I was just listening to the CBC in the car, and they were talking about how the makers of Scrabulous — two brothers from India — are being sued by Hasbro for violating the Scrabble trademark. Apparently they will have to remove Scrabulous from Facebook, which is causing kind of an uproar among its 50000 devotees.

The CBC’s guest was this guy, Matt Mason, who talked about how although it is important for companies to defend their intellectual property, current trademark and copyright law is hopelessly out of date with the way we use digital information today. He cited a study in which some guy kept track of all the copyright violations he did in one day — not just illegal downloads, but stuff like quoting someone else’s email in an email you were writing; taking a photo of your friend on the street with a TV screen in the background; embedding a company’s logo in a blog entry. He estimated that the total dollar value of all his violations, if sued for every infraction, would be something like 12.45 million dollars. In one day.

Mr. Mason had some interesting ideas about piracy. In particular he suggested that it was a bad PR move for Hasbro to sue the Scrabulous guys, as it creates a bad impression of Scrabble, the game, among the many many Scrabulous users. He said that since people love Scrabulous, Hasbro should just suck it up and find a way to deal with the the guys — to take advantage of the established user base and brand infiltration to get in on the action themselves, instead of just trying to kill the whole thing. An interesting suggestion. If I had more time on my hands I might check out his book to see what other ideas he has about the internet and pirating…I sure don’t have enough cash to cover that 12.45 million!

As I’ve mentioned many times before, Captain Jelly Belly has several food allergies. He’s allergic to eggs, fish, peanuts, and tree nuts. When he has even a trace amount of any of these foods, he produces spectacular multi-coloured vomit, which lands in a puddle on the floor spelling out, “I’m allergic, you idiot.” Often times he’ll get a cluster of a few hives as well, maybe on one arm or a leg or on his face. It’s a clear cut, fast reaction.

His relationship with milk, however, has never been as obvious. He doesn’t have an acute reaction to it, and it doesn’t turn up a positive result on his allergy tests. But we’re his parents, we know him, and we can tell that milk bothers him. This kind of mystery reaction is known in the industry as a “sensitivity,” code for, “your parents are imagining it, kid.”

When we were kids, my youngest sister, LittleSis, had one ear infection after another. Finally someone suggested to my mother to take her off of cow’s milk, and give her goat’s milk instead. It may have just been a coincidence, but LittleSis’s battles with ear infections ended, and she was a much happier child. She drank goat’s milk until she was an adult, but occasionally my mom would cave in and let her have a little pizza or ice cream with the rest of the kids. This indulgence almost always led to my mother declaring, later in the day, “LittleSis, I CAN TELL YOU’VE HAD MILK.”

When we started to suspect something was up with the Captain and milk, I asked my mom what she meant by the you’ve-had-milk statement. She said that whenever LittleSis had milk, she got really cranky. I was like, “Cranky? This is your definitive list of symptoms? All these years you never gave her cow’s milk because she was cranky? Like you never thought — just maybe — she’s a kid?” So I discounted it.

But now, we’re dealing with the same sort of nebulous symptoms that leave doctors and other parents thinking we are nuts. First of all, if he has milk on a regular basis, he wakes up screaming at night. It’s like a night terror, in that he screams uncontrollably for up to an hour at a time, and is completely unable to talk to us or communicate in any way. These events used to happen maybe five or six times a week, and every time, we’d completely freak out. But over time, we’ve learned that they are directly tied to his intake of milk. Too much milk, especially late in the day, and he’ll have a night scream incident. No milk, no screaming. No one can explain the link, but we’ve seen it happen too many times to discount the empirical evidence.

And yes, when the Captain has had too much milk…he gets cranky. Not his usual brand of too-tired, too-hungry cranky. It’s some bizarre, mutant-man cranky that is completely unlike his real personality. Every thing that we ask him to do is unbearably hard. Every small correction we make — asking him to hang up his hat, for example, or put down his car to come to dinner — results in uncontrollable crying. He’ll start hitting Gal Smiley for no reason at all, or randomly throwing toys. We know him too well to say that this is just a phase, or boy behaviour, or him being tired. He’s not himself. It’s like the milk is putting a stress on his body, and while his body deals with the intruder, he can’t handle any other form of pressure or stimulus. It’s too much, and he has a breakdown.

We’ve asked our allergist about milk, but since it doesn’t turn up on the test, he can’t help us. He thinks it’s a lactose intolerance, but I doubt it. Babies born lactose intolerant can’t stomach breast milk (since it has lactose in it, too), so within two months of birth, you have a serious, obvious, noticeable problem on your hands in terms of a screaming baby who won’t nurse, and we didn’t have that with the Captain.

Lately we’ve been speculating a lot as to what the root cause of this sensitivity is. We think maybe there is some additive in milk, or maybe something that they feed the cows, that bothers the Captain. A while ago suggested that goat’s milk worked for my mom with LittleSis because a lot of goat’s milk is organic (goat’s milk buyers being of the crunchy granola crowd, in general), and so maybe did not have as many additives in it as regular milk. An interesting idea. We’d love to know what the trigger is, both to better help our son, and so that we could perhaps find some milk products that are safe for him, because sadly, he LOVES milk, loves the cheese, loves the ice cream, loves anything milk-related. He’s always begging us for milk and it’s so sad when we have to say no.

Over the past few months we’ve been experimenting with lactose-free milk, on his cereal at breakfast, and it has been going okay. Usually he can have it for four or five days in a row before he starts showing signs of the uber-crank, and we can tell a nighttime scream is on the way, so we have to take a two or three day break. But it’s something. Last week they didn’t have the usual lactose-free brand we had been using, so I had to get a different brand, and on day one, I could tell something was up. He was NOT HAPPY. So…one brand okay, one brand not okay. Interesting.

Yesterday at the Superstore I thought to myself, “What if…this is crazy, I know…but what if, my mother actually knows something about raising kids? What if she is on to something with this goat’s milk thing?” So I bought a carton of goat’s milk.

And we gave it to Captain Jelly Belly on his cereal this morning.

And about 10 minutes later, he threw up. Definitely an obvious allergic reaction.

So…maybe this is progress? It wasn’t organic goat’s milk (at least, it wasn’t labelled as such), so who knows what kind of things might have been fed to the cows (I’ve heard stories on the internet — probably totally bogus — of farmers feeding colourants and other chemicals to the cows to affect the colour and texture of the milk, things that end up in the milk but do not need to go on the label). We now have a sampling of brands, some of which kind of work and some of which do not work at all. Maybe someday we’ll figure it all out.

In the meantime, we’re going to take him in for an allergy re-test to see if anything new — including milk — shows up. I hope we can narrow it down, because being able to give the Captain a big bowl of ice cream is a real fantasy of mine. And his, I’m sure.

Today as I was loading my groceries into the van at the Superstore, I smelled pipe smoke. It’s not a smell you often encounter nowadays, but it’s very distinctive and noticeable. It immediately made me think of my mother. Every time she smells a pipe, she has to say, “Oh, I love the smell of a pipe.”

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me with the kids. I’m not sure if it’s because they are sick or because we’re all stuck in the house all the time, but I’ve been very short on patience and creativity. I find that when I get into a major funk like this, I really miss my mom. So the pipe smell almost made me cry, but I held it together because crying in -19 degree weather in the parking lot of the Superstore is just a recipe for YET ANOTHER COLD, and heaven knows we do not need more germs around here.

Anyway, my mom loves the smell of a pipe because her grandfather, her mother’s father, was a pipe smoker. So it’s a smell that reminds her of her youth, and happy times of being a kid and visiting her grandparents. I never met my great-grandfather, but now I find it really interesting that I have a positive memory that is related to him, though my mother. It’s like she has found a way to pass her own good memory on to me, creating a new, morphed good memory.

I feel like I am not explaining this very well, but it cheered me to think that there is a link to the past that is being preserved. When I look at my kids, I often feel like 75-80 years on this planet — if we are lucky — is not enough. I would love the chance to get to know all my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and to have them know me. I like the fact that little bits of myself might get passed down to them as their parents remember their parents and grandparents.

In our family, I consider it my job to be the record-keeper for our kids. Their baby books are full of extremely detailed descriptions of every milestone of their life; their weights and heights and tooth arrival dates are all noted. I take hundreds of pictures and organize and label them all every month, then provide descriptions of the events to go along with it. Maybe I should start spending some time recording our family’s older generations, too. I’d love for my kids to know what my grandparents are/were like, to know their stories.

I smell family storybook. My interest has been piqued.

So I filled out the paperwork this morning to register Captain Jelly Belly for full-time French Immersion next year. Many thanks to Sinnick, Hardcormier, and MyFriendJen, whose personal testimonials really helped change my mind on this issue. I’m still nervous, but I think it’s the kind of nervous that just comes from not knowing exactly what is going to happen, which is a pretty silly kind of nervous but one that plagues me constantly all the same.

We’re hoping that FI will help make school more interesting and more challenging for the Captain. He likes JK but we are well aware that most of what they are learning is really easy for him. This month they are learning about the numbers 6 and 7, and the letters R, D, and M. The Captain can already count to 1000 and do simple addition and subtraction, and he can sound-out most three and four letter words. So learning basic numbers and letters is a little on the boring side.

Since he has the math and English stuff down cold, one of his favourite subjects is actually French, because he is learning new things and that is exciting for him. He’s always singing little French songs around here and using French words randomly in sentences, which is apparently a very good sign. We had an info meeting on Wednesday at the school and they were talking about how the more advanced kids in FI will be doing this sort of thing — using the odd French word in an English sentence — by the end of SK. So maybe FI won’t be quite the challenge we think it will be, but at least it should give him something fun to play around with.

At the info meeting on Wednesday, I thought they’d be all gung-ho French Immersion, but actually, they were suprisingly guarded. The principal was there and she said that one of the hardest things for parents and kids is to withdraw from FI at the end of SK or in the middle of Grade One, and so, we should be really sure that this is something that is right for our kid before starting the program. She said that if there is any doubt at all, we should stick with the English stream. Not exactly encouraging given my pre-frayed nerves on the issue, so thanks there, lady. I filled out the paperwork anyhow.

It’s on to new adventures! Or shall we say, les nouvelles aventures.

Okay, I realise that it is not worth it to get upset over a show that, in a best case scenario, is only lowering my IQ by 20 points. But the elimination pyramid that American Gladiators is using is stupid.

There are 24 competitors in the season, 12 men and 12 women. Each week, two men and two women compete against each other, for a total of six pairs of each sex. That results in six winners for each. But only the winners with the top four times in the eliminator — the final obstacle course — make it to the semi-final round.

That doesn’t make any sense to me, because now we have a situation where some of the people who did not actually win their matchup have better eliminator times than those that did win their matchup.

So in theory, we have people who are stronger competitors, and more deserving of a spot in the finals, being bumped because they did not officially “win.”

If they want to make it solely time-based — top four times go on to the semi-finals — then do that. If they want to make it solely elimination based — the six winners go on — then do that. But this combo of winners/best times is leaving out some of the good people who happened to be matched up with an even stronger person, while advancing some of the weaker people who just happened to be matched up with another weak person.

I think the show’s producers have some serious thinking to do on this issue.

In other news, I did not make it to the next round of voting at the Canadian Blog Awards — not surprising and I’m not upset or anything. But I will add that I think it is not fair, nor in keeping with the awards’ stated goal of increasing exposure for a wide variety of blogs in Canada, that their wide-open nomination process has allowed several blogs to be nominated in upwards of 7 or 8 categories, and advanced to the final round (top 5 in each category) in all of those categories. Shouldn’t a blog be classified under one grouping? If a variety of topics are covered, isn’t that what the “Best Personal Blog” category is for? Doesn’t it seem rather ridiculous to have 25+ categories, if the awards are just going to be divided between two or three sites anyway?

I think the award creators have some serious thinking to do on this issue.

Sir Monkeypants and the kids have been sick all this past week, SOME MORE. I swear this winter has been the most hellish yet for illnesses. Remember how I have an ongoing fantasy about going to med school? I’m beginning to think I’ve already graduated, and my extremely private practice includes three screaming children and one doing-his-best feverish daddy.

As the only healthy one I’ve been taking on an extra share of work around here, especially at night, and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve turned into a raging bitch about it. Last week I spent most of my time stomping around the house, whining about how stay-at-home moms don’t get sick days. Even with the flu, they still have to make it through lunches and dinners and breaking up fights over who gets to use the toilet first.

At this point, though, forget the day off. I’d settle for 10 minutes of being able to put the baby down. She has been the sickest by far and we’re at a point now where she’s napping for 20-minute intervals about three times a day, and the rest of the time, I’m carrying her around. Remember how I used to brag about being able to read with one hand, while nursing? That was nothing, man. Now I’m into making dinner with one hand, while putting a puzzle together with one foot, and talking on the speaker phone at the same time, all the while, of course, holding a crying baby.

The Wee One just woke up from her first nap of the day, though, and it appears that her fever is finally gone. She still feels crappy and doesn’t want me to put her down but she has a hint of that old sparkle in her eye. The Captain went back to school today and Gal Smiley is watching a video, and I feel like sanity is once again within reach. At least I’ve got it together enough now to officially apologize to Sir Monkeypants. Sorry, sweetie!

This past week has given me a window into the world of the colicky baby, and seriously, I do not know how those parents handle it without losing their minds. The constant tension that cannot be eased with a big piece of chocolate is too much to even contemplate. We really do have it lucky here in that we had three great babies and never had to live through colic. Knock wood!

Last night I posted in the middle of the Packers/Giants game, and the Pack were up something like 17-13, and looking good.

Then, they lost it in overtime, after the Giants tied it up in the 4th quarter. Clearly, in my few moments away from the TV, Brett Favre felt the loss of my support and totally came apart at the seams. Next year, all viewing, no blogging!

It would have been totally awesome to see Brett win another Superbowl. He won the very first one I ever watched, something like…11 years ago? I am old. Anyway, at the time, Green Bay was the only team I’d ever heard of and their predominance as answers to Trivial Pursuit questions led me to believe that they must, obviously, make it to the Superbowl every year. Or at least, every other year. Apparently, not true, but that year they won and now the legend lives on and I’m not letting go.

I think even if they had won last night, though, they probably would have been spanked by New England in the Superbowl. As I expect the Giants to be next week. Just gives me more time to concentrate on my chili, I say.

In other news, today is the last day of voting over at the Canadian Blog Awards. I think I’m sitting at something like 8th in the Best Personal Blog category, and only the top 5 get to go on to the next round. So vote, if you haven’t gotten around to it yet!

Since it’s playoff season in the NFL, we’ve been watching a lot of football around here. I love the game so I’m always up for a good game on TV, and since my beloved Packers are still in the running, I’m emotionally invested as well. Funny story — we were watching the Pack last weekend and I suggested to Captain Jelly Belly that one day I would take him to Wisconsin to see them in person, and he blanched and said, “But I don’t want to wear cheese on my head.” I explained that the cheese hats are not actually made of real cheese, but he doesn’t believe me. I think he thinks they take them off at halftime and take a few bites for a snack, maybe with a little baguette and some mini bottles of wine. Football is so civilized, wot!

Anyway, one of the things I like best about watching football is the amazing variety of names of the players. I’m not a highly social person, but in the past 37 years I’ve met my fair share of people. But in the NFL, it seems, no one ever has a last name I’ve ever heard of before. Know anyone on your street with the last name Favre, Poppinga, Morency, Umenyiora, Tyree, or Toomer? I just find it delightful to turn these names over on my tongue — they’re beautiful and new and exotic. It’s like travelling the world without leaving my living room — my favourite kind of vacation!

It’s not just the last names, either. As I write this, the Pack are playing the NY Giants. The Giants have a key receiver whose name is Plaxico Burress. Plaxico! If I ever met someone named Plaxico, I’d gaze up at him adoringly until he edged away and called 911. Meanwhile, over on Green Bay, there’s a guy named Atari Bigby, which is just so fabulous, you can tell he was meant to be famous. No guys named Atari work down at the local WalMart! Guys named Atari make a cool half-mil a year in the NFL! Also featured in today’s game are super sweet monnikers like Osi, Kawika, Sinorice, Gerris, Gibril, Vernand, Tramon, Orrin, and Ruvell.

I love the way they own it too. It’s like, “Hell yeah, my name is Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila! You know it! You better spell it right on the jersey, too, because I am a 250 pound wall of sheer muscle and I WILL HURT YOU.”

You know how in books or movies the characters use names like “John Smith” or “Bob Jones” when they want to check into hotels anonymously? Because these names are so common they escape notice? The NFL seems to imply that the John Smiths of this world — if there are indeed any out there — will stick out like a sore thumb for their shocking lack of syllables and strings of 4 or more consonants. John Smith? What kind of name is that? Naufahu Tahi, Visanthe Shiancoe, Kenechi Udeze, now those are names!

I’m beginning to feel like we really missed the boat when we named our own kids. Although I suppose “JELLY BELLY” will look pretty awesome on the back of the Captain’s future NFL uniform.

I’m up for a Canadian Blog Award. Before everyone gets too excited, I must admit that I nominated myself. I was kind of curious and wanted to see how the process worked. As it turns out, there does not appear to be any process at all. Anyone can nominate anyone in any category. Anything that receives a nomination is automatically eligible for voting. I’m in the Best Personal Blog category, but it’s quite arbitrary — there’s also a Best Parenting Blog category which seems to translate to, “People Who Blog Who Happen To Have Children Also.” There’s also Best Entertainment/Cultural Blog which is “People Who Blog Who Happen To Like Movies Also” and there’s Best Religious Blog which is “People Who Blog Who Happen To Go To Church Also.”

If you ask me, there should just be a division between personal blogs and professional blogs, and that’s that. But there I go, biting the hand that feeds me!

Anyway, I think it would be super duper cool if I got a ton of votes. Spread the love, people!

Vote by going here. The sites are in semi-random order so you’ll have to search through the list for TurtleHead.

Thank you for your patronage!

This week’s issue of EW is all about the Oscars. I cannot believe how much coverage this magazine devotes to this one event every year. There’s an issue in the summer covering Oscar contenders from the first half of the year. There’s an issue in the fall naming Oscar contenders to watch for in the upcoming prestige-film season. There’s this week’s issue, talking about what is likely to be nominated; then, after the nominations are released, there’s another issue where they predict the winners. Then there’s a big double issue after the awards ceremony itself where they dissect every aspect of the telecast and talk about who was a deserving winner, and who got snubbed. It seems like an awful lot of energy to spend on one night of glitz.

Don’t get me wrong, though, I do love the Oscars. I’ve watched the show every year since I was 13 and there’s nothing I like better than a good Oscar pool. Before we had the kids, we used to make it a point to see all five Best Picture nominees before the ceremony, as well as other films that had received a lot of nominations, so we could actually watch the show with meaningful opinions.

These days I’m lucky if I’ve seen even one of the nominees, because we’re restricted to what’s available on DVD, and most of the big movies are still playing in theatres. I still watch, though, and due to EW’s extensive coverage I usually have plenty of unfounded opinions to share with the viewing public, anyway. It’s surprising to me, though, that even though I know about all these movies and can talk about all these movies, I now have little desire to actually see these movies. In the past few years since Captain Jelly Belly was born, I’ve gotten excited about the Oscars themselves, but found precious few movies that I actually made a point of seeking out once they were released. And on top of that, many of the ones that I have actually noted go into limited DVD release and so are tough to rent, or doesn’t want to see them, or they are too heavy or complex for me to be interested in watching after a long hard day of taking care of the kids and so…they just fade away. I find I eventually catch up with the major blockbusters of the day but the little art films that win Oscars are going unseen.

This year I hope to change all that because there are many really excellent nominees. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about the year’s best films (or at least, Oscar’s version of “the best”), and I really, really want to see them. I love the Coen brothers, so to hear that No Country For Old Men is a top contender has me buzzing. I’ve heard wonderful things about Juno and can’t wait to see that one. I want to see Michael Clayton and Waitress and The Savages (starring two of my all-time favourite actors, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman — bonus!). I even want to see the more commercial stuff like Charlie Wilson’s War (love that Aaron Sorkin) and Sweeny Todd and Hairspray (hurray for the return of the musical!). I loved the book Into The Wild and I hear the movie is even better, and despite my iffy feelings for Brad Pitt I am actually interested in The Assassination of Jesse James. And speaking of westerns, which I also adore, there’s 3:10 To Yuma to check out, too.

I kind of hope the writer’s strike goes on for a really, really long time. I have a lot of viewing to catch up on!