Day 8

I'm planning to make a daily entry on the blog while we are in Montreal...life is so different for us hear. I hope blogging about it will help me remember to laugh at all the craziness!

Today was a good day. No nasty letters. No french phone calls. No public tantrums. No run ins with snow plows.

The girls and I only left the house once today - from about 10:00 to 11:00. We all bundled up and headed out to the mini grocery store about 10 minutes away. We put Maggie in the umbrella stroller and Carly walked with no complaints (usually a rock is in her boot, or her mittens are itchy, or her legs are bothering her, etc.). When we got to the grocery store, Carly pushed Maggie while I selected a few items. You have to bring your own grocery bags or you get charged per plastic bag at checkout. Fine with me...the plastic bags are too hard to carry when you are walking with children anyway. The grocery is interesting because the carts are smaller - no seats for children in the front and definitely no cars or trucks! I needed a pound of ground beef for our chili tonight - well the only thing ground that was packaged was ground pork - didn't think that sounded very good. We circled the meat counter 3 times while I was gathering the courage to ask for a pound of ground beef - and I was trying to over hear if the man was speaking English to the woman at the counter. Luckily, I didn't remember that they don't do things in pounds here...The meat is packaged and priced by the kilogram. Laws!!! Thank heavens I forgot about that or I would have never had the courage. Luckily, the butcher thought it was cute that Carly was pushing Maggie around and took pity on me. One pound of beef was a little less than 1/2 kilogram. The items in the grocery store all have sticker price tags - no bar codes...and the credit card machine scares me to death. It always takes me 3 or 4 swipes because you actually have to wait for the cashier to select credit...I'm so used to swiping my card while the cashier is still scanning my food - and I tell the machine that it's credit. Anyway, we made our purchases and then headed down another block to a coffee shop.

Mom needed some caffeine and Carly needed a reward for her help. She chose the biggest chocolate chip muffin in the case and did not feel like sharing with anyone. Luckily, it was pretty dry and not all that tasty, so after a few bites she agreed to pretty much give the rest away. Maggie was released from her stroller and that's when things really went down hill...so we packed up our muffin and started the walk home...Carly pushing an empty stroller and Maggie walking along the snow bank. It took us about 20 minutes to get home.

After Maggie's rough start, we have decided to give her another go at sharing a room with Carly. She has slept for the past 4 nights in our bedroom. The last 2 nights she has slept through the night...so, hopefully, Dr. Debbie Downer next door will cut us a break and give us a day or two to get Maggie adjusted to her new room (that shares a wall w/Dr. Downer). The girls fell asleep easily...I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can keep Maggie out of our room!