freddy’s blog spot

Come one,  come all.  I’ll be  taking part in a group exhibition on Saturday May 30 down Town Mtl.  Come see my latest work.

http://www.growstudio.org/index.php?/project/show-details/

No time to blog. Busy feeding… all the time.

Justin eats every hour on good days. Every 15 min on  other days.

Last Saturday Heather and Shilin organized a co-ed baby shower for Steve and I. Lots of people came down from Montreal and from Québec city.  We had food, fun, games and gifts.  My kind of day.  I just love full houses with lots of laughter and food.  I think I was meant for great big families…not to produce one, just to be in one.

Tuesday we had a doctors appointment. She said I had a lot of baby in there. (Justin does feel pretty big to me).  She did this very uncomfortable procedure called a scrub. She said that usually the contractions start about 48 hours after…. 56 hours later, no contractions here…. Still waiting.

I cant seam to focus on anything these days. Sometime I think about the delivery (and I panic internally). Other times I’m just so anxious to see Justin that I can’t concentrate.  It’s like being in love again. You know when you keep thinking about him all day.  My mind is constantly drifting.

I sleep a lot these days.  I take naps during the day and then I sleep some more at night. My life revolves around meal time and sleep time. In between I get a little work done.  Sometimes Steve and I go for extremely slow walk.

During the holidays we collected predictions on expected delivery date from family members. My personal bet was for tomorow.  How can I fall asleep now!

Steve and I spent Xmas over in St-Anselme as we usually do.   It was fun and packed with people as always.  Big families are amazing to me.  So much fun. So much like in the movies.  There was at least 27 poeple in the house.  The teens were playing Guitar Hero downstairs.  The grownups were having coffee and Bayleys to help down the supper. Grandma was all over the place serving sweets.  There was a 1 year old and a 4 year old that refused to tire down.  The pregnant woman went for a nap after eating too much for supper.

There was a gift exchange and lots of kisses and handshakes…   then the flu set in.  It descended on us like rain.  Two days after Xmas the mood was grim. Things were bad, the bathrooms were in high demand.  Steve and his twin brother were hit pretty badly.  They each took an adjacent sofa a blanket and wet face towel to keep on their forehead.   It was hard to say which of the convalescent was which.  Twins tend to moan the same way when their sick.

Luckily the pregnant woman escaped unscathed.

We had to stay one more day, because Steve was in no shape to drive us back, and I was too chicken to drive stick shift in the winter through the narrow country roads that lead us out of boony town St-Anselme.

Now we’re back. Steve is still afflicted but not defeated.  Hopefully he’ll be okay by tomorrow.

Yesterday was a very busy day.  The kind I like.

In the morning we had a doctors appointment. Justin is doing as well as ever. He is growing and growing and growing.  (I refuse to think about how he’s ever going to come out). I’m just happy that he is doing will and moving a lot.

We had a fun photo session at a specialized photo studio.  We will soon have mommy daddy and belly pictures.  Not often we get to play model. It was fun.

The prenatal class was actually useful, granted it was too long as alway.    It was all about the why and the how of breast feeding.  Okay, must admit I have a bias for the subject.  Breast feeding looks like such a privileged time with baby. I’m so looking forward to it.

Just a couple of weeks left. sigh.

I made some bone soup today. It was really good, I dare say.  It’s my first time making it.

Who’s bones? What’s  bone soup?   Well… I guess you can also call it chicken soup made from scartch.  I think bone soup sounds better.

Want the recipe… am not a scrooge:

• Basically, I’ve been collecting bones from previous chicken meals and storing them in the freezer.
• I got a big pot and I dumped the frozen bones in there with lots of water.
• I added chicken sauce, left overs from previous meals.
• Added spices, clove, bay leaves salt and the like.
• Diced potatoes.
• Let the potion boil for about an hour.
• Add frozen veggies and noodles.
• Boil a little more.

Done

Where did  I get the idea for bone soup? I’ve been seeing a nutritionist (for the pregnancy), she strongly suggested that I start eating bones. Any bones, chicken, pork, beef , even fish.  That’s where the good stuff is.  Great source  of calcium and omega 3. Then I remembered how my mom use to eat the bones when I was little.

Also Steve (the wise man in the family) once told me about the Neanderthal man.   They didn’t have the physical strength of other animals but they had the smarts.  Apparently they got the smarts from eating the bones. They weren’t strong enough to kill, and not fast enough to get to the left over flesh before the vultures.  So they got the bones.  Good for them.

I’m making bone soup my new staple.

I found a couple of more elaborate recipes: http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,soup_bone,FF.html

Steve and I went to our weekly prenatal class last night.  It was interesting in some ways, but we both came out a bit annoyed.  What could be annoying about a harmless parenting class.  Well…the language and the pretty assumptions.  I’ll have to do a bit of explaining on that, but let me tell you, it spawned a lot of reflections on professionals and brain washing.

Here’s what I mean. Not easy to explain but I’ll try.

The woman who’s the host ( I can never remember her name ) is very nice.  She’s polite friendly, professional and clearly dedicated. That’s not the problem, the problem is that she is also, what I’ve decided to call the product of our post new age society meet’s social intervention / new professionals. In other words, she talks fancy,  but what she says is quite debatable but not confronted because it’s so cute.

Ex: How to interact with your unborn baby.

• First you must great your baby with some gentle words, the way you would with anyone else before starting a conversation.
• Gently touch you belly to start the interaction. Tip of the fingers to announce your presence and palm of the hand to establish a warm contact.
• Play games with baby, gently tap on one side to call babies attention to that direction.  Baby is likely to respond with a gentle kick or push where you tapped.
• If interrupted or if you must end the contact, make sure to inform baby that the meeting is over. ( yes she used the term meeting)
• Gently inform baby with words or a special touch that you have designed for that purpose. The phone just rang baby love, we’re being interrupted, I have to end our time together.  See you later, love you baby. You don’t hang up the phone without saying goodbye do you?  Well… why would you do that to baby.

That, along with other things concerning your baby telling you things, such as; everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry about me I’m okay mummy or, when you are worried I am worried too mummy so please don’t be stressed.

Okay, am I an unfit parent or is half of this nicely phrased BS.  I mean, I’m all for talking to baby and playing with baby, I have no doubt that baby does respond and appreciates little tap and sound games, but what’s with the non sense talk.

She’s evidentially and educated professional and that’s the problem I think.  Our universities are spewing out gentle freaks that can only express themselves in the appropriate language of the profession.

Not to say that anything she is suggesting to do is wrong per say.  Then, what’s missing from her discourse? The common sense!  I think what she was trying to convey, is that it is important to establish a respectful relationship with your child starting from the get go.  We have to consider our children like full fledged individuals deserving of as much consideration as adults.  Interacting with an unborn child is a form of training for the parent and is also good for the development of babys’ brain.

See! I managed to agree with the actions and yet, was able to cut the new age BS out of it.  Again the host woman is not at all a life loving hippy type of person.  She is a normal looking educated professional with 2 daughters of her own and way too much time spent in those brain washing seminars.

That said, I’m pretty sure that if anyone confronted her about this.  She would end up explaining her logic in a  way very similar to what I just did.  So it’s not that she can’t think. It’s more of an institutional thing.  Steve and I have both met other professionals with the same problem.  I had a run in with a friend of mine who is a psychologist.  For the life or me, I cannot understand how she can help anyone with this circular type of speech.  She gives me a headcase every time she gets into the intervention mode.   An other girlfriend of mine is an ergo-therapist and she too has the professional talk embedded deep.  Her patients are not old and disabled they are an ageing clientèle with limited mobility. And don’t you dare call them otherwise!

I find something else bothersome about this.  I suspect an underlying arrogance at the bottom of this.  Maybe not an obvious and deliberate form, something more latent.  It wouldn’t be surprising since the very nature of problem is cliquish.  If you are a professional in any particular field, then you are part of a select group that can express their professional ideas with the appropriate vocabulary.  Otherwise you are somewhat of a neophyte with good intentions but really not suited for professional attention.  The medium is the message says Marshall. That’s how she managed to talk non sense for two hours and look perfectly credible.

Looking forward to the next class.

Muslim Fashionista look by FreddyArtist

Why? Just because.  I wrote a Hub about Fulla the Fully dressed Barbie and as I was doing the research for the Hub, I fell upon this beautiful blog from a Muslim girl in Australia.   Hegab Rehab , It’s all about fashion and the Muslim attire. ( The two don’t automatically come together in my mind).

Sure enough I got hooked.  I started imagining what I would look like if I was Muslim. By that I mean, what if I had to follow strict rules about the way I dress.  No arms,  no legs to be seen, not too much neck out there.  What would I look like?  How would I make my mark, would I have a personal style.

Well… this is what I came up with.  Pink and black sophisticated trendy girly look.  That, I think would be my Muslim fashionista look. Put a couple of pieces together.  If you do that, you’ll notice that not much skin is left out to be seen. I also aded a couple of scarves to cover the head. I couldn’t find any picture of fashionable looking woman with their hair covered in the right style.  That part you’ll have to imagine.

All in all, not too bad is it? Now how come the fashionable Muslim girls are not out there?  I don’t know of any.