The b'day party that ended in stitches

Well, almost.

After a near perfect day, including the morning spent at the fanchasmic Canmore Children's Festival, then the afternoon (otherwise known as Cay's b'day party) spent frolicking on waterslides in Banff, it concluded with the birthday boy slipping on a top step and inflicting a nasty cut on his eye.

Poor little dude.

Luckily, we had this to distract/compensate with:

Please note: I'm only proud of this because:

a) I am SOOO crap at doing the cake thing.

and

b) Cay is particularly pedantic and when he asked for a Batman cake and I could find no black icing in a 100km radius of Canmore, I was completely and utterly resigned to the fact that no matter what I did, he'd pull a Donald Trump on me at the presentation of my assignment.

But he loved it. And coming from a newly-4-year-old with a cut to the eye and a birthday perogative to cry if he wants to, that's sayin something.

ROCK!

PS Thanks to Girl Clumsy for the icing advice!

Always My Little Man

My little man turned four today. Yep. Four.

His birth was so amazing - as far as torturous experiences go - I distinctly recall afterwards just thinking that all I wanted to do with my life was have babies. Sigh. His was a waterbirth, and while I'll spare you (and I) the gorily intimate details - though if you're really keen, just look up 'waterbirth' on youtube and you'll soon get the picture - just know that it was really peaceful. So much so, that afterwards the midwives were trying to prod him and poke him just to get him to cry, cos he was so content and peaceful just chilling out in my arms in the bathtub.

And now here he is: four years later.

He drives me nuts with his J-Lo like schedule of costume changes, his inclination to blame me whenever he bumps his head/scrapes his elbow even if I'm not in the same room as this occurence, and his obsessive/compulsive rants regarding washing his hands BEFORE flushing the damn toilet.

But...he also cracks me up with his sayings (the latest one being "Rock the Casbah!"), his highly involved toy-based stories (last week's was very short and basically involved him picking up Ella's cabbage patch doll and shooting her in the face: twice. Please don't ask), while his cuddles first thing in the morning melt me into puddles of sleep-deprived goo.

"Am I REALLY four?" he asked this morning.

"Yup!" I said.

"Am I still Caleb?"

"Yup!" I laughed. "You'll always be Caleb."

Happy b'day little man.

Keeping up with the Jones'...

...or more specifically, keeping up with my good ole blogging and real life friend, Girl Clumsy, who has inspired me to get rid of the cobwebs, do some spring cleaning (it is actually Spring, over here in Canada, after all) and revamp the Comic Mummy premises. Thanks Nat!

My website's getting the onceover too pretty shortly, which I'm extremely excited about, given that my main man Matty B (who is a completely and utter GENIUS) is on the case and I cannot wait to see what delights he spews forth. Ah boy.

Mothers Day has come and gone - I wrote a short but sweet column on it last week but forgot to link it. Sozzoms! Here tis, please don't fret, take a deep breath and enjoy. Hopefully.

And this week's column (basically detailing how Mothers' Day was spent - i.e. on girl guide camp with little Miss Five) is up too if you're up to feeling like a CM stalker on this lovely morn.

In completely unrelated but worthy-of-documenting-for-my-own-reference, I had my last snowboard of the season today and it was ROCKING like an Opera. I finally experienced the joy of 'spring skiing' - i.e. slushy soft snow, so lush and thick and sloppy that it removes all fear of injury, sunny skies (resulting in my first ever Canadian sunburn) and absolutely no queues to the chairlift all day. I'm already lamenting the season's end...summer better be damn well spectacular to make up for it.

Seriously.

Getting the balance, slowly but surely

One of the reasons I think I'm finally starting to get this family/comedy thing in balance is that I'm trying less to balance things on a day-to-day scale, and more to balance them in a wider time-frame, say, over the course of a week, a fortnight or even a month.

Weekdays, I'm pretty much 100% focused on the kiddly-winks. I'm happy to report too, that while homeschooling is certainly proving to have a pretty stepp learning curve, it's getting better and better all the time. My relationship with both kids has improved (with Ella out of SIGHT), I've connected with quite a few more homeschooling families too, which has been awesome and my dear new friend Penny - who literally has an entire wall full of resources - has been unbelievably helpful, encouraging and full of wisdom. She's my little smiley sage. Love her.

Then come the weekend, I usually spend Saturday mornings with the fam and attacking the house, then after lunch make the trek down to Calgary for training with Loose Moose. This weekend was quite the juggling act though.

Friday: Drove down to Calgary early and performed in the Loose Moose Micetro show. Oh boy, I had the most magical time I think I've ever had onstage, I feel like all the training is really starting to kick in and I just let loose, was completely ridiculously excited just to be onstage and had a ball. I usually constantly swing between being in love with stand-up and improv - at the moment it's improv all the way baby. Plus I think I've found a director for my solo show - I don't like counting my chickens before they've hatched but it's looking good! I then crashed the night on Loose Moose friends' couches and did friendly battle with their cat who apparently took a great liking to my sleeping bag covered head.

Saturday: Spent most of the morning shopping for the Cay-man's b'day party (he's 4 on Thursday: WHAT THE?!) but unfortunately was unable to locate a Batman costume, his number one request. Ah me. Then met up with said little dude for a day out with Thomas the Tank Engine. My friend Sabina brought him down with her and her little ones for an afternoon of rides, face painting and da-da-da-da, an actual ride on THE Thomas!

Then jetted off to Loose Moose training in the afternoon (wonderful, wonderful, wonderful - we're doing 8 weeks on status work, which I'll write about more soon on the improv blog) and THEN off to meet up with my little girl on her first ever girl guide camp.

Phew. I just wrote a column about it which I'll post once it's up - in short, it was exhausting but lovely, and I've been so emotional lately just at how quickly both my kids are growing up. Such a cliche, but well, that's what they're cliches for. When they sang their Mothers Day songs this morning, I actually cried. Yep. Cried.

After lunch we drove back home, hung out as a family, then Timmy and I went out on a hot date to Banff for some much needed, well, 'hot date' time.

Then home just in time to tuck the kids into bed, give the house a quick once-over and brace ourselves for doing it all over again this week.

Phew.

PS Massively belated but sincere Happy Mothers Day-ness for all you hot mamas and mamas-to-be out there. You rock the world and don't forget it!! xxx

Vagueness, more comedy tours and a cliffhanger

I've been feeling a bit up and down of late, not to sound too mysterious but I've been waiting on some rather important news and as it turns out: Shock! Horror! I'm incredibly impatient. So much so that in the interim I've taken to sliding into a little rut of demotivation, putting my life on hold and hoeing into a brownie-baking spree until the news is uncovered, decisions can be made and I can re-enter the world at a fiery pace. Or at least, some pace that is not 'standing still'.

Yes, yes, very vague I know. I'll get there.

There are many good things happening which amazingly, are good for both comedy and family. Woo-bloody-hoo! For instance, I've scored another nice little tour back to BC in June, which I am so incredibly stoked about because the last time around I fell in love with the place, even when it was frozen stiff - this time around, it will be summer, which I've been assured is just magic on a mountain range. AND...the family's coming along for the ride. I'm currently driving myself mad trying to hook up some more gigs en route back to Alberta so we can take our time meandering back, but you know...whatever. It's all in the spirit of adventure. Tim was at first a little reluctant to take the time off work, but then (in typical Jen fashion) I just launched at him with my "Come on! We're in CANADA! We didn't come here to win employee-of-the-month awards, we came here to see the place, to experience something new, to have fun as a family!" Mission accomplished.

So yes, all is well - hopefully shall have some news soon. And then, at the risk of sounding like a Lost promo, all will be revealed...

Fatigued round-up: possibly an unwise move

SOOOOO tired.

Hmph.

This entry may not even make sense, such is my state right now. You have been warned.

So, the weekend in a nutshell:

1) Spent yesterday at the very wonderful Calgary Zoo. The kids LOVED it! We LOVED it! Our camera...dead. Waaaaaahhhh!

2) Then proceeded to balance out the family time with some me time, otherwise known as Loose Moose training. So very wonderful. I'm blogging about it (bit by bit, as usual I'm overcommitting myself) at the other place.

3) Have been trying to nail Caleb down to his birthday party plans (he's turning 4 in a little over a week: how did that HAPPEN?!) but he keeps changing his mind on a half-hourly basis. Seriously...I've been this close to ordering his birthday cake decorating set off ebay when he changes. One minute it's Buzz Lightyear, the next it's Lightning McQueen. When did my offspring become so fickle?

4) Money - or rather lack thereof - has been proving a little 'stressful', shall we say.

5) Spent much of today hiking with the family - well, the kids biked it - through woods, alongside rivers and general all-round picturesqueness. The kids LOVED it. We LOVED it. Our camera...dead.

Cest la vie!