Little Updates

Posted on by boj Posted in General

Trev’s “graduation”

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A week and a half until Trev starts kindergarten. He is going on a bus safety training tomorrow. His school is 1.6 km away from our house. My elementary school was 500 m away and my middle school was 1.2 km. The middle school was in a completely different part of town and I would take the tram to get there sometimes. The two elementary schools available to us are both about that distance away from us and they are still “really close”. I’ve lived in the suburb for over a decade and this still blows my mind.

Anyhow, Trev is really excited and I hope we have made the right decision. From talking to other parents and teachers, the school he is going to is decent (better than the alternatives in the neighbourhood anyhow). A lot of his friends from the daycare, including one of his two best friends, will be going there and the school has just introduced grade 4 french immersion so we will not need to move him to another school if we decide to put him in that program.

Penguins

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Despite the penguin fever that swept his older brother, Owen is indifferent. I made a penguin suit for him, but so far he is not interested in wearing it.

I found that I really enjoyed sewing these. Now that the seeing machine is out I might try and get the other projects finished. My quilting project got put aside when I got pregnant because I was too tired to sew, but now I feel a very different kind of exhaustion which makes sewing actually relaxing.

Pool

This year Chris got a really good system for keeping the pool in good condition on regular basis. I think I used the pool a bit more than previously though that could be mostly due to the fact that we stayed in Ottawa throughout the summer. We did not have people over this year as much as previous years which makes me a bit sad, but the back yard needed some maintenance and I was in no state to spend energy on it. Hopefully next year. I would like to see the return of our yearly BBQ and some more playgroup dates.

Ready for Halloween???

Posted on by boj Posted in General2 Comments

They had these really cool monkey suits at Trev’s daycare. Trev liked them so much he asked us to buy him one. We said, “Ok, if you earn twenty stickers we’ll go to the store and get you a monkey suit”. Trev diligently earned his twenty stickers so I asked the teacher at the daycare where they order their costumes from. Turns out that one of the teachers picked it up at the Goodwill. Oh.

Mental note: do not promise your kid you will get them a costume unless it is a month leading up to Halloween and you are physically in front of the said costume. We turned to the Internet because you can find anything on the Internet. You can find monkey suits on the Internet but they are too expensive. Or really, they are not expensive but when you add the shipping cost they become too expensive. Additionally, the costumes on the Internet were not even half as cute at the one at Trev’s school. We did the next best thing, we ordered monkey costume sewing pattern from the Internet and told Trev that we are “on it”.

Fortunately for me, by the time the pattern arrived and I was ready to start sewing, Trev hit the penguin phase. Penguin costumes are much easier to sew and it was quite easy to find a good tutorial.

So here is the result. Trev seems pleased with it and so am I. Now, should I make a matching costume for Owen?

Ready for September???

Posted on by boj Posted in General

Today I filled out my mat leave paperwork. I have not submitted it, I will keep it for a few days to make sure I am happy with the dates but essentially it is all done.

Trevor is supposed to start school in September and the week (we think) he starts will be the first week of my mat leave. Despite the fact that I am not sold on the whole concept of kindergarten, I am really excited for Trev. I almost cried today when I was thinking about how he is moving on to a new school. I am really nervous and hope that it all goes well.

Safety

Posted on by boj Posted in Bike, General

I have been wanting to write a bike safety post for months, but there is so much to talk about with respect to bike safety, that I could not get a post of readable length together. Fortunately, someone has already done it for me. This post comes as close as anything to how I feel about family cycling.

Then there is the pregnancy. Do I recommend cycling while pregnant? Heck yes! (Assuming that your ob/gyn approves it, which mine did). When I got pregnant with Trev, I soon stopped biking and going to the gym. I was simply too tired to do any of it. I stopped biking even before I realised I was pregnant because I just could not huff it in the athletic way I did before kids. I did prenatal yoga, which is better than nothing, but half a year of very little physical activity made it very difficult for me to recover form giving birth and thanking care of an infant. It took me a year or longer to regain any energy whatsoever. For those not in the know, a year without having energy to do all that you need to get done sucks.

With Owen I was prepared so I kept cycling in the summer and took spinning courses in the fall. By now I knew how to exercise while pregnant so I took that into the account. The endurance I’ve built up in spinning got me through the birth without drugs and I bounced back much, much sooner than the first time. So far, in this pregnancy, cycling has made me stay physically fit. This was particularly important since my hips readjusted very early (around 4 months) making it quite uncomfortable to walk (I’ve been wobbling for more than half the pregnancy). If I don’t cycle for several days I get sore, the muscles in my legs seize up during the night and I am generally grumpy. The weeks this summer when I was recovering from stomach flu or when it was too hot and humid to go outside or when my bike was broken were the worst this summer.

Are there risks? Sure, but like any other activity, you balance them out with the benefits. Car accidents are one of the leading cause of accidental deaths for children yet we still strap our little ones into the car several times a day every day. I’ve yet to meet someone who chooses to not drive for the fear of death and if I did I would think that they suffer from paranoia rather than making a rational decision. It is the same with biking. Like with the car, you make sure that your bike is in good working order and you ride in a way that you believe is safe. With biking the question really comes down to what you believe is safe and what you feel comfortable with.

With this in mind I took the CAN-bike course this weekend. The first section of the course consisted of theoretical part, then we did some drills and finally we went out on the road. We drove a bit around Centrepointe area and then hit Woodroffe, Medowlands and Hunt Club. We stopped biking about an hour earlier than scheduled because both Charissa and I were tired. This, I believe, had mostly to do with our bikes not being suited for long rides. According to the instructor’s bike computer we did about 18km, but she didn’t do the drills so I think Charissa and I must have done at least 20km if not more which is usually the limit of what I can do on my utility bike. We did all of the tasks except merging over four lanes of busy traffic to turn left, mostly because our bikes are too slow and we were getting tired. Frankly, I have no intention of merging over four lanes of traffic at this point in my life so no skin off of my nose. At least I know in theory how to do it.

Was it worth taking the course? I didn’t learn a lot of new things, which was in line with my expectations. I did learn a couple of new things and I corrected some minor impressions. Overall, I took the course to ensure that I am aware of “best practices” and to make sure I am as aware as I think I am of safety issues. In that sense the course delivered what I expected so it was worth it for me. Would I recommend it for others? If you think that you would learn from it, than it is probably worth it. I will definitely insist that our kids take the children’s version of the course once they are old enough and I would definitely recommend it for other people’s kids (because I am nosy that way…).

Possible baby names

Posted on by boj Posted in Baby, General3 Comments

We have a little bit over a month until the baby is expected and we are still not anywhere near having any idea what to call him.

Here is the brief list of names we have not discarded as of yet:

Bryce
Camden
Cameron
Douglas
Dylan
Liam
Logan
Lucas
Markus
Stuart

Overall, I am doing well but I find myself slowing down.

A spat

Posted on by boj Posted in Bike1 Comment

So I am having a bit of a spat with my bike store. I had my bike in for regular maintenance a few weeks ago and they did a terrible job. Well, maybe not terrible, but I had to go back twice (so far…) and that is twice more than I should have gone. I am definitely not happy.

The problem is that, other than this experience, I really like that bike store. This is the only store I’ve gone to that caters to me. I tell them what I want and they put it together. Sure, there are plenty of bike stores in town, but if I have explain to their resident expert what a bakfiet is, I sure as heck don’t want to buy it from him.

Currently my bike wheel is unusable. No bike makes for grumpy Boj. Grunpy pregnant Boj. No fun at all. I have another wheel on order. Usually when I am unhappy with the store, I just don’t go back. But there is something in me that is just not ready to give up on the place. So here are my options:

1. Screw them, get the wheel from somewhere else and never go back.
2. Get the wheel, get them to install it and then never go back.
3. Get the wheel, grump a bit about the maintenance job and then get some baskets that I have been wanting to get from there but insist that none except for the head mechanic ever touches my bike now or in the future. Get maintenance somewhere else or wait for winter when only the head mechanic is there.

There are two decentish bike shops in Kanata. I can go there, but they don’t cater to my needs (one is all about speed and performance and the other focuses on recreation). There are two other bike shops on Bank street downtown that carry the products that I like, but I am not too familiar with them. I’ve been to one and it seemed good but it felt too much like a boutique for me to have confidence in them. Perhaps I misjudged? The other one I have never been to, but that is where Dan got his bike so I am sure it is decent (I have to remember to ask Dan about it next time I talk to him). I am going to shop around for a bit and decide form there.

So back to my spat. I believe the problem is with the junior mechanics they have for the busy season. On one hand, we all have bad days, and sometimes things get overlooked. On the other hand, it is the management’s responsibility to make sure all of their employees, especially junior ones, are doing decent job. The maintenance list says that they will do a test ride once the bike is tuned. If they did a test ride, how come they did not notice that my bike could not shift into the first gear? For crying out loud, there are only three gears on the bike, how could you miss that??? Why was my wheel out of true if one of the steps is checking the wheel in a truing stand? Grhh!!!

I don’t know what to do. Part of me is wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, the other part of me thinks I am being a softie fool for it. Tune in next week to find out what I ended up doing…