that was a weekend

had a great time on sunday. we went with Tim and Lissa over a suspension bridge and along a treetop walk. it was kind of cool ... but not so impressive that it warranted opening both eyes simultaneously. we got a good view of Grouse mountain though. not enough snow to play in there so we went home and got out the X box.

dad and Tim spent a good couple of hours practising their snowboarding, and then Tim felt ready to take me on. i won't tell you the score, but lets just say i'm a canadian and he's an aussie - hardly a fair match. who do you think won?!!

songs of the day:

through the barricades - spandau ballet

trouble - coldplay

8 weeks old

my vital stats for all the ladies out there (especially my grannies):
today i weigh 12lbs 10oz (5705g) and I'm 23.5" tall.
my hair is definitely growing and darkening, and i can pack a mean punch.
my vocabularly is enlarging all the time, and i now have a wide range of coos, gurgles and squeaks, not to mention the cries and yells i've been perfecting for a couple of months now. i'm now working on expanding my range of facial expressions.
my breastfeeding skills lack finesse (mom doesn't often take me out to eat) but what i lack in style i more than make up for in suction. apparently i should be putting on 15-30g a day at the moment. i like to push that envelope to over 50g myself. i've largely accomplished this feat by demanding to be fed at very regular intervals (sleeping is for wimps) and by hoovering milk directly from the breast, rather than a bottle, so mom doesn't know how much i'm eating and stop me when i've had my ration.
i've grown out of my newborn and some of my 0-3 month clothing and have moved up to size 2 pampers. i'm making good use of the increased capacity which impresses dad more than mom!
anything else you need to know, just ask

Shopping

mom gave me my first lesson in buying Rice Krispies this week. we went to Safeway and put two big boxes in the trolley. they were on special offer - usually 7.99 each, this week they're only 2.99. bargain! even better mom had two coupons, each for a dollar off. when we came to pay however, they tried to charge us 3.99 a box. my mom's too sharp for that though, and we went to see the nice man at customer service (the one who let me change my newborn size diapers for a bigger size when i was a few days old). he got cross with the naughty pooter for charging us wrong, and gave mom the first box for free, and the second box at the right price. that meant he gave us five dollars back. are you keeping up with this? so far we've got 15.98 of Rice Krispies for 99 cents. BUT each box has a coupon on it for 50 cents off our next purchase, so in effect they gave us 1 cent to take them away. Mom's good at this kind of stuff!

Just two questions. why is cereal so expensive? i thought we grew grains and stuff in Canada, and secondly why does mom think i need to know how to buy Rice Krispies?

I'll scream and scream

until i make myself sick, but i'm not going to eat, and i'm not going to lie down, and i'm certainly not going to sleep even if it is 4am. i want to be upright and walking around like the big people. dad didn't seem to appreciate this too much, but mom was much more sympathetic. she walked me around the apartment and we had proper adult conversation. it can't have been too interesting though because i some point i forgot i wasn't going to sleep and must have dropped off. the next thing i knew i was waking up in my sleeping bag, back in my bed. sneaky trick.

smiling

this is a message to all the miserable kids out there. smile ... lots, it makes life so much better. it's particularly rewarding smiling at the big people smiling at you ... they love it, and the world's a better place. :) breastmilk and smiling, joel's favourite drugs!

Eaten alive

mom often complains that i've eaten her alive, so recently i've been trying this out for myself. i don't know what she's complaining about. it's my latest discovery - i LOVE eating my hands. when i'm hungry, when i'm bored, when i'm going to sleep, when i'm waking up....pretty much any time is a great time to eat my hands. mom now gets upset when i try and eat her and my hands at the same time. you'd have thought she'd be glad i was trying to feed myself.

more sweet music thoughts

thank you for your comments on my blog, i have international friends ... what fun.

uncle nick - i don't have a gramophone, so your two tribes 12" is no good to me, however dad tells me that he did record the pleasuredome album onto mp3 complete with full static, scratches and pops, so i will happily listen to two tribes and tell you what i think. grandpa wasn't very impressed when daddy bought that album, but daddy won't tell me why yet.

feeling christmassy today, so dad played me the definitive christmas song ... wizzard : no, slade : no, cliff richard : i don't think so, george michael : no. dad tells me this song was a perfect lullaby for me a few weeks ago. it is of course ...

a fairy tale of new york : the pogues and kirsty mcall.

dad says it's the only christmas song i'll ever need. if you've never heard it, let me know and i'll send you the mp3 - recorded from record with static ... so cool.

'to do' lists

dad has always been the master of 'to do' lists in this family. if it's not written down, it doesn't get done - at least not by dad. since i arrived mom has started writing lists too. i guess that's probably because she's trying to set a good example for me. some of mom's stuff i approve of: she has good intentions to get me at least one passport - a nice blue canadian one to match my eyes, and a british red one that'll match my face after i've been screaming for ten hours on an aeroplane. two passports, two birth certificates - it kind of makes sense .....less than two weeks until christmas though, which means less than two weeks until mom can cross off 'buy christmas cards' from her list.

i'm a bit worried that neither of them has 'buy Joel christmas presents' on their list. if it were to appear on both lists then i'd be doing really well. i overheard that dad's planning on going out and buying an X-Box later "for the youth group" so he says. i know it's for me really. i need to practise my snowboarding tricks ready for when i'm big enough to go out on the mountain.