Vodka and Soda

Adventures in Toddlerhood: July 2011

 

i can't believe how fast kayla is growing and how much she's developed.  

 

Stats:

• Age:  3 years old
• Height:  3ft, 2.5in
• Weight:  28.6 lbs (after 1 year, she gained about 1.5lbs.  she needs to share her secret pronto)

Developmental Milestones I've hit/working on:

• I'm fully toilet trained!
• I love singing! I love singing Jahpo chinese songs and sometimes I make them up.
• I can recognize and spell my name
• I can count up to 20 and recognize the entire alphabet
• I love talking
• I'm learing how to cut and use (safety) scissors
• I can hold conversations with people (and they actually understand me)
• When I speak, I look for acknowledgement from the other person
• I can dress myself
• I know my left foot from my right foot
• riding my bike

What I'm doing now:

• I listen nicely to mommy and daddy
• Dancing and singing any chance I get
• I can swim with floaties!
• I love doing arts and crafts; painting and stickers are my favorite

My favorite things right now:

• Toopy and Binoo!
• Adele, especially her song "rolling in the deep".  I love to sing along
• playdates
• the park
• taking care of my baby dolls
• sleeping in my own bed.  mommy and daddy keep asking me if i want to sleep at grandma's and pappa's but i don't want to
• Canada's Wonderland; especially the roller-coasters
• books.  I love books and when mommy or daddy reads to me before bed
• riding my bike
• Going to Grandma and Pappa's house so I can play with my cousins

 

trimming the fat

i've been doing a little house cleaning in terms of social media the past few days.  facebook, twitter and my google reader have all slimmed down in terms of people i follow.  no reason really;  i'm not being a snob, just keeping it real.  i'm sure people have done the same with me and do i care?  not really. it's not like unfollowing is insulting me in any way although people sometimes take it that way.

why i've slimmed down:

facebook

• you're my co-worker.  i did this because i prefer not to mix business with pleasure.  although the people i connect with at work are super cool, the professional me needs to have the clear distinction between business and personal.  also, i blog about work stuff and i don't want them reading it!
• i only accepted your friend request because i was in the inital stages of upping my friend count when i first got onto facebook years ago.  other than that, we have no commonalities and come now, let's be honest here - is there really a point?

twitter

• you don't tweet anymore - this is akin to purging your closet of clothes you haven't worn in a year.  if you haven't tweeted in 6 months, i unfollow. 
• your tweets only have links and RTs but nothing about you.   i want to read what you're doing.  inquiring minds want to know!
• i find myself always skipping over your tweets.  by this, i mean that i don't read them anymore.  not that they're not interesting but i don't connect with them anymore.  no hard feelings.
• annoying tweets.  i'm sure we all have followers of which we feel this way.  not that my tweets are all great and wonderful or interesting but when i check twitter updates in the morning and it's clogged with a hundred tweets about basically the same thing or RTs from people i don't know or care, it's kind of annoying.  sorry, but it's true.

google reader

• no variety in posts.  if you only post about one thing all the time, that's cool and all but  i like a little variety.  if you had a steak everyday, all the time, you'd get tired of it too, right?
• you changed the format of your blog and now i can't read any of it or i don't like it.  i've written about this before; i may like your blog but if i can't read any of it, i'll unsubscribe.   by this, i mean if you use a dark background with dark font or if the new layout has bright or sharp colors that hurts my eyes.  i'm getting old and these old eyes don't need to squint anymore than they already do.  when i say that i don't like a blog layout, i mean if you've included more ads that makes the flow and layout all disjointed, i'll unsubscribe.  i can't stand reading something and then having to skip over several frames of ads to continue reading or flashing ads are all up in my grill.  i lose interest, remove you from my reader and move on.
• i find myself never reading your posts anymore.  i'm not sure why this happens; maybe previous posts didn't capture my eye, i got too busy to read everything and i just felt too disconnected.  again, no hard feelings.
• i can't relate to your posts anymore.  i subscribe to blogs that i like and identify with.  i know our tastes and passions change on a regular basis which ultimately translates into our blogging style and that's totally cool.  i'll be honest - and this may sound a little mean or snobbish but again, keeping it real - if i can no longer relate to the posts, i'll start marking them as "read" in my reader without even reading any of them.  is that fair to you?  no. 
• all of your posts are guests posts.  i understand introducing guest posts while you're away on vacation but each post written by a guest writer?  i want to read about you, dear blogger!  if you can't be bothered to write, i can't be bothered to read.  just sayin'.

of all the social media mediums, facebook got the smallest overhaul.  i basically use facebook to pimp out my blog and maybe post some random pictures of kayla; i rarely go on the actual application.  now there's google+ which i haven't really had a chance to look into but to be honest, i don't feel the need or desire to play around with it; i just see that as facebook 2.0 without all the ads and confidentiality bullshite and another way to pimp out my blog.

 

have you recently done any social media house-cleaning?

weekend recap: a kamping we won't go

 

a little late but this week has been shite.  

last weekend made me realize how much i love air conditioning.  i've come to realize that as i get older, my tolerance for humidity and the heat gets lower.  don't get me wrong - i love the summer if i have an option to cool off in an air conditioned environment.  this past weekend we went fake kamping and by that, i mean we stayed overnight at a kampground that had facilities.  yes, i typed kamping with a "k" because aside from KOA not knowing how to spell, they also believe in cooking their patrons alive in their teeny tiny kabins.  

there wasn't any way i was going to tent it with a 3-year old so we planned for an alternate and rented a kabin which turned out to be us paying $120 to roast ourselves in a dutch oven.  while camping isn't really my thing, i was pretty excited for kayla.  we were going with hub's family and i knew kayla was going to have a blast with her cousins so i was more than willing to "rough it" for her.  when we drove to our kabin, this is what i saw from the car (and thought: are you serious?)

 

i know, right? at first  i thought it was a shed of some sort because it sort of looks like one, doesn't it?  like those sheds you buy at home depot to store your gardening tools and backyard stuff.  i think  my father in law has one that's bigger than the one we slept in and i'm sure he didn't pay $120 for it either.   but, i put my doubts aside and hoped for the best.

everything leading up to bedtime was great; kayla had a blast swimming in the pool and playing in the park, the girls loved the bbq and roasting marshmallows by the fire.  i put aside our strict regular bed routine and put kayla to bed about 1.5hrs later than her normal bedtime (not my fav thing to do but we were having fun so to hell with it).   things would have been ok if it hadn't been for the fact that the goddamn kabin was so fucking hot; like 40 degrees hot i swear.   imagine the hot air that blasts out of a bus engine but instead of a bus, it was our kabin and instead of the engine, it was our fan circulating that sweltering hot air around the room.  never mind that we had both windows open because it didn't matter.  they may as well have wrapped our cabin in saran wrap becuase there was absolutly no breeze going through the room. 

poor kayla had such a hard time falling asleep; she woke up at 1130pm and stayed awake tossing and turning until close to 2am because it was so freaking hot.   at one point she whispered to me:  mommy, i just want to sleep.  that's when i got up and yelled at poor hubs who was covered in sweat and trying to sleep in a bed made for an 11 year old.  in case you were interested, hubs is over 6 feet tall and that bed was no where close to being 6 feet long.

i'm an awesome artist. 

i know it wasn't his fault but i was so mad at the whole sleeping situation that i exploded.  it wouldn't have been so bad if it were just us two but the fact that kayla had to suffer through it really upset me.  after a few "NEVER AGAIN!" and "WE ARE NEVER COMING BACK HERE!" and "WHERE ARE THE KEYS WE ARE GOING HOME NOW!", we got some relief around 4am when a thunderstorm rolled in but needless to say, we barely got any sleep.   i got about two hours of broken sleep and the inlaws were also misterable and tired from the crappy night.   i was in no mood to cook breakfast so i decided to take everyone to ihop.  i was ready to get the hell outta there so we packed up to eat and then headed over to niagra falls for the remainder of the morning. 

it's unfortunate that the kabin - or shall i say krapin - experience sort of tainted everything else because really, everything leading up to bedtime was great but when you're hot and exhausted from a bullshite night, it's hard not to think of anything else but the comfort of your own home. 

enough with the words,  on to the pictures.

the girls had a blast.  kayla loved her first smore (as you can tell)

niagra on the lake - pellar estates winery.  the girls had fun running around and i had fun experimenting with my camera phone

 
niagra falls

a tourist in my own country.  the falls are beautiful and all but, well, it's just water and after a few minutes of looking around, i'd had enough.  so did everyone else because it was blazing hot with no shade and after baking in those kabins the night before, i think we all just wanted to go some place cool so... we went to the coca cola and hershey store.  kayla was all kinds of happy,  so was mummy because there was working a/c.  

 

pooped from the bullshit night and the heat.  but monkey's happy so that's important too

 

i don't think i've missed my bed (or my ac unit) as much as i did last weekend.  and the next time i go kamping, it's going to be in a place called a Hotel.

angry at my vagina

 

 

i got my period today and i feel like shit.  that's right dear readers, today's post is about my period so if you're squeamish, then i suggest to move along because i'm going to be writing all kinds of hateful things about my vagina.   normally i'm not that bad when it's my time of the month but there are months like now where i hate everything and everybody and everyone at work just pisses me off.  i also find that since childbirth, i went from having almost zero pms symptoms to having all of them and i'll swing from being a crabby bitch to a weepy mess at the drop of a hat. 

i seriously think that god is a man because if god were a woman, she would not curse her kind with a vagina that bleeds for 5 days.  that is not normal.  these crazy compulsions to eat everything that's not bolted or locked down is not normal.  the burning desire to scream at your husband if he's breathing too loud when he's sleeping is not normal and the itching urge to punch your co-worker in the throat when he's dragging the meeting too long is not normal.  

while i love being a woman and i know there's lots of benefits to having boobs and a vagina, i'm tired of my period.  men have no idea how easy they have it; they don't have to go through the monthly mood swings, the crazy cravings, pregnancy, labour or squeezing a whole person out of a hole that has no business being stretched to that ungodly size. yes yes, it's all about procreation and the gift of life yadayada but if it's so important, why is this gift not shared between the sexes?  why must women have to deal with bleeding vagina, cramps, bloating and fight the need to kill something every month?  and it doesn't stop there my friends;  it gets even better!  when we finally get relief of never having our periods again, we have to go through menopause - hot flashes, hairy faces, magnum PI mustaches.  awesome.  i swear, i'm totally not looking forward to that.  for an asian, i'm on the hairier side and it's enough that i have to take care of my upper lip and eyebrows on the regular - don't lie about this either ladies; we all have to deal with unsightly hair! - so if menopause changes me into a decendant of chewbacca, i'm lasering that shit off my face. 

today was a shitty day.  i had crappy sleep to begin with; i woke up at 3am and couldn't go back to sleep for a long time and just as i fell into a deep sleep, i woke up again because my period decided it would be fun to keep me up even longer by showing up unexpectedly.  i just tossed my underwear right  in the garbage because i didn't want to deal with it and it was 430am.  my fucking period is making me waste my money from its surprise visits.  i should just do what men do and buy all black underwear; that way i'll be able to save some money because  i'm pretty sure that's how they're able to live with skid marks - they're there but they can't see them so everything is peachy keen.  genius.

i had a meeting at work with a person i've since learned to deal with and by that, i mean suppress the urge to drop-kick him because he talks and thinks so slow.  he's not stupid or anything but he's the type who has to run through everything from the very beginning each and every time instead of focusing on the issue at hand.  i've learned to just let him talk and go with it but today because of said desire to kill everything in my path, this is what i really wanted to do:

that's right, i wanted to choke the bitch because he was driving me crazy with all his posturing and his um.. well..yeah...but...err..ahh...and...mrr...hmm...arr... and it took everything i had to not scream "SPEAK MOTHERFUCKER!! JUST SPEAK!! CHRIST ALMIGHTY FUCK IT SHOULD NOT TAKE THIS LONG!!"

so yes, i hate my vagina right about now and these cramps can go to hell.

monday favorites: gadgets

 

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i wouldn't say i'm your typical girl.  while i'm a tad into girly stuff, i don't really follow fashion all that much, my makeup/get ready routine is about 10 minutes tops,  i never do my hair, i never accessorize and i don't like chick-lit or sappy movies. hell, it was only last month that i bought my first hair brush.  and no, i'm not a savage.

what i do love are gadgets.  anything that clicks, beeps, lights up, makes noise and does stuff gives me a total geek boner.  if i can somehow hack into it, all the better.  i remember when i got my samsung blade many years ago - which was an great non-smart phone at the time - i sat for hours molesting it; playing with it, programming my contact list, discovering what it could do and just basking in the awesomeness of the phone.   when i discovered that i couldn't use the super mario brothers theme song as one of my ring tones and realized my carrier expected me to pay for ring tones - blasphemy! - i thought oh hell to the no.  there's gotta be some way to hack into this thing.  and i did.  it took me many hours and a few late nights for me to discover that if i converted my mp3s into video file format, transfer them to my phone in mass storage mode, i would be able to use them as ring tones.  suck on that, bell canada! i even learned some basic music editing techniques to glue snippets of a song or songs together if i wanted something specific for a ringtone. you may hi-five me now.

old technology is at the top of my List of Irritating Things besides bad drivers and stupid people.  like right now, i'm hating my blackberry playbook.  since RIM's last software update, my iMac can't recognize the device.  it's why i ditched my blackberry bold and went with HTC android and it was giving me all sorts of bullshit trouble.  RIM, you are really disappointing me these days.... but that's another post for another day.

what are some of your favorite gadgets?

tightening the belt

 

i need to start saving again better.  we've offically signed our basement reno contract to start aug 15 and now the price tag of this project is starting to weigh on me.  i'll admit that hubs and i have been a bit too carefree with our money lately but since this reno is going to be our reality for the next two months, i need to refocus on our budget. 

i've always been a saver; something i picked up from my dad when i was in my early teens.  he taught me the value of money by allowing me to help him balance the family books and eventually, i became the family "accountant".  i saw what came in vs what went out; i saw how my parents struggled to stay afloat and my sister and i contributed whatever we could from our part-time jobs.  this was a real eye-opener and was a huge incentive for me to finish school and focus on establishing my career so that i wouldn't have to struggle as my parents did.  as soon as i landed my first job out of school, i made sure to pay off my student loans as quickly as possible (damn those interest rates!) while helping out my parents as much as i could.  i truly believe that my dad did me a great service for teaching me the value of a dollar at an early age because i think that his lesson taught me how to save and budget which has allowed us to live a debt-free life (well, except for our mortgage; i consider that a "necessary debt") .

i've already kick-started my saving mode into high gear.  here's what i'm doing to keep my money in the bank:

• at-home pedis.  i hate doing this because i love to get my tootsies pampered at the spa but doing this myself saves me $25-30.  ps - the satisfaction quotent is extremely low when i do it myself :(
• bring lunch to work everyday.  i don't mind the night-before prep but i hate lugging my lunch bag to work.  it's just another bulky item that weighs me down and when i'm already struggling with my will power to drag my ass into work, having to drag my lunch bag with me makes this fight all the more unappealing.  and my lunches are pretty unsatisfying too;  since i'm detoxing from vegas, the only thing i'm allowing myself to eat are boring foods... you know, all the healthy stuff.  i've allowed myself one exception:  friday, when i go out for lunch with my team
• no more online shopping.  this is what's been killing my credit card the past few months and i now know why people are so addicted to online shopping:  no line-ups, no sales people bothering you and it's like christmas when you come home from a long day at work to find a little package waiting for you! that was the best part for me.   so no more old navy e-flyers; no more wagjag/groupon emails.  and yesterday was my last purchase, i pinky swear!
• pack lunch when we go out on weekends.  a meal for two at canada's wonderland will cost you about $30 and the food you get is gross and poorly cooked at best (and so unhealthy).  so last weekend when we went to wonderland, we packed our lunch (well, kayla's lunch) and she ate a healthy, hearty meal - carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, a ham and cheese sandwich and grapes.  that only cost me about $15 at the grocery store.
• paying cash instead of using credit cards.  credit cards are the devil's creation.  it makes us lose sight of how much something really costs because it's so easy to hand over a piece of plastic.    however, when i'm forced to count (and see) the cash leaving my hand, it gives me a chance to stop and think do i really need this?  if i really wanted to go hardcore, i'd employ my post-university trick:  freeze all of our credit cards so that i'd have to wait until they thawed out to use them.  this always worked for me; the thawing process took several hours and by the time it was done, i talked myself out of wanting to buy [insert unnecessary product here]
  
• transfer more money into our savings acount.  we have a separate savings account that operates on wire transfers only which is awesome because it prevents us from getting immediate access.  because it's separate from our chequing account, it's the whole "out of sight, out of mind" thing; less money in our chequing account means less spending
• get rid of my highlights.  highlights mean regular trips to the salon for touch-ups which runs me about $120.  if i color my hair back to black and just use the drugstore dye then that'll save me $112 since a box of Clairol is about $8.  

saving money sucks.

what do you do to save money?

random tuesdays: deep thoughts courtesy of Pinterest

 

 

yessss!

 

truth!

 

 

 

haha love this one

 

i need to get a set of these printed asap

 

 

monday favorites: 80s movies

 

the younger generation missed out on some totally awesome 80s movies.  it's sad when i reference  top movies like aliens, the goonies or back to the future only to get a reaction of blank stares.  hmph.

cheesy graphics, crazy hair cuts, loud fashion.  what's not to love?

 

beverly hills cop - axl foley and the gang 

 

i don't know anyone who doesn't love the goonies.  if you are one of those non-lovers, please go away because i can't relate to non-gooney lovers

 

can't buy me love - the movie that put patrick dempsey on the map.  look at those glasses and the hair. 80s at its best. heh

 

every girl dreamed of landing a hot senior like jake ryan. 

 

pretty in pink - ducky!

 

don't pretend you didn't love this movie too

 

'nuff said

 

YUM.  i loved harrison ford as Indiana Jones

  michael j. fox wasn't my heartthrob but the delorian was all kinds of awesome

 

 

one of tom cruise's best movies.  also, men in uniform are so hot

 

the breakfast club - one of my absolute favorites.  john bender was the best badass

 

cheesy now, but hella scary back then

 

tango and cash.  even as a kid, i loved action movies

 

there are so many more great 80s movies... what are some of your favs?

lazy saturdays and other random things

 

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my vegas trip really wiped me out; so bad that i played hooky on wednesday and it took everything i had to muster up the will to get up and drag my ass to work on thursday and for serious, they were the longest two days of my life.  never mind the regular bullshite at work but i've had to stay and work late both days due to late meetings scheduled near the end of the day.  really, who in their right mind books meetings at the end of the day, let alone at 430pm on a friday afternoon? 

anyway, it's saturday and all i did today was clean (long overdue), laundry (a mound that never seems to shrink!) and watch breaking bad.  btw, if you want a good show to watch, you must watch this because it's awesome.  i had most of the day to myself because hubs and kayla went to wasaga beach but after last weekend i just wanted to do low-key stuff, chill out and sleep.  i've been doing a lot of napping lately;  like today, i woke up after a 1hr nap complete with drool and everything.  it was sexy.

since coming back from vegas, i've been on detox not from booze (god, no) but from bad food.  it's hard to eat well when you travel; my plumbing was not nice to me during the trip and i think i speak for everyone when i say that it's  so unsatisfying when you don't have a very good number 2.  i therefore made a promise to myself that when i got home from vegas, it would all about freshly made foods and lots of fruits and vegetables.  with beer; i love beer.

***

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on my days off, i got to see a good friend of mine before he headed back to new york and i'm happy to announce that i now have a brother.  well, not a blood-related brother but one in spirit.  we are now tied by an indian tradition called rakhi which basically signifies the strong bond between brother and sister.  part of this tradition involves the sister tying a red string on the brother's wrist  and he's supposed to protect her etc etc.   then he gives her a gift of which i've been getting some mixed information; some sites say that it's a sweet treat like chocolate, others say it's a gift of monetary value.  i'm trying to find a way to convince him that it's his brotherly duty to get me a gucci bag and his sworn protection also involves not making fun of me all the time.  i've yet to convince him that these are new rules that are to be set with this tradition. anyway, i have to send him the red bracelet/string by august so i took a look at the styles i can get ... aren't they pretty? some are made with all sorts of pretty charms and beads and stuff... i sort of want one for myself!   minus the dairy milk.  that's going to be replace by a bag of some sort.

***

i need to get back into my organizing.  june was packed with all sorts of activities and i didn't have a chance to get more baskets so that project sort of fell by the wayside.  i am however, happy to announce that i 've managed to keep my closet clean and junk free since my purge.  i've also given myself the next few weeks to fully organize my closet and then post the results.  i've been taking pictures along the way and will one day post the final result. 

 

hope you all had a great week and an even better weekend!

new site name! (don't be alarmed)

 

you may be used to looking at this banner:

but don't be confused dear readers.... i decided to change my blog name.  i woke up one morning and thought vodka and soda would be an awesome name for a blog and so i decided that would be the new name of my site.  it's catchy no?  and seriously, vodka does make the world a happier place, doesn't it?  well, it does for me.

i'm way too lazy to change the URL address (it's too much work for you folks to update your readers etc etc) and even more lazy to do any sort of domain re-mapping so i'm going to leave it as www.lifeinprogress.ca and hope this doesn't cause too much confusion.

ugh, i can't believe i'm here until 530pm today.  someone booked me into a meeting at 430pm.  who does that on a friday afternoon?!