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*this is what my older bother used to say after he’d played a particularly good joke on me or one of my sisters.

Around my house, I’m pretty famous for playing super awesome tricks and pranks on my husband that more often than not go horribly awry, and usually not in my favour. Things like when I buttoned myself into the duvet cover with my head sticking out and my hands and feet in the corners and tried to walk across the apartment like a big… rectangular… blanket… monster? I’m not exactly sure what my plan was, but I barely made it out of the dining room before I fell over on a beanbag chair and laughed until I got a cramp. Others work out perfectly, like when Taylor was in the shower and I discretely filled a jug with freezing cold water from the sink and threw it on him, or when we were sharing an intimate moment and I thought it would be a great idea to purposefully make a really weird face. Like, seriously weird.

Sometimes my jokes have mixed results, like the time I was being a horrible shrewish nag about something really boring, like cleaning the oven. I felt bad about it, so when Taylor went to the store to buy Easy-Off I drew a Snidely Whiplash mustache on my face, and when he got back I pretended we were having a normal conversation- for about five seconds until I burst out laughing. I say this one had mixed results because although I achieved my goal of relieving the oven-cleaning tension, I used waterproof eyeliner to draw on the mustache and it took some seriously solid scrubbing to get it off.

Tonight Taylor and I were laying in bed talking about important things (dogs, preschool teachers I know, and whether or not my eyeball would get infected from the shard of claw I got in it while trimming the cat’s nails) and I decided it would be really fun to take a great big swig of water from my water bottle and then drool it on myself slowly while Taylor was talking. Unfortunately, I almost immediately started giggling, but I couldn’t open my mouth because I would have sprayed water everywhere. I couldn’t swallow it because I was laughing and it definitely would have gone down the wrong pipe, and I couldn’t spit it back into the bottle because the neck was too small. So I did the only logical thing: I pressed my face against Taylor’s shoulder and drooled it all over him and all over the bed and then laughed until I collapsed. Seriously, if laughter is the best medicine then I have NOTHING to worry about with that cat claw infected eyeball thing. Besides, Claire said she was sorry about that.

Oh yeah. She loves me. And WOW the top of my hair looks blonde here!

Today I took care of my former client Rachelle’s 7-week-old daughter Maya, and now I think I have the baby madness! I kind of had it before, but this morning as I sat holding this little wee squidger and she was sighing and making funny baby faces at me I was just like, OW MY OVARIES. I told Taylor we should have a baby boy and name him Jeremy. Jeremy Laramie. Say it out loud.

Also, the other month Danielle at Sometimes Sweet posted about buying the MbMJ Totally Turnlock Baby Back diaper bag and saving it for when she has a baby, and I thought this was a GENIUS idea. I told my friend Jenn we should each buy one, have some babies, quit working and just concentrate on doing yoga (her) and painting unicorns (me). I was totally broke at the time (financial crisis, ya know) and then once I was less broke the black was sold out and it was only available in caramel. No offense to Marc Jacobs but the caramel colour is sick. It looks like the inside of a baby’s diapers. Gross. HOWEVER, this morning on some strange whim I thought to check if the black was back in stock and not only is it in stock BUT it’s also on sale for $206 (regularly it’s of $458, that’s like 55% off!). WHAT THAT IS CRAZY. Even with all the extra charges (tax, duty, delivery) it was under $300 USD. Soooooooooo yeah, I totally ordered it. I figure if I don’t end up having another baby I can just sell it, or use it to carry a little dog around in. This is a no-lose situation. Edit: I had to call and verify my address so they could finish processing my order and the customer service rep had the most adorable southern accent.

As for my financial crisis, it is over, thank goodness! I did book that new client to start in March and I have all her paperwork and her deposit cheque already. Even more importantly, though, the family who I had to give notice to in December is back! Through no fault of their own, their child care subsidy payments were been cancelled by the government and I ended up not getting paid for November and December (which is why I gave notice- I mean, how long would you work for free?), but I let them know that should the matter be resolved I would be more than happy to look after their son again. Last Thursday I was checking the mail and there it was: a new subsidy authorization form. And it was backdated to November! I faxed the claim forms right away and today two and a half months worth of fees were direct deposited into my severely depleted chequing account. Hooray!

A year ago I was in the most awesome shape of my life- I was eating (fairly) well and working out six days a week (including with a trainer. Of course, this was all because I was getting married in Hawaii and I wanted to look my best, and it totally worked. Since then… well, let’s just say I kind of fell off the workout wagon. I’m definitely not the same shape I was back then, and bikini season is coming way early this year- in less than two months we’re going back to Hawaii. I’ve been going sporadically but it’s time to start ding regular workouts again.

Taylor and I decided that this week was the week we were for sure going to start going back to the gym, effective yesterday, but we came up with some pretty good reasons to blow it off. He was going to go in the morning after work, but it was raining and he didn’t want to go back out, and once it stopped raining he’d eaten the world’s largest bowl of soup and was too full. I was going to go after Sym went to bed but we had dinner late, so bedtime was late, and I still had to go grocery shopping and pick up some stuff at the drugstore. By the time I was done all that I was exhausted, it was already close to 10pm and I really just wanted to spend time with my husband.

Trying to fit workouts into my schedule has always been difficult. I can’t go in the morning (I start work too early) and it’s too busy after work, plus I have parenting responsibilities. Usually I go after bedtime (like I was planning to last night) but that means not spending time with Taylor since he would have to stay home and step-parent. When I was going six days a week I literally never saw him, except for the rare times we could work out together- Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings, plus Sunday mornings. Running on adjacent treadmills isn’t really the most quality of quality time! It’ll be us tonight though- no more excuses!

More tiny foods! Extra-small orange bell peppers, grape tomatoes and mini cucumbers. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the peppers, but the other two I use to make this cute salad:

This picture was actually from last summer, and I used a regular cucumber. This resulted in a lot of waste, a problem eliminated by using mini cucumbers.

Making vegetables fun with interesting or unusual shapes and sizes is a great way to get otherwise-picky children to eat them, and using mini-cookie cutters (I got mine at Yokoyaya123) makes it fast and easy.

2-3 mini cucumbers, sliced and cut into shapes
1/2 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 cup cooked frozen corn, chilled
1 tbsp lemon juice (I hate 99% of salad dressing)

I’m not reading this book but I made Taylor get a picture of it because the cover was too amazing:

I guess now we know what’s wrong with the economy: Deatheaters. You put down that real estate market right now, Lucius Malfoy!

The Center of Winter, 2/104
On Friday night I finished reading Marya Hornbacher’s The Center of Winter. I’ve read it before but I still really like it, and not just because I loved Wasted back in the day, like all teenage girls with weird, disordered eating habits.

Spook Country, 3/104
Currently I’m reading Spook Country and eurgh, I’m really not feeling it. It’s Taylor’s book, not mine, and I’ve actually gotten further in it than he did. I read a bunch of William Gibson’s stuff way back in the olden days of the 90s and I liked it well enough, so maybe this one’ll be okay in the end too. It has about 250 more pages in which to redeem itself.

Even though I’m not supposed to be buying books right now I still went with Taylor to the bookstore on Saturday so he could pick up a birthday card, and I totally slipped and bought World War Z to read next, oops!

I think I really spent more time asleep than awake this weekend! I keep trying to past the weird schedule I was on during the holidays but every weekend it comes creeping back.

Friday night was Family Fun Night, we ordered pizza, watched some Sailor Moon and played Apples to Apples. I thought it would be kind of lame playing with Sym since she’s only eight and doesn’t know what half the cards are, but I swear she’s like some sort of Apples to Apples savant. Even when she threw down random cards it would turn out to be eerily perfect or hilarious. Taylor ended up winning the game, but I think I laughed the most. After Symphony went to bed I worked a little on a painting and then Taylor and I watched the first two episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. If you haven’t seen it it’s a Bristish show from about five years ago, except it’s supposed to be a program from the 1980s that never aired- until now. here are the opening titles to give you an idea of what it’s like:

Saturday I slept in and then spent the day doing I don’t even know what. I think Sym and I did some work on our Farmville farm, and I made bagel BLTs for lunch. After Symphony’s dad picked her up Taylor and I went out shopping so he could get a birthday gift for our friend Rich. I picked up a grey tri-blend raglan pullover from American Apparel which I proceeded to wear for almost the whole rest of the weekend, until I spilled cranberry juice down the front. I also got Symphony some new socks at H&M, idk how but all her socks are disappearing at an exponential rate. She was down to all odd socks, so I made sure she brought home any socks that had been left at her dad’s, but they were all different odd socks so she sill had no pairs.

On Saturday night we went to dinner for Rich’s birthday- we were late because as usually I underestimated how long it would take to straighten my hair. I wore my new top with dark skinny jeans, grey platform heels and my black crystal bead necklace. the shoes would prove to be my downfall as later in the evening I would almost fall over in them, and, when we were heading home I ended up having to take them off and run across Burrard Street in my bare feet to get a cab. Note to self: next time, wear flats. Anyway the dinner was pretty funny- there was a hockey game that night and the whole restaurant was filled with another birthday party that seemed to mostly consist of screaming sports fans. After watching Vancouver lose in a shootout we headed back to Rich and Jenn’s apartment for drinks and cake, but I think we came home quite early. As it turned out, Taylor had fallen asleep during Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace the night before so I found the episode he’d missed on youtube and we watched it in bed.

Except for going out for brunch, I spent almost the whole of Sunday in bed until the evening, when I had to get up and clean the apartment. Since I have to keep the place clean during the week I often have a hard time motivating myself to tidy anything on the weekends, so it often turns into a total disaster area. Sometimes I’m too drained on Sunday night to accomplish much and have to get up extra-early on Monday to finish up, but luckily that wasn’t the case last night so this morning I got to snooze my alarm twice!

I have a love/hate relationship with alliterative blog post titles.

Yesterday I had my first prospective client meeting of the year, and I’m happy to say it went perfectly! The mom brought her little girl over during nap time and we ended up talking for over an hour. The kids I was looking after yesterday woke up before they left so she got to see me interacting with children other than her own, and also see her baby interacting with the children who already come here. Barring complications I’ll have a new one-year-old baby starting at the daycare in the last week of February. Yay!

During our meeting, the mom said one of my favorite things: “I really like talking with you and your whole setup here and I feel good about leaving my baby with you.” I can literally never hear that too many times! Wooing new clients is tricky; first-time moms are justifiably nervous and skittish about leaving their precious wee baby with a total stranger who they picked off a list. I do get some clients via referrals from other families I work/have worked with, or from acquaintances or other child cares, but most people who call me have gotten my child care’s name and number from the Child Care Resource and Referral Centre, which keeps a list of all the registered and licensed child cares in the city.

There are tons of things for a parent to consider when selecting a child care, practical things like:
Are the hours suitable for the family’s needs?
I’m open from 7:45 until 5:15 so obviously someone who starts work at 7am or doesn’t get off until 6pm wouldn’t choose to send their child here, but someone who works from 8am until 5pm could easily drop their child off and pick him or her up on time.
Are the fees reasonable/within the parents’ ability to pay?
My fees are about average for the part of the city I live in, but like most things in Vancouver, child care isn’t cheap.
Is the child care conveniently located?
It totally is! My apartment is in a nice residential neighborhood in the West End, near parks and schools, but also within walking distance to the business, financial and shopping districts.

While these things are all important, the most important thing of all is this: Do the parents like and trust the child care provider enough to leave their child with them? If someone had a daycare half a block from you and charged well below the average fee, but the provider gave you the creeps or seemed nasty, you would probably keep looking! This is why I like people to come by to meet me and see the space, even if they don’t need child care right away. I had one client who, before coming here, had been 99% sure she was going to go with this one daycare. After a year of emails and phone calls, she finally went over to see the child care in person and the place was filthy and smelled bad and the provider had a weird vibe. It could have been super nice and fun for the kids there, but the parent didn’t feel comfortable so she ended up starting her daycare search all over again.

When selling prospective clients on choosing my child care over another, what I’m really selling them on in me. Is my apartment clean and safe enough for their child, with plenty of room to play and grow? Do I provide fun and suitable games and activities for children of that age group? Am I going to take good care of their baby for them, love and nurture him or her while they, the parents, are at work? How can you even tell that about a person when meeting them for the first time, talking for 30 or 40 minutes?

I really can’t even imagine, I didn’t have to worry about this when Symphony was a baby. I didn’t go back to work until she was three, and when I did start working part-time she first went to my friend Jenny’s child care downstairs from our old apartment, and when I went full-time she started going to the YMCA group daycare two doors down. I had seen both Jenny and the women who worked at the group daycare interacting with kids every day for years before my daughter ever went to those daycares. I guess I was pretty lucky then, but I’m also pretty lucky now, that I’m one someone who people do trust to take care of their kids, so I get to do this great job!

Vacation time is over! I was kind of dreading getting back to work this week, mostly because the ridiculous 3 to 10:30 am sleep schedule I’ve been on for the last couple weeks really doesn’t mesh well with my 7:45 to 5:15 work day. I had to get up extra early this morning to tidy up. For some reason last night I started building my new bookcase and rearranging some furniture, and I left a huge mess in my wake. Yesterday I decided to turn the nap room (a small-ish third bedroom used only for the daycare kids to nap in) into a mancave-slash-study for Taylor, so in the middle of sawing and drilling bits of wood I dragged the grey couch in there from the library. It was totally stupid too, since the couch is too big to fit on the south wall where I want it, but at least it gives me more room in the library to practice my woodworking and cabinetry skills!

It’s actually been an alright day so far, mostly because I only have two kids to look after right now. This is nice because less kids obviously equals less work, and also the opportunity to do lots of things around the house I would never get around to otherwise. For example, this morning I repacked some books into smaller boxes while the 2 1/2-year-old played Legos and the 16-month-old supervised me and critiqued my work. Right now they’re both snoozing away- having a workday with a scheduled nap is great, even if I’m not the one napping! It gives me time to catch up on housework, have my own relaxed lunch and sometimes, just sit on the couch and read. And write blog posts, of course.

Of course, having less kids in the daycare has its drawbacks, or rather one huge drawback: I am totally broke! For some reason I just started hemorrhaging clients last fall, not because of me, just different things for each family. One little boy left in September to attend the same suburban child care as his older sister, another little boy left in November because his mom had a new baby and it was more practical for them to have a nanny, a girl left in December because her mom had a baby as well (seriously, if you’d like to get pregnant with your second child, send your first to my daycare. One of my current clients is pregnant right now as well!), and due to complicated financial issues another little boy is gone. At the same time, there seems to have been a real lack of people looking for child care, so out of the four that left I only filled one spot. My neighbor who also does childcare had the same problem, she was down to I think one part-time client. I’ve been walking around like Abby Elliot’s Angelina Jolie asking everybody if they have any babies, because I could always use more babies. Did someone say baby? I thought I heard a baby in here.

However, this morning started out with my first prospective client call of the year, and we have a meeting set up for tomorrow. I always like people to come by and meet me and see the space as a soon as possible, even if they don’t need child care for months and months or even years (I already have someone on my waiting list for spring 2011), but this woman is looking for child care for late February, which would be great. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that this one works out- I had a few meetings in November and December but nothing came of them- because really, I could always use more babies!

The Zombie Survival Guide, 1/104

I technically started this book before NYE but I was only as far as machetes so it’ll be my first book for 2010. Taylor got this for Christmas from his mom, I think because a few months ago we spent an afternoon coming up with our own zombie survival plan and he mentioned it on facebook. I’m out of my own books to read, and I can’t reread anything because when I took down the bookcases in the library I packed all our books away in a particularly inaccessible way. I guess now I’ve given myself some real motivation for getting the new book cases built!

Last night Taylor and I celebrated a quiet New Year’s Eve. I made dinner using some oddly-coloured food- roasted blue potatoes and pink navel orange chicken (I thought they were regular oranges until I cut them open and saw the colour) with a leafless salad, which was supposed to be a regular salad until I discovered that my spinach had gone wrong. With dinner we had some Veuve Clicquot Rose- pink champagne for my pink orange chicken!

Later we watched the Yeti episode of The Mighty Boosh, mostly because we’ve both had this stuck in our heads this week:

Genius. Genius.

Afterwards we had our Second Annual New Year’s Eve Viewing of the Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. To me, it just isn’t NYE without Sex Panther by Odeon. While we watched the movie we had more pink champagne (and when that ran out, a few glasses of regular champagne, which we didn’t finish but I miraculously managed to recork) and a snack buffet I’d arranged with some of our precious Bean Boy hummus & Que Pasa red corn tortilla chips; strawberries, grapes and more pink orange; and a bowl of the white, grey and green M&Ms I got in my Christmas stocking. We ate and drank so much that wen we went to get ready for bed I could hardly even bend over to pull up my sweatpants!

No, I don’t generally do New Year’s Resolutions, but I do have a few goals I’d like to set for myself in 2010:

1. Start going to the gym again and get back into shape. Note: I don’t set weight loss goals. I just want to take the weight I have and reconfigure it into more muscle, less fat. Last year when I was working with a trainer I only lost about 10 pounds (most of that after I stopped eating starchy foods after 6 pm) but I went from a size 12 to a size 10 and reduced my body fat percentage by 10%.
2. Read 104 books.
3. Paint a smaller version of Sym’s deer, and a unicorn version, and have prints made to sell. This was supposed to be my January project, but since I was too sick and exhausted to do any of my holiday projects I started them already, doing the sketch for the unicorn while laid up in bed. My goal is to get this done by my birthday (February 5th) and the profits from any sales are going to be put towards Symphony’s college fund.
4. Do all the things around the house I wanted to do in the last two weeks but couldn’t!