the cheese stands alone

cole and i were really excited to visit the royal city farmers market yesterday.  he saw a few of the photos of last year's market when i was putting together some posters for this year's event and he kept saying "want to go there!" 

i was glad the rain let up just as we were leaving the house post-naptime - it had been a steady downpour and not the best for outdoor shopping/wranging in open areas (yes, yes - umbrellas.  but at some point they become just another thing to carry!).  i had wrassled him into his rain suit and figured it was going to stay on, rain or not, at that point!

he was a big fan of the cheeses - we got some sharp cheddar from one place and i must go back for brie and herbed feta from little qualicum cheeseworks.  i had to tear him away from the cheese samples and he would have stayed all afternoon eating the delicious artisan breads at a bread affair.  if you have visible samples, he'll be right by. we spotted folks on our way through the park with popcorn, so that was a given: track down popcorn, post haste.  the salty-sweet kettle corn from gary's kettlecorn was great!  we left with cheese, popcorn, some organic & local veggies and some too-good-to-resist and highly recommended beer brats.  and we had to get his face painted - i couldn't resist!

it was really great to see a few local friends there - new west is already feeling so much like home to us.  it's really something to be able to randomly walk down the street and run into people you know - love that feeling of community here! 

interested in the market?  it's on, rain or shine, every thursday from now until october 7th - 3-7 pm, tipperary park @ 4th & royal.

mint-o-rama

why, why, why are there so many godforsaken flavours of mint toothpaste to choose from?

recently i was at the drugstore and i found myself standing in the toothpaste aisle, debating this question while listening to the lilting sounds of right said fred singing "i'm too sexy" - cole likes those musical holiday cards that launch a cornball song at their unwitting recipient, and i indulge this obsession of his until we get to the till just so i have enough time to debate which type of mint is the right one for me and so on... i tells you, that song is (hilarious and) plenty enjoyable as a break from the one dog eared musical card that we own, which plays "it's the most wonderful time of the year".

anyway, rambling aside (ahem) - crest alone had these mints:

clean mint | cool mint | fresh clean mint | minty fresh paste | clean mint paste | clean night mint | moonlight mint | radiant mint | refreshing mint | invigorating mint | revitalizing mint | vanilla mint | strong mint | peppermint | mild mint | freshmint (with no space!)

am i really supposed to believe these are all drastically different from each other? or different at all? and this paradox of choice was coming after i had to navigate the minefield of which type of toothpaste i wanted in general. tartar control? whitening? general tooth health? nighttime toothpaste? fresh breath and whitening? fresher breath but yellow teeth presumably, since no mention of whitening made it to the carton? extremely white teeth and crazily fresh breath?

in the end i picked cinnamon, (which actually tastes too much like gum) for sensitive teeth, cause i'm a renegade and all (or because i normally like cinnamon gum and have sensitive teeth).

Hey Cole, how's the weather up there?

Jamie gave me a special treat today - five whole hours of independence! I took a fantastic trip with Kim to Portobello West for craft ogling (and a little buying). We also dropped by the drool-worthy vintage and crafted shop Lucky Rooster on Charles at Commercial (add one more metre of vintage fabric to the vault) after deciding that it was not necessary to eat with other people's children at Little Nest since we had no babes in tow ourselves...

My boys ambled over to buy a couple's pass at Science World (Cole is free - lucky lad). We are pretty nearly across the street from it, so it's handy. Though Cole is a bit wee, Jamie said that he seemed to have a real blast looking at stuff and touching things. And I think generally being with Daddy of course... No photos - I did request it, but apparently taking care of the baby by oneself is quite a handful without the obligation to record it for posterity... :-) So anyway, we're set up for a year of all things science-related.

And the fun didn't stop there! This evening they made their first couch fort. We had to stop in the middle of construction for a bit of impromptu vacuuming of crumbs from beneath the cushions. Disgusting! How did so many crumbs get back there? Do I need to start serving us out of a trough? We eat all our meals from the couch despite having a perfectly functional table, which triples as my office and craft command centre.

While they were enjoying the newly-freshened couch cushion fort, Jamie got out the yardstick (technically a metre, but hey) and got down to measuring Cole's height. It would appear from our measurements that he's no taller now than he was several months ago (about 27 - 28 inches) but that can't be true since we keep raising his jumper and buying the kid new pants! Also, we have very little skill at baby measuring and Cole likes to lean...

Mmm... macarons

I am crazy in love with macarons. I have been meaning to make some for the longest time, but have been somewhat daunted by their complicated-ness and the fact that the best recipes are either in French (in which I am, how you say, out of practice) or dictate the ingredients in weight measurements (um, do you have 125g of egg whites?). I thought I bought all the ingredients the other day, but discovered I am fresh out of castor sugar and parchment paper. Since I'm taking too long to make my own, I cheated and satisfied my sweet (1/8th French) tooth with a few from La Baguette Et L'echalote on Granville Island.

SO GOOD! Especially the lemon ones. Light, crispy meringues with lemon cream sandwiched between. I don't think it can get any better than that! I love meringue, in any form. I am known to whip up extra when making lemon meringue pies just so that I can (oh so elegantly) eat it right out of the mixing bowl, raw. When I was doing this last week I wondered why I like it so much - I mean, I don't find the concept of raw egg whites appetizing...

I enjoyed one yesterday after Jamie and I took Cole on a walk to Granville Island. We had a great fall day, walking, checking out the exhibits at Emily Carr, visiting Opus (dropping hints for Santa), playing Santa for Coley at Knotty Toys and generally having a great time. We took the ferry back, which is always a good short cut, since it docks about five minutes from our doorstep. Cole enjoyed looking at the water and boats, and we even saw a seal.

We went strolling today along the seawall on the opposite side of the creek and ended up taking the ferry across to pick up some brooch fasteners at the bead shop for my crafty projects and unsurprisingly found myself tempted again. I brought two more home and promptly set about making tea and digging out a fancy teacup to accompany my treats.

More favourite books

We are book crazy around here these days. Maybe it's the dark of the rainy season, but all I feel like doing is curling up with a good book, a cup of tea and possibly a lemon tart, and reading. Preferably in a be-pillowed window seat behind leaded glass windows, but we are short on those two things. I did go to Costco yesterday though, so we have plenty of tea. While I seem to lack the leisure time for my own book-reading, I'm really enjoying reading to Cole. Here are a few of our favourites this week:

365 Penguins - a terrific oversized book full of vivid illustrations. I love this story - a penguin is mysteriously delivered to this family each day for a year. You'll see why! Strange... I just had the most bizzare deja vu about typing this paragraph... The story is pretty long and involves some light math if you want to get into it - great for older kids - but Cole finds the pictures particulary interesting.

And the feel of the paper - he is crazy for paper these days. I had to remind him that it's a library book (we must get our own!), so please get back to destroying my magazines:

We stopped by Duthies earlier this week and found titles to add to our shelves. I should have known it couldn't stop at looking! We found some favourites, including the adorable board book Saffy and a couple others about colours & animals - I can't remember the names now and Cole's napping in the library (aka his room).

We also picked up two books I'd had on my wish list for a while now, The Incredible Book Eating Boy and The Great Paper Caper, by the amazingly talented (and Northern Irish so I'm vastly sentimental about our honeymoon now) Oliver Jeffers.

I couldn't resist the story of Sergio Makes a Splash by Edel Rodriguez. It's so wonderfully minimal in it's use of colour. The story tells of a penguin from Argentina who loves water but is scared to swim. Adorable.

We also got a couple of favourites on the cheap while wasting time yesterday at Costco. Our mission was to buy tea since I had forgotten to go to the "real store" (aka where mustard doesn't come by the gallon), and Costco is sadly the closest grocery store downtown. We left with the tea, 8 pairs of ankle socks, two kinds of cheese, fruit, veg and of course a couple of books. I did manage to leave the kilo of Licorice Allsorts behind. We picked up Yertle the Turtle and Horton Hatches the Egg. Perfect for a day when I was longing for a vacation! ;-) I don't know why, but we didn't have Dr. Seuss around the house growing up, so all these stories are new to me. Man, I couldn't wait for that obnoxious turtle to get his comeuppance.

Dear Santa...

Auntie Jas asked me the other day whether we had any good ideas for Christmas gifts for Cole. Do I ever! Aside from boxes and crunkly paper, which is what he probably will enjoy the most! There are so many wonderful toys out there that we can't wait to play Santa for Cole.

I have a folder on my taskbar marked "things to buy." It's full of cool things for Cole that I've seen here and there on the good old Interweb, saved so that I won't have search around, let alone try to remember what I thought was so cool way back when in my sleepless delerium... It's nestled right between my "things to make" folder, which is full of craft & sewing projects I will make some time in the next thousand years, and the well-visited "Randi's news" folder, which contains links to my favourite actual news sites and trashy gossip.

Mostly it's full of cool wooden toys. I'm on a real wooden toys kick. I prefer wood to plastic - they're more safe, more durable and heck - way cooler. We're hoping to buy some more musical toys too, and I always have a saved shopping cart on the go at Amazon. I'm trying to avoid stuff made in China, whatever it's made out of, just because of the safety issues. Jamie and I have a thing against commercial cartoon characters, so we stay clear of anything branded. We're doing pretty good, with the exception of a Spongebob doll that Jamie bought a while back and Cole enjoys (possibly due to the tragic Tiny Tim style song I sing when I make him dance?). We have so many stuffed toys that for now that we are running out of places for them and Jamie has said more are verboten...

Rather than write a bunch of posts to share all these cool ideas - until I buy some of them, that is - I'm adding a new sidebar. Dear Santa.... If you're stumped for a baby gift for that special baby in your life maybe these ideas will help? And yay - most of them you can buy without leaving your chair! This is great for me because of my often moaned about lack of time, general laziness and love of packages in the mail. Here are a few of my favourites:

Cheekeyes wooden figures polar set

Any wooden blocks from Haba, in both fun colours and untreated wood or crazy wooden knob blocks

Awesome wooden montessori animal puzzles

Puzzle pairs simple matching games

Wooden drum from Plan Toys

International shopping...

I've been on a real bender lately for homemade international foods. I think I'm a pretty good cook, if I do say so myself, but it's too complicated and exhausting to make exciting dinners after Cole goes to sleep. We've been trying to eat healthfully, but I do get very bored of the two easiest dinners that fall under that category: grilled chicken & veg or stir-fry. That's when I resort to extra spicy homemade pizza or take-out, because my taste buds are sitting around, tapping their feet and rolling their eyes. I was noticing that when we eat out, we enjoy a wide variety of savoury and spicy international meals, so of course at home we'd be bored of mungie cake cuisine - fond as I am of good WASPy comfort food... :-)

So I've been trying to vary things up a bit with sauces, spices, marinades and such. I used to be more adventurous, when I had more time for cooking! So far this week we've had a red thai curry, butter chicken (my non-spicy inaugural Indian dish for Jamie, who has had a few bad experiences before) and Korean bbq beef stir fry last night. All have been delicious, and they've all been given two thumbs up from the resident (former) picky eater. Cole's only eating mush, so that would be Jamie. The only problem so far has been the butter chicken - it was amazingly good, but it took days to get the smell out of the house. It practically had to be exorcised. I have some udon bowls in mind next, some madras and satay marinades for grilling, and a few different Thai meals as well.

Part of the fun of making more interesting meals is revisiting some of my favourite international stores... I buy a lot of ingredients at our regular places - mainly Urban Fare and Whole Foods, just because they're on our daily paths, but for authenticity, I like to branch out... If you like Japanese snack foods, visit Konbiniya Japan Centre on Robson - there are about a million kinds of Pocky there, and they're open until 2 AM in case you're desperate...

I've been in love with H Mart, the Korean grocery store on Seymour, since my first trip there last year. They have the best selection of all your favourite Asian food items - and the most hilarious sweets & candy selection, including my new favourite - Hi Chew. Kind of like Starburst, if you replaced it's waxy oilyness with a more spongy, gelatinous texture. Really good, actually! Their website graphics are enough to make me buy a plane ticket. Oh, the glorious wackiness... The graphic designer in me loves the whole hearted commitment these products make to be enticing.

I also found some amazing glass food storage containers there yesterday - Glass Lock. They are glass on the bottom with an air-tight plastic lid. I'm not yet militant about plastic for food storage, but I really like the idea of not using it whenever I can. Old Pyrex dishes with the glass lids don't exactly seal well, so these are great! They simultaneously promise to be "almost unbreakable" and "semi-durable", so we'll see how they go.

I am sometimes a little overwhelmed by inability to read what I'm buying though... I nearly bought some rice crackers that promised "sea taste" which I thought sounded good, but alas, that meant cuttlefish flavour - aka squid -and that is a little too international for me. And I got a kitchen sponge because I thought it was cute and we needed a new one. It had a grouchy looking man on the front that looked as though he meant real business, but when I opened it I realized that it was some kind of magic eraser style cleaning product. It did remove the stroller scuff marks from our wall, and although I thought it might also be removing the paint, in the light of day all looks well...

I'm still on the hunt for some appropriate bento trays. Not boxes, but the open-top tray that you get at a medium-quality sushi place. I think they'd be fun to eat snacks out of at home - I am not adventurous enough to bother making my own sushi... I think they'd make good divided dishes for kids too - lightweight and unbreakable. No luck so far at Daiso or any of the other places I've tried, so I might just order some off the internet. Daiso - the 100 Yen ($2) store in Richmond - did yield some other delights though, including a few adorable bowls for Cole and some tea towels and baskets, all made in Japan.

Fab fridge frames and phat fabrics

Ding dong... That was the sound of the FedEx guy bringing me glorious packages today! Well - that was the sound in my mind, anyway - we don't actually have a doorbell...

I have been waiting for a plethora of packages and two finally came today. First up, I found some hilarious magnetic fridge frames from Working Class Studios, a group out of the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia. They're faux-roque! I needed something to help us organize the chaos on the front of the fridge... What with the random collection of travel and inspirational magnets, photos, calendars, postcards, paper scraps and cookie fortunes, it was getting to be a bit dizzifying. These are great! Note - this is not my fridge - I wish I had an exposed brick wall!

Also, I finally got the first of two fabric shipments from Purl Soho! Oh so adorable - Heather Ross' new line, Mendocino. Spooky octopuses and topless mermaids - what's not to love?!? It's as adorable in person as it looks online. I can't wait to make some girly things with this! I have a few baby items to make and I think I'll throw together a little couch quilt for myself. The magenta and gold colours just make me feel good. I'm not an over-the-top pink person, but I really dig this.

Still waiting for more fabrics and a bunch of patterns for Cole. And a couple books. I think that's it, but who knows... I hope I don't turn into the cat lady who gets buried under stacks of magazines and unopened parcels at this rate. I guess I'd have to get a cat first...

Lil' parder is done tuckered out...

I had to post this cute photo of Cole, sleeping after a walk in the Bjorn earlier this week. I love the way he's just spread out on the bed. He looks like he's been riding a horse in the old west or something! I clicked him out of the Bjorn straps and he just stayed asleep on the bed for a while. Note the bib - he wears them now in the carrier on walks, since one of his favourite activities seems to be sucking on the fabric. This way, he gets the bib all gobby and we can take it off when it gets all wet and cold against his face... And I have to wash the Bjorn less often!

That day, walked a few blocks over into Chinatown to buy some supplies at Ming Wo - some plastic measuring cups for him to play with in the tub and a good, solid, inexpensive 10-cup teapot for us. I do loves me some tea! :-) Also, we found some fun silicone kitchen utensils that are doing double-duty - I need to start stocking up on proper cooking supplies since I'm a grown-up now (or so they say) and Cole likes to play with them too.

While we were in the neighbourhood, we stopped by a great store on West Pender - Funhauser. They have all sorts of retro-style tiki stuff that is just up my cul-de-sac. I got an awesome book - Sippin' Safari. It has TONS of lost tropical drink recipes, with names like the "Sumatra Kula" and the "Dr. Wong", and details about the drink creators and the tiki lounges they were served in. Ahh, the hey day of the authentic tiki lounge... I wish I had a time machine. Apparently, I'll need to buy many more types of rum than I ever have on hand (which would be none)... :-) I do, however, have a terrific collection of vintage glasses and a massive library of exotica music, so I'm half-way there...

Choice made. Done. Finito!

Ahh, the world of baby products. So needlessly complicated. So overwhelmingly full of choices. Sometimes I think - in modern life in general - we are way too spoiled for choice and it actually makes choosing difficult. Not big life choices, but the nitty-gritty stuff choices. Like me spending many hours thinking about which high chair would truly, really best serve our baby-feeding needs.

Argh! So, I decided to stop waffling between product x and product z and just get on with it already. We just ordered an Anka high chair for Cole.

What I like about it is the simple look, the sustainable wood and BPA/phthalate free plastic and the fact that it's been formally rated as 'safe'. It's adjustable as baby grows and can be used up to 5 years/50 lbs converted to a booster seat. The tray is removable (and covered in a dishwasher-safe clip-on cover), so you can pull it right up to the table as well.

All in all I'm really satisfied. I was also debating about the Stokke Tripp Trapp, which I liked online but not as much in person (and it's nearly double the price) or the IKEA Antilop. I've heard really good things about the IKEA chair - and it's $25 in Canada - but I didn't like the fact that it didn't have a footrest and the tray was nearly impossible to get off in the store. I loved the price...

Phew - hands dusted off, choice made. Now I'll have to not think about this anymore until it arrives at the store in a couple of weeks. On to bigger, better matters. Like, did you see Obama's speech last night?

Cole finds IKEA exciting!

Jas and Cole and I took a trip to IKEA today to pick up a few "much needed" items. (More on "unnecessary" quotations here, but that would be more like much needed "items").

We got a few picture frames, as I'm finally getting around to hanging some of the wonderful photos from our honeymoon in Ireland, as well as a bunch of organizing stuff, fabric and some cute things for Mr. Cole. Like these adorable finger puppets (perfect for the doorway puppet show theatre I want to make) and this fun night light that gives off a cool blue glow.

The best part though had to be our lunch. Yes, the meatballs and mac & cheese with a side of veggies are good, but the funniest thing was Cole. We laid down some fabric on the table so that he could stretch out and play after an hour + in the Baby Bjorn. He'd had quite a lot of stimulation walking through the entire store, and after he ate his lunch (expressed milk - so convenient once in a while) he got snoozy. Being without his whole diaper bag of gear, I ended up swaddling him in some of the fabric I was buying.

Too cute!!! He fell asleep right on the table. What a doll.

Urban lunch picnic

Cole and I met Jamie on Tuesday for a great urban picnic. Our lunch was delicious - if I do say so myself. Alas, I didn't make any of it. But I will take credit for scavenging it from Whole Foods! ;-) Tuna wraps, asian coleslaw, cucumber and fruit salads, with sparkling French lemonade. Oh, and a coconut macaroon... Yummy.

Cole came out to play as he likes to do during meals out of the house. He had a great time pretending to stomp on our lunch!

I wouldn't want anyone to think all I do all day is picnic though. I also shop! ;-) Kidding, but not on that day... I found Cole a couple pieces of clothing from Old Navy when I was out getting lunch - they have a sale now, as always, it seems. The store at Park Royal in West Van has tons of stuff. Particularly if you have a baby girl or a toddler. We found some cute things though - a little pair of lined pants for the Fall and a cute linen shirt for next summer. I almost always refuse to pay full price for baby clothes, just because they always go on sale, so why not wait? Unless we're hard up for something in particular, or it's a gift for someone else and I indulge my shopaholic tendencies, I prefer to scout out the deals.

Perfect timing - popsicles!

I have been all in a mood to make popsicles lately, and the timing is good, since this past weekend has been so freakishly hot.

I heard there are popsicle molds at IKEA for just $1, and I definitely have to pick one of those up next time I'm out in the neighbourhood. But, that's a big trip for a $1 item (although I "need" some fabric while I'm there... oh and a few of this and that... meatballs for lunch... $100 later...). Being impatient as I am, Cole and I wandered over to Cookworks downtown last week to search out a quick fix.

We found some fun rocket ship popsicle molds from Cuisipro. They have other awesome designs too - sailboats and stars and the old-fashioned dual-stick kind, like the ones you'd buy at the corner store and whack on the side of the counter to break in half.

So far we've tried them with Abundant-C juice smoothies (ok), white lemonade (awesome!) and I have a few more ideas up my sleeve for various kinds of juice and crushed berries etc. I'm sure I can find enough flavours to keep us cool all summer! I suppose we'll just have to try them all... The molds themselves were really easy to use and they came out nicely.

Tons of great popsicle recipes online - like these margarita ones for grown-ups or of course brilliant ideas from Ms. Martha.

Baby clothes on sale!

Anyone needing new baby clothes? There are a ton of good sales on right now at all the stores...

I just got a few cute things for Cole at Baby Gap, including some more of the best socks around. I don't know what it is, but the Gap's baby socks - particularly the ones that are supposed to be worn cuffed - are great. We just pull them up practically to his knees, so they look like part of a rugby uniform, and they don't fall off at all. Which is more than I can say for most other socks!

There were great sales at Baby Mexx (50% off everything), Baby Gap and Zara Baby and Old Navy had a few things on sale too. For some reason, there seems to be a plethora (of pinatas?) of cute girl baby clothes out and on sale. I've been able to find a lot of great stuff for Cole in general, but man alive, the stuff for girls seems to outnumber the boys stuff like 5 to 1!

Cole does a turn on the catwalk...

So apparently I can't help taking photos of Cole's outfits every time he wears something new... It's not my fault - he's just so darned cute! And he will be glad some day that I'm only posting ones of him in clothes (so far, anyway) - he's cute in the bathtub too. :-)

Here we see two of our favourites - the 'I Heart Mommy' onesie that Bonnie found for us and the 'Dad's Team' onesie that we got in the States a while back. We got that baseball one as a joke (we don't even like baseball) because it was really funny and has a baseball on the seat, but it actually looks really cute on him. Glad we tried it on him now - it's a 'newborn' size and from the looks of things, it's going to be too small soon! Cole looks fairly introspective/bored/distractable on the subject of baseball...

On the subject of shopping, I was really pleased to find some clothes for myself yesterday on one of our shopping-walking jaunts. It is hard to buy clothes when you are not pregnant any more but not your pre-baby shape yet either! Cole was very good though and slept soundly through many trips into change rooms. I think it must be the tragic emo music playing in various stores at the mall that lulls him to sleep. He's going to grow up and wonder why on earth he has an affinity for faux-mopey bands wearing guyliner and flatironed hair. ;-)

FYI - we were in the big Sears at Pacific Centre to look for a Jolly Jumper (didn't find one) and they have an actual nursing room. If you are looking for somewhere private to breastfeed in that area, it has a chair and a change table and all - third floor. Otherwise I've found regular change rooms to be excellent, so far anyway. :-)

Check - another essential off the list!

Don't go thinking that Jamie and I are all about frog t-shirts and wall decals (ok, we're mostly about the silly stuff). We also realized that we had to get down to business and finally figure out which car seat to buy so they'll let us leave the hospital with PJs! It was kind of overwhelming every time we went looking, so eventually we resorted to the good old Internet for advice.

I am fine with not using the infant seat on the stroller frame, so we decided to go with a convertible model that will stay in the car and allow PJs to sit rear-facing for the full first year, regardless of his weight, and then switch around for forward-facing use. It also reduces the amount of stuff to buy (rather than an infant seat and a regular seat a year later). Of course, I'm also glad to reduce the amount of crap we have to chuck in a landfill, since you really can't share or sell a used car seat for safety reasons...

Consumer Reports rated the Britax Roundabout as the top choice in the smaller-sized convertible category. It's got a ton of safety features that go above & beyond, and it also doesn't look hideous (which helps, but on this one subject at least, I decided to go for function over form!). We chose the Onyx one shown above (not that heinous cow version!!).

The only trouble was that all the stores in our area have the seat on backorder! Luckily, Dave & Bonnie were still down traveling the California coast in their RV. We found a store that sold the seat in the area they were in, and they were so sweet to pop into the cutest kids store - Chicken Little in Santa Barbara, CA - and pick it up for us. Thank you!!!

Ready for a stroll...

We went on Sunday to pick up our stroller from Crocodile on 4th. I'm glad we went with the Bugaboo Frog - for us it felt like the most comfortable, maneuverable option, and suited our minimalist aesthetic. It's totally a cinch to collapse and expand too.

I totally recommend Crocodile, by the way - the store owner put our stroller together for us and was really nice, and they have a lot of other cute stuff that I'll be going back to peruse more closely... If you're in the market for a stroller, check them out, because the Bugaboo Frog was $100 less there than anywhere else, and a couple of our friends bought a Peg Perago there for a good deal as well. And a shout out to Kimmie & Shawn who we met there unexpectedly! Have fun decorating! :-)

Jamie thoroughly "enjoyed" posing for this quick photo on the store's doorstep... We pulled the sunshade up on the way back to the car so it wouldn't be quite so obvious that we were a couple of tools pushing a carriage full of instruction manuals down the street...

Blik-tastic!

Jamie and I decided to get some different Blik wall graphics after some serious consideration of the bare walls in PJs room and after getting bored of waiting for the ones we ordered originally to arrive... We are not super patient - lazy perhaps, but not patient!

I started thinking that something a little freestyle might be better than the alphabet Blik (which, in order not to hamper PJs ability to read someday would probably need to be arranged, you know, alphabetically). We saw my other favourite graphics - Critters by Dutch artist Zeptonn - at Inhabit in Yaletown (the best store in the whole area) last weekend, and we went for a terrific walk today to go pick them up.

They were so easy to install. Plan a little, peel & stick! Here you see Jamie tacking up the graphics in the high areas for our test layout.

And voila! Here you see one of the two walls that we applied them to. I left room on the short wall for some artwork (to be found/made) and we keep popping back in there to check the room out. It looks so great and like lots of fun. It's a great solution to walls that you can't paint - they peel off when you are ready to change your mind again.

We still have a bit of decorating to do of course - I'll upload a good 360 view soon when it's all together!

Ahh - comfort!!!

So, I am sure I've mentioned my lack of sleep... I have been feeling extremely tired lately and kind of like I haven't had a good night's sleep for about seven months! Well, Jamie suggested that I get some new fancy pillows to help, and yesterday we stumbled across a great one.

We stopped at Relax the Back in Burnaby, one of those weird stores that sells $4000 tempurepedic mattresses and zero-gravity chairs to chiropractic patients and the elderly. The store and staff are actually really nice and we found the most fantastic pillow there.

It's a memory-foam contoured wedge meant to help you sleep on your side or back comfortably, with a separate neck pillow. It is really, seriously amazing and so comfortable. Mainly I'm using it on my side but man alive on my back - the best thing ever! I have to find out from the doctor tomorrow if it's ok to sleep like that before I really do. I hope so! This morning was the first time I've woken up in the morning in a while not feeling like the bones in my hips and back were being rubbed with sandpaper all night!

I highly recommend the "lady ramp" as I'm calling it to any other pregnant ladies out there. Thank you Jamie - good idea and great pillow!

PJs need not be naked anymore!

We just got back from a little weekend road trip down to Washington for a couple of days and a look at what America offers in terms of baby items - and deals! Our friends Mike & Mi ae, who are also due near the same time, came too and we had a great time.

We made a lot more stops than I'm used to making on the way to Seattle for food & bathrooms, including a stop for doughnuts at Krispy Kreme (for both). Jamie was exceptionally excited, apparently!

We started our shopping-a-palooza at the outlets and we found tons of great baby clothes there for PJs. We bought him a bunch of tiny little onesies, t-shirts and pajamas (PJs for PJs!). Our absolute favourite has to be this t-shirt featuring a rather cross-looking toad, resembling the Hypnotoad from Futurama.

I'm steering clear of puppies, cars and anything with a big name-brand cartoon character on it. Instead, we found lots of abstract graphics and stuff like sea creatures, reptiles, stripes, robots, monkeys and such. I'm so glad Jamie and I share a warped sense of humour, because it makes shopping for this kind of stuff a lot of fun.

We also hit up Target and got a Baby Bjorn carrier (for $50 less than at home!) and a few more clothing items and blankets. The fabulous designer line Dwell has designed a special low-cost line for the store, called Dwell Studio. We found some terrific kimono-style onesies that button all the way up the side and were only like $5, something called a union suit, blankets and the most adorable wearable blanket that zips up the front!

I would say we had a very productive shopping trip! We have made just the tiniest dint in our baby-needs iceberg, but at least PJs won't have to be naked!

I also got a cute pair of flats and a couple things to wear at the outlet mall - stretchy non-maternity clothes that fit now and yet make you feel human, shopping at a regular store. PJs likes his mother to have new shoes... :-)

Thankfully they were very nice to us at the border and we only ended up paying less than $20 for duty & taxes. I am not good at math, but even I could tell that they gave us a huge break, considering all together we had a trunkload of stuff...