So if you follow me on twitter or are my friend on Facebook, you already know what happened Sunday night: Oliver and Callum were goofing off on the couch (somersaults and jumping and all sorts), and I got up to cook dinner while singing my favourite song “one of you is going to get hurrrrrrrt”, and then one of them DID get hurt. Oliver pushed Callum off the couch (so they say; I didn’t even see it) and somehow he broke his elbow.

Little tiny boy in a big cast kind of makes me want to weep.

We were really lucky to only spend about 2.5 hours in the Emergency department on Sunday night, from start to finish.  Callum was in obvious pain, Oliver was way too interested in all the other patients and their ills, and I was on my own with them.

It’s times like these, times when we are stuck, like on a plane for 14 hours a couple of weeks ago, or waiting for an x-ray, like Sunday, that I am so thankful for my iPod touch.  I mean, I adore the thing anyway. I probably love it too much. When there’s wi-fi, I have a constant connection to email and twitter. I can sit outside with the kids and read the news.

In desperate times, I let the kids play with it (otherwise, they leave it alone on threat of death…). We recently discovered Talking Carl, and they’re finding it hilarious to torture him (worrisome!), but I don’t have full use of that app as it is better suited for an iPhone.  Their favourite apps are  puzzle games, Shape Builder Lite and Tozzle Lite, and ones involving farm animals (Occupy Baby Lite has On the Farm, and they always like Peekaboo Barn Lite). (Gee, do you see how cheap I am?! Free apps all around!)

Thanks to Mom Central Canada, we were recently able to try out 3 new apps from My Living Stories.  I asked Oliver, and he decided he wanted to download The Tortoise and the Hare, King Midas, and Goldilocks.

Review:

As with Talking Carl, My Living Stories apps are better suited for an iPhone rather than an iPod touch as they give you the opportunity to record your own voice to tell the story. I suppose I could get a microphone for the touch.  I can see that a voice recording would be neat for a kid missing a parent, grandparent or other significant person.

I liked the graphics of the stories. They were clear.  The child-like voice reading the stories was also clear.  Sometimes, however, the background music seemed to drown out the voice of the reader.  We found it especially hard to hear the narrator of King Midas in parts.

The kids enjoyed the stories, which they were already familiar with except for King Midas.  Overall, I think it would have made more sense to have a collection of many stories as one app, rather than one story per app, but I’m not familiar with how technically difficult that would be.

Giveaway:

Hey Canadians, would you like to win a $25 iTunes card?

Here’s how:

1. Leave a comment on this post between now and August 10, 2010 at 7pm EST. Please indicate which My Living Stories app you think you’d be interested in (you can choose from the Princess & the Pea, King Midas, The Tortoise & the Hare, Little Red Riding Hood, and Goldilocks & the Three Bears). Do you have other favourite apps for your kids?
2. Please leave one comment per person only. There are no extra entries for any other activities (e.g. tweeting about it).
3. Please make sure your comment includes your email address.
4. Contest is open to Canadians only.
5. Readers may enter the contests on multiple blogs participating in this My Living Stories Mom Central blog tour, but are only eligible to win one iTunes gift card.
6. I will use random.org to select one winner on August 10th after 7pm EST.
7. I will contact you and ask you for a postal address if you have won. I will provide your name and postal address to Mom Central Canada for it to be used to send you your prize.
8. You do not need to be a parent to enter this contest. Maybe you’d like to record a story for your favourite niece/nephew/random kid you know.

Good luck!

I’m sure I’ll be getting out my iPod touch again when Callum has his first cast off next week…ugh…

Disclosure: I am participating in the My Living Stories program by Mom Central on behalf of Decode Entertainment. I received 3 free apps and a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

PS: also still a giveaway going on, on the other blog, for UnderWAY supplement drinks, which claim to curb hunger, until August 3rd.

Wednesday night is soccer night — which means dinner is prepared in a hurry, so anyone going can get out the door 20 minutes after we all get home.  I stuck a frozen thin crust pizza in the oven, ‘quattro formaggi’, cut up some strawberries, picked some grapes from the stem, and left out a box of field green & herb salad.

The boys sat down to eat, and I grabbed a slice of pizza. I suddenly had the idea to put some of the salad leaves on top of my pizza. I sat down, took a bite, and my time machine took me back to 2001.

July 18, 2001. My birthday. And I was crabby that it was my birthday and no one seemed to care (sometimes, I’m sulky and it’s stupid, I know). And it was really stinking hot. But? It was also Jean and Michelle’s wedding day. We were in Rome, Italy. We had come on this trip, the three of us, with the intention of getting these lovely people married in Rome. There had been problems getting the marriage license. There had been delays from their original planned wedding date as there was a minimum residency requirement. But today? They were getting married. For real.

Their Catholic priest back home in Northern Ontario had a connection to an American priest in Rome. I think I vaguely remember there had been a quick phone conversation to confirm that he would perform the ceremony.  We had ideas of a what a Catholic church wedding in Rome would be like – particularly after sight seeing on foot the previous few days, including a trip to St. Peter’s Basilica. I am not a Catholic. There is no god in my life. But visiting the Vatican just bowled me over.

Anyway; we found the church. And it was incredibly unlike St. Peter’s. It was kind of retro, maybe built in the 60′s. But here was the priest – a lovely, friendly man, whose American English was delicious after days of thick Italian blundering (by us).

I can’t remember everything about that day. I know I wore an unflattering long pale green dress I’d never wear today. I know that Jean and Michelle were so happy, and I had a tear in my eye. I know there was a funny old Italian man as a witness, besides me.

What I mostly remember is the priest taking us out for a meal afterwards. We went to a restaurant we never would have experienced: a small family-run place, nondescript. I was just guessing at what was on the menu, my Italian lacking. I ended up with a cheese pizza with rocket/arugula on top, and it felt like the best meal I had ever eaten. I can taste it now. I tasted it tonight, when I sort of recreated it. Almost. I was almost there.

We were invited back to the monastery to stay (I NEVER imagined I would end up sleeping at a monastery in my entire life) and it felt like the best sleep ever. After days of camping and hosteling on the cheap (the cheapest you could imagine), the newly married couple had their privacy, and so did I. A comfortable bed and a luxurious shower. And breakfast in the morning. It really was amazing.

The kids brought me back down to earth, with one squawking at the other, after I spent a few minutes back in Rome.  It was nice to go back, almost exactly 9 years later. I know I’ll go back again for real one day.  Maybe even with my good, still-married friends – if they’ll let me crash their second honeymoon like I did their first.

**

Speaking of food, there’s a review and giveaway on that other blog over there right now, for underWAY supplement drinks that claim to curb hunger. You can see what I think about them, and you can ask to try them, too, if you leave a comment, all you Canadians.

I’ve got stories. And I’ve got a blog. What a great place to tell them. But what I don’t have is time.  I’m so tired of complaining about how busy I am on here. Even if it’s true.

I’ve got the story about how when we got to England, I had a sinus infection, and then my latent-almost-non-existent asthma flared up due to the weather over there, so I ended up at the doctor asking for an inhaler and maybe some antibiotics. And I ended up at the bloody hospital all day with a port (IV) in my arm because they thought I had deep vein thrombosis/a pulmonary embolism. I didn’t. I had asthma and a sinus infection.

I’ve got stories of adventures in England. I’ll have to post some photos. Sometime.

I’ve got the story of coming back, which really I don’t even want to repeat, because I’m just going to get stressed out again. Because you expect, when you step on a plane to fly from the UK to Toronto, that you’re going to be sitting on it for about 8 hours, including boarding and landing and all that jazz.  But we were so lucky. We got to be on our plane for 14 hours! You can just imagine how much fun that was: 14 hours straight stuck on a tin can with a 2.5 year old and a 4.5 year old. Also, they threw in some drop-out-of-the-sky turbulence in for extra fun. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I’ve got stories. But this week (we got back Tuesday night), I had a night out for book club. Mark had a dentist appointment. We had to unpack. We had to get the dog from the pet sitter. And we had to clean it all up because, yes, our house is for sale and we need to keep it ready to view. There’s a viewing today. Fantastic, I’m thrilled - but I’m soooooo tired.

Tonight I’m escaping for a night to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a little luxurious splurge with dear old friends from university. A group of lefty social workers (3 of us did our Master’s degrees together 10 years ago) who haven’t had a proper chance to catch up since one got married last summer, maybe since before that. There may will be wine and laughing and tears. It will be good.

On Sunday, I’m turning 33. We’ll have dinner with my family. There will be cake. It will be good.

Maybe I’ll have more time for stories next week.  Or maybe I’ll be storied out. I think I might be.