I wish I had the time to tell you all about this amazing trip but I didn’t bring the laptop and borrowed time is too precious.

I can say that the flight was good, the stewardesses amazing, Ping Pong delicious and that red dress just as gorgeous as I thought. I can say that the recession seemed to give the people of Britain some sort of electic shock therapy because not a single day has gone by without helpful, charming, friendly people.

I can also say that lunch with the ladies I used to work with made my soul sing and the group gathering at the pub on Sunday pulled at my heartstrings. Oh and did you hear, Canada won the hockey?

There hasn’t been an epiphany – its been more like climbing back into bed with an old lover who knows what you need more than you do.

My daughter is a charming travel companion ( just like her father, who I miss more and more each day) and we haven’t really stopped since our feet touched the tarmac but its been delightful (if not a touch exhausting).

I can’t believe I leave in a week.

Off to the pub for dinner…

Ta-ta for now!

em xoxo

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I can’t quite express how excited I am about this trip. I’m courting epiphany and am squeeeeeeing about the friends I get to spend time with.

I am going to go to hereto drink Vanilla Lemon Vodkas and eat little steamed parcels of deliciousness.

Then I’m going here

Where I want THIS to be mine…

And then I’m going to go here and here.

And finally we’ll be hitting The Castle for a nice pub lunch on Sunday before I head to Husbando’s parents.

I have no idea if I will have a chance to post while I’m away but if not – catch you on the flipside!

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I have to admit that its true, Little Miss is definitely not what I expected from my child. You see, Husbando and I are pretty strong personalities (‘high energy’ a friend kindly said) – he’s a politics major who can hold his own in any debate with anybody. I’m an opinionated go-getter who has no problem performing for hundreds of people. We’re strong, independent and headstrong (we’re also both Aries – go figure!) and neither of us like being wrong. So I expected Little Miss to possess the most obvious of our character traits.

Except she’s doesn’t.

Somehow I managed to give birth to one of the easiest going creatures on the planet. Want to introduce a bottle? Sure thing! A sling? Not a problem! Want some time after she’s woken up in her stroller after a walk? Just leave her there! There has been nothing we have thrown at this girl that she has balked at. She falls over and laughs, takes solids like a champ and adored the pool the first time we visited. We can take her anywhere and do anything (I’ll let you know about the whole long haul flight thing in a few weeks) but so far she’s unflappable. In short, she’s everything I aspire to be. I honestly wish I was more like my five and a half month old daughter.

Perhaps that’s the point, maybe she’s here to remind me to relax and take it easy or not get too worked up over stuff. I guess I just didn’t expect to learn so much from her – isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

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First up was the Kinder sponsored kid’s party at Casa Italia. I had been bitching that there weren’t any Olympic events for young kids so when I was invited to this “Playdate” I was really excited. We had a great time – they had facepainting, a dance floor, Olympic photos and more chocolate than you can imagine. It was literally “Here’s a bag, fill it with chocolate!” That said, as is sadly usual with free stuff, some people always take the piss. I watched one woman fill clear a table of chocolate mega packs while a child (not hers) tried to put some in her own bag but the woman was snatching the boxes too quickly and later overheard the face-painting girls in the bathroom talking about an older boy who demanded “I’m the biggest person here so I should get the most chocolate!” Little Miss loved seeing all the other kids and ended up falling asleep in my Beco during one of our many dances on the dancefloor.

Afterwards one of my IRL BFFs suggested I join her family for dinner so we headed into Yaletown to try and find a kid friendly restaurant without an epic wait. Surprisingly it didn’t take long and we ended up at a new BBQ place. It was crammed but everyone was so chilled out and the staff were incredibly accommodating of our strollers and little ones.

As we left a woman stopped me and took a picture of Little Miss. I was a bit surprised (I mean how random!) but this woman said Little Miss was such a “quintessential” baby she had to have a pic!

After that, our bellies stuffed with ribs, corn bread and wine we had planned to walk straight back to our cars but as we strolled the cobblestone sidewalks the atmosphere was too enticing. When we came upon a DJ set up outside a storefront my friend’s daughter wanted to dance so we stopped for a bit. All of a sudden a totally adorable little boy appeared beside the stroller and he was stroking Little Miss’ cheek. His mum was a bit embarrassed but confessed that he “absolutely loves babies” and he was so gentle with her, and was soooooo enamoured of her it was too cute to interrupt. Little Miss kept grinning at him and it was so sweet when he kissed her on the forehead <cuteness overload> and she giggled. After they left I took Little Miss out of the stroller to join the full on dance party that had formed on the sidewalk, complete with drunk teenagers, 20-something hipsters and a couple of senior citizens.

It all felt so European and relaxed – everyone was relaxed and pleasant and kind to each other. I even had some perfect strangers high five me in the street as I walked back to the car! I realised that I definitely love the busy bustle of people in the city, that I miss that mass of energy you can only get with millions of people. I wish Vancouver was like that more often.

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On Monday morning the torch just happened to swing past our house which meant that we just had to see it! We invited some friends over for an “Olympic” breakfast at 7:30 and then at 8am we headed up the street to see the torch:

Seeing the torch upped my Olympic temperature from lukewarm to slightly raised so we decided to head over to the local events center to check out the official torch celebrations.

With, you know, several thousands of our closest friends.

A friendly sea of red!

I loved this sign one of the elementary kids made:

And there was a fantastic portable theatre space from Slovakia:

We got to “share” the flame:

And cheer Canada on…

In the evening we managed to grab last minute tickets to watch a friendly match between the Russian and Slovakian Womens Olympic teams (Russia won 4/0) but the day of celebrating was a wee bit too much for someone:

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I don’t think I ever got around to posting pics of the nursery so here’s one we took to help with house selling (made me realise we need a rug!) We decorated the room ourselves and my mum and I (she did 90% of the work) made all the crib bedding, the roman blinds and recovered the chair in the damask print. She did an AMAZING job!

Some of my favourite things in this room?

• Name print above the crib from Penny People Designs
• 3 Sprouts Elephant storage bin in far right corner
• Giant Monkey (on chair) by BlaBla Kids
• Owl (top left corner of the wall shelf) by b.delicious
• The “A” and “Z” bookends whose’s colour spouted the whole design (and who Benjamin Moore used to create the wall colour for me!)
• The adorable (and perfectly matched) wooden mobile which was a gift from the owner of a local toy store just after we found out we were having a girl (no idea who its by!)
• All the old school Fisher Price toys once belonged to Husbando or me

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As I lay next to her she pulled my forearm towards her (she’s got some grip that kid) and then wrapped her arms around my wrist and snuggled up to me. Wrapped around my arm, her little hands stroked (and sometimes scratched) my hand as I lay there breathing in the moment. She needed comfort and no blanket or stuffed animal would do – she wanted me. She wanted her mummy.

Last night it happened again – just as she was slipping off to sleep she reached out for my arm and stroked my wrist until she fell asleep. On my side, breathing in that heady scent of “just washed baby” I was so happy just to be there. There will be plenty of moments where she won’t want to hold my hand (hell I’m sure there will be plenty of moments when she won’t want to speak to or be seen with me) but in this moment, right now, there’s nowhere either of us would rather be.

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The first one came from See Kai Run. I had ordered Little Miss several pairs of (totally adorable) half price shoes during their December sale. By the middle of January I figured something must be up so I emailed them and asked them what was going on with my order. I very quickly received an email back apologizing and explaining that it seemed they had experienced a technical glitch when I placed my order that charged me but didn’t schedule my order to be fulfilled. Sadly because this hadn’t been discovered the shoes I had ordered were now all sold out. They apologized again and then offered me two different ways they could remedy the situation. They could either refund my credit card immediately or I could choose ANY three pairs of replacement shoes from the site – email them the size and styles and they would ship them to me right away. I chose the shoes (um hello!) and was able to order Little Miss these adorable shoes:

There was never any question or debate that they were going fix the problem – they admitted it was their mistake and immediately remedied it – making me tres happy and an ongoing customer.

My second great experience was with Mally Bibs. My grandmother had sent Little Miss some money for Christmas and had asked we get her something special with it. After much thought I decided that it would be sweet to get her one of the personalized Mally Bibs – I could chose the design (I love their old heart and crossbones design), the colours (her nursery colours of course) and have her name put on it.

With their custom design studio you choose the colour for the front, the pattern on the front, the main colour for the back, the colour of the pocket on the back and the colour of the name. I wanted the colour on the back to match the pink of the heart pattern on the front and thought I got it right – until the bib arrived and I realized that the colours on my screen weren’t the same as the bib.

Now I know that I am probably one of the only people that would notice but when you pay $50 for a bib you want it to be exactly how you want it to be and I knew it would bug me every time I looked at it. So I emailed Mally Bibs and explained the situation and asked if there was anything that could be done.

I received an email back very quickly from them saying that although they usually charge for changes and repairs they could see how similar the colours looked on the screen so if I sent the bib back to them they would fix it for me for FREE!

This is all in stark contrast to the service I’m receiving from my insurance company as I try and get our beloved iMac replaced after it was damaged. Do mom businesses better understand their customers (mostly other moms) better? Are they more sympathetic? Or do they better understand that moms are more likely to talk to other moms about their experiences and therefore one bad experience can have an outreaching impact? Whatever the answer this is one mom who is very grateful that they are more clued in and that both See Kai Run & Mally Bibs made my life easier! Thanks!

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Little Miss is sick, waking four to six times a night and generally being the Mayoress of Snotville.

Husbando’s working six days this week as well as having his hours rearranged for the Olympics at the last minute and because of said Olympics can no longer drive into work so on top of all the rearranging and rescheduling (and never seeing him) I now have to drive him to and from the Skytrain – 25 minutes away each way, twice a day AND he’s been told they want him to work every Friday night (this is in addition to every Saturday night and Sunday day.) That sound you hear is our social life crashing and burning.

Add to that the fact that our beloved iMac has DIED (obviously right after I moved ALL of our photos from the last FIVE YEARS to it so they would be in one place for me to back them up – the move happened but the back up didn’t) and despite being covered by our insurance the insurance company think that I agreed to a ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR deductible which I have NEVER had a house insurance deductible that high because, well, quite simply, most things in our house are worth far less than one thousand dollars so I don’t see the point of having a deductible worth more than something that might break.

And with the house on the market we are living in a show home where I can’t for the life of me find anything because we’ve hidden it away to look minimalist (with a five and half month old – HA!)

My sanity, and apparently my body (Now with added benefit of scratchy throat, achy muscles and itchy eyes!) are both abandoning me.

Dear this week – please leave me alone and pick on someone else. The sleep deprivation is making me crazy and I can’t be held responsible for my actions.

Lots of love,

Em xoxo

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