Saturday, March 31, 2012

Bon voyage

Just making those last minute calls to say bye before we go on our trip. Bangladesh here we come!

Sunday, March 25, 2012

First park outing of the year


I took the munchkins to the park today. My son made friends with a five year old girl. The two of them ran around, thick a thieves for 1/2 hour. This girl's mother was pregnant, sitting her car parked thirty feet away, talking on the cellphone. She could see her child but I was not impressed. Am I an overprotective mother or is she a substandard parent?

Anyways, my son left the park reluctantly. He wanted his new friend to come with us. When I explained that her mother would not appreciate it, he asked if her whole family could come with us. I explained that they were strangers. My son insisted that the girl was very nice and not strange at all. He went on to say that when he gets older he wants to marry this girl! Is it normal for a 4 year old to think this much about marriage? I told him he couldn't get married until he had a job and his own house. That should keep weddings off his mind for a while =).

I didn't get a chance to take pictures today. I was too busy living in the moment to document the moment =). The little girl took a picture of my son on her kiddie camera though. She said she wanted a picture of his cute face.

I will have to make do with a mental picture - little smiles framed by a clear blue sunny sky. The thought of it fills my heart with a pleasant ache. I hope it will be etched in my memory forever.

Here's a picture I took a few days ago of my sunny boy.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Ugly duckling day

I had one of those days that morphed from a horrible day to a fabulous day, and since I don't have very many of these kinds of days, I wanted to share it with you. I thought I was having a bad day. Someone was grumpy and rude to me in the morning (BTW - not my husband, he's one of those chipper early bird catches the worm sort of people). Also had a minor setback on my way into work and I was feeling like many little things were going wrong. I tried this new thing though - I did not allow my mind to linger on these small incidences, which normally would have kept me distracted throughout the day. I managed to focus on being productive and guess what? At the end of the day, two really big positive things happened to me:
1. A teacher at my son's school told me that my son did extremely well in school today with creating a survey. She said she thinks that he is smart.
2. My parents showed up at my doorstep with dinner, all the way from Mississauga! It was their anniversary and they wanted to celebrate it with us!
I will leave you with a picture of my son and a "course" he created for his toy car.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

I can finally have tea parties at our house!

Salon, front room, sitting room, parlor....whatever you like to call it, we have finally furnished our living room. We've had the house since 2008 and this room had been empty since then. Correction - Sampaguita, my beleaguered jasmine plant lived in a corner of this room, oh and there was a glass coffee table that we didn't want to keep in our family room because it was not kid proof. Otherwise the room was a great empty space. Even in it's unfurnished state, we used to like to hang out in this room. It has 19 ft ceilings  and is painted yellow so that even on a gloomy day, it has a light and airy feeling to it.

My insipiration for this room is this carpet:

It was given to me by my mother. She used to think I didn't appreciate it which is far from the truth. I really love the colors and design. I had nowhere to put it before as it is made of silk and silk and toddlers don't mix well.

Based on the colors in this rug, I went with teal as the main accent color for this room. I thought I wanted a the main sofa to be teal or turquoise. I thought I wanted this sofa:
 
It checked off all the criteria on my list. It was:

1. Dainty without being too girly.
2. Possessed clean lines without being sterile
3. It looked pretty but still invited you to come in and share a cup of tea.

But 2 things stopped me from purchasing it:
1. The fabric was not kid friendly. it was like some sort of textured knit fabric. The salesman kept trying to convince me that if I got it treated with some water repellent that they sold at the store then it wouldn't stain, but even he didn't really seem to believe what he was saying.
2. Just this piece itself cost $868 and I wanted to do the whole room for $1000.

After lots of searching I finally found these two pieces:

I love them! I bought teal cushions to tie in to carpet. The tree that you see in the corner is Hibby my hibiscus plant. Hibby and I go way back and there is a great story about how she came into my life that I am going to tell you all in another post someday.

We bought two accent chairs. We also purchased a little side table to go with them. The color of the side table matches the brown in the carpet.

This corner is for  best friends to catch up in. Sort of like me and sister. We need a corner to go off to and share secrets with each other.

We also bought a teal and silver lamp. It occupies Sampaguita's old perch. Don't worry Sampaguita has been moved to a sunnier home- she has Hibby's old spot in the dining room.
The glass bowl in this picture is another gift from my mother.

Lastly, I bought this green bowl to satisfy my need to have something in my favorite color in the room.

So there you have it, a whole room for $875 - well under budget! Now who wants to come over for a tea? 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Lunchtime escapade with my love

We often have date nights. These are planned events where we think of what we want to do, (usually watch a movie), book a babysitter and feel a little guilty for leaving the kids at home. The most memorable dates are spontaneous lunch time dates like the one we had today! My husband picked me up at noon and we went to covent garden market.



We had a leisurely lunch, ending with a satisfying cup of tea and did something we can never do when the kids are around - share our favourite iPhone apps with each other. Ok so we're a little nerdy.

Diastasis Recti Dilemma

Yay! We are finally going on a family vacation! We are going to the land of my birth - Bangladesh. It will be the first time my kids are going and we are all very excited. The last time I went on vacation was in 2007 before the birth of my children, before my diastasis recti.  
Actually this is the only thing I am not excited about. How am I going to outfit myself? After a year and a half of consistently working out and eating healthier, I have managed to shave off pounds and inches, but unfortunately I still look like I am at least 5 months pregnant. 
In fact I look more pregnant since I've lost the weight because the rest of my body has thinned out but my high belly still remains. Especially over the last month or so, I've had more well meaning intelligent women, who know better than to assume that someone is pregnant, ask me if I'm expecting. It's doesn't just look like a chubby tummy. 
I am worried about going to Bangladesh and facing all my friends and relatives with this tummy. Bengali women are, shall we say, more frank, then their North American counterparts. I am anticipating having to explain multiple times that I am not pregnant. To exacerbate this, have you seen the Bangladeshi traditional outfit?

Ok so I wouldn't necessarily wear a see-through Sari. What I would wear would look more like this one:

But still, there will be some belly showing and it wont be pretty. My other options are shalwar kamises:
This is much looser but I'm not sure it if creates the right waist to minimize my diastasis recti bump.

Part of me is saying that I am being silly and vain. What is important about this trip is reconnecting with people that I haven't seen in a long time, it's about introducing my children to my origins and having some down time with my family. It really shouldn't bother me so much.


Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Mug for my hubby

I made my husband a mug! He doesn't have an extensively documented childhood so I wanted to make something special for him

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Trip to the Sugar bush

This morning we visited Crinklaw's maple syrup farm that was established in some time in the 1830's.
First we ate some pancakes in a barn. The pancakes were delicious but it was -7 this morning and the barn was not very warm.

Then we went on a wagon ride to see the sugar bush which is a grove of maple trees that are tapped to make maple syrup. My daughter made a little friend in the wagon. She introduced herself as Puff the magic dragon to her new friend. Last week she was Pete the cat. It's hard to keep up with what she calls herself.




Then we learnt how the settlers used to make sugar. It was fascinating. In those days they didn't have cane sugar so they used to boil the sap for days until they were left with something that was like brown sugar. Apparently there was no purification process so the would manually pick out the bugs and sometimes they would miss some - ewwww!


Friday, March 9, 2012

What do you think he will be when he grows up?

He says he will be:

1. A farmer
2. A doctor
3. A pancake baker
4. A good daddy

Also he is very eager to know who he is going to marry.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Breaking bad habits


I've been thinking about a habit I want to break. Actually there are two habits:

1. Feeling the urge to read whilst eating and eat whilst reading or watching TV.
2. Night time consumption of pumpkin seeds.

Over the years I have developed this habit of getting more enjoyment when I couple eating food with reading or watching a good story. To me it makes the story and the food seem more pleasurable. I realize that this habit is harmful to me as I am consuming calories when I am not hungry. I am eating "healthier" things these days then when I was younger, so I'll have like a 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds or 1/4 cup pistaschios or almonds. Even so, I want to rid myself of this habit. When I have lunch at work ( I have to eat at my desk because I workout during my official lunch) I am scrambling to find an interesting blog to read because I can't just enjoy my chicken salad on it's own. Alternatively, if I am reading a good novel at home, after reading a few pages, I get up and pour out a 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds to munch on whist reading, and when the seeds are done, I put the book down as it is not as fun to read with out munching on something and I try not to eat more than the 1/2 cup to stay within my calories limits.

Ok - so I've articulated my problem. I hope you guys don't think I'm crazy. Now, how do I solve this problem? How do I get rid of this weird habit?


Monday, March 5, 2012

Bits of hope

I've been really ill with the rotavirus for the past week, hence the silence. I am feeling better now and I want to share two really small but beautiful things that have happened to me in the last few days.
1. Back in October of 2006, my husband, my mother and I spent half an hour wrestling my engagement ring off of my chubby swollen finger. As I recall a fair amount of cooking oil was applied to help with the removal process. At the time, we were visiting Bangladesh ( the land of my origin) and apparently when one travels to the tropics, one's body retains water and causes one's appendages to become swollen. We did not of course attribute said swollen fingers to the copious amount of delicious Bengali food I was consuming whilst on vacation!
My engagement ring had since been relegated to a remote corner of my jewelry box, only to see light of day every six months or so when I would take it out to see if it would fit. Well guess what? The last time I tried it on, I lost enough weight that it finally fit!

2. Remember Sampaguita, my jasmine plant that was riddled with spider mites? I ended up having to physically remove the spider mites by cutting off the most heavily infested parts of the plant. For a while it was touch and go for poor Sampa. She had lost most of her leaves and her bark went from green to brown but guess what? Just yesterday we noticed that she was flowering again! Sampaguita has pulled through! Me - 1; spider mites - 0!