Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling

In my opinion, this is the book that stops the series from being awesome.  And to be honest, I can't quite put my finger on what it is that I don't like about it.  If I had to be really critical, I would say that the character development was lacking, and the plot wasn't as strong as it could have been.  It was like Rowling had a great idea with the first book, but didn't know where to take it with the second.  After this, the books get progressively better.  But this is definitely the low point.

I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb

This book reminds me why I love literature.  It reminds me why I became and English teacher in the first place.  It shows the amazing power that literature has to communicate, to portray emotion, and to sustain culture.
The creation of characters in this book is amazing.  Wally Lamb made me feel closer to Dominick than I do to my own brother.  Its amazing that I loved him and hated him at the same time.  I felt bad for him, and rooted for him to get back together with Dessa.  I desperately wanted him to forgive Ray, and see that he did the best he knew how to do.
This book actually reminds me of something I saw on Oprah once - which is strange, because I don't often watch Oprah.  But years ago she had a guest that said that parents do the best they know how to do - and when they know better, they do better.  I know so many people who are bitter about the way their parents treated them when they were kids.  But as a parent, I really believe that we honestly do the best we can for our children.  That certainly doesn't make parents perfect, but there's no sense holding a grudge.
I read this book years ago, and I remember it was the first book I ever read that made me cry.  If you read it, it was at the part at the end about the flowers.  Check it out, and let me know if you cry.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling

I decided to kick off the list with an easy one - Harry Potter always makes for a nice light read.  I've read this book 2 or 3 times before, but I like going back to read it every once in a while, because for some reason I always forget the small details.  My favorite thing about this read-though was rediscovering the humor of the book.  I had forgotten, but the series started out really funny.  The Dursleys were written as kooky and foolish.  The whole bit about the mail being delivered and Uncle Vernon trying to stop Harry getting his letter - priceless.  I always thought it was a shame that that part wasn't included in the movie, but I guess they couldn't put everything in.

Another thing I for got about the beginning of the series - Hermione and Ron & Harry din't get along in the beginning.  It was the incident with the troll in the bathroom that brought them together as friends.

All things considered, I'm not sure that this is a literary masterpiece - the humorous tone at the beginning that's not carried through the rest of the book or series makes me think that Rowling didn't know exactly where she was going with this when she started out.  But it's a fun book, and sure to be children's classic for years to come.

One down, ninety-nine to go.

100 Great Books: A Year of Reading

I had really good intentions of blogging about my life with twins, but I haven't made an effort to keep up with it.  I think because I'm so busy with the babies that when I have a few minutes to myself, the last thing I want to do is think about babies.  So I've decided to try a new topic for the blog - books!

I thought it would be really cool to try to read the greatest books ever written and blog about them.  The problem is, how can anyone know what the greatest books ever written are?  I googled it, and there are literally hundreds of lists of the greatest books ever written, and none of them are the same.  In the end, the list I chose to follow is not one of the greatest books of all time at all, although it claims to be.  The list was put together by Indigo Books, who asked Canadians in an online poll what their favorite books were, and compiled the top 100.  This list is mostly newer books, and there's no way this is meant to be the greatest books of all time - Confessions of a Shopaholic made the list, but Lolita didn't.  But I like this list because it shows what the average person is reading and enjoying.  It also has some distinctly Canadian content (Anne of Green Gables and Fall on Your Knees).  There are a few true classics (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre), and even a few that I've never heard of (Catch-22 and Summer Tree).

Just to make things interesting, I'm giving myself a timeline - 1 year to read 100 great books.  That's roughly a book every 3 days, but some are super quick reads, like Charlotte's Web and Tuesday's With Morrie.  If I can do the short ones in a day, I can have extra time for the lengthy ones, like A Fine Balance or Dune.  And even though I've read a lot of these before, the rule is that I have to reread them.  I'll try to blog about each of the books as I go along - maybe a few at a time if I get behind, but I'll try to stay caught up.  We'll see how it goes with the babies.

So, without further adieu, here is the complete list:

1 The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
2 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3 To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4 Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
5 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
6 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
7 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien
8 Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
9 Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
10 A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
11 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
12 Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
13 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
14 A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
15 Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
16 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
17 Fall on Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald
18 The Stand, Stephen King
19 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
20 Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
21 The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
22 The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
23 Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
24 The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
25 Life of Pi, Yann Martel
26 The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
27 Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
28 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
29 East of Eden, John Steinbeck
30 Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
31 Dune, Frank Herbert
32 The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
33 Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
34 1984, George Orwell
35 The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
36 The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
37 The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
38 I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
39 The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
40 The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
41 The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel
42 The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
43 Confessions of a Shopaholic, Sophie Kinsella
44 The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
45 The Bible
46 Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
47 The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
48 Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
49 The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
50 She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
51 The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
52 A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
53 Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
54 Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
55 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
56 The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence
57 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling
58 The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
59 The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
60 The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
61 Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
62 The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
63 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
64 Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
65 Fifth Business, Robertson Davies
66 One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
67 The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares
68 Catch-22, Joseph Heller
69 Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
70 The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
71 Bridget Jones’ Diary, Helen Fielding
72 Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
73 Shogun, James Clavell
74 The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
75 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
76 Summer Tree, Guy Gavriel Kay
77 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
78 The World According to Garp, John Irving
79 The Diviners, Margaret Laurence
80 Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
81 Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley
82 Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
83 Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
84 Wizard’s First Rule, Terry Goodkind
85 Emma, Jane Austen
86 Watership Down, Richard Adams
87 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88 The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
89 Blindness, Jose Saramago
90 Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
91 In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
92 Lord of The Flies, William Golding
93 The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
94 The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
95 The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum
96 The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
97 White Oleander, Janet Fitch
98 A Woman of Substance, Barbara Taylor Bradford
99 The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
100 Ulysses, James Joyce

Drink More Water

The last few weeks of my pregnancy have been miserable.  Absolutely miserable.  I've done little more than lay in bed and panic about how I'm going to get through the next 7 weeks without dropping dead of feeling like crap.  Now that we have the cesarean section booked - March 23 - it seems like that date will never come, especially in light of the new batch of horrible pregnancy symptoms that I'm experiencing.

It started with a little swelling, which is, of course, normal in the third trimester of pregnancy.  Remember the picture of my wedding ring that wouldn't quite fit?  Well, the swelling got a whole lot worse than that.

Okay, this isn't actually my swollen hand, but it's pretty darn close.  It seemed to happen almost overnight - I woke up one morning and my fingers and palm were so swollen that I couldn't quite close my hand into a fist.  Once I got up and moved around a bit, the swelling, went down, but it returned the next morning, and then the next, getting worse and staying longer each day.

After the swelling started, I developed excruciating pain in my left hand, specifically in the thumb and first finger.  It was most painful when I was sleeping, so I woke often in the night because of the pain, no matter how I held my hand as I slept.  Once I woke up and moved it to get some blood flowing, the pain lessened a little, but not totally.  Even during the day, I couldn't grasp anything with those fingers at the risk of having pain and tremors shoot down my fingers and arm.

In my right hand, the same swelling, but slightly different symptoms.  My fingertips started to go numb while I slept, then my whole hand, and eventually my whole arm.  Again, when I woke up and moved it went away at first, but after a few days it stayed permanently, to some degree.  If my hand was relaxed, the fingertips were numb, but if I held it up for more than a few seconds - for example, to shampoo my hair in the shower - the whole hand went numb.  Not as painful as the other hand, but worrisome none the less.

I saw my OB for the first time last week, and he told me that because of the swelling, I have developed Carpal Tunnel in both of my wrists - unpleasant, but not totally uncommon in pregnancy.

Apparently the carpal tunnel is a part of the wrist that tendons and a nerve travel through to the fingers.  So, because of the swelling, the tendons and nerve in my wrists are being swished, causing pain and numbness.

I started to research carpal tunnel syndrome at home,  but just like my doctor told me, there's not much that can be done.  In extreme cases, surgery is the only answer, but since mine is caused by pregnancy swelling, it will go away after the pregnancy.

So in the meantime, I needed to find a way to reduce the swelling in order to get rid of some of the pain.  I started doing some research about what a person can do to reduce swelling.  I thought there might be some miracle fruit that you could eat, or a fancy herbal remedy or something.

Turns out, the answer was even more simple, and something I already knew, but didn't think about.  Drink more water.  And avoid things that decrease the amount of water in your body, like caffeine and sodium.  I'm not too bad with the caffeine - a coffee or tea about once a week - but I thought about all the sodium I was consuming, and it was pretty appalling.  We'd eaten out a few times recently, and I had been eating fries and gravy, and at home I snacked on chips and crackers.  It is recommended that people with swelling issues try to limit their sodium intake to 1000mg a day.  Even the things that I thought were safe, like my Raisin Bran cereal, had 350mg in a serving!  And as for my water intake, well there were days that I drank no water, and just milk or juice or coffee.

So starting yesterday, I decided to challenge myself to drink 2 liters of water a day (which is probably still not enough, but a huge increase for me), and to consider my sodium intake.  It would be too daunting to try to cut it out, but I checked the sodium content of everything I ate, and skipped things that seemed unreasonable - like the Raisin Bran.  I decided to commit to this for one week, and then see if it had made a difference at all.

Yesterday was only day one, but today I feel a million times better than I have in weeks!  The biggest difference was that I got a good night's sleep last night, which made a huge difference in my general wellbeing today.  I was a little less swollen last night, so I slept a little better.  Granted, I had to get up to pee more, but  I wasn't in as much pain, so I had an easier time falling back asleep, whereas in previous nights it would sometimes take hours.

All in all, water seems to be the miracle cure.  I'll have to see how the rest of my week goes, but I think I might be onto something here!

Pictures from January

This is me at 28 weeks - the thumb trick doesn't quite work anymore.  Oh, and I'm standing in the babies' room that my husband just painted.  Didn't he do a nice job?

This is me trying to wear my wedding ring, but no such luck.  It doesn't even go past my knuckle anymore.  My fingers are so swollen they look like little sausages!

Here's Daddy and Kash trying to set up the babies's crib - but they needed Mommy's help because they didn't read the instructions!

Baby Blankets

The babies' crib is finally set up!  The two blankets were made for us by one of my Grade 12 students.  Aren't they beautiful?  I can't wait for the babies to cuddle up with them!

Stupid is as Pregnancy Does

The other evening I was speaking to a colleague of mine, and she was asking about my plans for maternity leave.  This was a great opportunity, because she happens to be an expert when it comes to our teaching contract, so she would be able to tell me exactly what I needed to do to make sure I got my proper mat leave.

"I originally applied to take my mat leave starting on February 1st," I told her, "but my doctor thinks I might have to stop working before the end of the month, so I'm planning to just take sick days until February 1st if I have to, then start my mat leave."

"Actually," Kim explained to me, "If your doctor requires you to stop working early, then that's when your mat leave would begin.  You could also go on short term disability, but then you would lose your mat leave and go straight to your 37 weeks of parental leave."

"I see," I said slowly, thinking very hard about what she had just said.  "Well, what if I just took sick days until my mat leave starts on February 1st?"

"No," Kim said very slowly and patiently, "it doesn't work that way.  If you end up going off early, that's when your mat leave would begin.  You can't take sick days until your mat leave begins."

"Hmm," I said, carefully considering this information.  I wracked my brain to understand the implications of this information.  "Well, how about this?  I might be repeating myself, but couldn't I just take sick days from now until my mat leave begins?"

Kim gave me a strange look.

"Oh," I said, finally getting it.  "I just asked you the same question 10 times, didn't I?"

"Yeah," she replied.

Now, I am not a moron.  I know this for an absolute fact, and I have a lot of evidence to back up this claim.  I have two Bachelor's degrees, and a straight A average in the Master's program I am currently taking. I have a job that I go to everyday, and I am a functioning member of society.  But for some reason, I seem to be doing a series of incredibly stupid things.  According to www.whattoexpect.com, pregnancy hormones cause the brain's volume to actually decrease during the third trimester of pregnancy - which means I still have a few more weeks of this craziness to endure.

So, later that same night, I decided to relax in the bathtub - after all, it had been a stressful day.  I went into the bathroom, and took the detachable shower head off the wall to rinse out the bottom of the tub before I filled it up.  As I was rinsing, the shower head slipped out of my hand, and landed face up at the bottom of the tub, spraying water everywhere.

In retrospect, I can see that a rational person would have simply bent down, picked up the shower head, and them dried them self off with a towel.  But as I've already explained, a pregnant person is not a rational person. So, I did what seemed most logical to me in that instant - I screamed and ran out of the bathroom.

Once I was in the hallway, looking back at the water spraying out of the bathroom door onto the carpet, I realized that "pregnancy brain" was definitely becoming an issue for me.

Cleanliness is Next to Goodliness

I have recently discovered an amazing thing.  Not discovered in the sense that I didn't know it before, but rather like someone who discovers religion - I had an amazing, eye-opening experience that I feel compelled to share with as many people as I can.

Here it is - I can have a person come to my house, clean it from top to bottom, and all I have to do is pay them a reasonable amount of money.  This is huge!  No longer do I have to be burdened with thoughts of an unclean bathroom!  Instead of stressing that I need to be cleaning something, I can relax and spend time with my husband, or just hang out and be very pregnant.

Now, I understand that a cleaning lady is not for everyone.  There are people who actually enjoy cleaning their own home.  There's my grandma, and, um... well, probably other people too.  And it does cost money - we're paying $25 an hour, and she was here for 3 hours, and is coming every other week.  So I don't get off totally scott-free; I will have to do a few things in between.  But it is just so worth it.  One less menial task to worry about, one less thing to stress about, one less exhausting task.

So, I am strongly recommending that everyone who is pregnant or has kids or is otherwise busy try out the cleaning lady.  You don't have to commit to someone forever - just say upfront that you're doing a trial run to see how it goes.  Also, you don't have to leave the house.  I thought you did, but if you just go hang out in a room that you don't want cleaned - or move rooms half way through, that works too.  I had to go out for the first hour, then I had a nap and she just let herself out - easy-peasy.

I can definitely see this being essential when the babies come - we'll just go downstairs while she cleans.  I don't even want to think about trying to keep a house clean with two brand new babies.  And Garratt will be working a lot, so he's not very useful in the cleaning department.  Actually, that's not different from when he's not working.  Anyhow, try the cleaning lady.  We found ours on kijiji.ca.