Andre, Andre, Andre...

Friday, no exception to the insanity that has been our life lately, I forgot to put dinner in the slow cooker before we headed out the door. This was the exchange that occurred as we walked out to the car and drove away:

Me: Shit!
Andre: What happened?
Me: I forgot to the put the salsa chicken in the slow cooker for dinner tonight.
Andre: Oh
Me: Yeah, I'm working late tonight too, crap!
Andre: That's okay Jenna, you can just make regular chicken in the oven when you get home.
Me: ~slowly turns to him in the car with "the look"~ Pardon me?
Andre: ~realizing he said the wrong thing~ Umm, nothing.
Me: Yeah, I thought so.

Fast forward to just before lunch. I check my cell phone, and there's a message from Andre.
Andre: Hi Jenna, I just wanted to apologize for this morning in the car. What I should've said was 'Jenna, that's okay that dinner isn't in the slow cooker, don't worry, I'll make dinner when I get home tonight'. Love you!

I stood laughing as I listened to the message. Maybe he's slowly getting it.

The Dinner

I figured since Andre is at work, dinner is in the slow cooker, and the dishes are air drying in the rack I can finally sit with some cookies that I purchased at the Church Bazaar yesterday and share the details of our dinner last night.

The great experiment--our first date night with Pam and Mike post Abbey. I think all of us (or maybe just Pam and I) were a little nervous about how the evening would progress. So, usually if we would be doing an evening together we would have them over to our place, since Pam feels too much pressure if she has to cook anything, and I'm used to having no time to prepare a meal. Since the addition of Abbey to our little group, we decided it would be better to have the dinner at their house so Abbey was in her own territory, and Pam would be more relaxed.

So we arrived at their house around 5:30 to find Pam in a tizzy because Abbey had decided that she was in no way interested in sleeping that day, and would rather stay up with her dad instead. Pam thrives on routine, so she was very stressed to say the least. The first part of the evening before dinner we spent the time whispering and sitting in the dark living room because Pam wanted Abbey to go to sleep, and instead of putting her in her crib down the hall (there house is on one floor) she put her in the playpen in the living room.

Thank goodness Abbey decided she was rested enough after about 45 minutes because after a long day and a glass of wine I would've fallen asleep in the dark! Pam fed Abbey while the rest of us ate dinner and then Pam had finished feeding the baby about the same time I finished dinner so I took Abbey so Pam could eat her dinner. Abbey was overtired so she was a bit fussy so I took her soother and started to walk around to calm her, and every five seconds Pam was asking "is she okay?", "are you okay?", finally after about the fifth time I told her there were no tears, no crying and no flailing arms and legs so Abbey was just fine.

After dinner Mike took Abbey to her room to try and get her to sleep a bit while we had some dessert, and then around 9:30 I started to get tired from the dim lights and the wine, so Andre and I headed home, and arrived just at 10pm, just as I had predicted when we were driving to their house.

I think considering everything it was a good first dinner together. For the past three years we have always gotten together for a dinner in December to celebrate the holidays with each other and have made plans to get together in about a month again this year. We also decided since we're all not huge fans of New Years we would spend New Years together again this year as well. We'll see how all that goes.

One thing I have noticed is that whenever I'm with Pam and she's starting to get anxious or stressed with Abbey she'll always turn to me and say something like "See, doesn't this make you not want to have kids?" I was kind of just smile, and change the subject. How do you tell someone that you do eventually want kids, but that the experience might be different for us?

One other thing that happened on Saturday is that Andre and Abbey got to meet each other for the second time, and Andre got to hold her for the first time. He hasn't really seen her since we visited them in the hospital way back in August, and he's never had a chance to hold her. So I brought our camera with us last night so I could snap a picture of the two of them together.

Abbey has a thing with holding onto fingers, clothing, anything really as a security sort of thing. While Andre was holding her she grabbing his thumb and shirt, he kept saying "Look at those tiny little hands. Look at those nails!"

On the way home in the car Andre was commenting on holding Abbey, making sure he was holding her right and doing a good job. He was talking about how he liked holding her. Then out of the blue he says "I'll make a great dad one day."

Women like that give the rest of us a bad name.

"That woman" being a woman that I work with. I work in an office that consists almost entirely of women. We all get along, and get together outside of the office sometimes as well. We have one co-worker who likes to over share. She's constantly talking about inappropriate things, and for some reason feels the need to include very graphic details about her sex life with her boyfriend. We've tried walking away, changing the subject, you name it we've tried to convey to her that we're not interested in the intimate details of her relationship but it doesn't work.

Well yesterday at lunch there was 4 of us sitting eating our lunch just chatting and then she started to talk about birth control, and then she started to mention that she had "forgotten" to take a few of her birth control pills that past month. Now she's talked about how she's "forgotten" to take pills before, and how she desperately wants to have a baby. So we took the bait and asked her how many pills she "forgot" to take. She forgot to take five pills that month! Yes, almost an entire week of pills. Someone immediately said, "don't you think that maybe you're "forgetting" to take these pills on purpose to get pregnant?" We asked her if she had told her boyfriend how many pills she had missed that cycle. Her answer? "well he knows that I've missed a pill or two in the past, but I haven't told him". (I'm mentally shaking my head at this point.)

Now one thing I forgot to mention is that this woman and her boyfriend have a very dysfunctional relationship. He doesn't like to tell her where he's going to be throughout the week because he doesn't like her "keeping tabs" on him. She will call him to say hello and he won't answer the call. She can go an entire week without talking to him because he doesn't feel like talking to her. But then on the weekend when he wants some sex, he'll call her and she'll go running to see him.

Later on after lunch she's venting to me how much her b/f has been annoying her lately, and not answering phone calls, and how he arranged to work on his birthday and told her not to call him that day. I turned to her and said that would be an excellent reason why she should start taking her birth control everyday, and how a baby doesn't solve a problematic relationship, it just makes it more problematic. She just got very quiet and changed the subject.

It just gets so hard to just stand by and watch someone that you're friends with be so foolish and not see the roadsigns that all of us see. I think she feels that if she gets pregnant he'll immediately commit to her, and she'll have the life that she desperately wants. Two of us are married in the office, and she's made many comments about how it's not fair because we're younger than her. (rolling my eyes! It's not a competition!!)

At least she won't be in the office today, so we'll have a little peace and quiet.

At a loss...

Pam is back to her old tricks again. By old tricks, I mean not eating. We've been making a habit out of getting together the first Monday of every month for a little shopping date. It's the one time during the month that we will definitely get together, but we do try to get together more if the schedules allow for it.

For some reason Pam didn't cook before Abbey was born. She couldn't do her job (construction) for obvious reasons while pregnant, so she was a stay-at-home-wife for the better part of a year before Abbey was born. During that entire year she would go on and on about how she didn't have time to clean, didn't have time to cook, didn't have time to e-mail...the list goes on and on.

Now many times I had to struggle to be tactful with my responses being that I work a 40+ hour work week and still find time to clean, cook a complete dinner 5-6 days/week and keep in touch with friends. But over time I've come to realize that she doesn't cope with stress as well as the average person does, and that while I have learned to thrive (or at least survive) in stressful situations, she does not.

Her situation has steadily gotten worse now that she has the baby to take care of. I've been trying to help her by suggesting meal planning (don't know how I could survive without it), and sending her recipes that she can pop in the slow cooker, and some quick cook-it-in-30-minutes-recipes. Short of making food and shoving it in her freezer, I don't know how else to help her.

On Monday she confided that she hasn't cooked a meal in the three months since Abbey was born. She also confided that either she doesn't eat during the day, or she will have a bowl of Vector (meal replacement cereal) for dinner. I honestly don't know how she gets out of bed every morning. The public health nurse has told her that she needs to start eating more. The nurse suggested keeping some pre-cut fruits and vegetables in the fridge to snack on and keeping some convenience pre-cooked meals in the freezer to just pop in the oven. The only problem is that I don't think she will do this. The other problem is her husband is never home during the week (workaholic) and when he's home on the weekends he doesn't really cook.

I worry about the short term affects on her (and the baby) because she is not eating a balanced diet (0r at all) and the long term affects on Abbey having a mother who has such an unhealthy relationship with food.

The silver lining to all of this is that in spite of it all Abbey is a happy, alert, well nourished 13.7 lb baby girl. She is so cute, and now will smile and laugh when I visit her. Amazingly enough she hasn't played strange the times that I have seen her. Here is a picture of her that I took on Monday while we had stopped for a coffee:

(sorry it's a little blurry, I was testing out the camera on my blackberry)

We're planning to get together with Pam and her husband for our first couples "date" since Abbey was born on Saturday so hopefully I'll have some more news to share after the weekend.

How Rude

I had a baby shower to go to today. For a family friend that is expecting her first baby, a little boy. The mother is 16. It was interesting. There were two other teen aged mothers at the shower. They handed out little favours at the end of the shower. I opened the little envelope that came with the little chocolate and it was a note card with a pre-written thank you note in it.

Am I so strange to find this rude? Yes it was handwritten, and she did write it. But at the same time, these people, 99% of which were just friends of the family because her actual family is too disgusted with the entire thing to attend the shower, all attend and shower her with gifts, and all we get is a "Thank you for sharing my special day with me. Love _____"

Maybe I'm bend out of shape because I know countless couples who would give their right arm to have a child, and can't, and here were these children, holding little babies, opening gifts and not even knowing what a bottle brush is for heaven's sake! What kind of life is a 16 year old suppose to have while raising a child? Does she realize how hard everything is going to be for her?