Three babies, cont'd

I've found my love for my two new babies (the kitties) but I have to admit that they have tremendous potential for driving me nuts. It's great that they're curious, playful and active, and I love to see them paw at little things - Legos, pens, the cap to the milk that I set on the counter for 20 seconds...Sometimes I want to, well not only want to, sometimes I do scream at them to just stop! Don't touch anything! I mean, aren't cats supposed to sleep 20 hours of the day?? Now Soleil is regularly in the wall cupboard in the bathroom, randomly tossing Q-tips, combs, and jewelry (no one's supposed to be in that cupboard!) into the sink below. So now the bathroom door just stays shut. Pretty soon the cute kitties will be spending all day, every day in their room with their litter box.

Sometimes I wonder if I really need another baby - since I already have three. I spend my days telling Chloé not to play in the litter box, Soleil not to drink the water from the sink, and Caillou not to chew on the plants. I've got my hands full.

Wanted

This evening we watched the movie “Wanted” and I knew halfway through the movie I had to write something about it.

It's a movie full of clichés and borrowed ideas. “I'm your father...Wesley.” The good guy is the bad guy and the bad guy is the good guy. His girlfriend's fucking his best friend. The secret society “the weavers” reading code from a loom. The traumatized daughter of an assassinated man becomes an assassin. Honestly, any amateur screenwriter could've written this. Exciting concepts like the assassin that can bend the tragectory of a bullet (useful!), great blood-splatter effects and flying cars give it a bit of a boost. But it's not surprising to see these things in a comic. Good thing they were kept in the screenplay!

Every time someone did a curve shot (and since these were always in slow motion, they were hard to miss), I thought, it's like every gangster's dream of throwing their gun arm around their body and shooting a curve bullet. Fun.

Angelina Jolie – a horrible choice for a super-assassin. She looks frail when she's just walking across the screen, she's so skinny. Yeah, she looks tough and beautiful, and sitting in the train with James McAvoy she looks positively dangerous, but a few burgers would do her good. Her name is Fox. Because she's a fox. A scrawny, skeletal fox, but a fox nonetheless.

Some things to look forward to:

Morgan Freeman says “motherfucker.”

Angelina Jolie on her back on the hood of a moving (well, racing, really) car, her crotch in James McAvoy's face, steering with her knee and shooting at the car behind her.

Corpses for target practice.

Flying letters of a keyboard spell “Fuck you” in midair – and the “u” is the roots of a tooth from the guy who got hit with the keyboard.

I have to say I liked the end. “This is me taking control of my life...What the fuck have you done lately?”

Good question.

Sleeping baby

I'm very happy to share with you, Reader, that Chloé continues to sleep through the night. Most of the time.

It truly is heavenly. The only [tiny] problem is that I've become used to continuous sleep, so that when she wakes up and I have to comfort her I'm unable to fall asleep, although it generally doesn't take long to get her back to sleep. A small price to pay, I suppose.

We have friends who are still fighting to keep their son (who is the same age as Chloé) asleep through the night, and I definitely see similarities with what we were doing before. It seems these kids are just taking advantage of what we give them. Fair enough. They figure, I cry, they come. I keep crying, they don't leave. Yeah. I have total control. We apparently didn't mind being manipulated - until this manipulation was helping no one. She wasn't sleeping alone, in our arms, or even in our presence. At that point, something had to change.

I'd like to tell my friends that at this point, they may have to let him cry a little. I didn't like the "cry it out" theory when she was 2 months old, and I know parents whose children at such a young age responded very badly to this method - screaming until they puked, for instance. But at 18 months, our kids can do and handle a lot more. And unless you've chosen to have your child sleep in your bed with you (and if this is still working for everyone involved), they probably need to learn to sleep and fall asleep on their own.

And I think this was the most important lesson. After learning that she could just lay down in her bed and sleep without mommy's or daddy's shoulder, everything became simpler. Going to sleep in the evening, and staying asleep in the night (which is often waking and going back to sleep again). She still cries a little, of course, but if she's tired, she sleeps.

Now if only I could sleep...