Update

So, of course we made a mistake and put the whole thing in jeopardy. Turns out that Hubby doesn't have the holiday Monday, he's got the Friday. Why does this matter? Because now the Harpy won't be able to leave until Friday afternoon instead of Thursday night.

Short version: We informed her of the error yesterday. She kept us waiting until today when she decided that the change would "suit everybody's best interests." Now we just need to sign the damn thing....I sure hope this thing is over soon.

The Easter Bunny Rears His Ugly Head

So it's August and you may be wondering why I'm writing about the Easter Bunny -- believe me, I wish I wasn't.

With the start of this new school year, little step-monkey (Mojo) is starting the first grade! While it's true that for the past four years she has attended a variety of combinations of full day day care, Montessori and public school, this will be her first year of all day school in the same place. With that in mind, her parents set out to revamp the visitation schedule to avoid an excess of travel during the school week. Currently Mojo alternates between spending two school nights at Dad's house every other week and one school night and a weekend. The change was to increase the weekend time to include Sunday night and now a Wednesday night (that's only one school night -- see?)

When we contacted our lawyer, she told us that if the parties agree on the changes, then there's no need for a lawyer to get involved (thankfully!) so my hubby discussed the changes with the Harpy, came to an agreement, typed it up, and gave her a copy for her perusal. The idea being that the sooner we can get this thing signed, the sooner we can implement the changes so that step-monkey is used to the new schedule before school starts.

*Insert deep breath here*

Well, of course the Harpy takes forever with the damn thing, then agrees to the changes.

Then she changes her mind.

Sunday night, she calls and says that she wants to change the agreement so that long weekends like Easter and Thanksgiving are split between the two households (currently the agreement says that whoever has Mojo on the long weekend keeps her). We think that this is a stupid idea -- why? Well, because the whole point of the new arrangement is to cut down on travel -- not increase it! Besides which, the whole reason her nose is out of joint on the long weekend thing is because they've happened to fall on our weekends in recent years (which, by the way, has not stopped her from asking us to give up our time with the child so that she can drag her up to Belleville -- which, oddly we usually agree to). Would she give a crap if the weekends had been hers? Would she consider giving up some of her time and inconveniencing herself so that the child could spend some extra time with her dad?

I think we all know the answer to that.

I'll abbreviate the story somewhat, since I've gone on too long already. Harpy basically jeopardizes a summer's worth of negotiations and some expensive gymnastics lessons for some loose wording about splitting the Easter weekend. She is, in every aspect, totally unreasonable.

In the end, I suggest to my husband that we just give her what she wants. Easter is clearly a big deal to her (her family exchanges gifts as though it's Christmas -- they do not, however, attend church and couldn't care less about the resurrection of Jesus -- a capitalist family to the core!) and for us it's really about getting to spend the extra time with step-monkey. So in our efforts to keep the peace, we are forced to agree to the following:

Mojo will spend the weekend preceding Easter with her dad. She will spend Easter weekend with her mother and when she returns from Belleville, she will spend whatever is left of the holiday Monday with her dad. Every year from now till eternity.

I had no idea that the Easter Bunny was into sodomy.

I think what bugs me the most about the big stink she made is that she was willing to make things worse for her own child in order to get what she wanted. I don't know exactly how these changes are supposed to benefit step-monkey, but I hope that at least in the Harpy's mind they do somehow do just that.

One thing's for sure -- I'll never see Easter the same way again. It never ceases to amaze me how that woman can suck the joy out of everything that crosses her path -- even a long weekend!

One Smart Little Monkey

So this weekend we took the step-monkey to her first wedding (other than ours, of course) and needless to say, she had an excellent time. The bride was Italian-Canadian, the groom Macedonian-Portuguese, and so it's no surprise that the meal took 3 hours to eat (not including the sweets table or the midnight seafood buffet!) But this story isn't about the food. This story is about what smart cookie my little step-monkey is. I'll paint you the picture...

We're in the reception hall filled with hundreds of European-Canadians (I'll not comment on the array of tragic fashion statements made by these many guests, just know that there were more than a few!)

The dance floor is over-run with little girls, mostly in puffy white dresses and they are running themselves ragged. At the table next to ours is a little boy, probably about 4 or 5 years of age. His name is Andrew and he is in trouble pretty much from his arrival on. He is also out on the dance floor, terrorizing the girls with whom he clearly wants to play, but his manner is so rough that he simply cannot be abided. Step-monkey runs over to us at our table from the dance floor and professes that she "doesn't like that mean little boy!" He is trying to push around everybody that comes in his way. I am ready to push him around should he attempt to do the same with my step-daughter. However, I try I different tact instead. I tell step-monkey that she should let Andrew know that if he wants to play with them, he's going to have to be nice. She does, he does, and moments later, step-monkey comes back to the table to report that Andrew "has learned his lesson." Awesome.

The two proceed to amuse each other for most of the evening. At one point they come over to our table to ask if Andrew can come over for a sleep-over. Andrew gives me his phone number. I'm not kidding. My 6 year old picked up at a wedding! However, things took a turn for the worse as the evening wore on. It went something like this:

Andrew pushes the flower girl down, step-monkey scolds Andrew for this and he turns on her, trying to push her down (not likely by the way, she's about a half a head taller than this little Portuguese boy). Step monkey walks away from Andrew. She comes to the table and tells me that she does not want to call him or have him over for a sleep over. The romance is ended. She tells me, "I broke up with him."

She broke up with him!

Maybe it's just me, but I am both horrified at, amused by and proud of my little step-monkey's behaviour. I can't say that I want her to be making sleep-over plans with little boys that she's just met, but I am very glad to see that she's not the sort to let anybody push her around. Good thing for Andrew. I was ready to take him outside for a little chat!

Where to begin....

So, it seems that I was wrong about being able to write more often once school was over. What with it being August now and this being the first post. I suppose that it's because we've been very busy monkeys around here this summer. Where shall I begin?

I'll start with the fun news. Step-monkey lost her first tooth on June 15th and it was awesome! She was really nervous about it hurting when it came out, but of course, when her dad actually coaxed it out of her gums she didn't even notice. I was glad that the first one fell out at our place and not her mother's. Selfish, I know, but as luck would have it, there were two loose teeth and the second one fell out the next weekend at her mom's.

It's just such a rite of passage in my mind, the losing of baby teeth. And of course, she looks hilarious with a big gap in the middle of her mouth. I suspect that subsequent growing up changes won't be nearly as cute.

On a much less pleasant note, I learned via some standard pregnancy type tests that I had an infection for which I had to take antibiotics. They were mild and short in duration, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to be doing during my pregnancy. All the while I was fighting off the longest cold in human history. I caught a cold during the last month of my first trimester and I managed to hang on to it for more than five weeks!!!

Now I don't know about the rest of the world, but I've never had a cold last much longer than two weeks or so. I think I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, since I was just getting over the morning sickness/nausea. However, there was an upside to the illness. While it's true that I could not breathe, smell or taste anything, a happy side-effect was that I could go into not just my kitchen, but the refrigerator without gagging! Oh happy days! It was nice to be able to cook and eat again, although it was with a little less joy than usual. You just don't realize how closely connected the ability to smell is to the ability to taste until you lose it.

Sadly, I was not the only one suffering during this time. My poor hubby got bitten by some cruel insect and the bite got infected. Instead of picking strawberries at the farm with his wife and daughter, he spent the better part of 3 hours in the emergency at North York General with an I.V. dripping antibiotics into his arm. Worse yet, he had to keep it there for a week. Did you know that nurses will come to your house everyday to change your I.V. bag? Well they did, and then he had to finish out a round of oral antibiotics which ended the day before he went in to have all four of his wisdom teeth removed. Talk about a rough couple of weeks. In all honesty, I felt so bad for him that my difficulties didn't really register on the radar. Poor guy.

Touch wood, all of that seems to be over with now and we were able to spend a great weeks vacation with step-monkey this past week. It's funny how easy it is to get used to having her here every day. We were able to take her with us to the 18 week ultrasound appointment where she could see the baby, hear it's heartbeat and learn that it is going to be her little sister. She was very excited and pleased to learn that it would be a girl as she had hoped.

Now, if we can just get the house ready for this new little monkey, that will really be something to get excited about!