We just got word yesterday that registration at our local school for junior kindergarten is the week after next. We’ll have to go over to register the Captain, who will begin attending school five days a week in September. It actually pretty sad for me. I remember when he was born, school seemed so far away as to be unimaginable, and now, here it is already. I know I’ve kind of had the luxury of seeing him all day, every day, up until now — Sir Monkeypants, who works for a living, laughs at me when I get all misty-eyed about the Captain going away for 2 1/2 hours a day. But still! My baby! Growing up! Sigh.

In other Captain news, for the past two days he has gotten up at night, used the bathroom all by himself, and got himself back in bed, all without calling for help. We actually slept right through it. Miracle of miracles! I thank the new Buzz Lightyear nightlight we got for the outlet near his door for this great nighttime gift. I guess I can live with JK if it means that at least one of our kids can be self-sufficient throughout the whole night!

Captain Jelly Belly has just learned about phonics, and the concept of spelling, and he’s really excited about it. Now he is constantly asking how to spell everything around the house, or what letter something starts with.

The other day he thought he’d try his own hand at it so we had this conversation:

CJB: What does EAFXZ spell?
Me: Nothing.
CJB: What does FFRJU spell?
Me: Nothing.
CJB: What does YYREWQSTR spell?
Me: Still nothing.
CJB: What does DAMN spell?
Me: Ummmmm….nothing.

Gal Smiley has been in a bit of a mood lately that we like to call, “Being Two Years Old.” That involves lots of yelling “No!” at people and other anti-social type behaviours.

Yesterday when had the gall to offer her yogurt for breakfast, she yelled at him, “GO AWAY!” He said, “[Gal Smiley], that isn’t very nice talking.”

So she very politely and calmly said, “Go away, please.”

Looks like the terrible twos are almost over!

This week was the week for people to put their “real” Christmas trees out on the curb for pickup, and I was amazed at how many people on our street and in our area had a real tree. Probably 80% of the houses on our block have a real tree out front.

We rarely had a real tree growing up — maybe twice that I can remember — so I’m totally comfortable with an artificial tree. and I have never done the real tree thing, and that’s okay — having a fake tree lets me get it up nice and early, and I don’t have to worry about the watering thing, because heaven knows, I cannot keep a plant alive in this house. Ferns and mums shudder as I walk past them in the grocery store.

For some reason though, I really thought that having a real tree was becoming a rarity. It seems that every Christmas tree lot I pass in December is loaded with trees but no customers. I see maybe three or four cars each year carting home a tree on their roof, and I never once saw any of our neighbours bringing in a tree from outside. Plus, someone told me about this link, which shows that if you do not keep your real tree in water, it can become completely engulfed in flames inside of 5 seconds, and the entire room becomes a burning firepot of hell in about 40 seconds. Scary, no?

Anyway, I guess these days they take the used trees and do useful things with them, like making them into mulch, or feeding them to elk (a weird story I read in the paper this morning about a dude on his elk farm). In any case though, I’m still surprised at how everyone seems to have a real tree. I guess we’re the odd ones out!

I read an article in the paper this morning that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It was about an American woman who was arrested in Ottawa over the Christmas holidays for kidnapping her own children, part of a custody battle thing. I heard about it at the time but didn’t think it was anything special.

Today’s full-page article presented her case and it has a lot of surprising aspects that have me thinking. First of all, she is 49 years old, but her children — a boy and girl, twins — are only 18 months old. She had them at age 47, after paying $30,000 for in-vitro fertilization. She planned to be a single mother — the egg used was from a donor mother and she used an anonymous sperm donor as well.

That seems to beg the question, who exactly is she in a custody battle with? It turns out that her pregnancy was so physically difficult, requiring hospitalization, constant bed rest, and feeding through a tube for the last several months, that she began to think that she couldn’t handle the twins herself. At first she decided to give one up for adoption, then eventually decided to give them both to the same family. The adoptive family lives in a different state but agreed to give her visitation rights. After the adoption went through, she had a change of heart and fought to revoke the adoption, but lost her case, and thus, while on one of her weekend visits with the kids, ran with them to Canada. Now she has had all her visitation revoked, and it’s unlikely she’ll ever win custody back.

It’s obviously a very messed up situation, but what I can’t stop thinking about is that this woman gave birth in the first place. It seems crazy to me that, at age 47, she would feel ready to deal with a pregnancy and new baby. Even if it was something she realised (way too late) that she really wanted, I can’t believe that the doctors in the clinic would say, “Oh, you’ve got $30 grand, sure, we’ll hook you up with a purchased egg and purchased sperm and send you on your way.” It just seems kind of wrong to me. Shouldn’t they have had some sense of responsibility here? Wasn’t it up to them, at the least, to make sure that she was a) physically able to sustain a pregnancy, and b) mentally ready to provide a home for a baby as a single mom? Even if she passed these tests, they had to know that a post-menopausal woman isn’t exactly the ideal candidate for IVF. It’s a physically taxing process, and the baby would draw a huge amount of nutrients from her body that would never be replaced, especially calcium. I’m all for IVF for younger parents who have tried every other avenue, but in this particular case…just because it was scientifically possible, doesn’t mean it should have happened.

I guess it’s fine for me to sit and judge when I have two awesome kids and a fabulous husband to help out. But knowing how hard it is to get through a pregnancy, even with no complications, and how hard it is to deal with a newborn, let alone twins, let alone by yourself, I just can’t believe that this situation was allowed to arise. I can understand the woman’s desire to be a mother, but surely someone with some common sense should have intervened at some point, shouldn’t they?

Anyway, I’ll try to let it go now.

Twice now in the past month I’ve mistaken Ivana Milicevic for Lake Bell. Twice! That like, never happens to me.

The baby brain definitely has something to do with it, but seriously, do they not look exactly alike? They play about the same kinds of parts too, and are about the same level of fame.

Submitted: They are actually the same person, working under two names just to mess with my head. Discuss.

Yesterday, by the end of the day, I had the following identifiable spots on my pants:

• spaghetti sauce
• chocolate icing
• yogurt (not my fault, though — courtesy of Gal Smiley)
• salsa
• tea
• watermelon juice

I believe every meal of the day was represented. It’s a little skewed because I was wearing overalls, so the bib part took a real beating at dinner. But even given the handicap, I’d say it’s a pretty unbreakable record.

My family has a really weird obsession with getting their Christmas shopping done early. It stems from my mom, who has slowly creeped back her shopping window so that now, she starts to think about it in July, and if she isn’t all finished by the end of September she considers it a personal failure.

Personally, I usually try to have all my shopping done by December 1st, because one time about eight years ago, I decided I couldn’t possibly go down to Southern Ontario to visit the folks for Christmas without new slippers to wear, so I made Sir Monkeypants take me over to the mall for a “really quick visit” on the afternoon of December 23rd, which that year fell on a Saturday. A Saturday. In December. At the mall. Yup.

After 45 minutes of trying to find parking, then an hour standing in line at the checkout, then another 20 minutes just getting out of the lot, I thought I might pass out from stress and lack of carbonated beverages. Since then I try to get done early so I can avoid the mall in the month before Christmas.

That means that I usually start thinking about my shopping the day after Halloween, which drives Sir Monkeypants crazy, much as the fact that he never shops before December 15th drives me crazy. Even worse is my brother in law, CanadiensFan#1, who refuses to discuss anything Christmas related before the start of December, and mocks me and FameThrowa every year for insisting on doing our Christmas draw in August.

So this year, I am finally ready to admit that Sir Monkeypants is right, right, right. Early shopping is wrong, wrong, wrong.

First of all, at least four times, I have seen something that I bought back in November on sale in the week before Christmas. I cannot believe, with all the massive, massive crowds out there, and the massive amount of shopping going on, that places like Toys R Us or Sears feel the need to have a sale, as well. Do people really need that kind of further encouragement? Do we really need the pressure of getting up at 7am on a weekend so we can run to the store and be first in line when it opens so we can get the big deal? I guess so, because since I am not out there getting the big deal, I am busy sitting at home quietly avoiding the crowds and feeling like a chump who spent way too much on her Christmas gifts this year.

Secondly, I am now the parent of two preschoolers who finally “get” the whole Christmas thing, that is, they understand there are presents coming to them. And being of a mercurial age, they change their mind about what they want about sixteen times a day. For their stockings, I bought them Buzz Lightyear and Woody dolls way back in October, when they couldn’t get enough of Toy Story. Now it’s all about Cars and Winnie the Pooh, and I’ve had to go back to the stores twice now to get extra things because I couldn’t bear the thought of them not getting the absolute coolest stuff from Santa. Now I feel bad that I’m spoiling them. If only I had waited until we had a firm decision from them — i.e., until December 22nd or so — I could have avoided extra shopping, extra spending, and extra guilt all around.

Plus, the mall used to be a nice “getaway” spot for us during the week, some place warm and inside with a toy store to visit and french fries for a treat, a place to make a nice outing. Now that it’s off-limits — because all my shopping is done, and that’s the whole point of finishing early — we’ve been trapped in the house for three weeks. By Christmastime, we should be good and ready to have a knock-down, drag-out, free for all.

Next year…I’m converting to last minute shopping!

On Saturday morning I took the Captain to the pool for his swimming lesson in our new van. Later we picked up Sir Monkeypants and Gal Smiley to do a little Christmas shopping.

Once all four of us were in the car, Captain Jelly Belly says this:

“This morning, we were going so fast in the van, Mommy went through a red light!”

Sir Monkeypants said, “Reeeeeeaaally,” while I turned 16 shades of red and knew I was totally busted.

Then the Captain added, “But it’s okay, Daddy, because no police saw us and we didn’t get in trouble.”

And that is wrong in so many ways that I just had to burst out laughing.

Sir Monkeypants said, “Captain, why don’t you listen to Hi-5 while I talk to Mommy for a few minutes.“

Captain Jelly Belly has been able to count to 20 for a while now, but just in the past two weeks he’s made a major mental association between numbers and quantity. He now understands that 10 is smaller than 15, and 18 is more than 12. He’s so excited by this idea that he wants to apply his new 1-20 scale to everything. The pool is “12 warm,” it is “10 windy” outside, and he has “5 juice” left in his cup.

He adorably wants to use this scale with his emotions, too. Last time we were at the mall, Sir Monkeypants asked him if he was bored, and he said, “Yes Daddy, I am 10 bored.” But when we got to the toy store, he exclaimed, “Now I am ZERO bored!!” When he falls down, if I ask him if he is okay, he might say, “Don’t worry Mommy, I am only 2 hurt.” Or, when Gal Smiley is really bugging him, or I make him do something he doesn’t want to, he says, “I am twenty mad!”

The best part is that at night, before bed, he likes to tell me, “Mommy? I love you twenty.”