Party and big boy bed.

A couple of pictures from the party Sunday.

W in his crown with his special cupcake.

Caught in action! He's so fast the world blurs around him.

And a couple of photos from today when we built his big boy bed.

Banana and screwdriver. A real little handyman.

The finished room. We added a security rail to the bed after this photo was taken.

The day after

Yesterday we had W's big birthday bash. It was in the park like last year and I was stressing so much about the baking and the weather that I failed to sleep the night before. So tired and cranky with a million things to do I begun my day.
W didn't get much sleep either and once the extended family showed up there were just no sleeping to be had so we had chicken, veggies and Dairy Queen blizzard cake instead.
Off to the park, me and W hung out at home for an extra 45 minutes after everyone else left. Once we got there we ate and played and some friends joined us and W got some more gifts and discovered the joy of smarties.
J dressed him for the party and for some reason he put him in the exact same clothes he wore last summer for his birthday so I'll be doing side by side pictures tomorrow. Today I'm still recovering. We're also getting his new bed tomorrow because on Wednesday my one year old will officially be 2 and there will be the birthday post.
The countdown is on. 2 days til W's birthday 10 days to mine and 16 until we go to Sweden.

Forth Friday: The abortion issue

I have wanted to talk about abortion here for a while but I find it to be a bit of a sensitive issue. I am pro choice. I believe that it's very much a woman's right to chose but I don't think it's right when it's being used as a contraceptive.
Now J's mom was quite young when she had him and his sister was very young when she had her first child. Both of them received pressure from family members to have abortions but they chose not to. J feels that abortion is tricky because he was almost aborted himself and so was his godchild.
My own personal opinion is that there are so many unwanted children in this world already so why should we force women to add to that if they do not want to. Keeping abortions legal is necessary to ensure that women don't try to do it to themselves or go to back alley clinics and get botched. But I do think it should be a carefully made decision. I think if possible both parents should be involved and it should never be used as a contraceptive, it should be a last resort.
I know a lot of people feel very strongly about abortions and the people who oppose it call the fetuses children in order to make the abortion into murder and part of me understands where they are coming from. Those children would have grown up to be people I might love who knows. But what makes it right to force someone to have a child they do not want. And what about cases of rape.
I think the abortion process should maybe be a bit more difficult say you should have to do some counseling before going through with it to ensure you know what you're doing.

I am very tired right now so I am rambling a bit. I hope you will all share your opinions with me.

the Friday issue

the Friday issue is going to have to wait until later tonight or next week because I just don't have time today. I have been baking all day and soon my niece will be here.

sorry

party planning

W's birthday is only 1 week away now and we're throwing him a party on Sunday so I am in a party planning and prepping mood. Yesterday while shopping for juice boxes and chips I completely forgot to look at my prepared list and ended up forgetting half the stuff I need so I'll have to go back again.
All this planning and prepping has got me so preoccupied that I am unable to think long enough about other things to write a complete post about it.

I will try to write the Friday issue for tomorrow but don't expect anything else until Sunday after the party.

When gorillas attack!

Yesterday we went to Granby Zoo. The weather was beautiful and since it's still early June there were not too many people. We started off with Africa and W really fell in love with the rhinos he kept asking to go back to the rhinos. We saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, ostriches, and lions.
Then we came to the gorillas. The zookeeper was there talking about the gorillas since they had recently received two young male gorillas from Toronto zoo where they had started fighting their dad. Granby zoo recently lost it's oldest gorilla Mumba so they took the two young gorillas. When we got there the gorillas were hanging out at the back of a truck where the front of the truck was outside of the glass and the back was in with the gorillas. You could get in the truck and the gorilla would literally be just on the other side of the glass. As we were standing next to the truck looking at them they started play fighting and messing about. W got intrigued and wanted to go down to see them better so I put him down right in front of the glass.



As he's standing there one of the gorillas turns around and looks right at me and bus (it's like a foot away from us separated only by glass) pounds his chest, makes some noise and kicks the glass right where W is standing. If the glass would not have been there he would have kicked W right in the face. W got surprised and scared and started crying so I quickly picked him up and got him out of there. We then went and sat on a statue of Mumba and looked at the gorillas from another side where they were not right in front of us.



W spent the rest of the day saying "gorilla boom".
After Africa we ate and then we ventured into the petting zoo where we fed some goats and petted a bunny and went for a pony ride.




I didn't want to do the pony ride since it was ridiculously overpriced but W kept shouting "pony ja! pony ja!" over and over so I couldn't deny him the pony ride.



After that we went to the bird house where we bought some nectar to feed the birds. I had three birds on my arm at one point fighting over the nectar and W had a brave bird land on his arm.He did not look too sure about that.





Then we petted a shark looked at the tigers, bears, leopards, snakes and frogs as well as the wallaby's with their babies.
Granby zoo also has this little amusement park with rides so we went on the merry-go-round and in helicopters and on a little train.



Then we made our way into the jungle gym where W left us outside the fence to go play with the balls. He stayed in so long we had to get the attendant to get him out and that freaked him out so he had a meltdown when he couldn't get to me through the fence.




After that we were tired so we went home.
Granby zoo also has a aqua park where we had a lot of fun last year but it was a bit too cold yesterday to go swimming outside so we passed.
Back in Montreal we were subjected to the most ridiculous detour I have ever had to take due to massive amounts of police and closing of streets.
All in all it was a great day for our whole family!
Funny enough I think W enjoyed the playground, where you could sit on fake animals, the most.

Third Friday: the new world order issue

This Friday I thought I'd take a break from the baby and childhood related issues and go with a political one. As you may or may not know I've been studying International politics this spring so I am all read up on globalization, regionalism, nationalism and terrorism. The topic of the new world order has come up at several points during my studies specifically in the form of Mary Kaldor's "New and Old Wars" and excerpts from Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" and Fukuyama's "The End of History".
These three all give different perspectives on the new world order Kaldor for example argues for a cosmopolitan approach where the UN will take the role of world police and the focus will be on humans and humanitarian issues.
Huntington on the other hand believes that the world will be divided along the lines of the eight main civilizations: Western, Latin America, Islamic, African, Hindu, Sinic, Orthodox and Japanese. The world will then be clashing along the lines of these.
Fukuyama argues that the end of history is that the liberal capitalist democracy has won. Communism is no longer an option and the end of history is therefor the end of the humans ideological evolution.
Now personally I don't agree fully with either of these since Kaldor is way to optimistic and utopian in her world view and Huntington divisions are too rough and don't account for all the different kinds of cultures within the great eight. Fukuyama has a point when he says that the liberal capitalist democracy is the new leading form of governance but I can't agree with his belief that this is the end of history. One might even argue that it is in fact the continuation of history after the dead lock between communism and liberal democracy that was going on during the cold war.
I would hope that the future world order would include some shape or form or higher international government since that is a good way to keep peace and ensure that we don't destroy our planet too much. But I am not optimistic that this will in fact happen. Sovreignty is too important to the individual states.

What do you believe? Please share your realistic and unrealistic ideas about the new world order!

even worse

So if I thought yesterday was pretty crap with the whole cat pee incident it was unfortunately only the beginning. I took W to the park and he didn't really want to play so we went home. Once we got home he felt warm so I checked his temperature and he had a fever of 39.3°C (102.7°F). We had a very rough night with about 45 minutes of W just talking at around 4 am. At 6.30 he wanted to watch Finding Nemo. I was supposed to give it to him for his birthday but since it only 2 weeks away and he's sick I gave it to him yesterday. So I dragged my ass out of bed grabbed a bunch of blankets and went to sleep on the couch while W watched the movie. At 9.30 he's made it through almost 2 whole films and decided to wake his dad. He finally crashed again at 11 am and slept to 2.45 pm.
He now has a fever of 39.1°C and we spent about an hour and half sitting in our stairs looking at cars and people and throwing bread to the birds. It sucks that he's sick today since it's really nice outside and he was healthy last week when it rained. At least it's not next week when we're throwing him a birthday party or the week after when he'll actually turn 2.

I can't believe my little man is going to be 2 soon...

Brody!

Today I had to take my cat Brody to the vet for her booster vaccination. It's every three years so it's not that bad. I don't really like my cats since I had a baby. They loose a lot of hair and miaow during the night and are expensive to keep but I still feel obligated to take care of them. So I packed Brody in the pet taxi and off we went. She did well at the vet's and she's healthy and pretty so I was pretty proud. I bought her this toy filled with cat nip before leaving as a present for being well behaved. Apparently though I should have not bothered because halfway home she decides to pee in her pet taxi. That stuff stinks and since I didn't have a towel or anything in there it also splashes. I had to pull over and baby wipe half my car and digg out an old magazine to put in the pet taxi to soak up some of the pee. Brody during all of this, seemed to have forgotten she had to stay in the pet taxi all the way home when she peed, was miaowing at the top of her lungs and whaling. It was awful. It then took us forever to find parking. As soon as I got back here I dumped the whole pet taxi with cat and all into the bathtub and gave them both a good scrub. Brody hates bathing so that was a bit of a struggle too. It's a good thing there's another three years before I have to take her again, that'll give me enough time to forget about this. Next year it's Pico's turn. First time she went in the pet taxi when we picked her up that first day she pooed in there so I am always a bit iffy about bringing her anywhere. Besides it'll be embarrassing since she's so ugly and fat and her fur is all icky.

Nuff said.

The time for Wii is here!

So I did my exam today!
I got back home a couple of hour ago and W's been sleeping for forever and I honestly don't know what to do with my time. I should be writing a cover letter for a job application but my brain has gone for the day. I think I used up all my brainpower writing that exam. So now I've checked all my internet sites and I've fed the cats and I've put my books away. Tonight I'm finally gonna open my early birthday present to myself. Lego Star Wars the complete saga for Wii. J rented the game last summer and I spent a month playing it and last week it was on sale at best buy (which I keep calling buy more after watching too much Chuck) so I bought it for myself. I haven't opened it yet cause I know that as soon as I do I won't be studying anymore so today is the day!