Captain Jelly Belly is really into Buzz Lightyear right now (and superheroes in general). So a couple of weeks ago, I let him watch a downloaded copy of Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, a straight-to-video 2-D animated movie featuring just Buzz on a secret mission to defeat Zurg. In the movie, Buzz’s Space Ranger partner, Warp Darkmatter, is killed in an explosion. It later turns out that Warp is not actually dead, but instead, is alive and working for Zurg as Agent Z, so there isn’t any graphic death scene or dead body or anything like that. But Buzz thinks the death is real, and so there is a sad part where Buzz feels a tragic loss.

This is probably the first thing CJB has ever seen that has a death in it. It doesn’t seem to be upsetting him too much, but he has been talking about death again a lot lately. In particular, he is obsessed with giving me constant evidence that he is not, in fact, dead. He’ll say stuff like, “Mommy, see how I’m talking right now? That means I’m not dead.” Or he’ll say, “I’m running around, which means I am not dead.” Or even, “My heart is still beating, so that means I am not dead.”

At first I thought it was kind of amusing/charming, but now it’s kind of creeping me out. Today in the van he asked me, “Will I be alive all day today?” and I said, “Of course!” But then I got to thinking…what if he knows something I don’t? Is it too late to panic? Because I think I could whip up a really, really good panic over this one. I mean, I have an awful lot to fret and worry about in general, but I could clear my usual slate to devote myself 100% to panicking over CJB’s apparently impending doom.

Okay, now I’m really freaking myself out! Time for a new post subject!

Since she was a baby, Gal Smiley has loved canned fruit salad, but she only really likes the cherries, and, at a distant second place, the pears. It’s not one of my favourite things in the world and I found out I was throwing away a half-can’s worth of peaches every time, so I gave up and stopped buying it. But a couple of weeks ago, we were in the grocery store and Gal Smiley saw some on the shelves, and grabbed a can excitedly, so let her bring it home.

Sure enough, when we opened the can, she only wanted the cherries and maybe a few pears. But something amazing has happened: out of nowhere, Captain Jelly Belly has decided that he loves the peaches, with pears as a distant second place choice.

So now, I can give the girl a bowl of cherries with a few pears…and the boy a bowl of peaches and a few pears…and we are left with nothing more than two or three sad looking little grapes at the bottom of the can. Whoo-ee! Everyone happy, and no waste!

Such moments of food serendipity are so rare, I felt the need to blog about this. Now if only I could get them to eat anything I ever make for dinner, we’d be rockin’ awesome.

Last night Sir Monkeypants was flipping around the TV channels while we were waiting for The Amazing Race to begin, and he turned to a sitcom we’ve never seen before, The New Adventures Of Old Christine. The title character, Christine, was supposed to go and vote, but she forgot because she was watching American Idol. She had this conversation with her civic-minded ex-husband:

Christine: I’d like to vote but…Idol.
Ex: So? TiVO it and let’s go!
Christine: It’s broken! We’re watching it live…like animals!

This made me laugh out loud…we laugh because it’s funny, and we laugh because it’s true. I’m so, so into my PVR now, I know I could never go back to living without it. A few years ago I remember we were over at FameThrowa ‘s place, and we were watching a movie on TV, and the Captain, who was just a baby, woke up from his nap and starting fussing, and there was only five minutes left in the movie, so Sir Monkeypants and I were standing in front of the TV willing it to end quickly. And then FameThrowa said, “Just pause it,” and leaned over and PAUSED HER LIVE TV, and we just about fell over from the beauty and magic of that moment.

Once we had our own PVR, it was amazing how fast we got used to being able to pause and rewind. I now find myself wanting to rewind the radio in the car when an annoying thing like a lane change has made me miss a few seconds of CBC’s The Current. Every time we go to visit my mom, we have to explain to our kids that not only can we NOT pause it, and NOT rewind it, but also, there is NOTHING stored on the PVR, and all we can watch is whatever happens to be on RIGHT NOW. You can see the nightmares growing in their little heads with every word.

A few weeks ago, our PVR died, a very sad day in the TurtleHead household. We quickly borrowed a single-tuner one from our friends, but in the end we decided we just HAD to have a double tuner (the dead one was a double), so we splurged for a new one. And I just got finished paying our massive monthly Bell bill, and despite the fact that we are kind of looking to save a little money right now, I just can’t even consider cutting back on our Bell services (which include the satellite and internet).

It’s funny, I don’t consider myself to be a really technical person, and every time poor Sir Monkeypants wants to bring something new and cool into the house, he has to a) suffer through many, many eye-rolls as I make it known that I am clearly humouring him and his desire for man-toys, b) spend many, many hours teaching me how to work it, and showing me excitedly how it will change my life, while I continue with the eye-rolling, combined with complaints about the number of remotes we have house, and then c) deal with the fact that he hardly ever gets to use said item as I take it completely over, and exclaim frequently how it has changed my life, and how I’ll never live without it again.

It’s a PVR world for me, in any case.

Today while we were out shopping, I took Gal Smiley to the bathroom for a diaper change (don’t even ask us about toilet training — she is definitely winning that war). The change table, as is common in small bathrooms, was inside the handicapped stall, so after I finished the diaper change I shut the door to the stall so I could pee too.

Gal Smiley was in a pretty cranky mood but she got pretty excited when I sat down and ripped off a piece of toilet paper, to have at the ready. When I was done, she had a minor freak out when I attempted to wipe my own butt. She screamed, “I want to wipe your bum!!”

Gal Smiley, you get to watch me blow my nose, change my clothes, and heaven knows, I can’t remember the last time I peed by myself. You get to come and poke me while I’m sleeping in bed at 5:30am and you get to ask me what I’m doing while I’m clipping my toenails. You can have a look in my mouth to see how many teeth I have and you can poke my tummy to see if the baby is really in there. But when it comes to wiping my bum, I have to draw the line somewhere.

A big thing at wedding and baby showers these days is to pass around a book for everyone to sign, and to add a little nugget of advice for the bride/mom-to-be. I always like to write something that I personally think is really useful information, but others might not have thought of. I remember when my friend got married, other people gave her boring advice like, “Don’t go to bed angry,” and “Remember to respect each other,” and blah blah whatever. I wrote, “Always bring home gingerale when your husband is sick,” advice I totally stand behind, because it was my delivery of gingerale to a sick Sir Monkeypants one time when he was sick in university that explains why we are married today.

Lately it’s been more baby showers than wedding showers. I like to write, “If it’s a girl, don’t wash the pale pink stuff with the dark load, or it will pick up an ugly blue tone that does not work with the rest of the baby girl wardrobe.” I learned this fact the hard way, and I can already hear 15-year-old Gal Smiley, looking at baby pictures of herself, saying, “What the hell is up with these pants with the blue splotches on them?” and me saying, “Don’t swear, little lady.” If it’s a boy, my advice is to be sure to buy him a Buzz Lightyear action figure for his fourth birthday.

When I was pregnant with Captain Jelly Belly, I had a shower and we did the advice thing. MyFriendJen, who has a daughter a few years older than the Captain, gave me the following good advice, “Pick your battles — if she wants to wear a pink skirt with orange tights and a green shirt, let it go.” I laughed at the time. And actually, since then, the clothing thing hasn’t really been an issue, because the Captain is very pliable, and he’ll wear anything we tell him to wear as long as a) we do all the work of actually getting it on his body, and b) he is allowed to watch Monster Trucks during the dressing process.

But lately, Gal Smiley has let it be known that she is a bit of a fashionista, and she finds our taste wanting. She’d rather pick out her own outfits, thank you very much, than be seen in that hideous pair of pink stretch pants one more time. This morning, although she consented to wear the jeans and pretty flowered top that I picked out for her, she insisted on getting her own socks — yellow with red toes and heels, and a picture of a dump truck on the top. I actually thought for a second of insisting on the plain navy socks…but then I thought of Jen. And of how Gal Smiley’s on an antibiotic right now for an ear infection, and she takes her medicine three times a day with an open mouth and no complaining, unlike the Captain, who must be sat on top of and his mouth forced open any time he has to take anything vaguely medicinal.

So I figured, what the hell, let her wear the yellow and red socks. Nothing can stop her plan for World Domination Through Cuteness, anyway.

Today was the first really amazing, warm, sunny, beautiful spring day, and we celebrated by heading out to the park in the afternoon. You can tell it was a successful trip by the incredible volume of sand sprinkled throughout the house. Gal Smiley had an impressive amount of sand between her toes, and she was wearing socks and shoes. I have no idea how she got it in there, unless she injected it with a found needle.

One reason that we brought half the park’s worth of sand back with us is that we took some shovels and pails with us today specifically for sand play. When we got to the park, all three of us plonked our butts down in the sand and started to dig. We built tons of sand castles and jumped on them, and Captain Jelly Belly had a great time burying and “finding” a little plastic dump truck that travels with our sand stuff.

Since it was such a nice day, the park was crowded with kids, and within a few minutes of our arrival, we’d attracted a real crowd of munchkins who wanted in on the sand play. Lots of other people bring sand toys to the park so I’m not sure what the big deal was with ours, except maybe for the fact that my superior knowledge of sandcastle building (free tip to y’all: you have to dig deep to get the really wet packing sand) was impressing the kiddies. Anyway, I’m happy enough to share our sand stuff with whoever is around — heaven knows my own kids have helped themselves to a stray pail and shovel many, many times on park visits in the past, and I’m always careful to make sure they return it before we leave. But I couldn’t get over the aggressive nature of today’s mob. At any given moment, there were at least three or four kids circling us, watching for the very second we’d put something down, and try to grab it. Older kids thought nothing of coming up to Gal Smiley and asking to use the very shovel that she had in her hand, or to try to take her half-full pail away and use it themselves. I like to promote sharing, but we were actually using our own stuff, and it really doesn’t seem like too much to ask to use our own stuff.

So that put me in the awkward position of having to tell strange kids stuff like, “Um, I think she is using that,” or “It’s okay to borrow things we aren’t using, but my son is busy with that truck right now.” I was pretty polite, I think, but saying stuff like this to other people’s kids always feels to me like stepping over a line somehow. Parents — even ones that are happy to sit on a bench reading a book while their vulture children hover over our sand toys in a rather rude way — are very, very sensitive, and easily offended, and having a “Mommy Incident” at the park isn’t something I look forward to.

In the end I avoided any newsworthy events, and we finished in the sand and packed up our (obviously, fabulously enviable) sand toys and headed home. And I’m sure we’ll be back there tomorrow…hopefully not drawing as much attention as we did today.

Pregnancy is really tiring, but this time around I feel as though I’ve been more exhausted than before. It’s hard to get up in the morning, and even after a solid nights’ sleep, I still have to have a nap in the afternoon on the couch while poor Captain Jelly Belly watches Toy Story 2 for the hundredth time. On days when I eat a lot of chocolate, I can actually hit Party Animal status by staying up past 9 p.m.

So I had some blood tests done last week, and it turns out there’s a reason (other than the obvious basketball-sized lump in my tummy area) that I’m so tired — I have like, no iron in my body. Apparently a healthy iron reading is around 100, but most adult women are doing well if they hit 50. My reading was a totally awesome 12. 12! Let me just say, I am really, really safe from any future attempts by Magneto to use my body as a jailbreak tool.

To correct the imbalance I’m supposed to be taking iron supplements three times a day, but I can only work them in twice a day, due to the scary amount of other vitamins, minerals, and other chemicals with really long names that I’m supposed to ingest every day. They all have their rules and regulations and meeting them all has become a full time job. It’s kind of like one of those logic puzzles with the grid…a set of hints like, “Jack lives in the red house; the green house is next to the blue house; the owner of the yellow house has a dog,” that sort of thing, only with drugs. Here’s my current list:

• Prenatal vitamin — must be taken with food to avoid an upset stomach
• Iron supplement — must be taken with food and a Vitamin C supplement, and not with a calcium supplement or any kind of milk product
• Calcium supplement — take with food, preferably milk, as the Vitamin D in the milk helps to absorb the calcium
• Metamucil — take twice a day to counteract the effects of the iron supplements, and not with any other kind of medication or supplement

So you can see, squeezing in all these pills is something of a challenge. Today I actually considered buying one of those little plastic pill containers that keeps track of what to take when, that older people use once they are up to taking like, 18 pills a day. Sheesh! Add in the Metamucil and the exhaustion, and my inability to lift, carry, or snuggle comfortably with the kids anymore, and I may as well be 80.

I think what I’m saying, in my cranky old lady way, is that despite the awesome pants and the pregnant-lady parking at the Superstore, I’m really, really ready to be not pregnant anymore.

I just checked the weather for this week, and on Friday, the low is 0 degrees, and the high is 17.

Is this really true? Are we expecting a 17 degree swing in temperature on one day? Most of the other days this week have similarly unbelievable temperature swings.

Hmmm. I feel as though this is more about “weatherman covers his ass” than “really wacky weather.”

Yeah, I’ll admit it — I’ve been checking out Fox’s new show, Drive. Wanna make something of it?

I know, I know, it has a really cheesy premise — people are roped into participating in an illegal, no-rules, cross-country road race, for a prize of $32 million. It’s big on the action, and low on the character development. But it’s actually pretty fun to watch. So far, there’s only been three episodes but it’s a fun way to waste away an hour. I gave it a try due to lingering goodwill towards Nathan Fillon, ex-star of Joss Whedon’s fabulous show Firefly, which I adored. Also, it has a lot in common with this other reality/game show that Sir Monkeypants has been watching, called Bullrun, which is an actual cross-country road race for a measly prize of $200 000.

Anyway, Drive has potential and I’m liking it. But one major complaint I have about the show is in regards to the opening credits. I’ve complained a lot in the past about the lack of opening credit sequences for TV shows these days, along with the accompanying lack of cool theme songs. It’s a little sad. So I’m happy that Drive attempts to at least have an opening credits sequence. The sequence, however, has some serious flaws in that it gives away spoilers about the show. Doh!

The credits flash from car to car, showing each car driver/passenger in closeup, with the actor’s name underneath. It looks fast and flashy, but the problem is that it a) shows people in cars that they are not currently members of, and b) shows people in cars that are currently not yet on the show. For example, there’s a father-daughter team, and the father is dying of some sort of terminal disease. The father is played by Dylan Baker, who is a “guest star” in every episode so far, while the opening credits show his daughter, played by Emma Stone, riding in the back seat of another team’s car. Sooooo…any guesses as to what will happen in the next few episodes? Anyone?

Several other cars in the opening credits show a mixed-up set of characters. Sigh. It was such a nice idea…but, in the end, only annoying.

On Sunday we were fishing around for something to do that would get us out of the house, and Sir Monkeypants said to me, “Why don’t we all go out for dinner?” And the minute it was out of his mouth, you could tell he totally regretted saying it and wished he could turn back time, like Superman. But it was far, far too late for him to escape — I’d had a hard week, and the thought of not only not cooking, but having someone else bring me food while I sat in the comfort of a vinyl-lined booth was too intoxicating to pass up.

We were actually already out in the car when this big idea came up, so after a lot of debate and last-minute lane changes, we decided to go to the Swiss Chalet. It seemed family-friendly and we’d actually get a real waitress.

When we got there we realized we had no idea what was safe for the Captain to eat, and calling FameThrowa on the phone to have her check their website didn’t pan out because her stupid network was on the stupid fritz again. But happily, it turns out the Swiss Chalet is the ultimate destination for those with food allergies. They have a massive chart that they hand out for free that lists around fifteen different allergens, cross-referenced with every item on the menu (even dressings and sauces), marking each for their allergen content. Rockin’ awesome! We were surprised and happy to find several items that were safe for the Captain.

So there we were, at dinnertime, in a real…ish restaurant, ordering food, getting service…it was amazing. I felt like a member of high society. Before kids, it was so easy to just hop in the car and dash off for a dinner out, any night of the week. Now it’s a whole production and you never know just how it’s going to go. This time, the Captain ate more than I’ve ever seen him eat, Gal Smiley sat happily in her high chair and coloured, and and I ate semi-nutritious food that I did not prepare, and did not have a big yellow M on the side.

It just felt like the biggest, most amazing success in the world. Watch out, Joneses of the world! The TurtleHeads are all cosmo now!