yesterday

six weeks

this week has been filled with smiles

you'll look sweet upon a seat of a bicycle built for two

ok so we have the wedding pictures covered which just leaves bike races, belly button books and a couple of anecdotes. as the picture up there indicates, we will start at the beginning with the bike races as i have been meaning to put some of this up for awhile.

a few weeks ago marko and i went with our friend dreena to see her husband mike in the yaletown criterion which is a cyclical bike race that happens in...yes you guessed it...yaletown. i wasn't sure what to expect but was actually thrilled and amazed (sometimes both at the same time). we went with the intention of taking some pictures and we weren't disappointed. (if that link doesn't work it is because you don't have flash and my fancy pants husband made the website in flash..sorry) mike ended up coming in third overall (or was it fourth?) so that was pretty exciting.

in fact we loved it so much that we decided to go and check out the much bigger and certainly more hyped tour de gastown last week. this time we took along our trusty companion catriona. once again mike was in the running but this time the competition was a little bit tougher and there were way more competitors (or so it seemed). sometimes it was even tough keeping track of who was who. in the end mike didn't do as well as yaletown but it was great to watch anyway (although the loud announcer guys could have been a little less wrestlemania).

so there you go, bike race info up to date. now didn't that feel a little like one of those books you would get when you were a kid that had scratch and sniff stickers hidden on every page and you would sniff around looking for it, then when you found it you would feel very satisfied, both at the finding and at the sniffing. unless you don't have flash or have not downloaded quicktime for free yet, in which case you now feel more like the kid whose parents forget to pick them up after school. there you sit in the parking lot and it is starting to get dark. sorry.

when i wanted you to share my life i had no doubt in my mind

this past weekend my brother elton officially married his wife jody. they have been together 10 years now and have a home and a family together. their two daughters reidun and kyla are of course no strangers to my blog. it was a beautiful wedding with just close friends and family at a farm in maple ridge. it was a great spot for a wedding with a view of the pond acting as a backdrop. anyway i will stop talking and say congratulations to the wonderful couple and leave you with some photographic highlights for your viewing pleasure...

little fish little fish swimming in the sea

i have lots to share, wedding pictures, bike race videos, belly button books and perhaps a funny anecdote or two, but for now you will have to settle on some new photos of cohen. maybe tonight, if he gets to sleep at a decent hour i will have time for the rest.

if a baby cries in the woods does it make a sound?

i can't believe the week is almost over again. cohen has really shown some changes this week. he is starting to notice things more and he can follow objects with his eyes and concentrate on faces which is really cool. we have staring contests somedays but he usually nods off or looks away first. he is also starting to grab things and likes to grab the bumblebee from his bouncy chair and throw it to the ground. i can tell he is going to be a handful as a toddler!

well here are some pictures from a couple of things we did this week.



we went to a bbq tonight and cohen got to meet the rest of my co-workers that he missed last time. he also got to hang out with my boss nancy. here you can see him quite happily enjoying himself on her shoulder



and here he is again wearing new clothes because the old ones kind of leaked..all over nancy..oops! sorry



this is a picture of my cousins daughter hayley who came for a visit with her grandma (my aunt) paula yesterday afternoon. she is of course pictured here with my mom and cohen. doesn't she have the cutest smile?

it isn't called looking for cohen after all

for those that miss all the pictures of our first kid...

my room with a view

i couldn't have said it better myself

it takes a village to raise an army...wait no that isn't it

so something strange happened to me at the park today. maybe strange isn't the word,as those of you reading this that live in my neighbourhood will likely not find it alarming at all. perhaps unsettling is more apt.

so i decided to take cohen out to the local park this afternoon for a little blanket r&r. i naively thought it would be sparsely populated but once i got there i realized that it is saturday so of course it was packed. but not just packed with kids laughing and playing gayly with inflated balls. no it was mostly packed with people who came directly from the liquor store to the park bench and had since settled in to an afternoon fiesta. i parked us down on the grass anyway. live and let live and all.

so i am taking some pictures and explaining to cohen about how alcohol is something that one should try not to abuse when over walks a 30 something year old semi-homeless boozey smelling but seemingly nice woman and the oh so familiar words "how old is your baby?" leave her lips. 4 weeks was my reply and then the awkward silent pause followed.

now regular readers here know that i have been struggling with the idle stranger conversation. but i have come to a conclusion about it and it is this: i am completely incomepetent at speaking with strangers, they slightly scare me and i simply have no idea what to say. i got this way from a childhood of being taught to fear strangers and from living in vancouver where most of the time talking with a stranger is an enormous mistake. but this isn't good. i am not proud of it. most importantly, i don't want cohen to feel the same. i wish we were more of a community, that we all didn't look at our feet all the time. so with that in mind i smiled at the woman.

this was mistake number one. mistake number two was when she looked at him and said "do you mind?" and i didn't ask "mind what?". in fact i didn't say anything, there was no time. she had scooped him up into her unclean arms faster than i could say "huh?" and there he was completely enclosed by her more than ample body, her face leaning in to his to talk baby with him.

what the hell right? but wait no it gets better, so much better. the aside here would be that i am a chicken. a total and complete wimp when it comes to confrontation. when a person is approaching me, in my path on the sidewalk, i am always the one to move to the other side. it is just easier. so when she started walking back over to the park bench where her husband was sitting, with my baby in her arms, i froze. then i followed her and depsite the fact that in my head i was screaming, out of my mouth came nothing. when she got to the bench she handed him to her husband and then he promptly handed him back to me. clearly he could see the terror in my eyes. then she said thank you for letting me hold your baby and i know that she meant it. i could tell it meant a lot to her. but still i couldn't help thinking, is there not a line? cause i think there is and i am pretty sure it was just crossed.

and yet looking back i am not sure how it could have played out different. i need to get tougher, more affirmative. or more relaxed i guess. i can't decide.

afterwords i found that cute hipster hat at the used store though and somehow it helped to shift the world back to right.

the song and dance keeping you in a trance. if you don't buy my record i got my advance

i am sitting here on a friday night eating twizzlers and looking for something interesting to read on the internet. i remember when it was enough to entertain me. all the information, an endless supply of links and new ideas. but then it just sort of became old and now it is something i do out of habit. a tick if you will. i read the same blogs everyday and look at the same news sites. every now and again i break away from the norm and read something different. when i get sick or confused i look up the answer. but i am not alone. this is what we have become. the entire world in the palm of our hands.

i bring this up because i was originally going to put jokes about monkeys here but when i looked some up i found: "we've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of shakespeare. now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true".

of course this is not funny and has no business being called a joke but it is true none the less. i guess i am just another monkey.

so now you are sitting there with a want for an actual monkey joke. power of suggestion and all. inside you know that there could never be an actually funny monkey joke but still you need to believe right? well i was never one to let people down. brace yourself...

a woman got on a bus holding a baby. the bus driver said, "that's the ugliest baby i've ever seen!"

in a huff, the woman slammed her fare into the fare box and took an aisle seat near the rear of the bus. the man seated next to her sensed that she was agitated and asked her what was wrong. "the bus driver insulted me," she fumed.

the man sympathized with her and said, "why, he's a public servant and shouldn't say things to insult passengers."
"you're right," she said. "i think i'll go back up there and give him a piece of my mind."

"that's a good idea," the man said. "here, let me hold your monkey."

*insert sound of cymbal "bu dump da"

come on, at least there are pictures of monkeys here. sometimes you need to hang onto the small things and if there is one thing the internet has taught us it is to never expect too much.

4 weeks

there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

so i was sitting here tonight thinking once again about male actors, which i guess is the theme for the week. i am not sure what it says about me, the fact that i am spending so much time looking at actor's photos? hmmm maybe i do know but let's not talk about it. so anyway, i am here and i am thinking and i am wondering if there is someone that we would all say tomahto about? is there one male star for which all females swoon. ok maybe not all, but most?

i don't know the answer for sure but after careful consideration of many candidates i have decided on my choice.



who is yours?


oh and i swear this is the last post with gratuitous male photos for at least a month

well what have we here

i was just going through some of our wedding photos in attempt to get a project together and i came upon this picture of my niece kyla when she was 11 days old. remind you of anyone??

i'm dedicating this unusual song to an unusual person who makes me feel kind of... unusual.

this was taken very recently at a premiere for pirates of the caribean dead man's chest



this was taken back in the day.



ok ok i could have found a better recent picture but then that wouldn't be any fun. you know to be honest having just scoured through several dozen, perhaps even hundreds of pictures of christian it has occured to me that maybe i never really did find him attractive. it was always the characters he played that swooned me. now i just see him for him and well it is just isn't the same. so i concede. he can titillate. just not me. not anymore.

and now back to our regularly scheduled program

i am not good at this game. although i think i kind of see it, if i turn my head at a certain angle and look closely right after staring straight into the sun. what do you think?

+

=

can we at least say that maybe he kinda has my nose? cause i feel a little ripped off.

why is it that men age so well?

ok ok i know i said it was dead to me but i think that was mostly just a coping mechanism to help me get past the hump of withdrawal. i have only gone back and watched the finale twice which i think is pretty good considering how much time i have on my hands these days. but the rewatching got me reminiscing about the good old days, back when a movie had a certain something, during a time i like to call the 80's (collective groan). what can i say i was born in the 70's, i am prone to fits of nostalgia when it comes to things like molly ringwald and leg warmers. it's better than ninja turtles and power rangers, says me.

so there i am nostalging and i remember the classic film "can't buy me love" which happens to star a certain doctor which can also be found on a certain show. so naturally i had to run out to the local independent video establishment to rent it. i hadn't given it much thought on my way to the store but once i got there i was overcome with fear. i had built a certain reputation here, did i want to sully it with this? was it worth it? i decided to saunter in and case the place. maybe someone different would be working, not video store guy, the one who would remember what i rented later and judge me quietly.

it was not to be though as he was there behind the cash peering around the store. we exchanged niceties and i knew it was a now or never moment. i thought that maybe if i could find it on my own and casually slip it over the counter he might not notice. unlikely but still. but then it happened. i approaced the back of the store and there right against the wall is a rack and on the top in bold letters the words (and numbers) THE 80'S. he had a rack of only 80's movies in his store. there were dozens, maybe even a dozen dozen. this was going to be ok. i scanned the titles and there it was sandwiched by caddyshack and cocktail. i tepidly picked it up and hesitantly looked around to see if anyone saw. it was only me and video store guy in the place.

i laid it down and looked him dead in the eye. might as well face this thing head on. but when i looked i saw that he was close to my age and it occured to me that maybe this is okay, maybe he understands. just then he looks up and exclaims "wow i haven't seen this in forever, man does that take me back". i let out a sigh of relief.

what a terrible movie.

would you lie with me and just forget the world?

first things first. if you don't have quicktime and so you couldn't see the video from the last entry then you can find a windows media player version here. make sure you listen to the sound cause it is almost the best part.

so today was my first day home alone with cohen as marko headed back to work. it started out a little hairy (literally) when marko muttered to me on his way out the door that we are going to need draino for the bathroom sink. i didn't quite understand so i nodded and fell back asleep. i figured it would be clear later. unlucky for me it was. turns out that three weeks worth of unshaved facial hair doesn't go down the bathroom sink quite as smooth as one would hope. the sink looked spotless on my approach but as soon as i ran the water all the hair backed up into the sink causing a huge mess. little did i know that the big mess was yet to come.

i went back into the bedroom to get the little tiger as we had woken together and i promptly engaged him in our morning ritual which involves me giving him kisses on his forehead saying good morning and then sometimes sucking on his chin. as i lean in for the chin suck today though i am treated to a different kind of love. after not throwing up for 5 days (and thereby completely catching me off guard) he chose this moment to lose his breakfast shooting directly for my eye. i couldn't help but laugh as my hair/face/clothes became completely covered in half digested milk. if that weren't enough, as i pull away from him he lets out some more on the bed and the floor. so of course i take him into the bathroom to clean him up only to remember that the sink is full of tiny little hairs and it won't drain.

welcome to my new life.

some days i think it pays to stay in bed.

when you showed me myself i became someone else

click here to see a video of cohen and marko in the park.

three weeks

we went to the park today and got to see the many sides of cohen

serious


surprised


pleased


but mostly just cute!