Tag: The Peanut

One season! Two seasons!! 39 seasons, ah! ah! ah! ah!

Posted on By admin

Why ‘Sesame Street’ still counts

This morning “Sesame Street” enters its 39th season, having lost nothing except its newness.

“Sesame Street” is such a part of the culture that to anyone born after 1965, Oscar and Bert and all the others are family. So they rarely surprise us anymore. But they do still delight.

This latest season kicks off with a show featuring “Telly Monster and the Golden Triangle of Destiny,” a spoof of “Indiana Jones.” Many of its younger viewers won’t get the Indiana Jones reference, or the hat. But they’ll have fun, while their parents will find it at worst painless and often charming. That’s probably one reason “Sesame Street” has lasted so long. It doesn’t overreach and aim for blinding brilliance with every line.

While it doesn’t condescend to kids, it also recognizes that’s what they are: kids. Sometimes they just want silly. In one scene, when Texas Telly is looking for the Golden Triangle of Destiny, he gets a hint that it may be underneath something in the Laundromat. An energetic search follows, during which piles of socks and neatly folded shirts are randomly tossed into the air and scattered on the floor. There, they are forgotten despite the pleas of Leela, an Indian-American, the show’s newest cast member, who joins this season.

If “Sesame Street” went strictly by the rulebook, Telly and his cohorts would go back, pick up all that laundry and put it back neatly where they found it. But if doesn’t happen in life, “Sesame Street” figures, maybe sometimes it shouldn’t happen on the show, either. There’s always a little anarchy in the lives of children, however hard parents try to order, coax, plead and pound it out of them, and there’s still a little anarchy on “Sesame Street.”

“Sesame Street” doesn’t shy away from good deeds, of course. When Telly finds the Golden Triangle of Destiny, he decides not to keep it but to donate it to the Museum of Triangular History so everyone can enjoy it. Nor do the writers forget that however endearing we find the cute parts, their show’s core mission is to teach fundamental things like letters and numbers.

uncategorized

A bit of a rough weekend, really.

Posted on By admin

Talk about the cure being worse than the disease…

Katy was put on antibiotics last week to get rid of a small boil in her armpit that was very sore. The first round of antibiotics almost, but not quite, got it sorted out so she went back to the docs and they precribed her another round of the same antibiotics. Katy never really reacts well to antibiotics – they tend to make her stomach go completely wonky. Which they did, but to an extent never seen before. She had killer heartburn and it got to the point where she couldn’t sleep on her side at night because the muscles were too tender. She spent Friday night and Saturday night sleeping propped up semi-upright in bed. Suffice it to say, she didn’t sleep well.

We went to the docs on Saturday morning to get something done about the stomach pains. They prescribed something more powerful than the Gavescon she was using up to now. It seemed to help, to a point, until she started having an allergic reaction to it. Nothing too dramatic, just two days of constant itching. Since she can’t take antihistamines, I had to cover her in cold, damp towels during the night to soothe most of the itching. Suffice it to say, she didn’t sleep well.

The midwife came on Sunday morning to check her blood pressure. It’s elevated, but given the weekend she’s had, it’s not as bad as it could be. The midwife thinks that Katy should take the week off and get as much bedrest as she can, so Katy’s off to the docs (again!) to get signed off as sick for the week.

It’s not all bad though. We managed to get a lot done this weekend. We did a good sorting out of the office, I built the last of the nursery furniture that we’d bought last weekend, I did a stupid number of loads of laundry, we sorted out all our clothing and gave away a bunch of unused stuff to charity and I installed Ubuntu on the home laptop while we had a Harry Potter marathon.

I’m at the office right now but I’m just grabbing some files that I need to work from home. I’m going back as soon as they’re burned on DVD.

Hopefully, things’ll start going more smoothly in the near future.

uncategorized

Long weekend update

Posted on By admin

Lots to say about the weekend.

It starts on Friday, when I finally handed in all the course material that I was drafted to do for a course being given this week, yay! Katy had an appointment at Addenbrookes to talk with a mental health nurse about ways to avoid post-natal depression and how to deal with things while during her pregnancy. She hasn’t been sleeping well – which is apparently very common in pregnant women – and it’s making her tired and a bit grumpy. The recent weather really hasn’t been helping either. I got home at a reasonable time and chatted with Katy and her parents. They came down for the weekend. We went to the chippie for some take-out fish&chips and had a nice quiet evening.

Saturday saw us going to Ikea. IKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAA!! Le sigh. I’m an ikea-whore, I know this to be true. We bought some nursery furniture: a leksvik chest of drawers that will double as a change station, some trofast wall shelves for storage, a poang chair for those late-night feedings and, joy of joys, it would seem that the leksvik cot-bed that we’ve been lusting after is back in production after being taken out for a re-tooling to fix some sort of manufacturing issue. Of course they were all out on that day, typical, but at least it means that we can get one ordered :) We also got some funky ghost-y nightlights and a rug that’ll really tie the room together, man (*) and some assorted stuff for the kitchen. It’s impossible to go to Ikea without buying random shit from the market area :)

We got home and we had ourselves the first BBQ of the season (yeah, we’re a bit late, I know, but still, we more than made up for it with the amount of food we cooked). I’d made some sangria with cheap, sweet rose wine, fizzy lemonade, lemons, limes, oranges, pineapple, watermelon and lots of ice. It went down exceptionally well in the scorching heat we had all weekend.

BBQ

We cooked chicken thighs with jalapeno relish, sausages, pork burgers with ginger, potato wedges with olive oil & chives and feta & watermelon salad that really was really refreshing and light. We ate outside, which is something that I really don’t like but must work on and discovered that our kitchen chairs are really, really uncomfortable (that’s how often we use them that we only realize this after having had them for over 3 years…)

We had a pub lunch on Sunday and spent most of the day building the Ikea stuff and unwrapping the pushchair. It’s not really a one-handed job, but it’s much simpler than I expected it to be.

It’s been stupidly hot all weekend. They said it would be close to 30 degrees and there wasn’t a touch of wind for most of the weekend, except for when it rained a bit late last evening. It’s been so hot that all the windows of the house were left wide-open for most of the weekend (and those people who know me well will understand the import of that statement). We didn’t see the cats for most of the weekend – we figure they holed up somewhere shady and slept it off. We got worried for a bit when we hadn’t seen Reenie for almost a day and a half (being that she is an attention-whore) but she wandered in for some food and some fuss, so all is good.

This week should be fairly uneventful. Bit of work – I’m giving a session on Thursday in the course I mentioned earlier. Otherwise, very routine on my part.

(*) bonus points if you get the movie reference.

uncategorized

The peanut is a he!

Posted on By admin

Katy had her 20-week scan and we’re happy to report that all is well and we’re having a boy. Katy wanted a girl but was expecting it to be a boy. I can now finally (*) say that I would have preferred a girl but I’ll count my blessings that all is ok with the peanut. Growth figures are right where they should be and all the bits and pieces seem to be in the right number and in the right places. This is very good news indeed and lifts some weight off our shoulders. We’ve been surrounded by people having problems and complications with their pregnancies, so it’s nice to know that all can go well once in a while (touch wood!). Two coworkers had premature births. In one case, the mother required two emergency surgeries and the baby had to have an emergency hernia operation this past weekend. Katy’s colleague lost her baby recently and was due roughly at the same time as Katy. So yeah, we’re very happy that things seem to be going well right now.

The scan technician was impressive in being able to distinguish the blobs she was seeing (there’s a kidney, that’s the liver, here’s the willie, etc…) At one point, the switched from 2D scanning to 3D scanning. Now that’s weird! Technologically impressive, but somehow wrong :)

We have now also finalized a name: Benjamin Alexander Côté. I was lobbying for Alexander Benjamin, but Katy preferred the former. In the end, to keep it simple, we put two suits of cards in a hat (red and black) and cut cards for a best 7 out of 13. She won 7 to 6. Dagnabbit! But it was fair and square, so I can’t really complain about it or cry foul.

So it’s now official, and we’ve started buying stuff. We went to mothercare and bought the pushchair while it was still on sale :) If you want to buy us something for the peanut, you’re more than welcome. We didn’t want people to send us stuff before we had these scan results and all was well. So all is well. Now send stuff :D

(*) I didn’t want to say anything until we finally had confirmation in case what I said somehow influenced the outcome (**).

(**) I never said I was rational…

uncategorized

I’m pregnant. I win. The end.

Posted on By admin

I don’t know where I first saw the original t-shirt, but I just had to get one for Katy. However, being fabulous, I got her a custom-made hooded sweatshirt (as it’s her preferred form of day-to-day clothing).

I got it in the post yesterday and gave it to her as a reward for having gotten a clean bill of health from the OBGYN. Her blood pressure has gone down and is holding steady, which is very good news indeed. We have a detailled anatomy scan scheduled for next monday, which hopefully will also be positive and we’ll find out if you’re all going to be uncles or aunties.

uncategorized

Everybody? Meet the Peanut.

Posted on By admin

This is the Peanut.

The Peanut at 12 weeks

If all goes according to plan, the Peanut will be with us by the end of November.

So far, things are going well (touch wood). Katy hasn’t had any morning sickness (though she does have afternoon queasiness and killer heartburn) and the only really annoying thing she has is the need to go pee every two hours.

We’re in the process of discovering just how little we know about baby stuff and just how expensive everything is. Besides being scared shitless at the prospect of becoming parents, we’re looking forward to it†.

Katy would prefer it be a girl (because she says that everybody she knows is having boys and is upsetting the population balance). I won’t comment on what sex I’d like the Peanut to be (and don’t ask me why I won’t comment because I won’t comment on that either). I’m just hoping that all the right pieces are in the right places. That’s always a good start.

We’ll keep the readership informed with pertinent details when we get them.

† Even though I’ll never publicly admit it

uncategorized