Swimming

On Friday Morgan and I took Delphine swimming at the local community centre where they have a baby pool, a shallow pool with warm water and wide graduated steps.

Delphine did not take to the water like a fish. She wasn't scared, but she wasn't willing to give it her whole-hearted commendation without further study. So we sat in the shallows, and she considered.

If you haven't met Delphine, I should explain now that she is a very serious little person. She approaches new situations with gravity and deliberation, studying her surroundings with big, blue, unblinking eyes before deciding if she approves.

It took her a good ten or fifteen minutes of thought before she concluded that sitting in a large puddle of warm water doesn't suck. She learned how to splash herself by pounding on the surface of the water, never failing to be surprised by the result. *splash!* *blink* *blink* "What happened? My face is wet." Then she got her hands on a toy orca and chewed contentedly on its tail and watched the other children until it was time to get out of the pool.

Altogether I think we sat for at least forty minutes. While Delphine studied and considered and decided, Morgan and I watched the other people. There was a little boy with red goggles who talked to everyone, there was a girl in a red flowery suit who was fascinated with Delphine, there was a mom who constructed an elaborate Rube Goldbergian fountain out of flutter boards and watering cans. It was a hoot. We'll go again.

Two Things I Don't Feel Guilty About

...although I feel like I should.

One: I don't read to Delphine. I know you're supposed to read to children from the moment they're born to imbue in them a deep and abiding respect for the written word, but reading to Delphine is and has always been a wresting match in which I attempt to prevent her from eating the written word. So whatever intangible benefit you're supposed to get from being read to as an infant, Delphine's not getting it.

Two: I only bath her once a week. Other people say "Oh, I hardly ever bath my baby, once every three days is enough!" Or ever four days, or so. Not Delphine! She gets a wash every seven, whether she needs it or not. I don't think it's doing her any harm.


In other news, she's learned to crawl on her hands and knees. She doesn't choose to do so very often, but she can, I've seen her. She still prefers to creep about on her belly, like a snake. I'm going to make her an outfit out of Swiffer cloths and rent her out.

She's starting to get the pincer grasp, so I let her feed herself little puffed rices and shredded cheese. She's also eating tofu, and I think tonight I will set some of our pork aside and blend it up for her lunch tomorrow. Meat!

She's learned to get back down to ground level from standing, which is great news because previously, her only option was to fall over and hit her head. It also makes her very mobile and pretty much the master of all she surveys; she can go from sitting to standing, standing to sitting, sitting to crawling, crawling to standing. Since the condo is generally safe I let her hang out on the floor, exploring and humming to herself, for long stretches of time while I get stuff done.

Bored Now

Somehow, inexplicably, I have nothing to do. There is no pressing housework, I have no paperwork to do, I can't knit because it takes too much concentration and unbroken blocks of time, I've read and read and read until my eyes are bleeding.

I guess it's not inexplicable. Christmas is over and there isn't another errand-intensive event like that in the forseeable future. More significantly, Delphine now plays by herself for reasonably long stretches of time, so jobs that used to take hours to do in between attending to her, now take a few minutes. My last problem is that this wintery weather is stretching on interminably, and I have nasty cabin fever. I've been hiding inside, only going out for necessities, for weeks now and I'm tired of it.

Fortunately, next week is rich with activities; Monday is choir, Tuesday I'm trying to set up a board games night, Wednesday morning is playgroup, Thursday I'm going to see Ellen and Dexter, and Friday is a baby storytime at the Mount Pleasant library. If that doesn't keep me amused, or at least busy, nothing will.

Enough

Let's get that bit of glurge off the top of the page, shall we? I called my brother and he is JUST FINE, he is not a child or an emotional cripple, he does not need me to take care of him, he is perfectly capable of living in a city without me there without falling into the pit of despair.

Seriously, I always think he's much more miserable than he really is. He sends me these long gloomy Eeyoreish emails about how awful everything is and I get all upset. Then I talk to him on the phone and he says the same things, but he says them with a smile in his voice and I can imagine the spark in his pretty blue eyes and I know he's okay.

I, on the other hand, am running out of money, am freaking out about it, am so clumsy and nervous and excitable that I seriously took a pregnancy test today (negative). I need a break, or something, and Delphine won't stop crying. Feh. Soon Blake will be home and we can go to Starbucks and cook a pizza or something and watch bad television, and then it will be the weekend, hoorah.

Bad Sister

It's my brother's thirtieth birthday today, and he's alone at work in Vancouver right now. He was supposed to be visiting my parents but he couldn't take time off because of a deadline.

I didn't get him anything; he's planning to move to Japan so he didn't want anything heavy, and I don't know what he likes to listen to or what video games he plays. I didn't want to just get him something for the sake of getting him something, so I ended up getting him nothing at all, which is kind of sad in that it's nice to get presents, but in some ways an inappropriate or unwanted gift is worse than no gift at all. Or so I tell myself. I hope he doesn't mind, or think I don't love him or think about him, because I do.

He's not happy in Vancouver; it's not working out for him. The weather is miserable, he doesn't love work. I worry about him. In some ways I wish he had moved to Toronto instead of Van, so I could see him and keep an eye on him and take care of him. But in some ways (most notably geographically, but also culturally, I think) Vancouver is closer to Japan, which is his goal and something I want him to achieve. So maybe it's best that he's there and not here. But I still miss him terribly.

I love you, Dave. Happy thirtieth.

About Blog-o!

Quick introduction. Blog-o! is a weblog shared by Blake and Amy. It's split up into categories, which are listed in a sidebar over on the right there. If you click on one of the categories, you'll only see posts in that category, so if you only ever want to see what Amy has to say about Delphine, you could click on the "delphine" link under "amy", then bookmark that page and never have to read anything else.

Blog-o! is run using PyBlosxom, a Python blogging doo-dad. For more information about that you'll have to talk to Blake (it's Amy writing here) or click on the graphic over on the right. I don't know how it's supposed to be pronounced, but I advocate "pie-blossom".

Too Cheap to be a Girl

Delphine and I walked down to St Clair to have lunch with Del's Grandpa today, and on the way we stopped at Shopper's Drug Mart to pick up some stuff. Specifically, I need some new moisturizer for my face, something with SPF. I was going to pick up some Neutrogena SPF 45 I had heard about, because apparently SPF 15 isn't high enough.

Two problems; first, they didn't have Neutrogena SPF 45, the highest they had was 30. Second, the SPF 30 was, I shit you not, twenty dollars. Twenty dollars for face lotion is too damn much. I already spend that for a tub of alpha-hydroxy cream which makes my zits go away, I'm not about to add another $20 tub-o-gold to my repertoire. So I ended up getting another bottle of the Oil of Olay stuff I'm using now, for ten dollars, which is still five dollars too much. I'm seriously thinking of getting a bottle of regular old sunblock and using that instead; deep in my heart I know that there's nothing special about the stuff they pour into the face cream bottles and sell for a million dollars an ounce. It probably comes out of the same vat as the five dollar no-name hand lotion.

I also got a box of Natural Instincts temporary hair dye in Hazelnut or some such nutty colour; right now my hair is reddish brown with about an inch of dark brown plus grey at the roots, and I want to cover up the reddish and even it all out. I'm never sure what colour to buy to match my natural colour, and I either end up with almost-black or something too light which makes my hair look too red. God, my life is hard.

The last thing I got was Aveeno diaper rash cream. Del's had a minor diaper rash for about three months now, and the only thing which really makes it go away is cortisone, and that only temporarily. I haven't tried the Aveeno stuff yet, and I'm sure it won't be any different than everything else on the market, but it's worth a try. It's got to smell better than Desitin, anyway.