Another new baby! Welcome Eleni Nicole, daughter of Maria and Joel, who are our friends from London who now live in Pennsylvania.
I think most of my friends who are going to have kids have actually already had them, so this is exciting – a firstborn! Eleni was much anticipated. I am hoping that we are going to be able to visit them soon, maybe even at Easter. I miss hanging out with Maria loads, and Mark and Joel can commiserate/celebrate their British expat-ness in North America. Oh, and Oliver and Eleni can get married one day. Sounds good to me.

I am so bored at work today; I have nothing to do until like 5 people get back to me on a few things, and the two people who could give me more work to do are not here.

So I walked to the Eaton’s Centre on my lunch, not a short walk, brisk as I could in the slush and mud. Winter gets awful when snow is wet and melting and brown.

The most impressive feat of all? – I went to H&M, Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn and didn’t spend a cent. That could have a been a Visa bill in the thousands! But instead, nada. Wasn’t that inspired anyway, except by some Henckels knives but they would bankrupt me.

Only 1 hour and 57 minutes until I can go home…not that I am counting.

Somewhere in the deepest USA, someone will be receiving a fax order and then taking it by hand to an Amish furniture maker, who is going to make a dining room table and chairs for us. How random.

Mark has been obsessed with having a huge dining room table (one of his other Canadian dreams, along with the large plot of land), and we’ve been searching for the right one for weeks. Basically we couldn’t find anything in the major furniture stores – something close at Leon’s but the chairs weren’t right. We found another place that did custom orders, but the price sent us back to Leon’s ready to take anything.

Mark happened to hear an ad on the radio for Amish furniture, and there is an outlet near to my parents’ house. After being indecisive all weekend, we took the plunge and ordered our set this afternoon. I hope it will turn out well – at least we know by what’s in store the quality will be very good. The table will look something like this but darker; the chairs are sort of a slightly more modern mission style. It should be with us in 6-8 weeks, once the company has gotten around not being able to fax or email the builders directly. I didn’t actually really believe they were using real Amish builders until they assured me it was true and offered to show photos of the process. I wonder why they don’t get Canadian Mennonite furniture makers involved?

I had a great week at work because (a) I had 4 free high quality lunches; (b) I got to drive in to Thornhill instead of taking the GO train downtown for 2 days, which was so much better than my normal commute; and (c) I got to see my good friend Jean on Tuesday who was down in Toronto from Sudbury giving a keynote speech at a conference (he’s a teacher who’s done good work on a French literacy project). I never get to see Jean and Michelle as they live so far north (and even lived in Yellowknife for a while) and have two little ones but I hope as we are all in the same province now, we’ll be able to rectify that situation.

Awww … congrats to Samantha and Bill and big brother Tate on the arrival of UnNamed Little Brother. Sam, you are such a champion – 2 home births and no pain relief. I bow to your womanhood; I am clearly inadequate!

But you have to hurry up and name him so I can send him something.

Today I discovered just how negligent we are as parents – Oliver came home from daycare with a bunch of valentines from his [...hmm...what do I call them? co conspirators of cheekiness and mayhem? co prisoners? colleagues? fellow students?...] little friends and treats too! As well as a little mailbox that may just feature his first scribbles. Or some other kid drew them on for him – who knows.

Anyway, the point is – we didn’t send anything. Oops. I really didn’t even think about it. Valentines’ Day in England isn’t so much a day for the kiddies in Mark’s experience and I’ve just been too sick in the mind and body to think about it properly. So I think we are going to have to send some stuff for his last day there in a few weeks. I just need to find something certified 100% definitely peanut free and kid friendly to take.

I have actually lost any sense of guilt of taking him there, really, in particular for the last 3 days when I’ve been home and technically I could have had him at home too. But why, when he literally is acting like he has the time of his life there. He often comes home tired and miserable – cranky for food and drink and bed, after a busy day. But the whole time he is there, he’s as happy as a clam. Are clams happy? Who knows – Oliver is. I’ve had the chance to pick him up and drop him off and he really does love it. He just loves being around other kids and it’s great. I think the daycare we chose has been a really good introduction for him, and I’m sorry that we are going to have to switch when we move, but I am sure he’ll settle in the new place too.

Still at home – how crazy is that? I am actually feeling better, I could have gone in today, but we are having a huge snow storm so they told me not to come in again. I am going to do some work at home today, and I have a teleconference to run this afternoon.

Monday, though, Monday was crazy. Or rather I was little crazy. I had a glimpse of what madness must be like as my feverish night, waking and dreaming, consisted of hearing voices, having delusions of grandeur, and also thinking that I must have meningitis or something really bad. Despite taking extra strength Tylenol, my fever kept coming back Sunday and Monday until yesterday I lost the chills and most of the aches. I can’t remember being so sick, other than the time I had pneumonia when we were visiting London in August 1995, except I didn’t know I had it until I got back to Canada.

I’m worried about Mark driving in to work today but he assures me this is what 4 wheel drive is for. I just took Oliver to daycare with 4 wheel drive and I didn’t think it was that fun. At least if he expires today, he gave me some bling for Valentine’s Day before hand! I got a necklace with a circular diamond pendant, something similar to this. So nice. I’ll have to show it off tomorrow when I go in to work finally again.

I’m at home, on my own. I can’t even remember when I’ve had a whole day on my own before. Actually I do – probably December 2005 before Oliver was born. I’m not having a fun alone day though. I’ve got whatever lurgy he had on the weekend and I feel like I am dying. His cough started Friday, mine on Saturday. His feverish day was Saturday; mine was Sunday – it must have broken around midnight when I woke up just covered in sweat, the tylenol had done nothing for it up until that point. His nose is running but mine not so much as it’s decided to live in my chest instead. I should go to the doctor, but I am also expecting daycare to call any minute and tell me to come and get him as he’s too sick to be around other kids. I don’t actually know why she hasn’t called yet. So I am not entirely sure what to do.

Other than sit in my pj’s, drink coffee, stare blankly at the tv and put my feet up. Doctors should make house visits for everyone (yes I am sure the public health system can support this! ha ha); the thought of having to shower and get dressed just slays me right now, I have no energy or strength. Lazy sick person.

Nothing else is really going on. The days are consumed by commute (ugh), work (good), and that’s about it. Other than I am just so looking forward to moving. I think I am going to have to add a ticker to go with my own mental countdown.

Randomness:

• I bought a toque/tuque today for Toque Tuesday (charity – buy a hat, money goes to combat homelessness), which I haven’t done for a number of years since I’ve been out of the country, but I think in those years they have shrunk the size of the toques. Or my head has grown even bigger. It like barely fits. I don’t remember it being an issue before, particularly since I wore the last one I had for ages.
• Mark’s commute is not as bad as we thought it would be, or he was just lucky yesterday. And he has EXCELLENT benefits. So I have a good pension and he has really good benefits – well done us.
• He’s leasing a Volkswagen Touareg, but hasn’t got it yet, so they lent him a Jetta, which he is enjoying. I think he misses having a zippy car. But we need to worry about the condition of the winter roads, and transporting Oliver and Piper. So we’ve gone for more practical options rather than fun ones.
• I treated myself to some Burt’s Bees lip shimmer. It’s good.
• After what seemed an enormous amount of effort to get my UK mobile phone working here (…I ordered an unlocking code on ebay.co.uk, figured out how to change the band as it’s a tri-band phone, I ordered a Rogers sim card on ebay.ca, Mark changed the plug on a UK extension lead so I could charge it up as it’s dual voltage, and then I managed to register the phone with Rogers and get a phone number…) – they gave Mark a phone at work yesterday. So we now have 3 between us. Annoying. They are catching up to UK mobile phone usage here in Canada, like the phones are mostly the same models now, and they have GSM now (using sim cards), and people use them a lot more than they used to. But people don’t seem to text as much, and the worst thing of all is that pay as you go is not really pay as you go, it’s pay once a month or your credit is gone. Stupid.

I haven’t taken any proper photos in a while, despite having a brand new Canon 5 megapixel we bought in the Boxing Day sales – actually mostly because I had ordered a 2 GB memory card and it took ages for it to be delivered. But it’s here now, and I went picture crazy on Saturday.

So I give you this slideshow on Flickr, fairly representative of a Saturday. And now I’ve got lots of photos to share with relatives in the UK.

Today was fun; we have public health insurance coverage now, so we decided to get him caught up on his immunizations. This kid hasn’t had a jab since he was 4 months old and he ended up with one of the pneumo-meng’s in one arm and his MMR in the other – yes there were screams and tears. But he’s been fine ever since.

And full time every day daycare starts tomorrow, with Mark going to work. I am a lot less stressed about it now though – I think he’s having a good time there. He absolutely loves other kids now, just wants to go and have a chat (babble) with every little person he sees. Will be interesting in 5 weeks when we change daycares, however, how he deals with the abruption of the change, and how he deals with being the littlest one in the junior toddler room!