Weekend of fun

Well, I'm officially done celebrating my birthday. This weekend was the icing on the very delicious birthday cake. I spent the whole day with Trent on Saturday, which is both exhausting and fun at the same time. He's so much fun to be around these days because he's so interactive and he's constantly making me laugh. It's exhausting because I have to think of ways to keep him engaged and entertained. Brian saved us $400 this weekend by fixing the Subie's roof rack himself. It'd been rattling and annoying both of us for some time, and the Subaru service dept. said to fix it they'd have to take the whole roof liner out and all the interior panels to get to the bolts. Brian decided he could do that himself. I remember when I met Brian how completely useless he was as a handy-man. And in the last week he's saved us hundreds of dollars by doing the 40K mile maintenance on the Subie, and now this. I'm happy to report that the annoying rattling is gone and the interior of the Subie looks exactly like it did before. Way to go, Brian.
On Saturday night the girls and I headed down to Cedar St. to finish off the birthday week with some ass-shaking, and that's exactly what we did. I didn't sit down the whole night. Lucky for me I was wearing my super comfy kick ass boots. The girls got me a birthday cake and balloons and ensured I always had a vodka soda in my hand. True friends never divulge your age, and I was entertained by the fact that my cake said "Happy 29th Birthday Amanda!" hehehe. We all spent the evening in our usual spot right in front of Brian Lee, dancing and being generally goofy. Brian is as entertained by us as we are by him. As usual, the night got crazier with every passing minute. I saw a small cat-fight break out nearby at one point but it was diffused quickly. The band learned 2 of my favourite Bon Jovi songs and played them back-to-back! I felt so honoured. Danny came up to me later and told me that they learned those just for me! what a wonderful surprise.
On Sunday, Trent slept until 9:30! what a good boy, then Brian took him downstairs and let me sleep a little longer. We spent the day playing and hanging out, then ended the weekend at Hula Hut with Tiff & Brett and many people I hadn't seen in ages, to celebrate Brett's birthday. Trent was so perfectly behaved and Brian and I were so proud of our little guy.

In other news, I got a good rating on my yearly assesment at work. I hope that this will help me survive the current round of lay-offs happening this week. Brian also got a good rating. Cross your fingers :-)

Another year wiser

I just want to point out that I am not one year older. I am only one day older than I was yesterday. My day started off pretty well, but had a few minor hiccups in it as the day progressed. Brian and Trent treated me to breakfast today. I had that delicious coffee cake with the raspberry cheesecake stripe down it! mmmm! I got to open a present from Kevin & Darice. I am now hooked up with a Bluetooth headset to go with my awesome new phone :-)

Then I got a call from mum and dad on Google Video Chat. That turned out to have way better video and sound quality than we've experienced lately on Skype. I also learned that my mum is on Facebook! That's so cool!

About 30 mins or so into our chat, my great morning started to take a turn... my laptop crashed. No blue screen, no warning message. Just flat out turned itself off and then refused to boot. I tried a bunch of things to get it back up, including safe mode, recovery mode, and even swearing like a sailor mode. Finally I resigned myself to having to take it in for recovery by the pros at work, and set about getting my other laptop up and connected to the intranet. Lucky for me I have 2!! Meanwhile I'm still desperately trying to boot my regular laptop. After about 15 or so reboots, it came back!!! Tenacity does pay off. But that little eye-opener prompted me to continue to get laptop #2 connected and loaded with everything I use on a daily basis, should this happen again.

Next, I had to set up an appointment for Onyx to see the vet. She has blood in her urine again, and I was tired of schlepping the poor cat 15 minutes in the car to our old vet, plus she always wants to run a barrage of tests on her that cost a fortune. So I switched Onyx to a new vet who is only 5 mins away. Onyx didn't even put up a fight when I shoved her into the carrier. A sure sign she's not feeling well. I like our new vet. He seemed a lot less judgemental than our previous one when I said I wasn't interested in running a bunch of tests, and wanted to just make Onyx as comfy as possible. He didn't even take blood or urine, but instead read her file that they had retrieved from our previous vet, made an educated guess on what could be wrong, and we're treating for that to see if it helps. He thinks she has sterile cystitis. We're giving her a special diet and an anti-inflamatory. If Onyx responds to the treatment, then we'll do some kidney tests to make sure that her kidneys can handle the medication. I am pretty sure our previous vet would never have prescribed something without a mountain of tests, so this makes me very happy.

Ok, so one disaster averted and one positive prognosis for the cat has rescued my day. I'm looking forward to dinner with friends this evening.

Trent and daddy comparison

Courtesy of Grandpapparazi, here's a comparison of Trent and Brian. SO cute!

Sick boy!

Trent seemed to be having a bit of a tummy issue on Sunday. During breakfast he didn't eat much and had a minor throw up of his french toast. Didn't think much of it, assuming he managed to gag himself, which he does every once in a while. At lunch time he barely ate his leftover grilled cheese from Saturday's visit to Spicy Pickle, though I did convince him to eat some lasagna. A move I would later regret. His demeanor seemed normal, though so I figured he was just not hungy. We met Barbie and her family for dinner at TX Roadhouse, and I ordered a kids meal with steak and mashed potatoes for Trent. He just played with it. He even refused the cupcake Barbie's dad offered him. He just poked the frosting and ate a couple of finger fulls of it. In the car on the way home, all hell broke loose. First came the suspicious smell, which I blamed on Brian... and Brian couldn't recall if it actually was him so he graciously took the blame ;-) As we pulled into the garage, Trent chucked up the bit of frosting all over himself and his car seat. Ugh. I stripped him down and bathed him, at which point I discovered the source fo the suspicious car smell as it smeared onto my trousers! After his bath he seemed a little lethargic. I put on his PJs and right after I was done dressing him, he threw up all over himself (and me)! I sent Brian out for some pedialyte while I continued to comfort Trent as he threw up the remainder of whatever he'd eaten. Poor Trent emptied his entire stomach on me, himself, several towels, the floor, and his his giant stuffed lion.
As a parent you try not to overreact to these things, but with it being both diarrhea and vomiting, and he has a minor cold as well, I just wanted to get an expert opinion, so we called the doctor. The doc seemed unconcerned. We sat up with Trent till we were sure that he was done throwing up, then he willingly went to bed.
The next morning when Trent got up he was fine. No signs of anything wrong. Weird! We kept him home for the morning to be sure he was ok, and then he went to school in the afternoon. School reported a normal day. I have no idea what that was, but Trent was such a big boy about it. He never once cried or fussed while he was throwing up. Way less of a baby than I would be under those circumstances. I dunno if all kids are like this, but I feel like Trent is a tough kid. He never complains about being sick. Even when he had the shingles he didn't scratch or anything.
I'm happy to report that the poop came out of my trousers after I washed them in hot water and Oxyclean.

18 month checkup, etc...

Trent had his 18 month checkup today and we're so impressed with the little guy. He only cried for about 20 seconds when he got his injection, and the doctor said that he's already hitting many of the 2 year developmental milestones, most notably his language skills, his affinity for mummy, and his independence. His projected adult height is 5'10". Not bad considering the height of my family :-) I don't know how accurate that can be at this point, though.

While we were at the doctor's office we witnessed some parenting techniques that could benefit from a visit from Supernanny, to say the least. Brian and I try not to judge because everyone's parenting philosophies are different, but this woman was a complete control freak and her poor daughter was just trying to express herself. She actually took her to the bathroom and spanked her. We could hear the girl howling in there. I couldn't help judging. I hate that I did, but it's so clear to me why her kid was acting like that when she clearly sets such a bad example and completely and publicly invalidated her daughter's feelings. Of course, I've never been in her situation so I don't know how I would act under those circumstances, but I'd like to believe that I'd show Trent some consideration and try to diffuse the situation without resorting to violence.

Completely unrelated sidenote: Last night when Brian and I were about to watch a movie, I had to laugh when the DVD player reported that the disc was an unsupported format and Brian walked over to the DVD player, took the disc out, wiped it on his jeans, and put it back in. I wondered if that was an advanced technique I hadn't heard of yet for correcting a badly formatted DVD ;-)

Happy 1.5

January 4th was Trent's 18 month birthday :-) He's officially a big boy now, and boy does he let us know it! He's fiercely independent right now and gets so mad if you try to help him without him asking for help. But he does ask for help and it's sooooo cute. He signs help and says "hap! hap!". He's just chatting away all the time now, too. We really have to be careful what we say around him. Yesterday he said something that sounded like "shit". Brian and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh. I'm also loving that he says the word "mummy" with a "U" not an "O". It's very distinct.
He's in a major mummy phase right now, which is quite flattering, but sometimes can be a little inconvenient.

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