Monthly Archives: July 2007

I feel so ashamed that I haven’t been writing here even though I’m not sure if anyone really even reads it. Once you start a blog, you feel really obligated to keep it up. Things have been crazy busy lately. Last week Emma’s dayhome was closed because her caregiver came down with Norovirus and was incredibly sick. I worked from home and took a sick day. Emma was bored and had a touch of something herself (definitely not Norovirus though, thank goodness!). She’s been clingy, rashy and just generally, not herself. I’m sure the intense heat wave we’re having here is not helping at all.

Kris’ 13th birthday was great. We spent the day with him and his friend playing minigolf, laser tag and go karting. It was alot of fun. We bought him a Wii for his birthday and I think Mark and I are enjoying it almost as much as Kris is. It’s tons of fun, although I did come down with a fairly severe case of Wii elbow already and K says I’m embarassing when I play. I guess I maybe get into the game a little bit! I definitely love Wii Sports. We had my parents and Chris over for pizza and cake that night. On Friday, Kristopher and Joe went to a Harry Potter release party downtown with 3,000 people. They didn’t get back until around 1 a.m. — second time this week Kris has been out past midnight! They had a blast and Kris has been reading like crazy ever since in his new hammock chair in the back yard. Joe spent the night and hung out the next morning. It was nice having him around again!

I’m going to aim for every second day again at least to post here…aim for, not promise though! I can’t believe how busy this summer has been with K’s birthday, a new baby nephew, K’s upcoming trip to Europe, life with a toddler, etc. etc. I know, excuses, excuses. Continue reading →

Last night was pretty rough. About an hour after we put Emmy to bed she sat up and started to scream. It was her frantic pain cry. We picked her up, walked with her, jiggled her, all to no avail. We undressed her to see if anything was wrong that we could see from the outside. Nothing. I held her and nursed her. She was still pretty upset. We finally got her calmed down with watching reality shows on tv and a big bag of popcorn twists. That little girl was up until after 10! She looked pretty cute though just kicking back, watching t.v. and having a snack. We don’t normally let her watch t.v. at all but sometimes you do what you have to to get through the night. She was up over and over again. It was brutal! Hopefully tonight goes a little bit better. Mark is optimistically thinking we’re all going to go to bed early. In reality, she’ll probably just have a longer nap this afternoon…why can’t we nap at work? Continue reading →

It is funny how it is not always the big things that really stick in our memory as we get older. Sometimes the simple things become what we really identify with. I find that now that I have my own family, I often end up reflecting and comparing it to when I was growing up.

For example, last weekend, Dale and Kris went up to Drayton Valley to visit Dale’s family. So, since Emma “suggested” I get up early, I got it into my head that it would be nice to make some chocolate chip cookies as snacks for their trip. By the way, making cookies with Emma around is a totally different process than when she is not around and I am amazed that they ended up edible (they nearly were not, but that is a different story).

So, as I was cooking, I got to thinking about how my dad used to watch hockey and make chocolate chip cookies all the time (or at least it seems like it looking back). First he would find some sucker to cook them because he didn’t want to do that (I think it distracted from the hockey game). Then, he would sit down with the biggest potery bowl that I have ever seen and mix up 2 to 4 batches of cookies. Each commercial break, he would go and get a couple more ingredients, and go back to his mixing and watching the game… I don’t know why, but that is one of those happy family memories that always stuck in my head, and I kept thinking about it as I mixed up cookies for my family…

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Babies not as innocent as they pretend
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/07/2007

Whether lying about raiding the biscuit tin or denying they broke a toy, all children try to mislead their parents at some time. Yet it now appears that babies learn to deceive from a far younger age than anyone previously suspected.

Behavioural experts have found that infants begin to lie from as young as six months. Simple fibs help to train them for more complex deceptions in later life.

Until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old.

Following studies of more than 50 children and interviews with parents, Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth’s psychology department, says she has identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old.

Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents’ attention.

By the age of two, toddlers could use far more devious techniques, such as bluffing when threatened with a punishment.

Dr Reddy said: “Fake crying is one of the earliest forms of deception to emerge, and infants use it to get attention even though nothing is wrong. You can tell, as they will then pause while they wait to hear if their mother is responding, before crying again.

“It demonstrates they’re clearly able to distinguish that what they are doing will have an effect. This is essentially all adults do when they tell lies, except in adults it becomes more morally loaded.”

She added: “Later it becomes more sophisticated by saying, ‘I don’t care’ when threatened with a punishment – when they clearly do.”

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Emma climbs everything! She has absolutely no fear. Every time I turn around, she’s standing on the kitchen table. Mark wants to bungee the chairs to the table so that she can’t pull them out to climb them. She moves all her small furniture around to the big furniture so she can climb up the side of the arm chair and face plant into the seat. She’s driving me nuts! That reminds me of a pirate joke I know…A pirate walks into a bar and the bartender says “Do you realize that you have a steering wheel attached to your crotch?”. The pirate says “Yarrgh, it’s driving me nuts!”. Anyways, she’s constantly setting up obstacle courses for herself. Mark wants to take her climbing like at a climbing wall or something but I don’t think the harnesses would be big enough for her. She even has this new “dismount” when I’m nursing her. She dives head first off my lap and does a little flip to get to the floor. I gave her a perfect 10 for her dismount this morning! Yarrrgh, someone help us please…she’s such a monkey! Continue reading →

Emmy’s new nickname is Mimi. She says it constantly while randomly pointing at things with a frustrated look on her face. She can say alot of things but not quite enough for her. I think she’s telling us that she wants…something or another. I wish we understood almost as much as she wishes she could get us to understand. I’m not sure that sentence made any sense.

Anyway, “Mimi’s” new poop spot is in the tub. Tonight is the third night in a row that she’s pooped during her bath. Of course it’s funny to me because I don’t give her a bath. Mark’s been doing that nightly since pretty much day one. I’ve got to run and keep an eye on Mimi so that Mark can scrub the tub and bleach the bath toys, yet again. We’re going to need new toys for the tub soon as these ones are going to disintegrate from being scrubbed so much!

P.S. The baby’s name is Zachary Solomon Mitchell and he is very sweet. When Gabriel, my brother’s first son, was about 20 minutes old, he laced his fingers together and looked very serene. Yesterday, when I met Zachary, he did exactly the same thing. I’ve never seen any other babies do this. Very, very cute but a little freaky too. Sort of like how I met this fourth cousin of mine at the funeral who was two weeks younger than Emma. They both have exactly, I mean EXACTLY, the same birthmark. Emma’s is on her chest and Brianna’s is on her eyebrow. WEIRD!!! Continue reading →