-of-year finances.

So that's how people do it.

My mom used to wake up at an insane hour. She probably still does. She said she loved it - that it was her favourite time of day. She got more done before we woke up than during the rest of the day.

I guess I signed up for this. I feel more grown-up today than I've ever felt before. Not that we should call the papers yet. We'll see if I manage tomorrow.

Only a couple more days until Christmas, and my mind is as crowded as Yorkdale's parking lot. Takes a lot of work to clean it up in time to welcome the Birthday Boy. Really hard to keep my mind on the right things these days.

Not that I'm the hugging type, but a virtual holiday hug to y'all. Hope it's a good one.

"Mama, what does 'balshebee' mean?"
"I don't know, M."
"Yes, you do!"
"No, I don't."
"Mama, you do."
My mind was cycling through all the songs that she's been addicted to recently, until I hit across the right one.
"M, is it from a Cinderella song?"
"Yes!"
"Is it from this one:
We can do it, we can do it.
We can help our Cinderelly
We can help her dress look pretty
there's nothing to it really...
...
When dancing at the ball she'll be more beautiful than all..."
"Yes! What does it mean?"
"Well... I don't know."
"Yes, you do!"

Sigh.

S is approaching six weeks - and I have a moment to post to this journal. S is sleeping her extended afternoon nap and M is upstairs with Grandma "cooking".

It's been a challenging six weeks. It's difficult to exist without any control over most things in life, except maybe the decision to be cheerful or not. Besides sleep, and responding to M and S's immediate needs, the rest of the world seems like a blur. It's hard to imagine that things will go back to normal, but they did last time, and they have been for women since the beginning of time - so I shouldn't be an exception.

M's cookiness and S's great grins (her recent talent) and D's... herculean patience and ability to run our household better than I can - these are keeping me sane and thankful.

So, she came at 10:59pm on Sept. 29. Minutes before, Mrs. R was racing us Grand Theft Auto-stylz in her van through the streets of Toronto (through some red lights I hear) with me yelling "She's coming out NOW! I'm pushing!" in the back, with D calmly repeating, "You're doing great, just breathe, just breathe..." beside me and Mrs. R yelling "Don't push yet! Just breathe!" When we arrived at the hospital and they threw the van door open, the my uninhibited yelling prompted a herd of nurses to suddenly appear with a stretcher onto which I was thrown and everyone rushed into ER where amniotic fluid exploded everywhere. They had just enough time to drag the obstetrician from upstairs into ER and S made her appearance. Sans anaesthetic. She was placed on me and she was beautiful.

Yeah. Drama.

After a bit more drama (heavy post-partum bleeding resulting in drastic loss of blood, which I'm still trying to recover from with iron pills and lots of red meat) and almost two weeks of round-the-clock feedings, we're settling into a more normal schedule and her naps are stretching out to two hours or a bit more. D and I are still walking zombies and just have enough brain cells to remember the various pills that need taking, wash ourselves (and Madeleine and Sophie), feed ourselves and get ourselves to the various appointments that pepper this early stage. D is changing diapers, bathing M, cooking, cleaning, doing excessive amounts of laundry, arranging appointments and providing much needed emotional support. Mama has been cooking like mad and periodically appears with large tupperware containers of food, thank goodness. Mrs. R has been sharing her expertise and borrowing S to give us much needed rest.

And despite us being lost in the flurry of baby-related activities, the world putters on along. M still gets her pre-nap and pre-bedtime story. These days she has a mini-obsession with the poems of Dennis Lee. Alligator pie, alligator pie. If I don't get some I think I'm going to die. Give away the green grass, give away the sky, but don't give away my alligator pie.

[Two week update] She's back to her birth weight! I'm feeling much better (as evidenced by this long entry). I think I'll celebrate by napping.

Aside: These are the things that makes one fall in love with one's husband more and more.

So, we're officially late. Well, it was expected. M was a week late.

So, we wait. And field daily phonecalls which consist of "Are you still pregnant?"

Started singing this to M, which she refers to as the "Sy-by" song:
"We ain't got a barrel of money.
Maybe we're ragged and funny,
But we travel along
Singin' our song
Side by side." (At which point she joins in, "Sy-by-sy")

And this one:
"Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see.
Blue birds singin' a song
Nothin' but blue birds all day long."
(After which she demands, "But where's the little girl's mommy?" "What little girl? Do you mean little bird?" "No, the little girl - where's her mommy?" Ewan ko nga.)

D learned how to cook Champorado! Ah, little bits of heaven.

M and her daddy are spending a rare weekday morning wandering around the neighbourhood. He's going in to work a bit later today to give me a break and to spend some time with M.

Can't figure out if I should go back to get some much needed sleep or get more work out of the way so that I can get some much needed sleep later. Time - what a gift!

We bought a little gender-neutral sleeper and a fuzzy blanket, which will serve as M's gifts to her new sibling. After the whole mall trip, M looks at me and asked, "Why don't I just give the baby my old blanket?" Ha. Could've saved $20.

Sister-in-law is expecting! That'll be grandchild numero 12!

Hurrah! Hurrah!

Meanwhile, keep prayin' folks. This one's ready to arrive any day now.

Hurrah! Hurrah!

Waddled down the street with M this morning for a bit of exercise. There's a big tree down the street that is currently dropping small round seeds that M collects by the handful and takes back to our porch to count. Today we got 17. Which is a bit tricky since she can only count to 10 (on a good day).

Yesterday I was a tired pregnant person. As I lay on the couch resting, M decided that she would tend to me.
"I'm the doctor, ok? I'm going to take your temperature with my thermometer. In your kili-kili."
She probaby took my temperature 12 times. With a peach pencil crayon. I had to teach her not to wrench the pencil crayon from my armpit.
"I'm going to give you a pedicure," my doctor informed me. Yup. With the peach pencil crayon.
"I'm going to give you a pedicure on your fingers."
"You mean a manicure?"
"I'm going to give you a manicure, mama." With the peach pencil crayon.
Then I got a invisible bandaid on my knee. First she applied some mysterious invisible medicine from her sand bucket.
"Are you better now, mama?"
"I think so, M. Thank you."
"Can you get up and play now, mama?" I didn't know she had ulterior motives.

Sigh.

D is downtown listening to a group of Ugandan doctors who are in town for the XVI International AIDS Conference. M is fast asleep, and I find myself working on work-related things at 9:24 at night! This is odd - I'm usually pretty good at ending the work day at 5pm (or so). We have a handful of very intriguing projects these days, and it's nice to be able to feel strongly for the work. That said, I'm glad I don't find myself having to work this late usually.

I feel the nice kind of tired.

Imagination isn't faith.
Daniel Berrigan, with his usual color, puts this rather crassly, but accurately: He'd been asked: Where does your faith live? In your head or in your heart? His answer?
Your faith, he assures us, is rarely where your head is at, and even less where your heart is at. Your faith, he brilliantly states, is where your ass is at! Within what commitments are you sitting? What holds you, morally and otherwise?
Our actions, our charity, our morality, our commitments determine whether we believe or not, Passing strange, but the posterior is a better indicator of where we stand with faith than are the head and the heart. We understand this because we all have experiences wherein we find ourselves inside of certain commitments (marriage, family, church) even though, at times, our heads and our hearts are not there. Still, we're there! Why? The head tells us this doesn't make sense, the heart no longer has the type of feelings that would keep us there, but we remain there, held by something deeper, beyond what we can explain or feel. This is where faith lives. This indeed is what faith means.
- Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Catholic Register


I've looked and looked for a clear way to express this idea and this is the clearest I've read in a while. It captures what I've tried to express about love. Love is where your ass is at!


For the complete article, click here.

32 weeks! Approximately 8 more weeks to go!

So here is the beginning of the Pork Souvlaki adventure:
Method:
Google with key words: Recipe "Pork Souvlaki"
Record recipes from first five relevant hits
Convert all ingredient units for consistency across recipes
Normalize all ingredient amounts (so that each recipe is for 1 kg of pork)
Create a master recipe by averaging ingredient amounts across all five recipes

Result:
1.00 kg 3.27 Tbsp 2.84 Tbsp 2.20 tsp 2.17 cloves 0.37 tsp 0.67 Tbsp 2.67 Tbsp	pork lemon olive oil oregano garlic black pepper salt parsley

In response, D asks, "Wouldn't it have been more interesting to normalize using olive oil?" Ha! The olive oil was probably the most variable across the five sample recipes. The experiment is currently marinating in the fridge. We'll keep you posted.


Update:
Sooo good! Hurrah! Success! Heigh-ho for Google.

The year was 1998. It didn't work perfectly, but we did fill the lab with the sweet smell of pancake batter.

Feeling particularly grateful for our life these days. Reading the newspaper and listening to friends talk about difficult times -- it seems that we've got a lot to be thankful for.

We spent the evening strolling over to a nearby park to let M finish up the last of her energy at the slides before bedtime. As usual, the park was full of families with exactly the same plan. Found a nearby bench and enjoyed watching M go down the slide many, many times. Talking about the day's goings on with D. He has to go across the city tonight and fix his aunt's air conditioner (which is leaking water into her house).

Strolled back home, got M in pajamas, read some stories and said our prayers. "Goodnight, mama." Lights out.

Peace, I think, is having someone to take care of - to love.