Feelings

Here's a tip for ya: people interviewing you for a job never want to hear about your feelings. 


Ha!  I went for a job interview last week, which is kind of remarkable considering I was still in the throes of post-traumatic stress.  But it was a hard-won interview and even though I love love love love love my job, I'm the kind of sicko who like Lisa Simpson, likes being graded and tested and so I go on job interviews (there are fewer and fewer opportunities for assessment as you get older).  Maybe it's because I miss the rush and pressure of the restaurant biz.  Who knows?  Either way, going on job interviews is good experience - it's a good fact-finding expedition, it forces you to keep your resume and cover letter current, it's good to find out how you stack up in the marketplace, and it allows you to brush up on your interviewing skills, which are good skills to have.  They're also the skills most likely to languish forgotten in the dusty recesses of your brain.


Now I did my due diligence.  I studied up on the organization's strategic priorities, did a thorough search, read the annual report, polled people to find out what their experiences had been interviewing for similar positions and practiced answers to the questions they had been asked.  Unfortunately, everything I studied - they didn't ask me about.  And instead they focused on very concrete, job-based experiences that I hadn't studied up on, and since I don't currently have that professional experience, I had nothing to draw from.  So...I ended up starting a lot of sentences with: "I feel" which is THE WORST.  I had that out-of-body experience where you can hear yourself digging an ever-deeper hole and yet you CAN'T STOP YOURSELF FROM RAMBLING ABOUT HOW YOU "FEEL" ABOUT THE SITUATION.  Worst!  "I really feel like I'd be good for the job because of x, y, z" is a horrible spot to be in.  They don't care how you feel!  People FEEL a lot of things that aren't germane!  Basically, I bombed.  Ah well.  Live and learn.  Now I know what to do next time.


The interview was epic.  2 hours long.  45 minutes to prepare a written component and then 15 minutes to study up on the interview questions before they brought you before the panel for an oral presentation of the written component and THEN the interview began.  Yikes.


Needless to say, by the time Friday rolled around I was ready to partay.  We had the roomie and L'Armi over on Friday night for some fun ice cream and cupcake eatin' and talking late into the night.  We're trying to name their baby.  It's tough.  L'Armi loves patrician sounding "family" names and the roomie likes names like "Moonbeam."  Not quite that bad, but pretty close.  It's hard trying to find a middle ground.


Sometimes it bears repeating: I am a lucky button with wonderful, smart, funny people in my life.  This weekend bore testament to that.


Saturday we chilled and did house stuff and then had dinner at J & S's house.  She made this awesome short rib-pinto bean thing and coleslaw and I made deviled eggs and mini chocolate pudding pies and she made this banana cake with cream cheese frosting.  My favorite part of the night was playing with their daughter, L.  We were peering our their window, with our heads under the shade looking for "night penguins" and then the Big Yam toddled up in his jammies and stood watch next to us and I thought my heart was going to explode.  So best!


Then we hustled home to welcome SMckay for a sleepover!!!  I LOVE SLEEPOVERS!!!  I really, really, really do.  Not for me the sanctity of the insular nuclear family.  I would still have roommates if I could live in a house big enough to afford each family their own privacy but still allowed us to lounge around together in our pjs and eat meals together.  I just like it. It's just my style.  Maybe because I don't edit myself?  That makes it easier.  I'm willing to always let it all hang out - friends or family bearing witness to the domestic strife be damned.  That's just the way it goes, naw mean?


Anyway, hanging with SMckay was obviously the bestest.  We were talking about online dating and looking up this one site that I had read was where all the hipsters go to hook up and the Dotytron made me howl, because he woke up from his slumber on the couch to inquire, "What's going on?  Are you talking about MASH?  Are we doing MASH?"  LOL!  It just makes me laugh how he was suddenly an expert at MASH and totally wanted in (that's Mansion-Apartment-Shack-House to you).  


The next morning we took SMckay to Bonjour Brioche where we ordered a giant breakfast and then went to Lolly's to help her paint her new adorable cute house.  We painted a good chunk of the day and then broke to head to Lil' Ugmo for a post-painting takeout/Family Day hangs session.  First SMckay made us stop at Sherway to go to MAC.  It was crazy so we were circling around FOREVER trying to find a parking spot.  We saw a guy standing next to a car with his back to us, so we're like, "Sweet! Is he leaving?" only to realize that he was PEEING IN THE MALL PARKING LOT.  WHAT. THE. HELL.  Who does that?!???  We all screamed and drove away so fast, completely traumatized.  


We got Chino Loco's for dinner and then basically goofed around creeping on online dating sites and profiles and had the best time ever. I laughed so hard my tummy hurt.  The Dotytron was killing me.  We were all basically group-writing messages to various suitors.  One of them messaged us accusing us (rightly) of "creeping" on his site.  To which the Dotytron had us type back: "Who is the creep?  The creep or the creep who creeps the creep?"  There was a bit more back and forth and then we were left with the task of writing a closing message to this one guy who was a bit of a dummy dud, but a nice one.  The Dotytron's suggestion?  "One last creep.  Goodnight, sweet prince."  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!!!!!!!  GOODNIGHT, SWEET PRINCE!???!!!???  I'm STILL laughing out loud about that, 2 days later.  


Monday we went to hang out with my fam-bam cuz my sis was in town with all the cousins.  She and I took the kids swimming and as we were entering the community centre, we turned around to hurry the kids and were stopped short by the overwhelming cuteness that was Miss Ramona holding the Big Yam's one hand, Little Ze holding his other hand, and also Little Big Cuz.  The four of them holding hands and walking was the CUTEST. THING. EVER.  I basically died inside.  We had dim sum lunch and then Phoenix for dinner.

The Big Yam's first dance with whipped cream straight off the beater

The Big Yam and Little Big Cuz swarming me when I pulled out a banana.  They're like banana zombies.  Instantly drop whatever they're doing and stumble over.

So in short: I basically had the awesomest Family Day weekend ever.  We had big friend laughs and love, big family laughs and love.  What more could you want?  


Today was pancake Tuesday so for dinner we had blueberry buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and a fat baby with bourbon caramel sauce and ice cream for dessert.  


Fin.

WE ONLY HAVE 6 HOT DOGS!

In the ongoing chronicles of me being a psycho - I shouted "We only have 6 hot dogs!" at the roomie as she was exiting our car today, after we had arranged tentative plans that she was going to meet up with us again later tonight.  She had just said, "don't worry about saving me dinner, if you want to eat without me, that's fine," and me, in a panic that we only had one package of Shopsy's all beef hot dogs, made sure to tell one of my oldest friends who just happens to be 5 months pregnant that we only had 6 hot dogs.  The implication being, obviously, that there wouldn't be enough for her, our guest.  The Dotytron gave me one of his patented head shake/incredulous resignation expressions that he reserves expressly for when I'm being a psycho.  "You're only saying that because you know you're going to eat 5 hot dogs." Sigh.  He knows me so well.  What is WRONG with me?  Why can't I eat less than 4 hot dogs, ever?  Why am I a hot dog hoarder?  No one knows.


The Dotytron had the day off so we went to Kensingston Market with the roomie who is on her month-long vacation month.  We picked up yerba mate and then ate a tonne of Chilean empanadas and pulled pork on plantain goodies at Segovia.  So good!  I checked out the menu at Agave Y Aguacate (the spot that totally exploded in Kensington last spring)...but we weren't feeling it.  The stuff is kind of expensive and the menu didn't sound too appetizing.  We also got churros, of course.  Just practicing leading up to Fat Tuesday.


In amid all the personal and professional craziness this week, the much-hyped Drummond Report (aka The Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Service) dropped on Wednesday.  It was kind of a big deal.  I haven't had a chance to read through the whole thing yet (it's like 500+ pages), but it's the most comprehensive review of the OPS in recent memory, with an eye to finding cost-saving measures so that we can accelerate the elimination of the deficit.  The spectacle surrounding the Drummond Report has been kind of buck and leading up to its release, the fear over the types of austerity recommendations it would contain served to paralyze the workings of the province.  It was pretty fascinating.  I haven't really thought through the political strategy behind commissioning such a sweeping audit, but on a gut level, I think it was pretty brilliant.  


Tonight we're doing Friday Night Junkfood night - which is being expressed in the form of the aforementioned hot dogs, Kraft Dinner, and Bobette and Belle cupcakes with movies and knitting.  Yay Friday!


Fin.

DonDon Izakaya

Before everything went to hell in a hand basket this week, the Dotytron and I took advantage of some Momma D babysitting service and went out for dinner.  We took one for the team and tried the new izakaya that had opened up on Dundas, DonDon Izakaya.  We went in knowing it was a risk, given that Guu not only has the izakaya district of our hearts cornered, but is also pretty much our favorite restaurant, regardless of cuisine, in Toronto.  

Reviews on Yelp had been mixed.  I was heartened by the fact that the place was crawling with Asians (I almost always trust an Asian person's opinion of food over almost every other ethnicity - in Toronto, a place filled with young Asian couples and groups of Asian friends is a good sign indeed), but as it turns out, that hope was misplaced.  

The space is nice enough.  The staff, all of whom seemed to be Japanese, are like, the younger, less hot, less cool cousins of the Guu staff.  Part of the joy of going to Guu is ogling the Japanese eye candy (see previous posts re: my Guu boyfriend).  The crew at DonDon are not ogle-worthy.  Awwww...poor guys.  Now I feel bad for saying it.  The atmosphere is considerably less raucous than at Guu - the servers still shout at you but the vibe of the room is just...off.  No one is giving themselves over to the experience...it was like a concert where everyone is one their phones or sitting their butts in the seats and not engaging with the act.

Overall, the menu featured way less stuff we wanted to eat, and the dishes we ordered were mostly okay, with only one standout item.  The food was missing the love and the care.  

 Tako wasabi is one of our favorite dishes at Guu, where finely chopped raw octopus is mixed with wasabi and served with little sheets of nori for turning into spicy raw octopus seaweed cigarellos.  Here the tako wasabi was cut a little too big and served a little too warm.  

This was egg salad mixed with raw salmon, stuffed into a smoked egg.  It was a nice little bite, but it had been prepared way in advance and the bacon chip was cold.  Cold bacon is never appealing.  I feel like if you ordered something similar at Guu, it would have been made a la minute.  

This dish was the ONE knockout.  "Black Croquettes" - little creamy potato cod fingers coated in squid-ink panko and fried.  So good!  The insides were fluffy and light and creamy.  This was so good we ordered another round.  

They kind of do a Japadog type fusion hot dog thing.  This was a pork wiener (with a very unpleasant, mushy texture) topped with a cold kimchi-based relish.  I think if everything had been warm, this would have been better.  As it stood, the vinegariness of the kimchi and the competing temperatures didn't coalesce into a proper fusion dish.

This was advertised as a pork belly bun - a la Momofuku.  It wasn't pork belly, the bun was a little soggy from oversteaming and then sitting.  If it had been pork belly and the bun was piping hot, this would have been a good dish.  As is...it was meh.

This was chicken and mashed potatoes and bonito flakes.  Another dish that had a good underlying concept that was undone by the shoddy execution.  The chicken was a little flabby, but the mashed potatoes were divine (I suspect they were instant).

A teriyaki hot dog.  Here the hot dog was all beef and had a better texture, but it was still overwhelmed by the lack of subtlety in the teriyaki toppings.

Ahhhhhh...hamachi sashimi.  Impossible to eff up.  Impossible not to enjoy.  Why isn't there funding going to making sure that yellowtail can be farmed?  Huh?  What's up with that?!?   If we can invest billions into oil sands, then surely, hamachi farming should be equally prioritized.

Kushiyaki (stuff on sticks!) Bacon wrapped asparagus, bacon wrapped oyster mushrooms, grilled quail eggs, chicken, and gizzards.  I prefer my kushiyaki with just a sprinkling of salt.  So good.  This dish had a really nice, smoky flavour that enhanced the fattier items (like the bacon stuff).

This was supposed to be sashimi that was lightly grilled over a hay fire.  This was awful.  Here you have butterfish and tuna sashimi that was RUINED by the greasy flavour of the smoke.  It tasted the way burning butane smells.  If any of you have a grill, and have ever oiled the piece of food you want to grill and then had the oil burn over the hot heat and leave a greasy, blackened slick of burnt oil film on the food - that's what was on these beautiful pieces of fish.  We couldn't even choke this dish down.  It was sad.

Soy tofu.  Silky, custardy, served with a seasoned soy.  I prefer this dish warm.

Dessert was a nicely executed creme caramel for me and a matcha red bean thing for the Dotytron.


At one point, we saw the owner talking to another dude, and I turned to the Dotytron and asked, "do you know what language they're speaking?" He listened intently for a minute and then turned to me and shook his head.  That's right.  The owners of DonDon are CHINESE PEOPLE (they were speaking Cantonese).  This is a classic case of Chinese people ripping off and trying to cash in on a successful business model.  Sometimes, this works.  Like, say, in AYCE restaurants.  In this case, the attempt to replicate Guu but cut corners failed.  


In the end, I'm glad I took one for the team.  Technically, the "team" in question consists of MHui and her hubby, whose unbridled enthusiasm for Guu matches ours.  At least we can relegate this place to the "never again" pile.  


Sigh.  There's nothing I can do...I only want to eat at Guu (sung to the tune of Hootie and the Blowfish.)


Fin.

Sick Kids

I hope that you all never have occasion to visit Sick Kids hospital, but if you do, know that it is a place that brings you to your knees with awe.  


Monday morning, 7am, the Big Yam fell down the stairs of our house.  The entire flight.  All 14 steps.  It was my fault.  I thought the gate was closed.  I thought the gate was closed.  That thought haunts me.  I could have sworn the gate was closed.  The sound of the thump that sent me running out of his room and the sight of his little body, face down and splayed out on the floor haunts me.  I was in the middle of getting the Big Yam ready for the day.  I went to pee, and I know the gate was closed then because he stood at the gate and watched me pee, and then proceeded to pee on the floor.  I went and cleaned up his pee, and I could have sworn the gate was closed at that point, too.  I got him dressed and I was grabbing his socks from his room when I heard that sound and even worse, that awful, drawn-out silence that followed it.  


I ran downstairs and gathered him up and saw that his bottom three teeth were at a right angle and he was gushing blood and screaming and it was a freakin' s**tshow of epic proportions.  There are no words.  I called my neighbours to figure out where to go and then called Momma D and she came right away and we drove to Sick Kids Emergency, the Big Yam wailing all the while, though eventually settling down when I sang him songs in the car, even with the effin' massacre in his mouth.  


Here's the thing about being a parent.  YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO BE AFRAID OF. I saw his teeth and I was freaking out.  When we got to Sick Kids Emergency, they asked me a barrage of questions - how many steps, are they carpeted, what did he land on, did he scream right away (concussion check), could he move his head (concussion check), any vomiting, odd behaviour, were his legs and arms bent at a weird angle.  I didn't even THINK to check that stuff.  I picked him up like an idiot, when he could have hurt his neck or spine or any of that other stuff I didn't know about but actually learned when I did my CPR training.


They put a neck brace on him even though the preliminary check seemed fine.  Then it was a matter of me trying to soothe him enough so he would be still for the CT scan.  I tried for an hour but he was getting scared and I'm sure his teef were hurting like whoa and he wouldn't settle, so then it was a whole debate between the anesthetist and the trauma surgeon about weighing the pros and cons of putting him under for a CT scan when it was unlikely (based on the preliminary evidence) that he had any spine/head fractures/issues.  Complicating things was the fact that he had eaten breakfast this morning, leading to the risk of pulmonary aspiration (what I learned - chemically induced unconsciousness leads to disabling of the natural block in the esophagus that prevents contents of the stomach entering the lungs).  So there was a big argument between anesthetist and trauma doc that I unfortunately overheard.  The end result after a consult with neurology and dentist was that he was going to be put under.  So they let me into the room with him to help him calm down before he went under and then they kicked me out so I wouldn't see him getting intubated.  Poor little guy.  He went under so quick. 


The entire surgery lasted about 30 minutes.  They pulled his 4 bottom teeth out.  I signed the consent forms after the fact because it all happened while he was out.  Then the Dotytron showed up and we were there when he woke up.  They wanted us to stay overnight so we were moved into the day patient room which is a bit of a misnomer because the other 3 patients in the room had been there for a few days, most of them waiting to be transferred to a private room.  I stayed with him through the night and the Dotytron went home at 9pm to get some rest because his concert band is competing today in the Ontario Band Association thingamajig.  The trauma doctor I spoke to last night said that he could have discharged us, but due to the height of the fall and the facial impact on the poor Boobla, he preferred one night just to watch and make sure that no concussion symptoms occurred after the fact.  As he put it, he would have preferred that the Big Yam have a seizure at the hospital than with us at home (my preference too.)  


We got discharged this morning.  It was a long night.  It's crazy how still hospitals become at night - how unearthly and alone you as the visitor seem to be, haunting the deserted halls, even though you're sharing your vigil with everyone else keeping watch over their loved ones.  


I can't say enough good things about Sick Kids.  Every staff member we met was phenomenal - kind, competent, warm, loving.  Great bedside manners.  It is an exemplar of how our health care system should work.  They were obviously in a hurry to discharge us, seeing as how we were occupying a bed unnecessarily.  I kept marveling at the miracles and the work being performed at that place.  Each section of each floor has a a well appointed playroom for the kids, there's a library, a school, research facilities.  Thinking about the amount of money that keeps that place running is mind boggling - the army of nurses, RNs, nurse practitioners, nutritionists, family counselors and the doctors in each section of each floor.  


I came away thinking of how lucky we are and how ludicrous this whole parenting venture is.  It's like the ultimate Ponzi scheme.  You get sucked in not knowing how much you owe.  There were people in the neurology, neuroscience, and trauma wing who had been coming to Sick Kids for years and years  - who had effectively grown up there.  There were kids there with undiagnosed neurological issues - countless things that you have no idea to be afraid of when you decide frivolously to have a child.  


I came away from my 3am haunting of the Sick Kids halls completely humbled by humans and our ludicrous coping capabilities, our resiliency, our strength, and how low we can be pulled.  The work that's done in that building is inspiring and I'm not just talking about the work of the doctors, researchers, and residents.  The love that parents can have for their children and the ability of children to adapt and be kids regardless of situation is staggering - another example of the sublime.  


My sis says I dodged a bullet and I am inclined to agree.  I'm so grateful that my Boobla is okay, for the most part, unscathed except for the loss of his baby teeth and his newfound thirst for lemon flavoured Jell-O.  We have to see a pediatric dentist to see what the long term ramifications are for a kid to lose their baby teeth so young.  If it's only cosmetic, as I suspect it might be, I'm not that fussed about it.  I couldn't believe that through it all - he still wanted me - he still wanted to be carried and kissed by his mama.  Especially since I did it to him.  I feel like he's Rihanna and I'm Chris Brown or something.  I kept expecting to the Sick Kids people to call CAS on me - hell, I'm on the brink of turning myself in.  My sis thinks I'm taking it harder because I am so controlling and have such high expectations that this slip up is harder for me to take.  That might be part of it.  Feeling like a bad, negligent mum is another huge part of it.  Knowing that I hurt the little fatburger and ruined his fatburger mug is another huge part of it.  I won't be able to hear him crunching into an apple again for a long time.  The inside of his mouth looks like the human centipede and that's my fault.  

This is what he looked like sleeping in the prison-crib at the hospital.  They taped this foam block to his hand to keep all the IVs in - in case they had to give him medicine or something later.  Awwww...poor little block hand.


I took the rest of the week off of work to spoil the Big Yam rotten and cover his human centipede mouth with kisses.


Fin.

BLW addendum

I keep feeling like I neglected to add something in my BLW rundown...but I can't remember what it is.  Ultimately, as with everything in life, you gotta do what's right for you.  Did I follow strict BLW procedures?  No.  But how you interpret parenting styles/methods is also up to you.  I know people who implemented BLW but would make individual turkey-quinoa patties for their kids to eat and then hover over the baby while they were eating, and then end up eating their own (different) dinner later.  To me, that kind of defeats the whole simplicity of the BLW system.  What I liked best was not having to make a separate meal for myself and for the Boobla.  I also know parents who have 2 year old kids and still cut up everything into teensy weensy little bites for them cuz they're so afeared of choking.  Again, if that's what floats your boat, go on ahead.  You're talking to the lady who put a bumper on her crib from birth because it tied the room together.  I clearly don't have all the answers.


I'm a pretty devil-may-care parent.  I'm not over-protective, I'm not generally a hoverer (this will come later, when my kid develops guile - I'm DEFINITELY a check-your-browser-history type of parent), I let my kid fall down and I don't rush to make sure he's okay.  It's just not my thing.  A lot of it is ignorance - ie. I didn't know you're supposed to have a helmet on a kid when he's tobogganing - and some of it is just me using my own internal common-sense-o-meter.


Par example: I gave the Big Yam peanut butter at 6 or 7 months.  We don't have any allergies in my family, the Dotytron doesn't, and I followed a tip from my neighbour where I rubbed some on his arm, then on his lip, to see if he hived up.  He didn't, so he's been yamming p.b. ever since.  I also gave him whole eggs - I didn't really get what the egg embargo was about anyway.  I think the conventional wisdom is yolks only, but then Poh Poh told me that the Chinese way was whites only, so then I split the difference and gave him the whole egg around 7 months.  He ate meat pretty much as soon as BLW was underway, he eats seafood and shellfish, he eats spicy food - it's all a go.  The only thing I'm a maniac about is sweets.  So he doesn't get juice, or syrup on his pancakes, or ice cream, or chocolate, and never sweet treats or prepared snacks.  I keep some disgusting spelt Cheerio-type things around the house and he gets those, and the odd Mum Mum, but otherwise, I don't let him have any processed food.  Sometimes I feel bad for the kid, cuz I think he must be wondering what's that EXTRA stuff we put on our pancakes and french toast, but then I get over it.  He has a lifetime of desserts in front of him.  He's had the odd taste here and there, but that's about it.


I keep thinking that I should put photos of the Big Yam's room up on OhDeeOh or something.  Only because I think I did a good job with his room and it's all tied together.  Maybe I will someday.  I have some fantastic nursery ideas for the next one (if there is another bambino in our future.)  I think part of my drive to have kids is for the decor purposes.  I'm a strange one, admittedly.


Today is my day off.  I wanted to keep the Big Yam home with me but I had too much shiz to do.  A lot of school and prep and getting the house ready for the focus group I'm hosting tonight.  I know, it sounds all weird and Tupperware party but it's considerably more benign.  My friend J is writing another book on foodies and asked me if I wanted to host a focus group for some of my foodie friends.  This post-doc is administering it and will bring snacks.  Host gets a $50 g/c to Loblaws and participants get a $25.  At the time,  I didn't know how bucksauce my life was going to be so I went with it.  I'm treating it very much like a focus group.  Like, even though my friends are coming over, I'm not hosting per se.  I'm definitely kicking everyone out by like, 10pm, because a) we want to take the Big Yam swimming tomorrow; and b) we're both exhausted from Ehmdo's show the night before.


The show was fantastic!  I haven't been to Lee's in a long time.  Predictably, I'm not used to going out to hear someone singing pop numbers.  If there isn't a driving bassline or if it's not like, Heart or Prince, it's not really my bag per se.  But my outlaw sis has a fantastic, expressive voice and a gift for writing catchy pop tunes and it was so nice to see her getting the support she deserved for the work she's put into this new album.  We left at around 11:45 to relieve the poor roomie, who was kind enough to babysit for us.  Yes, we got a preggo to do our babysitting for us.  I love the roomie.  


Tonight for dinner, we veered off Friday Night Takeout Night austerity measures and splurged on FOOTLONG PANZEROTTOES and FRIED CHICKEN.  That's right.  AND. FRIED. CHICKEN. Sick.  I also made this cornflake crunch cookie recipe (haven't baked the cookies off yet) from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook.  Cornflake crunch is THE BEST!  It smells like heaven when you're toasting it.  It's crushed up cornflakes, milk powder, sugar, and salt bound with some melted butter and it is insanely delicious, eaten straight up, or lending texture and salty-sweetness to a trashy cookie like this one:


Tomorrow is a big day.  Swimming, dim sum lunch with my fam bam in Markham, then back downtown for a bit of a date night for me and the Dotytron - we're going to try this new izakaya, called DonDon Izakaya and then we're going to my Discerning Coyote friend's birthday jam.  We hope to be home by like, 10pm.


Fin.

Baby Led Weaning

I've had a few peeps ask me about Baby Led Weaning (or BLW), so I thought I would take this opportunity to share with y'all how we did it.  

This is particularly topical since I just weaned the Boobla off the boob this past week.  It happened naturally.  He seemed to be less invested in the boob as his source of morning and night time milk and so I just replaced it with a bottle and he was fine.  Pretty painless for the both of us, although I was sad to see it go.  I'm not going to miss the biting but I will miss the smushiness of it all.  He's pretty content to be held during the morning and night time feeds though and it's been a nice augmentation to night time stories.  When he brings his book to the pillow-fortified corner we've designated as the lounging space in his room, he pats the floor, I give him his bottle, and he settles into the crook of my arm and we read stories together.  It's pretty sweet.

We've also snuggled him up beside us on the couch with his milk and a blanket over his legs and the sight of him like that just slays me for some reason.  I can't believe we have a little Big Yam couch potato buddy.  The look of him is at once older than his years and younger than his years and it just gets me.  

BLW was spear-headed by Gill Rapley, a Brit in the grand tradition of Brits who are more into earthy mama-dread granola stuff (see: Brits and the animal rights movement, Brits and midwifery.)  I've linked to her site under her name above.  It basically comes down to this: instead of spoon feeding your kid purees, you let your baby feed themselves.  There are several guiding principles:

1) BLW is not about "how much" your kid is eating.  You let the baby guide the process.  You're still breastfeeding and offering breast milk or milk before meals, so meal times are about letting your kid explore tastes, textures, and the social conditions of eating.  The tagline is "just for fun, before age 1" (the idea being, that you don't stress about nutrients that your kid is ingesting before you wean them off of milk - they're getting everything they need from the breast milk, food is exploration time.)

2) Your baby knows what's what.  You put our unseasoned, steamed or raw food and let your baby go to town.  There's no pressure on your baby to "finish" anything.  The baby will explore and play and taste what they want and eat more of what they want and reject the stuff they don't like.  This isn't about force-feeding or shovelling food down a baby's throat.  The underlying assumption is that your baby knows what they need (similar to how pregnant women crave foods that meet some dietary/nutrient deficiency they're facing) and you let them do their thing.

3) The food should be easy for the baby to handle.  Sticks shapes (like beefeater french fries) or long strips are best at first.  If your baby doesn't have teeth, just let them gum at the food - we had T working on chunks of steak and mashing avocado and sucking on pork chop bones - as long as there's nothing that can break off and cause a choking hazard.  Sweet potatoes were steamed and then presented as disks or in two-finger width wedges or batons for him to eat.

4) GAGGING IS NOT CHOKING.  You have to be pretty confident and know the difference. Our bodies are pretty well designed.  Kids can gag up stuff pretty effectively, as long as the item in question isn't the exact perfect shape/hardness to obstruct their airway (that's choking).  We were understandably nervous at first, but we just watched him and let him do his thing.  Our confidence was also bolstered by taking the CPR course, where we knew how to resuscitate an infant and how to position them to free a blocked airway.  The Big Yam gagged all the time.  We became more nonplussed with it when we saw how good he was at it.

5) Offer sips of water.  This goes along with #4.  Give them sips of water and have water ready at hand so that if they are having a problem getting something down, they can flush it down with water.

6) Food shouldn't be seasoned with salt or sugar, etc.  

7) Baby should be able to sit up unassisted and have the interest in food and motor skills to maneuver food to their mouths (or close enough.)   

Ultimately, we did a modified version of the baby-led weaning program.  I bought one box of cereal cuz I didn't trust myself and we supplemented that with the sticks of food.  I pureed stuff that I wanted him to try but that I didn't think made good BLW sense - stuff like kale, rapini, turnip greens, etc.  

I was pretty strict about things.  The Big Yam got cereal and vegetables and I didn't do fruit for a very, very long time, because I know that we as humans are programmed to enjoy sweets and I wanted him to gain an appreciation for the full spectrum of flavours, not just apples, bananas, etc.  

His meals went something like this: morning was a carb, some cottage cheese (or egg for protein) and a fruit.  Lunch was all vegetables.  Dinner was a carb, protein, vegetables, and a fruit for "dessert" (sometimes).  I've loosened up on the fruit front but I am still willing to starve him into submission if he starts getting too picky.  Last night he didn't want the spelt salad I made and only wanted a banana.  So I stopped feeding him (he was just throwing stuff on the ground) and he got his milk (no banana!)  This morning, when he was (obviously) ravenous, I offered him bites of the spelt salad again and only after he had eaten that, did he get his regular breakkie.  So yeah, I can be a bit of a monster, but I justify it by saying that choice in food is a luxury, and he's not allowed to turn down perfectly good food.  What if he was living on Red Cross packages?!?  He's lucky he has spelt salad to eat!

BLW isn't as effortless as people claim it is.  People are all like, "they just eat what you're eating!"  Which I guess is true, if you're okay eating UNSEASONED FOOD.  I am not.  So there was a bit more work to it, but not much.  I would just start with the food he was going to eat or put aside a portion before I seasoned at the end.  

Here's a link to a BLW website (with a message board!  Populated mostly with crazy Brits!)  In the end I feel like our modified BLW approach made the most sense for us.  There's no way in hell I'm making unseasoned food.  And pureed veggies and some rice cereal was handy when we were travelling.  BLW is a messy process.  I do like not fussing about "how much" the baby has eaten.  And I like the element of enculturating the baby into the process of eating.  

In the end we approached it the way we seem to approach a lot of our parenting - we read a bit, got bored, polled some friends for anecdotal advice, did what made sense and what worked with our lives and were disciplined and systematic in the application of the methods, didn't stress, and were willing to be mean to our kid and not negotiate with terrorists.  That's basically our style, in a nutshell.  

This is the Boobla in his FOB-tastic "Boo Boo Town" vest.  The Dotytron loves nothing more than when the Boobla is dressed like a new immigrant from mainland China.  Also, there's nothing better than the words "boo boo town" in combination.  Literally, the best.

Last night's dinner was poached salmon, with chimichurri, and the spelt salad, which had: roasted butternut squash, baby spinach, red onion, dried cranberries, toasted pecans, and a maple-cider dressing.  It was hella tasty:

Tonight is the outlaw sis' CD release party at Lee's.  We're having the roomie come over and watch the Big Yam.  She goes on at 11pm and I'm loathe to keep a preggo up super-late, so I think we'll just end up catching a wee bit of her set and then heading home.  It's too late for us!  On a work night?  Forget about it.

Tonight for dinner we had freezer tuna noodle casserole and sautéed rapini with lemon & garlic.

I had a realization today that I've got a lot on my plate.  Sometimes, I'm such a driven maniac and I thrive on being pushed so much that it feels like it's NBD.  But then I realize that I've got a lot going on.  Full time work and school and parenting and the all-around hustling/life management I do in general is kind of a big deal and I feel like I downplay it a lot.  This is just me taking a moment to give myself some daps.  To me, from me.  

  

Fin.

Running!

I am being run off my feet lately.  I've had a slew of ideas for projects at work, which of course, only serves to make my life at work all that much more hectic and frenzied as I try to keep all the balls in the air.  It's serious crunch time for school, with only about 6 months left of the program before I'm done and I get to semi-proudly add the letters MPPAL to my name.  

Question for all you people - do you put your degrees after your name in your letterhead?  Is that something I should add to my resume and cover letter or is it weird and poncey?  

Then you've got juggling an active social life, being a parent, coordinating the Dotytron's and my shared medical benefits (which is seriously a part-time job in and of itself!) and on top of it all, all of this is being fueled (or NOT being fueled, more correctly) by my reduced caloric intake of late and you have the end result of me passing out on Friday night at the Golden Girls-approved hour of 8:30pm.  

Would I have it any other way?  Of course not.  Would I perhaps prefer to be one of those people who are paid to post on Pinterest by companies like Pottery Barn (maybe not them) or Etsy or Anthropologie?  Of course.  Being an arbiter of pins is like, my dream job, following closely on the heels of being the librarian at Entertainment Weekly.  And yet, would I REALLY want to have to limit myself that way?  I love being a multi-faceted person with many (some would say too many) interests, always taking on too much and teetering on the brink of having it all collapse down on me.  But since I've left the trenches of the restaurant industry, I think this is the only way I know how to be me - to simulate the experience of being in the weeds and the adrenaline hit of pushing through the rush and feeling your blood pumping and knowing that you are ALIVE, gosh darn it!  Some people heli-ski, some people 

free-climb, me?  I'm a professional administrator of the daily mundane and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Seriously?  Not a good look for me.

We've watched a tonne of movies lately.  

50/50 was really excellent.  I don't think it deserves "best picture" talk, but overall, the tone of the film is really warm, generous, and sweet, only occasionally veering off into maudlin territory.  I think that Bryce Dallas Howard's girlfriend character was over-drawn (that seems to be her lot in life!), but Anjelica Huston as the protective, hovering, overwhelmed mother really struck a chord.  There's a scene where she's in the oncologist's office waiting with Joseph Gordon Levitt and looks at the oncologist's degrees and says something like, "Hmmm...he went to a state school," and it made me think of something my mum would say.  My mum would say EXACTLY that.  LOL!  It was very cute.  The character's relationship with his parents going through this thing rang true and the humour is played perfectly.  I think it deftly navigates the emotional eddies of a young person experiencing cancer and Seth Rogen is a perfect foil.

Unfortunately, I watched Moneyball after reading the book and so I was less interested in it.  I feel like people just love Sorkin's writing so much that anything he's attached to makes the awards-circuit.  This was good - not as good as the book.  It just seemed kind of slight to me - they didn't really capture the essence of Billy Beane's internal psycho-social struggle or how renegade the Oakland head office was at the time.  It was good.  Not great.  It doesn't linger with me.

This was more entertaining than I anticipated, mostly due to the inclusion of an orangutan character named Maurice.  This is a classic installment in the "animals/robots/aliens realizing that people are bad" genre (see: Short Circuit, Project X, King Kong, ET, etc.)  The Dotytron kept talking about Susan Sontag (ie. "See! They [the apes] just want to be Susan Sontag!") which led us to this hilarious clip from Gremlins 2 where the smart gremlin talks about how the gremlins are really just after "civilization" and talks about the finer things, which somehow includes Susan Sontag.  It's pretty hilarious:

This scene is notable because you would NEVER see Susan Sontag (or an equivalent modern personage) referenced in a popular film today.  I don't think so, at least.  It makes me sad.

Attack the Block I had wanted to see for a while based on awesome reviews, but the Dotytron, being clueless, had never heard of it and was skeptical.  The film opens with a mugging and as soon as the characters opened their mouths, they had us SOLD.  We loved this movie.  It's basically like, Revenge of the Chavs, or if Goonies has been made in a low-class apartment complex in the UK.  It's an adventure film featuring a rag-tag, meatball-filled, gang of no-good, dorky kids, who have this big adventure and learn a little something along the way.  A tried and true genre, but one that has been forsaken by the movie producers gods of late, for reasons unknown, since the end result can be so charming.  Movies for kids tend to either skew too young, or too old, and the adventure element isn't done nearly so well with live actors as it was in the heydey of the style, which would be the 80s.  Add to that the natural fondness the Dotytron and I have for characters saying "bruv" and "innit" and all the other amazing UK slang that we had exposure to through the jungle scene and it's a match made in heaven.  We found this movie just all around charming and really funny.  I think familiarity with the type of scene in question is a bit of a must.  I don't know if it will resonate with you the same way if you didn't know anything about it, but we really liked it.

I watched Sideways and thought it was the boringest thing I had ever seen in my life.  The Descendants, on the other hand, I loved. Some of it hit a little too close to home - it was hard watching George Clooney's wife in the film in a coma and the character's grief brought raw emotions to the fore.  We have a deep and abiding love for Hawaii in this house.  Certain places just seem to strike a chord for us, resonating deep.  Spain is one of those places for casa Dotytron and Lagerfeld.  Hawaii is another.  Sure, you say, how hard is it to fall in love with paradise?  But that's one of the threads that's explored in the film and there's a thesis there about life, generations, descendants, family, grief, and the ties that bind in this elemental place that I haven't fully thought through yet.  I really loved that it showed the mundane Hawaii - the every day Hawaii of strip malls, and cloudy days.  I was talking to my film friend D about it and he found it maudlin and he didn't like the heavy use of voice over.  I don't know - I was quite taken with the film and I really enjoyed it.  I find myself wanting to talk about it and think about it, which is generally the sign of a good one, in my books.

On Sunday morning I made us biscuits with scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and crisped proscuitto for breakfast.  I loves me a biscuit breakfast sammy:

This was last night's dinner - a lentil soup with lots of veggies, some chopped kale, and a ham hock thrown in for smokiness.

Tonight is a school night.  I'm doing a presentation on public sector values and ethics and then busting outta there to get home in time to eat cake (I made the Momofuku birthday cake!) with Momma D and Ehmdo for the outlaw sis' birthday.


Fin.

T.G.I.F., mofos

Sooooo glad it's the Friday.  The Big Yam woke us up at 5am this morning and I was exhausted by 11am (when I had already been up and working for SIX G-D HOURS!)  Any time he does something wrong he likes to lean in, reeeaaaallll slow, with his mouth gaping open, for a big, passive, dead-fish-mouth kiss.  It's pretty cute.  Sometimes, it's less cute.  Like when he does it after trying to bite my nipple off.  I said to the Dotytron, "I think he misunderstands the point of the 'sorry' kiss.  He thinks his kisses can fix anything."  We looked at each other for a beat and then said, "He's not entirely wrong about that."  Seriously, the dude could have just blithely chomped down on my boob with his bajillion teeth and hung on like a pitbull with lock-jaw, and then he'll lean in with one of his kisses and I completely forget that I was mad at him.  


I keep telling him he's a super-genius and I don't know if it's working and I have no idea what child development milestones he's supposed to be meeting, but I'm fairly convinced that he is one (you mean, you can't will your child to be gifted?!?  Not on my watch!)  When I tell him to go get his socks and shoes, he does it.  His "bum!" noise in the dancing video below we've figured out his him trying to say "jump!" and do the action.  He also tried doing up the zipper on his hoodie this morning.  I can't wait until he can help me fold laundry and wash dishes.  That should be in like, 2 months, right?  


Speaking of genius kids, the Dotytron teaches a gifted class at his middle school who sound HILARIOUS.  They do things like come up with mathematical equations for the bottom number in a time signature or when he plays "musical jeopardy" for them, one of them will write down the different category values as "2 to the power of 6 - 10" or something and I'm always joking that the Dotytron is laughing along with them but in his head is like, "HAHAHAHAHAHA!  I don't know if that's right."  Anyway, they're not gifted kids in the way I was a gifted kid.  Oh, you mean I haven't mentioned before that I was gifted?  I was.  No biggie.  Quit asking me about it, really.  These are gifted kids in the math-y/robotics extra-curricular class kind of way.  Anyway, the Dotytron was telling me that he was telling them yesterday about how he always wanted to do a musical installation based on Pi and the kids lost their s**t.  They basically thought it was the coolest thing ever and were already wondering where they could find some "open source software" to compose the thing.  Today the Dotytron told me that two of his kids wrote the program last night.    The Dotytron loves his little nerdlinger gifted kids the mostest.  Why are nerds so endearing?!?  I love nerds, but I absolutely LOATHE (on sight) kids who look like this:

Kids in fedoras are the worst.  Even worse than that are kids in fedoras wearing dress shirts with loosely knotted ties.  That's like, every privileged kid whose parents indulge them (ie. the kids who go to the alternative school close by us.)  

We've jettisoned Friday Night Take Out Night in the name of household austerity measures.  We always have plans to eat at least one meal out (frequently more) on the weekends with friends/family and I didn't want to spend the whole weekend eating out.  So Friday Night Take Out Night has morphed into Friday Night Junky Food night.  Tonight we had moco loco, which is that Hawaiian dish we're crazy for - traditionally hamburger patties on white rice, with fried eggs and canned brown gravy.  DEEELICIOUS.  I also made us Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookies - which have potato chips, graham crumbs, coffee grinds (fresh, not used!), butterscotch chips and chocolate chips.  


My plan this evening is to eat like a pig, watch a million episodes of Top Chef: Texas (rooting for Paul from Austin, obvs) and then pass out on the couch at 8pm, fall fast asleep, then wake up in a fury at 10pm and instantly start shriekily accusing the Dotytron of "keeping me awake" (I generally repeat this ritual about once a week).  


Fin.

Major. League.

Yesterday I had to shower in the morning so the Dotytron took over the dealing-with-the-newly-awakened-Boobla duties.  The Big Yam likes to greet each day by dropping a steaming pile of bass in his drawers.  It's his thing.  Whatever.  I don't know his life, I'm not judgin'.  So when I came downstairs to eat breakfast, I asked the Dotytron, "did Big Yam poo this morning?" to which he replied, "Uh, yeah.  Major. League."  I started laughing and I was like, "Ummm...I don't even know what that's supposed to mean."  LOL!  So now any time we're trying to describe anything, we're like, "Two words for you: Major. League."  It's actually an amazingly elastic descriptor.  

I was laughing about it all yesterday, really.  I found out recently that people I know are splitting up.  The reason given was that their relationship had gradually become more of a business relationship and the so-called magic was gone.  Maybe it's because I grew up in a broken home, but I'm always like, super paranoid that that's going to happen to us.  Or I'm always sizing up our friends thinking, who do you think is going to get divorced first?  I mean, you never get hitched or start living with someone thinking that it could happen.  BUT IT COULD.  It can happen to anyone!  ANYONE.  So of course I get all worried and I asked the Dotytron whether he thought our magic is gone and he rebuffed me by saying yes, of course.  His preferred way of dealing with me when I'm being irrational is to NOT be comforting and basically say the exact thing that is going to send my paranoid irrationality into overdrive.  It's a strange  methodology.

A couple of weeks ago, when we took the Big Yam sledding, we ran into our neighbours, the ones who gave us their baby sled.  They were out on the hill with their bigger sleds and offered us the use of their disks and fancy snow sledding gear to take a few runs down the hill.  I was asking the Dotytron if he was going to go and he said yes, and then he asked me if I wanted to go and I said, no.  And then he asked if it was because I was scared, and just joking, I said yes.  BUT THEN HE TOLD MY NEIGHBOURS THAT IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS SCARED.  I was so pissed!  I wasn't ACTUALLY scared.  I just hadn't gone out of the house emotionally and mentally prepared to go sledding myself.  I just wasn't in the right head space for it.  I was so mad at him (like, jokey-mad, mad.)  I was all freaked out by what the neighbours would think of me being scared to go down a baby hill and what their assumptions would be.  "Why did you tell them I was scared!!!" I hissed.  

Anyway, for some reason those above examples came to mind when I was constructing my internal "relationship magic" litmus test.  The fact that I find the Dotytron hilarious and that we can be jokey-mad at each other is a good sign, I think.  This is what Mindy Kaling said in her book about great marriages:

"My parents get along because they're pals.  They're not big on analyzing their relationship. What do I mean by pals?  It mostly means they want to talk about the same stuff all the time. In my parents' case, it's essentially rose bushes, mulch, and placement of shrubs.  They love gardening.  They can talk about aphids the way I talk about New York Fashion Week.  They can spend an entire day together talking nonstop about rhododendrons and Men of a Certain Age, watch Piers Morgan, and then share a vanilla milkshake and go to bed.  They're pals.  (Note: they are pals, not best friends.  My mom's best friend is her sister.  A best friend is someone you can talk to ad nauseum about feelings, clothing, and gossip.  My dad is completely uninterested in that."

Way to go, Mindz.  You basically summed it up pretty nicely.  Hopefully the Dotytron and I are pals, through and through.

Last night's dinner of beef, barley, mushroom soup w/ thyme and leftover bread that my Discerning Coyote friend brought over.

Tonights dinner: veggie shepherd's pie.  The vegetables were sauteed onion, garlic, carrot, celery root, butternut squash, and sweet potato.  I was going to add peas but then forgot.  Seasoned with curry powder, salt and pepper.  Topped with mashed potatoes, topped with cheddar.

Fin.

Ugh.

I pretty much had to post today just so Dax Sheppard's ugly, broken-nosed mug wasn't staring me in the face every time I checked the ol' bloggy bloggy.

For some reason the Grammy nominations are super-stressing me out.  Because, you know, having a full time job, parenting, doing a full-time Master's degree, and having a million other interests isn't enough to have on my plate, I have to worry about Ye getting the Grammy nomination shaft.  I KNOW.  NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE GRAMMIES.  But still!  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is easily the best album of last year (of all the albums I heard start to finish, which is like, 2).  It was a pop opus.  Say what you will about Kanye (and note that I am a die hard Kanye apologist), but he makes sick tunes!  Four words for you:  ALL. OF. THE. LIGHTS.  I just listened to that song a million times at my desk at work 'pon the youtube and I never get tired of it.  My whole body turns into a giant goosebump.  Bon Iver?!?  Are you trying to make my cooch dry up?  Is that your end-game here, with your snoozefest, typical, indie-bait production and your weird falsetto singing?  Because that's instantly what happens.  If I was a 21 year old today, and some guy I was about to get busy with put that on, the party room would be SHUT DOWN.  Mumford and Sons get a pass because I'm a sucker for twangy rootsy business and they do a pretty legit version.  My sis isn't going to like this, but Adele got way too much love!  There is no way in hell that Rolling in the Deep is a better song than All of the Lights.  There just isn't.  Sorry.  Rolling in the Deep is over-produced and slick, even as it's trying to sound all old-timey barn-burn-y.  Her voice is super-compressed on that tune!  And that shiz is PLAYED. OUT.  Women everywhere: get over it!  

I totally had to get that off my chest.  

In related infuriating, why, God, why?!? news, people yammering about Gotye (pictured above) have been turning up in my FB feed.  He has this tune called Somebody That I Used to Know that is the equivalent of male sprites drilling into your ears with little wee shards of sprite magic glass.  Didn't we learn anything about curly haired weirdoes being twee from Mika?  OMG.  I can't even link to the song because I'm pretty sure my vagine has crawled up into my body in displaced embarrassment.  


Jayzus.  We need a cleanse.  

Tillers hepped me to this tune at Kdubsguelph cottage last summer and I instantly fell in love.  So freakin' hardcore rave-tastic.  Ahhhhhhhh...

Fin.