i hate crying.  i always have.  especially in front of other people.  you know how there are always those people who look so elegant and sweet when they cry?  and people are always like, "oh you poor thing...  there there..."  not me.  when people see me cry they run away screaming.  i am not a pretty sight.  my face does that whole scrunched up stupid thing, my nose runs, my eyes are red, i can't talk properly cause i'm doing those big gasping sobs.  it's terrible.  and the worst part?  i'm a crier.  i cry over everything.  always have.  probably always will.  my hubby says it's one of my endearing qualities.  and believe me, if anyone should have been scared away, by now it should have been him!

i was frustrated today.  frustrated with the student loan people who are all going to be burning in hell while i am relaxing in heaven.  ((man, that's not a very Christian thing to say, is it?))  jason and i have some pretty massive student loans from university, and we would love to make payments on them to just get the idiots off our backs.  alas, they do not want our money unless it is their specified sum.  a sum of course which they have deemed us "capable" of paying.  of course, this amount is taken from our gross income, and does not take into account ridiculous luxuries like rent...  diapers...  food.  how dare we try to feed our children on a daily basis!

anyways, the united way credit counselling guy was, as always, totally amazing, and he got us more answers than ja and i have gotten in about 2 years.  hopefully that'll all be straightened out soon.

on the upside, how adorable is my son? (click on the pic for more)...  he looks like some kind of adorable little fat cheeked pumpkin...

this was taken thanksgiving weekend in waterloo at this fabulous park they have.  we went to see Glenna's new apartment and have some family time there.

and how cute is this?

both the kidlets like to sleep the same way...  gotta have their lovies on their heads.

hopefully they'll be prettier criers than their mother!

are often forgotten in the light of day.

i came up with something that i wanted to blog about, and man oh man was it witty!  and insightful!  and just plain fun!

unfortunately, i have forgotten what it was.

so i guess you'll just have to trust me.

while in a bubble bath tonight...

keyzia:  hey!  my bum makes bubbles too!

me:  it does?

keyzia:  yup.  watch out, momma, it's going to be stinky!

me:  ephraim, what does your lion say?

ephraim:  rooooaaar!

me:  good boy!  what does a duck say?

ephraim:  kack, kack, kack

me:  yay!!  what does a cow say?

ephraim:  rroooooaaar!

me:  a cow says moo!

ephraim:  rroooooar!

me:  what does a horse say?

ephraim:  rrooooooar!!

me:  a horse says nay!  what does a horse say?

ephraim:  roooooaaaar!!

 

is there really any point in arguing with a one year old?  all animals but ducks say, "rrooooaaaar!" i guess it makes it easy to remember, hunh?

why, why i ask you does it seem to always be that even spontaneouly best laid plans get trampled in the dust of life?

rachel (a good friend of mine) and i have been wanting to do some leaf pics of our kidlets ever since the leaves first started changing.  keyzia's first fall we did pics of her and us in the leaves, and they were absolutely beautiful.  of course i bragged about them, and then rachel wanted some too!  (ummm...  rach?  didn't mean to sound like you're coveting there!  but...  how could you resist my incredible talent with a camera??)

we've been trying to go for a few weeks now, but the weather has usually been sucky, and when the weather is good it's been sucky the day before so nothing really has a chance to dry out.  it's quite annoying actually.  the weekend of nat's wedding would have been perfect, but i was already posing for pics then 4 hours away.

anyways, this morning it was overcast, but the weather channel was not calling for rain (of course, now it is, but that is part of why i feel that virtually everything in the world is out to get me)(psychosis?  not me.).  so, i ran around, rachel ran around, we both ran around and finally met up here so that we could walk over to beavermead and do this beautiful colorful leaf pics that would be so amazing we could open a gallery and people would be in awe over the beauty of our children amongst the leaves.  that's what we thought would happen.

instead, milana started crying as soon as i put her in the wagon, keyzia was whining about...  well, who knows...  and as soon as we stepped out the back door of the building we were hit with some rain drops.

me:  is that rain?

rachel:  yup.  think i just felt a drop there.

me:  well, waddaya think?  do we just hit the park down the road so we're still relatively close?

rachel:  sure.  that sounds good to me.

me:  it's probably just going to spit a little anyways.  i mean, the weather channel would never lie to us and tell us it was not going to rain today right before it starts to rain.

rachel:  oh no, the weather channel would never lie.  i mean, i think that might be impossible.

me:  okay then!  let's go!

**awright, awright, so the conversation may not have gone exactly like that...  but that's the basic gist of it anyways**

so off we go to the park that's just down the road from us.  i thought it might be good because it's kind of backed by some woods...  woods have trees, trees have leaves...  leaves are essential for leaf pictures.

one good thing, it was beautiful back there.  the leaves were all kind of gold on the ground, you couldn't even see that we were in the middle of the city, there were some strategically placed huge rocks...  logs... etc.  perfect.  now.  to. get. the. children. to. do. anything. but. cry.

i snapped a couple of quick shots of my kidlets while they were happy tearing around back there, and rachel tried to bribe/threaten/plead with milana to stop crying.  then keyzia started crying.  she wanted to "get out of the woods."  the angels were definitely ephraim and kierra at this point.  we set the beautiful bright eyed kierra up on her tummy and totally piled these gorgeous leaves all around her.  she was so sweet!  i think i may have even gotten a couple of shots of her smiling.  awww, what a co-operative baby....  until...  until until until...  i thought that maybe taking a couple of rachel and kierra would be sweet.  rachel wasn't crying ((yet)) and kierra was in a good mood...  ahh yes, genius, genius i say!  alas.  no.  kierra started crying. 

this was the point where we realized that we should have packed it in right outside the apartment when it started spitting.

ephraim was the good one now.  i did get a couple of him climbing around some trees and stuff, so hopefully those will turn out, and the ones of pre-cranky kierra should be nice.  the ones of snot running down the face scrunched up crying keyzia and milana...  not so nice.

i'm going back to bed.

i'm bored with my blog.  yes, you heard me, bored with the look of it.  it's very frustrating, however, not knowing the lingo, or a lot of code, and trying to make the damn thing look the way i want it to. 

i think i'm in a "simplify" kind of mode...  i'm pretty sure no one was using the links in my sidebar anyways, but if anyone wants them back, just leave a little doo dad in the comments and i can put them back.

also, any suggestions for layout or whatever, just leave them there too!  i've been seeing a lot of other blogs, and you know, they're just so pretty!  i want to have a pretty blog too!

and yes, i do know that the grass is always greener...

you wake up in a foul mood for no particular reason?  and then your husband makes you feel like a completely incompetent wife and mother before going on his jolly way to work?  and then you can't shake that feeling all morning?

and the two...  and the six as well!!

jason's cousin and her hubby, and our good friends surprised us with this fancy dancy new phone on friday!  it is too cool.  we can set it to play different songs for when different people call in (ja picked the 007 theme for him...)  and, best of all, every single buttons work when you press them!  how great is that?

unfortunately, this marks the end of our weekly survivor/csi watching nights with james.  carla had abandoned us by going to toronto to school, and leaving us to feed her poor starving husband.  (ha!  just kidding carla!)  hopefully soon enough they can come back to peterborough to continue the friendship that we've developed.

and hey, having family close by to babysit sure helps too!

well, it seems as if the colder weather is upon us.  time for bundling up and extra sweaters...  even hats some days. 

now, the problem with children is that they grow.  they seem to grow continually.  and since last year at this time, ephraim was only 2 or 3 months old, he has outgrown his hats from last year, forcing us to go hat shopping.

of course, the first place that i went was walmart.  ahhh walmart, you let me down.  i was not happy with the hat selection at walmart.  (but, quite frankly, our walmart sucks.)  thankfully, as luck would have it, there is a children's place in the mall and after a quick look at the puppies, we dashed in to see what hats they had.

i'm quite particular when i buy things for the kidlets.  especially new things.  i think i may just be too cheap....  but, they did have hats, and they should fit the kidlets next year too...  i wanted them to tie or attach under the chin in some way, because, as you will see, ephraim hates hats.

first we did keyzia.  she was easy, her coat is pink, so she wanted a pink hat.  easy.  there's even room for pigtails if we need it!  ephraim's coat is yellow, and they actually had yellow and blue hats.  great.  keep in mind here that keyzia is happily sitting in the back of the cart, with her new hat on her head, and ephraim is sitting in the front.  i pick out what i suspect will be his size, put it on his head and....

"bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

flop.  he completely flopped over backwards so that he was hanging into the back of the cart, with his arms sprawled back.  totally limp.  apparently there is some kind of poison in that particular hat that attacks one year olds and instantly kills them.

okay, no problem.  i took the hat off him and he sat right up, flirted with the sales girl, happy as can be.  put the next hat on him.

"bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

flop. 

take the hat off and he's up and back to smiling and laughing.  these hats must only affect boys with some kind of a temporary paralysis of all the limbs causing them to go limp and be unable to move until said offender is removed from the head.

i did get him a hat.  and he has worn it.  without going limp...  most of the time. 

i think the only antidote to the hat disease may be the coming of spring.  is it too soon to start looking forward to that?

 

my son.  my darling angel son.  okay, okay, so he was NEVER really an angel...  what with the incessant screaming and all...  but, my son has started talking.  he has figured out that when he says, "mo" we will shovel more of whatever we have been eating into his open mouth.  when he says, "booobbbbbblllleeeee"  in that pitiful little "how could you deny me anything that i wanted," voice, then he gets a bottle or a cup.  he has also added, "zia" "buppy" (puppy) and a few others to his list.  he'll actually try to say just about anything!

so, all of this has resulted in the need to add a new category.  much like konversation with keyzia, we now have ephraim's exchanges where i can record all of the wonderful things i am learning from my youngest child.