Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Today is my niece’s 5th birthday!  How did you get to be five years old already, kiddo?  I remember my sister calling to tell me she was having a baby like it were yesterday!  I remember going to visit you for the first time when you were only two weeks old – such a teensy tiny little thing – like it were an hour ago!  I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you – all bundled up against the cold Toronto winter, you and your mom came to the airport to pick me up.  Just a perfect little angel!

I asked your mom what you wanted for your birthday this year and she told me a typical Madeline story.  She’d asked you “What do you want for your birthday?” and you’d answered, “I don’t need anything.  Well, I’m almost out of paint.” ¹  But I’m an aunt and aunts can’t get their nieces *nothing* for their birthday, so I hope you like what I sent you! ²

It’s hard for me to be so far away all the time, knowing I’m missing out on so much of your life, but I cherish all the times I do get to see you and I think of you every single day!

Happy 5th birthday, Kiddo!

Love, Aunt Beth

1. Seriously people, what kind of kid doesn’t go crazy wanting presents??  A perfect angel, that’s who!  I mean, I’m 32.92386712 years old and *I* act way more like a five year old for presents that my niece does! [↩]
2. For the curious, I settled on sending some money for her to use to adopt an animal of her choosing at Toronto Zoo.  She loves the zoo! [↩]

For me, September is going to be a month o’ babies.  First up, I’m babysitting my friends Clayton & Jodelene’s baby next Saturday while they go to a Sarah McLaughlin concert.  Mason is six months old and so so so so cute!  I’m really looking forward to hanging out with Mason for the afternoon.

The next weekend brings Sarah and Dave and their baby, Teddy, to town from Ottawa.  Teddy is seven months old and so so so so cute! And I’m the worst aunt in the world, ‘cuz I haven’t even met Teddy yet, so I’m ridiculously excited to finally meet him!  While they are here, we are also going to meet up with Sarah’s friends Deepa and David and their baby, Sarojini. I’ve only seen a couple of photos of her from when she was born (so so so so cute!) and she’s about five months old now so she’ll be sooo much bigger than those photos.

And then the weekend after that my sister, her bf and my neice are coming to visit.  And, ok, my neice is almost five years old, so she’s not exactly a baby anymore. But she’s always be my little baby!  And I’m super duper excited to see all of them. And to take Madeline for a drive in my Smart Car!  Also, they are going to come and watch me play hockey. Yay!

Decided to go for a change of scenery, so Tod and I are now at Workspace, where a slew of other bloggers are Blogathoning!  I’d post a pic but it’s time to post, so this is just going to have to be the shortest blog post of the day!

What’s Workspace, you ask?  It’s this: http://www.abetterplacetowork.com/

Mad props to Workspace for letting us blog here today!

Don’t forget to donate!

Read about the charity that I’m supporting, Options for Sexual Health!

I’m 26/49ths¹ of the way through this Blogathon, to be exact.  And I have to say that this is even harder than I thought it would be!  I mean, I didn’t expect it to be a walk in the park to publish a blog posting every half hour, but I’m feel far more drained than I would have expected for just more than halfway through! Seriously, I just had to stop for a full two seconds to think about if “through” or “threw” was the correct word in the first sentence and that’s not the kind of thing that I normally have problems with.  Directions, yes. Spider phobia, definitely. But the difference between “threw” and “through,” not usually one of my problems.  I also almost called Sarah viscous in one of my comments and I honest to FSM had to go to the dictionary to find the correct spelling of vicious.  Because it’s much nicer to call your friend vicious than to say she’s of high viscosity, right?

Mercifully, I have a few guest postings lined up, which gives me enough time to actually breath in between blog postings. Because, for the most part, I’m knocking these babies out with just enough time to reply to comments, answer emails, take the odd photo for an upcoming posting & upload it to Flickr, and then knock the next one out!

And a big shout out to those who have commented, because it really does help to know you guys are out there reading this stuff and to have a chance to chat in the comments section, and to those who have donated to OPT.  The Blogathon.org page says I have 8 pledges totalling $217.46, but when I add up all the donations in my list, it’s actually $252, so I’m not sure how that all shakes out.  But my tired brain is waaaay to tired to even think about attempting to think about attempting to think about their calculation.

¹Or I will be as soon as I click “publish” on this posting.

Story #1

My niece alternates holidays with her parents.  One year she spends Christmas morning with her mom (i.e., my sister) and Easter morning with her dad, and the next year it’s switched around the other way.  This year she spent Easter morning at her dad’s place and she was concerned.  How was the Easter Bunny going to know that she’d be at her dad’s place on Easter morning?  No problem, my sister told her: we emailed the Easter Bunny to tell him.

Story #2

My mom sometimes picks up my niece from daycare (which she calls “school”) if my sister and her bf are busy, but she hasn’t had occasion to do so in a while.  My niece says, “Why doesn’t Grandma pick me up from school anymore?”  And then she think s more about it. “Why doesn’t Aunt Beth ever pick me up from school?”  (My niece lives in Toronto. I live in Vancouver). My sister tells her that Aunt Beth lives very far away and it takes about 5 hours on an airplane for me to get from my home to her school.  Apparently, however, this is not a good enough excuse. “She could just fly here for two times.”

Congratulations are in order for Sarah, the Resident Historian and Chief Political Correspondent here on Not To Be Trusted With Knives, and her husband, Dave, who welcomed their son, Teddy, to the world on Jan 20!

I’ve seen a few pictures and have to say that he’s pretty damn cute.  Also, he looks just like me when I was born¹ . Which totally makes biological sense. I mean, I’m his Aunt Beth², after all.

On the left, Teddy, in a photo I stole off Dave’s blog. On the right, me, a mere 32 years, 11 days ago.
¹Yes, I realize the arrogance of that statement. I have a category of rampant narcissism for a reason, you know!
²where “Aunt” = honorary aunt as we are in no way genetically related.

“It’s as clean as a button”¹.

“She’s so tired that her head could pop off!”

“Mommy says a lot of bad words.”  To which my dad asked, “Does Aunt Beth say bad words?” To which my niece replied, “No. Only your other daughter.”

And my personal favourite was this conversation that we had while she was painting and I was uploading pictures to Flickr:

“Lugubrious,” she said, pretty much out of nowhere.

“What’s that mean?” I said, thinking that it was a word she’d made up, sort of like the name Sposheila².

She looked at me very seriously: “Lugubrious³ means miserable. My teacher taught me that.”

¹Apparently she likes to attempt similies, but doesn’t always get them quite right. My sister tells me that one day she walked into the living room, which had just been cleaned and said, “This living room is as clean as a horse in a living room!”
²Her toys are often named Sposheila. Or Sholo.
³Pretty much everyone I’ve told this story too has said, “Lugubrious is not a word.” But it is. I looked it up.
²I love that “miserable” is the word she uses to dumb down the other word to explain it to people. Because “miserable” is a pretty big word in itself. Especially when she could just say “sad.”

Is that normal for a 4-year-old?

I generally like to start my Christmas shopping around Dec 23.  Living across the country from my family means that I can’t really do that, so I generally do my shopping around Dec 18, buying everything in one frantic day and then praying to the FSM that Canada Post will deliver in time for Christmas.  This year, however, I’m going to visit my family in late November for my wee niece’s 4th birthday, so I’ve decided to be responsible and do my Christmas shopping before then so that I can bring all my presents with me to Ontario.  This may also have to do with my cheapness responsible frugality, as bringing presents on my trip means I won’t have to pay the exorbitant shipping costs I usually face come Christmas time.  Thus far, I have purchased a grand total of two – count em, two! – Christmas presents, as well as a few things for my niece’s birthday.  So, yeah, still a ways to go, but it’s a start!

Plane tickets have recently turned mega-cheap, so my sister booked a flight for me to go to T.O. for my niece’s birthday weekend in November.  Madeline is turning 4 when, apparently, she is going to be a big girl.  And have a pig-themed party.  So excited!