Anyone else wanna negotiate?

So the Bear was supposed to be gone for two weeks, and coming home this past Friday. But it worked out for him to come home for a couple of days at the start of last week instead. Knowing he'd be coming home late Sunday morning via the ferry, I arranged to have our friends watch Tweetie for a few hours so we could have some time together before I got back into the work week, and he headed out of town again. It worked out for our friends to take her in the evening, so we decided to go out for a bite. And running through the options of places to go, we opted to go to Cactus Club, for old time's sake. The Bear used to take me to one of the original Cactus Club locations in North Van when we were still dating, and though the franchise has gone through a couple of makeovers since, there's still that connection.
So, we dropped off T and headed downtown. We put in our orders, including some wings with blue cheese sauce, one of the Bear's night out staples, for starters. A little while later, a different server brought the wings, but without the sauce. Our server had been caught up in a bit of a billing backlog. The Bear, being particular about such things, mentioned the missing sauce, and the other server said she'd look into it.
And so we waited. And waited. We never saw the other server again, but eventually flagged down our own. Knowing this was more an issue of staffing than our own server's efforts, the Bear asked to speak to the manager. Our server dutifully asked about the problem, and he filled her in. She came back a moment later with the sauce, and said the manager was on his way. Of course, by this time, the wings were cold, as were the finger bowls. When the manager came by a few minutes later, the Bear filled him in. And true to the Bear's negotiating record, the manager comp'd us the wings, plus a fresh pound with fresh sauce, and dessert. Which left me feeling room in the budget for another virgin margarita. And the rest of the evening went wonderfully, except that with all the extra wings, it was hard to finish my meal.

Life Happens

I don't know about any of you (are any of you still out there - it's been so long) but I can be inclined at times to think way too much. And this has even been independently and objectively confirmed. When we lived in K-town, I worked at an online career development company and had lots of access to different personality and aptitude testing. Okay, it's perhaps a little less objective when you have access to the code, you're providing all the answers yourself and can take the test over and over. But when we were candidates for MAF, we did a fairly extensive personality assessment, with evaluations from different people who knew us. It was one of those four quadrant systems and I landed securely in the thinker's corner: Analytical-Analytical.
So when it comes to the big things in life, I rather like to take in all the info I can and weigh it all out. Pray about it, too, for sure, but the point is I like to be pretty sure of where I'm going and my best options for getting there. But sometimes, while I'm busy processing the data and mapping out the alternatives, life happens.
And life is exactly what happened about eight weeks ago, though it took us awhile to figure it out. It was three and a half weeks ago now that we learned, quite unexpectedly, that that same life was then five weeks along as the doctors count, and growing inside me. There've been some hurdles to overcome, and it's not been an easy three weeks emotionally, but a second ultrasound yesterday showed, unofficially, that everything seems to be on track.
Naturally, I'm back to thinking and processing all the new implications, but I reached a few conclusions pretty quickly. One of the biggest questions I was thinking, debating and praying about over the last number of months was whether I'd be able to handle another. Becoming mama to Tweetie's been a wonderful experience so far, and I certainly wouldn't go back for a minute, but it's also been incredibly hard on a lot of levels. The nature of this pregnancy cries out divine intervention, so I take great hope from the thought that God seems to think we can handle it. And since we made no active decision and did nothing to help this along (ok, well obviously we did something, but let's not get into those details) I can't spend the next months and years second guessing that choice.

So, there you have it. Life happens, often when and how we least expect it. And if all continues to go well, Tweetie will be a big sister next year, and there'll be a whole new wave of pregnancy and motherhood flotsam washing up on the coast in the meantime.

picky eater?

Tweetie's been exposed to all sorts of different foods and flavours, and there's not much she outright dislikes. What she likes enough to make a decent-sized snack or meal of, especially among those things that travel well to daycare, seems to shift regularly. So we experiment sometimes, and judging by her little belly, we do alright.
But this morning she made me laugh. Cheerios are always a staple. I can put a little handful out and she can feed herself while I fix whatever else needs fixin'. And I can expect that some will find the floor instead of her mouth, more when she's not so hungry. This morning she was hungry and as I settled in with the cereal bowl and bottle, she was picking up the last oatey morsel and checking it out. It was a broken 'O', more like a big 'C'. She looked at it, put her hand out, and dropped it to the floor. I looked down where it landed, and today there was only one other bit on the floor.
Another broken O!
A sign of perfectionism and snobbery to come?